Sunday, November 25, 2012
Saturday, November 24, 2012
Conversation with Douglas
Dear
Zahid.
As
the United States winds down for its Thanksgiving, I thought I’d take a moment
to thank you for our ongoing professional association. Our business is entirely
dependent on the quality of our international relationships; we’re grateful for
our personal ties.
In
America, Thanksgiving has long resisted commercialization. One reason may be
the ecumenical nature of the holiday. The official designation actual dates to
1863, a particularly tumultuous year in American history, starting with
Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation to free all slaves in American territories
and winding through the Battle of Gettysburg, considered by historians to be a
key turning point in the Civil War.
Sunday, November 18, 2012
And We Sit With Rage
Assalamu ‘Alaikum,
And We Sit With Rage
“We are now again at
the crossroads of history, and awareness of Islamic identity
is beginning to dawn
in the consciousness of emergent Muslims. Only when this awareness comes to
full awakening with the sun of knowledge will there emerge from among us men
and women of spiritual and intellectual maturity and integrity who will be able to
play their role with wisdom and justice in upholding the truth. Such men and women
will know that they must return to the early masters of the religious and
intellectual tradition of Islam, which was established upon the sacred
foundation of the Holy Quran and the Tradition of the Holy Prophet, in order to
learn from the past and be able to acquip spiritually and intellectually for
the future; they will realize that they must not simply appropriate and imitate
what modern secular Western civilization has created, but must regain by exerting
their own creative, knowledge, will and
imagination what is lost of the Muslims’ purpose in life, their history, their
values and virtues embodied in their sciences, for what is lost
can never be regained
by blind imitation and the raving of slogans which deafen with the din of ‘development’;
they will discern that development must not involve a correspondence of Islam
with the facts of contemporary events that have strayed far from the path of
truth; and they will conceive and
formulate their own definitions and conceptions of
government and of the nature of development that will correspond with the
purpose of Islam. Their emergence is conditional not merely upon
physical struggle, but
more upon the achievement of true knowledge, confidence and boldness of vision
that is able to create great changes in history.”
Preface to “Islam and
Secularism” by Professor Syed Muhammad Naquib Al-Attas, a legacy he dedicated
to, in his own words, “The Muslim Youth”.
(http://www.scribd.com/doc/32659313/Al-Attas-Islam-and-Secularism)
Wise words of a very wise man.
Saturday, November 17, 2012
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