Recipe for Sheikh Nuh's homemade, whole grain bread. 

The Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) said, "When two vituperate each other, [the sin of] what they say is borne by the one who first began, as long as the one wronged does not transgress [the bounds of merely defending himself, by answering back with worse]" (Muslim, 4.2000: 2587. S). And when a group of Jews covertly cursed the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) by using a play on the words "as-Salamu 'alaykum," 'A'isha noticed it and gave them a rounding, and he said, "Enough, 'A'isha; for Allah does not like vulgarity or making a display of it" (ibid., 1707: 2165(4). S). And in another version, "O 'A'isha, always have gentleness, and always shun harsh words and vulgarity" (Bukhari, 8.15: 6030. S). This is the adab of Islam with hardened enemies, so how should it not apply to our fellow Muslims, let alone family and loved ones?

There are few topics that generate as much controversy today in Islam as what is sunna and what is bida or reprehensible innovation, perhaps because of the times Muslims live in today and the challenges they face. Without a doubt, one of the greatest events in impact upon Muslims in the last thousand years is the end of the Islamic caliphate at the first of this century, an event that marked not only the passing of temporal, political authority, but in many respects the passing of the consensus of orthodox Sunni Islam as well. No one familiar with the classical literature in any of the Islamic legal sciences, whether Qur'anic exegesis (tafsir), hadith, or jurisprudence (fiqh), can fail to be struck by the fact that questions are asked today about basic fundamentals of Islamic Sacred Law (Sharia) and its ancillary disciplines that would not have been asked in the Islamic period not because Islamic scholars were not brilliant enough to produce the questions, but because they already knew the answers.

Born in 1954 in the farm country of the northwestern United States, I was raised in a religious family as a Roman Catholic. The Church provided a spiritual world that was unquestionable in my childhood, if anything more real than the physical world around me, but as I grew older, and especially after I entered a Catholic university and read more, my relation to the religion became increasingly called into question, in belief and practice.

I was asked about copyrights at the Shafi'i fiqh lesson at last winter's Toronto din intensive. The answer I gave was that copyrights are an issue differed about between the sheikhs I have studied with.

Recipe for Sheikh Nuh's homemade, whole grain bread. 

A cardinal principle of the tariqa is zuhd or nonattachment to other than Allah. One should always leave what does not concern one in this life or the next.

The Five Basic Exercises (5BX) fitness plan was developed for the R.C.A.F (The Royal Canada Air Force) as a progressive fitness training plan based on scientific principles to develop and maintain the physical fitness of their military personnel. The program has been widely adopted by the public.

Question: Is someone who has an idea that is kufr or “unbelief” thereby an “unbeliever”?

Question: Recently a pamphlet has been circulated around Oxford saying that evolution is synonymous with kufr and shirk. I myself am a biologist and am convinced by the evidence which supports the theory of evolution. I am writing to ask whether the Quranic account of Creation is incompatible with man having evolved. Are there any books which you would recommend on the subject?"

My friend Usama al-Majdhub of Damascus called this morning and asked me to answer a question he had heard from some people in the Ukraine. He is flying to Kiev tomorrow, and wanted to pick up the answer tonight. To introduce myself, I am an American living in Jordan who converted from Christianity to Islam some years ago. My thoughts on this subject are many, but my answer can only be brief, so please excuse the shortcomings you find in it. The question Usama related to me was: "As Christians, we believe in One God, and that Jesus is God. Why then do Muslims say we will go to hell?"

Few would deny today that the millions of dollars spent worldwide on religious books, teachers, and schools in the last thirty years by oil-rich governments have brought about a sea change in the way Muslims view Islam. In whole regions of the Islamic world and Western countries where Muslims live, what was called Wahhabism in earlier times and termed Salafism in our own has supplanted much of traditional Islamic faith and practice. The very name Ahl al-Sunna wa al-Jama‘a or “Sunni orthodoxy and consensus” has been so completely derailed in our times that few Muslims even know it is rolling down another track. In most countries, Salafism is the new “default Islam,” defining all religious discourse, past and present, by the understanding of a few Hanbali scholars of the Middle Ages whose works historically affected the tribes and lands where the most oil has been found. Among the more prominent casualties of this “reform” are the Hanbalis’ ancient foes, the Ash‘ari and Maturidi schools of Sunni theology whom I have been asked to speak about tonight.

The following is an excerpt from the unpublished manuscript of a new revision of the manual of the tariqa. It is copyright MMIX © Nuh Ha Mim Keller, and may not be reproduced in any form without written permission. Some has been drawn from traditional sources such as Imam Ghazali, while some is new. It has been excerpted here from manuscript as a stop-gap to answer some questions about marriage frequently received, and because the manual will take longer to finish than people's questions permit. May Allah help all through it.

In response to numerous requests from around the world for definite guidelines, I shall here summarize the main adab to be observed by our Shadhili tariqa at the weekly Latifiyya gatherings, larger regional or national gatherings, other, family tariqa events, and our annual suhbas in the various lands.

By what one can gather from the press, the FBI and CIA have seemingly been unable to prove who precisely, if anyone, may have masterminded the attack earlier this month on the World Trade Center other than the immediate assailants,who are presumed to have been a number of young men from Egypt and Saudi Arabia, and one from the United Arab Emirates. Whoever they were, the facts point to a number of inescapable conclusions. The planning of it argues for a method to the madness, coupled with at least normal intelligence and a technical education, while the psychological facts entail that such people do not destroy themselves unless they see some advantage for themselves in doing so, which entails that they believed in an afterlife, meaning that according to their own standards, they were in all probability "religious." The question arises: "What sort of religion condones killing thousands of ordinary civilian people?" The answer is "No religion at all."

Perhaps the biggest challenge in learning Islam correctly today is the scarcity of traditional 'ulama. In this meaning, Bukhari relates the sahih, rigorously authenticated hadith that the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) said, "Truly, Allah does not remove Sacred Knowledge by taking it out of servants, but rather by taking back the souls of Islamic scholars [in death], until, when He has not left a single scholar, the people take the ignorant as leaders, who are asked for and who give Islamic legal opinion without knowledge, misguided and misguiding" (Fath al-Bari, 1.194, hadith 100).

Surely those who believe, those of Jewry, the Christians, and the Sabaeans—whoever has faith in Allah and the Last Day and works righteousness, their wage awaits them with their Lord; no fear shall be upon them, nor shall they sorrow” (Qur’an 2:62)

Sheikh al-'Alawi has said, "All the universe is Light, and the only thing that darkens it is the manifestation of the self in it." Sheikh 'Abd al-Rahman al-Shaghouri, who met Sheikh al-'Alawi, and related this to me, used to teach that the notions that affect our hearts come from one of four quarters. Notions of tawhid or the absolute Oneness of the Divine come from the All-merciful Himself; those of doing good come from the presence of the angels; those of lusts and desires come from the ego; and those of doubts in eternal truths come from the Devil.

Health recommendations for traveling to India.

Question: Is it possible that God does not merely save followers of other previously valid religions besides Islam out of a divine amnesty, but for the truth that exists in previous religions, including those such as Native American religions, and others?

Raise no objection to the Shaykh for this
Is likely to cause disconcertedness to the novice in addition to his desertion

A man was walking through the marketplace one afternoon when, just as the muezzin began the call to prayer, his eye fell on a woman's back. She was strangely attractive, though dressed in fulsome black, a veil over head and face, and she now turned to him as if somehow conscious of his over-lingering regard, and gave him a slight but meaningful nod before she rounded the corner into the lane of silk sellers. As if struck by a bolt from heaven, the man was at once drawn, his heart a prisoner of that look, forever. In vain he struggled with his heart, offering it one sound reason after another to go his way-wasn't it time to pray?-but it was finished: there was nothing but to follow.

The work of the mujtahid Imams of Sacred Law, those who deduce shari'a rulings from Qur'an and hadith, has been the object of my research for some years now, during which I have sometimes heard the question: "Who needs the Imams of Sacred Law when we have the Qur'an and hadith? Why can't we take our Islam from the word of Allah and His Messenger (Allah bless him and give him peace), which are divinely protected from error, instead of taking it from the madhhabs or "schools of jurisprudence" of the mujtahid Imams such as Abu Hanifa, Malik, Shafi'i, and Ahmad, which are not?"

I will close this answer by translating a conversation that took place in Damascus between Shari‘a professor Muhammad Sa‘id al-Buti, and a Salafi teacher.