Before modern times, sharia-mindedness played a much more limited role among Muslims than it does today. No doubt jurists devoted a great deal of effort to writing books on the fine points of law, and theologians dedicated their lives to investigating the mysteries of the divine nature. But these were...

I said in my last post that Islamic thought divides human beauty into two basic sorts, innate and acquired.

Innate beauty is the harmonious balance of the entire range of divine attributes present in the human substance, such as life, consciousness, desire, power, speech, compassion, justice and kindness. Acquired...

Islamic texts typically begin talk of God's love by citing the Quranic verse, "He loves them" (5:54), which is to say that God loves human beings. God's love is enough to show that people are beautiful, for "God is beautiful and He loves beauty." Human beauty, however, is of two...

Anyone with the vaguest knowledge of Islamic culture knows that it has produced extraordinary works of art and architecture -- Persian miniatures, the Taj Mahal, the Alhambra. Few are aware, however, that this rich artistic heritage is firmly rooted in a worldview that highlights love and beauty.

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Acquaintances of mine who have participated in recent dialogues between Christian and Muslim theologians, such as those organized by A Common Word, report that one of the biggest misunderstandings shown by Christian theologians is the notion that Islam has little or nothing to say about love.

One...

"God is love," the New Testament teaches, and Muslim theologians would respond, "But of course." The problem is that we are not God. As Jesus said, "Why callest thou me good? There is none good but one, that is, God " (Mark 10:18). There is no authentic love but one,...

Muslim scholars who claimed that Islam specifically and religion generally are based on love were not simply talking through their hats, as many readers of my previous post seem to think. They offered plenty of evidence. In order to see its logic, however, we need to remember the two axioms...

In the field of religious studies, the word "religion" is commonly understood to designate a worldview along with the various cultural phenomena that embody it, such as doctrine, ritual and art. In this broad sense of the term, everyone has a "religion," whether acknowledged or not.

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A few years back, long before 9/11, one of our Religious Studies majors told me that she had taken my course to learn why she should hate Islam. As a normal young American growing up on Long Island, she had no doubt that she should hate Islam, but she still...

People often ask me what Islam says about this or what Islam says about that. I usually ask them what they mean by "Islam." Not many people have anything more than a vague idea of what this word can designate, not to speak of the diverse meanings that have been...

Rumi is justly celebrated as one of the great poets of human history. When I started reading him as an undergraduate 45 years ago, I did not know Persian and relied on the work of R. A. Nicholson, who produced the first critical edition of Rumi's 25,000-verse Mathnawi along with...