Reddit comments from June 2024

Accessibility/knowledge of the Qira'at even in book form is more difficult than I imagined. It's very easy to get a Mus'haf with Qira'at notes in the margins or a verse-by-verse differences between the 10 Qira'at volume. But getting standalone editions of each Qira'ah, especially in the same print?

Let alone the shaadh Qira'at. I don't even think there's a print of Hasan al-Basri's Qira'ah as a standalone volume.

I would think some publishing house would publish a set that includes one mus'haf with the marginal notes or an academic text that goes verse by verse, alongside 10 volumes or so in the preferred ṭarīq of each qira'ah. But I haven't found such a thing, even in the Arab world.

According to traditional scholarship, most of the tajwīd rules actually pre-date Qur'ānic tilāwah and were considered the proper way to speak formally or recite poetry.

A hadith in al-Tabarani quotes the Prophet as ordering the Quran to be recited in in the "accents of the Arabs and their sounds." luĥūn al-'arab wa aṣwāṭihā.

Al-Nuwaīrī's commentary on al-Jazarī's Ṭayyibat al-Nashr describes īmālah and fat'ĥ as being from the fus'ha language of the Arabs with which the Qur'an was Revealed.

Of course, there are some rules that are Qur'ān specific, but a lot of them developed organically over time to ensure the specific words of poetry were clearly heard.

The Yemenī Jewish tradition of reciting the Psalms is also interesting for some similarity with the Qur'an.

My current position, as a student who is still learning, is that it seems that Tajwīd is a mix of jāhilī poetic style, some newly introduced features directly from Muhammad (perhaps mudūd and other rules), along with the culmination of scholarly efforts on the part of the grammatians and reciters. It seems that specific madd lengths and other features have a clear historical origin in the period preceding Abu Bakr b. Mujāhid's "Kitab al-Sab'."

I don't know if you're looking for English or Arabic resources. English is going to be really hard. There's the Bridge's Translation of the Ten Qira'at but I don't think it's very good at all.

Individual masa'hif: [https://app.quranflash.com/](https://app.quranflash.com/)

Verse-by-verse comparisons: [https://quranpedia.net/book/20065](https://quranpedia.net/book/20065)

There are print editions but some of them are exceedingly rare. If you find a way to get your hands on a Shu'bah volume let me know. I've found one on eBay. Haven't found Abu Ja'far. I'm almost done with my collection of the ten (and an additional tariq here or there, for example both Warsh and Qalun). There's about three missing.

Unfortunately even in Sa'udi bookstores around Makkah, what the Qira'at are isn't common knowledge and there's some negotiating you have to do with the shopkeepers to find anything.

It would be nice if Dar al-Ma'rifah would just publish a 10-12 volume set but it doesn't seem likely.

Most of the information I've gathered on this is from first-hand sources. I don't know of any research on it. If you go through Kitāb Sibawayh, he extensively discusses the reason for pronouncing certain things in a particular fashion from a grammatical perspective, which explains a lot of the Tajwīd rules. Kitab al-Sab' by Abu Bakr b. Mujāhid does the same.

I don't know if there is a history of Tajwīd/Qira'at that specifically focuses on the development of rules with focus on pre-Islāmic influences, maybe a scholar here can point us in the right direction.

The Qur'ānic style is definitely unique but the common Sunnī conception that Tajwīd was something solely Revealed by God to Muhammad as part of the Qur'ān isn't held by serious traditionalist scholars.

Haven't ever seen a Shu'bah in person and only ever seen one copy for sale online. My collection:

• Mus'haf Tajwīd fi al-Qira'at al-Ashr

• Ibn Kathīr (Bazzī & Qunbul)

• Al-Kisa'ī (Abu al-Harith & Dūrī)

• Qalūn 'an Nafi'

• Ibn 'Amir (Hisham & ibn Dhakwan)

• Al-Dūrī

• Warsh 'an Nafi'

Obviously Hafs.

Most of them are Dar al-Ma'rifah print.

It's interesting to note the narration of ibn Mas'ud paraphrasing ta'ām al-athīm as ṭa'ām al-fājir as quoted by al-Ṣuyūtī and in Mustadrak al-Ĥākim. It seems ibn Mas'ud did not hold the idea of verbatim oral transmission exactly, and I wonder if this was a contributing factor to his exclusion in codification.

Bart Ehrman makes an interesting point in "Misquoting Jesus" that, before the printing press, books were often used more to jog someone's memory as a point of reference than to be "read" cover to cover. He makes a point about the lack of spaces between words in ancient Greek that necessitates a teacher due to multiple possible readings. I can't help but imagine something similar involving masahif that don't have nuqat or tashkil.

It seems the early Muslims used the few maṣāĥif they had in that way: as a tool to learn/memorize from at someone's house or the masjid, then go back home with what you memorized.

أبو عبيد وابن الأنباري وابن المنذر – كما قال السيوطي - عن عون بن عبد الله أن ابن مسعود أقرأ رجلاً : (إن شجرة الزقوم طعام الأثيم) فقال الرجل : "طعام اليتيم" ، فرددها عليه ، فلم يستقم بها لسانه ، فقال : أتستطيع أن تقول : طعام الفاجر ؟ قال : نعم ، قال : فافعل .

وقد روي مثل ذلك أبي الدرداء رضي الله عنه ، أخرجه سعيد بن منصور وعبد بن حميد وابن جرير وابن المنذر والحاكم وصححه .

انظر : "الدر المنثور" للسيوطي (7/418)

On the authority of Awn b. Abdullah that ibn Mas'ud read to a man (The tree of Zaqūm will be the transgressors' [athīm] food). So the man said, "...[will be] the orphan's [yatīm] food." Then he [ibn Mas'ud] repeated it to him [to correct him], but his tongue wasn't able to say it correctly.

Due to that, he said, "Are you able to say 'the sinners' [fājir] food' [instead]?"

He said, "Yes."

He replied, "Then do so."

Reported by al-Suyuti, ibn al-Mundhir, and al-Hakim.

Arguably the entire issue of Khalq al-Qur'an was initiated by Greek-Christian discussions/debates on the demiurge and Logos. Yasir Qadhi speculates that Jahm b. Safwan was affected by Christian philosophical discussions in Syria and that's how he introduced this idea of the createdness of the Qur'an into Islamic discourse, which lead to about three centuries of intense controversy (still controversial to this day).

Western secular academia has certain philosophical presuppositions that are absolutely necessary to function otherwise no further research is possible. The same is true of Islamic traditionalism. Before you can really do sophisticated…

1. German Idealism - The Struggle Against Subjectivism 1781-1801 by F. C. Beiser

2. The Protestant Ethic of Capitalism by M. Weber (on the formation of Capitalist secularism out of Calvanism and the wider protestant movement)

3. Formations of the Secular by T. Asad (on the development of secularism and the creation of the idea of "religion")

4. Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences by G. W. F. Hegel (The Logic, part 1 in particular)

5. A Brief History of Analytic Philosophy by S. Schwartz (particularly the chapter, "The Rebirth of Metaphysics")

6. Hegel’s Modal Ontological Argument, A DISSERTATION, School of Philosophy of The Catholic University of America, by David Pensgard

7. The Incerto series by Nassim Talib for philosophical skeptical analysis of Western humanities

8. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by T. Kuhn

I don't think universities without faith commitments are close to objective in any sense and I don't think that they are free of commitment to a faith. I think that secularism and the secular approach is a faith commitment that makes as many assumptions about the Divine, supernatural, metaphysics, and epistemology as Hinduism or Jainism or any traditional "religion." It is predicated on accepting some kind of epistemology that grounds objective reality in the empirical world, usually Hegelian, and that is a faith-based proposition - not a rational objectively provable one by any philosophical means.

Hegel's epistemological framework has been deconstructed extensively and a lot of holes have been poked in his system of modal logic, upon which basically all of continental and analytical philosophy was based (which essentially all secular thinking presupposes).

David Pensgard's thesis on "Hegel's Modal Ontological Argument" deals with this extensively, although I have to warn you it's a difficult read.

Empiricism is not incompatible with humanities nor does it presuppose only empirical methods can lead to the truth. That's just patently false. The ancient Greek school of Empricists relied heavily on logic, which is a mental construct that cannot be derived from reality. Indeed, philosophy and logic underpin empiricism - a philosophical school.

What you are describing is something like hard materialism or almost logical positivism. Most secular historians subscribe to a group of philosophical schools, including empiricism, which is simply the exclusion of neoumenal knowledge as an evidentiary basis and a reliance of knowledge which can be gathered from the senses (including reports from others, which includes history or historical documentation).

I don't think you and I can have a fruitful discussion on exactly what secular studies entails without going through "Formations of the Secular" by Talal Asad. Otherwise, we will just fundamentally disagree too much on what secularism is and will talk past each other.

Secularism is not the mere lack of a religion, that's false advertising. There are as many faith commitments in secularism as any other worldview. Again, this isn't something for Reddit posts. If you'd like to understand my position, Asad's book is the best place to start, followed by Weber's. That being said, what I am saying is slowly becoming the mainstream position in the academic study of religion even in Western academia (although they are leaning towards a kind of Foucault-relativism/subjectivism).

Hegel is not single-handedly responsible for all of Western philosophy and many of the trends would have happened without him, but it's easier to think of certain large zeitgeists using the main figures they represent. It's also no coincidence that the major representatives of philosophical liberalism ended up becoming known as the Young Hegelians (like Marx).

Hegel is representative of a wider intellectual movement spanning 500 years, but he's probably the most important champion and intellectual contributer to it, and the one that lent it the most legitimacy.

The ibn Taymiyyah of secularism, if you will.

The historical-critical method certainly has a lot of value, but what happens when we also apply the historical-critical method on the secular institution, its methodologies, and the method itself? That's where I think we get some really interesting insights.

I have every intention of responding to you but I am in the middle of a workday right now. I will get back later.

>I preface this by saying that if you do not want to have this discussion here, no problem, but I don't see a better social media platform to discuss this than this website. Reddit isn't the problem, it's fine for long-form discussion. The…

What there was was: Protestant Christianity that saw outward and physical manifestations of worship as being backwards or resembling paganism. Some iconoclastic sects of Protestantism took this to the extreme, making Christianity something…

Most of the conclusions we arrive at by looking at the historical record are arrived at not because of their truth, but because of their plausibility. The plausibility of a theory and the amount of records indicating it do not constitute…

I have added more comments. I apologize, I am not a paid academic, so I have to share my thoughts in my free time.

You don't see why it's necessary because you've never looked into how absolutely problematic these things are. You are just assuming that science is true, "because it works" like Richard Dawkins says. Please refer to my other comments. I would highly suggest investigating:

1. [https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/induction-problem/](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/induction-problem/)

2. [https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/scientific-underdetermination/](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/scientific-underdetermination/)

3. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-body\_problem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-body_problem) (in particular, pertaining to the complexity of systems and chaos theory making our ability to determine anything about the physical world incredibly limited)

4. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical\_rationalism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_rationalism) (Karl Popper generally)

The simple reality is that the physical sciences cannot lead to truth in any meaningful sense, and their short-term efficacy could be an example of "short-term evolutionary fitness" which could have much larger long-term consequences and/or stop working at any moment.

Pretty much everything else you brought up I dealt with in my other comments targeted at u/chonkshonk . If there's anything I missed please let me know.

I'm here to be a critical intellectual period. Not just critical about the Qur'an and its history, but just generally critical.

You totally misunderstood what I was saying. Observable facts something different than conclusions drawn from facts. This is the idea of inductive versus deductive reasoning. The problem is with induction.

No philosopher of science trivializes the problem of induction. It's literally the biggest problem in the field.

There's nothing wrong with making inductive arguments contigent on the epistemic humility that inductive reasoning can never lead to objective truth about reality on its own, can be proven wrong at any time, and it's much easier to prove things wrong than to prove them right.

There's a difference between that and direct observation of physical realities. We do have to agree on some things that are real outside of our own minds, even if the absolute certainty of them is not 100%.

By the way, that comment by Dawkins was pretty universally seen as laughably bad and an incredibly embarassing fumble. He was not prepared for that at all and no serious philosopher of science would posit something like that.

On a smaller timeline, just because a trading strategy works in the short-term doesn't mean its assumptions about the market are true. Hedge fund managers make this mistake all the time. They build up billion dollar firms over the course of a decade, assuming their models make true conclusions about the market because "it works" until it doesn't. Quantitative analysis, machine learning, PhD economists, all engage in this pseudoscience.

Then the firm blows up because of some "statistically insignificant" event happening and wiping them out.

Intellectual robustness matters. Building your worldview on fragile catchecisms means that it only takes one observation to disprove everything.

I'm not sure why we are having this discussion. I don't deny the value of science or scientific research. I'm not a young earth creationist. I don't claim to be an evolutionary biologist. I just know what science is and what kind of conclusions it can meaningfully offer, and what it can't.

My intention was to deconstruct the idea that secular Western academia is objective and impartial with a minimal set of assumptions, focused on achieving the truth with as few barriers as possible.

I think rigorous skepticism is an important tool for arriving at truths. Just like the use of empirical realities, logic, innate instincts, and metaphysics. I disagree with the approach that only takes empirical realities as true or even as the supreme truth. That is the essential perspective of Western academy, it is biased against the other 4 major sources of truth.

Intellectual history is not overloading. What I am doing is called problematizing something incorrectly assumed to be simple. Ideas and institutions have a lot of baggage that's taken for granted. Your same argument can be made by a…

It's also somewhat disingenuous to ask me to use Reddit to explain these arguments after I offer several very long academic works instead, then complain that nothing is being said in long messages. I can just list out the arguments with links to papers and books, like I did at first, or I can somehow try to distill them into comments. I have done both, and you're still accusing me of saying nothing.

I also brought up the plausibility/truth fallacy. u/saberen did a good job engaging with those ideas and whether those valid epistemological critiques are reasonable standards but I haven't gotten back to them yet. I intended to today.

1. Define the HCM Wikipedia: >Historical criticism began in the 17th century and gained popular recognition in the 19th and 20th centuries. The perspective of the early historical critic was influenced by the rejection of traditional…

HCM is a fundamentally Euro-centric and Biblio-centric approach to analyzing texts. I have thoroughly critiqued that, demonstrated why it's problematic, and in doing so proven my initial point as far as I am concerned.

The problem of induction and epiphenomena was an approach from philosophical skepticism and has almost nothing to do with the other arguments I was making. I was offering a complete deconstruction that involved intellectual history and operant philosophical principles.

In basic terms:

Western academia presupposes the superiority of empiricsm to the exclusion of the other major sources of knowledge: instinctual intuition, formal logic, metaphysics, or rigorous skepticism. I believe it is neccesary to use all five means of attaining knowledge to arrive at truth, not just one of them.

None of the works I have mentioned specifically deal only with HCM. The post wasn't just about HCM and neither were the conversations. If you want me to try to find a work which specifically criticizes ONLY HCM from these angles I can certainly try, but HCM doesn't live in some vacuum.

The one that would probably closely deal with it is Talal Asad's work.

The best work for you may be "Islam as a Discursive Tradition*" by Talal Asad.

It's in the Wikipedia page?

The problem is that you are taking the thesis at face value while I am criticizing the entire edifice behind the thesis. Saying HCM is just "suspension of conclusions until after investigating" is like saying "Capitalism just means free trade bro!" when confronted with a Marxist critique. You can distill any ideology into a catchecism, they all sound great.

I skipped the first two paragraphs because I thought we both understood the thesis of what HCM claims to be. That claim is not interesting, it's an assertion. What I was doing was testing the claim, unfortunately your response to my critiques was just to repeat it again and again.

I went into the historical and intellectual context around HCM and problematized that. You don't get to ignore it by just saying, "all it means is suspension of a conclusion!" That's just describing skepticism, not a very specific historical methodology. People have been suspending conclusions on evidence for 10,000 years, no one needed HCM to teach them that.

HCM is a very specific approach to studying history and anthroplogy with a very specific history to it. I quoted the Wikipedia page to evince that. I'm not sure what else I need to say.

Reminder to myself to respond

Reminder to myself to respond

I'll respond to the rest later but I had to block that guy because of his weird constant barrage of irrelevant comments. Before I did, I saw he made 3 posts about me in r/askphilosophy. In one of them, I think the first one, an expert in an adjacent field said what I was discussing made sense to him. Even in the post where people were confused, it was pointed out that the lack of context was a part of the problem. He made 3 different posts on what I was saying.

https://www.reddit.com/r/askphilosophy/s/PUrD5mgQ0k

>As is apparent now, that's not the case. Of the long reading list you recommended, none of the works you cited deal with the historical-critical method. It's also obvious from the list of problems you gave of the HCM that you do not know…

[https://www.reddit.com/r/askphilosophy/s/PUrD5mgQ0k](https://www.reddit.com/r/askphilosophy/s/PUrD5mgQ0k)

I wouldn't describe Jordan Peterson as a radical skeptic, I think he engages in solipsism when he can't deal with certain arguments by playing with language. Peterson is mostly a philosophical relativist that borrows a lot from Western…

The idea is that if you can understand where model failure applies to economics or market analysis, you can then extrapolate the idea of model failure when it comes to the edifice of scientific knowledge. I am not making a direct analogy here, I was trying to demonstrate the idea of model risk and model failure. Simply because a model of knowledge is currently effective at future prediction does not mean the observation which will disprove that model's value does not exist, it could certainly exist and simply has not been spotted yet. This is the problem of induction or the black swan problem.

I was criticizing the robustness of empirical sciences vis-a-vis fundamental truth claims.

Some of the other posters were suggesting that my argument was incoherent, that's why I posted that.

I would advocate that there's some middle-ground between HCM and classical Islamic methods for source-text research. HCM can have its place and can provide some useful knowledge, but the approach of ignoring truth-claims from a philosophical perspective and relying solely on empiricism is what I find fault in.

From my previous comment:

>My thesis in this thread is that the Western secular academic history to humanities in general, Islamic studies in specific, has as many baked-in assumptions as the Madrassah. I think it prioritizes empiricism over the other important sources of knowledge, namely: metaphysics, natural instincts, formal logic, and skepticism.

>What I was doing in these comments was testing HCM according to just one of those other branches of knowledge, which is rigorous skepticism. We can often find out more accurately and objectively what is not true than what is. When we just apply that, we see the system start to fold in on itself.

>Muslim scholars and philosophers were dealing with empiricism, instinct/intuition, logic, and skepticism in a much more robust way when developing their approach over the course of 1,500 years. So, the idea that HCM or the Western approach is more "unbiased" or "objective" with less assumptions is something I aimed to disprove through multiple avenues. I also aimed to disprove that it is more effective at arriving at truth.

It seems that we're just talking past each other, because I very clearly set forth some specific arguments. The only way to continue this conversation further would be to crack open the texts you recommend, the texts I recommend, and have a more formal discussion that includes long-form essays that are highly structured (topic title, citations, evidence, bullet points, point numbering). I don't know what your interest is in having a discussion like that or how fruitful it would be. I'm willing to go through your specific citations and make arguments specifically directed at HCM, especially as pertains to Qur'anic studies, but I don't want to do it on Reddit comments. If you can find a better platform for something like that, we can think about it.

Reminder to reply

Reminder to reply

I don't think I have the free time to do that, but perhaps there is a middle-ground between writing a full-fledged academic work to be submitted for peer review and what we're doing on here. However, if we can't find a middle-ground then I don't think these comments on Reddit will get us anywhere. It has to have more structure or we'll just keep going in circles.

There's so many inaccuracies and misrepresentations it's hard to know where to begin. The Qur'an was transmitted orally and through writing from the beginning, outside of the official state-sanctioned codification process. Several companions had their own complete masahif by the death of the Prophet, famously Abu Bakr, Ali, and ibn Mas'ud. Let alone numerous partial masahif or parts of Suwar on various materials.

You can't just quote Kitab al-Masahif without doing some kind of historical validation. If you don't accept isnad as historical then it's already useless from that perspective, and even if you do it's a text that requires a lot of criticism.

Does "Quran" here mean mus'haf, Qira'ah, or Harf? Seems that there is confusion here about it.

What academic references do you have that Sunnis believe the 12 imams were Sunnis? Everyone before Ja'far al-Sadiq predates the religious schism between Sunni/Shi'a, and I've not heard anyone claim that the people after Ja'far al-Sadiq were Sunni. The only figure you could argue would probably be Ja'far al-Sadiq himself, but Shi'ism was not very theologically developed at that time (Ithna Ash'ariyyah didn't exist because, obviously, most than half of the 12 imams were not even born yet).

William Montgomery Watt's book on the "Formative Period of Islamic Thought" is very interesting as pertains to the development of early Sunnism as contrasted with other sects. Early Sunnism was a cross between populist reaction to the excesses of government and a traditionalist approach, as contrasted with groups like the Mu'tazilah, Karramiyyah, early 'Ibadiyyah (aka Khawarij), and Shi'a. There were certainly times when Shi'a political motives and Sunni ones were aligned, and other times when they weren't.

The traditionalist al-Nasa'i was killed for his "tashayyu'." Al-Shafi'i was imprisoned for his ties to the Shi'a. Abu Hanifa was accused of Shi'ism.

Before Shi'ism came into its own as a theological doctrine, there wasn't as clear of a line, and the pejorative of "Shi'i" was something the Umayyads used to silence their enemies, since they took a decidedly anti-'Ali stance.

Was Ghazali a Sufi? The most famous "Sufi" and considered one of the greatest, in some circles /the/ greatest, Sunni scholar. Ghazali would consider Rumi a heretic.

What does "spiritual practices" mean? Most Sunni acts of worship are considered spiritual, and most theological Sufis are not distinguished by unique acts of worship (perhaps only the sam' and idiosyncratic acts of devotion of some cultish tariqat, like twirling or wailing dervishes).

You guys are conflating theological Sufism, which itself is diverse, complicated, and multi-faceted with Sunni spirituality (also Sufism) and the idea of Sufism writ large.

You can refer to AnneMarie Schimmel's book on the topic "Mysticism in Islam", although that one is decidedly more focused on theological Sufism as opposed to Sunni Sufism.

There's also conservative Sufism, along the lines of figures like ibn Taymiyyah, ibn Qudama, ibn al-Qayyim, al-Nawawi, etc.

Sunni Sufism's greatest figures include the likes of al-Junayd al-Baghdadi, Abu Hamid al-Ghazali, Abu Hasan al-Shadhili, Abd al-Qadir al-Jilani, ibn 'Ata'illah, and Abu Yazid al-Bistami. A decidedly normative/conservative Sunni work would be ibn al-Qayyim's Madarij al-Salikin "Stations of the Wayfarers" (translated) or a revision of Ghazali's "Revival of the Religious Sciences", such as ibn al-Jawzi's "Path of the Seekers" Minhaj al-Qasidin.

Sunni Sufis will also read and benefit from theological Sufis but usually with some distance, criticism, or mental gymnastics to keep them in the theological fold. Ibn 'Arabi is the most authoritative, with his "Makkan Openings" or other works. Jalal al-Din al-Rumi is considered a borderline Sunni-Sufi. On the farther end you have al-Hallaj, Farid al-Din al-Attar, and Hafiz.

One of the most esoteric works within the Sunni fold is ibn 'Ata'illah's "Hikam" (Wisdoms), which are almost like Islamic Zen koans.

It's a difficult one, not necessarily where I'd recommend starting. Sayyid Hossein Nasr has a nice concise overview (although I believe he is actually Shi'i leaning) https://a.co/d/caYBfCG This is a good practical manual in Sunni Sufism:…

No. Mut'ah (متعة) and Moo'tah (مؤتة) are totally different. Different letters, different origins. Mut'ah is pleasure, fun, or intrigue. Moo'tah is a city in Jordan.

If people are adding narrators they are lying. I'm not understanding the argument here.

"they're not claiming all alleged narrators lied"

"spread later by people adding narrators"

Without adding narrators, then it traces back to many eye witnesses. With adding narrators, it means a significant number of people lied about where they got the story.

What's the third possibility I'm missing here?

If a practice transcends region or even sect, why wouldn't a verbatim sentence or do that does the same? What's the distinction between a widely dispersed quote from a person and the imitation of their action? Given an action and given a verbatim quote, with the same level of proliferation, what gives us more confidence regarding the action versus the quote?

I don't see how this makes much sense when I said a verbatim quote. Secondly, look at all of the variation just in Sunni Muslim salah. There's several different opinions on when to begin turning and finish turning your head when saying "al-salamu alaykum" to end the prayer, different opinions on which version of the salam is valid, where to turn your head (do you turn left? Do you also salam forward to the imam?) Etc.

There are literally volumes just on the normative scholarly differences in salah, that are thousands of pages long.

How is this more reliable than, "Whomsoever lies upon me, let him take his seat in the Hellfire." Which is widely transmitted verbatim across regions and sects?

It's the single most widely disseminated narration in the entire hadith corpus. If any hadith is authentic, it's that one. It's almost in it's own category according to traditionalists and even traditionalists that are skeptical of the classification/category of tawattur put that one as the lone tawattur narration

According to Sunni traditionalism Mutawattir has to have been spread at the level of the sahabah so I'm genuinely confused what "later generations projecting" onto stories has to do with mutawatir. Using an existing story later on, even if a massive number of people do it exactly, cannot be mutawattir because that's an anachronism.

Are you just discussing very widely spread stories or are we discussing the concept of mutawattir? I agree that a lot of widely spread stories are made up or inspirations or folk religious tales. I just don't see what your comment has to do with mutawatir per se, which by definition requires mass transmission at the sahabi level, then the tabi'i level, then the atba' tabi'i level, at the minimum.

This has become circular now. If we are testing tawattur there are only the following options:

1. The chains are made up by people lying in some kind of transcontinental conspiracy, but the narration has truly been massively narrated at every level

2. The narration became massively narrated later, perhaps based on some earlier story, and chains were deceptively added in a conspiracy to justify the narrations

3. The narration was massively transmitted from the start accurately and the chains are a best-attempt to try to trace it back to the Prophet

Either:

a. The story was mass transmitted early on

Or b. It wasn't

Regardless either:

a. The chains are not made up whole cloth

Or

b. They are

What combination of A & B are we discussing as a thesis?

I don't think mods mind if you provide citations from first-hand sources, which are what Western academics are using anyways.

I have formally studied Malik's school & I agree that the post is a misrepresentation of 'amal ahl al-Madina. It wasn't just memories people passed along. There were physical landmarks, no longer extant written sources, mass corroboration, inherited activities, acts of worship, items passed down generations, etc. Madina was intentionally kept as an incubator of early Islam by Abu Bakr and especially Umar.

Obviously, memory alone is not reliable and there's so much research on that. But human memory along with written sources, many witnesses, landmarks, etc. is totally different.

I don't think Amal Ahl al-Madina can be summarized or analogized accurately with something like this. A significant concept of Malik's madh'hab is tying the rulings to the physicality of Madina. Malik himself studied with numerous scholars that would read their hadith from him from now non-extant manuscripts, which would make the source material for the Muwatta some of the oldest.

We know that human memory is more or less designed to tie circumstances and memories to physical locations as opposed to text or numbers. Joshua Foer discusses this and the research around it in "Moonwalking with Einstein." In that book, the focus is on why the method of the loci is so effective for memorization and the faults of human memory.

So there's a big difference between narrating something as a hadith in Iraq and saying, "right here in the Prophet's Mosque, this happened."

If you study the fiqh approach of Malik, a lot of it defers to going to the places of controversy for research. Instead of engaging in ordinary tafsir or looking for a narration as to what direction the Prophet took as a Qibla (just look at the fiqhi ikhtilaf regarding the Qibla), he used the Prophet's mosque which was built based on the direction the Prophet prayed.

There's countless examples of this happening at the level of Malik, his teachers, and their teachers. When your memory of something is tied to the physical location it's a different game than memorizing a story you are told, because of the way the human brain is wired.

1. According to Yasin Dutton in "Early Islam in Medina - Malik and His Muwatta'", Malik narrates from 98 teachers just in his Muwatta'. One of his teachers, ibn Shih'hab al-Zuhri, was infamous for not writing hadith down. On this point,…

I think this is where the misunderstanding as to what 'Amal Ahl al-Madinah is. That was exactly my point in the comment.

"In fact it doesn't even have much to do with *ʿamal* at all. It is looking at a historical object from that time, and looking at its qiblah. This is exactly the same thing we could do today as archaeologists, assuming we have a building that stems from that time."

'Amal ahl al-Madina does not just refer to actions or statements. Malik's thesis was that Madina at his time was a fairly accurate representation of the Madina at the time of the Prophet, and that if he carefully documented it, along with its history, then that would give us the most accurate information possible about the city that the Prophet established. If you want to call it a kind of proto-anthropology or proto-archaeology, go ahead. In Islamic sciences this is called his approach of "'Amal ahl al-Madina."

'Amal here refers to the most prominent feature of the approach, but not the entire approach. Just like usul al-fiqh is actually Islamic epistemology writ large, but since it was developed and primarily discussed in law books, it's referred to as usul al-fiqh (although it's used for theology, Qur'an, and Hadith studies).

This kind of synecdoche often confuses people, because the terminology seems to be referring to one thing, but in reality it's referring to a much broader set of interconnected concepts that were not seen as distinct or discrete to the early Muslim scholars.

I didn't mean your argument was circular, I meant that the discussion was becoming circular and we were just repeating ourselves.

I asked you a clarifying question then you asked me a question based on your comment which I found unclear in the first place. I can't answer your question because I don't understand what scenario you're putting forth for me to review.

In hadith there is sanad and matn. I would like for you to explain what possibilities exist as to the origin of the sanad and the origin of the matn for any Mutawatir narration. What are the potential origins of both and what are the possible combinations of origins?

Then please tell me which ones you think are actually true.

That's not circularity that's just a thesis which you may find uncorroborated. Circularity would be if you thought the thesis was self-evident or axiomtic because of the thesis, which is not the traditional claim. The traditional claim is that sanad and matn proliferation, especially mutawtir, corroborate that thesis.

My position on what exactly?

How do you deal with the fact that the primary description of Islamic paradise has to do with Gardens and the greatest reward, in Quran and Hadith, is looking upon Allah's Face?

Sex and spouses are mentioned far less than the pastoral aspect of Paradise and emphasized less than seeing God's Face (a fundamental point in Islamic theological works).

According to commentaries on Aqīdah al-Tahawīyyah (such as al-Babartī's), Ahdaniyyah (Ahad-ism) and Wahdaniyyah (Wahid-ism) are the two major categories of Tawhid. Ahdaniyyah has to do with Allah being One to the exclusion of others, which is a repudiation of polytheism. Wahdaniyyah has to do with Allah being One in Himself, which is a repudiation of multiple entities coexisting under one Godhead, personalities, or components to God.

They are different kinds of Oneness. Wahid is used as the first number in counting because it's conceived as being the smallest indivisible unit. Ahad is more unique and probably more appropriate when dealing with the pagan Arabs than Wahid.

Ibn Mas'ud it seems took more of a license in interchanging loan words for his Qira'ah than others as well.

Thanks for this

I'm not sure what you guys mean exactly when you say the Bible, but as pertains to the New Testament: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Development_of_the_New_Testament_canon?wprov=sfla1

Torah codification wasn't totally solidified until Islamic Andalus so I'll have to disagree with you there. Arguably NT codification finished before OT.

I thought it was pretty widely known that the Halacha wasn't compiled in one written text with diacritical marks until Maimonides put the oral Torah down into writing.

The nuqat on the Tanakh wasn't added until the linguistic exchange from Arabic in Andalus, which has some parallels to the Qira'at compilation, even if the text was already established.

It's complicated and determining exactly what we mean by canonization or putting a date on it is probably not a one-liner.

Where are you getting,

"early manuscripts have a second reading of this passage which appears in high frequency"

Sean Anthony says in your link,

"I say “theoretically” because no early copy of the Qurʾan AFAIK attests to this variant; whereas some early copies 𝑑𝑜 attest to the standard reading."

It seems Sean Anthony is saying the exact opposite. He's saying the skeletal letters allow for a different grammatical declension in theory but there's no evidence anyone read it like that.

I'll have to go down this rabbit hole tomorrow, would be very interesting if true and attested in manuscript form.

I think you mis-titled this post.

Are you asking about ibn 'Abbas or ibn Kathir? Or a quote from ibn 'Abbas in Ibn Kathir?

Wouldn't the likeliest language be Hebrew considering the amount of discussion of Moses and the Israelites in the Quran?

There is an accusation regarding a specific sahabi, if memory serves me correctly it was Dihya al-Kalbi, but I'll have to check.

This is a mistranslation of what al-Qaṭṭān is saying. He was not referring to intentional fabrication by dishonest people. He was referring to nonacademic folk religious tales that pious laity would narrate without criticism.

Muhammad bin Abī Attāb narrated to me, he said Affān narrated to me, on authority of Muhammad bin Yahyā bin Sa’īd al-Qattān, on authority of his father, he said:

وَحَدَّثَنِي مُحَمَّدُ بْنُ أَبِي عَتَّابٍ، قَالَ حَدَّثَنِي عَفَّانُ، عَنْ مُحَمَّدِ بْنِ يَحْيَى بْنِ سَعِيدٍ الْقَطَّانِ، عَنْ أَبِيهِ، قَالَ لَمْ نَرَ الصَّالِحِينَ فِي شَىْءٍ أَكْذَبَ مِنْهُمْ فِي الْحَدِيثِ ‏.‏

‘We do not see the sāliĥūn (righteous uneducated/nonscholarly people) more false in anything than they are regarding Ḥadīth’.

قَالَ ابْنُ أَبِي عَتَّابٍ فَلَقِيتُ أَنَا مُحَمَّدَ بْنَ يَحْيَى بْنِ سَعِيدٍ الْقَطَّانِ، فَسَأَلْتُهُ عَنْهُ فَقَالَ عَنْ أَبِيهِ، لَمْ تَرَ أَهْلَ الْخَيْرِ فِي شَىْءٍ أَكْذَبَ مِنْهُمْ فِي الْحَدِيثِ ‏.‏ قَالَ مُسْلِمٌ يَقُولُ يَجْرِي الْكَذِبُ عَلَى لِسَانِهِمْ وَلاَ يَتَعَمَّدُونَ الْكَذِبَ ‏.‏

Ibn Abī Attāb said: ‘So Muhammad bin Yahyā bin Sa’īd al-Qattān and I met and I asked him about it and he said on authority of his father: ‘You will not see the people of good (Ahl ul-Khayr, i.e. uneducated pious worshippers) more false in anything than they are regarding Ḥadīth.’

Muslim said: ‘He was saying that falsehood flows upon their tongues although they do not intend to lie’."

Thanks for this link. I've only recently been exposed to Little's work and the idea of ICMA, so I'm still learning myself. I have pretty extensive background in hadith studies outside of academia. I can't comment on Little's interpretation…

Same series of narrations:

حَدَّثَنَا أَبُو كَامِلٍ الْجَحْدَرِيُّ، حَدَّثَنَا حَمَّادٌ، - وَهُوَ ابْنُ زَيْدٍ - قَالَ حَدَّثَنَا عَاصِمٌ، قَالَ كُنَّا نَأْتِي أَبَا عَبْدِ الرَّحْمَنِ السُّلَمِيَّ وَنَحْنُ غِلْمَةٌ أَيْفَاعٌ فَكَانَ يَقُولُ لَنَا لاَ تُجَالِسُوا الْقُصَّاصَ غَيْرَ أَبِي الأَحْوَصِ وَإِيَّاكُمْ وَشَقِيقًا ‏.‏ قَالَ وَكَانَ شَقِيقٌ هَذَا يَرَى رَأْىَ الْخَوَارِجِ وَلَيْسَ بِأَبِي وَائِلٍ ‏.‏

Abū Kāmil al-Jahdarī narrated to us, Hammād- and he is Ibn Zayd- narrated to us, he said Āsim [bin Bahdalah] narrated to us, he said: ‘We would catch up with Abū Abd ar-Rahman as-Sulamī and at the time we were young men, so he would say to us: ‘Do not sit with story-tellers other than Abūl-Ahwas and beware of Shaqīq [Abū Abd ar-Rahīm]’. [Muslim] said: ‘This Shaqīq held the view of the Khawārij and is not Abū Wā’il [Shaqīq bin Salamah, the righteous Tabi’ī]’.

Sahih Muslim Introduction 51
https://sunnah.com/muslim/introduction/50

Weight training + Ensure

Username 👌

New Atheism was stillborn from the start, an online counter-cultural movement by leftists who thought technology was going to bring us utopia. Dawkins was always a clown advancing ridiculous arguments and saying the wildest things, never a real intellectual

I want to try geisha coffee beans. Can someone direct me as to what brands are best? Or a guide?

Thank you

Thank you

That mod comment is beyond box-headed and ignorant. Same mentality accuses Nawawi, ibn Hajr, Baqillani, and the plethora of Sufi-Ash'ari 'ulama of being "zanadiqah." I'm not sure what they're going to do with the fact that the majority of Sunnī ulama in history followed a 1. Kalam school and 2. Identified as Sufi. Even ibn Qudama al-Maqdisi identified as Sufi.

Ibn Taymiyyah wore the khirqah of the tariqah of Abd al-Qadir al-Jilani.

Furthermore, imam al-Bukhari himself was accused of being a mutakallim over Khalq Af'al al-'Ibad because the students of imam Ahmad accused anyone that held those beliefs of being kafir.

It's about 5 centuries time to move on from this childish intra-Sunnī sectarianism. Take the opinion of imam al-Saffarīnī that they are all Ahl al-Sunnah and leave these philosophical debates, that never even existed during the time of the sahabah, where they belong.

Nawawi and ibn Hajr ARE Ash'aris, please do the most basic research.

I am more than qualified to evaluate the immaturity and lack of Islamic knowledge in that comment.

Deal with evidences not with usernames

Shaykh Dr. M. M. Azami writes, "Returning to Orientalism, let us take one quick case study. In his Origins of Muhammadan Jurisprudence Schacht writes, "I feel myself under a deep obligation to the masters of Islamic studies in the last…

This is incorrect. Mu'tamad opinion of Hanbali AND Shafi'i schools make hijab fard. Maliki school it is: a Sunnah by default, fard if her beauty causes a fitnah, and makruh if it draws more attention to her - in Muslim lands. However, if there's any chance a nonMuslim will see her - it becomes fard (i.e. living among them).

Hanafi school it is a highly stressed sunnah but due to their usul there is not enough evidence to raise it to wujub. However, it is still heavily emphasized and recommended.

3/4 madhahib require it in the West and one highly recommends.

As for sitar I do not know of any sahih evidence or mainstream view of the fuqaha endorsing it. If you can provide dalil or statements of ulama, I will change my mind.

My apologies, I meant niqaab. That's the relied upon position. All ulamaa agree in hijab

Absolutely loved this film and want to see it again. They're eviscerating us smh.

My man got the Arabic subtitles on

If you are referring to the time of the Prophet then the main historical sources are the Qur'ān itself (strongest historical document), the ĥadīth compilations, the Sīrah compilations (which mostly predate the ĥadīth in terms of being…

It makes more sense to do this according to domain specificity. I am working on AI data cleaning as part of a suite of tools I am developing, so that my software can use AI to produce a better end deliverable.

According to Hassan al-Basri yes. According to the vast majority of the fuqaha and the four schools, no. All humans have al-taharah al-Adamiyyah (Adamic purity). There is ikhtilaf about touching women.

I don't understand why Google doesn't sponsor the best Local Guides to get them going out more often and making Maps better. They have an infinite war chest.

Interact

Interact

Interact

What does it mean when it says "interact here first before submitting" on your post?

Love it

Awesome

Jacket is fire 🔥

Love it

Always fire

What's the jacket?

Love the trousers

Who made that jacket and how can I contact them?

Absolutely fire and if you guys ever want to start a line or get rid of that piece please find me haha. What fabrics were used? Fascinating combination of textures/patterns.

Great fit

Love the look and the way you're playing with the silhouette. Jacket is gorgeous



Rastah joggers. Falcon garments jacket.


Get rid of the tie and the second fit is 🔥

It has less to do with the clothes and more to do with lighting, angles, grooming, exercise, and facial structure. This is a question for the photographer and looksmaxxing, not the fashion. The second guy could look much better.

Mewing, facial hair, and angles can get you 50% of the way there in a picture and most people are so vapid nowadays they decide if they like you based on online photos anyways

It's truly a skill and an art but in our modern image obsessed society it can literally change your life. The difference in your career and romantic life is so drastic depending on the quality of your photographs. Fashion is a big part of that as well

What do you do bro 🤣

Great spot to be in and I see why visual execution is so important. That 1% of professionalism & attraction could mean big numbers. Kudos

It's Oedipus Rex set in '90s Japan with talking cats

Is Junayd celibate as well? What's the messaging here

It is haram to lie about this if you are marrying a virgin man. Do not listen to the ignorant people in here claiming otherwise.

https://islamqa.org/hanafi/askimam/463/my-problem-is-that-i-am-not-a-virgin-and-i-am-afraid-to-tell-my-future-husband-that-who-ever-it-maybe/

Plenty of Muslim men, virgin, repenters, and divorced would be interested in you. But if you lie about it, you are building your relationship on deception, and Allah can expose you at any time. You will be held accountable for this.

Your tawbah will be accepted for.sure if you are sincere of this sin, but if you deceive a man and marry him without telling the truth that oppression will have to be dealt with on Qiyama

https://islamqa.org/hanafi/askimam/463/my-problem-is-that-i-am-not-a-virgin-and-i-am-afraid-to-tell-my-future-husband-that-who-ever-it-maybe/

https://islamqa.org/hanafi/askimam/463/my-problem-is-that-i-am-not-a-virgin-and-i-am-afraid-to-tell-my-future-husband-that-who-ever-it-maybe/

https://islamqa.org/hanafi/askimam/463/my-problem-is-that-i-am-not-a-virgin-and-i-am-afraid-to-tell-my-future-husband-that-who-ever-it-maybe/

https://islamqa.org/hanafi/askimam/463/my-problem-is-that-i-am-not-a-virgin-and-i-am-afraid-to-tell-my-future-husband-that-who-ever-it-maybe/

https://islamqa.org/hanafi/askimam/463/my-problem-is-that-i-am-not-a-virgin-and-i-am-afraid-to-tell-my-future-husband-that-who-ever-it-maybe/

https://islamqa.org/hanafi/askimam/463/my-problem-is-that-i-am-not-a-virgin-and-i-am-afraid-to-tell-my-future-husband-that-who-ever-it-maybe/

So if a Muslim man was a drug dealer and is a convicted felon on probation, should he lie about that before marriage to potential sisters?

You realize marriage is one of the areas where exposing sins can actually be fard if it harms the potential spouse? RasulAllah exposed the character flaws of several sahabah when it came to marriage, including hitting their wives excessively. You guys take ahadith out of context and twist them to justify haram. The first haram is the zina, the second haram is lying and deceiving a Muslim man.

If your marriage contract is based on a lie it is invalid. Please study Islamic contract law. This is grounds for faskh if you trick the person. Just as if a Muslim man lied about his income or some other important factor. You are engaging in a contract based on ghish (deception).

May Allah bless you always and keep you away from making a permanent decision to a temporary problem

"Every soul shall taste death." It's the Quran my brother

Seems to be some Sufi scrawling, most of the outer circle says "bismillah al-Rahman al-Rahim". Then it has a few of Allah's Names and what seems to be parts of Quranic Ayat. In the center it says, "Ya Muhammad" and "Ya Allah". I can't read a lot of it but it could have some numerological pattern since there's the six pointed star in the corner.

It's a mix of occult Islamic mysticism and possibly sihr. It seems rudimentary. I recommend burning it.

It could either be a Sufi charm or it could have a sihr component. Regardless, these things do not harm or benefit outside of Allah's leave and this is not the path of the true Sufiyyah. Advise your uncle to burn it and bury the ashes as they contained Allah's Name.

There are explicit statements by senior members of the Israeli government calling for eliminating all Palestinians from Gaza. Even Netanyahu has made references to Palestinians as "Amalek", a pagan tribe that was genocided in the Torah.

There is no controversy in Israel about this. Zionists believe they have a right to kill or displace all Palestinians. The controversy only exists among Zionist apologists outside of Israel. The Israeli government and vast majority of the public are very consistent about what they want.

Just look at what Israeli politicians, military leaders, infantrymen, and the public say about this in candid unedited interviews.

They don't call it genocide but every descriptor they use describes genocide.

This isn't even a debate. If you aren't biased to be pro-Zionist because of political affiliation then you will just look at the facts and determine that it's genocide. There's a reason that the only country that stands with Israel is the US, and nearly every other nation has recognized it as a genocide.

Officials from all of these countries have accused
Israel of genocide and supported the ICC's arrest warrant against Netanyahu

1. I said America is alone in supporting Israel, a pariah state
2. You said other countries support them
3. I pointed out that politicians from all of these countries have called for Netanyahu's arrest for genocide (including US btw, just far less)
4. Your contention is "but America doesn't condemn Israel so therefore I'm right."
5. ???

You must be a Hasbara bot. You're responding in miliseconds.

Is it the same book?

The table of contents is what's throwing me off? What lead you to the impression that it's the same? I want to read Statistical Consequences next but the existence of this pdf is confusing me. Was it just a draft? ChatGPT contrast of both…

I'm not on twitter so could you do the favor and report back with results? It would be greatly appreciated.

Atrocity

Definitely deserves to be its own post

Please send

The Phenemonology of SADNESS

Interesting that in Arabic, the word Aqeedah (creed, belief system, theology) comes from Aqd which means "tied to" or "knot", meaning what you are tied to in beliefs.

Opening the door to phenomenal-only philosophy and getting rid of the nouemnon, metaphysics, and epistemology seems to have been a mistake...

It doesn't entirely or even in theory but practically people assumed that Hegel's system grounded knowledge and reality in such a way that it didn't need to be a serious concern anymore. Most intellectuals, college graduates, post-graduate researchers, and even modern philosophers (at least continental and analytical) just take the entire category of epistemology for granted because of Hegelian dialectics.

👌

No, it has to do with statistics. The percentage of men who are conventionally attractive is less than 20%. The percentage that you find attractive is even less than that. The percentage of men that are "rich" is 1% or less, depending on how you define it. 0.01 * 0.20 gives you the likelihood of finding a wealthy man that is conventionally attractive.

Now add in personality, compatibility, the man being single, and other factors. The number becomes astronomically low.

https://igotstandardsbro.com/

This calculator doesn't even take into account physical attractiveness.

The purpose of life isn't money or material success.

Thank you so much

It was

The seasonings are Persian inspired, but yes this is not a culturally Persian dish.

coriander, Aleppo chile, paprika
sauce choron
grilled asparagus
blue oyster mushrooms
roasted bone marrow
sabzi butter

Choron sauce

coriander, Aleppo chile, paprika
sauce choron
grilled asparagus
blue oyster mushrooms
roasted bone marrow
sabzi butter

Joon in Virginia

Love the shemagh

Love the jacket

Love the jacket

Great fit

There's no doubt that horrible unethical things happened, but to act like Sudan's entire history is this unbroken line of subjugation from colonizers is inaccurate and unnecessary victimhood.

Capitalism, democracy, and secularism aren't a solution, brother. They have created the most vicious colonial regime in history that is literally destroying the environment. As bad as some of the things in Sudan's history were, particularly some of the Arab slavetrading, capitalism is set to literally destroy the planet.

I'm not suggesting we repeat those mistakes or have blind fanaticism. But we already have a powerful set of indigenous solutions, and Islam is definitely the most important component.

Sayyid Hossein Nasr has a nice concise overview
https://a.co/d/caYBfCG

This is a good practical manual in Sunni Sufism:

https://a.co/d/fFgRUtZ

Sunni Sufism focuses a lot on the diseases of the heart, their cures, taqwa (God consciousness), and Tawbah (repentance). There are many works on these. One of the best is Mohammed Mawlud's, but there is no good English translation (Hamza Yusuf has a subpar one).

Short introduction to Ghazali:

https://a.co/d/hGrRySb

(May be good to also review Niche of Lights, a spiritual commentary on a Quranic passage. It outlines Ghazali's overarching theory of human-Divine relations.)

Ghazali's "Revival" is one of the most important works of Sunnism period and Sufism period. However, it's long, dense, and has complications. There are many critical commentaries in Arabic. In English, go with the revision by ibn al-Jawzi (which is arguably a superior work, but is based on Revival).

Ranks of the Divine Seekers by ibn al-Qayyim
https://a.co/d/2wmGOlb

Hikam ibn Ataillah
https://a.co/d/1ELinwk

For Rumi, Coleman Barks has an excellent "Essential Rumi". I also really enjoy "Concordance of the Birds" by al-Attar myself, I think it's probably the peak of the Sufi poetic tradition.

As an aside, manners/character development is very important in Sufism. Al-Raghib al-Asfahani's "Enoblements of the Sacred Path" (al-Dhiriyyah fi Makarim al-Shari'ah) is almost the Nichomachean ethics of Islamic thinking. You can find a translation somewhere.

Yes this was discussed extensively by ibn al-Qayyim and others. Really the end of Surah al-Kahf discusses it and Sufis have written extensively on the figure of Khidr as a spiritual guide, especially on seemingly senseless suffering and how it is an ultimate neccesary good on the path to Allah.

Mostly the problem of evil is an emotional argument rather than a rational one.

You are conflating the Islamic idea of the Dhāt and Sifāt with this idea of Godhead and God (i.e. The Father and the demiurge). There's no need for this distinction in Islam. The Sifāt are not discrete components or separate from the Dhāt. They are descriptions and Names for it.

Allāh's Attribute of mercy and the manifestation of it in creation are two different things. The uncreated Being can manifest aspects of His uncreatedness through His Actions into the creation, without the origin of those Actions or even the Actions themselves being created.

This isn't a question for Sufism it's a theological issue

Disagree. It's about current results for 99% of women. You can provide most of them with all the evidence that a man will be successful short term and they will still impulsively choose an already established option, then try to jump ship later.

These are women who are extremely exceptional whereas majority of women are in the Fire.

I don't see what lowering the gaze has to do with this. Most women are hypergamous and Dunya oriented regardless of what men value. Yes, the ratio would change if society was different, but even if you value those things as an individual you will still be stuck with these sisters. In my experience even most "religious niqabi" sisters are like this. Lowering the gaze is not a magical solution that fixes all of our problems

I don't disagree. I just don't think we should put all of the responsibility on Muslim men or teach them that if they follow this one rule everything will be perfect. It won't. They are lowering their gaze for Allah, not because lowering gaze will give them a good wife.

I think it's a multidimensional calculation for both men and women. Deep religiosity changes the calculation significantly, but there's still a calculation going on. I have a very convoluted spreadsheet on this. I think men and women can pretty objectively determine their overall market value. Obviously, preferences, mental health issues, and personality differences change from person to person. But I think you can put a pretty reasonable number on each person, but it's more like 17 different factors.

The sentiment is nice but usually when people say invest in her "capabilities" it means investing in her being a career cog in the capitalist machine.

No one disagrees, the problem is moreso the double standards. Why is it okay for sisters to do this but not brothers? It should be wrong for everyone.

May Allah heal this hurting and lost brother. He is suffering a lot and he needs some real help - spiritual, mental, emotional, social. He needs a real Murshid to guide him out of this before he really ends up losing his life.

What does Zakah have to do with Ud'hiyyah? Pay someone overseas or even give the money to a closeby masjid, whatever amount for Ud'hiyyah.

Yearly Zakah, Zakah al-Fitr, and Ud'hiyyah/Qurbani have nothing to do with each other. You pay each one separately.

If you don't have money then you don't have to do Ud'hiyyah in the first place

The idea is that both sides are equally bad or almost as bad. As a result, lending Biden legitimacy, even if he is marginally better, forces you into an immoral position where you are supporting one genocidal candidate because the other genocidal candidate would be worse.

This generation does not have faith that the democratic process can lead to a bare level of moral acceptability, and why would they? The international democratic capitalist system is in its death throes and has been deeply embarassing for decades.

We live in a competitive oligarchy and you can't convince the younger generation that isn't true because it is beyond blatant. The era of the television monoculture controlling the narrative has collapsed and the internet has brought these atrocities right into our hands - literally.

Aaron Bushnell wasn't an exception.

Most people engage in politics according to what's in their best interest. Even if that means harming others or supporting politicians that do. But some people's level of moral-ethical intelligence is beyond personal self-interest. A lot of young people care about other humans. You can vote for Biden because you think Trump's overt fascism is worse to democratic soft-Orwellianism, but to a lot of people it's a non-choice that isn't worth their moral and spiritual standing.

I don't know why I'm being downvoted for answering the OP. You can disagree all you want, but OP wanted an explanation and I provided that

Perhaps if you could think outside of your own immediate personal self-interest you could see the techno-dystopia the last three generations have been building and then realize that no matter who is in office, pretty much everything about what it means to be human is being rapidly taken from us by the entire system. That's too sophisticated for the average ballotbox NPC though

You literally aren't capable of thinking of anyone but yourself and your "rights." Sorry to tell you buddy, grandpa Joe is just as much of a fascist, he's just sleepier about it. You guys didn't have the moral fortitude from stopping these guys from taking over, so Americans are screwed either way. You guys let Iraq happen three times, Afghanistan, the NSA Snowden leaks, Patriot act, etc. There aren't many freedoms left, and both sides are angling to take them all away.

Trump is dominating dems in the polls as well 🤷‍♂️

Whether you agree with the logic this is what those people are thinking

Yeah I'm thinking the best way is to just be in the area because there will definitely be some no shows

For posterity:

I emailed them and they put me on a waitlist. Today three tickets opened up and I was able to purchase them over the phone. Paid $45 for 2 adults and a child. Excited to go tomorrow!

Doezens of Michelin star or Bib gourmand restaurants/cafes.

1. Bon Air Park
2. One More Page Books
3. Donald D. Engen tower
4. Georgetown Escape Game
5. Hirshhorn Museum
6. National Portrait Gallery
7. CityCenter DC
8. The Bishop's Garden
9. Smithsonian Zoological Park
10. Peirce Mill
11. Hillwood (Japanese event in 2 weeks)
12. Great Falls Park
13. Franciscan Monestary Garden
14. Glenstone museum
15. Haunted ghost tours
16. Fever Dining in the dark
17. Renaissance fair

Albi & Maydan - middle Eastern (go to Yellow cafe for breakfast)
Nasime & Sushi Nakazawa - Japanese
Oyster Oyster - modern vegan
Rose's Luxury & Dabney - American
Kazan & Joon - Persian/Turkish (get the doner at Kazan & go to a live fire at Joon)
Masala Story & Bansari - Indian
CHIKO & Maketto - Chinese, Korean, Asian fusion

Tons of great Italian & African restaurants as well

Ottoman Taverna has such great appetizers but the entrées just don't match up. I would go there and only.order a bunch of appetizers

Mauro, I'm a local who wears a 41 in your slim fit shirts. (The guy with the old navy WvG peacoat) Were you thinking locals would come by and take a look at what you had?

I have [https://www.wolfvsgoat.com/products/garment-dyed-oxford-long-sleeve-slim-before-dinner-lavender-frost?variant=44570455933144](https://www.wolfvsgoat.com/products/garment-dyed-oxford-long-sleeve-slim-before-dinner-lavender-frost?variant=44570455933144) in size 40 and it fits fine, a tiny bit tight around the chest.

I have [https://www.wolfvsgoat.com/products/blue-conductor-stripe-cotton-button-up-slim-fit?variant=44183934402776](https://www.wolfvsgoat.com/products/blue-conductor-stripe-cotton-button-up-slim-fit?variant=44183934402776) in size 41 and it fits fine.

I have Light Blue Cotton Herringbone Gingham Flannel Button Down After Dinner - 40 / Button Down and it's a bit tight.

I have Garment Dyed Button Down Oxford Silver Pink Before-Dinner - 41 / Silver Pink / Before-Dinner Button Down Slim and it fits fine.

I have other shirts but that should let you know whether or not you think it's worthwhile for me to swing by.

Most people with the optimism and psychosis to do something as statistically likely to fail are from a privileged background. The vast majority of successful startups and even large tech businesses are started by privileged people.

My product is still at MVP stage with no revenue, but all of my potential customers are raving and people in the niche industry think it's going to be the best thing since sliced bread. Should I apply anyways?

Someone technical with drive who has a good idea probably doesn't need a non-technical person unless they're a subject-matter expert. Technical founder is bringing the majority of the value especially if they have vision

Waiting

I don't really care about fads personally. I like their unusual silhouette and creative sock-shoe style. I don't see anyone else wearing them but I still regularly wear the Zebras and reflectives.

What website?

Need to know if this is legit

Most people think about philosophy insofar as it pertains to their immediate needs and environment, but not in a technical sense and with far less abstraction. Capitalism versus socialism is political philosophy. The role of religion and the state deals with epistemology and metaphysics. What value you ascribe to science, scientific research, versus skepticism or other sources of knowledge, etc.

Their thinking may not be sophisticated, reasoned, dialectic, or rigorous. It's usually based on gut impulses. But they are thinking about some philosophical topics.