14. April 2017
Professor Khaled Abou El Fadl delivers a powerful lecture on the notion of reasoning with God and the forgotten role and importance of reason in the Islamic tradition. He discusses his latest book, Reasoning with God: Reclaiming Shari'ah in the Modern Age, and how Muslims need to reclaim the beauty of their tradition in which reason and reasonableness are central to leading a life of Godliness as opposed to Godlessness. Enlightening, powerful and pertinent to the challenges facing Muslims in...
01. November 2014
Submitting to Infinite Divinity One way of approaching this issue is to re-consider the idea of submission to God. It is well known that the word Islam means submission, and the basic Islamic demand is that human beings submit themselves to God, and to no one else and nothing else. Human beings should struggle to defeat their weaknesses, control their urges, and gain mastery over themselves. Only by gaining mastery over the self can that self be meaningfully submitted to God. If the self is...
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...
09. January 2014
Human rights and terrorism both are grand concepts. Human rights is a grand concept of an ultimate or absolute good, in many ways, like the idea of divinity or like the idea of light. Terrorism, on the other hand, is a grand concept of an ultimate or absolute evil, very much the antithesis of divinity and the antithesis of light. Although we human beings, including theologians, jurists and philosophers, produce a remarkable variety of terminology to negotiate our idea of good and our repulsion...
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
If envy is a sin then I am the incurable sinner for I envy every eye that ever caught a glimpse of you. I envy the waves that carried your voice, and the air that touched your cheeks. I envy even the ground that once served you, and I confess to you that despite my indulgent sins, my shameful whimsies and ugly flimsies, I confess to you, "I love you." My confessions are as silly as my muted words. You have been loved by so many more substantial than I, and what good does my silence or...