E-baad-e News

Wednesday, December 19, 2012

The most formative educational influence in my life was a great high school teacher named Charlie. At Brooklyn Prep, Charlie Winans simultaneously taught a group of us history, literature, art and music - and he was master of all of them. For three years, three hours a day, five days a week, he led us from the cave paintings of Altimira and the sounds of simple percussion to Jackson Pollock and Aaron Copland. To him, the word "boundary" had no meaning. After the Jesuits who ran our school followed the heinous example of Walter O'Malley and pulled out of Brooklyn, Charlie taught for several years at a yeshiva and today, at the age of 82, he volunteers at Mother Teresa's hospice for AIDS patients. Thank you, Charlie, for being in my life.

-John Sexton, "Installation Address."

"The central challenge

facing the academy in our time will be the discovery of the proper balance between preservation and adaptation - between maintaining the hallowed essence of what we have been and creating what we must become in a world that day to day hardly remains the same.

-John E. Sexton, "Installation Address," September 26, 2002.

Tuesday, December 18, 2012

Charlie quote

"Then, too, he spoke earnestly to the boys about the importance of choosing the right girl. "Of course you want beautiful girlfriends, but gentlemen, gentlemen, with today's methods any young female can be made to look good. You know what they say: 'powder and paint make a woman what she ain't.' No, find someone who is intelligent - smarter than you, even--and try hard to make it work. Because if you're lucky, she'll take you the distance."

-pg. 99-100 of Charlie's Prep by Steven Englund and Vincent Curcio

Charlie, my namesake, was John Sexton's mentor at Brooklyn Prep.

"The earlier texts

discuss worship and servanthood largely in terms of a moral imperative. Many later texts, especially from 'Ibn Arabi onwards, ground the moral imperative in what can be called an "ontological imperative". This perspective includes discussion of the Divine Being, the structure of the cosmos, and the reality of the human soul. In modern times, most well-known Muslim authors have continued to cling to the moral imperative, but they have lost touch with the ontological imperative. Indignantly denying "the death of God", they nonetheless go along with its implications by embracing the demise of metaphysics. Instead of standing on the solid ground of Being, they attempt to root the moral imperative in the shifting sands of empirical science, political ideology and critical theory.

-William C. Chittick, "Worship" in The Cambridge Companion to Classical Islamic Theology, edited by Tim Winter, p. 219.

Shaykh Abdal Hakim Murad's lesson on Imam Malik: Sage of the City of Light

http://quilliampress.com/video/imam-malik/

Four great legal theorists dominate the history of Islamic Sacred Law. In this lecture, we meet Imam Malik ibn Anas (d.795), celebrated as the ‘Imam of the City of Emigration’ (Imam Dar al-Hijra).

Revered for his great love of the Sunna of the Chosen One (a.s.), Imam Malik dedicated his life to preserving the great treasure of Prophetic wisdom for future generations. As the honoured scholar of the City of Light, he knew that the Sunna was to be learned not only from the Hadith, but from the lived practice of the great people of Madina. His fiqh is therefore rooted in community practice, which gives it great flexibility and humanity.

Close to many of the Second Generation (the Tabi’un), he narrated the famous ‘Golden Chain’: his own teacher Nafi had learned hadiths from Ibn Umar, who reported directly from the Holy Prophet himself.

A sage who always made wudu before quoting a hadith, the Imam once remarked: ‘Allah places the gift of knowledge wherever He will. It does not consist in narrating a large amount.’

Monday, December 17, 2012

Islam at Brown

http://islamatbrown.blogspot.com/?m=1

Tweet from أ.د.عبدالله بن بيه (@Bin_Bayyah)

	أ.د.عبدالله بن بيه (@Bin_Bayyah)
12/15/12 1:07 PM ‏تحتاج الأمة إلى تجديد الإيمان وربطها بغذاء الأرواح، والإكثار من الذكر الذي هو مفتاح تزكية النفوس.

The ummah needs a renewal of belief, connected with a nourishment of the souls and an abundance of remembrance which is the key to purification of the self.

-Abdullah bin Bayyah

Via Rashid