Wahdat-al-Wujud and the politics of polytheism
Wahdat-al-wujud was an idea developed by the inestimable twelfth-century scholar, Ibn Arabi. Translated literally, wahdat-al-wujud means unity of being, but it can also mean unity of finding. The object of this ‘finding’ is God, and the finder seeks to remove the veils that stand between himself and God so that the perfect level of certainty [...]
The Amman Message in light of Imam al-Ghazali’s Clear Criterion
By all accounts, the Jordan Initiative was a remarkable achievement- a shining moment in this otherwise troubled age. In 2005, King Abdullah, the latest monarch of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, invited leaders of all Muslim communities to Amman and placed before them a short document. By the end of that conference, those leaders had [...]
Guns, germs and Sufis
I am sometimes astounded by how much mis-information some people, Muslims and non-Muslims, place on the branch of Islam known as Tasawwuf. That’s right, no matter what some left or right-wing Muslim evangelicals might insist, Tasawwuf has always been an indispensable part of Islam. Like the other branches of knowledge like jurisprudence (fiqh) or Quranic [...]
Marifah- Knowledge and Realization
Marifah.net has been doing good work, putting out translations of classical works that not only inform, but also refute many of the ideological positions taken up by modern Islamic groups.
For the uninitiated, the word marifah means gnosis. The gnostic discipline exists in almost all religious traditions. In the Islamic sense, the light of gnosis,
…will [...]
What’s that Hadith doing in my computer?
All religions revolve around a source, and for Islam, the sources are the Quran, which is a divine revelation, and the Sunna, which is defined as the sayings and actions of the Prophet Muhammad. However, it would be foolhardy to compare the contents and nature of the Quran with the Christian Gospels. The verses in [...]
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