Tag: modernity
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The Fictional Thirst and Postmodern Hunger
“Verily, hardship is followed by ease.” -Quran 94:6 Fiction is valued for its magnificent ability to portray lived ideologies in metaphorical form. Such portrayals are assessed, positively or negatively, according to how persuasively their metaphors are developed and sustained. Recently, I happened to choose a work that struck me as a generative metaphor. South Korean…
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Sharīʿah in the Modern World: Reviewing Mashal Ayobi’s ‘The Light We Lost’
A Book Review of The Light We Lost: Grappling with Shariah in the Modern World by Mashal Ayobi The aftermath of the catastrophic Bondi shooting, and the start of Zohran Mamdani’s term as Mayor of New York, has put Muslims, terrorism, the Sharīʿah and the like back into the limelight of oriental focus, the favored…
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Industrial Islamism and Manipulation in Turkiye
Industrial Islamism dismantles the common assumption that Islamism in modern Turkey arose primarily from cultural nostalgia or religious resentment against Westernization. Instead, he locates its roots in the rise of a distinct social class, the faubourgeoisie, that emerged from Turkey’s accelerated post-Cold-War industrialization.
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Fasting as an Entry into a Transcendent Cosmic Realm
The author explores the crisis of meaning within modernity, emphasizing the loss of metaphysical grounding and identity amid neoliberal consumerism. It presents fasting as a transformative practice, aligning the self with divine attributes and serving as a resistance against hyper-individualism. Fasting purifies the soul, bridging human experience with transcendence and spiritual elevation.
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The Artist and the Nafs in Modernity
This epitomizes the phenomena of the modern artist, marketing themselves as a part of the art, rendering the art and its meaning as secondary. The commercialization of art and the aggrandization of the self become imperative in propelling the artist’s quest for financial gain. In essence, art is now judged on its ability to be…
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Spiker’s Hierarchy & Freedom: A Case For Akbarianism Against the Poverty of Modernity
Hasan Spiker’s most recent work, Hierarchy & Freedom, explores the historical/philosophical relationship between “hierarchy” and “freedom” in Western thought, providing a convincing case for Platonism and its innate hierarchical structures in opposition to the empirical, positivistic philosophical structure forwarded by the West.
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Lessons on the Pitfalls of Modernity in ‘The Road to Mecca’
Muhammad Asad’s autobiographical account The Road to Mecca (1954) is a fine work that moves between various genres, including historical narration, adventure tale and conversion story, presenting numerous entertaining anecdotes. More intriguing, however, is the unique and fascinatingly nuanced insight that Asad (formerly Leopold Weiss), gives into a soulless and lost Europe of the early…
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رمضان: شهر مناهضة الإمبريالية
لقد عتاد المسلمون على العيش في حالة دفاع دائمة كثمن لوجودهم، ونشروا بسهولة تفسيرات لممارساتهم الدينية والثقافية. قد تكون هذه صفقة مقبولة وحتى مستحسنة للحفاظ على السلام في المجتمعات الحديثة المتنوعة، ولكن مع حلول شهر رمضان المبارك، لا يمكن للمرء أن يتجاهل الصبغات الحديثة المميزة في التفسيرات المتداولة لفوائدها العديدة. يتجاهل الخطاب المعاصر حول هذه…
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Andrew Tate and the Ethics of Sincerity in Digital Engagement
There is an obvious question for consideration here: why do some people come out in support of Tate while others come out against him? Why do some people seemingly materialize out of thin air to say we must have a good opinion of him, while other more progressive-leaning individuals come out to say Tate deserves…
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Critiquing Modernity: Book Recommendations 2022
The twentieth century and the rise of nation-states and commensurate isms, have propelled societies into an era that is driven by abandonment of God, ethic, and a cohesive worldview that perpetuates meaning. The following list was prepared to give readers the tools to better understand, critique, and provide solutions for the malaise of modernity.