Trust in God and Tawhid- Imam al-Ghazali

Hamza Yusuf is a modern Islamic Scholar.
Al Ghazali was a medieval Islamic Philosopher.

Healing Hearts

The video clip posted below is taken from one of Shaykh Hamza Yusuf’s lectures: “The Critical Importance of Al-Ghazali in Our Times”. Shaykh Hamza in this 2:25 min video clip touches upon what Imam al-Ghazali meant when he spoke about Trust in God and Tawhid. I would encourage you to listen to the clip (and the whole lecture if you can, but this clip in particular). For me, this clip pretty much sums everything up. I think once we get our heads around this thing Imam al-Ghazali wrote about and Shaykh Hamza narrates (which doesn’t happen overnight), we will be able to deal better with the situations and circumstances God places us in. It’s not an easy thing, but hey, who said this life was meant to be easy? But we strive, and strive, and persevere, and try to build our understanding which ultimately gives us the strength and…

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The only good Iraqi is a dead Iraqi

This is the impression I get when I study Iraq War civilian death count statistics: that people really just don’t give a damn. Years ago, it finally struck me that I didn’t give a damn either, and I decided to find the actual statistics of how many people died. The results, or lack thereof, was shocking. I have been anti-War ever since. The total wars of our day are usually only contests of how many people you can blow up. My count so far is zero. Thank God.

I first went on to Wikipedia. The results were astounding:  the lowest toll was from US Classified logs at about 66,000…and the highest was 1.2 million. That is twenty times more. Many other estimates, and mind you all these estimates were at different time spans, ranged from a hundred thousand to six hundred thousand. To give you an idea of proportions: 3,000 American civilians died in 9/11, and 5,000 American soldiers in Iraq. Imagine if no one had to die.

The highest estimate at about 1.2 million from the Opinion Research Business agency ( ORB) is extremely controversial, and I wouldn’t put too much stress on it. The second highest number – the estimate that I am most fond of – is from the The Lancet, a two hundred year old peer reviewed science journal. This estimate has also been controversial, but my emphasis is on the fact that we hardly know how many died, and not on how many died.

I highly recommend you check out the abstract of their survey. You need an account to read the whole thing (it’s free), but I’ll post a chart or two soon to give you an idea of their numbers. Basically, these guys (the only other statisticians to use this method were the ORB pollsters) actually went to Iraq, randomly selected 50 clustered blocks of 40 households from all of Iraq, and surveyed them. They asked them who they knew that died, and they tallied up the numbers. To confirm the accuracy of random Iraqi households, 87% of the time they asked for death certificates. 92% of the time certificates were produced. The other 8% is excusable: in some places at certain times death certificates were not issued, and young children weren’t always  documented. The journal has been criticized for the small poll group of 2,000 and for the polling method, but the polling was random and the death certificates were almost always provided. Perhaps their critics should be asked why they didn’t use polling numbers. Sitting on the other side of the Earth in front of a computer documenting deaths somehow seems a bit more sketchy to me.

So the Lancet Survey is quite interesting. It shows us the shocking disparity of numbers between government run statistics (the United Nations, the Iraqi government, the American government…) and independently run statistics. It shows us the shocking disparity of numbers between computer analysts that have never been to Iraq and pollsters that risked their lives. It is an awful thing for so many people to have died – and for people over here to not even care, know, or even have the ability to know. I intend to post a bit more on the Lancet Survey and what it teaches us…especially about the demographics of who was killed and when. If the survey numbers are true, the coalition forces that invaded Iraq may have caused more deaths then Saddam Hussein. If they aren’t true, they still killed a damn lot of people – and I am confident that there were better but possibly more pricey ways to not do so.

 

 

 

TO BE CONTINUED.

Secular Humanism: A Eurocentric Ideology (Response to a Critic)

This man is a genius. Almost as smart as me. Almost.

Fighting for the Fight or Fighting for what’s Right

There is an inexplicable paradox in much of our daily lives when it comes to arguments – that we usually argue for the sole reason of arguing. I see this all too often, and usually these sorts of arguments only lead to everyone getting pissed off and no one getting satisfied. It defeats the whole purpose of actual intellectual discourse. There is no pursuit of truth, no mutual desire for getting thing’s decided. When we bicker like this, all we are doing is trying to entertain ourselves. It rarely works.

What’s even worse about this sort of arguing is that very quickly it stops to be about actual logic. It slowly becomes about who can debase the other person through red herrings or personal attacks, or who has the better rhetoric and louder voice. There’s no honest search for an answer in that. I could only hope that people would get more sense: argue not for the sake of arguing but for the sake of getting the right answer…even if it isn’t yours. Be willing to confront the fact that you may be wrong, and try to remind the other person to do the same. Rhetoric with no content isn’t the way to go.

This happens to me all the time, and I have a feeling it happens to all of us. Which is why I usually try to ask myself why I am arguing this point or the other. What’s the intention that I set out to discuss it? Usually the intention is to have some fun ridiculing the other or proving I’m right, and that’s a problem. This happens on the internet just as much as with talking, and I’m afraid we do it without even realizing it. So let’s fix that. Just ask yourselves what your purpose is in the discussion, and if it’s not a good purpose, make it so or quit the discussing. Fight for what’s right, not for the fight.

The Evolution of Knowledge

“Today, the exploration of new places and new ideas seems self-evidently a good thing. For much of human history, though, priests, politicians, and philosophers cast a suspicious eye on curious folks. It wasn’t just that staring at rainbows all day or pulling apart insects’ wings seemed weird, even childish. It also represented a colossal waste of time, which could be better spent building the economy or reading the Bible. Philip Ball explains in his thought-provoking new book, Curiosity, that only in the 1600s did society start to sanction (or at least tolerate) the pursuit of idle interests. And as much as any other factor, Ball argues, that shift led to the rise of modern science.”

I’d like to read this book one day, and I recommend you all do so too. It sounds really interesting – the article is great. I will post expanding on this one day with a review of an essay called Doing Nothing is Something by Anna Quindlen. It’s about downtime, a bigger word for boredom. It is the inspiration of creativity, and day by day we are losing it once again. Curiosity and creativity go hand in hand, and perhaps the Enlightenment can be narrowed down to just that.

“God promised y…

“God promised you a promise of truth. And I too promised you, but I betrayed you. I had no authority over you except that I called you, and you responded to me. So blame me not, but blame yourselves.”
– Satan (Al- Qur’an 14:22)

“I know nothing…

“I know nothing except the fact of my ignorance.” — Socrates