Ishmael My Brother July 31, 2008
Posted by electromagnetic in Lines.Tags: Abraham, Ishmael, Israel, Shin Shalom
add a comment
Ishmael my brother,
How long shall we fight each other?
My brother from times bygone,
My brother – Hagar’s son,
My brother, the wandering one.
One angel was sent to us both,
One angel watched over our growth -
There in the wilderness, death threatening through thirst,
I a sacrifice on the altar, Sarah’s first.
Ishmael my brother, hear my plea:
It was the angel who tied thee to me …
Time is running out, put hatred to sleep,
Shoulder to shoulder, let’s water our sheep.
Shalom, Shin. In Forms of Prayer edited by J. Magonet and L. Blue. London: RSGB, 1985, III, p. 891. Quoted in “Abraham from a Jewish Perspective” by Sybil Sheridan found in Abraham’s Children: Jews, Christians and Muslims in Conversation edited by Norman Solomon, Richard Harries and Tim Winter. London: T&T Clark, 2006.
Kassay’s Orphan July 15, 2008
Posted by electromagnetic in Traces.add a comment
An orphan is not one without a father but one without knowledge.
Ala Kassay, 1426.
Globalised Before Globalisation July 12, 2008
Posted by electromagnetic in Video.Tags: Abdal-Hakim Murad, Consumerism, Economics, Modernity
add a comment
I just watched a video [linked below] of Abdal-Hakim Murad’s lecture at the recent Radical Middle Way project event “Globalised Before Globalisation: The Forgotten History of the Muslim Trader” delivered at Canary Wharf, London, on May 7, 2008 [Khan Dera Films, approx. 20 minutes].
Murad discusses economic dimensions of the sirah or life of Nabi Muhammad (peace be upon him). He conceives of the sirah as a tale of two cities: Mecca and Medina and explores how the hijra or migration of the Nabi from Mecca to Medina can be understood not only in terms of a theological and political shift but an economic shift as well. I think Murad’s talk is an insightful comment on a much neglected aspect of the biography of the Nabi. The way he links his point to the greater consequences of modern economics is creative. One of the most difficult aspects of this lecture for me is Murad’s observation about why more relatively wealthy white people do not become Muslim as frequently as poor black and brown people in Europe and other parts of the world, especially North America. Acknowledging factors like racism as barriers, he goes further to suggest that since God is with the broken-hearted, people who tend to come from socio-economic backgrounds that encourage complacency and maintenance of the status-quo of the establishment are less receptive to embracing the transformative path that Islam represents because doing so would threaten to burst their bubbles of advantage: economic, intellectual, and otherwise. This lecture also features one of Murad’s lighter moments as he mischievously imitates the accent of an Indian telemarketer before a crowd of predominantly younger British professionals (many of South Asian heritage), evoking laughter as he tries to drive home the point that we live in a society in which the evidence of the great (and increasing) socio-economic disparity between the wealthy north and poor south is often thinly concealed but just enough so that we do not bother to examine it or actually do anything about it.
Watch the lecture at the Radical Middle Way website here.
Vision and Light in Kindi July 10, 2008
Posted by electromagnetic in Fragments.Tags: Aristotle, Euclid, Kindi, Optics
add a comment
Although he [Kindi, d. ca. 870] accepts that we perceive visible forms, he is always neutral about the mechanism by which we perceive them* [Footnote 19: Consider, for example, this passage from On First Philosophy: "our perception through the senses, upon direct contact (mubashara) of sense with its object is not in time" (AR 106.8). Here al-Kindi's statement is consistent with Aristotle, but emphasizes only the fact that sensation is through contact, which as previously mentioned is common to all ancient theories of vision. By the same token, al-Kindi does not try to bring together the Aristotelian doctrine of visible forms with his extramissionist mechanics]. Nowhere does al-Kindi imply that we must perceive forms through some sort of intromission view. In any case, al-Kindi may, like modern scholars, have been troubled by Aristotle’s own inconsistency on the question of the mechanism of vision. In the Meteorology and De Caelo he adopts an extramission theory like that of Plato, Euclid and al-Kindi* [Footnote 20: ... ]. Still, it is clear that [Kindi's] De Aspectibus considers and rejects an identifiably Aristotelian theory of vision.
Al-Kindi’s fidelity to Euclid is also less than complete. De Aspectibus diverges from the Optics on a number of points. This is done more in a spirit of charity than criticism: al-Kindi says in De Aspectibus, Prop. 11, II. 79-81, that we should not be eager to attribute error to a figure like Euclid, but instead “we should think well of him and shift what he says to the right path (convertamus eius sermonem ad semitam bonam).” In the rest of this section I want to present three such shifts:
(A) Euclid presents visual rays as one-dimensional lines emitted to form a cone. Al-Kindi argues that the rays must in fact be three-dimensional.
(B) Euclid also believed that as the lines emitted from the eye spread out, there will be gaps between them; this is why we do not see things clearly when they are far away. Al-Kindi denies this, and holds that the visual cone is continuous.
(C) Finally there is the aforementioned account of how light is propagated: along straight lines, but having an instantaneous effect over the whole extent of its path (in other words, light does not travel).
Adamson, Peter. “Vision, Light and Color in al-Kindi, Ptolemy and the Ancient Commentators” in Arabic Sciences and Philosophy. Vol. 16, No. 2, September 2006, pp. 213-14. Note: I have left out Adamson’s diacritics.
Religion is a Secular Concept? July 9, 2008
Posted by electromagnetic in Fragments.Tags: Religion, Secularism, Wilfred Cantwell Smith
add a comment
Secularism…has become an ideology that holds that there is nothing higher in the universe than we. Many of its victims have not only believed this, but have even felt it. Some, to the devastation also of their neighbours, have even begun to live in terms of it. In a milder version, even if one feels that there is more to human life and to the world than objectively appears, yet one is not allowed to think it. Especially, one is not allowed to think it publicly. Most people do feel it, except that growing number of the alienated and despairing, for whom the world and especially their own lives are bleak.
This brings us to the secular-religion polarity. As remarked, ’secularism’ began as anti-religious, tacitly meaning anti-Christian and anti-Jewish. Thus we come to the ‘religious’ issue in our topic. Let us note first of all that it was the rise of the secular movement in the West that led to the development of the concept of a ‘religion’ and of the adjective ‘religious’. ‘Religion’ as the name of a particular system of ideas, practices, outlooks and institutions was not merely a Western term, and a recent one, but also a secularist one. The notion of secularism inherently presupposes something called ‘religion’ from which it advocates that we should be free. If there were no religion, there would and could be no concept ’secularism’. Similarly, however, though this fact has been less clearly noticed, if there were no secularism there would be and could be no concept ‘religion’. The term ‘religion’ was developed by secularists in order to belittle it.
‘Religion’ is a secular concept.
Smith, Wilfred Cantwell. Modern Culture from a Comparative Perspective. Edited by John W. Burbidge. Albany, New York: SUNY Press, 1997, pp. 72-73.
Call for Change July 8, 2008
Posted by electromagnetic in Lines.Tags: Abdal-Hakim Murad
add a comment
Rigour of Moses, Ahmad’s mercy,
Beauty of Jesus, heralds all.
In Adam’s heirs no controversy,
Call for change, don’t change the call!
Abdal-Hakim Murad, Contentions 12, no. 86.
Walk on Water July 7, 2008
Posted by electromagnetic in Fragments.Tags: Jesus Christ
add a comment
Once someone asked Jesus, “How are you able to walk on water?”
Jesus replied, “With certainty.”
Then someone said, “But we also have certainty!”
Jesus then asked them, “Are stone, clay, and gold equal in your eyes?”
They replied, “Certainly not!”
Jesus responded, “They are in mine.” (Ahmad)Jesus said, “You will never obtain what you desire except through patience with what you despise.” (Ghazali)
Jesus, the son of Mary said, “God has given me the power to give life to the dead, sight to the blind, sound to the deaf; but He did not give me the power to heal the fool of his foolishness.” (Razi)
“Walk on Water: The Wisdom of Jesus” translated by Hamza Yusuf. Excerpted in Seasons Vol. 3, No. 2, Spring 2007, pp. 85-88.
