Wednesday, March 31, 12:00-2:00 pm
PhD Thesis Series on Religion and Politics
801 IAB
Haroon Moghul (Current PhD in MEALAC, Columbia University)
“Parliaments of Caliphs: Reconstructing Islamic Law in Allama Iqbal’s League of Muslim Nations”
http://sipa.columbia.edu/cdtr/events/index.html
http://avari.typepad.com/avari/2010/03/at-nyu.html
Thursday, March 25, 2010
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Imam al-Ghazali's Faysal al-Tafriqa - I love it!
As for yourself, if your aim is to extract this rancour from your heart and from the hearts of those like you who are not seduced by the provocations of the envious and not afflicted by that blindness that condemns people to being led around by others (taqlid), but who instead thirst for insight into some of the agonizings that result from the obscurities engendered by systematic thinking and stirred up by speculative inquiry, then address yourself and your companion and ask him for a definition of 'Unbelief'. If he claims that the definition of 'Unbelief' is that which contradicts the Ash'arite school, or the Mu'tazilite school, or the Hanbalite school, or any other school, then know that he is a gullible, dim-witted fellow who is stifled by his enslavement to blind following. In fact, he is blinder than the blind. So do not waste your time trying to reform him. For it would be enough to silence him that you compare his claim with those of his opponents, since he will not find any difference between him and the rest of those who blindly follow some other school in opposition to him.-On the Boundaries of Theological Tolerance in Islam: Abu Hamid al Ghazali's Faysal al Tafriqa (Studies in Islamic Philosophy, V. 1)
, translated by Dr. Sherman Abdal-Hakim Jackson, pg. 88-89.
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Critical Islamic Reflections Conference at Yale: The (Muslim) Woman Question
Critical Islamic Reflections Conference: The (Muslim) Woman Question
Date: Saturday, 10 April 2010
Time: 09:00 - 19:00
Location: William L. Harkness Hall, Room 119
Street: 100 Wall Street
Town/City: New Haven, CT
http://www.yale.edu/cir/
As we enter the second decade of the twenty-first century, global media continue to traffic in representations of Muslim women, while representations produced by Muslim women are gaining international traction. Contemporary discussions around the role of Islam in foreign and domestic policy, civil society and democracy, war, globalization, human rights, and the private sphere increasingly hinge upon the semiotics of gender. However, despite the race to represent—and through representation to understand—the Muslim woman, prevailing debates on gender and Islam remain trapped in neo-Orientalist discourses and occluded by political ideologies worldwide.
As symbols of both oppression and liberation, Muslim women have historically been agents of political change and subjects of restrictive state policies in the West as well as in Muslim-majority societies. Lively religious debates on gender and the challenges of modernity prevail at the confessional level within Muslim communities. These debates are recast into objects of consumption by audiences unacquainted with the breadth and complexity of the Islamic scriptural tradition.
This conference explores how representations of Muslim women within visual and material cultures and in historical and contemporary literatures inform popular imagination and public policy on Islam even as they are influenced by them. Presentations will explore not only how Muslim women have been represented and have engaged in practices of representation, but will critically examine the structures of power such representations may serve, subvert, create, negotiate, or complicate.
To register, please visit http://www.yale.edu/cir/registration.html
Registration Fees: (There is no registration fee for Yale affiliates)
$7: pre-registration fee if you register online
$10: on-site fee if you register at the conference
For a detailed program, please visit http://www.yale.edu/cir/program.html
Thanks Omer!
Monday, March 22, 2010
keep growing
one of my favorite quotes from Emerson:
The other terror that scares us from self-trust is our consistency; a reverence for our past act or word, because the eyes of others have no other data for computing our orbit than our past acts, and we are loth to disappoint them.-Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance
With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words, and tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said today. -- "Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood." -- Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.
Kierkegaard's world by Clare Carlisle
Kierkegaard's world, part 1: What does it mean to exist?
For Kierkegaard, the most pressing question for each person is the meaning of his or her own existence
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2010/mar/15/kierkegaard-philosophy-existentialism
Kierkegaard's world, part 2: The truth of knowledge and the truth of life
Kierkegaard understood that, when faced with a choice in real life, no amount of knowledge can resolve the dilemma
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2010/mar/22/kierkegaard-philosophy-knowledge
Thanks Khalid!
For Kierkegaard, the most pressing question for each person is the meaning of his or her own existence
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2010/mar/15/kierkegaard-philosophy-existentialism
Kierkegaard's world, part 2: The truth of knowledge and the truth of life
Kierkegaard understood that, when faced with a choice in real life, no amount of knowledge can resolve the dilemma
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2010/mar/22/kierkegaard-philosophy-knowledge
Thanks Khalid!
Sunday, March 21, 2010
Gaith Adhami's CD 'Upward Climb ' is now available for download
The upward climb is a journey without distance – the road to the purification of the soul and self realization. Those who choose to climb the steep path take the celestial stairs to a higher Being and a higher meaning in life. But this road requires from the traveler a sincere spirit dedicated to overcoming struggle. For this reason the upward climb is, as Robert Frost would put it, the road “less traveled by”. I pray we all find strength and courage on this road. This album is an exploration of the “upward climb” in regards to spirituality, humanity, and politics. The project is a patchwork of the many musical influences in my life from hip hop to traditional Arabic folk music, bound by the common thread of poetry.http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/gaithadhami
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