Without having much familiarity with the tradition, it seems that the shahadah, lā ilāha illā-llāh, there is no God but God, can be taken in several different ways.

There is the ethnocentric interpretation, taking the Islamic God as the only one, or rather, the Islamic interpretation of God as the only correct one.

Then, the interpretation of the practitioner or faithful, having God as the single or main focus for ones attention and life.

Or the worldcentric one, seeing God as One, with many interpretations and faiths appropriate to the culture and needs of different people.

Or the one of the mystics, seeing all as God, and eventually allowing a sense of separate self to fall away.

The second part of the shahadan, wa muħammadan rasÅ«lu-llāh, means that Muhammad is the messenger of Allah, and I can’t say I have any problems with that.

(more…)

A BBC documentary outlining how Islamic culture sparked the European renaissance and modern European culture.

In our post-cold war times, where Muslims are the new villains and scapegoats, and the Islamic world the new favorite shadow projection object, it may be good to remember what we owe Islamic culture.

The most obvious example is the role of the Islamic world in the birth of modern Western culture: the Renaissance, which would not have been what it was (or may not have been at all) if it wasn’t for the Islamic Golden Age, and their preservation, enriching and transmission of elements from a wide range of ancient cultures, including the Greek and Roman.