inFusioN

Bismillahirrahmanirrahim,

I was on the road the other day, looking at beautiful Gothic cathedrals and castles in the countryside, whilst taking a short break from my revision. A few friends of mine were taking pictures of the scenery and the buildings of surrounding areas when it struck me how obsessed a lot of us are with the form of something rather than the substance of it. Although there is nothing inherently wrong in admiring the form of something, I believe if an exclusively superficial treatment of the object has some shallowness associated with it, and in doing that we are missing out on the more important lessons, hikmah, that can be derived from such an experience.

What we see depends on our own weltanshauung..

Kant famously alluded that we look at the world with rose-tinted sunglasses; from which both shapes our worldview as well as influence it. The same is true when we study and admire a particular object. The first thing that will strike us is the form of the object; its dimensions, its colour, its appearance. Only after that do we usually make a judgment on that object. This judgment will be influenced by our own prejudices, weltanschauung (worldview), interests, bias and intentions. And from this we will abstract what we want from that object, before moving on with our life. This, I believe, is what is the common man does usually, at least from my humble observations.

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Bismillahirrahmanirrahim,

There is a reason for most everything, at least I would like to think so. There’s a reason for the economic downturn, the fall in property prices, the stagnation of demand, the theology of Christians, the spread of Islam, the imperialism of the Khilafah, the suspicion towards Jews. Each and every one of this has a reason, and though we can never be sure exactly what is the true reason, we should at least try to be as fair as possible in finding out what these reasons might be.

Let me try and give an example. A lot of Malay Muslims that I know ridicule Christian theology and say that it is absolutely obvious that it is wrong. Looking at it from an Islamic point of view, it does seem wrong, but the question is should we simply dismiss everything and assume that it is wrong and that these people are dogmatic people who does not follow reason at all? Do we take everything at face value, or do we dig deeper into history, philosophy and theology to truly understand? Or do we not care as long as we have our religion?

Should there be change? What do we mean by change? Why?

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Bismillahirrahmanirrahim,

I wanted to discuss this since it seemed interesting especially because the Protestant movement has been quite crucial to the development of modern liberal ideologies (as Gobetti would have had it, at least. c.f. On Liberal Revolution). Apparently, all the milestones in the Lutherian movement up till the peace of Augsburg (after he nailed the 95 theses against the Catholic church on the doors of the Wittenberg in Germany) has been won partly due to incursions made by the Turks in the time of Sulaiman the Magnificient. Since there are small kingdoms in the in Germany, whose head was supposedly the Holy Roman Emperor, the invasion by the Turks in Hungary (remember that they did capture Budapest) had put pressure on the Holy Roman empire to levy more troops. Then, there are more mercenaries (freelancers; lance for hire, hence the modern term) then regular troops (or a standing army), the emperor need more money to pay them. This give some sort of leverage to the smaller kingdoms making up the Holy Roman empire and because some of them supported the Reformation due to political or religious reasons, this gave the Reformers some power to demand recognition from the state.

Martin Luther, the man who started the Reformation

I am not talking about the Reformation in England and Henry VIII and his successors, that is quite complex since it involved Scotland, Spain and Rome. But if what is said here is true, then contrary to what people might think, the Turkish influence over the Mediterranean (which was called the Mare Nostrum (Latin: Our Sea) in Roman times) has had a huge impact to the modern weltanschauung , what we call worldview. If that is indeed the case, then perhaps it is wise for us to re-evaluate the influence and contribution of the Muslim medieval world to shaping today’s world.

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Bismillahirrahmanirrahim,

Its been a while since I updated this blog, mainly due to my own intellectual inactivity and I apologize for that. That is over with, I would like to outline reasons why I would discuss something and how I discuss it. The first premise is more of a reminder to myself since the reasons and niat of something might change with time, so I would like my fellow friends to point out irregularities in my own position should they find it.

What do we ultimately want?

Anyways, I would like to think that the reasons for any discussion is to find the Truth. I do not believe that we will know the Truth when we found it, but rather, we might inch closer to the Truth by the processes of discussion and dialectics. Hence, I am a bit opposed to debating in the sense that debates are conducted in order to find a winner. I myself am not a debater, so I would not know the inside story of all these debates. But I would rather have a dialectic rather than a debate, when theses and anti theses are put forwards so that we can evaluate which one opinion has the stronger claim to the Truth. For those who have no clue what dialectics are, according to the OS X dictionary, it means the art of investigating or discussing the truth of opinions. This method have been used in philosophy throughout the centuries, notables being Marx, Hegel, Al-Ghazali, Ibn Rush, the ancient Greeks etc. One might wonder what makes Truth so valuable, indeed, it might not seem so very favourable since it might put us in a disadvantaged position in social terms because humans are, after all, rarely consistent, but that is exactly the point.

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Bismillahirrahmanirrahim,

There was a discussion on the idea of collective guilt that me and my friends undertook which I thought was interesting. I’ll put it up here.

How do we think of the issue?

Hamedullah:

“Do you know anything about the topic above? Have been hearing this too often lately. Am looking for sources other than wikipedia : )”

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Bismillahirrahmanirrahim, After a long period of excessive relaxation, finally I managed to finished reading what I had intended to read in 3 books; Islam and Secularism by Prof Naquib Al Attas, Meditations on First Philosophy by Rene Descartes and Universe or Multiverse, as well as the weekly self-proclaimed capitalist magazine The Economist that I subscribe, though those are always works in progress. As of now, the book that I have in my hand is Nigel Warburton’s Philosophy the Classics:

The book that is in my bag as of now

This book is good for light reading. It gives a summary of the great books in Western philosophy and focusses on ideas which are worth discussing. For those interested in a cursory reading of Western philosophy, I would recommend this book. The other book that I am looking forwards to reading is Bertrand Russel’s Problems of Philosophy:

Not exactly the edition on my bookshelf, but this will do.

This book seems rather interesting, and since I think I can finish Nigel’s book relatively fast (it really isn’t that complex), I am hoping to start on Russel’s book within 2 weeks time. There has been a lot of interesting developments around the world and I can’t make up my mind as to what to think of them, especially on the Obama question. I suppose I will write about them when something big really happens.

Wallahua’lam

Bismillahirrahmanirrahim,

It is a bit odd, this Kuala Terengganu by-election, though not unexpected. It is quite reasonable to expect that both parties will address the issue of hudud that has been raised time and again before this in Malaysia, and use their own interpretation of what it means to serve the Muslims in their religion. Now, I do not want to go into that; haven’t read too much about it, but what I do want to speak about is something rather obvious and I do fear that I am merely wasting my time in writing this.

What is the purpose of life?

What I first want to do is realign people’s misconceptions, or rather, the things that are not usually said when people talk and discuss about matters regarding hudud and Islamic fatwas. The writings that I encounter would usually be sympathetic or hostile without a lot of ground in between, and yet in these writings, there are usually worldviews and assumptions that are implicit but not discussed (either that or I am deeply mistaken).

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Bismillahirrahmanirrahim,

The recent attack on Gaza has rekindled past horrors and sentiments as well as humanitarian concerns for the people in Palestine. Most of the people I know and I read off would be saddened by the circumstances, and blame the world or Israel and America for everything that happened. And then there seem to be a sigh saying that “as a student / person I can’t do much. I can only pray and hope that everything will be okay”. For one, I disagree with this statement absolutely and I do think (surprisingly) that we need to be pragmatic in these matters.

A man carrying a child in the aftermath of the attack

The reason I say this is quite simple, and most people will recognize what is being said here. However, I do think such a defeatist position is unhealthy for the crisis, which I think needs to be treated first and foremost as a humanitarian crisis, and we need to start to be less reactive and start thinking of how to be proactive in our communities to make real change. And do remember, change does not come at once; time is needed for things to take place, but that does not mean that we should not do anything about it.

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Bismillahirrahmanirrahim,

It was rather of curious, my trip to Malta is. For one, no one seems to know where it is and how big it is. It is south of Sicily, north of Libya and north east of Tunisia. It constitute of a number of Island, the largest of which is Malta itself, followed by its sister island, Gozo. Malta is an interesting country, and yet it seems that many of my friends seem to neglect it, for reasons I know not. But let us first review Malta’s history in brief. This is by no means comprehensive, and do take the time to read some of the things that is said here.

Present day Malta, overlooking Birgu / Vittriossa

Malta, being in the middle of the Mediterranean as it is, has been quite important in the history of mankind. It was first colonized by man more than 7000 years ago whose by people whose existence is felt by their building of great megalithic temples in Malta. This temple building culture was then joined by the Phoenicians, the great sailors of the ancient world, who also founded the city of Carthage, Rome’s greatest enemy. After the fall of the mother city of the Phoenicians, Malta came under the control of Carthage who was then the great power of the Mediterranean and undoubtedly, the masters of the sea. It then transfered to Roman hands after the Punic wars, with a few changing of hands in between. And just to be clear, the term ‘Punic wars’ is used to describe the Roman war with the Carthaginians, who are regarded by the Romans are Phoenicians, although they really didn’t have any allegiance to the mother city (funny, no?)

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Bismillahirrahmanirrahim,

This is something I wrote for my essay assignment. Since the understanding of it is quite low amongst us, I think it is best that I share this.

This is by no means the final truth of things, it is merely a starting point.

Wallahua’lam

“There is another you reading this exact text in another parallel universe”, that is the most popular account of the multiverse that exists in society [27]. The common view is that there are parallel worlds in which everything that can happen happens and that these parallel universes is not causally interacting with one another. This kind of view is certainly counter intuitive, but there seem to be a resurgence in the interest towards the multiverse theory and it seems ever more likely to be a consequence of our current understanding and theories of the universe, rather than being just a metaphysical theory.

The multiverse, quite simply, is a set of universes that is supposed to encompass the whole of reality or. In other words, it is a description of reality that involves more than one universe. The first person to propose this idea seriously was Hugh Everett in his dissertation when he proposed what is now known as the many-worlds interpretation in 1956. [28] When this thesis was published, the physics world hardly took any notice. But as physics progressed, his interpretation came to the fore. With developments of quantum physics, it seems that his interpretation of quantum mechanics, however counter intuitive, seems to be attractive in terms of its consistencies and its logic. Everett’s many worlds has also been developed by many people and there are even theories that suggests the possibility of testing the model.

Hugh Everett, the man who came up with the many-worlds interpretation, Image: http://space.mit.edu/home/tegmarkeverett/

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