03. October 2023
By Khaled Abou El Fadl I call upon the Conference and I hear agonized wailing answer my calls. Where are you my Conference—where is the sanguine voice of reason and the flirtatious melody of beauty? Where is the resonance of your words and the power of your belief in humanity? I implore you talk to me, my Conference. I am God’s slave—I am your faithful son and the lover of beauty. Don’t leave me gasping, frightened, and mummified by this merciless doubt. I want to devour words and...
04. June 2011
Keynote Lecture, Dr. Khaled Abou El Fadl Inspire Conference London, June 4, 2011 The Conference of the Books: The Search for Beauty in Islam[1] is very dear to my heart. I often tell my students that this is the one book that I want buried with me so that I can hold it in my defense in the Hereafter. The Conference of the Books invites the reader to share with me what can only be described as truly intimate and metaphysical and transcendental moments that scholars are often not honest enough to...
01. June 2006
This Conference resonates with visions of the subtle and sublime; it permeates the world with echoes of The Divine. Centuries of discourse coalesce upon a moment to ponder a single emotion in time. The records of existence are re-opened and examined as the ideas migrate and rebound. It is not what we know, but what we could know that guides us; aren't the possibilities limitless when exploring the Divine? We search for God in the permutations of the rejuvenating text, in the enticements of...
01. June 2006
(Excerpted from The Search for Beauty in Islam: A Conference of the Books by Khaled Abou El Fadl) The Lord of the essence, the silence, and the void; the Lord of the truth, the light, beauty, and the word, I am a Muslim who searches for beauty—I search for beauty as I search for my religion—as I search for myself. You have taught me by the Word, the truth of being, which is nestled in our souls: justice, equity, love, mercy, compassion, trust, dignity, well-being, and safety is the fabric...
01. January 2006
This Conference was founded on the beauty of the Book, and our Civilization was the civilization of books. Our way to God is guided by the Book, and we found our worth only in books. Our God manifested through the Book, and our identity was defined by books. So how can we become the corrupters of the Book and the betrayers of books? What type of arrogance permits a people to name themselves God’s soldiers and then usurp His authority? What type of arrogance empowers a people to inject their...
01. January 2006
The Conference of the Books consoles our reality with a dream. The dream is complex and rich but serene. It is the serenity of faith directed by the intellect and disciplined by morality. In this dream, the human soul and mind are uplifted by the Divine. The Divine affirms the innate worth of the human being. A dream might exist at the edge of reality, yet it remains only a dream. By its very nature, a dream urges, teases, and provokes reality, but a dream is not real. Early in the morning...
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...
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...
01. January 2006
By Khaled Abou El Fadl The knowledge that is God makes all else tentative. The certainty that is God reduces all else to conjecture. The more one learns the more one asks, and the more one asks the more one discovers the Divine. In this Conference the only absolute is God; all else searches for the absolute. If one claims knowledge, humility before The All-Knowing makes the heart shudder. In this Conference, arrogance is the only ignorance and temporal knowledge is but a question. It is...