Ayatollah Dynamite

Moments after I converted, I suffered a debilitating allergy attack. As Brother Hisham was filling my fresh Muslim mind with images of the great beast at the End of Time and fire and brimstone and a host of do-or-die obligations, my nose ran like a faucet. There was not a tissue in sight. I had to use my sleeve.

by Cedric McClester

“There’s something going on In the Mosques, Something, We don’t know about,” Said Donald Trump

I come from Kashan and I do all right.

I have a piece of bread, some smarts, a bit of wit. I have a mother, better than the bright green leaf, and my friends, like the river streaming.

I have a God as well who lives right around here somewhere… among these night-blooms, or there at the foot of the white pine, past the stream’s consciousness, past all the statutes and laws of the reeds.

I am a Muslim: The rose is my qibla. The stream my prayer-rug, the sunlight my clay tablet. My mosque the meadow. I rinse my arms for prayers along with the thrum and pulse of windows. Through my prayers streams the moon, the refracted light of the sun. Through translucent chapters I look down at the stones in the stream-bed.



Every part of my prayer is clear straight through.

- Sohrab Sepehri

George Bataille, speaking of true Sufism, true Irfan: “I call experience a voyage to the end of the possible of man. Anyone may not embark on this voyage, but if he does embark on it, this supposes the negation of authorities, the existing values which limit the possible. By virtue of the fact that it is negation of other values, other authorities, experience, having a positive existence, becomes itself positively value and authority.”

“This is the first time the Modest Fashion Week will be coming to Dubai, following its two successful editions in Istanbul and London, and there's a lot to look forward to.”

“‘I am so-and-so, son/daughter of so-and-so, and I announce that I am leaving Islam.’ This type of tweet is becoming familiar in Saudi Arabia and is spreading.

…

In February 2016, the regional government in the Saudi Arabian city of Jeddah handed down a 10 year sentence, along with two thousand lashes and a twenty-thousand riyal fine, to a 28-year old Saudi man accused of sending more than 600 atheistic tweets through his Twitter account.”

“My first encounters with religion was funeral, when I’d go to mosque and graveyard with my parents, and of course frequent daily (3 times per day, everyday except Fridays) call for prayers (Adhan or Azan as we pronounce in Iran). And what I can immediately associate with religion, even to this day, is singing. Later I realized those chants and singings were within Persian music systems and traditions.”

https://arash-yazdani.com/writings/interview-with-nyrkr/

"The Islamic State announced three months ago through its online publication 'Al-Naba' that it would target this specific mosque for being the headquarters of the Jariri sufi order, which it described as the largest and most blasphemous of the orders."

The article explains how Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, the founder of the Tawhid and Jihad organization which was the precursor to today's Islamic State, set forth the strategy of attacking the Shi'as of Iraq in order to foment chaos.

"But Egypt, which does not contain a significant number of Shi'a, was not hospitable to the terror organization's plan. Thus they exchanged the Shi'a element for the Coptic and Sufi ones, and Egypt witnessed waves of church bombings, culminating in the attack on the Sufi mosque in Bi'r Al-Abd in Sinai."

http://www.aman-dostor.org/1842

Richard Burton, in/famous for his Middle Eastern travels and especially his illicit journey to Mecca as a fake-pilgrim, also penned a fascinating travelogue about a journey to the Mormon Zion, the Utah Territory. Islam was never far from his mind, however, and he makes abundant comparisons between the Latter-Day Saints and Muslims.

Mormonism and Islam have many features in common, Burton says: "Mormonism, it will be observed, claims at once to be, like Christianity, a progressive faith ... and, like El Islam, to be a restoration by revelation of the pure and primeval religion of the world." Both faiths claim that all the other religions and sects are corruptions of the one true consistent message, and that they alone represent the purity of that salvific message.

Burton sees Joseph Smith and Muhammed as cut from the same cloth of impostorhood: "As of the Ayat of El Islam, so the revelations with which Mr. Joseph Smith was favored, it is remarked that their exceeding opportuneness excites suspicion." Throughout the text, however, it is evident that Burton places Smith even lower in the depths of depravity, as is true in much of the anti-Mormon polemic of the day.

But the blackest mark against Mormonism is its Islam-esque suppression of the feminine: "There is a Moslem air of retirement about the Bee House," Burton says of his visit to Brigham Young's home, "the face of woman is rarely seen at the window, and her voice is never heard from without." Elsewhere he observes of the Mormon capital city more generally, "There is a certain monotony of life in Great Salt Lake City which does not render the subject favorable for description. Moreover, a Moslem gloom, the result of austere morals and manners, of the semi-seclusion of the sex ... hangs over society."

In the mid- to late-1800's, an anti-Mormon polemic arose that drew comparisons between Joseph Smith and Muhammed. There were three main points to this critique, that both prophets were opportunistic impostors, that both promulgated a faulty theology, and that both indulged in sensual delights, i.e., polygamy. Many polemical writings of the time actually cast Islam in a more positive light than Mormonism, acknowledging the role of "Mahomet" in improving the lot of the lowly and uncivilized Arabs.

One of the underpinnings of religious authority in the Islamic world is the regulation of sex and gender. Governments are often judged as to their "Islamicness," in the eyes of both outsiders and Muslims themselves, by the extent to which they enforce dress codes, penalize sex crimes, and encourage traditional gender roles. This would all be well and good, but it turns out to be counterproductive; while the imposition of certain rules in Islamic law, like the penalty against acts of homosexuality for instance, or the enforcement of Islamically-based norms, like the wearing of hijab or the separation of the genders is intended to preserve the god-consciousness of society and improve the overall moral standards of the community, the effect is quite the opposite. In the countries where these traditional religious norms are most strictly enforced, the incidence of homosexuality is vastly higher than in countries that have no such rules or norms. The social pressures against extramarital sexuality cause social absurdities to take place, like the prevalence of hymen reconstruction surgery, or the replacement of premarital anal sex for premarital vaginal sex.