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Articles on
Islam by Nuh Ha Mim Keller
American convert and Islamic scholar
Who or what
is a Salafi? Is their approach valid?
Their basic claim is that Islam has not been properly understood by anyone since
the prophet Mohammed
and the early Muslims - except themselves.
By Nuh Ha Mim Keller
What is the
distinction between hadith and sunna?
Sheikh Nuh Ha Mim Keller dispels the confusion.
Becoming
Muslim - by Nuh Ha Mim Keller
"I studied philosophy at the
university and it taught me to ask two things of whoever claimed to have the
truth: What do you mean, and how do you know? When I asked these questions of my
own religious tradition, I found no answers, and realized that Christianity had
slipped from my hands."
The story of American former Catholic, Nuh Ha Mim Keller, who in the 25 years since his
conversion has gone on to become one of the leading contemporary scholars of
Islam.
Would you advise individuals
to study hadith from al-Bukhari and Muslim on their own?
"There are benefits the ordinary Muslim can expect from personally
reading hadith... but without a guiding hand, the untrained reader will
misunderstand many of the hadiths," cautions Nuh Ha Mim Keller.
What is a
Madhhab? Why is it necessary to follow one?
"The slogans we hear today about 'following the Qur'an and
sunna instead of following the madhhabs' are wide of the mark...In
reality it is a great leap backward, a call to abandon centuries of
detailed, case-by-case Islamic scholarship in finding and spelling out
the commands of the Qur'an and sunna," argues Nuh Ha Mim Keller.
Why Muslims
follow Madhabs
"Who needs the Imams of Sacred Law when we have the Qur’an
and hadith? Why can’t we take our Islam from the word of Allah
and His Messenger?" Nuh Ha Mim Keller explains the
necessity to respect and value scholars and the schools of Islamic
law.
Nuh Ha Mim Keller is an American
Muslim translator and specialist in Islamic Law. Born in 1954 in the
north-western United States, was educated in philosophy and Arabic at the
University of Chicago and UCLA. He entered Islam in 1977 at al-Azhar in Cairo,
and later studied the traditional Islamic Sciences of hadith, Shafi'i and Hanafi
jurisprudence, legal methodology (usul al-fiqh), and tenets of faith (`aqidah)
in Syria and Jordan, where he has lived since 1980. His English translation of `Umdat
al-Salik [The Reliance of the Traveller] (1250 pp., Sunna Books, 1991) is the
first Islamic legal work in a European language to receive the certification of
al-Azhar, the Muslim world's oldest institution of higher learning. He also
possesses ijazas or "certifiates of authorisation" in Islamic jurisprudence from
sheikhs in Syria and Jordan.
His other translations and works
include: Al-Maqasid: Imam Nawawi's Manual of Islam; The Sunni Path: A Handbook
of Islamic Belief; and Tariqa Notes (handbook for those on the Shadhilli path of
tasawwuf). He is currently translating Imam Nawawi's Kitab al-Adhkar [The Book
of Rememberance of Allah], a compendium of some 1227 hadiths on prayers and
dhikrs of the prophetic sunna. He is also completing a work on the issue of the
Qibla which will be available soon.
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