WHEN Ibn Sa’ud’s illiterate tribesmen, the half-naked Bedouin ikhwan, butchered 4,000 inhabitants of Taif in the 18th century and ransacked its libraries, they used the leather covers of the vandalised holy books to make sandals. Whipped up by the angry theology of the Najdi cleric, Ibn ‘Abd ul-Wahhab, Ibn Sa’ud’s[…]
THE op-ed (Cape Argus, 17 August) by Ben Levitas, chairman of the Cape Council of the South African Zionist Federation, alleges that South Africa’s foreign policy is now unfairly, if not irrationally, singling out Israel as an international pariah state. However, his argument for “balance” on the question of Israel,[…]
THE other day a listener rebuked me on the station’s SMS line for expressing disgust that a local nashid group had been pulled off stage at a festival in Gauteng, in spite of the group having a contract from a Muslim impresario to perform at the event. Apparently it was[…]
JABL NUR – the Mount of Light on which the Rasullulah (SAW) received his first Revelation on 27 Ramadan – is a sweaty climb for the modern pilgrim. For the hardy Arabs of the pre-Islamic Hijaz, it was a gentle walk. Before Islam, Ramadan was not a holy month. But[…]
WE all knew him as “Doctor” but he was a Shaikh of the Qadiriyyah Sufi Order in a written chain (which I have in my possession) extending from Madinah to India. I first met “Doctor” Ya’qub Jaffer of Claremont in the turbulent 1980’s when I embraced Islam at the hands[…]
THE other day I was asked in a radio interview whether South African youth, frustrated by lack of opportunity and the politics of party privilege, would ever rise up against authority like the generations of the 1970’s and 1980’s. It was an interesting question, asked against the background of the[…]
FOR the 40-year old son of Abdullah, a member of the noble Quraish tribe, his annual month-long retreat in a mountain cave outside the city of Mecca had been a puzzling one. During his meditative sojourn on this lonely desert peak he’d heard voices saying: “peace upon you, O Exalted[…]
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