Sunday, January 04, 2009

"catholic" islam

I found out recently that a friend of mine is thinking of converting to Roman Catholicism. As a result I've been thinking more about some of the more "Catholic" aspects of (traditional, orthodox) Islam; the saints/awliya, the litany/dhikr, rites and canon law/schools of fiqh, apostolicity/silsilas and ijazahs, creeds, admiration for Mary, etc. This train of thought has also been helped along by the fact that I've been reunited with a number of my books on Islam with some new ones besides... some friends of mine who helped me moved were holding on to some of my things and also wanted to get rid of some books themselves.

One of the books which they gave me, The Word of Islam by John Alden Williams was interesting to me because it contained a Maturidi creed which, in contrast to what many scholars claim about the sinlessness of prophets, seemed to allow the possibility that before his period of prophethood, David (as) actually committed the sins the Bible ascribes to him involving Uriah and Bathsheba... but more on that in another post.

These days I'm also reading Perfecting Women by Barbara Metcalf which is a partial translation and commentary of Maulana Ashraf 'Ali thanawi's Bihishti Zewar which is a famous resource for Hanafi fiqh (among other things).

return to guadalupe
the radical middle way
protestant islam
more protestant islam
"...being the last one around"

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Salaams,
On the subject of sinlessness, I was reading Ibn Kathir's "Stories of the Prophets" a few months ago and was surprised by the less-than-exemplary actions and traits that were imputed to some prophets. Obviously, this doctrine is not universal, as Ibn Kathir doesn't seem to know/agree with it.

Anonymous said...

Forgot to mention that I think that contrary to the prevailing perception there are actually quite few *meaningful* parallels between Sunni Islam and Protestantism. And if you're Sufi, even fewer.

The parallels are mainly political/organization, and even those are of fairly limited relevance IMO.