Out Of Africa

"Karen, I am with you because I choose to be with you. I don't want to live someone else's idea of how to live. Don't ask me to do that. I don't want to find out one day that I am at the end of someone else's life. I am willing to pay for mine - to be lonely sometimes, to die alone if I have to"

... Out Of Africa

We Live, As We Dream ... Alone

"Do you see him? Do you see the story? Do you see anything? It seems I am trying to tell you a dream -- making a vain attempt, because no relation of a dream can convey the dream-sensation, that commingling of absurdity, surprise, and bewilderment in a tremor of struggling revolt, that notion of being captured by the incredible which is the very essence of dreams"

"It is impossible to convey the life-sensation of any given epoch of one's existence -- that which makes its truth, its meaning -- its subtle and penetrating essence. It is impossible. We live, as we dream -- alone"

... Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad

Shall I Compare Thee To A Summer's Day?

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate.

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,

And summer's lease hath all too short a date.

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,

And often is his gold complexion dimmed;

And every fair from fair sometime declines,

By chance, or nature's changing course untrimmed.

But thy eternal summer shall not fade

Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st;

Nor shall death brag thou wand'rest in his shade,

When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st,

So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,

So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

... Sonnet 18, William Shakespeare

Singleness of Passion

"Difference of object does not alter singleness of passion. It merely intensifies it.

We can have in life but one great experience at best, and the secret of life is to reproduce that experience as often as possible"

... The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde

May You Never Steal, Lie Or Cheat

“May you never steal, lie or cheat.

But if you have to steal, then steal away my sorrows.

If you have to lie, then lie with me all the nights of our life.

If you have to cheat, then cheat death because I don’t want to live a day without you”

... Leap Year

Restoring the Shari'a?

Thus, the traditional jurists operated within a self-sufficient system in which practice, hermeneutics, and positive legal doctrine were conjoined to produce the legal culture, which largely defined their world. Practice stood in a dialectical relationship with doctrine, informing it and by which it was informed. Practice also formed an integral part of interpretation and was by no means a mere tail-end of a process, a funnel through which justice was disposed. The legal practitioners and jurists constituted likewise an epistemic community, which was systematically engaged on a hermeneutical level. Their practice was both pragmatic and discursive and was the direct result of a legal tradition that bound them with the authoritative demands of doctrine and continuity. Their present was primarily the last moment pf a historical tradition, integral to and inseparable from it. When a qadi or a mufti adjudicated a case or a question, his engagement epitomized at once horizontal and vertical fields of synchronic and historic legal activity: it brought into play 1) the hermeneutical presuppositions of legal theory and methodology and the exegetical arsenal associated with it throughout centuries of refinement and evolution; 2) the principles of positive law, which had been constructed as part of the founders' authority, which in turn was seen as the founding principle of the school as a doctrinal entity; 3) the aggregate but diverse body of knowledge generated by the authoritative figures of the school in the interpretation of these principles; and 4) the reception of these interpretations by the community of jurists within the school, a reception determined by the extent of the interpretive applications in the social, mundane order.

The coming into play of these diachronic and synchronic elements was integrated into other parts of juristic and pedagogical experiences: The qadi or the mufti (or any legal professional for that matter) engaged himself, at one and the same time, in a tradition in which 1) he acquired legal education through the method of "closed texts," which, together with the ijaza (license) system, constituted a fundamentally different sort of training from that which the modern law school offered; 2) he was apprenticed, during and after his graduate study, in shari'a courts where doctrine met practice and where the imposing intellectualism of the law collided, but was always synthesized, with the reality of society and judicial practice; 3) the religious ethic was the sole dominating force and the final arbiter of legal legitimacy; 4) the entire juristic (doctrinal) and judicial enterprise was thoroughly supported by financially and administratively self-sufficient and independent institutions; and 5) the authority of the jurist was individualistic and exclusively personal (ijtihadic).

None of these elements continues to exist in the modern legal systems of Muslim countries, and what remains of the traditional system, as we have already said, are remnants of mutilated doctrine patched up in a disparate and methodologically deficient manner. Even if we submit that these remnants are faithful to the Islamic ethos as it stands nowadays - which we do not -they are, by virtue of their displacement and organic disconnection from the erstwhile dynamic and vibrant school tradition, incapable of further development and change, at least not so in a systematic and coherent manner; on the one hand, they have lost their methodological, hermeneutical, practice-based, and institutional connection with the Islamic legal tradition. If the name furu' (branches) is to be taken in any real sense, as it well may be, then their stem, through which they are literally nourished, no longer survives. On the other hand, they have been systematically alienated from the modernist legal system, and their disconnection from it is equally obvious.

To put our argument more plainly, in order to rejuvenate the entire traditional system - in its founding principles, axioms, hermeneutics, and financial, educational, and madhhab institutions - it would be required that Islamic law be more than a dead "branch." And this, in light of the intractable and well-nigh irreversible modernity and its imperatives, is a manifest impossibility. Since traditional shari'a can surely be said to have gone without return, the question that poses itself therefore is: Can a form of Islamic law be created from within or without the ruins of the old system?

... Can the Shari'ah be Restored?, Wael Hallaq

Shari'a & Ijtihad

Any understanding of the Shari’a is always the product of ijtihad, in the general sense that reasoning and reflection by human beings are ways of understanding the meanings of the Qur’an and Sunna of the Prophet. But in the process of development of Shari’a during the second and third centuries of Islam, this term was defined and limited by Muslim scholars in two ways. First, they determined that ijtihad can be exercised only in matters that are not governed by the categorical texts (nass qat’i) of the Qur’an and Sunna. This is a logical proposition, but it not only assumes that Muslims agree on which texts are relevant to a particular issue and on how to interpret those texts, but also deems that whatever consensus was achieved over these matters in the past is permanent. Second, early Muslim scholars specified detailed requirements for a person to be accepted as qualified to exercise ijtihad (mujtahid), as well as in the manner in which ijtihad can be exercised. But even the very definition of the term or qualification needed by the scholar who can exercise this role is necessarily the product of human reasoning and judgment. So why should that human process preclude subsequent reconsideration?

Determinations about whether or not any text (nass) of the Qur’an or Sunna applies to an issue, whether or not it is categorical (qat’i), and who can exercise ijtihad and how are all matters that can be decided only through human reasoning and judgment. It therefore follows that imposing prior censorship on such efforts violates the premise of how Shari’a can be derived from the Qur’an and Sunna. It is illogical to say that ijtihad cannot be exercised regarding any issue or question, because that determination itself is the product of human reasoning and reflection. It is also dangerous to limit the ability to exercise ijtihad to a restricted group of Muslims who is supposed to have specific qualities, because in practice that will depend on those human beings who set the criteria and select a person as a qualified mujtahid. To concede this authority to any institution or group, whether it is official or not is dangerous, because that power will likely be manipulated for political or other reasons. The fact that knowing and upholding Shari’a is the permanent and inescapable responsibility of every Muslim means that no human being or institution should control this process. The power to decide who is qualified to exercise ijtihad and how it is to be exercised is part of the religious belief and obligation of every Muslim. Any restriction of free debate by entrusting human beings or institutions with the authority to decide which views are to be allowed or suppressed is inconsistent with the religious nature of Shari’a itself. This reasoning is one of the main Islamic foundations I propose for safeguarding constitutionalism, human rights, and citizenship for all…

The principle of consensus apparently acted as a unifying force during the second and third centuries of Islam by drawing the substantive content of Sunni schools together, diminishing the scope of creative new thinking through ijtihad. The commonly held view is that there was a gradual decrease in the role of creative juridical reasoning (the so-called closing of the gate of ijtihad) on the assumption that Shari’a had already been fully and exhaustively elaborated. Whether there was a closing of the gate of ijtihad or not is the subject of debate among historians (Hallaq 1984). But it is clear that there has not been any change in the basic structure and methodology of Shari’a since the tenth century, although practical adaptations continued in limited scope and locations. That rigidity was probably necessary for maintaining the stability of the system during the decline, and sometimes breakdown, of the social and political institutions of Islamic societies. However, from an Islamic point of view, no human authority was or is entitled to declare that ijtihad is not permitted, though there may have been consensus on this matter among Muslims. There is nothing, therefore, to prevent the emergence of a new consensus that ijtihad should be freely exercised to meet the new needs and aspirations of Islamic societies. The purpose of the proposal presented here is to secure the political, social, and intellectual space for debate and reformation, not to prescribe a particular approach to that debate. The essentially religious nature of Shari’a and its focus on regulating the relationship between God and human believers mean that believers can neither abdicate nor delegate their responsibility. No human institution can be religious in this sense, even when it claims to apply or enforce the principles of Shari’a. In other words, the state and all its institutions are by definition secular and not religious, regardless of claims to the contrary.

... Islam and the Secular State: Negotiating the Future of Shari'a, Abdullahi Ahmad an-Na’im

Ode To A Nightingale

My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains

My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,

Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains

One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:

'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,

But being too happy in thine happiness,

That thou, light-wingèd Dryad of the trees,

In some melodious plot

Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,

Singest of summer in full-throated ease.

O for a draught of vintage! that hath been

Cool'd a long age in the deep-delvèd earth,

Tasting of Flora and the country-green,

Dance, and Provençal song, and sunburnt mirth!

O for a beaker full of the warm South!

Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,

With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,

And purple-stainèd mouth;

That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,

And with thee fade away into the forest dim:

Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget

What thou among the leaves hast never known,

The weariness, the fever, and the fret

Here, where men sit and hear each other groan;

Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last grey hairs,

Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies;

Where but to think is to be full of sorrow

And leaden-eyed despairs;

Where beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,

Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow.

Away! away! for I will fly to thee,

Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards,

But on the viewless wings of Poesy,

Though the dull brain perplexes and retards:

Already with thee! tender is the night,

And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne,

Cluster'd around by all her starry Fays

But here there is no light,

Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown

Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways.

I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,

Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,

But, in embalmèd darkness, guess each sweet

Wherewith the seasonable month endows

The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild;

White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine;

Fast-fading violets cover'd up in leaves;

And mid-May's eldest child,

The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,

The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.

Darkling I listen; and, for many a time

I have been half in love with easeful Death,

Call'd him soft names in many a musèd rhyme,

To take into the air my quiet breath;

Now more than ever seems it rich to die,

To cease upon the midnight with no pain,

While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad

In such an ecstasy!

Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain—

To thy high requiem become a sod.

Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!

No hungry generations tread thee down;

The voice I hear this passing night was heard

In ancient days by emperor and clown:

Perhaps the self-same song that found a path

Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,

She stood in tears amid the alien corn;

The same that ofttimes hath

Charm'd magic casements, opening on the foam

Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.

Forlorn! the very word is like a bell

To toll me back from thee to my sole self!

Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well

As she is famed to do, deceiving elf.

Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades

Past the near meadows, over the still stream,

Up the hill-side; and now 'tis buried deep

In the next valley-glades:

Was it a vision, or a waking dream?

Fled is that music: - do I wake or sleep?

... John Keats

Bright Star

Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art –

Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night

And watching, with eternal lids apart,

Like nature’s patient, sleepless Eremite,

The moving waters at their priestlike task

Of pure ablution round earth’s human shores,

Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask

Of snow upon the mountains and the moors –

No – yet still steadfast, still unchangeable,

Pillow’d upon my fair love’s ripening breast,

To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,

Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,

Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,

And so live ever – or else swoon to death.

... John Keats (1795-1818)

Salafi and Sufi

"If Salafis are calling you a Sufi and Sufis are calling you a Salafi,

then you are in a good place to be"

... Hamza Yusuf Hanson

But In Ourselves

The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,

But in ourselves, that we are underlings.

... Julius Caesar, William Shakespeare

Whoever Brought Me Here Will Have To Take Me Home

All day I think about it,

then at night I say it.

"Where did I come from,

and what am I supposed to be doing?"

I have no idea.

My soul is from elsewhere,

I'm sure of that.

This drunkenness

began in some other tavern.

When I get back around to that place,

I'll be completely sober.

Meanwhile, I'm like a bird

from another continent, siting in this aviary.

The day is coming when I fly off,

but who is it now in my ear, who hears my voice?

Who says words with my mouth?

Who looks out with my eyes? What is the soul?

I cannot stop asking.

If I could taste one sip of an answer,

I could break out of this prison for drunks.

I didn't come here of my own accord, and I can't leave that way.

Whoever brought me here will have to take me Home.

... Mevlana Rumi

For Nothing

Earth a flower

A phlox on the steep

slopes of light

hanging over the vast

solid spaces

small rotten crystals;

salts.

Earth a flower

by a gulf where a raven

flaps by once

a glimmer, a color

forgotten as all

falls away.

A flower

for nothing;

an offer;

no taker;

Snow-trickle, feldspar, dirt.

... Turtle Island, Gary Snyder

Made A Beggar Of Me ...

A beggar smiled at me and offered me alms,

In a dream last night, my heart sprang with delight.

His beauty and grace which shone from his tattered,

Presence took me by storm until I woke at dawn.

His poverty was riches, it covered my body in silk.

In that dream I heard the beckoning sighs of lovers.

I heard soft cries of agonized joy saying: "Take this,

Drink and be complete!" I saw before me a ring,

Jeweled in poverty and then it nested on my ear.

From the root of my surging soul a hundred tremors,

Rose as I was taken and pinned down by the surging sea.

The heaven groaned with bliss and made a beggar of me.

... Mevlana Rumi

Butterflies

I almost wish we were butterflies and liv'd but three summer days - three such days with you I could fill with more delight than fifty common years could ever contain ...

... John Keats

Make Me Pure

Garden Of Love

I laid me down upon a bank,

Where Love lay sleeping;

I heard among the rushes dank

Weeping, weeping.

Then I went to the heath and the wild,

To the thistles and thorns of the waste;

And they told me how they were beguiled,

Driven out, and compelled to the chaste.

I went to the Garden of Love,

And saw what I never had seen;

A Chapel was built in the midst,

Where I used to play on the green.

And the gates of this Chapel were shut

And "Thou shalt not," writ over the door;

So I turned to the Garden of Love

That so many sweet flowers bore.

And I saw it was filled with graves,

And tombstones where flowers should be;

And priests in black gowns were walking their rounds,

And binding with briars my joys and desires.

... William Blake

Only To The Door

Belief brings me close to You:

but only to the door.

It is only by disappearing into

Your mystery

that I will come in.

... Hakim Sanā'ī Ghaznavi

Where Is The Life We Have Lost In Living?

'where is the life we have lost in living?
where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
where is the knowledge we have lost in information?'

... T S Eliot

As If We Never Said Goodbye

But Still Bless Me Anyway...

"Nothing's lost forever. In this world, there is a kind of painful progress. Longing for what we've left behind, and dreaming ahead"

"I've lived through such terrible times and there are people who live through much worse. But you see them living anyway. When they're more spirit than body, more sores than skin, when they're burned and in agony, when flies lay eggs in the corners of the eyes of their children - they live. Death usually has to take life away. I don't know if that's just the animal. I don't know if it's not braver to die, but I recognize the habit; the addiction to being alive. So we live past hope. If I can find hope anywhere, that's it, that's the best I can do. It's so much not enough. It's so inadequate. But still bless me anyway. I want more life"

... Angels In America, Tony Kushner

Live Like We're Dying

Our hearts are hungry for a food that won’t come

And we could make a feast from these crumbs

And we’re all staring down the barrel of a gun

So if your life flashed before you, what would you wish you would’ve done?

Well, if your plane fell out of the skies

Who would you call with your last goodbyes?

Should be so careful who we left out of our lives

And when we long for absolution, there’ll be no one on the line

Yeah… we gotta start lookin’ at the hands of the time we’ve been given here

If this is all we got then we gotta start thinking

If every second count on a clock that’s ticking

Gotta live like we’re dying

We only got 86 400 seconds in a day

To turn it all around or to throw it all away

We gotta tell ‘em that we love ‘em while we got the chance to say,

Gotta live like we’re dying

Cinema Paradiso: Love Theme

For The Sake Of Those In Need

It was Mary's painful need that made the infant Jesus

begin to speak from the cradle.

Whatever grew has grown for the sake of those in need,

so that a seeker might find the thing he sought.

If God Most High has created the heavens,

He has created them for the purpose of satisfying needs.

Wherever a pain is, that's where the cure goes.

wherever poverty is, that's where provision goes.

Wherever a difficult question is,

that's where the answer goes;

wherever a ship is, water goes to it.

Don't seek the water; increase your thirst,

so water may gush forth from above and below.

Until the tender-throated babe is born,

how should the milk for it

flow from the mother's breast?

... Mathnawi, Mevlana Rumi

The Scarlet Letter

"Who is to say what is a sin

in God's eyes?"

"How close they are,

love and hate.

We're no less bound by one

than the other"

... The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne

The Twilight Saga: New Moon

"Nothing lingered here. Nothing more than the memories that I could have called back whenever I wanted to, if I was ever willing to endure the corresponding pain—the pain that had me now, had me cold. There was nothing special about this place without him. I wasn't exactly sure what I'd hoped to feel here, but the meadow was empty of atmosphere, empty of everything, just like everything else"

"As much as I struggled not to think of him, I did not struggle to forget. I worried—late in the night, when the exhaustion of sleep deprivation broke down my defenses—that it was all slipping away. That my mind was a sieve, and I would someday not be able to remember the precise color of his eyes, the feel of his cool skin, or the texture of his voice. I could not think of them, but I must remember them. Because there was just one thing that I had to believe to be able to live—I had to know that he existed. That was all. Everything else I could endure. So long as he existed"

"Before you, Bella, my life was like a moonless night. Very dark, but there were stars—points of light and reason... And then you shot across my sky like a meteor. Suddenly everything was on fire; there was brilliancy, there was beauty. When you were gone, when the meteor had fallen over the horizon, everything went black. Nothing had changed, but my eyes were blinded by the light. I couldn't see the stars anymore. And there was no more reason for anything"

"After all the thousand times I’ve told you I love you, how could you let one word break your faith in me? I could see it in your eyes, that you honestly believed that I didn’t want you anymore"

Sophie's Choice

The film that made me love Meryl Streep for the first time, and after all these years, still remain one of the best movies ever.

I Could Not Stop For Death

Because I could not stop for Death,

He kindly stopped for me;

The carriage held but just ourselves

And Immortality.

We slowly drove, he knew no haste,

And I had put away

My labor, and my leisure too,

For his civility.

We passed the school, where children strove

At recess, in the ring;

We passed the fields of gazing grain,

We passed the setting sun.

Or rather, he passed us;

The dews grew quivering and chill,

For only gossamer my gown,

My tippet only tulle.

We paused before a house that seemed

A swelling of the ground;

The roof was scarcely visible,

The cornice but a mound.

Since then 'tis centuries, and yet each

Feels shorter than the day

I first surmised the horses' heads

Were toward eternity.

... Emily Dickinson

There Is A Holiness To The Heart's Affections...

"A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:

Its loveliness increases; it will never

Pass into nothingness"

"I am certain of nothing but of the holiness of the heart's affections and the truth of imagination - what the imagination seizes as beauty must be truth - whether it existed before or not - for I have the same idea of all our passions as of love: they are all, in their sublime, creative of essential beauty"

"For myself I know not how to express my devotion to so fair a form: I want a brighter word than bright, a fairer word than fair. I almost wish we were butterflies and liv'd but three summer days—three such days with you I could fill with more delight than fifty common years could ever contain"

“I had such a dream last night. I was floating above the trees, with my lips connected to that of a beautiful figure”

"Was it a vision, or a waking dream?

Fled is that music: - Do I wake or sleep?"

"Here Lies One Whose Name Was Writ In Water"

... John Keats (1795-1821)

I love Keats ...

I Am Vertical

But I would rather be horizontal.

I am not a tree with my root in the soil

Sucking up minerals and motherly love

So that each March I may gleam into leaf,

Nor am I the beauty of a garden bed

Attracting my share of Ahs and spectacularly painted,

Unknowing I must soon unpetal.

Compared with me, a tree is immortal

And a flower-head not tall, but more startling,

And I want the one’s longevity and the other’s daring.

Tonight, in the infinitesimal light of the stars,

The trees and flowers have been strewing their cool odors.

I walk among them, but none of them are noticing.

Sometimes I think that when I am sleeping

I must most perfectly resemble them—

Thoughts gone dim.

It is more natural to me, lying down.

Then the sky and I are in open conversation,

And I shall be useful when I lie down finally:

Then the trees may touch me for once, and the flowers have time for me.

... Sylvia Plath