This is Jihad?

As much as I’d love to respond to this, posting on CF really isn’t good for my iman.  Also not good for one’s iman is nutters like those mentioned in the post.  What is good for my iman then?  Sh. Nuh Keller, may Allah (swt) be pleased with him.  There is rarely a time when I listen to his lectures and I don’t come away feeling my ruh lifted and enlivened. 

If you haven’t listened to Sh. Nuh’s lecture entitled “This is Jihad?” DO IT NOW!  The first half is a review of the rise and effects of wahabism, and the second talks about the rules and nature of jihad.   I’ve only listened through once, but it’s so chock full of good stuff, I’ll probably listen to it a few more times and take notes.  

I’d love to post this on CF, as the sheikh clearly and equivically teaches the opposite of what nutters in said post are preaching, but I worry that it’s too technical for non muslims, and even muslims in general.  If any of my readers listen to this lecture (do I have any readers left?), please leave some feedback on the accessablitily of the lecture.  jazakAllah khair.

“traditionalism” hits mainstream media

Egypt’s Grand Mufti Counters the Tide of Islamic Extremism

Adapting. One thing is absolutely clear, though: Gomaa’s unshakable confidence repeated as often by his protegees as by him”that the inherent moderation and pragmatism of traditionalist Islam make it far superior to anything proposed by puritanical Salafists or Wahhabis or utopia-minded Islamists. Through the centuries and across cultures and continents, Islam spread and flourished, they all say, precisely because the principles of sharia were applied and interpreted in light of changing reality. Apart from supporting bedrock principles of the faith as set forth in the Koran and the hadith (the authoritative accounts of the words and deeds of the Prophet), Islamic jurists sought to make the lives of Muslims easier, not more difficult, through their realistic application of religious law. As Gomaa sees it, what the best Muslim jurists have always done is to focus on the intent of sharia to foster faithfulness, dignity, intellectual growth, and other core values. Called al makased, this method of seeking to apply the law through an understanding of its purposes is at the core of Gomaa’s scholarship and jurisprudence and is being spread by his scores of students and followers. 

But there have always been in Islam, as in other religions, the terrible simplifiers, the puritans who, like the 18th-century Arabian cleric Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, claim not only to streamline the faith but to return it to basic principles. Often called Salafists, such Muslims in more recent times have also presented themselves as modernizers and reformists. The more political among them, the Islamists, have additionally sought to make Islam into a political program to replace secular forms of government.

Tossing out centuries of reasoned reflection upon the meaning of sharia and discounting the importance of most schools of jurisprudence, these puritans reduce the law to selected passages from the Koran and the hadith and, as the traditionalists see it, distort the intent of sharia by taking the chaff for the wheat. “Their fast-food jurisprudence has led to great intolerance,” says Suhaib Webb, a 36-year-old American convert to Islam who came to Al-Azhar University from California precisely to learn the classical traditions of jurisprudence. “The classical discourse dealt with reality,” Webb says. “The modern discourse is utopian. Ali Gomaa is respected because he deals with reality.”

Interesting.  Rather than throw about words like “moderate muslim” without giving a coherent definition, here’s an article that actually seeks to grasp the changes in islamic jurisprudence in the last few centuries, and define these different movements. 

As for GM Gomaa, I can’t same much about him.  I have his autograph (ok, his signature) on my official al Azhar conversion papers.  That’s about it.  *Puts study the history of al-Azhar on list of things to do*