Contentions 19
1. Vir manifests not only in virility but in virginity.
2. You will only begin to walk when you see your radical incapacity.
3. Can the False Salafism accept the distinction made at the Fatiha’s end?
4. The final refutation of Mu’tazilism had to wait for Heisenberg.
5. Love the Holy Prophet because he makes it possible for you to be human.
6. Do not moralise for the sake of morale.
7. At the root of your suffering lies the fear that your animality is defying God’s Lordship of the world.
8. The lowest scholar has no scholarship. Above him is hafiz al-hukm al-nabawi. But the rescuer of the umma is hafiz al-hal al-nabawi. Exhaust your days in the search for him.
9. Eve is completion, not addition.
10. He that plans Sharia rule where there is no Tariqa is as he that sets a fire in the rain.
11. If your birth is humble, let the sunna make you a nobleman; if your birth is noble, ensure that your acts are not less so.
12. He that considers a part of the sunna to be small is uninterested in the Prophetical light.
13. Anyone can fear His law, but they only love it who are close to Him.
14. Narrowness without knowledge of God is only narrowness; narrowness with knowledge of Him is one of His Friend’s royal roads.
15. Forgiveness is only complete when you love those who have given you the opportunity to be forgiving.
16. Those that dislike literalists because they are literalists have not grasped that one should only dislike an absence of the love of God. All else is simply argument.
17. The rejection of Sufism is a rejection of reason.
18. Her vulnerabilities invite you to stand up for her, not to stand up to her.
19. He who has not yearned to prostrate is a false claimant to faith.
20. Pity the unbeliever who sees the world as a matrix of soil; crave to see the world as the luminous motion of His geometry. You were created only to achieve this type of perception.
21. Without holiness, Islam is just the lava of the mind’s fearfulness.
22. He that is near God is saturated with love and acceptance; he that is far from Him burns in the hell of anger and anxiety.
23. You are a moral subject, but are you a self?
24. How you engage with people is usually more important than what you are saying to them.
25. Misery is only for those without hope.
26. The unbeliever breathes out, the believer breathes in.
27. Beware! To die for Islam is easier than to live for it.
28. No life of prayer is sound that is not ruled by thankfulness.
29. If the mosques disappoint you, remember that ‘All the world has been made a mosque for me.’
30. Even if you cannot live simply, be sure to enjoy simple pleasures the most.
31. Christologists should believe in the Father’s kenosis, not the Son’s.
32. See with God’s light, and happiness will never desert you.
33. The Mother of Cities gave birth to Stamboul, with Balat in its embrace. The mistake of Galatians yielded Galata, where Sarah was enslaved with all her children.
34. The nearest model for humanity was once the lions, then it was the apes; now it is the ants.
35. If you wish to remember God properly, be settled.
36. Maidens! Wed him that knows that beauty grows.
37. Do not worry about money.
38. Their habitat is degraded since habitat a’maluhum.
39. Islam puts the Kun back into Kunst.
40. How many a gala dinner is a Ghala’ dinner!
41. Honour the view of every feminist who has had twins.
42. Apart from Sufism there is only nationalism.
43. All your time is borrowed time.
44. Do not be so arrogant that you believe that you do not deserve to worship God.
45. Bless the Holy Prophet because you yearn to be truly yourself.
46. It is of God’s mercy that your rushed and unseemly prayer can be made into something beautiful, if you offer only one additional minute to Him.
47. Alcohol? Among believers, there is no ice to break.
48. God is the meaning of the world.
49. If you wish to be settled, remember God properly.
50. Let us find our great nourishment in seeing the value of others.
51. Paul: the Walking Word should have saved his breath.
52. The Arabs might think their way out of their misfortunes, or be granted the gift of repentance, but they will never fight their way out of them.
53. The Liber Asian’s absolutes offer a salutary shock, not a claim that there are absolutes other than God.
54. The monoculture’s rot: either you are in a rut, or you are in rut.
55. The pole of Western politics is greased with lard.
56. The planet exists only to grow flowers.
57. I phone, therefore I’m known.
58. Salla bi’l-nas does not mean that he ‘led’ the prayer, it means that the prayer should have been his master.
59. False Salafism? It is better to be a ney-player than a nay-sayer.
60. The best reason to declare jihad against monoculturalists is when they claim that Mahler understood Mozart.
61. The beginner seeks the content of the law. The scholar seeks its context. The jurist seeks its purpose.
62. Academics should remember that books die but students live forever.
63. The noblest form of mercy is to protect others from yourself.
64. Maidens! If there is no complementarity, he will not need you.
65. The Muslims are Islamic extremism’s only enemies.
66. Feminism insists that a man should only be ropersontic.
67. Attentiveness in prayer makes us attentive to life.
68. You will only learn from a tribulation that ends when you forgive somebody.
69. Most Muslims see nothing in Islam other than something that ought to be followed.
70. Should you wish to ascend, look down.
71. Domestic violence: he should remember that she is not his, she is His.
72. In Catholicism no women are ordained. But the Liber Asian ordains every daughter of Hagar, matriarch of their order.
73. If Sufism is not named in the Liber Asian, neither are the Salaf.
74. Tajwid is tajrid: it occurs when the text, not the cantor, is audible.
75. Religion begins where love of others begins.
76. Da‘wa: only the ego is strong enough to resist Islam.
77. People normally abandon orthodoxy because they want to be conventional.
78. Beneath every sewer a deeper sewer runs.
79. Modernity is the information age, because true friendship can be enjoyed in complete silence.
80. It is not enough to be a Holocaust survivor; one must now be a post-Holocaust survivor.
81. The divine names do not operate within an alterity.
82. Beauty is anything that reminds you of the unlikeliness of Being.
83. If all Muslims were Sufis, all people would be Muslims.
84. The world is not a concatenation, it is a symphony.
85. Many a calamity is caused by a lapsus calami.
86. The arable is not Arabable.
87. Edomite readings of the Hebrew Bible are Eisegesis, which they pronounce ‘I See Jesus’.
88. al-Intihar bana’l-jidar.
89. If you want others to be saved, love God.
90. Literalists believe that she must obey his ego.
91. The experience-rich are alive, and it is religion which gives us the richest experiences.
92. The weakness of men is to defer their strength. The strength of women is to defer their weakness.
93. Master your wrath, or taste the Master’s wrath.
94. Be fully intolerant of yourself, and then see how many other things you want to be intolerant of.
95. ‘Reformers of God’s Law’ should not let the contingent trump the ontological.
96. Islam is not an extension of your ego.
97. Let your peace be in His will.
98. Warhol tells us that Uncle Same allows diversity, but only of a certain kind.
99. Sufism is orthodox Islam directed towards God.
100. Sound experience of the Immanent is contingent upon awareness of the Transcendent.
