Desire and Love in Marriage
I want to begin by trying to explain to you the difference between desire (hawa) and love (mahabba). Desire is something that happens to you; you are passive before it; it arises; it gets you; it seems strong and you seem weak. It is aroused by…
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Reflections on Education
The importance of religion to Muslims means, an emphasis on Arabic and Qur’anic studies; and the importance of earning their livelihood, means they have instead, to learn English, which is the only medium Western learning could be studied.
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Advice to women travelling for `umrah
Women, generally, have always been easy targets of abuse and harassment by misguided, predatory men and hence it has rarely been safe for them to travel alone. That is why the Prophet advised that women when travelling in a potentially unsafe…
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Surah al-Takwir & Surah al-Infitar
These surahs compel us to call to mind realities that we accept are true but which we almost-never include in our conscious, deliberate calculations when we decide on a course of action or when we put a value on something when we say…
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Surah al-Insan & al-Dahr
This surah can be paired with the one before it. Al-Qiyamah ended with a brief account of the lowly first stages of human life, from which one can hardly imagine that there could emerge so complex a creature as a human being capable of knowing right from wrong and therefore…
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Surah al-Tatfif
Woe unto the mean-hearted – those who, when they take the measure from people, strive to have it full, and when they measure for them, strive to make it short. Although some translations render mutaffifin as fraudsters…
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Surah Nuh
This surah is a condensed overview of the themes found in more extended narration elsewhere in the Qur’an, of the story of Nuh `alayhi s-salam, notably Surah Hud. As always in the Qur’an, the focus on certain elements…
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Surah Al-`Imran
The longer surahs at the beginning of the received text of the Qur’an have a complex arrangement of passages because they are simultaneously addressing three major concerns of the Qur’an, and the focus of attention alternates between these concerns.
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