Contentions 5




4.     Political Islam? It would be a good idea.

5.     Because of self there is suffering.

6.     De coeli: alterities are only nominal. De terrae: realities are only nominal.

7.     Terrorism is to jihad what adultery is to marriage.

8.     Truth is stronger than faction.

9.     Formalism is an excuse.

10.    Exoterism offers only literalism or liberalism.

11.    The idolator is he who takes symbols literally.

12.    Against Urizen’s shield, bullet points avail more than the sword.

13.    After the khalaf there is only the Mahdi.

14.    Culture builds the ceiling of religion higher.

15.    Beware the word that is an excuse for not making dhikr.

16.    Compliance is no excuse for strictness.


18.    Literalism is defensible on all levels save the sacred.


20.    The failures of exoterism are not usually the victories of esoterism.

21.    True humanism: the Real is known only through mu‘amala.

22.    Exoterism cannot see that nothing is strong enough to limit His self-disclosures.


24.    Paradise is occupied mainly by the stupid and the Sufis.


26.    Uncertainty is only superficial.

27.    Modernity: the nuclear winter of the Reformation.

28.    A madhhab is a grammar of the Law.


30.    Scripture provides the consonants, and culture the vowels, of a sacred civilisation.

31.    Being hard is the soft option.

32.    The existence of God is proven by existence. The existence of existence is proven by the one for whom it exists.


34.    Detachment from the need to conform is perfect only when it yields perfect conformity.


36.    Without the batin, the zahir is an idol.

37.    The lower cannot cause the higher, but it can be adequate to receive it.

38.    Only those who dislike formalism can bear it.


40.    Those that sell Tornadoes shall reap the whirlwind.


42.    The Prophet carries all of great Islam.

43.    Les Lumiéres? Mais nous sommes la derriére-garde!

44.    Liberals make mercy colder than justice.

45.    A god is any site of independent volition.

46.    The Sutra is a zunnar. The Sura is for the ahrar. (‘Say: my Lord enjoins justice.’)

47.    The impermanent cannot be devoid of suffering.

48.    The internal, not the external, reaches the eternal.

49.    The formalist is the corpse of an angel.

50.    Modernity: ‘a world full of Christian ideas gone mad.’ (Chesterton.)

51.    Prayer shows us what we truly desire.

52.    Never trust a leadership position you find convenient.

53.    Popular culture dwells in deep pockets.

54.    Tajdid involves liposuction, not resurrection.

55.    The zulf is the truth of the Self. The Dhat is the truth of the That.

56.    The Liber Asian trumped the Manu mission.

57.    Morality means more-reality.

58.    Modern Islam: triumphalism without a triumph.

59.    It is better to flourish as a second-class citizen than to be threatened as an equal.

60.    Conformity can be more radical than alienation.

61.    Jahiliyya is ‘knowing no other way’.

62.    Fiqh is a sword for Theotormon.

63.    Stridharma? Allahu astar. Karma? Allahu akram.

64.    Only the sage has the right to be spontaneous.

65.    Inequality is from the nafs alone.

66.    Do not number fiqh among your worldly concerns.


68.    Error is its own punishment.

69.    To claim that beauty is decadence is decadence.

70.    The Affective to the Traditional: the Mosaic becomes a mosaic.


72.    The body cannot overcome the nafs, because the nafs is bigger than it.

73.    Formalism: to esteem his fingers over his soul.



76.    The true king admits the beggar first.

77.    Let us pray, O Lord.


79.    Ijma‘ records unity in order to supply it.

80.    Truth is proven in the diversity of saints.

81.    The body exists that we might grow wings.

82.    Nothing is difficult, except in our thoughts.


84.    Maimonides showed that Jesus was indeed a redeemer.

85.    The shallow always dries up.

86.    The last was also the comprehensive.

87.    The world has shrunk, but so have we.

88.    Tawakkul: the lock, as well as the key, is a revelation.

89.    Only the Liber Asian can free Oothoon from Bromion.

90.    Despair is the only grounds for despair.


92.    Today it is hard to achieve zuhd through poverty.

93.    Levinas offers only juda’-ism. (‘Ma be-falak bude-im …’)

94.    That anima came from Amina. That harth brought forth the heart.

95.    Warm the hearth, that there might be gratefulness.



98.    Bassa Selim always gets the loudest cheers. (‘Save him that comes to God with a sound heart.’)

99.    If you seek light, avoid the narrow view.

100.  The ahl al-hadith have only four madhhabs.