Liberty Books' Home-service: Awesome

I ordered a book online yesterday for the first time and in 24 hours, it's here all the way from Karachi with no TCS courier charges. Above all, with payment upon delivery!

Here's a book for record... Nassim Nicolas Taleb's much renowned The Black Swan.

Picture taken by yours truly

Removing misconceptions about Sufism: An answer

Shaykh Nuh Mim Keller writes in his article, The Place of Tasawwuf in Traditional Islam, which was first recommended to me when i became interested in entering sufism:

"What about the bad Sufis we read about, who contravene the teachings of Islam?


The answer is that there are two meanings of Sufi: the first is "Anyone who considers himself a Sufi," which is the rule of thumb of orientalist historians of Sufism and popular writers, who would oppose the "Sufis" to the "Ulama." I think the Qur'anic verses and hadiths we have mentioned tonight [see article] about the scope and method of true Tasawwuf show why we must insist on the primacy of the definition of a Sufi as "a man of religious learning who applied what he knew, so Allah bequeathed him knowledge of what he did not know."

The very first thing a Sufi, as a man of religious learning knows is that the Shari‘a and ‘Aqida of Islam are above every human being. Whoever does not know this will never be a Sufi, except in the orientalist sense of the word—like someone standing in front of the stock exchange in an expensive suit with a briefcase to convince people he is a stockbroker. A real stockbroker is something else.

[Important para]

Because this distinction is ignored today by otherwise well-meaning Muslims, it is often forgotten that the ‘ulama who have criticized Sufis, such as Ibn al-Jawzi in his Talbis Iblis [The Devil’s deception], or Ibn Taymiya in places in his Fatawa, or Ibn al-Qayyim al-Jawziyya, were not criticizing Tasawwuf as an ancillary discipline to the Shari‘a. The proof of this is Ibn al-Jawzi’s five-volume Sifat al-safwa, which contains the biographies of the very same Sufis mentioned in al-Qushayri’s famous Tasawwuf manual al-Risala al-Qushayriyya. Ibn Taymiya considered himself a Sufi of the Qadiri order, and volumes ten and eleven of his thirty-seven-volume Majmu‘ al-fatawa are devoted to Tasawwuf. And Ibn al-Qayyim al-Jawziyya wrote his three-volume Madarij al-salikin, a detailed commentary on ‘Abdullah al-Ansari al-Harawi’s tract on the spiritual stations of the Sufi path, Manazil al-sa’irin. These works show that their authors’ criticisms were not directed at Tasawwuf as such, but rather at specific groups of their times, and they should be understood for what they are."

Read complete article (lecture transcription) here. For another short introduction to Sufism, a work that negates or clears misconceptions firsts, and then affirms or elucidates what the matter is all about - (this is analogical to what Shahadah in Islam is, i.e., La ilaha illa'llah) - i find this work useful: Sufism: Principles & Practice by Dr. Hamid Algar.

Muhammad: his life based on the earliest sources

Muhammad: his life based on the earliest sources by Martin Lings ('Abu Bakr Siraj-ud-Din - may allah bless his soul)...

Not to sound trite and unimaginative, it's a wonderful book. Written in the best type of English, the top. It's not any product of Orientalism - far, far, far from it. I find it wonderful for various reasons.

The narrative. It's captivating, it again and again brings tears to eyes on which i have no control to resist. It compels one to cry out of love for Prophet, the Man of God, Mercy for two Worlds. One surrenders to the Truth owing to the prose. Although my mother tongue is Urdu, yet I have found no work in Urdu, a few best I've read, that match the quality of such a captivating and gripping prose.

The sources of the book. As the title clearly shows, it is based on the earliest Arabic biographies of Prophet, like, Ibn Ishaq, Ibn Hisham, Ibn Sa'd, books of Hadith, etc. - to name a few. Some portions of the Arabic sources have been translated for the first time. I was amazed to find out how much an ordinary Muslim in sub-continent knows about Prophet which an English Muslim may never know, were he to remain among English speaking people and not come in contact with Arabic, Persian or Urduu literature on Sirah.

The grace of the book. I felt the grace (barakah) of Allah while going through the pages, through the lovable small chapters (which make the reading more interesting and light on the part of an immature reader). Lings himself said that while writing this book he felt the presence of Prophet heavily.

Best biography in English. On the flip of the book is written this passage: this book was declared the best work on Sirah in the English at the national Sirah conference, Islamabad, 1983 and an award of $5000 was made to the author by the Government of Pakistan. When Shaykh Hamza Yusuf was looking for an English biography of Prophet for his students, he was dismayed not find great books. But his search was over when he found this books, and recommended it as the textbook biography.

My book of the year award goes to...

...Islam and Contemporary Society. Ed. Salem Azzam. This book is like a mosaic (shown below if you're unfamiliar), which represents Islam in relation to the contemporary context it now finds itself in, in totality. Don't deprive yourself from reading it, a constellation of scholarly articles by the finest and towering intellectuals of our times. P.S: Why there's no summary of any article from the book? I feel I'd bore you by introducing each chapter in my stammering words... Plus, it wasn't published in 2009, rather quite some time ago...

From an Armenian Mosque. (Image source.)

Reading: Sufi Aphorhisms

Since yesterday, I have turned by attention to this book by a great saint of past Ibn Ata Illah, named Kitab al-Hakim, Sufi Aphorisms. I guess the great saint belonged to Shadhili tariqa. I turned to it for two-fold reasons: out of a need i felt inside so as to progress spiritually; and secondly, to find cure to "misophical" (hatred of wisdom done in the name of 'love of wisdom' or philosophy) kind of skepticism towards getting an understanding of faith, particularly that of Islam, which is belief in the One God, unseen, in the day of judgment, revelation and Prophet-hood. The magnitude of need follows the same order in which these two needs are put. And certainly, this addresses matters of spiritual progress, self-purification, but as well as in a manner of certitude which helps unveil the hidden reasons for unbelief and misunderstanding. Though I am looking for someone to properly teach this book - it just can't be read like every other factual book.

"Abdallah Jones and the Disappearing-Dust Caper" by D. Abdul-Hayy Moore

What Daniel Abdul-Hayy Moore calls as "the Sufi version of Harry Potter" he wrote back in late 80s is this book, "Abdallah Jones and the Disappearing-Dust Caper" :: More than a decade has passed since I heard a bed-time story from my mother. i can still cherish the merriment and pleasure i used to get from the soothing voice of a heavenly gift called maa - ah! those bed-time stories. Abdul-Hayy in the following video has read out the first chapter of his book for 5 mins for us, rekindling the forgotten warm memories of the experience of the kindness of humanity's milk.

Books!

"The world of books is the most remarkable creation of man. Nothing else that he builds ever lasts. Monuments fall; nations perish; civilizations grow old and die out; and, after an era of darkness, new races build others. But in the world of books are volumes that have seen this happen again and again, and yet live on, still young, still as fresh as the day they were written, still telling men’s hearts of the hearts of men centuries dead.

And even the books that do not last long, penetrate their own times at least, sailing farther than Ulysses even dreamed of, like ships on the seas. It is the author’s part to call into being their cargoes and passengers,—living thoughts and rich bales of study and jeweled ideas. And as for the publishers, it is they who build the fleet, plan the voyage, and sail on, facing wreck, till they find every possible harbor that will value their burden.

- CLARENCE S. DAY,
The Story of the Yale University Press Told by a Friend, pp. 7–8 (1920)

Read "Riyad-us-Saliheen"

Riyad-us-Saliheen is perhaps when of the most read books of hadith in Muslim world. It was written for us, non-scholars, ordinary people (in terms of their degree of knowledge). And this is the beauty of this book, it helps us avoid the pitfalls of misunderstanding certain hadiths. This happens mostly when its interpretation requires a considerable amount of knowledge, which I will try sometime to write at length as to why?; and that what sciences are involved in this complex art of decoding the correct meaning out of certain hadith that seem confusing, Insha Allah. You can read the book here. Download in pdf-form here.

Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson

Source

I bought the children version of Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson a few months ago to gift it to my sister. The mere title and the illustration of a boy holding a telescope out in search for treasure Island was interesting enough for the relishing of a curious mind. But the book didn't get attention of its kind owner due to various reasons. Thus, this time before setting out for a 2-hour long journey, I wished to fulfill its desire to be made known of itself, picked it for a reading with a child's state of mind, thinking: there's got to be stupefying surprises on the turn of every page, horrible paths the boy'd have tread on, heroic battles he may have fought, the journeys would have been hectic, demanding two priceless qualities, faith and patience. Then i thought, if I can learn about the latter two priceless human qualities by any way, whether through contemplation, narration or story-telling, or in a philosophical discourse, I'm ready to do it. It is because I've chosen to follow one particular sunnah (way of life) of Prophet Muhammad (S.A.W) and that is patience, which according to Ali Hajvery, 'is a strange thing'.

There was, however, more in this story than the exemplary show of faith and patience by those characters who were honest and just, it was the wild ideas and dauntlessways of doing things by the central character that boy named Jim Hawkins. Had it not for his being aggressively wild and crazy (a more appropriate designation), his team would not have been saved. This is not a fantasy fiction book. There have been crazy people in my family as well, or in any family. People who have a contempt for being settled, an idea too remote for sedentary people, but if us the sedentary people can think of the delight of dispelling faith in the means of this world, and putting our trust in One God, by leaving everything in His hands and set out for destinations that may not exist - if they can taste the flavour of that liberty that doesn't lie in 'doing' and satisfying the temptations of soul, they surely would induce a desire to be free, the same desire that boy had.Image source

(This is the map of the notorious treasure island.)

William C. Chittick: Science of the Cosmos, Science of the Soul: The Pertinence of Islamic Cosmology in the Modern World by Muzaffar Iqbal

Image source

"In the short introduction to this work, William Chittick states that after almost forty years of sitting back and letting sages such as RCma, Ibn 'Arabi, Sadr al-Din Qunawi, 'Abd al-Rahman Jami, Afdal al-Din Kashani, Shams-i Tabrizi, and Mulla Sadra speak through his translations, he has finally felt at ease in applying their wisdom to the complex problems of the contemporary world. At the heart of this book consisting of seven chapters, all but one of which were originally written as lectures for conferences, is the question: "how do we know what we know?"

Religious traditions clearly distinction two modes of knowing and hence the two kinds of knowledge: transmitted (naqli) and intellectual ('aqli). The former is passed from generation to generation, the latter is learned by training the mind and polishing the heart. Transmitted knowledge is revealed knowledge. God wants the believers to fast during the month of Ramadan; He reveals this to the Prophet who transmits it to the believers and those who hear him say so, pass it on those who are not present--and so on down the generations. Intellectual knowledge, on the other hand, is acquired by the knowing subject. Even though it may require teachers, it does not ultimately depend on the authority of the teacher for its verification and existence; it resides in the heart and mind of the knower. That two plus two equals four does not rely on an authority once it has been comprehended.

The first three chapters consist of lectures delivered to Muslim audience, and therein one finds ample evidence of Chittick's command over the material he has studied and translated for over forty years. It is also in these three chapters that one finds the sharpest and most clear diagnosis of contemporary Muslim dilemmas as seen from the perspective of a deeply concerned but objective scholar, who can stand aloof from the moribund tradition and look back at the times when it produced great thinkers and sages. He can thus wonder: what has gone wrong? Intellectual tradition is essential for the survival of religion, for one cannot think of Islam without simultaneously comprehending the Qur'anic commands demanding Muslims to think, reflect, and ponder.

Muslims have stopped thinking, Chittick states boldly, knowing that his observation would be contested by many. Thus he explains what he means by "thinking". By "thinking", he means the kind of thinking that produced the intellectual tradition of Islam which is now rapidly disappearing. It was a training of the mind, a discipline of the heart which was rooted in the message of the Qur'an. Modern intellectuals, trained in modern modes of thought, inhabit a mental schizophrenia where faith and practice are not harmonious, mind and heart are at war with each other, and the gods of modernity reign supreme in the lives of those who claim to worship only one God. "A god is what gives meaning and orientation to life, and the modern world derives meaning from many, many gods. Through an ever-intensifying process of takthar, the gods have been multiplied beyond count, and people worship whatever gods appeal to them."

Containing clear but frightening prognoses of the modern world, Science of the Cosmos, Science of the Soul leads one to think about the contemporary state of the world from an uncommon perspective and debunks modern ideology, rooted as it is in humanism, scientism, and many other "isms" which have emerged in the Western thought since the European Enlightenment. Without being "too Islamic", the book draws upon a variety of traditional sources to articulate its main concern: fallen into a path of self-destruction, humanity needs to wake up before it is too late. It is the role of intellectual tradition to help humanity in this effort." (Source)

The Demons of Work

Now-a-days I am preparing a paper sort of a ‘report’ (a dubious name to such a title which I will reveal just then after just now) on ‘Cultural Globalization’. I always tend to take long routes, taking more pain and not allowing my self the luxury of direct access to facts; this show how dim my perspectives are on things so real. But I can’t help myself avoid doing that. So I have started reading The Reign of Quantity and the Signs of Times to analyze the patterns of globalization in our world culture, rather to critique on the new spirits of time and et cetera, et cetera. This tendency of taking a long route by delving too deep in one concept only, thinking that if the nature of that single concept may be found the knowledge of others will show up like rays of sunlight do on a sunny day, has only contributed to low grades and low grades. In words of our liberal economics professor: 'God knows why'. What else should I do when I find, for instance, so-called scholarly books on subject globalization so biased that tinges of scholarly language seem to be only suicidal for ‘some inexplicit reasons’. They propound everything in favor of their theses ‘in the manner of jurists’ that one starts to believe in the relativity of truth. They start with premises and take them as absolute, so that all that follows must only under any circumstances conform to their personal likings and biases. But they do sound, somewhat, scholarly - 'depressingly so'.

I chose this book I already mentioned to write on the subject of modernism, hoping, as usual, to find an application on the culture the latter gave birth to, so as to reveal its actual roots, no matter how non-cultural the language of the paper or my ‘thesis’ (another dubious title), may sound. Knowledge is for its own sake. Unity is not uniformity; it is far more profound than the latter. And, this is the difference I can make here. What follows now is an introduction to this book, which I picked up to clear my mind of the illusions of the modern times:

“The Reign of Quantity is an attack on the scientism of modern World. In these beautiful and profound pages Rene Guenon looks back to an ancient Wisdom, once common to both East and West but now almost entirely lost. Contemporary civilization itself – with its industrial societies and illusory notions of progress – is his target. In particular, he shows that today’s sciences are dominated by a quantitative approach, that they neglect that idea of quality. To this “reign of quantity” he opposes the sacred metaphysics of the ancients, which he sees as rooted in Divine Truth. His book is ultimately a warning against the real danger that humanity faces today – a warning all the more urgent because that danger is unperceived by those from whom guidance is sought and expected.”

This is how Shaikh ‘Abdul Wahid Yahya, the author, describes the purpose of his book:

“Among the features characteristic of the modern mentality the tendency to bring everything down to an exclusively quantitative point of view will be taken from now on as the central theme of this treatise. This tendency is most marked in the scientific conceptions of recent centuries but it is almost as conspicuous in other domains, notably in that of social organization; so much so that with one reservation the nature and necessity of which will appear hereafter, our period could almost be defined as being essentially and primarily the “reign of quantity”. This characteristic is chosen in preference to any other not solely nor even principally because it is one of the most evident and least contestable but above all because of its truly fundamental nature for reduction to the quantitative is strictly in conformity with the conditions of the cyclic phase at which humanity has now arrived.”

Moreover, my instructor once told me that to know capitalism is to know globalization. Understand the former; you’ll get what the latter is, he meant to say. I hope this conforms to my personal likings.

Battlefield - An Exotic Classroom For Geeks

Imagine a scholar-soldier going into a precarious, chaotic, gory battlefield. And a Chinese proverb would bet that that learner can do anything he thinks he can do, but not within a few hundred years. This apprehension about sholarly nerds has been realized by such a soldier who fought in Afghanistan, against no matter whom. On Mr. Mullaney’s memoir about his experiments with war and battlefields, a journalist comments,

"'The Unforgiving Minute” is Captain Mullaney’s attempt to reconcile the precombat lessons that seemed so clear to him with the exigencies of battlefield experience... It’s the inner journey of a man who is at first eager to learn as much as he can from service and scholarship. Later on he learns from his mistakes." (Read its complete review here.)

'A Poignant Picture of Punjabi Life'

Image source.

Should we not read Economist about a new collection of stories by an American brought-up Pakistani, who throws vivid light on the complex culture of his soil? IN OTHER ROOMS, OTHER WONDERS, is Daniyal Mueenuddin’s first debut which is about the life of a Pakistani feudal lord. But there is a lot more magic in this than a mere fictional biography of an aging landlord, which justly makes it a literary piece of work by painting things in a large canvas of Pakistani society, especially of Punjab. Nothing could make a foreign journalist describe the Pakistani society so accurately than the stories carved by Mueenuddin, that:

IN PAKISTAN life is shaped as much by who you know as what you do. In this remarkable debut, a range of characters rich in practical intelligence demonstrate the importance of influence. An electrician burdened with 12 daughters persuades his employer to give him a motorcycle; a servant sleeps her way into maintaining her position in a Lahore household; a down-at-heel woman pleads for a post with a distant rich relation. (Economist.)

Therefore, connections are very much the necessity here. Now some words about the archetypal stories by Daniyal Mueenuddin:

Passing from the mannered drawing rooms of Pakistan’s cities to the harsh mud villages beyond, Daniyal Mueenuddin’s linked stories describe the interwoven lives of an aging feudal landowner, his servants and managers, and his extended family, industrialists who have lost touch with the land... A hard-driven politician at the height of his powers falls critically ill and seeks to perpetuate his legacy; a girl from a declining Lahori family becomes a wealthy relative’s mistress, thinking there will be no cost; an electrician confronts a violent assailant in order to protect his most valuable possession... (Daniyal Mueendin website.)

Pakistan is said to be well understood by its inhibitors and much misunderstood by the outsiders. Hopefully this collection of short stories, praised by both Mohsin Hamid and Salman Rushdie, will remove any misconceptions in the minds of foreigners, which can save many lives. Moreover, it can remove the number of dejected hearts who often come here with the romantic notion of receiving bliss from the perfume of Pakistan, and return with many natural shocks. I see hope. (Very poignant.)

Two Pre-Sophia Philosophers & Their Concept of God

I once asked my friend about what he thought of pre-Sophist period philosophers. He deliberately restrained himself from answering, for some good, and instead put forward this question to me that as to what I thought of them. I could not reply him at that time. Therefore, I do it now.

'Brave'. They were brave. That is my first reaction about them. They rebelled against the masses and rejected what they considered as wrong, especially about religious philosophies, which is the primary concern of this post. Popular religion in their period was of many gods. A long list of them - begotten gods, sons of god, images of gods, etc, etc. Whereas, their polytheistic notion about god was "countered with a more philosophic conception of one god, the source in some way of the entire universe and the power behind all the phenomena of the universe."

I can highlight two such philosophers, whom I consider to be brave thinkers. One is Xenophanes and the other was Heraclitus. Both had a great contempt for the religion of public. Heraclitus condemned their religions in this way, "And to these images they pray, just as if one were to converse with men's houses, for they know not what gods and heroes are." Whereas Xenophanes, belonging to the sixth century B.C., "proclaimed that God was one and unchangeable." He condemned the popular notions of god as beings like us. "Yes, and if oxen or lions had hands, and could paint with their hands and produce works of art as men do, horses would paint the forms of gods like horses and oxen like oxen. Each would represent them with bodies according to the form of each," he wrote. He thought that God was unlike us, the mortals. And that He is the First and the Last, or to say that He had neither any beginning nor any end, "an eternal unity." Although he rejected polytheism and believed in monotheism, he however has been called pantheist in the book Basic Teachings of the Great Philosophers*, because he thought that God is the world. "A belief that everything in the universe is God, and God is everything in the universe," the book says. This position, of pantheism, is not acceptable in all three great monotheistic religions of the world, Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

* All the quotes in this article were taken from this book.

The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam by M. Iqbal

The Reconstruction of the Religious Thought in Islam

By, Allama Muhammad Iqbal.

The book starts with the most penetrating questions and yet they're not: very penetrating to a deeply reflecting mind, but not to an unconscious one. For instance, he starts the first lecture, or chapter, of the book by expressing his own deep philosophical perplexing queries: "What is the character and general structure of the universe in which we live? Is there a permanent element in the constitution of this universe? How are we related?" The book is immensely philosophical, and is an effort to address these philosophical questions from the viewpoint of religion Islam and its authentic classical sources, primarily Qur'an and Prophetic traditions of the Prophet of Islam (P.B.U.H.). 

I have found it to be a very resourceful book, not limiting itself to a particular domain of knowledge. For instance, this book points to the origins of philosophy of atomism based on Qur'anic injunctions in Islam - a subject very pertinent to physics and chemistry science students. (You can read an extract from the book here on atomism by a Muslim school of thought.) The book heavily relies and takes constant inspiration from the Holy Qur'an and Hadith of Prophet, and as well from the classical and contemporary Muslim metaphysical sources. It seems as if the writer wants to shed off the treasures of Islam to the whole world, so as to enlighten it.

 Nevertheless, this book has one great flaw. It never reaches down to the level of "layman's" understanding. Perhaps, that has been the reason why it remains a neglected piece of work in Muslim world today. That is, although it wishes to communicate a profound understanding of religious message to humankind, it does not wish to bend its lofty manner of expression by resorting to plain language. Another reason of its being neglected by Muslims may lie in its excessive use of the language of modern Western philosophy in conveying the meaning of the religious text. This particular aspect of this work has been criticized vehemently by relatively traditionalist scholars, who seek to reform Muslim societies in the exact spirit of Prophet's days and first Islamic century.

 What I have said till now may be very inaccurate, but this is what I've been able to appraise. Here, I do not feel shame to mention that I have miserably failed to fully grasp an understanding of the complexity of this work. However, it certainly has enlightened my thinking in many ways. Its certain passages opened up new worlds of understanding to me that I wish to share here. You may find one passage quite thought-provoking, while the other groundbreaking, and some simply beautiful and a few other as revolutionary.

 Although this book takes inspirations from Western philosophy and sciences, it very much deserves critical criticism with liberal spirits from Muslim quarters. However, it should be noted that in Muslim academic circles across the globe, this book has received a wide range of audience. It has been well criticized with differing perspectives, and the numbers of critical works on it are increasing day-by-day. It is only that common people with no background in philosophy are very much unfamiliar with this work and that, as I said, maybe an internal flaw of this work.

 I have posted a few extracts from this book on the following topics that I have found thought-provoking and exotic for any conscious reader, in the comment section:

 1. about the cognitive element of mystical experience(s)

 2. about the notion of matter

 3. about Ijtihad

 4. Explanation of a beautiful verse of Urfi

 5. about the knowledge of heart.

(See the comments section.)