Classics

Introduction to Classics

A Muslim poetess and mystic describes the journey that leads to complete annihilation in God. This is not the result of a technique or some personal effort, but a grace that the Most High pours out on those He chooses, eliminating any distance between the lover and the Beloved.

A short essay by ‘Ā’isha Al-Bā’ūniyya on the mystical path leading to the moral and ontological annihilation of the Ego

The thinkers who want to Islamise knowledge

The decadence of the Islamic world is primarily due to intellectual causes. It is therefore necessary to rethink the whole tradition of human knowledge

Muslims must rethink the notion of knowledge, starting from an integral conception of the human being and his relationship with God

From Cairo to Montpellier and then to Paris, the interior journey of the young student Taha Hussein

A young Egyptian, who is destined to become a great intellectual, encounters the modern university, first in Cairo and then in France. It is an experience that broadens his horizons without making him forget his origins

Hasan al-Basrī, a spiritual master from the first century of Islam, warns the Umayyad sovereign ‘Abd al-Malik to keep the verses of the Qur’an that describe human beings as responsible for their own deeds

With masterful conciseness, an eighteenth-century Indian thinker recounts how Islamic law was born and how the various legal schools were formed. What he teaches is that, within certain limits, a divergence of opinions is not a curse but, rather, a necessity

Shāh Walī Allāh, an Islamic intellectual of the eighteenth century, answers the question “What is Sunnism?”

A political refugee living in Egypt, the Syrian intellectual al-Kawākibī launched a vehement appeal against tyranny. The implied target was the Ottoman sultan, Abdul Hamid II. An Islamic reformist manifesto that continues to inspire contemporary Arab thinking