Bismillahirrahmanirrahim,

I have gone through a few writings and discussion online regarding political issues in Malaysia and some global issues (such as the bombing of the moon by NASA) these few days and I must say that as a student, I am quite disturbed at how words are used whose meanings are not entirely clear. Some people will moan that since I read some philosophy, it is obvious that I will take this stance, but I think that is missing the point.

The problem is that people, myself included, often times forget that a lot of our conceptions, if not studied, analysed and defined first, might not be entirely clear even in our minds. And yet we use those same words and concepts all the time in our arguments without bothering too much about what it actually means.

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Bismillahirrahmanirrahim,

The tag line of this blog is ‘agreeing to disagree’, and I chose it for a reason. The term seem simple enough to be understood and yet so hard to apply, especially when emotions are running high. Let us try to motivate this discussion more.

I’ll first quote Wikipedia since it’s the easiest way to explain things:

Agree to disagree or “agreeing to disagree” is a phrase in English referring to the resolution of a conflict (usually a debate or quarrel) whereby all parties tolerate but do not accept the opposing position(s). It generally occurs when all sides recognise that further conflict is unnecessary, ineffective or otherwise undesirable. They may also remain on amicable terms while continuing to disagree.

Wikipedia also points out that the alternative phrase of ‘agreeing to differ’ has the advantage of not posing a logical contradiction, but that phrase is not as memorable. Therefore, I will use the original phrase with the above explanation for ease of use.

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Bismillahirrahmanirrahim,

Over these past few weeks, I’ve had a few run-ins with some friends of mine over some matters that are not worth mentioning here. That made me thinking, people (that I know, at least) usually think that if they have justification, they can do whatever they want to do, even if their justification has yet to be examined. It is a rather interesting, to me, since it does show how people work.

Justification

A close friend of mine always complains that he as an outsider should not comment excessively on the workings of an organisation. I always replied by saying that an outsider usually has insights that an insider can never get. After all, any action might be understandable, but it might not be justifiable. An unbiased outsider can usually reason out what’s understandable and what’s justifiable, hence giving a particular action a fairer judgement. Understandable would mean that one is able to understand the reasons as to why a particular person might do something, while justifiable would mean that something can be shown to be reasonable or have adequate grounds for doing it. Hence, one might have a justification for doing something, but if it is inadequate, then it might not be entirely justifiable. Therefore, some actions might be understandable but not justifiable, whilst some might be justifiable but not understandable. For example, it is understandable that Palestinians would want to shoot rockets into Israel, but it might not be entirely justifiable, though perhaps part of the argument might be.

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Bismillahirrahmanirrahim,

I was contemplating a visit to the British Museum whilst walking back from my friends’ house near Little Venice when a thought regarding the issue of how Islam was spread entered my head. As I am no historian and I have not read enough in the matter (and that I was a Muslim), it was pretty clear that whatever analysis (if it can be called that) or thoughts that I have will be mostly educated guesses, at best. So I was rather reluctant to write anything regarding this issue as I fear that it will probably sound apologetic.

The sands of time

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Bismillahirrahmanirrahim,

“Why did you take physics?”

“Why haven’t you travelled Europe?”

“Why do you save so much money?”

“Why do you make things complicated?”

The purpose of life?

These sorts of questions are quite normal, I suppose. A lot of people are asked such questions and the answer will depend on the person who is doing the answering. The ‘why’ question usually inquires as to the reason of an action or incident, and the answer will be as we would expect it to be. And yet, I find it odd that reasoning aren’t always consistent, and in some cases, are so compartmentalized that it would simply seem rather odd to the ardent observer.

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Bismillahirrahmanirrahim,

After an extremely long hiatus, partly due to exams and some issues with accommodation, I have decided to write something shorter, just to get into the mood. The subject in question is ‘objectivity’, which, in my mind, is quite a hard subject. Let us then begin.

Definition are most important when discussing matters such as this, but as with other terms, the definition of objectivity is a contested one. Nonetheless, allow me to define it as Wikipedia.org defined it, as it seems the easiest and clearest definition. According to Wikipedia, then, “a proposition is generally considered to be objectively true when its truth conditions are “mind-independent”—that is, not the result of any judgments made by a conscious entity.” Of course, it is debatable whether or not there is such a thing as a judgement that is independent of a conscious entity. This notion of a ‘view from nowhere’ has been contested since the time of Descartes and has been a persistent criticism on a number of concepts and it has to be said that it is a valid and substantial criticism, but I will not go through them here in detail. To avoid unnecessary complications, I will try to redefine it as ‘a judgement which is least influenced by personal feeling or opinion in considering and representing facts’. Of course, it is not always clear whether or not even that is possible, since any judgement is made within a particular person’s Weltanschauung (worldview), so even with a relatively imprecise definition, we can never be sure that such a thing is possible. But in order to move forwards, let us assume that such a thing is possible as it seems reasonable to me to do so.

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Bismillahirrahmanirrahim,

It has been bothering me for some time and therefore, I will write something in this subject to get my views across. Let me start, then. The article can be found here: http://www.iluvislam.com/v1/readarticle.php?article_id=1829

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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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