[MoonStar]

I'm reading Charles Le Gai Eaton's book and will be posting quotes I like from it.

From the introduction:

"In what follow I hope, God willing, to show what it means to be a Muslim, and to consider doctrine, history, and social life in the light of the Revelation which is the source of Faith.....To every statement I would gladly add a formula of great significance in the Islamic context, a formula which means that God knows best, that He alone knows, and that those who speak or write must always keep in mind their relative ignorance and the limitations of their perspective, just as the living must always keep death in mind. Wa Allahu a'lam."

----------------

" 'Thus have We appointed you,' says the Quran, 'a middle nation' (or 'a community of the middle way'), 'so that you may bear witness to the truth before mankind...' (Q.2.143). Islam is a 'middle nation' even in the purely geographical sense, spanning as it does the center-line of the planet; a 'nation' which is heir to ancient and universal truths, and to principles of social and human stability (often betrayed but never forgotten) of which our chaotic world has desperate need; a nation which witnesses to a hope that transcends the dead ends against which the contemporary world is battering itself to death." - chapter 1, pg 26.

[Khairan]

Awesome! I look forward to reading more of this thread.

[MoonStar]

The Quran, set on a shelf with other books, has a function entirely different to theirs and exists in a different dimension. It moves an illiterate shepherd to tears when recited to him, and it has shaped the lives of millions of simple people over the course of almost fourteen centuries; it has nourished some of the most powerful intellects known to the human record; it has stopped sophisticates in their tracks and made saints of them, and it has been the source of the most subtle philosophy and of an art which expresses its deepest meaning in visual terms; it has brought the wandering tribes of mankind together in communities and civilizations upon which its imprint is apparent even to the casual observer. The Muslim, regardless of race and national identity, is unlike anyone else because he has undergone the impact of the Quran and has been formed by it."

- chapter 4, pg 77

[Pushpa]

Nice thread Moonstar.

I remember there were some excerpts I really liked about salah, and how the various postures are reflective of our relation to God and the world, and another about how being a Muslim means for man to be truly man to the utmost of his being, and woman to be truly woman to the utmost of her being, or something like that.

[MoonStar]

yeah, I like the book because it speaks to you on many levels, some things are basic reminders, others really make you think, and he has a way with words.

continued from right after the previous paragraph:

"Other books are passive, the reader taking the initiative, but revelation is an act, a command from on high- comparable to a lightning flash, which obeys no man's whim. As such, it acts upon those who are responsive to it, reminding them of their true function as viceregents of God on earth, restoring to them the use of faculties which have become atrophied- like unused muscles- and showing them, not least by the example of the Prophet, what they are meant to be. To say this is to say that revelation, within the limits of what is possible in our fallen condition, restores to us the condition of fitrah. It gives back to the intelligence its lost capacity to perceive and to comprehend supernatural truths, it gives back to the will its lost capacity to command the warring factions in the soul, and it gives back to sentiment its lost capacity to love God and to love everything that reminds us of Him."

- chapter 4

[Songbird]

I wish Islamica would contain more threads such as this.

May Allah swt reward your efforts sis - keep up the good work.

[Variable]

This guy sounds pretty cool, what's his story?

[Pardees]

Conversion: Islam, the growing religion

[MoonStar]

"Among the orientalists some have described Islam as individualistic, while others have seen it as 'collectivist.' It is both. Standing shoulder to shoulder in straight lines in the communal prayer, the Muslims form a single block, an indivisible army of God in which the individual is merged into the sacred community; and yet one man praying alone in the desert, isolated from all others, represents in himself the fullness of the community and exercises the divine authority on earth; the rest might have died, yet Islam is present where he is present. The same may be said of those who follow the example of the Prophet in rising to pray in the still hours of the night; the world sleeps, but the Ummah is awake and stands before its Lord. Even in the midst of the community, the individual recognizes no ultimate authority, spiritual or temporal, but that of God, which is one reason why the Quran tells us that if we kill a single man unjustly it is as though we had 'killed all mankind' (Q.5.32)."

- ch 3

[MoonStar]

"God is sometimes described as al-Bayyin, translated as the Evident, the Apparent; but such tepid words cannot convey the force of meaning inherent in the word. To a man in the desert the sun is more than simply 'apparent'; it is blazingly and undeniably present, and he cannot escape it; such is the actuality of the Divine for the Muslim. Frithjof Schuon speaks of the nomads 'scorched by the ever present and ever eternal Divine Sun'. 'In the face of this Sun, man is nothing: that the Caliph 'Umar should conquer a part of the ancient world or that the Prophet should milk his goat amounts to more or less the same thing; that is to say, there is no "human greatness" in the profane and Titanesque sense, and thus no humanism to give rise to vain glories; the only greatness admitted is the lasting once of sanctity, and this belongs to God.' (footnote- Dimensions of Islam, Frithjof Schuon, p. 69).

- ch. 3

[MoonStar]

"Muhammad (pbuh) said: 'Wisdom is the believer's straying camel; he takes it from wherever he can find it and does not care from what vessel it has issued.' It is common enough for occidental writers, when considering the different forms which Islam has assumed among different peoples, to say that is has failed to eradicate 'pre-Islamic ideas'. The religion of the Quran did not come into this world to eradicate such ideas, unless they had been twisted by human passions and falsified by human one-sidedness, for it is the heir to the spiritual treasures of the past. Nothing true is alien to it. Many streams have been absorbed into this river over the course of time; it still flows towards the sea."

- chapter 2

[MoonStar]

he's talking about the meaning of nabi vs. rasul in the paragraph before this one:

"The modern mentality, impatient of restraints and rigid frameworks as it is of rules and regulations, prefers the 'prophet' to the 'messenger.' Even in a country such as England, where practising Christians are in a minority, most people- according to recent surveys- claim to 'believe in a God', though they have no use for 'organized religion.' The poetry of prophetic utterance, all fire and ice, has immense attraction compared with 'religion', which is thought to imprison the free spirit and which is, in the last resort, dull; it puts duties in the place of feelings and it requires association with some very unattractive people. Poetry, however, does nothing to build a house in which uninspired men and women can live out their lives in terms of a revealed pattern for living, which may be one reason why the Quran tells us specifically that Muhammad is 'not a poet'. What a 'messenger' brings to us is not only news from heaven but also the blueprint for an earthly structure which keeps us safe from hell."

- chapter 3

[MoonStar]

"The Prophet said: 'A believer who recites the Quran is like a citron whose fragrance is sweet and whose taste is sweet...,' and he said also that 'he who learns it and goes to sleep having it within him is like a bag with musk tied up in it.' When he told his companions that 'hearts become rusty just as iron does when water gets at it' and they asked him how this rust was to be removed, he replied: 'By frequent remembrance of death and frequent recitation of the Quran.'"

- ch 4

[MoonStar]

The Quran is not a book of philosophy, but it is the source-book of philosophy; not a treatise on psychology, but the key to a psychology. Writing from an entirely different point of view, yet in perfect agreement with Asad, Seyyed Hossein Nasr remarks that the message couched in historical terms is 'addressed to the human soul'. 'The hypocrite (munafiq) who divides people and spreads falsehood in matters concerning religion also exists within the soul of every man, as does the person who has gone astray, or he who follows the "Straight Path"... All the actors on the stage of sacred history as recounted in the Quran are also symbols of forces existing within the soul of man. The Quran is, therefore, a vast commentary on man's terrestrial existence.' (footnote- Ideals and Realities of Islam by Seyyed Hossein Nasr, pg 51.)

- Ch 4

[MoonStar]

"Perhaps the first step towards faith in our age is a thoroughgoing skepticism, which pours its corrosive acid upon false certainties and brings awareness that we are like swimmers in an ocean amidst waves which change their shape from moment to moment and offer no hold to our grasping fingers. It is only when we are truly 'at sea' that we learn to distinguish between what is enduring and what is ephemeral."

- ch 4