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Articles on Islam
by Abdal-Hakim Murad
From Drury
Lane to Makka
Abdal-Hakim Murad recounts the tale of theatrical scene painter, Hedley
Churchward, who in 1910 became the first confirmed British convert to Islam to
make the Hajj pilgrimage.
The Fall of
the Family (Part II)
By Abdal-Hakim Murad
"Many houses
have become more like dormitories than homes. Mealtimes are desultory,
tin-opening affairs; both parents are too exhausted to spend "quality time" with
active children; and the sense of belonging to the house and to each other is
sadly attenuated. By the time children leave home, they feel they are not
leaving very much."
Boys will be
Boys - Gender identity issues
"Walaysa al-dhakaru ka’l-untha, says the Qur’an: the
male is not like the female. This is why we say, respectfully ignoring the
protests of old-fashioned feminists, that men and women, in a God-fearing
society, will tend towards different concerns and spheres of activity. Our aim,
after all, is human happiness, not political correctness."
By Abdal-Hakim Murad.
The Fall of
the Family (Part I)
"Back in the 1950s and early 1960s, British family values were still
recognisably derived from a great religious tradition rooted in the
family-nurturing Abrahamic soil. While the doctrinal debates between Islam and
Christianity remained sharp, the moral and social assumptions of the
"guest-workers" and their "hosts" were in most respects
reassuringly and productively similar. That overlap has now almost gone."
Abdal-Hakim Murad
British and
Muslim?
Unsettled, discontented second generation Asian immigrant Muslims in Britain
tend to "locate their radicalism not primarily in a spiritual, but in
social and political rejection of the oppressive order around them. Their
unsettled and agitated mood is not always congenial to the recent convert, who
may, despite the cultural distance, feel more comfortable with the first rather
than the second generation of migrants, preferring their God-centered religion
to what is often the troubled, identity-seeking Islam of the young".
By convert to Islam, Abdal-Hakim Murad.
Bin Laden's
violence is a heresy against Islam
"Mainstream theologians have come out unanimously against the
terrorists. What we must now ask them is to campaign more strongly against the
aberrant doctrines that underpin them", writes British Muslim convert
scholar, Abdal-Hakim Murad.
Recapturing
Islam from the Terrorists
"Muslims cannot deny
forever that doctrinal extremism can lead to political extremism. They must
realise that it is traditional Islam, the only possible alternative to their
position, which owns rich resources for the respectful acknowledgement of
difference within itself, and with unbelievers."
by British convert to Islam, Abdal-Hakim Murad, 14 September
2001
The poverty
of fanatacism
"The Islamic movement risks ceasing to form an authentic summons to
cultural and spiritual renewal, and existing as little more than a splintered
array of maniacal factions. The prospect of such an appalling and humiliating
end to the story of a religion which once surpassed all others in its capacity
for tolerating debate and dissent is now a real possibility."
By British convert to Islam, Abdal-Hakim Murad.
The Trinity
- a Muslim Perspective
A lecture by Abdal-Hakim Murad given to a group of Christians in Oxford,
England.
British convert to Islam,
Abdal-Hakim Murad, was born in 1960 in London. He was educated Cambridge
University (MA Arabic), and at al-Azhar University, the highest seat of
learning in Sunni Islam. He has studied under traditional Islamic scholars
in Cairo and Jeddah, including Shaykh Ahmad Mashhur al-Haddad, and Shaykh Ismail
al-Adawi. Abdal-Hakim Murad has translated several classical Arabic works,
including Imam al-Bayhaqi's 'Seventy-Seven Branches of Faith', and 'Selections
from the Fath al-Bari'. He is also
the Trustee and Secretary of The Muslim Academic Trust and
Director of The Anglo-Muslim Fellowship for Eastern Europe.
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