I’ve been told my article “Competing Spaces of Religious Belonging: Deobandi Debates on Interest/Usury as a Case Study” is due to be published very soon with @hanafismjournal It traces how the Ḥanafīs developed a sophisticated theory to guide Muslims’ relationship with those who shared an alternative worldview and with regard to their living in non-Muslim lands.

A few people have asked about Umrah so here are some of my tips & experiences of being there. Others can add comments. First, intention. One must have the right intention which is to please Allah and to follow the way of the Prophet ﷺ, and the Prophets that came before him ﷺ. As for practical issues, you’ll need to install two apps on your phone beforehand, if possible. However, they will only work when you get to SA and buy a sim. You can buy this at the airport. A basic sim will do unless you intend to use lots of data.

There are numerous benefits of remembrance (zikr), Shaykh Abdul Fattāḥ Abū Ghuddah in his ta’līq on Risālah al-Mustarṣhidīn of Ḥarith al-Muḥāsibī (d.243/857) has listed one hundred such benefits. The remembrance [of Allah] removes sadness, despondency, brings about happiness and contentment in the heart. It is also the pathway to the pleasure of Allah, and distances one from the promptings of the devil.

Yesterday we looked at Tawḥīd (Absolute Monotheism).

Ṣhirk, that is polytheism or associating partners with God, may be considered it's opposite.

It has many categories, but they can be collapsed into three:

#theology101 1) Association with His essence.

For example, to attribute things like being Pre-Eternal, Creator, or Sustainer to other than Allah, the Exalted.

2) Association with His attributes. All His attributes are - like Him - Pre-Eternal and are not shared with anyone.

Really wonderful book. This book focuses on an important period in South Asia (from around 1000 to the late eighteenth century) while challenging stereotypes (you know stuff like India was largely in decline until Europeans came and saved it.. or it was isolated from the rest of the world and it was brought forth etc).

Given all the talk around secularism I have always wanted to know if premodern Muslims conceived the world in a *similar* way. Of course, it would never be the same as the European experience. But if they did, how was it understood? And what can we learn from it today? So, today I had a chance to read “Did Premodern Muslims Distinguish the Religious and Secular? The Dīn–Dunyā Binary in Medieval Islamic Thought” by Rushain Abbasi.

Right, my twitter friends, I need your help.

I need you to share this tweet far & wide around Britain.

I'm compiling the largest national survey on understanding Imams in the UK.

sites.cardiff.ac.uk/islamukcentre/…

@MuslimCouncil @IlmFeed @IslamUKCentre @MuslimCouncil @IlmFeed @IslamUKCentre Are you an imam or do you know one well? If so, we’d love to hear from you!

Working closely with mosques & council of mosques around Britain we are compiling an anonymised national research of imams & want you to complete a simple survey. It shouldn't take more than 5 minutes.

You know you always have a book that you wished you had read before submitting a piece of writing; something that might add credence to the argument you were making. This is another one of them. Contrary to the modern matter of fact imaginings, the author argues that throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth century, the Muslim world was vibrant with creative and ground-breaking intellectual undertakings that restructured Islamic thought.

A big thank you and shout out to Dr @SadekHamid for sending me a signed copy of his book. It asks us (again) to move beyond stale Orientalist and worn out tropes between a good and a bad Muslim. @SadekHamid Right away, I can empathise with his concern that within the many trends that exist in Muslim communities in the West there is an urgent need to engage with Islam’s intellectual legacy and to focus on reinvigorating “sophisticated intellectual and philosophical ideas”.