I dont think anyone among the Muslims expresses doubt over the sufficiency of the Quran. God is everywhere ("Wheresoever you may look there is the face of God-see 2:115) and it is the Quran which instructs us to be righteous and turn towards God(see 66:8). Why then do you feel that social and...
There is no doubt certainly for Shia/Sunni as well as you put it.
However I assume the routines of your life are conditioned by various social and cultural factors, including the Quran certainly. So it is for Shia/Sunni. Only difference is that in their case, over a period of time these...
I have three points to make:
1. A hadith like the one you cite, or other similar ahadith, lack the interpretive context necessary to situate it properly in the fiqh. A fuller rendition of the report may be found in the Muwatta:
The context is somewhat muddled here, as someone else is...
In my experience, when we study "monotheistic religions" closely we find they are not really monotheistic. Indeed, I believe that this categorization of religions as monotheistic or not is itself flawed and developed out of oversimplified assumptions about the nature of the Everlasting Reality...
The concept of being saved (as you are thinking in the Christian sense) is just not there in Islam. Nor is the concept of the original sin. Instead of a human being in need of being saved, Muslims approach the Everlasting Reality differently. As human beings we are born as perfect human beings...
Reminds me of Rumi's poem:
I died as a mineral and became a plant,
I died as plant and rose to animal,
I died as animal and I was Man.
Why should I fear? When was I less by dying?
Yet once more I shall die as Man, to soar
With angels blest; but even from angelhood
I must pass on: all...
I would like to share an incident about Imam Abu Hanifa's life.
Once, there was a sharp debate between two experts in Islamic law, Imam Abu Hanifa (a Persian) and Imam Shafii (an Arab and Quraysh). Imam Shafii argued that reading surah al-Fatihah in Arabic during prayer is obligatory and salat...
I believe the way is first through the shariat (although it depends on how you interpret its intricacies). Initially condition and surrender your basic nafs (egoistic desires), offer the five canonical prayers, and do supplication, and do basic tenets e.g. charity. This is the beginning.
You...
Indeed he was so in unity with Shams that he named his diwan (collection of poems) as Diwan-e-Shams-e-Tabrizi, as he felt that although outwardly he was the poet, yet the soul in the lines is of Shams Tabrizi and hence Shams Tabrizi is the real poet.
Can you post any of the sources which say that Rama came after Krishna?
In the Mahabharata I have seen references to Rama directly as well. There was the admonishment of Yudhishtra (if I remember correctly) by a sage to his complaint that 13 years in the jungle was a long time and no one had...
As others have pointed out, it is for God to judge ultimately who is what. Quran 22:17 says in effect that ultimately God will judge everyone, regardless of everything. But as per agreement of all virtually a majority of the Muslim scholars/leaders (Amman message) if one believes in the basic...
I think you have a misconception. Madhab deals with jurisprudence and the shariat, Sufism deals with the inner dimension. The majority of those people professing to follow Sufism all follow some school of jurisprudence when it comes to the shariat. The fact that they are also Sufis is something...
Regarding the picture on the right of the section you are interested in, I think it might not convey the correct idea. The Shia tradition and the Sunni folds are two basic divisions, but there are a myriad of ideas existing within them which combine together in many ways. Like a Sunni Muslim can...
To say that a religion is non-Abrahamic/Abrahamic is itself a Western concept which developed comparatively late. In reality none of these religions projected themselves as such and this categorization itself is faulty. Islam categorically projects itself as universal in many places in the Quran.
I think you should take it on a country by country basis. In some countries you would find no religious freedom(Maldives, Saudi Arabia) and in some you would find a lot(Turkey, Malaysia).