/lit/ - Literature

Nietzsche on Islam

>Christianity destroyed for us the whole harvest of ancient civilization, and later it also destroyed for us the whole harvest of Mohammedan civilization. The wonderful culture of the Moors in Spain, which was fundamentally nearer to us and appealed more to our senses and tastes than that of Rome and Greece, was trampled down ( I do not say by what sort of feet ) Why? Because it had to thank noble and manly instincts for its origin because it said yes to life, even to the rare and refined luxuriousness of Moorish life! The crusaders later made war on something before which it would have been more fitting for them to have grovelled in the dust a civilization beside which even that of our nineteenth century seems very poor and very "senile." What they wanted, of course, was booty: the orient was rich. Let us put aside our prejudices! The crusades were a higher form of piracy, nothing more! The German nobility, which is fundamentally a Viking nobility, was in its element there: the church knew only too well how the German nobility was to be won . The German noble, always the "Swiss guard" of the church, always in the service of every bad instinct of the church but well paid . Consider the fact that it is precisely the aid of German swords and German blood and valour that has enabled the church to carry through its war to the death upon everything noble on earth! At this point a host of painful questions suggest themselves. The German nobility stands outside the history of the higher civilization: the reason is obvious. Christianity, alcohol the two great means of corruption. Intrinsically there should be no more choice between Islam and Christianity than there is between an Arab and a Jew.

>It may be that Allah will ordain love between you and those of them with whom ye are at enmity. Allah is Mighty, and Allah is Forgiving, Merciful. Allah forbiddeth you not those who warred not against you on account of religion and drove you not out from your homes, that ye should show them kindness and deal justly with them. Lo! Allah loveth the just dealers. Allah forbiddeth you only those who warred against you on account of religion and have driven you out from your homes and helped to drive you out, that ye make friends of them. Whosoever maketh friends of them - (All) such are wrong- doers.

-Qur'an 60:7-9

Qur'an
http://www.sacred-texts.com/isl/pick/


A Compendium on the Soul
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/58186/58186-h/58186-h.htm

The Ring of the Dove
http://www.muslimphilosophy.com/hazm/dove/ringdove.html

Article on how the secularization of Rumi by liberal translators desaturates him

https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-erasure-of-islam-from-the-poetry-of-rumi

Survey of Qur'an translations

http://www.islamicstudies.info/quran/translationssurvey.htm

The Mysteries of Selflessness

http://www.allamaiqbal.com/works/poetry/persian/ramuz/translation/index.htm

Twilight in Delhi

https://www.slideshare.net/F2016119046/twilight-in-delhi-novel-by-ahmed-ali-full-text

Good article by a young convert

>Anomie was one thing; the ferocious renunciation of tradition I encountered at university was quite another.

https://www.firstthings.com/article/2019/05/why-i-became-muslim

https://youtube.com/watch?v=9MOwOW5owd8

Maturidi creed: upholding the doctrine of free will and natural law, Maturidis place high value on reason, science and classical philosophy. Their jurisprudence is Hanafi. The Maturidi "Summa" is Tabsirat al-Adilla

Ash'ari creed: denying efficient causation and natural law, Ash'aris subscribe to decisionism and consider esoteric teachings of the Sufis to be the focal truth of Islam (although someone from any creed can pursue Sufism and many do, Muhammad Taqi Usmani is a major Maturidi Sufi Shaykh). Ash'ari jurisprudence includes two schools, Shafi'i and Maliki. The Ash'ari "Summa" is "Iyha Ulum al-Din"


Athari Creed: rejecting layers of interpretation of the Qur'an, Atharis believe the text only has one meaning and that meaning is plain. Their school of jurisprudence is Hanbali. The Athari "Summa" is Ibn Taymiyya's "Kitab al Iman"

https://youtube.com/watch?v=9yPciopIjXo

If you have read Kant then jump right in, otherwise read secondary guides on Phenomenology of the Spirit. Hegel is very difficult to parse but extremely exciting stuff, though I do not agree with phenomenology.

This is a thread on the Qur'an, specifically two matters that frequently pop up

1. I have seen it asked how the Qur'an is eternal. Doesn't that violate Tawhid? The answer is that Islam makes a distinction between God's essence (ontology), properties (phenomenology), and energies (actuality). The Qur'an is considered a property of God, not something other than God which is also eternal. By the Qur'an I don't mean the speaking or writing of it.

2. Difference between fundamentalist and traditionalist readings. Quite simple, fundamentalism posits that the Qur'an's meaning is univocal, whereas traditionalism posits that it is multivocal. In other words, a fundamentalist believes a given passage means one and only one thing, whereas a traditionalist believes it has multiple meanings. Sufism is of course a part of traditionalism. This has nothing to do with how theocratic one is, both approaches endorse Shariah, traditionalism is not about saying 100 lashes for fornication is "just a metaphor" or anything like that. Also being a fundamentalist does not mean passages are not qualified by certain factors (for example how much a theft has to be before legally being theft) such as context (for example a passage saying kill these treaty-breaking unbelievers does not mean Kill All Infidels).

post and discuss Muslim books

Qur'an, obviously
http://www.sacred-texts.com/isl/pick/

The Ring of the Dove

>AFTER verbal allusion, when once the lover's advance has been accepted and an accord established, the next following step consists in hinting with the glances of the eyes. Glances play an honourable part in this phase, and achieve remarkable results. By means of a glance the lover can be dismissed, admitted, promised, threatened, upbraided, cheered, commanded, forbidden; a glance will lash the ignoble, and give warning of the presence of spies; a glance may convey laughter and sorrow, ask a question and make a response, refuse and give-in short, each, one of these various moods and intentions has its own particular kind of glance, which cannot be precisely realized except by ocular demonstration. Only a small fraction of the entire repertory is capable of being sketched out and described, and I will therefore attempt to describe here no more than the most elementary of these forms of expression.

http://www.muslimphilosophy.com/hazm/dove/ringdove.html

The Incoherence of the Philosophers

http://www.ghazali.org/works/taf-eng.pdf

1,001 Nights (all the other volumes are on Project Gutenberg as well)

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3435

Ghamidi's "Mizan"

http://www.sacred-texts.com/isl/pick/

Article on how the secularization of Rumi by liberal translators desaturates him

https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-erasure-of-islam-from-the-poetry-of-rumi

Good article by a young convert

>Anomie was one thing; the ferocious renunciation of tradition I encountered at university was quite another.

https://www.firstthings.com/article/2019/05/why-i-became-muslim

Continued from last thread

>>12968446
>What could possibly be on the other side of this limit? Antimatter? Solid matter? "Nothingness"?
>It's more space.

Yes, there are other physical realms. But not infinite ones, or else mathematically we would be 1/∞, i.e. nonexistent

Great things about the Qur'an

No genealogies

No contradictions ("Will they not then ponder on the Qur'an? If it had been from other than Allah they would have found therein much incongruity." -4:82)

Beautiful and readible even when going into the law. So readible that many Muslims memorize the whole thing

>The similitude of the life of the world is only as water which We send down from the sky, then the earth's growth of that which men and cattle eat mingleth with it till, when the earth hath taken on her ornaments and is embellished, and her people deem that they are masters of her, Our commandment cometh by night or by day and We make it as reaped corn as if it had not flourished yesterday. Thus do we expound the revelations for people who reflect.

This is verse 10:24 as translated by Pickthall, a famous English writer who converted and worked with a team of Muslim scholars on it. Full text here

http://www.sacred-texts.com/isl/pick/

The Qur'an a rather different take on Genesis than the Bible. Adam was already mortal before eating the fruit (Satan, who is not a talking snake, promises it will give Adam immortality). It is just a fruit. Adam asks for God's forgiveness and gets it. God doesn't walk around or rest or make man in His image. There is nothing to suggest the Deluge covered the whole planet, indeed that is contrary to the recurring theme of God's wrath being incited by the rejection of His messenger (here Noah); each messenger who is an ultimatum prophet is sent to a specific people and if they refuse to heed, God reigns fury on them. Examples include Egypt after Moses, Median after Shu'eyb, Sodom and Gomorrah after Lot, Jerusalem after Jesus, Thamud after Salih, etc.

Where did he say that?

It would mean he read Nietzsche but not Kierkegaard

Great things about the Qur'an

No genealogies

No contradictions ("Will they not then ponder on the Qur'an? If it had been from other than Allah they would have found therein much incongruity." -4:82)

Beautiful and readible even when going into the law. So readible that many Muslims memorize the whole thing

>The similitude of the life of the world is only as water which We send down from the sky, then the earth's growth of that which men and cattle eat mingleth with it till, when the earth hath taken on her ornaments and is embellished, and her people deem that they are masters of her, Our commandment cometh by night or by day and We make it as reaped corn as if it had not flourished yesterday. Thus do we expound the revelations for people who reflect.

This is verse 10:24 as translated by Pickthall, a famous English writer who converted and worked with a team of Muslim scholars on it. Full text here

http://www.sacred-texts.com/isl/pick/

The Qur'an a rather different take on Genesis than the Bible. Adam was already mortal before eating the fruit (Satan, who is not a talking snake, promises it will give Adam immortality). It is just a fruit. Adam asks for God's forgiveness and gets it. God doesn't walk around or rest or make man in His image. There is nothing to suggest the Deluge covered the whole planet, indeed that is contrary to the recurring theme of God's wrath being incited by the rejection of His messenger (here Noah); each messenger who is an ultimatum prophet is sent to a specific people and if they refuse to heed, God reigns fury on them. Examples include Egypt after Moses, Median after Shu'eyb, Sodom and Gomorrah after Lot, Jerusalem after Jesus, Thamud after Salih, etc.

As for the story of Jesus, according to Islam Paul claimed to have visions and added a lot of things, such as abolition of the law, that Jesus did not teach.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=lZck3Xx9lzo

This an interesting article by a man who converted

>But when I entered the chapels and listened to the ministers, the regeneration I sought didn’t happen. Christian voices sounded all too agreeable and compromising. I wanted something stronger, something that didn’t bargain with secularism. I found it in Islam.

https://www.firstthings.com/article/2019/05/why-i-became-muslim