Novels Islamic Quotes

The stupidity of people comes from having an answer for everything. The wisdom of the novel comes from having a question for everything. When Don Quixote went out into the world, that world turned into a mystery before his eyes. That is the legacy of the first European novel to the entire subsequent history of the novel. The novelist teaches the reader to comprehend the world as a question. There is wisdom and tolerance in that attitude. In a world built on sacrosanct certainties the novel is dead. The totalitarian world, whether founded on Marx, Islam, or anything else, is a world of answers rather than questions. There, the novel has no place.

Muka bumi ini semuanya dihamparkan oleh Allah sebagai masjid.

If a woman enjoyed sex, or expressed her sexuality outwardly she was automatically a slut with no respect for herself. Sex was a favor you allowed your husband so angels wouldn't curse you until morning.

Al-Qur'an itu di alam kubur bisa memberi syafaat bagi pemiliknya, di akhirat juga memberi syafaat bagi pemiliknya.

Tiba-tiba ia teringat kisah Syaikh Muhammad Abduh yang menangisi kondisi umat Islam dan keluarlah kalimat yang sangat terkenal dari ulama terkemuka Mesir, "Al-Islamu mahjuubun bil muslimin". Yang artinya, Islam tertutup oleh umat Islam.

If you ask Muslim women why they cover up, ninety-nine percent of them will say it's to avoid arousing men. Fuck that, where's your self-accountability?

A Muslim just follows Allah. Sunni-Shiah? That's farga, the groups—Allah discourages this in the Quran, you know, never ever form the groups.

You know,” said Jehangir, breaking the silence, “it's only Muslims who use the term 'innovation' to mean something bad.

Sesaat ia terhenyak oleh teks wasiat Habib Hasan Al Bahr. Menghadaplah kepada Allah dengan hati luluh. Hindarkan dirimu dari sikap ujub dan angkuh. Pergaulilah manusia yang jahat dengan baik, karena pada hakikatnya kamu sedang bermuamalah dengan Allah yang Maha Besar. Ulurkan tanganmu kepada orang-orang fakir dengan sesuatu yang dikaruniakan Allah kepadamu. Lalu bayangkanlah, bahwa Allah-lah yang pertama kali menerima pemberianmu itu, sebagaimana dituturkan dalam berbagai ayat Al-Qur'an dan hadits Nabi. Kelak hatimu akan merasa sangat senang dan bahagia dengan Allah.

I understand you only too well, but Rachel’s needs are no less important than your desire to be part of history. Find a balance. Happiness is like good health. You only miss it when it disappears.

The Qur’an sought to reform, not to destroy and start from scratch, to salvage what was useful and then to modify and build on it. The task was to get the Arabs to think about religion in a novel way, to inculcate in them a new conceptual frame of reference, to transfer them from one worldview to another, and higher, one. This process of transformation took them from traditionalism to individualism, from impulsiveness to discipline, from supernaturalism to science, from intuition to conscious reasoning and, in the end, ideally, harmonized the whole.

I ran across an excerpt today (in English translation) of some dialogue/narration from the modern popular writer, Paulo Coelho in his book: Aleph.(Note: bracketed text is mine.)... 'I spoke to three scholars,' [the character says 'at last.'] ...two of them said that, after death, the [sic (misprint, fault of the publisher)] just go to Paradise. The third one, though, told me to consult some verses from the Koran. [end quote]' ...I can see that he's excited. [narrator]' ...Now I have many positive things to say about Coelho: He is respectable, inspiring as a man, a truth-seeker, and an appealing writer; but one should hesitate to call him a 'literary' writer based on this quote. A 'literary' author knows that a character's excitement should be 'shown' in his or her dialogue and not in the narrator's commentary on it. Advice for Coelho: Remove the 'I can see that he's excited' sentence and show his excitement in the phrasing of his quote.(Now, in defense of Coelho, I am firmly of the opinion, having myself written plenty of prose that is flawed, that a novelist should be forgiven for slipping here and there.)Lastly, it appears that a belief in reincarnation is of great interest to Mr. Coelho ... Just think! He is a man who has achieved, (as Leonard Cohen would call it), 'a remote human possibility.' He has won lots of fame and tons of money. And yet, how his preoccupation with reincarnation—none other than an interest in being born again as somebody else—suggests that he is not happy!

Islam’s all about knowledge, right? Muslims know everything. We seek knowledge from the cradle to the grave. We seek knowledge even if it be in China, Yusef, EVEN IN CHINA! And we’ve reduced our religion to fuckin’ academics. The guy who knows Islam best is the one who really hits the books hard, learns his shit. Muslims brag about having no priests but we’re getting molested by scholars. Yusef Ali, books are not Allah. Even a book by or from Allah is not Allah.

Fahri kembali meneliti Majmu' Washaya karya Al 'Allamah Habib Hasan bin Shaleh Al-Bahr: Ketahuilah, himmah adalah wadah taufik. Kendarailah kuda himmah, niscaya kamu akan mencapai puncak cita-citamu. Mintalah pertolongan Allah dalam setiap langkahmu, maju ataupun mundur. Niscaya tidak akan sia-sia jerih payahmu dan akan tercapai cita-citamu. Lazimkan sikap shidiq dan ikhlas, karena keduanya harus dimiliki oleh orang-orang yang memiliki keberhasilan dan keuntungan dalam perdagangan.

In Islam, all living things have souls. We are made pure by the fire of the lord compassion.

If Islam was to be saved, it would be saved by the crazy ones.

Hanya mereka yang bisa menjiwai mental para pahlawannya yang akan meraih prestasi-prestasi gemilang.

Radical Islam poses no serious threat to the liberal package, because for all their fervour the zealots don’t really understand the world of the twenty-first century, and have nothing relevant to say about the novel dangers and opportunities that new technologies are generating all around us.

If liberalism, nationalism, Islam, or some novel creed wishes to shape the world of the year 2050, it will need not only to make sense of artificial intelligence, Big Data algorithms, and bioengineering but also to incorporate them into a new and meaningful narrative.

Efforts to silence the people who raised their voice – whether through violence, intimidation or the courts – meant that three decades after the Rushdie affair there was almost no one in Europe who would dare write a novel, compose a piece of music or even draw an image that might risk Muslim anger. Indeed, they ran in the other direction. Politicians and almost everybody else went out of their way to show how much they admired Islam.

The problem for US officials is the same problem that filters through all the other sections of our societies. It goes something like this. Since we know – thanks to Salman Rushdie, who was forced into hiding for his life because of his novel about Islam, The Satanic Verses, Theo van Gogh, the Dutch film-maker who was murdered after making a critical film about Islam, and others – that there is a potentially high price to pay for criticising Islam, what reaction are we able to make in response to the religion? If we cannot criticise it at all, ever, for fear of being ‘phobic’ at best and beheaded at worst, we have to find some other attitude towards it.

Dari Profesor Charlotte ia bisa belajar tentang kekuatan fokus. "Sejak masih remaja, ketika teman-temanku lebih suka belajar menyanyi dan menari, aku tidak. Aku tidak ikut-ikutan mereka. Aku sudah punya cita-cita yang jelas. Kukatakan pada diriku, aku harus jadi profesor di The University of Edinburgh. Aku mulai belajar bahasa asing dengan serius. Salah satu teman sekolahku ketika itu berasal dari Irak. Dia gadis yang cantik dan baik. Ayahnya pengajar di Baghdad University sedang menyelesaikan Ph.D. bidang Kimia di The University of Edinburgh. Aku belajar bahasa Arab darinya. Aku belajar cerita seribu satu malam dengan bahasa Arab darinya. Sejak itu saya tertarik dengan dunia Arab. Dan aku fokus mendalaminya. Kini keinginan saya menjadi kenyataan. Kau lihat Fahri, aku sudah jadi Profesor di The University of Edinburgh.

They need a deen that's not your uncle's deen.

By the one in whose hand my soul lies, To Allah belongs the dominion of the Earth and skies, We belong and will return to Allah the Most High.

Yasunari Kawabata, the Japanese Nobel Prize winner for literature in 1968, committed suicide in 1971. Two years earlier, in 1969, another great Japanese novelist, Yukio Mishima, ended his life in the same way. Since 1895 ,thirteen Japanese novelists and writers have committed suicide, including the author of the Rashomon, Ryunosuko Akutagawa, in 1927. That "continuous tragedy" of Japanese culture during 70 years coincides with the penetration of Western civilization and materialistic ideas into the traditional culture of Japan. Whatever it be, for the poets and the writers of tragedies, civilization will always have an inhuman face and be a threat to humanity. A year before his death, Kawabata wrote "men are separated from each other by a concrete wall that obstructs any circulation of love. Nature is smothered in the name of progress." In the novel The Snow Country, published in 1937 , Kawabata places man's loneliness and alienation in the modern world at the very focus of his reflections.

The Muslims had become masters of Hindustan. They were quite willing to let us Hindus live our lives as we wanted to provided we recognized them as our rulers. But the Hindus were full of foolish pride. ‘This is our country!’ they said. ‘We will drive out these cow-killers and destroyers of our temples.’ They were especially contemptuous towards Hindus who had embraced Islam and treated them worse than untouchables.

No, it has nothing to do with Islam. The Quran grants women the freedom and right to seek divorce. It’s more cultural, or maybe regional. The importance of family values and keeping the family together, that sort of thing.

Ansar is an Arabic term that means helpers or supporters. They were the citizens of Medina who helped Prophet Mohammed upon His arrival to the Holy city. While 'Hussain' is a derivation of 'Hassan' that means 'GOOD' (I also owe this one to Khaled Hosseini). That's how my favorite character in my debut novel 'When Strangers meet..' gets his name... HUSSAIN ANSARI, because he is the one who helps Jai realize the truth in the story and inspires his son, Arshad, to have FAITH in Allah.

If liberalism, nationalism, Islam or some novel creed wishes to shape the world of the year 2050, it will need not only to make sense of artificial intelligence, Big Data algorithms and bioengineering – it will also need to incorporate them into a new meaningful narrative.

Our Prophet ﷺ showed KINDNESS while he was treated with hostility, He showed LOVE and COMPASSION to everyone, even to his enemy. Sent by the MOST MERCIFUL to the world as a MERCY, He is the BEST of creation, the most noble man, Described by his wife as a WALKING QUR’AN. Follow his SUNNAH as best as you can...

The merger of religion and politics is a classical Islamic ideal; in the recent era, they have again been brought together. The utopian aspirations of the Islamic movements evoke the Muslim ideal of the caliphate, but in many respects they are an altogether novel adaptation of Islamic concepts to modern conditions.

Allah is CLOSER to you than your jugular vein, He knows your DEEPEST thoughts; he feels your pain. Any problems, RAISE your hands to Allah and complain, The most compassionate, the one who LOVES you greatly. Allah is more MERCIFUL than a mother is to her baby, HOLD on to the QUR’AN and the SUNNAH tightly. A guiding LIGHT, shining brightly...

They were Muslims, man, but not your uncles. They need a deen that's not your uncle's deen. Iman, think about it like that, iman! It's supposed to be all about having no fear of death, right? And we got that part down, we've done that and we have plenty of Muslims who aren't afraid to die. Mash'Allah--but now Muslims are afraid to fuckin' live! They fear life, yakee, more than they fear shaytans or shirk or fitna or bid'a or kafr or qiyamah or the torments in the grave, they fear Life... You got all these poor kids who think they're inferior because they don't get their two Fajr in, their four Zuhr, four Asr... they don't have beards, they don't wear hejab, maybe they went to their fuckin' high school proms and the only masjid around was regular horsehit-horseshit-takbir-masjid and they had to pretend like they were doing everything right...well I say fuck that and this whole house says fuck that--even Umar, you think Umar can go in a regular masjid with all his stupid tattoos and dumb straghtedge bands? Even Umar, bro, as much as he tries to Wahabbi-hard-ass his way around here, he's still one of us. He's still fuckin' taqwacore.

A moment later, Vesta became aware that her life was passing her by in that busy city, where no man could capture her heart… What if she married someone, who wasn’t mentally prepared to keep his Zoroastrian identity intact? Or what if her future husband was forced to convert to Islam? What if he tried to force her to convert as well? What if he suddenly decided to become an extremist and called for Sharia Laws in Kurdland? She shivered at the thought.

The jamaat was an almost silly mish-mash of people: Rude Dawud’s pork-pie hat poking up here, a jalab-and-turban there, Jehangir’s big Mohawk rising from a sea of kufis, Amazing Ayyub still with no shirt, girls scattered throughout – some in hejab, some not and Rabeya in punk-patched burqa doing her thing. But in its randomness it was gorgeous, reflecting an Islam I felt could not happen anywhere else ... If Islam was to be saved, it would be saved by the crazy ones: Jehangir and Rabeya and Fasiq and Dawud and Ayyub and even Umar.

the technological revolutions will gather momentum in the next few decades and will confront humankind with the hardest trials we have ever encountered. Any story that seeks to gain humanity’s allegiance will be tested above all in its ability to deal with the twin revolutions in infotech and biotech. If liberalism, nationalism, Islam, or some novel creed wishes to shape the world of the year 2050, it will need not only to make sense of artificial intelligence, Big Data algorithms, and bioengineering but also to incorporate them into a new and meaningful narrative.

Let me tell you a joke, Rora said. Mujo wakes up one day, after a long night of drinking, and asks himself what the meaning of life is. He goes to work, but realizes that is not what life is or should be. He decides to read some philosophy and for years studies everything from the old Greeks onward, but can't find the meaning of life. Maybe it's the family, he thinks, so he spends time with his wife, Fata, and the kids, but finds no meaning in that and so he leaves them. He thinks, Maybe helping others is the meaning of life, so he goes to medical school, graduates with flying colors, goes to Africa to cure malaria and transplants hearts, but cannot discover the meaning of life. He thinks, maybe it's the wealth, so he becomes a businessman, starts making money hand over fist, millions of dollars, buys everything there is to buy, but that is not what life is about. Then he turns to poverty and humility and such, so he gives everything away and begs on the streets, but still he cannot see what life is. He thinks maybe it is literature: he writes novel upon novel, but the more he writes the more obscure the meaning of life becomes. He turns to God, lives the life of a dervish, reads and contemplates the Holy Book of Islam - still, nothing. He studies Christianity, then Judaism, then Buddhism, then everything else - no meaning of life there. Finally, he hears about a guru living high up in the mountains somewhere in the East. The guru, they say, knows what the meaning of life is. So Mujo goes east, travels for years, walks roads, climbs the mountain, finds the stairs that lead up to the guru. He ascends the stairs, tens of thousands of them, nearly dies getting up there. At the top, there are millions of pilgrims, he has to wait for months to get to the guru. Eventually it is his turn, he goes to a place under a big tree, and there sits the naked guru, his legs crossed, his eyes closed, meditating, perfectly peaceful - he surely knows the meaning of life, Mujo says: I have dedicated my life to discovering the meaning of life and I have failed, so I have come to ask you humbly, O Master, to divulge the secret to me. The guru opens his eyes, looks at Mujo, and calmly says, My friend, life is a river. Mujo stares at him for a long time, cannot believe what he heard. What's life again? Mujo asks. Life is a river, the guru says. Mujo nods and says, You turd of turds, you goddamn stupid piece of shit, you motherfucking cocksucking asshole. I have wasted my life and come all this way for you to tell me that life is a fucking river. A river? Are you kidding me? That is the stupidest, emptiest fucking thing I have ever heard. Is that what you spent your life figuring out? And the guru says, What? It is not a river? Are you saying it is not a river?

Scripture and Tradition Scriptural exegesis was no mere school exercise. The New Testament text became the battleground for the fierce debates over the nature of Jesus, God and man, that were waged in the fifth century and exegesis was the weapon that all the combatants wielded with both skill and conviction.23 The scriptural witness, often couched in familiar, popular, and even homely language, had to be converted into the abstract and learned currency of theology, the language of choice of the Church’s intelligentsia. Scripture, as it turned out, was merely the starting point. The steering mechanism was exegesis, and behind the exegesis, the helmsman at the rudder, stood another elemental principle: tradition.24 Judaism, Christianity, and Islam each possessed a Scripture that was, by universal consent, a closed Book. But God’s silence was a relative thing, and his providential direction of the community could be detected and “read” in other ways. Early within the development of Christianity, for example, one is aware of a subtle balance operating between appeals to Scripture and tradition. It was not a novel enterprise. By Jesus’ time the notion of an oral tradition separate from but obviously connected to the written Scriptures was already familiar, if not universally accepted, in Jewish circles. Jesus and the Pharisees debated the authority of the oral tradition more than once, and though he does not appear to have denied the premise, Jesus, his contemporaries remarked, “taught on his own authority,” not on that of some other sage. He substituted his authority for the tradition of the Fathers. Thus Jesus was proposing himself as the source of a new tradition handed on to his followers and confirmed by the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost. The Christian view that there was a tradition distinct from the Scriptures may have begun with the early understanding of Scripture as synonymous with the Bible—serious exegetical attention did not begin to be paid to the Gospels until the end of the second century—whereas the “tradition” was constituted of the teachings and redemptive death of Jesus, both of which Jesus himself had placed in their true “scriptural” context.25 Thus, even when parts of Jesus’ teachings and actions had been committed to writing in the Gospels, and so began to constitute a new, specifically Christian Scripture, the distinction between Scripture in the biblical sense and tradition in the Christian sense continued to be felt in the Christian community.26

When I first began writing novels the greatest threat to America and the world appeared to be fundamentalist Islamic terrorists intent on waging a Holy War to establish a Caliphate. So these tended to be my villains. I dutifully took care to explain each time that radicalized Jihadists vowing to wipe all non-Muslims from the face of the Earth and create rivers of blood in the streets didn’t represent the vast majority of peace-loving Muslims. Since there were only small pockets of Jihadists, and over a billion Muslims, nothing could be more obvious. Still, in today’s world, one needed to state this explicitly. But then I began researching the leadership of China, and I was astonished by what I found. I had always thought the country was largely harmless. A promising market for American goods, and a wonderful supplier to American consumers. But the more I researched, the more clear and ominous their endgame became. It wasn’t as if it wasn’t all there to find, in their own words. Still, their reputation within the US tended to be excellent. China was ten times the threat of Russia, yet many Americans thought just the opposite.

To Allah belongs all that is in the East and the West, He knows what is buried deep within your chest, Put your trust in Allah and let Him take care of the rest.

Allah is the First, Allah is the Last, Whatever you can think of, Allah is not that. Allah's mercy overpowers his wrath, May Allah guide us all to the straight path.

Our Prophet ﷺ showed KINDNESS while he was treated with hostility, He showed LOVE and COMPASSION to everyone, even to his enemy. Sent by the MOST MERCIFUL to the world as a MERCY, He is the BEST of creation, the most noble man, Described by his wife as a WALKING QUR’AN. Follow his SUNNAH as best as you can...

Allah the Especially Merciful, the Most Kind, When you put your trust in Allah you will certainly find, Tranquillity of the heart and peace of mind.

Muhammad ﷺ is for us, an EXAMPLE and GUIDE, The GREATEST Prophet, in him we take pride. Spread GOODNESS wherever you go, but make sure, That in your heart, your intentions remain PURE. Take yourself to account, before you’re accounted for, So that in this life and the next, you’ll be successful forevermore.

Allah has no partners, Allah has no equal, Allah the All-Seeing, the All-Hearing, the All-Powerful. Allah the Everlasting, who has no beginning and no end, Beyond our imagination, we cannot even begin to comprehend, Praise Allah and upon Muhammad ﷺ our blessings we send.

Allah is the First, Allah is the Last, Whatever you can think of, Allah is not that. Allah's mercy overpowers his wrath, May Allah guide us all to the straight path.

One had a feeling, in revolutionary and intellectual circles, that they spoke from a script, playing characters from an Islamized version of a Soviet novel.

The book sensitively deals with dilemma of a Muslim woman trapped between orthodox relatives and the western society with different ethos. The defence by Daniel of Nadia and her dilemma is apt and nuanced. The novel captures different shades of attitudes in the west regarding Islam. IT points to the need for more dialogue and better understanding. Irfan Engineer, Director, Centre for Study of Society and Secularism, Mumbai

what is a ‘mystery’? The Greek word mysterion (from the root word muo –to shut the mouth) is used 25 times in the Bible, always translated in English as a “mystery.” A dictionary definition is “anything that is kept secret or remains unexplained…something that arouses curiosity or speculation…a novel, short story, play or film whose plot involves (an event) that remains puzzlingly unsettled until the very end’.” Interestingly, dictionary definitions of the word mystery also refer to the mysteries of the events of the life of Christ, such as the Mysteries of the Passion, and of the Sacraments. Jesus also used the word: “Unto you it is given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God: but to others in parables; that seeing they might not see, and hearing they might not understand.

He was the ideal undercover agent for Western intelligence, Rafsanjani announced – ‘a person who seemingly comes from India and who apparently is separate from the Western world and who has a misleading name’. Rushdie was a white colonialist, hiding beneath a brown skin; a traitor hiding behind a Muslim name. The British secret service had paid him to betray the faithful, the Iranian theocracy explained as it added corruption to the list of charges against him. It gave him bribes, disguised as book advances, as it organised the assault on Islam by the cunning if curious means of a magical realist novel.

Is it really Allah's will, that none shall thrive, except the chosen hive? Islam is the one true religion, not a system of oppression. Islam is the one true religion, not a veil to persecution. Safa's tears fall. Still they fall. Fall on you. Fall on me. Safa's tears call. Still they call. Out to you. Out to me. Safa's tears weep. Still they weep. Weep for you. Weep for me.

Italian or Irish or Nigerian American. We wore Brooks Brothers or Izod or Polo or Levi’s, we opened our mouth and said one word about abortion or taxes or God or radical Islam or military service or Bush or Obama or Fox or NPR or we said we were from Mississippi or North Dakota or the West Village or Boulder and within the time it took to say “box” we were in one. We’d somehow gotten to be straight white males or gay African American females first, and human beings second, and if you claimed the eschewment of label you’d be mocked, dismissed, labeled as a naive rube from beyond the Adirondacks. “How

Literary scholar Hamid Dabashi notes the curious case of the English language novel The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan, written by a traveler named James Morier, who pretended he had merely translated a Persian original. Morier used a ridiculous diction in his novel to lampoon Persian speech and depicted Iranians as dishonest scoundrels and buffoons. Then, in the 1880s, an astounding thing happened. Iranian grammarian Mirza Habib translated Hajji Baba into Persian. Remarkably, what in English was offensive racist trash became, in translation, a literary masterpiece that laid the groundwork for a modernist Persian literary voice and “a seminal text in the course of the constitutional movement.” The ridicule that Morier directed against Iranians in an Orientalist manner, the translator redirected against clerical and courtly corruption in Iranian society, thereby transforming Hajji Baba into an incendiary political critique.2

In an extraordinary 2012 essay in Guernica, Pakistani writer Kamila Shamsie remembers the moment she noticed that no American novelists of the post–Cold War era, “who started writing after the 1980s when Islam replaced Communism as the terrifying Other,” had included the imperial experience in their Great American novels. “But that would change, I told myself,” she writes. “The nation that had intervened militarily with more nations than any other in the latter half of the twentieth century but had itself come under attack infrequently would now see its stories bound up with the stories of other places.” Instead, she observes, “the American novel continued to look inward even as the American government looked increasingly outward. September 11 did nothing to change that. So in an America where fiction writers are so caught up in the Idea of America in a way that perhaps has no parallel with any other national fiction . . . why is it that the fiction writers of my generation are so little concerned with the history of their own nation once that history exits the fifty states?

Down the road the voice of a child called out the adhan from the megaphone of a mosque’s citadel, and even with the static and the echo and the cracking of his pitch, it sounded so sweet in the fading light, with the fields darkening, and the crickets chirping their songs.

Christianity had become a convenient ritual for those who overeat on Saturday, commit adultery on Saturday night, and play golf on Sunday.” Ellen’s description, when delivered in French, sounded witty, ugly and profound. “She said she needed a religion much closer to original sources. One thing she said impressed me. She pointed out that Islam, Christianity and Judaism all started in the desert, where God seems closer, and life and death are more mysterious. She said that we are all essentially desert animals and that life is meant to be harsh. When we live in an oasis like Philadelphia or Munich we become degenerate and lose touch with our origins.” “Would you return to

In his writing about communism’s insidiousness, Miłosz referenced a 1932 novel, Insatiability. In it, Polish writer Stanisław Witkiewicz wrote of a near-future dystopia in which the people were culturally exhausted and had fallen into decadence. A Mongol army from the East threatened to overrun them. As part of the plan to take over the nation, people began turning up in the streets selling “the pill of Murti-Bing,” named after a Mongolian philosopher who found a way to embody his “don’t worry, be happy” philosophy in a tablet. Those who took the Pill of Murti-Bing quit worrying about life, even though things were falling apart around them. When the Eastern army arrived, it surrendered happily, its soldiers relieved to have found deliverance from their internal tension and struggles. Only the peace didn’t last. “But since they could not rid themselves completely of their former personalities,” writes Miłosz, “they became schizophrenics.”7 What do you do when the Pill of Murti-Bing stops working and you find yourself living under a dictatorship of official lies in which anyone who contradicts the party line goes to jail? You become an actor, says Miłosz. You learn the practice of ketman. This is the Persian word for the practice of maintaining an outward appearance of Islamic orthodoxy while inwardly dissenting. Ketman was the strategy everyone who wasn’t a true believer in communism had to adopt to stay out of trouble. It is a form of mental self-defense. What is the difference between ketman and plain old hypocrisy? As Miłosz explains, having to be “on” all the time inevitably changes a person. An actor who inhabits his role around the clock eventually becomes the character he plays. Ketman is worse than hypocrisy, because living by it all the time corrupts your character and ultimately everything in society. Miłosz identified eight different types of ketman under communism. For example, “professional ketman” is when you convince yourself that it’s okay to live a lie in the workplace, because that’s what you have to do to have the freedom to do good work. “Metaphysical ketman” is the deepest form of the strategy, a defense against “total degradation.” It consists of convincing yourself that it really is possible for you to be a loyal opponent of the new regime while working with it. Christians who collaborated with communist regimes were guilty of metaphysical ketman. In fact, says Miłosz, it represents the ultimate victory of the Big Lie over the individual’s soul.

Salafism’s rejection of modern Western values provided these kids with an alternative identity of rebellion (just as Sayyid Qutb had provided me with such a foundation) – a way to define themselves against not only mainstream society but the traditional Islam of their own parents. They reminded me of the nihilists in Ivan Turgenev’s novel Fathers and Sons, who mocked their parents’ traditional values as simple-minded.

Faktor-faktor yang melahirkan cinta adalah keimanan, keislaman, dan kemanusiaan serta berbagai mata rantai nurani yang kokoh dan benteng maknawi yang tangguh (Badiuzzaman Said Nursi dalam Novel Api Tauhid)

Ten shockingly arty events What arty types like to call a ‘creative tension’ exists in art and music, about working right at the limits of public taste. Plus, there’s money to be made there. Here’s ten examples reflecting both motivations. Painting: Manet’s Breakfast on the Lawn, featuring a group of sophisticated French aristocrats picnicking outside, shocked the art world back in 1862 because one of the young lady guests is stark naked! Painting: Balthus’s Guitar Lesson (1934), depicting a teacher fondling the private parts of a nude pupil, caused predictable uproar. The artist claimed this was part of his strategy to ‘make people more aware’. Music: Jump to 1969 when Jimi Hendrix performed his own interpretation of the American National Anthem at the hippy festival Woodstock, shocking the mainstream US. Film: In 1974 censors deemed Night Porter, a film about a love affair between an ex-Nazi SS commander and his beautiful young prisoner (featuring flashbacks to concentration camp romps and lots of sexy scenes in bed with Nazi apparel), out of bounds. Installation: In December 1993 the 50-metre-high obelisk in the Place Concorde in the centre of Paris was covered in a giant fluorescent red condom by a group called ActUp. Publishing: In 1989 Salman Rushdie’s novel Satanic Verses outraged Islamic authorities for its irreverent treatment of Islam. In 2005 cartoons making political points about Islam featuring the prophet Mohammed likewise resulted in riots in many Muslim cities around the world, with several people killed. Installation: In 1992 the soon-to-be extremely rich English artist Damien Hirst exhibited a 7-metre-long shark in a giant box of formaldehyde in a London art gallery – the first of a series of dead things in preservative. Sculpture: In 1999 Sotheby’s in London sold a urinoir or toilet-bowl-thing by Marcel Duchamp as art for more than a million pounds ($1,762,000) to a Greek collector. He must have lost his marbles! Painting: Also in 1999 The Holy Virgin Mary, a painting by Chris Ofili representing the Christian icon as a rather crude figure constructed out of elephant dung, caused a storm. Curiously, it was banned in Australia because (like Damien Hirst’s shark) the artist was being funded by people (the Saatchis) who stood to benefit financially from controversy. Sculpture: In 2008 Gunther von Hagens, also known as Dr Death, exhibited in several European cities a collection of skinned corpses mounted in grotesque postures that he insists should count as art.

The Ultimate Creator has to be uncreated since it is necessary for the universe to be created in the first place. We find cause or creator for something that is created and that begins to exist at some finite point in time like the universe which came into existence 13.7 billion years ago. The Ultimate Creator did not come into existence at some finite point in time. It is ever-existing. This God is not the ‘scientific conjecture of god of the gaps’ which fits in the novel for pages that are not found in the novel. This God is the author of the whole novel and the programmer of nested loops within loops. He is not the pixel of the painting or a brush or a colour or the painting itself. It is the painter. It is not the laws of physics or theorems of mathematics alone. It is the source of these laws and theorems. Isaac Newton aptly said that gravity explains the motions of the planets, but it cannot explain who sets the planets in motion.

Modern Western art, particularly in the form of the novel, has become an instrument of self-exposure and, in most cases, what is exposed is inner sickness. The novelist works out his 'complexes' in writing. He exteriorises his despair and parades before the public all the elements of ugliness and disease present in his soul. Muslims can only find this unspeakably wicked if they recognise it for what it is, but for the most part they are unlikely to recognise something so totally alien to their faith and to their culture. The freedom of artistic expression appears, from the Islamic perspective, no more than a license to vomit in public.

Penyakit yang Menghambat Dunia Islam : Pertama, mewabahnya keputusasaan yang faktor pemicunya ada dalam diri kita sendiri Kedua, matinya kejujuran dalam kehidupan sosial dan politik Ketiga, suka kepada permusuhan Empat, mengabaikan tali cahaya yang menyatukan sesama orang mukmin Kelima, penindasan yang menyebar seumpama penyakit menular Keenam, perhatian yang hanya tertuju pada kepentingan pribadi. ( Badiuzzaman Said Nursi dalam Novel Api Tauhid)

Les djihadistes ont massacré les innocents et entendent désormais tuer l’amour.