Beyond Dogma

Thursday, February 9th, 2012

Javed Mojaddedi has written an excellent study about the tension between Rumi’s Islam, a “religion of Love,” and the more legalistic religious system that gradually gained authority in the third and fourth Islamic centuries. Beyond Dogma, Rumi’s Teachings on Friendship with God and Early Sufi Theories, soon to be published by Oxford University Press, is an original and welcome contribution to the understanding of Sufi history in general and Jalaluddin Rumi in particular. Rumi is the embodiment of the essence of Islam, but not an Islam that defers to a dry legalism determined by man-made concepts, but rather an Islam imbued with mercy, compassion, flexibility, and love.  The noble character of Muhammad and the beautiful revelation of the Quran are to be found with those who valued sincerity above all and sought the experience of the divine with their whole hearts.  ~Kabir Helminski  Excerpts from that book follow: (more…)

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2 Poems by Mansur Al Hallaj

Monday, January 23rd, 2012

By Mahmoud Mostafa

Underlying his fearsome courage was a beautiful tenderness that was forgiving, loving, and filled with wisdom. His deep spirituality was expressed in the most exquisitely poetic way that at the same time is filled with powerfully raw and naked power. His words were imbued with the perplexity that overwhelm a heart drowned in the ocean of love. He spoke in ways that shocked ordinary people but awakened and were understood and cherished by his fellow travelers. (more…)

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On The Inner Dimensions of Islam

Tuesday, June 21st, 2011

The Quran and Tassawuf

A Talk by Ali Allawi on the earliest origins

and the Qur’anic support

for a tradition of inner spiritual practice.

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ISLAM AND HUMAN VALUES

Tuesday, March 1st, 2011

Islam and Human Values by Kabir Helminski (with input from leading scholars) was written to address the urgent questions, misunderstandings, and distortions of Islam that are all too prevalent today. The need for a document like this seems to grow daily in the face of Islamophobic propaganda and extremist versions of Islam. Islam and Human Values makes the case that there is an intrinsic Islam with the Qur’an as its reference point that stands for religious pluralism, freedom of conscience, human dignity, social justice, and the spiritual transformation of human beings. It is our hope to raise funds to print a small booklet, illustrated by photos of Western Muslims by great photographers like Peter Sanders, to distribute widely in the English speaking world. This current document may be downloaded and freely distributed.   Download the document.

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FEMALE PERSPECTIVES OF THE QURAN by Amina Wadud

Tuesday, February 1st, 2011

Amina Wadud, internationally respected Quranic scholar, talks about her life’s work, which has included new insights into how our understanding and appreciation of the Qur’an might benefit from the inclusion of women’s perspectives. The Quran has for centuries been interpreted almost exclusively by men, and some of their assumptions have resulted in excluding or marginalizing women’s sensibilities that could make an important contribution to our understanding.  Listen to Amina.

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AN INTERVIEW WITH SHAYKH FADHLALLA HAERI

Friday, August 20th, 2010

Kabir Helminski conversed with Shaykh Fadhlalla Haeri in Praetoria, South Africa about meeting the spiritual needs of our time, about reason and spiritual intelligence, about spiritual capacities and the power of unconditional love. Listen to this remarkable conversation.

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BARAKA: RECONNECTING WITH OUR SPIRITUAL LEGACY

Monday, May 3rd, 2010

Kabir Helminski

Many spiritually inclined people, and especially those from a Muslim background, face a double alienation in today’s world.  On the one hand, they are alienated from the mad rush of contemporary society with its commercialization, its ugliness, its pandering to the ego, and its lack of meaning. On the other hand, they are equally alienated from various expressions of Islam that fail to inspire them. Too often, the teachings of Islam as they are presented seem irrelevant, authoritarian, dogmatic, and one-dimensional. (more…)

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RECOVERING THE TRANSCENDENT IN ISLAMIC SPIRITUALITY

Tuesday, April 20th, 2010

Ali Allawi. Few people combine real life experience with spiritual insight as much as Ali Allawi.  He has a deep appreciation for the spiritual education once provided by the Sufi orders and the need for reviving an effective language of spirituality. We were delighted to learn that he is also closely associated with our dear friend, Shaykh Fadhlalla Haeri, and thus deeply acquainted with the path of spiritual experience. He has also held positions of responsibility as Minister of Trade and Minister of Defense in the cabinet appointed by the Interim Iraq Governing Council from September 2003 until 2004, and subsequently Minister of Finance in the Iraqi Transitional Government between 2005 and 2006.

The following is an excerpt from Ali Allawi’s The Crisis of Islamic Civilization (With permission from Yale University Press).

The recovery of the sacred, which is integral to any hope for the recovery of Islamic civilization, revolves around the notion of ihsan, the third essential dimension of Islam. In the sensibility of the times, this might veer towards tedious or sanctimonious moralizing, but ihsan has nothing to do with controlling or moulding outer forms of behaviour. It is a conscious pursuit on the part of the individual to perfect virtuous qualities which are associated with the inner spiritual journey. This pursuit was undertaken in the past through affiliation to the various Sufi tariqas, which had millions of adherents and adepts, or, in the Shia lands, through the more individualist and even solitary path of irfan, the metaphysical form of Sufism, which was acceptable to the Shia consciousness. The tariqas cannot be compared to the monastic orders of Christianity, if only because of their scale and ubiquity in Islamic public life. The modernist and Islamist assault on the spiritual paths of Islam destroyed a crucial form of organization which had encouraged the inculcation of moral qualities in the mass of the population as well as in the elites. It was not replaced with anything better than just an alternative: of either a dry ‘rationalist’ or scholastic Islam, or the doubts and moral ambiguities which are a feature of secular life. The ihsan aspect of Islam was degraded over time and, with it, nearly all the features of Islamic life that were marked by charitable works, communal solidarity and social concern. . . Although the traditional Sufi orders may be well past their prime as a vehicle for spiritualizing the masses, the deeper yearning which they had earlier addressed still remains.

(more…)

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