“…I know the system, why do you think I became Muslim?!”
Titles and Truths
“In private sessions he would normally remain quiet and calm. If he was asked a question, he would answer, and if not, he would maintain his silence. Occasionally if someone would refer to him as a Professor (Ustād), he would say,
‘I do not like this title. We have gathered here as colleagues in thought so that we might discover the truths of Islam’.” | Ayatullah Ibrahim Amini about ‘Allamah Tabataba’i
Zinn: Empire or Humanity? What the Classroom Didn’t Teach Me About the American Empire
https://tomdispatch.com/empire-or-humanity/
Excerpt:
The motive of the U.S. establishment, understood by the aerial gunner I knew, was of a different nature. It was described early in 1941 by Henry Luce, multi-millionaire owner of Time, Life, and Fortune magazines, as the coming of “The American Century.” The time had arrived, he said, for the United States “to exert upon the world the full impact of our influence, for such purposes as we see fit, and by such means as we see fit.”
We can hardly ask for a more candid, blunter declaration of imperial design. It has been echoed in recent years by the intellectual handmaidens of the Bush administration, but with assurances that the motive of this “influence” is benign, that the “purposes” — whether in Luce’s formulation or more recent ones — are noble, that this is an “imperialism lite.” As George Bush said in his second inaugural address: “Spreading liberty around the world is the calling of our time.” The New York Times called that speech “striking for its idealism.”
The American Empire has always been a bipartisan project — Democrats and Republicans have taken turns extending it, extolling it, justifying it. President Woodrow Wilson told graduates of the Naval Academy in 1914 (the year he bombarded Mexico) that the U.S. used “her navy and her army… as the instruments of civilization, not as the instruments of aggression.” And Bill Clinton, in 1992, told West Point graduates: “The values you learned here will be able to spread throughout the country and throughout the world.”
For the people of the United States, and indeed for people all over the world, those claims sooner or later are revealed to be false. The rhetoric, often persuasive on first hearing, soon becomes overwhelmed by horrors that can no longer be concealed: the bloody corpses of Iraq, the torn limbs of American GIs, the millions of families driven from their homes — in the Middle East and in the Mississippi Delta.
Have not the justifications for empire, embedded in our culture, assaulting our good sense — that war is necessary for security, that expansion is fundamental to civilization — begun to lose their hold on our minds? Have we reached a point in history where we are ready to embrace a new way of living in the world, expanding not our military power, but our humanity?
How Stanford Profits Off Addiction
https://stanfordreview.org/how-stanford-profits-tech-addiction-social-media/
The University’s responsibility for making social media addictive shines a troubling light on campus entrepreneurial culture. According to the New York Times, Fogg taught students “to build no-frills apps, distribute them quickly, and worry about perfecting them later.” This crass approach of build now, think later takes inspiration from the philosophy of “creative disruption” that reigns in Silicon Valley, and damages the educational integrity of this university.
Some Bullet Points and Questions from Ustadh Ubaydullah Evans’ Conversation with Dr. Sherman Jackson on Race
The Murder of George Floyd has led to a quick “Americanization” of the Muslim Community in that we see a flurry of webinars and conversations on race
- Is this real because of a real recognition that will open up real discourse and change?
- Or is the sweep of the dominant culture’s media about the issue just making it expedient and easy to engage now – and at a shallow level?
The Introduction to Bidāyat al-Ḥikmah
The text Bidāyat al-Ḥikmah by the late al-ʿAllamah al-Sayyid Muḥammad Ḥusayn al-Ṭabāṭabāʾī has been translated in full and in part by several students and scholars. Here, I am posting a translation of the introductory chapter (muqaddimah) of his text that I translated as part of my study of the text; if you are interested in a more elegant and precise translation with annotations see Sayyid Ali Quli Qarai’s text here.
﷽
In the name of God, the Gracious, the Merciful
The Introduction regarding the definition of this discipline, its subject of study, and its goal.
All praise is God’s, as is all extolment in its reality. May prayers and peace be given to God’s messenger Muḥammad, the best of His creation, and Muḥammad’s pure family from his Ahl al-Bayt and ʿItrah.
[Metaphysics] Divine Wisdom (al-Ḥikmah al-Ilāhiyyah) is a discipline which studies the qualities of being (al-mawjūd) qua being. Divine Wisdom’s subject (mawdūʿ) – which encapsulates the subject’s essential properties (aʿrāḍihi al-dhātiyyah) – is being qua being. Divine Wisdom’s goal (ghāyah) is the general knowledge of existent things and to distinguish existent things from things which are not actually existent (mawjūd ḥaqīqī)[1]
Continue readingAl-Sharīf al-Raḍī on the Umayyads after their Slaying of al-Ḥusayn
They sold the clear path of religion
for pathless error,
And for righteousness they purchased
the perils of transgression.
…
[The Umayyads] claimed that religion
allowed them to kill [the ʿAlids].
Isn’t this the religion they got
from their forefathers?
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A Five Minute Summary of al-Ḥusayn’s Stand Against the Umayyads
A Five Minute Summary of al-Ḥusayn’s Stand Against the Umayyads
The Tent-Pole of Religion
The Tent-Pole of Religion
A Descent into the Maelström
“The ways of God in Nature, as in Providence, are not as our ways; nor are the models that we frame any way commensurate to the vastness, profundity, and unsearchableness of His works, which have a depth in them greater than the well of Democritus.”
– Ascribed to Joseph Glanvill by Edgar Allan Poe in his “A Descent into the Maelström.”
Elaborating on this theme, one of the characters of Poe’s story, while describing his experience of hurling into the sea’s vortex upon his fishing ship, tells of a moment of lucid reflection despite gazing into the face of death:
“It may look like boasting—but what I tell you is truth—I began to reflect how magnificent a thing it was to die in such a manner, and how foolish it was in me to think of so paltry a consideration as my own individual life in view of so wonderful a manifestation of God’s power.”
ʿIlmprocess 