Hold fast to the Rope of Allah, all together, and be not divided. (Qur’an, 3:103)
Surely, those who have made divisions in their religion and turned into factions, you have nothing to do with them. Their case rests with Allah; then He will inform them of what they used to do. (Qur’an, 6:159)
In light of the Divine Word, we recognize that the historical nature of Sunni Islam is a broad one that proceeds from a shared respect for the Qur’an and Sunnah, a shared dependence on the interpretations and derivations of the Companions (may Allah be pleased with them), and a shared respect for the writings of a vast array of scholars who have been identified by their support for and affiliation with the Sunni Muslims and have been accepted as the luminaries of Sunni Islam – as broadly defined.
Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist (London: Penguin, 2007) is a little gem of a novel. It is the story of Changez, a Pakistani from an old Lahori family fallen on genteel poverty, who goes to America to get a good education and make money. It is a tale of enchantment followed by disenchantment. Changez wins [...]
It was sad to hear of the passing away of Robert Jordan on 16th September, whose Wheel of Time series was a modern, if flawed, fantasy masterpiece. The series had captured the imagination of a generation, selling some thirty million copies and was translated into twenty languages.
Of course literary critics are usually sniffy about popular [...]
Herman Melville (1819-1891), the American novelist, essayist and poet, from his vantage point of the nineteenth century, speculated about America’s future role in the world. He defined two faces that America could show to the world:
Intrepid, unprincipled, reckless, predatory, with boundless ambition, civilized in externals but a savage at heart, America is, or may yet [...]
