How to engage with what is happening in our time
I generally avoid commenting on political issues, because in my experience doing so only serves to complicate and multiply the weaknesses of my fellow Muslims. I prefer to focus on matters which can waken people to a strong realization that they have…
Islamophobia
Any phobia has two directions from which it arises. One direction is from the person himself who is suffering the phobia, some cause in him, psychological or cultural. The other direction is from that which the phobia is about. In this case, Muslims should realise and admit to…
Al `Imran 121-130
The Qur’an is not revealed to human minds and hearts cut off from their pasts. It is not revealed to blank minds, but to minds already shaped and constrained by their culture (inherited from their ancestors) and by present, ongoing relations and commitments.
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…
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…
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…
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.
Not being able to take a bath after menstruation
If a woman’s menstruation stops while she is at work or travelling and she is not able in that situation to take a bath (ghusl), is she allowed to miss the obligatory prayers (i.e. defer them until she can take a bath)?