keepin it platonic

about platonic friendship. i've now read more than a few classical books on muslim love theory, here's my observation. we can be compassionate to all, but if we seek real friendship, our scholars say that friendship and love are related. there is muhabat-love, which all muslims should believe in. it's gereral and can exist between all who cleanse their hearts of greed, pride and conceit. it has nothing to do with sexual urges. it has everything to do with being a beautiful person. but your inner and outer beauty attracts a beholder of beauty. lets not forget ishq-love, which some say is good, some say bad. the fire of ishq-love can ignite when one beholds beauty. the philosopher says that isqh-love seeks physical union. the mystic says ishq-love is an affair of the soul seeking a spiritual union. Didn't Al-Ghazzali say that love is an attachment between hearts. the heart, the soul, the spirit, the self, different names of that inner light. i was just an innocent by-stander when your terrorist thighs struck me down. after your beauty has lit my flame and the fire rages within. you can try to say: "just control your self, bro." to which the heretic-ashiq-lover will respond: "What Self?? You FOOL, My self exists NO-MORE! How can i control that which belongs to GOD, that Divine breath which gives life to this lump of clay. Didn't al-Ghazzali say that love emenates from my heart. Didn't al-Ghazzali tell me that i have more than one self? Didn't he say, to deny the others and let the Divine self shine through. Mine eyes, they say, are My windows to that soul. They have gazed... and witnessed a manifestation of HIS Divine Terrorist Beauty... (you think yo mama gave you those terrorist thighs)??? And Now you speak of CONTROL."HUSH asad HUSH!!! You have spoken too much!

groopies

about the hamza yusuf "groopies" and leaders/followers. In my journeys, i visited the graves and witnessed the devotees of Jalaluddin Rumi in Konya, Moinuddin Chisti in Ajmer, Ali Hajweri in Lahore, Bahauddin Zakaria in Multan, Shabazz Qalandar in Sewan, Nizamuddin Awliya in Delhi. It is said that love is a blindness. sometimes in our passionate attachments to great scholars we lose our ability to see their and our own human deficiencies. but this issue must be handled delicately. i thank allah for giving me intelligent and articulate friends like usman and mathew and mairaj who took part in a much needed discourse on this subject on the muslimdisc list.

images of the prophet

just got back from one month in the land of my ancestors. a land famous for its miniature paintings. about pictures of our beloved prophet?!? aztaghfirullah! i've read much on and seen many persian miniatures, but... Some of the mi'raj pics are among the most beautiful works of art i've seen. They reflect MY civilization's ability to absorb the beauty of parent civilations as well as a desire to inject color and intricate geometric designs into our great book-based civilization. the artform probably came into existance because Mongols embraced islam but did not arabize themselves. plus, YOU try telling a Mongol or Turk warlord "images are haram." He'd slice off your head, then commision the paintings anyways. your poor severed blood-dripping head at the gates of the beautiful palace serving as a warning to other self righteous scholars trying to command good and forbid evil or brave souls trying to score iman points by speaking up to a tyrant. i don't know whats worse: Oppressive/Progressive Il-khanid, Ottoman, Safavid, Mughal princes sidelining sharia scholars, but sponsoring imaginative, unique, beautiful art and images of our beloved prophets in their poetry and history books (prophet Yusuf and Zulaikha was a favorite subject) or hyper-sensitive Muslims and idealistic activists ignorant about muslim history and art running around saying "there is no images in islamic art" or "we did not do what the christians did," ignoring centuries of our figurative art. maybe its a product of movements founded by arab or arab-wannabe activists who dismiss the history and contributions of non-arab muslim peoples producing a bunch of deluded followers. I can understand efforts to keep images of the prophet out of new productions. fear of iconization and all, but, its a shame that Non-muslim scholars seem to know more about our civilization than we do. we look like fools when they reply that those images of our prophet were from books produced BY MUSLIMS.