12. November 2018
The rulers of Saudi Arabia derive much of their legitimacy and prestige in the Muslim world from their control and upkeep of the Grand Mosque and the Kaaba in Mecca and the mosque of Prophet Muhammad in Medina. King Salman, like the rulers before him, wears the title of the “Khadim al-Ḥaramayn as-Sarifayn,” which is translated as the “Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques” or, more precisely, “The Servant of the Two Noble Sanctuaries.” Despite the humility of the royal title, the...
31. December 2017
Dr. Khaled Abou El Fadl presents the Islamic, Christian and historical record of Jesus, Prophet of God, contrasting early reports of the message of Jesus from later reports, which present a "Romanized Christianity," which has carried to the present day. This "Romanized Christianity" characterized a pacifist Jesus, in stark contrast to the earlier reports where the message of Jesus was extremely critical of wealth, privilege, power and classicism, and indifference to the poor and...
14. August 2017
The question of how the law becomes known has occupied the minds of Muslim scholars for a long time. In the early centuries, the heated debates, and at times even hostilities, centered around the place and role of ethical principles and reason in the development of the religious tradition. Numerous reports in the Islamic tradition described the very mission of the Prophet Muhammad as part and parcel of an ethical project—a project that builds upon and develops people’s natural ethical...
21. June 2017
WHEN Imam Zuhri, a famous scholar of Sunna (Prophet Muhammad's traditions), indicated to Qasim ibn Muhammd (a scholar of the Qur'an), a desire to seek knowledge, Qasim advised him to join the assembly of a well-known woman jurist of the day, Amara bin Al-Rahman. Imam Zuhri attended her assembly and later described her as "a boundless ocean of knowledge." In fact, Amra instructed a number of famed scholars, such as Abu Bakr Muhammad ibn Hazama, and Yahya ibn Said. Amra was not an anomaly in...
19. June 2017
Dr. Abou El Fadl presents a "first-hand meeting" with the Prophet. Based on a review of original Arabic texts, this seminar: 1) Gives a view as to the moral lessons from the Prophet's life as a model for humanity; 2) Brings to life his moral example; 3) Provides a portrait of the living tradition of the Prophet's character: how he looked, smiled, laughed, talked, and got angry; 4) Presents the opportunity to learn to identify at a personal level with the identity of the Prophet as a symbol of...
30. June 2016
Dear Dr. Abou El Fadl, I would like to begin by saying that I am an avid reader of your work, and have a deep respect for the Islamic tradition. If it isn't too bothersome, I just have a few questions that I have yet to find satisfying answers too. A good friend of mine recently confronted me on the issue of the Prophet's (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) wife, Aisha. I was rather confounded on how to answer, particularly because he phrased the question approximately as such: "Did...
27. June 2016
by KHALED ABOU EL FADL One of the truly sublime Muslim voices that for decades had been chanting endless mystical devotionals communing with God has been silenced by the bullet of an assassin. Amjad Sabri of the Sabri Brothers has been killed, and his unfortunate companion injured, by radicals in Karachi, Pakistan. A year earlier, a frivolous blasphemy case was filed against Sabri because radical Muslims did not like some of his Sufi lyrics about the Prophet and his family. As has become the...
01. November 2014
By Khaled Abou El Fadl Years ago, purely out of curiosity, I bought a group of cassettes that would change my life. Normally, whatever money I had, or even did not have, was spent on books. My whole childhood could be summed up by an endless quest for books, and the never-ending chase for money that could be spent on books. For reasons that never became clear to me, this one time I managed to save some money but did not feel like buying more books, and instead, on an impulse bought a set of...
01. January 2006
By Khaled Abou El Fadl Prophet of God, Muhammad, may peace and blessings be upon you. Peace and blessings from the heart of this pitiful delinquent, and if you turn me away, I have no grounds to complain. I know that I am a man who is frivolous, malevolent, and trivial; I deem myself entirely contemptible. So if you ignore me, I understand; in fact, perhaps that is exactly what you should do. Yet, you never turned a single soul away especially when this soul, with your love, is entirely at...
01. January 2006
Can we trace the footsteps of the beloved when the beloved has walked away? Can we find the scent, the fragrance, the redolence of his trace? Can we seek the fragments of memory, the smiles, the laughs, and the kind gestures? Can we locate the beauty over fourteen hundred years too late? I agonize over these questions, struggle with the promises, and I refuse to despair. I agonize over the questions, and so I run to the Conference—I run to the books. I run to the papers and the ink. I run to...