Like any great thinker, Moses Maimonides (1135-1204) presents paradoxes to the inquirer. In his case, the paradoxes are patent, and deeply unsettling or enlightening, depending on your point of view.
2.2 | The Idea of Islam
When Balbir Singh Sodhi, a Sikh living in the US, was murdered in supposed revenge for 9/11, his killer told police ‘I stand for America all the way’.
Four poems from Iranian-born British poet Mimi Khalvati.
My father knew he had a daughter of a different nature. It wasn’t by chance that we were a family who knew a lot about telepathy.
‘Truth is an illusion’ said Nietzsche. For my mother who has never been to school, truth is standing up calmly after a deluge.
Damn this desire to fly. Damn these wings.
We would wait at the side of the main road for the coffins to arrive. Bassim and I were eight. The war with Iran had entered its fourth year.
I always thought that Islam is something in which you either believe, or you don’t believe. If you want to call yourself a ‘Muslim’, it’s sort of an all-or-nothing deal. You’re either in or you’re out.
The introduction of critical thinking into religious discourses has always been controversial and not exactly risk-free.
I have a religion, and I call my religion Islam. I call myself a Muslim. But the truth is that I’ve made up Islam for myself. If this matters, if someone making up their own Islam seems unreasonable, you can skip past these pages.