“The male is not like the female” (وَلَيْسَ الذَّكَرُ كَالْأُنثَى (3:36

This is a clear, straightforward teaching in the Quran and the ḥadīth. 1/ In this day and age the fundamental realities behind such a statement are frequently questioned, and we are too often criticized for advocating anything that sounds even remotely like a “traditional” understanding of gender relations. 2/

After I posted picture of the AyaSophia or the Hagia Sophia, I received some of the standard responses from people lamenting that it had been converted back into a prayer space. To my mind, such responses indicate a deep misunderstanding of the history of the Hagia Sophia. 1/ The Hagia Sophia suffered great damage several times under Byzantine rule. By the time Constantinople was conquered by the Ottomans in 1453 had fallen into disrepair. Some historians maintain that if the Ottomans had not sought to restore the building it would have collapsed. 2/

In many ḥadith the Prophet (SAWS) recommends that we read Sūrat al-Kahf every Friday. These do not impose an obligation. Rather they present the gift, an invitation to enter into peace and partake of sublime beauty. 1/11 God and Messenger (SAWS) do not just call to mercy, God chases after us, hoping that we take one small step to enter into the abode of mercy that He may shower us with forgiveness and protect us. 2/11

There is no such thing as "The Satanic Verses." The classical Arabic sources do not have the term al-ayat al-shaytaniyyah. The term “Satanic Verses” originates with William Muir’s Life of Mahomet, first published in 1861 and was a polemical term from it inception. Muir “combined scholarly and evangelical or missionary purposes." (Bennet, 1998). As Aaron W. Hughes (2012) obsserves, Muir's work was part of a European Orientalist tradition that sought to show that Islam was "a corruption, a garbled version of existing monotheisms".

The #Quran states that God is Shākir, Grateful or Thankful, and Shakūr, the emphatic form, which we could translate as “very grateful” or “ever-grateful.” Understanding this requires analysis of the root – sh-k-r, and the manner in which it is deployed in the Quran. (1/19) Both attributes are employed to refer to God: shakūr (35:30, 35:34, 42:23, 64:17) four times and shākir twice, stating that God is “thankful, knowing” (shākiran ʿalīman, 2:158, 4:147). (2/19)