Reddit comments from October 2024

You're making an assumption then using that as evidence

Bart Ehrman, "For modern people intimately familiar with any of the major contemporary Western religions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam), it may be hard to imagine, but books played virtually no role in the polytheistic religions of the…

Jahili poetry had a kind of primitive tajwid style...

I have a lot of independent research done on this but it's not coming from an academic source, it's from first hand sources. I don't know of any academic specializing in this. I'd like to post but concerned mods will take my comment down.

Tajwid is a subset of Qira'at studies that focuses on Hafs so the proper question is whether the Qira'at rules come from the Prophet.

What we can prove:

1. Some tajwid/Qira'at rules are just features of the Arabic language codified for posterity.
2. Some rules come from the style of reciting Arabic poetry before Islam which was not totally standardized.
3. Some rules may or may not have originated from the Prophet himself and passed along through the companions.
4. Some rules definitely came from grammarians, calligraphers, and other experts of Arabic.
5. Some rules definitely came from the independent discretionary research or opinion of the famous Qurra.

Exact madd lengths for example can clearly be historically traced to its origin in early Islamic calligraphy. Some rules clearly are just features of the language. Other rules accomodate different Arabic dialects from the time (sometimes that don't exist in spoken Arabic anymore), etc.

Essentially, tajwid is an amalgamation of cultural influences, language, and scholarly effort. However, does that mean the Prophet did not recite with some form of tajwid?

It is inconceivable that, within the expectation of jahili poetry having a certain style, the rules of formal Arabic, and Qur'anic self reference to recitation - that he himself did not recite with tajwid. However, does that mean his tajwid and modern tajwid were analogous? This is almost certainly not the case.

...what? Sunni hadith corpus, tafsir works, and Sufi literature is copious. Just by sheer volume there's far more Sunni-Sufi literature than Shi'i mystical literature. The Mystical Dimensions of Islam by AnneMarie Schimmel is a good…

Yes. There are entire compilations of hadith books with only narrations from Sunnan al-Sittah on mysticism. Some of them are widely read, such as sections of Nawawi's Riyad al-Salihin. There are even sections within the Sunnan on mysticism (called Riqaq or other similar titles).

...the sources are listed in the comment

Is there any study contrasting al-Dānī's prescription for rasm versus what the oldest extant manuscripts actually have?

I read the summary and will DM you for the full article.

What do you think about the Qur'anic interchange of رحمة and رحمت ?

To be more specific it seems to be the same pattern that you're describing with tabūt and tabūh but both variants are actually IN the Quran simultaneously.

These two words are not pronounced the same unless we're continuing with tashkīl. In speaking, one would be pronounced raĥmat with a hard -T ending and the other would be pronounced raĥmah with a very soft -H sound.

"A word that ends in a ة "taa marbuta" is pronounced with a "هـ" "ha" sound if the speaker stops at the word, and it is pronounced with a "t" sound if the speaker connects the word to the following word. As in many other languages, any Arabic noun/adjective has to be either masculine or feminine."

https://human.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/Languages/Arabic/Introduction_to_Arabic/04%3A_The_Family___Al_Usrah/4.04%3A_Possessive_Pronoun__Demonstrative_Pronouns__-__Taa_Marbuta#:~:text=A%20word%20that%20ends%20in,be%20either%20masculine%20or%20feminine.

In some dialects of Arabic ة is actually just rendered as ه and never pronounced with a ة sound, unlike in MSA. So, it is rendered as رحمه. There are some fus'ha dialects where it is always pronounced with a -t sound but that's not the reading of most of the Qurra, and not the reading of Hafs. Hafs pronounces ه when stopping and ت when continuing.

You can also check here: https://ar.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D8%AA%D8%A7%D8%A1_%D9%85%D8%B1%D8%A8%D9%88%D8%B7%D8%A9

قال ابن منظور : (قال الفراء : والعرب تقف عند كل تاء مؤنث بالهاء، إلا قوم طيئا، فإنهم يقفون عليها بالتاء، فيقولون : هذه أمت، وجاريت، وطلحت). لسان العرب

Ibn Mundhir quotes al-Farrā',

"The Arabs stop at every feminine ت as a ه, except for the people of Tayy'a. They stop at each one with a ت, so they say, 'This is ammat (instead of ammah), jariyyat (instead of jariyyah), and Talhat (instead of Talhah)."

There's also readings in the ten canonical Qira'at that read ة as ت even on stopping.

It seems like a very similar concept to تابوت او تابوه .

How many foreign loan words do you think are in the Quran and what percentage is that of total words?

I was trying to clearly communicate or even over-communicate what concept I was referring to. I know you're a researcher and know Arabic. We're commenting on an online forum, so it isn't always clear what ideas are being exchanged. It wasn't intended to insult. It was intended to clarify what I was saying.

I'll try to go back and find where I got that idea of reading ة as a ت. But thank you for clarifying that the تابوت / تابوه distinction isn't related. For me, it seemed there was some morphological relationship between interchangeability of ت، ة، and ه in various dialects. I guess that isn't relevant to the particular research you did here.

I think I was mis-remembering what Sibawayh has in al-Kitab about a tribe (seems to be Tayy') that pronounced التاء المربوطة as مفتوحة on stopping. It took me down a rabbithole about the instances in Quran where a word that ordinarily has ة is rendered with ت and how some Qurra would still pronounce that ت as a هاء when stopping.

https://www.islamweb.net/ar/library/content/231/76/%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%82%D8%B3%D9%85-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%AB%D8%A7%D9%86%D9%8A-%D9%81%D9%8A-%D8%A8%D9%8A%D8%A7%D9%86-%D9%87%D8%A7%D8%A1-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%AA%D8%A3%D9%86%D9%8A%D8%AB-%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%85%D8%AE%D8%AA%D9%84%D9%81-%D9%81%D9%8A%D9%87%D8%A7-%D8%A8%D9%8A%D9%86-%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%82%D8%B1%D8%A7%D8%A1-%D9%81%D9%8A-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%A5%D9%81%D8%B1%D8%A7%D8%AF-%D9%88%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%AC%D9%85%D8%B9

Can you please point out to me how many words total you think are not Arabic but in the Quran?

What do you make of the narrations in Sira literature attritbuted to Musaylima al-Kadh'dhab where he tried to make his own Quran? Or do you think they don't stand up to historical scrutiny?

...what?

There's examples of interchangeable ه، ة، and ت outside of idafah constructs. You're right that no one would stop in the middle of idafah, but I can find examples where someone might stop on a word ending in ت with a ها or a ة and pronounce it as a ت.

Even accepting this number which you yourself say is inaccurate, if there are over 5000 unique words in the Quran (not counting any repetition at all) this is about 5%. I don't get your point.

I'm really struggling to find English sources but it's in early Sirah works and in Tafsir. It's reported that Musaylima constructed part of what he called his own "Quran", some of which survives in Islamic texts. These include Surah al-Dafda'ah (Frog) and Surah al-Fīl. They're usually quoted as comedic examples of a poor attempt to imitate the Quranic style (although Musaylima did attract a sizeable following, personal subjective views on the aesthetic value of what is narrated about him aside).

It's also in ibn Kathir's tafsir and history which are translated but heavily redacted so I don't know if it exists in the translation.

I think someone else found some English sources.

Anyways it's clearly an attempt to imitate the Quran if taken to be historical.

Thanks a lot for digging this up. Why is Sean Anthony calling him Maslama though?

It seems likeliest he had a Makkan accent so Qalūn 'an Nafi' and Ibn Kathīr would be likeliest candidates overall?

I'm curious about whether you think some things like mīm al-jam' (vowelization of the letter م when it comes at the end of a word to indicate plurality) or hā al-kināyah (letter ه at the end of a word to indicate connected 3rd person singular pronoun) could have been carried over from the Prophet's time?

I agree we can't tell for the specific furūsh (individual word variants). Perhaps an independent study could be done for each one but it would probably be mostly inconclusive and highly speculative.

Do you think the Makkan qurrā carried a relatively similar dialect down by the time of ibn Mujāhid? At least in terms of the uṣūl (general reading rules).

Trying to be considerate of other people and translate the terms.

Thanks this was really interesting. I'll need to read your book to get those insights. I think I'm just assuming that those Qurra carried their dialects into their reading styles but I need to expand my understanding.

If you were developing software to examine actual recitations that would be interesting. This isn't interesting. Part of the reason is that the vast majority of sensical combinations and permutations have already been explored in books like I'rab al-Qur'an by al-Nah'has where he explores literally every Ayah with as many possible grammatical variations as he can that make any sense.

You're just doing it with AI and even then most of it will be useless.

The weather forecast is also a kind of hadīth. Is the Qur'ān against that? So is history. All kinds of reported knowledge really. So is the Qur'ān telling you to only understand truth from itself and nothing else? What sense does this make?

An argument that hadith is ahistorical has scientific value. This argument doesn't make sense.

How and when was the practice of singing Qur'an verses established? 1. How was this established? Does it go back to the origins of the Qur'an or is it a later invention? Reciters of the Qur'an believe that the rules of recitation are…

Wah'habis is generally considered to be a derogative term by Salafis and religious Sau'dis.

The Salafis are also not a monolith as to opposition of maqāmāt. Al-Sudais is probably the most famous living reciter and he certainly uses them. In fact the vast majority of Sau'di and professional Salafi reciters do (Mishari, Luhaidan, Minshawi, etc.).

The argument from some reciters, like Ayman Suweid (considered by some the greatest living scholar of tajwid), is that there's no evidence for maqāmat or specific styles of ghinā in the hadith or books of Qira'āt. That makes them religious innovation. They also claim that some singing styles can alter the meaning of the recitation. This is unconvincing to me for various reasons.

Probably the flattest or most monotone reciter is Mahmoud Khalil al-Hussary, the blind reciter from Egypt. He was contemporaneous with one of the most operatic and vocally talented reciters, Abd al-Basit Abd al-Samad. It's truly astonishing to listen to them both recite.

There's an incredible reverence and gravitas to Husary. It's somber, powerful, and sobering. Abd al-Basit is almost operatic, vibrant, and ecstatic. They're both clearly having spiritual experiences along with these incredible performances.

Sudanese-style has similarities to some West and central African styles. Being from Sudan myself, I am partial to it :) (especially Noreen Sadiq).

There's narrations of the Prophet advising people to sing the Quran (ghinā). I think later on singing began to take on an exclusive connotation of musical singing for entertainment as opposed to chanting scripture, hence some people's anathema to the term around the Quran.

Some links of the same chapter recited differently:

Noreen Sadiq (Sudanese style)
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=g_mtPT-bBuw

Khalil al-Husary (Egyptian)
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=e0KqMpKvr0I&pp=ygULSHVzc2FyeSBudXI%3D

Abd al-Basit (very different Egyptian)
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=NEnLvXp1-Ok&pp=ygUQQWJkIGFsIGJhc2l0IG51cg%3D%3D

Sudais (Saudi)
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lE4NnFXlZZE&pp=ygUKU3VkYWlzIG51cg%3D%3D

I must have been thinking of another reciter, thank you

This isn't accurate. The founder of the modern Salafi movement is Mohammed bin Abd al-Wah'hab. No one identifies as Wah'habi and there is no Wah'habi creed distinct from Salafism. There are just many kinds of Salafis, the vast majority of which revere and respect ibn Abd al-Wah'hab.

The only Salafis that don't are very fringe modernist Salafis and some also fringe Albani fanatics, but even Albani's relationship to ibn Abd al-Wah'hab's thinking isn't one-dimensional.

It could be in reference to Talmudic law. According to Shahak Israel,

"Taking of interest. Anti-Gentile discrimination in this matter has become largely theoretical, in view of the dispensation which in effect allows interest to be exacted even from a Jewish borrower. However, it is still the case that granting an interest-free loan to a Jew is recommended as an act of charity, but from a Gentile borrower it is mandatory to exact interest. In fact, many – though not all – rabbinical authorities, including Maimonides, consider it mandatory to exact as much usury as possible on a loan to a Gentile."

[Jewish History, Jewish Religion pg. 89]

Some strains of Judaism were very strict against gentiles, stating that the prohibitions of Mosaic law applied only towards Jews. However by the middle ages some Jewish scholars became very sanguine on Muslims.

The Arabic version of ibn Kathir extensively quotes the Bible but not as an authoritative source.

This isn't accurate. Both of those that were reportedly in Ubayy's mus'haf are still read by Muslims every day. They're just considered a prayer and not Quranic text.

One of them is recited after each prayer and the other is a supplication used in Witr as Qunut...

Would be very interesting to contrast this with a quote from ibn Taymiyyah who both upholds the literal reading of such verses while insisting that reading is not anthropomorphic and accuses the Asharis (like Razi) of anthropomorphism. I…

Islamic philosophers may agree with this quote specifically but broadly speaking they would not agree with Rāzī's theological formulations around the Dhāt and Ṣifāt. Most of their work was about negating impossibilities for God as opposed to affirming positive characteristics. They would be more similar to the Mu'tazilah in that regard but they were more extreme than them for sure.

Al-Rāzī may relegate the most anthropomorphic Ṣifāt to the realm of majāz but things like Seeing, Hearing, Knowing, etc. are all considered literal. The philosophers also saw those as human attributes not befitting for God and so took them as also metaphorical, which lead the Ash'arīs to accuse them of Atheism (ilhād).

By the time of al-Rāzī the Islamic philosophy movement has been almost entirely taken over by Avicennan Asharism.

There is no such hadith. The hadith states that if a Muslims calls his brother a kaffir, then certainly it falls back on one of them, i.e. that one of them is a disbeliever. Also most scholars take this to be the lesser disbelief and not the major disbelief.

Takfir is studied in theology and in the books of jurisprudence as edicts of apostasy.

The question has assumptions. It assumes that the progression of secular scholarship towards a critical approach is some unbiased scientific method, and that since this kind of objective historical approach was applied to analyze the Bible there should be an equivalent in Islamic studies.

The problem is that the entire idea of secularism, secular knowledge, textual criticism, and even the wider historical critical method are inextricably linked to the history of Christianity - especially Protestantism.

So even if I recommend a popular academic work like "Misquoting Muhammad" by Jonathan Brown, you won't find it's contents much like "Misquoting Jesus."

I'd recommend Formations of the Secular by Talal Asad, Orientalism by Edward Said, and The Protestant Ethic of Capitalism by Max Weber. That will help explain why the idea of an Ehrman for Islamic studies isn't sensical nor plausible.

I promise I won't re-open the Hegel thing again 😅

That wasn't what my answer was getting at. There are popular academics that discuss Islam and have some revisionist views. My issue was more with OP questioning why the attitudes and methodology of academic Biblical studies isn't mainstream in Islamic studies.

That wasn't what my answer was getting at. There are popular academics that discuss Islam and have some revisionist views. My issue was more with OP questioning why the attitudes and methodology of academic Biblical studies isn't mainstream…

Please see my most recent reply to /u/chonkshonk

Perhaps I should write a very extensive post on this sub-reddit explaining why religious Muslim scholarship is skeptical of HCM from philosophical, epistemological, and historical grounds, with some citations, references, and quotes. This issue has come up again and perhaps consolidating the discussion into one place could be beneficial.

>Two things: >OP never said anything about this. OP said, >However, I’ve been having trouble finding unbiased, secular, critical, and reliable scholars. ... In my opinion, the difficult aspect of Islam from a critical point of view is that…

This conversation isn't going to lead to anything unless I write a robust post that explains what I'm trying to communicate so I'll try to find some time to do so and tag you

I was planning to do a series of posts and at the top of each one use academic citations explaining exactly what HCM is so there's no confusion about what we're discussing. Since you recommend Sinai's definition I will definitely include it.

1. Definition of HCM based on scholarly citations
2. What comprises the HCM?
3. What is the HCM applied to?
4. Why is HCM advocated for?

Then I can post critiques in conversation with that middle-ground. I think the first one should be on the epistemological gaps HCM is subject to. Then we can discuss historiographical vulnerabilities HCM is exposed to (this will be tied to the issue of epistemology but much more applied to specific use cases). Finally we can talk about the intellectual history of HCM and how that colors the entire field.

Thanks

A definition just tells you what something is, what the idea of HCM is, the thesis and what it's supposed to do. That doesn't explain how exactly it's implemented or what it looks like in practice. Just because you know that HCM is supposedly about drawing conclusions about historical texts through a system of suspending judgement in terms of truth claims or assumptions and analyzing them using observable facts - doesn't mean you know how that's done. What are the tools that a historical critical scholar deploys that distinguish them from a graduate of a seminary or anyone else grappling with these texts?

You cannot apply thr same secular studies versus traditionalist apologetics divide which you see in Biblical studies. That's the whole point of what we've been discussing. You didn't understand the conversation

Example format of a post:

Epistemology | Gaps in the HCM

1. Definition of HCM based on scholarly citations
2. What comprises the HCM?
3. What is the HCM applied to?
4. Why is HCM advocated for?

5. Definition of Epistemology
6. What compromises epistemology?
7. What is epistemology applied to?
8. Why is epistemology relevant to HCM?

9. Epistemological argument against HCM
10. Epistemological argument against HCM
11. Epistemological argument against HCM

...

Conclusion.

All of the posts would have 1-4 copy-pasted unless there was some serious error on my part and I had to adapt it.

Here's how Wikipedia describes it, "An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, generally referred to by its shortened title The Wealth of Nations, is the magnum opus of the Scottish economist and moral philosopher Adam…

The top reply to the comment you linked echoes what I am saying and the first commenter agreed. https://www.reddit.com/r/AskEconomics/s/svoMDca7c4

Human knowledge is cumulative. People build on the work of others. Without fundamental texts that open people to think and systematize ideas, you don't get formal sciences. I'm not denying there's development or that the specific conclusions can be outdated, I said they very well can be.

Freud is still taught in universities and practicing clinicians use his theories to treat people. Whether you think it's pseudoscience or not is irrelevant to those facts on the ground.

Your opinion of Marxism doesn't objectively debunk it and clearly Marx is still relevant because there are a ton of Marxists and communist regimes.

I don't understand why we're relitigating this when I already said these things in previous comments.

This is the problem with the general decline in humanities over the last 4 decades. Not only is there no concept of a Western tradition to be preserved or studied, but the basic tools of debate, logic, rhetoric, etc. are not there. Every point you made was either already addressed by me in a previous comment or didn't make sense prima facie.

Muhadithīn is the plural.

Really great question I'd love to hear an answer to.

I don't know if you can find an exact reason. That lām is called Lām al-Jalālah, or the Majestic L in the Name of Allāh. It's worth noting there are 3 lām in this word Allāh. I don't know of any other Arabic word with 3 lām like thar.

ا ل ل ل ه

اللله

الله

That's not what Islamic traditional sources say. It can certainly be your conclusion, but that's not what's in the Sunnah or Kitab al-Masahif or elsewhere.

What an amazing source

Please tell me it's archived on WayBack Machine?

Traditional sources claim multiple companions had entire manuscripts of the Quran, known as the companion codices. The first compilation occurred during Abu Bakr's time, during which they produced "mus'haf al-Imam", a now non-extant mus'haf containing the entire Quran and not discriminating against major variants present at the time of the companions.

Then, there was a pause during the reign of caliph Umar in terms of official state compilation. However, companion codices spread far and wide across the Islamic empire - most famously to Kufa where ibn Mas'ud and Ali b. Abi Talib were.

Traditional sources say Uthman then engaged in a standardization policy that involved burning all of these manuscripts and requiring all Quran masahif to be copied from the new Uthmanic codices, for which he convened a council.

The vast majority of companions and 2nd generation Muslims agreed to do this. Notable exceptions include Ubayy b. Ka'b.

The result is that the several Uthmanic codices became the standard skeletal text of the Quran and there aren't many fragments extending before that.

How much of this is accepted or denied is up to each scholar, but the vast majority accept the part of Uthmanic codices. There's less historical records on the period before that.

You are disgusting

The entire concept of race was invented in the Americas by Europeans seeking to create a pan-European identity to justify subjugating poorer "whites", Africans, and Natives. Arabs may be discriminatory at times, but we don't have racialism as a defining ideology of our civilization like Western liberalism does.

Many sociologists, anthropologists, and historicans argue that the modern conceptualization of race has no basis in biology and was not widespread historically. It is a unique product of a trans-national European identity due to the wars with the Ottomans and north African Muslim sultanates, but was not crystallized until a pan-European identity was required in the new world as contrasted with a pan-Native and pan-African identity.

https://thenewpress.com/books/fatal-invention

https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/invention-of-race-in-the-european-middle-ages/878223724345B49D515AA39DF3A0B617

https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2021/12/16/inventing-the-science-of-race/?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=NYR%20Race%20werewolves%20marriage%20Purgatorio&utm_content=NYR%20Race%20werewolves%20marriage%20Purgatorio+CID_78068a72752bb95b0a1f213c9605a497&utm_source=Newsletter&utm_term=Inventing%20the%20Science%20of%20Race

I really don't think you understand what I'm talking about at all. Categorizing people based on color or origin or even discriminating against them on that basis is as old as time. But it isn't racism, because racism requires the concept of race and is an entire ideology around made-up non-existent concepts.

You should go and read the academic citations I gave you. I'm still waiting for you to demonstrate to me that racism predates the citations I gave you or that people even had a conceptualization of race before the European invasion of the Americas.

Since you didn't seem to read or understand my message I'll just put it again. What's strange is you seem to acknowledge that Europeans used a different ideology to construct racism but you can't seem to grasp that there was a new ideology they built out as opposed to routine discrimination.

Bringing up examples of classifying people or discriminating against them doesn't prove your point or disprove mine. You just aren't engaging with me at all.

"I really don't think you understand what I'm talking about at all. Categorizing people based on color or origin or even discriminating against them on that basis is as old as time. But it isn't racism, because racism requires the concept of race and is an entire ideology around made-up non-existent concepts.

You should go and read the academic citations I gave you. I'm still waiting for you to demonstrate to me that racism predates the citations I gave you or that people even had a conceptualization of race before the European invasion of the Americas."

Some of these may be examples of proto-racism, probably really only a unique mix of Chinese supremacy and a concept of race. But I'm not academically familiar with Chinese views on this. In terms of Western, European, and Arab cultures - I am.

You'd benefit from this:

https://www.zinnedproject.org/materials/howard-zinn-on-race/#:~:text=Book%20%E2%80%94%20Non%2Dfiction.,and%20not%20merely%20a%20dream.

What I'm trying to communicate is that there's a big difference between discrimination based off of skin color or ethnicity and racism or "racialism." There is a unique ideology of this thing called "race" which is only a few hundreds of years old. People always discriminated or harmed each other over physical and cultural differences, but it didn't come into its own as a worldview until pretty recently historically.

I'm encouraging you to actually read those citations not for a debate but for knowledge.

Racism or racialism is an ideology that asserts the existence of race (something that has no basis scientifically or defined exactly sociologically) and that there is a hierarchy to those races. It developed out of a necesity for pan-European unity and distinction from the Ottoman empire's military advances in the Middle Ages. It crystallized and came into its own in the new world as wealthy land-owning Europeans needed to develop a national identity and sense of kinship with poorer Europeans against subjugated blacks and natives.

Racism is closely related to white supremacism. Some go so far as to argue you cannot truly be racist without white supremacism, because racism relies on institutional discrimination over time as opposed to unorganized discrimination.

To me, casual unstructured, unplanned, discrimination is not racism or racialism (perhaps a better term). Racism is a unique modern phenomenon with an intellectual history that posits the superiority of white people. It's the justification for American exceptionalism and imperialism.

Edit: although I do believe it's possible for there to be other branches of this and it seems likely the Chinese have their own ideology of race.

How do we deal with Pew research that indicates for every 1 man in a committed relationship there are 1.5 women in a committed relationship? It seems that soft quiet polygyny is actually the default relationship model in the states and OPs question has incorrect baked in assumptions.

The second one seems much more likely however the rate of responses of the Pew study makes it seem a lot less likely it's a methodological issue. It seems that there's a lot of women who believe they are in a monogamous committed relationship with one man who is in fact in multiple polygynous relationships. Whether you want to call it a misconception or soft polygyny, in the past it would just be called polygyny and more socially accepted.

It makes more sense that humans have always been polygynous and continue to be polygynous because there are biological imperatives to that, than to imagine we suddenly became genuinely monogamous over the last century (and only in Western countries). Is it more likely there's a widespread social misconception about monogamy or that there's been a fundamental change in evolutionary behavior? The data seems to indicate the prior possibility over the latter.

https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2020/08/20/a-profile-of-single-americans/

Only 7.6% of adults are LGBTQ so that's nowhere near enough to explain the disparity, especially because a significant amount of bisexual, asexual, and trans people are in heterosexual relationships.

34% of women are single while 63% of men are single. This is about a 1.5 ratio. For heterosexual partners, there's an average of 2 women to every one man in every other relationship if evenly distributed. This could also be explained by some men having many long-term relationships (think Andrew Huberman).

That doesn't preclude that the findings hint at a model of relationships that is very widespread but not socially acceptable to acknowledge, which is one man to multiple women. It would be great to find research specifically on that which cuts through the social taboo, but it seems to be the most intuitive explanation of the data and most in accordance with other things we know about human socio-sexual behavior.

I think this is mostly semantics. It's a fair semantic point to bring up, but in a circumstance like this I think the most bare-bones definition of relationship is what we should go with. The common denominator, even if the individuals involved wouldn't define it like that.

A long-term emotional and sexual relationship between two parties, even financial commitments, cohabitation, legal recognition, and responsibilities are not shared.

The meaning of polygyny is:

"A pattern of mating in which a male animal has more than one female mate."

It does not require having multiple dependent wives, although that was the model historically. If any one man is having sex with multiple women who do not have sex with anyone else for a long period of time, that is polgyny. Similarly, monogamy is having sex with one person exclusively.

My thesis is very simple. There are innate biological drivers towards polygyny in many animals, humans included. If we define polygyny as "A pattern of mating in which a male animal has more than one female mate." Then it's as common in…

I have to do more research besides just reading the Wikipedia but "almost surely" is definitely a closely related topic. It seems to highlight that in an actual infinite run, there's no guarantee even of outcomes with theoretically guaranteed possibilities (probability of 1).

However what I was touching on was moreso the actualization of fringe possibilities or very low probability in the context of an infinite sample. If Almost Surely encompasses probabilities of 1 it should encompass all lesser probabilities? I'll see if anyone has phrased it like that.

Huge help, thanks!

Thanks for that point, it helps a lot

In Islamic legal system there's four surviving major schools of law. Each one has voluminous compendiums of fatāwa, which are essentially case precedent or judicial opinions according to that school's legal principles. Sometimes the records of what actual judges decided in actual cases with their legal reasoning are called manāzil.

These fatāwa extend over 1,400 years. The fatāwa of the earliest Muslim jurists are still used to help provide light on contempotary issues and are studied extensively.

One of the major differences between the fatwa system and say American common law or case precedent is that fatāwa have to much more strictly justify or base themselves on source scripture. While they can contradict other fatāwa, a novel fatwa is very highly scrutinized for doing so and will likely be rejected unless it closely coheres with the Qur'ān and Sunnah.

I would argue that Islamic jurisprudential thinking is the most sophisticated legal system mankind has ever produced. This is called Fiqh. It is not as complex as modern Western law, but it solves a lot of problems with a lot more elegance.

The Chinese and Islamic world had this figured out long before the Magna Carta.

There's no historical accounts of widespread homelessness under Islamic law, as a simple example. Also look into public welfare usage of land or water. People have a right to private land and water until it becomes a detriment to public good, in which case the state redistributes according to public good. There's no incredibly complex property laws or zoning etc., but when your private ownership of land or water impedes an important public good, then that public good trumps your personal property rights.

How would an individual's voting behavior change my view? Genuinely asking because I can't see the angle here

If this is the argument then it doesn't apply and is not persuasive. I supported Obama in 2008.

How does this change the view of the opening post? Just because someone was previously ignorant of geopolitical realities in the past doesn't mean their thinking can't mature

The entire democratic process is supposed to provide the real-world consent and legitimacy. Liberal thinkers made that very clear and Thomas Jefferson even suggested violence if the democratic process was insufficient. It wasn't some abstract theory to them.

Sovereign citizens have a wide variety of strange beliefs that primarily revolve around the US not having jurisdiction over their personhood if they go through a particular legal process. It's a conspiracy about jurisdiction and citizenship, not the basic premise of modern democracy.

This is the same exact utilitarian consequentialist argument that belies the entire concept of consent of the governed that I brought up in my post. You just restated it without elaborating as to how or why this is a superior position.

While that may be the case, that's not what I'm arguing for or suggesting in my post. I am discussing voting specifically.

This is just gishgalloping

Consent of the governed does not mean that the citizenry isn't violently resisting the state. I don't know where you got that idea. Declaration of Independence,

"That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."

You've framed it as a utilitarian consequentialist problem which is a perspective I find unconvincing because of the consent of the governed concept.

This is an interesting line of thought, can you continue?

Elaborate please

Because I find consequentialism unconvincing

Because a vote is saying, "I give consent to this person" when I don't give consent. It's false.

This exact sentiment got me banned from r/palestine.

Not sure but I got cascade banned from several subs for criticizing protesting in America as more about moral licensing and diffusing frustrations than actual change. Although pretty much everyone paying attention to Palestine is disillusioned with the bipartisan system in US

The Quran is underwhelming to you because you're not reading it in it's native language, which means you're not reading the actual Quran at all, and it seems you're pitifully ill-equipped to understand it. Do you really think 1500 years of…

Must be such a hassle getting it in and out?

How many of those users actually actively use github?

Circumstances never justifies immorality or injustice. They have a choice even at a young age to choose morality and to deviate from social norms. They just don't want to pay that cost or do the necessary introspection. Their trauma is a consequence of them oppressing others, it's a totally justified punishment and, in fact, not enough.

Thanks for your ignorant comment.

In military parlance what happened to Dresden was called area bombing. Area bombing was a strategy developed during the second world war under the leadership of general Curtis LeMay. Area bombing is contrasted with precision bombing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Area_bombardment

The idea of area bombing is very similar to the Israeli Dahiya doctrine - destroy as much civilian infrastructure with high civilian casualties to turn popular opinion against your enemy, trying to stop recruitment and force capitulation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dahiya_doctrine

Since Israel is a white settler colonial state and a significant portion of Israelis are American nationals, it makes sense that Israeli military strategy is heavily informed by American military strategy.

In political science this is called "urbicide."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urbicide

Urbicide is what happened to Dresden. Genocide is much wider spread and focused on a much larger area and specifically an ethnic or religious group. Israel is not just trying to elminate one city, they are trying to eliminate the entire Palestinian identity.

You're right it's about 15% to 2.5%.

This is what happens when you choose to support and believe in a man regardless of what he can offer you. You don't get this undying love and loyalty by waiting at the finish line for the best possible candidate. You get it by offering that pure unconditional love to a man when he's young or unproven or both.

Let's just put the shirk issue aside entirely.

Do we even LIVE in a democracy? Or is this just a competitive oligarchy, corporatocracy, and kleptocracy?

Isn't it the case that both sides agree on 95% of the issues fundamentally and that the ability to effectuate actual change has NEVER come from the ballot box?

The shirk 'aqdī issue deserves to be discussed. But the maslaha mafsada argument does not.

It is beyond foolish for American Muslims in 2025 to be discussing the maslaha mafsada of a polygarchical conspiracy wherein Americans themselves have never changed anything for the better by voting.

Shaykh Dedew doesn't know this because he hasn't dedicated himself to understanding these nuances. He doesn't live here. The shuyukh that do, that know this is a polygarchy, but still want to be sheltered by political allegiences deserve our reproach for possibly advocating shirk without any conceivable benefit.

Do you have a youtube?

When communists perpetuate genocide against Muslims (Russians, Yugoslav, Chinese) then it's a genocide. When liberal polygarchies do it then it's fighting extremism.

Thanks for the clarification. What I should have said is the threat of communism or fascism. As you pointed out, the Yugoslav wars were due to the collapse of the Socialist Federal Republic and the militant groups or armies that arose were not dedicated to socialism (although some bore that name). The US intervened because they had an interest in ensuring neither communism nor radical reactionary fascist movements threatened their international liberal global order.

The best port until delta comes out

Solidus

Just because Jenny is tragic and herself a victim doesn't justify her mistreatment of Forrest. You can be an incredibly broken and hurt person who is still ethical, not leading other people on, and not using them. Jenny decided to be unethical because others were unethical towards her, and Forrest suffered because of that.

The fact that people are justifying her keeping Forrest's son from him for nearly six years is truly frightening.

No wonder Celeste had such a rocky relationship with Ellie. Ellie reminded her of the woman she thought stole Paris from them. Spitting image really.

Love Murakami but Uniqlo's usage of fabrics produced from Uigher slave labor means I'll never buy another garment from them.

Always good to ask for sources

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/02/fashion/xinjiang-forced-labor-Zara-Uniqlo-Sketchers.html

You didn't know. Enjoy your shirts. Don't do business with them anymore

Maybe you'd enjoy the Quran if... you actually had a connection to it?

So the Quran is a book. With words. That have a meaning. It isn't a musical instrument that you just practice and play. Your teacher and mom are treating the Quran the way non-Muslim Asian parents treat an instrument.

What you are doing is RECITING. Reciting without understanding is pleasurable for some people, but Abdullah ibn Abbas (Prophet's nephew) described it as being as useless as throwing out good dates.

You should not be forced to recite if it isn't pleasurable and you don't understand it.

What you need is to READ the meaning of the Quran in your mother tongue or English. Alternatively, listen to a tafsir of the Quran.

Try someone like Nouman Ali Khan. He has many problematic beliefs, but his tafsir lectures can be insightful. You will have a totally different experience of the Quran when you understand what it means.

The Quran should never be used to chastise or harass a student. The whole point of the Quran is guidance. You cannot get guidance if you don't understand it.

It is better to read the Quran and understand its message than recite it and not understand it.

Imagine Indian Hindu women prefering Muslim men so much you have to make up lies as ridiculous as this 😂

We live in the most lopsided marriage market in all of human history. Men have never had to provide or be more than they are today to attract a spouse. The statistics and repeated reporting from Muslim communities is consistent.

I'm going to give you the same advice Muslim men are given. However, it's far more apt because most young brothers have zero options whereas most sisters have literally hundreds.

As a woman, if you're not attracting the kind of men you like: do better. You're not in their league, that's why they aren't paying attention to you or ghosting you. Figure out what those men want and level up. If you can't do that, lower your standards.

There are literally millions of men with this description.

Then she needs to level up and work on herself to make the kind of men she's attracted to behave nicely towards her or lower her standards. If the kind of men she's like are not treating her this way it's because they don't see her as a viable candidate. She should fix what they find unattractive or realize she's aiming out of her league

Trauma is like when you have a near death experience or are tortured physically or abused for years. Not finding someone that meets your standards for a few months is not trauma.

Mu'adh bin Jabal (RAA) narrated that the Messenger of Allah (ﷺ) said: “If anyone disgraces his brother for a sin, he will not die before committing it himself.” Related At-Tirmidhi who graded it to be Hasan. وَعَنْ مُعَاذِ بْنِ جَبَلٍ ‏-…

Please read the post,

"I finally left those apps

I did it. I finally left all those marriage apps. I was on basically all of the platforms created for more practicing people. Pure Matrimony, HalfOurDeen, Sunnah Match, etc. but I was so stressed because I couldn't find any matches through them.

It was starting to make me feel like there was no hope in finding a spouse for me. BUT I finally made the decision to leave, because of how much it's been consuming my mind and I feel so FREE. Just leaving it up to Allah. Leaving it in his hands.

To all the people who are on those apps. Don't let it consume you. Don't lose hope if you don't find a match on there. Honestly, I don't think I'll ever go back to them. They've traumatized me but I hope things work out for you, Inshallah! Just know that you can always leave those apps if they stress you out. Allah will still be there to grant you your spouse!"

I was so stressed BECAUSE I couldn't find any matches through them.

Muslim men are being imprisoned, killed, tortured, betrayed, and villified as the T-word. If you don't like the app don't use it. I understand if you get stalked IRL, or sexually harassed, or something truly bad happens. Dealing with weirdos is a part of dealing with a lot of men looking for a husband.

You really think that guys acting weird on an app is equivalent to being killed? What?

You're doing a horrible job of communicating what happened to you specifically on an app that constitutes trauma. Your job is to convince me that you've and other sisters been routinely traumatized, which I'm not buying. If you fail to convince me of that and it's true, you stand to suffer.

Has it ever occurred to you that you could be very significant in the sight of Allah if you become a righteous worshipper who works for Him, and that your impact on society or having children may not be anywhere near as important as that? What if Allah created you so that you could be closest to Him and He wants to for Himself?

May Allah recompense them justly

Control yourself and stop clicking on these videos. Watch videos from Sapience, IERA, and Muslim Skeptic instead.

You need to find the best way to protect yourself from her. If you know someone that can deal with her justly report it to them first. However if the police or government system is the best way, you should go there. Their court and justice system is very oppressive however if that's your only option what can you do?

Giving love and compassion to someone like this often isn't what they need because growing up in that kind of environment tends to make them attachment avoidant. These sisters need to work on themselves first before trying to enter into a traditional Islamic marriage, or they should seek less religious men who want a more modern arrangement with all of the consequences that entails.

It's no one's job to fix someone else as a partner. They should deal with their issues prior to marriage, just like men should.

The kind of man that you're describing in the first paragraph is the kind of man that expects his wife to have a soldier attitude, not a partner attitude. That kind of competency and leadership goes hand-in-hand with wanting someone who is their cheerleader and obedient, NOT partnership. It's a bit fantastical to think you'll find both dynamics in one person when they're diametric.

Yes, I agree. There has to be love, compassion, and firm discipline hand-in-hand so that a woman can grow into her fitrah in a healthy way. That's the right outlook generationally.

But when a woman has already been underprivileged and disadvantaged by either a very weak/dayūth father or an abusive one, the onus falls totally in her lap to overcome that disadvantage or face worldly/spiritual consequences.

That's the flip side of accountability. We want to create environments where all Muslims are given the best likelihood of success, but if that environment doesn't exist - accountability still does.

Growing up in a non-Muslim land doesn't excuse shirk and growing up with horrible parents doesn't excuse violating Islamic behavorial norms. Sisters that had abusive or weak parents are still accountable for their behavior.

Hope you find what's best for you ukhti 🤲

No strong religious man wants a disrespectul disobedient but affectionate wife. He wants a respectful obedient affectionate wife.

Are you a sister, telling me, a man, what men want?

It's really bad and a lot of it is due to your generation

Okay due to the generation very slightly older than you

What comes out when you ejaculate necesitates ghusl.

That's pre-ejaculate. You are ejaculating. Therefore it's not madhi.

I don't know how to be any clearer that if you ejaculate and liquid comes out you need to perform ghusl.

https://www.islamweb.net/ar/fatwa/173167/%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%85%D8%B3%D8%AA%D9%85%D9%86%D9%8A-%D8%A5%D8%B0%D8%A7-%D9%84%D9%85-%D9%8A%D9%8F%D9%86%D8%B2%D9%84-%D9%81%D9%87%D9%84-%D8%B9%D9%84%D9%8A%D9%87-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%BA%D8%B3%D9%84

Nassim Taleb clearly hedges in his books that it's impossible to be a rational machine, humans are irrational, and empirical skepticism is a conscious effort that must be systematically applied to very risky areas - but that it's fine to make predictions about lower stake things.

No human being can live their life fully accounting for model risk and accepting our ignorance about reality or the future. We are pattern finding creatures.

That being said, I don't know if he's falling into Hegelianism per se. Perhaps with his views on domestic politics. However, in terms of the Middle East, I think he's just demonstrating conventional historical theory.

I think you need to read his books in order of release. As he found his niche they became increasingly complex and technical.

He may have said that but I don't personally think that makes sense. There's a clear trajectory to his thinking, it becomes more robust and fleshed out in response to oversights or missing pieces in his other works. They also get more difficult and rely on other underlying concepts.

He's Lebanese and the Biden-Kamala admin has just allowed the Israeli government to invade his home country with zero provocation where they are destroying civilian infrastructure and killing civilians. Of course he's mad? How could he not be?

What provocation did the state or civilian populace of Lebanon offer against the state of Israel? Keep in mind it's illegal under international law to invade a sovereign country to go after subnational militias. That has to be done by the state that those militias are operating in, unless permission is given for a transnational operation.

He wanted to be a philosopher. He wanted to be rich. He applied philosophy to the stock market. He got rich. Then he became an armchair hobbyist philosopher. He has a family. He's respected internationally. I don't see why or how he isn't happy. He's just an aggressive critic of what he perceives as stupidity, that doesn't mean he dislikes critiquing it. If the stupidity didn't exist, what would he do?

I don't think that "thinking" window actually shows any of the logic GPT is doing in the backend, I think it's a smaller model summarizing text as it's being produced to give you a complete answer. Sometimes that smaller model is being stuff that it has little context for and being told to summarize the logic, so it gets it totally wrong. You see shifts of 1st, 2nd, and 3rd person, irrelevant trains of thought, etc.

So protesting and whining in the streets once or twice a month absolves people of all sins? That's how all of those crises were resolved right, by people mass virtue signaling and posting on social media. If all you did was protest or post then you're just as culpable for doing absolutely nothing.

It's a zero risk way for people to feel like they are doing something for Palestine or any other movement while actually only diffusing their own revolutionary energies towards nothing. Protesting accomplishes nada. It's counterfeit resistance

Please demonstrate to me when protesting in the United States has effectuated any kind of serious reform, especially in the domain of wars in the middle east. Please also demonstrate protesting as a "prelude to social reform" using actual historical examples (without some whitewashed inaccurate version of the civil rights movement). Also, please explain why this isn't an actual tactic used in resistance movements in the middle east if it is effective.

I think that these protests are primarily for protestors to feel good about themselves and their otherwise inaction. At the end of the day, their tax dollars and participation in civil society is literally fueling this genocide. Just because you verbalize that you don't like it, when you continue being a cog in the imperialist capitalist machine enacting the genocide, you are just as culpable.

It's amazing to me that I asked for protests in the United States. One of them you mention was a boycott. The second one is taken totally out of context of the greater civil rights movement. Martin Luther King Jr. himself used a wide variety of tactics outside of protesting and even his protests have been heavily whitewashed.

I did not dispute the efficacy of protests in other countries when coupled with direct political action. Protests just toppled the government of Bangladesh. However, the particular situation in the United States is designed so that protests are essentially loosening pressure valve in a highly controlled environment.

You are uneducated and are taking the narrative given to you from on high to control your "activism" so that it leads to absolutely nothing. Let me know when a single Palestinian, Lebanese, or Syrian life is saved through your protesting buddy.

Bold assumptions. Don't project your own inaction onto everyone you meet

His main argument is that only rigorous skepticism produces robust models that can survive unaccounted for risks. To him, skeptical empiricism taken to logical conclusions is the appropriate way to deal with serious systems - whether politically, militarily, or economically. Since you cannot account for what is in your blindspot, you should not put faith into systems or predictions that rely upon past experience, but rather build systems that are "anti-fragile."

It's called the black swan because of the problem of induction. He essentially takes the nondetermination of scientific theory, heuristics/biases, the philosophical skeptical tradition, and the ideas of Karl Popper then uses them to dissect what he thinks is wrong with a wide variety of topics. In particular, stock trading and investment.

In an environment subject to what he calls type 2 randomness (or "Extremistan") the flaws of models created by experts that don't account for their ignorance can be catastrophic. Modern society is full of type 2 features that our ancestors didn't have to deal with. Unexpected large outlier events that are very rare but take up the majority of the sample size (fat tails) he calls "black swans."

Taleb is the premier Arab uncle. Every Arab uncle (ammu) is opinionated about every conceivable topic with unnecessary passion, kitschy, weird, arrogant, but somehow incredibly welcoming in the strangest way. But unlike most Arab uncles, Taleb is a multidisciplinary genius, multi-millionaire, and philosopher. So, he may be the single most insufferable ammu in history.

Imagine having ammu Nassim at the dinner table during a family gathering. At least with a regular ammu you can take respite that their off-the-wall theories are certainly whatsapp hogwash. With him, they're the Laws of the Universe.

Most of his ideas are counterintuitive and run against common sense. Using human psychology in artificial environments is what gets us models that are inaccurate. A simple example is the stock market.

Taleb believes that it's not possible to accurately model the behavior of the market because it's either too complex or truly random. All models using past data only work because they are fitted to data points that exist but cannot account for new unknown unknowns. So his strategy in the market is to consistently lose money every single day on very unlikely bets that the market will crash. For years. However, the one day it does crash, the market moves so much that you make millions.

He calls this the "barbell strategy." The majority of his portfolio is in zero risk instruments (treasury bonds) and the rest is in extremely unlikely bets the market will crash. He makes money once a decade when it does. Taleb has made billions of dollars doing this.

He also rejects the traditional view of history, the predictive value of past data, and a lot of common sense things most people believe. We get away with those things in our natural environment, but not in the modern world.

You should read about Abu Is'haq al-Shatibi and his reconciliation of Islamic deontological ethics with consequentialist outcomes.

"He argues that the Sacred Law and its’ sources can be read in an inductive fashion, allowing a person to come to the conclusion that every aspect of it is for a clear human benefit, and that these benefits can then be made into rules with which to re-interpret all of jurisprudence.

"Perhaps groundbreakingly, al-Shatibi was able to reconcile between deontological and consequentialist moral frameworks. To al-Shatibi, voluntarism and Divine Commands naturally lead to the best consequences and the best consequences are God’s Law. Therefore, al-Shatibi described that the higher intents and aims (maqasid) of the Sacred Law (al-shari’a) were twofold: the maqasid of the Lawgiver and the maqasid of humans."

How about basing your moral epistemology deontologically but still using consequentialism to refine it, like Abu Is'haq al-Shatibi?

He attempted to reconcile Islamic deontological ethics with consequentialist outcomes.

"He argues that the Sacred Law and its’ sources can be read in an inductive fashion, allowing a person to come to the conclusion that every aspect of it is for a clear human benefit, and that these benefits can then be made into rules with which to re-interpret all of jurisprudence.

"Perhaps groundbreakingly, al-Shatibi was able to reconcile between deontological and consequentialist moral frameworks. To al-Shatibi, voluntarism and Divine Commands naturally lead to the best consequences and the best consequences are God’s Law. Therefore, al-Shatibi described that the higher intents and aims (maqasid) of the Sacred Law (al-shari’a) were twofold: the maqasid of the Lawgiver and the maqasid of humans."

Metaphysics and epistemology, which consist of like 75% of actual philosophy, is about finding some universal principle to base your reality on. Whether that's God or not, this is literally the topic of most of the history of philosophy.

Most likely nothing is going to happen until there's a population crisis like in other countries. Western culture has become unfit to survive on a civilizational scale unless something rapidly shifts.

Most likely nothing is going to happen until there's a population crisis like in other countries. Western culture has become unfit to survive on a civilizational scale unless something rapidly shifts.

Sudanese people don't stand up for themselves. No one rallies behind a champion that doesn't exist.

Literally every other Arab country had a civilian lead armed resistance except for us.

Weakness doesn't win wars 🤷‍♂️ no one will save Sudan except Sudanese people in Sudan. If Sudanese people in Sudan don't decide with enough percentage of the populace and force to save themselves, Sudan will just cease to exist.

Tribalism is not having tribes. It's a specific supremacy ideology about a particular tribe. You want to argue that tribes themselves have a place in society. Not tribalism. Tribalism is incompatible with a multicultural society, like Sudan, because supremacist tribes self-segregate and avoid intermarriage with other tribes.

You can't have a multicultural Westphalian nation state that's organized by tribes. However, you can have a multicultural state that has tribes but has some kind of a federal government with overarching laws. Tribes can exist if they're subservient to a central authority. Once the tribes have their own governments and don't report to anyone, there is no cohesive trans-tribal state.

Yes that's certainly feasible in the context of 99% of their population being genocided and beint quartered in very small reservations. They have autonomy within the confines of their subjugation and very small populations. Even then, the Federal government is constantly imposing power on them and taking more rights from them.

I don't have a problem with tribes or even the size of the tribes. I have a problem with tribal supremacy and tribal governments. I think pan-Arab, pan-African, and most importantly pan-Muslim unity should prevail over tribal affiliation.

Tribes as part of culture - wonderful. Tribes as the dominant force in society- bad. I am against ethno-centric governments.

In the time of rasulAllah every Arab had a tribe and tribal affiliation they were proud of. But the tradition of tribal governance and tribal supremacy was abolished.

Without some serious mental gymnastics these are words of kufr. You can excuse ibn Arabi for his shatahat (ecstatic utterings), but we don't find inspiration from things that clearly go against the core of Islam.

Al-Fatihah 1:7

صِرَٰطَ ٱلَّذِينَ أَنْعَمْتَ عَلَيْهِمْ غَيْرِ ٱلْمَغْضُوبِ عَلَيْهِمْ وَلَا ٱلضَّآلِّينَ

The path of those upon whom You have bestowed favor, not of those who have earned [Your] anger or of those who are astray.

The Qur'an is full of Allah reviling, cursing, and punishing the disbelievers. One of the main aspects of Tasawuff is love & hate for Allah's sake.

I never called you a disbeliever. I asked you to read the Quran. This quote you posted literally opposes Surah al-Fatiha.

Get the book "Purification of the Soul" from Firdous Ltd. Ibn Taymiyyah, ibn al-Qayyim, ibn Rajab, ibn al-Jawzi - were all great Hanbali imams of Tasawuff. Hatem al-Haj has extensive lectures on Manazil al-Sa'irin.

The major topics you should look into:

1. Taqwa & Ihsan
2. Tazkiyyah al-Nafs
3. Diseases of the heart and their cures
4. Tawbah, Istighfar, & Inabah
5. The spiritual secrets of ibadat (Al-Sharī'ah wa al-Tarīqah)
6. Adab & Akhlaq
7. The history of Tasawuff, both Sunni tasawuff and theological tasawuff

It was narrated from the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) – in a hadeeth that has many corroborating reports and isnaads – that he said: “Allaah will judge between His creation, jinn, men and animals. On that Day, Allaah will let the hornless animal settle its score with the horned until, when there is nothing left to be settled, Allaah will say to them, ‘Be dust.’

At that point the kaafir will say, ‘Would that I were dust.’”

(Classed as saheeh by al-Albaani in al-Silsilat al-Saheehah, no. 1966)

Here's some other citations if you don't want Albani:

وأخرج الحاكم وابن أبي حاتم وابن المنذر وابن جرير عن أبي هريرة قال: ما من دابة ولا طائر إلا سيحشر يوم القيامة ثم يقتص لبعضها من بعض حتى يقتص للجلحاء من ذات القرن ثم يقال لها: كوني ترابا، فعند ذلك يقول الكافر: يا ليتني كنت ترابا، وإن شئتم فاقرأوا: وما من دابة في الأرض ولا طائر يطير بجناحيه إلا أمم أمثالكم ما فرطنا في الكتاب من شيء ثم إلى ربهم يحشرون.
وفي صحيح مسلم يقول النبي صلى الله عليه وسلم: لتؤدن الحقوق إلى أهلها يوم القيامة حتى يقاد للشاة الجلحاء من الشاة القرناء

So powerful

Chinese empire wouldn't be any more benevolent than US empire. Just look at the Uighers. Genocide in Gaza, genocide in East Turkestan.

Tons of independent journalism exposing the Chinese CCP genocide of Uigher Muslims. There's no difference in supporting that or supporting the genocide in Gaza. Pick the genocidal colonial imperialist secular regime you want.

https://xjdp.aspi.org.au/resources/millions-of-leaked-police-files-detail-suffocating-surveillance-of-chinas-uyghur-minority/

Also check The Intercept.

"[S]ocial science has not been kind to the broken windows theory. A number of scholars reanalyzed the initial studies that appeared to support it.... Others pressed forward with new, more sophisticated studies of the relationship between disorder and crime. The most prominent among them concluded that the relationship between disorder and serious crime is modest, and even that relationship is largely an artifact of more fundamental social forces."

"Order Maintenance Reconsidered" from the Journal of Law & Criminology

Yeah I'd like a print as well

Excited for the project... you look so giddy with the yarn! Enjoy your time

The cream cardigan is gorgeous

The level of ignorance is truly astounding.