What is “spiritual materialism”? Today most often it is mistaking the egoistic and identitarian rejection of the modern world, for “tradition” and “spiritual realization”, and mistaking the physical and aesthetic trappings of a “spiritual lifestyle” for spiritual reality. (1)

Everyone knows that in order to stay humble and avoid materialism, you'd better not buy, e.g., that Mercedes S Class. But what about those more subtle cases, in which it is precisely owning a Mercedes S Class that is going to help you stay humble, and avoid spiritual materialism?

The Lote Tree Poetry Course I highly recommend this to any Muslim or Muslima who would like to contribute to freeing the Umma from our benighted post-Colonial state of cultural decline and blind dependence on falsely universalized Western hedonistic "culture" ... It also happens

The author of The Anatomy of Knowledge is a true polymath. Not everyone knows that.

The Alhambra minus the generic mediocrity of Charles V palace

It’s increasingly clear that being “pro-Israel” in America and parts of Europe has little or nothing to do with the country Israel. It signifies a set of beliefs: 1. Ethnic basis of politics, racial hierarchy 2. Critique of internationalism (UN) 3. Centrality of violence or force

Another beautiful rendition of the Alhambra, pure and unadulterated ...

Thomas Carlyle's lampooning of Samuel Taylor Coleridge is by far the most riotously funny piece of satire I have ever read — as well as being a paradigm of English literature. At first sight, it is difficult to understand why Carlyle was so hard on Coleridge when it is well known

The Lote Tree Press is doing exceptional work by showcasing the deep poetic traditions of the Islamic world and amplifying the voices of Muslim poets today. In 2020, they published a powerful anthology, A Kaleidoscope of Stories, which I highly recommend...

Imām al-Ghazālī: Through the Holy Prophetic Spirit ﷺ, many varieties of knowledge are effused upon creatures. Thence do we come to understand Allah's ﷻ naming our master Muhammad ﷺ a light-giving lamp (Qur'an 33:46)

I'm delighted to be teaching Imām al-Ghazālī's luminous Mishkāt al-Anwār (one of my favourite books, and an indubitable influence on Suhrawardī) this Sunday on the first day of Term 2 at BT Academy. Applications for next year's AdvDipTh are opening soon. bloggingtheologyacademy.com

It feels like the world broke over the past five years. It feels like a completely different world from the one I grew up in. What's next for humanity?

“Using the method, the total deaths since the conflict began would be estimated at about 335,500 in total.” theguardian.com/commentisfree/…

“'Man is the meeting place of the angelic and the animal realms.' This is the human essence, as some of the greatest philosophers of the Islamic tradition have taught us, from al-Rāghib al-Iśfahānī and al-Ghazālī to Shāh Walī Allāh.” -Hasan Spiker renovatio.zaytuna.edu/article/transg…

Good writing is ornamental and beautiful, while it is also instrumental, that is, in its conveyance of meaning — but it is not merely instrumental. Or to be more specific, evocative, poetical, allusive, and indeed elusive language is capable of conveying depths and shades of

Note to self: After Gaza, you really do have nothing at all to complain about. Whatsoever.

The myth of the intrinsic subjectivity of artistic, architectural, musical, literary taste, etc., arose largely in parallel to a decline in recognition of the purificatory malleability of the soul, and in the spiritual practice which alone allows one to experience the numinous.