The Manrilla Blog | Life. Art. Religion. Culture.

10 Responses to “Glossary of Muslim and Islamic Terms”

1. The Manrilla Blog | Life. Art. Religion. Culture. » An Unhealthy Obsession With Knowledge Says:
   June 6th, 2007 at 12:09 pm

   […] I have written before that simply taking shahadah in no way connotes leaving one’s demographics. If you live in environment were violence is king; where drug trafficking and addiction is king; where homelessness is a concern; where teen pregnancy is a concern; where education [or lack there of] and economic prospects [or lack there of] is an issue, then recognizing Allah as your Lord and Master will not “magic wand” any of the above crises away. But instead of addressing any of these issues, I see an almost OCD-like condition amongst Muslims in their “pursuit of knowledge”. I cannot count the number of fliers and emails I have received inviting members of the community to come and “master the sciences of Hadith” or “mastering usul al-fiqh“. Make no mistake, these areas of knowledge are important and they have their place. But I find it hard to justify this type of “educational system” in light of a severe lack of real-life, secular education. Are the mastering of these sciences in anyway crucial to the survival of these communities? If one does not possess an education or a job [often the two go hand-in-hand] then in what way is mastering the science of Hadith going to serve your worldly purpose? There seems to be two factors at work here: [1] the misplaced emphasis cum desire on such knowledge and [2] the misplaced emphasis cum propagation of such studies. There needs to a be greater awareness on the part of the community to look critically at itself and deal with what’s most important. Likewise, the religious leaders also need to reassess what it is they’re teaching - is it of immediate, pertinent value? Unless the vast majority of people who plan to attend such classes and seminars are planning an academic career in Islamic Studies [which being that many have not gone beyond a high school education if that] then again, how is this justified? Instead, could we have a simple return to morality and piety? […]

2. The Manrilla Blog | Life. Art. Religion. Culture. » You Can Take Shahadah… Says:
   June 6th, 2007 at 12:40 pm

   […] …but you can’t leave your demographics. Gun violence is an issue facing all people who live in urban centers but the dangers facing Blackamericans is even greater. Is this a danger that faces all African-Americans? No, but if you are Black and living in a major urban city, the chances are you may be involved or caught up in it. And being Muslim does not exonerate you. Your shahadah will not invalidate your demographics. The following links are to a study that was produced by the students at Swenson High School here in Philadelphia, assisted by Learning Lab and presented by WHYY. Here’s a blurb page as well as a direct link to the movie. And in case you think your shahadah is bullet proof, there are Muslim names amongst the dead. […]

3. The Manrilla Blog | Life. Art. Religion. Culture. » Kafir - A Word Reexamined Says:
   June 7th, 2007 at 12:06 pm

   […] If there is one primary characteristic that Modernity spells out to me, it is in the way in which certain schools of thought or groups of people, who deemed antagonistic or undesirable, are cast, part and parcel, as barbaric and backwards. The underlined point in this type of casting is that the target group has always been so. Modernity, in all of its technological advancements, falls short in analytical thinking. Islam, as an example, a highly sophisticated entity [no different than any other religious tradition] is reduced to simple barbarism [as if it has always been so]. Ironically, many Muslims have fallen pray to this line of thinking as well. Recently, I was reflecting on the user of the word, kafir, and how it is used and understood now, in this Modern context, and then how it was used and understood in contexts prior. And while I do not subscribe to the apologists’ theory that the word some how does not have any application for Modern Muslims, I do think there is a sincere and important need to revisit the history of this word in the Muslim tradition. Sample if you will, as articulated by Dr. Sherman Jackson: “Premodern and even early modern jurists spoke quite casually of the “non-Muslim wife” [al-zawjah al-kafirah], the “non-Muslim mother” [al-umm al-kafirah], and “non-Muslim parents” [al-walidan al-kafiran] as human beings worthy of respect as such. For example, in Bulgat al-salik li agrab al-masalik ila madhhab al-imam Malik 2 vols. [Cairo: Mustafa al-Babi al-Halabi, n.d.] [an authritative Maliki text still used on the graduate level at al-Azhar seminary today], after indicating that a Muslim must be good to his parents regardless of their religion, al-Dardir [d. 1201/1786] writes, “and he should guide the blind parent, even if he or she is a kafir, to church, and deliver him or her thereto and provide him or her with money to spend during their holidays” [2: 523]. Also, the Maliki and Hanafi schools unanimously agreed that a non-Muslim mother [umm kafirah] had a primary right to custody of her Muslim children in cases of divorce from a Muslim husband, assuming that she would not attempt to steer the children away from Islam. […] It should be noted that the Maliki school bore the brunt of the atrocities inflicted by the Christians upon their expulsion of the Muslims from Spain and Sicily and the Hanafi school bore the brunt of the Mongol invasions. Still, these views on the non-Muslim relatives remain standard in the Maliki and Hanafi schools right down to the present day. […]

4. The Manrilla Blog | Life. Art. Religion. Culture. » Lying Liars and the Lies They Tell Says:
   June 15th, 2007 at 9:52 am

   […] It appears that a group of men, affiliated with Mapping Shari’a.com [their bi-line reads: “Mapping Shari’a in America: Know the Enemy”, entered a mosque in the DC area, posing as potential shahadahs, claiming to be wearing thobes [what?! No one ever shows up with Middle Eastern clothes on!], and that they were giving Jihad Qatil literature and so forth. While this might initially seem to portray itself as a right-wing, pro-patriotic organization, it’s true colors bleed to the edge, as seen in their Mission Statement: America is a unique people bound together through a commitment to America’s Judeo-Christian moral foundation and to an enduring faith and trust in G-d and in His Providence. America’s founding, and its greatness was neither accident nor staging ground for some better existence or world state. America was the handiwork of faithful Christians, mostly men, and almost entirely white, who ventured from Europe to create a nation in their image of a country existing as free men under G-d. […]

5. The Manrilla Blog | Life. Art. Religion. Culture. » Public Minimum, Private Maximum Says:
   June 26th, 2007 at 10:09 pm

   […] There is much debate these days regarding Islam, the West, democracy, human rights, statism and a whole slew of other topics which all collide in a jumble of arm chair reactions and suppositions. Slogans are volleyed at slogans – a cycle of retaliation. As someone who is now more frequently called upon to talk about Islam [or more specifically, to “explain Islam”], this has become an increasingly difficult and sophisticated task. One of the most glaring difficulties is that the dialog is often between two comparatives – meaning that the position that many non-Muslim [and quite frankly, anti-Muslim] opponents is that the West is the criterion in which to judge the rest of the “free world” by. As Olivier Roy illustrates their case, “that there is no salvation (no modernity) outside of the Western political model.” [Roy, Olivier. The Political Failure of Islam. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994. Pg. 8.]. To be fair, there are many Muslims today who have an imagined concept of what the Muslim society or even ummah, should be: a societal body governed by shari’ah, where within both the sovereign and the people are subjects to shari’ah. That there is no law, secular or religious, that works either parallel or perpendicular to the shari’ah. To a great extent, this imagination is evoked from the first early communities of Muslim, the Pious Ancestors and the Rightly Guided Khalifas. To bring us back to our impasse, the Western critic sees Islam locked in an ahistorical, static mode, and mainly due to their [limited, in my opinion] understanding of shari’ah, Muslims can never break out of this mold and therefore Islam and Muslims are doomed to an at best social structure that something out of the Middle Ages. Ironically, many Muslims use the same said argument as their clarion call to both Islam and the establishment of the Islamic state – Islam is timeless, and due to its Divinely Inspired system of lifestyle, is beyond reproach. […]

6. The Manrilla Blog | Life. Art. Religion. Culture. » The Consequences of No Spiritual Growth Says:
   October 23rd, 2007 at 8:36 pm

   […] Spirituality. in modern conversations about religion, spirituality comes up more often than religion itself. I often hear people describing themselves as spiritual but not religions. What is spirituality? Does Islam even have a spiritual component to it or is it simply a collection of religions edicts? Like most answer, I believe [D] - all of the above, applies. If we were to take the first half of the word, “spirit” then I think that’s a safe place to begin. For me, it would seem that spirit is something not of the tactile world - it is something rather beyond. Perhaps one could say it has no worldly function. If this be the case then Islam is full of spirituality. Hajj, for instance, could be described as a wholly spiritual endeavor. It certainly serves no worldly purpose. Sawm, or fasting during the month of Ramadan could also be termed as spiritual. Even salah, or the 5-times daily prayer, can be seen as a spiritual act, though certainly a communal one. But does Islam have any elements that go beyond a simple five point diagram that fits easily into a flier to handed out on street corners? What about spiritual development that encompasses acts of compassion, mercy, love and justice? And how many of us ever heard these terms when we took shahadah? As the brother said, it was never a part of the handbook he was given. […]

7. The Manrilla Blog | Life. Art. Religion. Culture. » Clash of Globalizations: Western and Islamic Utopianists Says:
   October 24th, 2007 at 8:54 am

   […] If Ali, Manji, and their contemporaries are guilty of what Dr. Sherman Jackson has dubbed, the “false universal” [or what I will refer to here in this post as globalization] then many modern Muslim ideologies also stand charged of the same crime. Much of the efforts of many modern Muslim religious thinkers has been to try and reduce, dilute or unify Islam into a single entity. That which does not fit this mold is tarnished as bid’ah [innovation] and is only a stone’s throw from being tossed in the refuse basked of kufr [disbelief]. Indeed, in my fifteen years years as a Muslim, I have often heard from various imams and preachers that Islam is a universal religion that neither sees nor quantifies race. And yet I can say with certainty that the common experience, especially on behalf of many indigenous American Muslims [convert or otherwise, who’s families do not hail from the “Muslim world”] would give stiff contradiction to the latter. In a recent post on the blog, Black American Muslim Political Scientists, Charles Catchings points out in this piece, I Am Not Alone: “…the fundamentalist pretends that no issues of racial prejudice exist while advocating a very race and culture-based interpretation of Islam.” […]

8. The Manrilla Blog | Life. Art. Religion. Culture. » Apology Theory - The Cycle of Inferiority Says:
   October 24th, 2007 at 8:56 am

   […] A second consequence of the apologists is the enraging of the radicals and extremists. For those who are disenfranchised, in many ways, the Muslim who apologizes and explains away the ills of his or her religion ignites the ire in these groups almost to a further extent that does the West. The apologists are seen as both corroborators, conspirators and innovators (bid’ah) of the religion. In a sort of Manichean way, any Muslim who seeks to “water down” the religion in trade for gaining forgiveness, respect or other from the infidel, is seen as someone who is corrupting the religion. This then gives rise to the call for the “true believers” to rise up and defend Islam from both without and within. […]

9. The Manrilla Blog | Life. Art. Religion. Culture. » Making Tahriym and What Lies Therein Says:
   October 24th, 2007 at 8:57 am

   […] Tahriym, or the process of making something haram (forbidden) is so common amongst Muslims these days. Especially with the brothers, I should clarify. As with the aforementioned article, Sunnah, Bid’ah and What Lies Therein, we have seen that we have a plethora of people speaking out the side of their necks with no knowledge or authority to do so. While this may or may not be a new phenomenon, it is none the less causing some serious problems, as well as real bid’ah (see the article to get an idea on the definition of bid’ah). […]

10. The Manrilla Blog | Life. Art. Religion. Culture. » Now That The Sugar High Is Gone Says:
    November 11th, 2007 at 11:27 pm

    […] These should all be familiar to many of us. And while they might produce a giggle or two out of some of us, I believe they speak to an undercurrent in the Blackamerican Muslim pathology that continues to hinder and plague many of our communities from emerging out of the quagmire and starting to produce and participate. In fact, my biggest criticism of these folks is that that is all they do! Arm chair criticisms seldom produce anything and are for the sole benefit for lazy-ass Negroes to sluff off, if you can pardon my French. It is not my aim to take potshots at my fellow Muslims but I do believe we have to starting calling spades, spades. In a conversation with a close friend of mine today, we both lamented at the criticisms that were leveled at the conference, specifically in reference to MANA inviting members of the Nation of Islam to the conference. The meat and potatoes of their argument rests in the fact that “these people do not have the correct ‘aqueedah” and therefore we should just toss the baby out with the bathwater [again…]. How dangerous and slanderous is this. MANA is the only organization that I’ve seen that has taken serious steps to extend the Nation an olive branch to try and bridge the gap in terms of dogma, but also to say, “hey, we as Blackamerican Muslims wish to express our solidarity with our fellow Black brothers and sisters and that we’d like to address the various maladies that attacking our communities”. Please note this: I am not a member of MANA. Nor do I speak for them. Rather, this is how I interpreted their gesture. But to dive in a bit further about this notion of “correct ‘aqueedah”, let’s ask our selves: “Hmm…, what would Muhammad [pbuh] do?” […]

Leave a Reply