By Bookreviews on
28-1-2009 17:27
In Islamic Legal Theories by Prof. Wael B Hallaq, he discusses Muhammed Shahrour’s Legal theory. He calls Muhammed Shahrour's ideas the solution to the Muslim world. His insights are very intruiging.
Here is the PDF file:
Islamic Legal Theories by Prof. Wael B Hallaq on Muhammed Shahrour’s Legal theory
They are from this book by Professor Wael B. Hallaq who is professor at the Institute of Islamic Studies at McGill University. The same university of the famous Professor Toshihiko Izutsu who wrote "God and Man in the Koran".
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By Bookreviews on
28-1-2009 17:21
"Hadith as Scripture is the only book that covers both the earliest and most recent discussions on the authority of the Hadith. The authority of Hadith is a concern to Muslims in their daily lives, as well as a question of academic interest. Hadith as Scripture contains the first-ever Western language translation of the earliest extant text on the subject. This work explores the earliest extant discussions on the authority of the Hadith in Islam and compares them with contemporary debates."
In modern Islamic movements, a new trend has emerged, created because of the need to reform the Muslim society to make it progressive and 'to keep up with the times'. Famous reformers, Muhammad Abduh and Sayyid Qutb for example, were more focussed on the Qur'an and its message, than the Hadith and other historical materials deemed important as a basis for Islam. Their reason was that only the Qur'an could be seen as timeless...
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By General on
1/28/2009 3:25 PM
Jan. 27, 2009 -- A sperm-looking creature called monosiga is the closest living surrogate to the ancestor of all animals, according to new research that also determined animal evolution may not always follow a trajectory from simple to complex.
Yet another find of the study, published in the latest PLoS Biology, is that Earth may have given rise to two distinct groups of animals: bilaterians -- animals with bilateral symmetry, like humans -- and non-bilaterians, which include corals, jelly fish, hydra, unusual, often poisonous, creatures known as cubozoans, and other organisms.
Free-living, unicellular organisms called choanoflagellates, however, could be on every person's family tree, so long as it was a gigantic one. "It is clear that the choanoflagellates -- living representative is monosiga -- are the best candidate for the nearest relative of animals," co-author Rob DeSalle told Discovery News.
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By AY Mol on
18-1-2009 18:39
In the traditional Islamic concept, the Afterlife was approached using the ancient understandings of the universe. Because of this, most views on the afterlife are mythological using metaphorical expressions and viewing it as something not linked to a natural system within the universe. With the emergence of the materialistic Western science, the concept of a Hereafter was ridiculed since it concerned spirituality, something that is believed to lie outside empirical knowledge and thus improvable. But with new theories coming from the fields of cosmology and quantum physics, the universe shows to be far more complex and far less material. On the lowest levels of existence, all matter turn into quanta-energy and information and follow laws and systems very different from the higher levels where energy is in the forms of light and matter.
The Qur'an constantly reminds us that we must understand this universe to understand God's system:
3:190-191 إِنَّ فِى خَلْقِ ٱلسَّمَٰوَٰتِ...
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By AY Mol on
15-1-2009 14:25
In a previous Blog I had given a small summary on the concept of Amina and Salama being concepts that refer to the state, action and intention of a person which is not directly to the details of their 'faith/religion' as it is traditionally understood. Amina in Arabic refers to making people to be in safety and without fear and Salama refers to be in good health and safety and living in peace. Salama is thus the result of Amina.
Thus a Muslim is a person that wants and lives in peace and health and a Momin is a person entrusted with the peace and safety of everyone else1. Thus Mutaqeem are people who guard the safety of themselves and others, as they guard the human rights2. This is done by upholding the morality of justice and equality in the world as lined out in the Qur'an. Since these are guidelines every good willed person will agree...
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By AY Mol on
11-1-2009 14:17
As a Muslim, people always expect me to have a certain opinion about the Israel-Palestine conflict, which is understandable. But to make something clear, a Muslim means one who wants and lives in peace, so I support peace and not directly any people who label themselves as Muslim. I view the conflict as a human looking at other humans in distress and struggle. And as a person coming from a Dutch family who did not grew up in a traditional Muslim household I do not have the long emotional roots with the conflict as many of my born-Muslim friends. It is sometimes interesting to see them getting mad and very emotional about the current conflict, and I think by myself, I didn’t see this same reaction on you with the Sudan slaughters, or the hundreds of thousands people dying of hunger and disease every year. ‘Of course I feel the same anger about those things’ is their common reply. This is not an attack on them, it is just a common psychological phenomena called association. The association here is based...
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By General on
1/6/2009 3:37 AM
By Professor Jim Al-Khalili
University of Surrey
Isaac Newton is, as most will agree, the greatest physicist of all time.
At the very least, he is the undisputed father of modern optics, or so we are told at school where our textbooks abound with his famous experiments with lenses and prisms, his study of the nature of light and its reflection, and the refraction and decomposition of light into the colours of the rainbow.
Yet, the truth is rather greyer; and I feel it important to point out that, certainly in the field of optics, Newton himself stood on the shoulders of a giant who lived 700 years earlier.
For, without doubt, another great physicist, who is worthy of ranking up alongside Newton, is an Iraqi scientist born in AD 965 who went by the name of al-Hassan Ibn al-Haytham.
Most people in the West will never have even heard of him.
As a physicist myself, I am quite in awe of this man's contribution to my field, but I was fortunate enough to have recently...
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