Dear Nafs – collection #1
(n.b. The “Dear Nafs” series started on 5 February 2020. This covers everything up through 24 February 2020.) Dear Nafs: Realize that when your own teachers referred to you as …
Summary of Religious Duties during the Month of Rajab
(n.b. This article was originally written 21 years ago. It is reposted with minor corrections.) Rajab, one of the four sacrosanct months in the Islamic year, began only a matter …
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The old Shari‘ah Perspectives blog
Back in 2006–2008, I had a small blog called “Shari‘ah Perspectives” while I was in Cairo. I wrote most of the posts, with maybe 10% coming from a few friends. …
Comment: Pork-free “pork”
This article describing a pork-free “pork” mentions that the product is …gluten-free and designed for kosher and halal certification, looks strikingly similar to real pork, with its light pink hue …
Abusing the middle position
The frequency that canned oversimplifications like “Islam always takes the middle position” “Truth always lies in the middle position” are now given as foundations or integral supports for arguments related …
Comment: “One act of zina is less sinful than watching ten seconds of porn”
Someone asked me about the following statement: “One act of zina is less sinful than watching ten seconds of porn” Here are just four cars involved in this trainwreck: Punishments …
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Dismissing blocking-the-means just for lack of certainty
Dismissing an argument that follows the form X leads to haram-Y what leads to the haram is haram therefor X is haram for no reason other than “X doesn’t always …
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Advice for benefiting from “Infamies of the Soul”
A friend who is teaching Infamies of the Soul asked for additional resources and general advice on teaching the book. I don’t have a lot of advice, but here goes: …
Dismissing specific claims of consensus on the grounds that “Consensus is a weak argument”
Someone recently asked me to review a piece where a contemporary figure dismisses one of Imam al-Nawawi’s opinions simply because the Imam’s argument includes mention of consensus, and that consensus …
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Temporal Fixity & Flexibility in Legal Rulings
(n.b. The content for this article comes from a short class on legal maxims, presented in 2014. It provides more information than the earlier article on the abuse of customs.) …