By Kabir Helminski Entering the Kentucky Exposition Hall for the Islamic funeral service of Muhammad Ali, one of the first things that caught my eye were people in T-shirts that read “I Am Ali.” I quickly realized that these were not necessarily Muslims, nor sports fans, but regular people, citizens of Louisville, volunteers to help
Shaikh Kabir Helminski (Qur’anic translation and commentary by Muhammad Asad) 1. Witness objectively, without judgment: Ya Shahid The purpose of human life can be stated as: to attain the knowledge of Reality. Everything that is given to human beings through revelation is to guide us to knowing our true selves and through our selves to
"This denial of the right to freedom vis-à-vis religion is one of the roots of the evil from which you suffer, oh my dear Muslim world; it is one of those dark wombs in which, in recent years, monsters grow, and from whence they leap out at the frightened faces of the whole world..."
Jawid Mojaddedi's 'Beyond Dogma, Rumi's Teachings on Friendship with God and Early Sufi Theories' published by Oxford University Press, is an original and welcome contribution to the understanding of Sufi history in general and Jalaluddin Rumi in particular. Read excerpts from the book...
Islam without Extremes, A Muslim Case for Liberty by Mustafa Akyol (W. W. Norton & Company , 2011) makes the case that Islam and liberalism can and must go together. In his view, while governments necessarily deal with crime in order to protect the commons, no state apparatus, whether non-Muslim or Muslim, should be enforcing morality upon the individual.
Underlying his fearsome courage was a beautiful tenderness that was forgiving, loving, and filled with wisdom. His deep spirituality was expressed in the most exquisitely poetic way that at the same time is filled with powerfully raw and naked power. His words were imbued with the perplexity that overwhelm a heart drowned in the ocean of love.
The aim of this essay is simply to point to certain guiding concerns and perspectives that are shared by both these artists, perspectives which are happily subsumed in the multifaceted Arabic technical term tahqīq or “realization” that was particularly favored by Ibn ‘Arabi and the long line of his later interpreters, or muhaqqiqūn.
Few people writing in America today have as deep a grasp of metaphysics as Charles Upton. We commend his new book to anyone interested in spiritual psychology, Sufism, and Islam. It is a well-written in depth study of the spiritual psychology inherent in traditional Sufi practice. Read an extract...
Islam and Human Values by Kabir Helminski (with input from leading scholars) was written to address the urgent questions, misunderstandings, and distortions of Islam that are all too prevalent today. The need for a document like this seems to grow daily in the face of Islamophobic propaganda and extremist versions of Islam. Download the document...
Many spiritually inclined people, and especially those from a Muslim background, face a double alienation in today’s world. On the one hand, they are alienated from the mad rush of contemporary society with its commercialization, its ugliness, its pandering to the ego, and its lack of meaning. On the other hand, they are equally alienated from various expressions of Islam that fail to inspire them.