Reprints

The Way of Walāya: Friendship with Allāh by Souad Hakim

This is the way of spiritual authority. You cannot get it by study or birth or any other means other than to get it from one who has it, and he has it from a teacher, who has it from his teacher who gave him Naṣṣ, going all the way back to the Prophet ﷺ. It is essential to find a teacher who has this authority.

The ʿAbdāl, The ʾAwtād & The Aqtāb compiled by Ibrahim M. Hakim

Explores the existence of the saints (ʾawliyā), their characteristics, their levels, their numbers, and their hierarchy established by Allāh in the work of dispensing with the creation as true representatives of their Master.

Sacred Inscription as Cosmology: Glimpses of ʿIlm al-Ḥurūf by Saiyad Nizamuddin Ahmad

The Qurʾān 41:53 speaks of the macrocosm and microcosm as consisting of signs (āyāt) just as its own individual "verses" are also know as āyāt. Thus the world may be thought as a vast tapestry of signs that make the "Qurʾān of Engendered Existence (al-qurān al-takwīnī)." Indeed such a view is to be found in ʾIslāmic esoterism along with various contemplative methods based on Qurʾānic chanting (tajwīd) and an esoteric understanding of the Arabic alphabet that may be termed "letter mysticism." The article examines aspects of such letter mysticism using three sources upon which some of these contemplative practices are based.

Wahhabism by Zabair Qamar

What is a Wahhabi? Do the majority of Sunnis support Wahhabism? Are Sunnis and Wahhabis one and the same? This article examines the roots and role models of ʾIslāmic extremism that spring from the most extreme pseudo-Sunni movement today, that is, Wahhabism (also known as Salafism).

Stages of A Spiritual Journey by ʿAllahmah Ṭabāṭābaʾī

“In your life you get some pleasant breaths from your Lord. Make a point of being benefited by them and do not turn away from them.” Under the divine impulse the novice on the spiritual path decides to somehow or other get beyond the world of plurality. This journey is called by the gnostics sayr wa suluk (spiritual journey). Suluk means to traverse the path and sayr means to view the characteristics and prominent features of the stages and stations on the way.

This book is about the journeying through these stages, through twelve Worlds, their characteristics, and the obstacles and barriers which a seeker has to face while traversing them.

Excerpts from the Book of ʿIrfān (Volume II) by Ḥazrat Faqır Nūr Muḥammad Sarwarı Qādrı / translated by Dr. Sayyid M. ʿAli Ḥaider Rizvi

From the opening of the book: "Allāh discusses His many favors in Sūratu-r-Raḥmān which He has bestowed upon His creation and has therein placed Qurʾān as the topmost amongst all. As Allāh says, "The Merciful. It is He Who has taught the Qurʾān. He has created the human being. He has taught him speech (and intelligence)" (Ar-Raḥmān 55:01-04).

The first and foremost blessing and favor of Allāh, who is Universally Merciful and Singularly Compassionate, is that He taught His words (kalām) to human beings, who earlier did not know how to express themselves intelligibly."

Nā-kujā-ʾAbād or: The Land of No Where by Henrí Corbin

Through analysis of language and story the author takes us to what seems to be a mythic landscape but in reality is an interior one in search of the hidden ʾImām, who may be external but who certainly resides inside.

Some Schematic Diagrams from The Text of Texts by Sḫaykḫ Ḥaydar bin ʿAli ʾAmūli

This is a collection of 25 cosmographical diagrams from ʾAmūli's The Text of Texts.

ʾAmūli saw the world as constituted by divine letters (ʿilmu-l-ḥurūf), a profound reversal of the tendency in mainstream Western philosophy to privilege the spoken over the written word, which has been termed logocentrism. In this alternative tradition the cosmos itself is nothing more or less than a text, spelled out by letters that are also understood as the basic phonetic units of the language. The written word is therefore not seen as posterior to spoken language, nor parasitic upon it, but is rather coeval with and inseparable from speech and from contingent being.

Amūli organizes the relations between words and worlds through a series of diagrams, many of which are the result of his direct visionary experiences.

Until the twentieth century 99% of all Muslims were usuli — they belonged to an established authentic tradition of jurisprudence, doctrine and theology. In 2016, that number dropped to 65%. What and how did it happen?

“…the thousand-plus-year-old edifice of traditional Islamic jurisprudence was shaken by two main ideological challenges: (a) ‘modernism’ and (b) the anti-usul movement. ‘Modernism’ basically believes that Islam [incl. doctrine and law] should be updated to correspond to Western values. The anti-usul movement (basically Salafism/Wahhabism and the Muslim Brotherhood) calls for going back only to the Qurʾan and the hadith without regard to an integral methodology of jurisprudence.”

The book contains some useful questions and some answers that can help the readers to identify where they stand vis-à-vis traditional ʾIslām today. This is an important excerpt and an important book to understand how and why a tiny minority of 1.7 billion Muslims defy the fundamental principles in ʾIslām that call to "live and let live with all the people on earth” in peace, love and mercy.