:s1: Welcome Yursil, The ASFA forum was great--pity it was closed down. Hope to see a lot more of you here.
as-salamu'alaikum wa rahamatullah, I came across this old thread as a google search on my name pulled it up. I have since moved the contentions commentary and my blog to http://www.yursil.com/blog and yes! I was the moderator at sunnah.org, wow I am surprised people remembered that -Yursil
:s1: Ok, let's discuss our ideas on this one: 31 Has the Liber Asian deprived Eve of her priority in the felix culpa? Obviously Liber and Asian is a pun on liberation. Liber is Latin for 'free' so we have Free Asian. Eve refers to Women in general. Felix Culpa is latin for Fortunate Fall. A quick google search also told me that it is a Catholic celebration for those who believe the Fall of Adam (alayhisalam) [as the Christians believe] was necessary for God to send Isa alayhisalam and hence salvation. (Aside: I have heard a very similar argument by Shaykh Hashmi MiyaN except that for Isa alayhisalam you replace Huzoor e Aqdas :SAWS: and the 'Fall' was done with full knowledge but as a sacrifice so that Huzoor could be sent to Mankind). I think this is a criticism then of the women's lib movement (of the sixties and earlier---Simone De Beauvoir, Germaine Greer, etc.) and what it has done, in reality, for the status of womankind, and especially its aping in the Muslim world (which is almost all in Asia) by feminists such as Fatima Mehrnissi.... In short, by aping women's lib, the muslim woman is losing the exalted status accorded to her... what do you think?
h.ikam i think the h.ikam of sayyidina ibn atta'illah al-iskandari have been translated into english: http://store.talkislam.com/b7963.html as part of the Classics of Western Spirituality series....
:s1: I can see an argument for why, perhaps, Shaykh Abd al Hakim should give clues to what he means by some of the more obscure one's --but then again aren't you having fun trying to work out all the alliusions, puns etc? I think that the slim mu-slim is also an allusion to the phenomena in the West of an obession with being slim to the point of anorexia; the more-slim would be those who are the anorexic which in this simile means 'holier-than-thou'. ie. the slim are your standard, run-of-the-mill, everyday Muslims, the laypeople, and the mu-slim are the fanatics who are holier-than-thou or at least think they are. i think it is a clever taunt against the wahabis who are spiritually anorexic. i could be totally wrong of course!
riddles, aphorism, puzzles are not new in islam. the great shafiyi jurist, imam tajuddin `abd al-Wahhab as-subki wrote a riddle riddled poem to as-Safidi; suyuTi says, '...and he said that he will answer the riddles. but i cannot find the answer in either prose or verse'. then he proceeds to answer / interpret it and then summarizes his answers in verse. he has named this fantastic epistle, 'al-ajwibatu'z zakiyyah `ani'l alghaaz as-subkiyyah' / intelligent answers to the riddles of subki. --- the aphorisms of ibn `aTaAllah as-sakandari (or al-iskandari as some have it) are famous and peerless. and its interpretation by ibn `ajibah crowns the work and puts it on a throne! one learns of language, etymology, hadith, principles, history, anecdotes, poems among many other things when reading this amazing book. --- aphorisms and riddles stimulate the mind; and in all probability shaykh abd al-Hakim intends to try simulate the collective intelligence of atleast the english speaking muslim youth. as i have said earlier, there are references to many things liberally strewn around. anyone with a decent reading history must be able to figure it out. and there are a few which i don't think sound right. *i* don't think right, doesn't sound right. i am a nobody after all. but, is there a way one can clarify those (again probably) misunderstood ones? these days a dialect has an idiom which is diametrically opposite in another - leave alone half way around the world. such region specific idioms should be pointed out, or else the prevalent meaning will be accepted. to wit: i suppose the mu-slim bit is 'more-slim' since the british (ending) r is almost non-existent. but someone not acquainted with this accent may find it illegible. once this is resolved, we must think of what is slim being referred to here? is it just there to fit the last word? in any case, the french will read it 'm'sleem' to which an aphorism can be:muslim is like muslin. mostly lean. [which according to tolkien was a more recent phenomenon; whereas the original r was certainly trilled which he hints - or rather emphasizes in the lord of the rings that r is trilled. i guess the flair is still found in upper-class british speech. if i remember well, many officers of the empire and even the emperor in the 'star wars' trill the r. and not surprisingly so. english is essentially a germanic language, and that sound is not lost there -- yet. talking of jedi, someone said yoda is from 'yodha' meaning 'warrior' in sanskrit. is jedi a corruption of jehadi? think, we must.] --- another easy one: gauche in french means left. and the word meaning 'clumsy' is used in english because left-handed people have trouble with things and hence clumsy; many experiments and psychologists have pointed out that it has more to do with right-hand bias (everything is designed for the right-handed as a rule) than left-handedness. why is the numeric keypad on your right? dexterous is the word meaning 'skilled' comes from dexter, which means right. rightly done or 'unlike the lefties who are clumsy'. same with adroit. droit means right. so it is a pun. [sorry for stating the bleedingly obvious and a disclaimer: i am right-handed.] this kind of word play is intrinsic to arabic because of its - what i believe - unrivalled morphology. --- we can discuss. we can all say aloud what we think of these contentions and what we have understood from them. thereby, accumulating different viewpoints and knowledge from diverse fields.
:s1: So bro Obz I am a bit confused! Are you arguing against the contentions (due to their complexity--some of them at least) or for them?! I am happy to admit some of them go over my head too and i have to look things up before I understand them. I treat these as Islamic word puzzles with a hidden meaning which is precioussss, yesss. Of course one can interpret these in many ways too which is another joy of them...
tafarrus intended here is from firasah - or insight/foresight. but also comes from furs, which means 'persianisation' Persianisation enhanced foreseeination? [the present day furs pronounce it as forsi]
A beautiful analogy is given in ad-Durr al-Mukhtār: Fiqh is from the field, whose soil was turned [zará/tilled] by Ábdullāh ibn Masúūd :ra: and irrigated by Álqamah; Ibrahim an-Nakhaýī harvested it; Ĥammād pounded it; Abū Ĥanifah grounded it to fine flour; Abū Yūsuf kneaded it and Muĥammad baked the bread. The people eat this bread. al-fiqhu zarú bni masúūdin; wa álqamah ĥaśśaduhu thumma ibrāhimu dawwāsu númānu ťaĥinuhu, yáqūbu áājinuhu muĥammadun khābizu, wa'l ākilu'n nāsu Fiqh is from the field, whose soil was turned [zar`a] by Ábdullāh ibn Masúūd :ra: and Álqamah – irrigated which; Ibrahim an-Nakhaýī pounded it; Abū Ĥanifah Númān grounded it to fine flour; Abū Yūsuf kneaded it Muĥammad baked the bread and the people eat this bread.
19. The mujtahid does no more than turn the soil ! isn't this so true ! I particularly liked the play of words in this one : 21 The usuliyyun have been replaced by the usuliyyun
the contentions series is quite interesting for the anglophone. no; for the anglophone who understands arabic. no; for the anglophone who understands arabic and religious terminology. no, for the anglophone, who understands arabic, religious terminology and is widely read and knows europe well. before you tell me off with: 'stupid; it *is* meant for the erudite', i have a couple of questions. is there a reference list for the slowpokes like me? and is there a place to explain what the shaykh means? most references are cryptic..and ambiguous. don't bind me to shaykh murad's contention the 50th: 'criticism is infectious'. some contentions are certainly contentious. haroon was complaining that this place was getting boring (alright, he didn't say that, but if you take out the politeness, that is what he meant). so we can contend with the apparently contentious contentions and debate the intentions of certain contentions or as shaykh murad would have it: contentions are mainly content; with ions that are notions. [not-ions] update: i looked around mas'ud forum and found this: http://www.masud.co.uk/masud_forum/viewtopic.php?t=6 and from there: http://www.pegasus.rutgers.edu/~optics/ more specifically: http://pegasus.rutgers.edu/~optics/archives/article_commentaries/contentions_commentary/index.html and is this yursil (kidwai taken from masudforum) the former moderator of the former as-sunnah.org forum?
http://www.masud.co.uk/ISLAM/ahm/contentions8.htm Click above for some thought-provoking, deeply meaningful apothegms., Here are a couple of my favourites: 46 Mecca: he will come. Jerusalem: he was here. Medina: he is here. 37 Preferring rida to riba is the choosing of the milk over the wine. I have changed this subtly to: 37 Preferring Rid.a to riba is the choosing of the milk over the wine. :wink:
