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Torah finials from India decorated with floral motifs, with hand-shaped tops engraved with the Hebrew word, שדי (shaddai). 

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—Attar, The Conference of the Birds

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Esau had good reason to be upset with Jacob. Not because he lost his inheritance—the same Inheritance he already uncaringly gave away— But because Jacob had deceived their father. How dare he exploit the helpless? How dare he fool the beloved as he does his enemy? No. A thief doesn’t deserve his earnings.

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A sheep in the role of Cordelia in “King Lear With Sheep.”Credit” Nick Morris.

Source: ‘King Lear With Sheep.’ Yes, Sheep.

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In my view, if you want to understand salat it is of central importance that you understand that the whole universe is always praying.

Do you not realize [Prophet] that everything in the heavens & earth submits to God: the sun, the moon, the stars, the mountains, the trees, & the animals?

Surat al-Hajj ayat 18, (transl. M.A.S. Abdel Haleem)

Islam, submission to God, is the natural state of the creation. Humans & jinn are unique in being the only part of creation endowed with free will & capable of disobedience: we are not always engaged in prayer & remembrance, but the rest of the world is. This means that not only are we alienated from God, we are also alienated from the rest of creation, from the ceaseless prayer which reverberates through the universe.

Salat is the manner in which we attune ourselves to the melody of the worshiping world & momentarily return to our natural state of submission. I think salat in its movement has a rhythmical quality involving the whole body. It is our gate into the universal dance and song of worship.

In salah, we are first & foremost praising & pleasing God. But the manner in which we do that is by uniting ourselves to the whole creation. I believe this is why prayer times change with the seasons; I believe this is why the most intimate & sacred position, sujud, is the one which makes us closest to the earth; & I believe this is why the tradition of the Prophet (s) urges us to prostrate on clay or another natural material. Salat is an acknowledgement of the supremacy of God, & in being that it is also an acknowledgement of the unity of all creation, an acknowledgement that we too are clay (15:26), dust (22:5), & water (24:45).

Sujud is making yourself low so that you may come to reflect the Most High. Through salah, we mend our alienation from the world, & in rejoining the rest of the worshiping world we are connected to God & transformed by Him. It is a means by which we can be made whole.

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Despite being Muslim, the dhimmi environment around me really influences the way I think of scripture. Sometimes I confuse what is Biblical and what is Qur'anic. Perhaps I should work on that...

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Folio from a Manuscript of the Qur'an. Iran, Shiraz, 1550-1575. Ink, colors and gold on paper.

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Megillah cases Left to right: Ioannina, Greece ca. 1900; Aleppo, Syria ca 1875; Ukraine ca 1850; Turkey ca 1875

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Abraham (as) patron saint of bad decisions.

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--Rumi

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Mystical Love & Sufi Women

The mystical metaphysics of Love is one of the most recurring themes in Sufism, as it is in many other religious traditions.

In this collaboration with Dr. Justin Sledge and the channel ESOTERICA, we explore the Love Mystics of Islam and Christianity. Here I talk about Sufi women like Rabi'a al-Adawiyya and A'isha al-Ba'nuiyya and what role they played in the development of Islamic mysticism.

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Ibn ʿArabi on water and divine lowness

Commentary on Ibn ʿArabi's The Bezels of Wisdom

I guess I just love this because I've been thinking about the directionality of the divine lately, feeling a bit of an aversion to the privileging of the heavenward direction above all else—which I associate with hierarchy, ascension, Plotinus. I've been thinking against Simone Weil's conception of grace as that which enables ascent against the force of gravity, a hoisting upward, which is often a kind of turning away from the created world, a disavowal of earthy existence. What can I say. I love the earth. I'll keep on loving the earth. I want to think with the low, the mineral, with water, which always finds the lowest point. Water is that which supports life from beneath.

How did I find my way to Islamic mysticism? In the Abrahamic traditions, it really does offer the most affirming view of creation. We're all the breath of God.

What would it mean to find God below?

If you let a rope fall down, it will fall on God.

As I wrote in my review of the experimental film Last Things by Deborah Stratman:

Why not found a religion based on fear and respect of the mineral kingdom? Death is not ascent but descent, a return to our mineral form, as Mallo and Cixous know. 

From Agustín Fernández Mallo's The Book of All Loves: “The fact that teeth and bones are all that remains of us after death is proof that our ultimate identity is mineral. We do not ascend, we are not on some track towards that which the ancients formulated as spiritual; on the contrary, we sink down into the most durable physical matter. A kind of periodic table of elements is what we are; more of the earth even than earth itself.”

From Hélène Cixous’s Three Steps on the Ladder of Writing: “There is passage through the animal state, then through the vegetal state, and so we move away from humankind; from the vegetal we descend into the earth, by the stem, by the root, until we reach what doesn’t concern us, although it exists and inscribes itself, which is of the mineral order, although it doesn’t hold together since we are aiming toward disassembly, toward decomposition.”

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Ibn ‘Arabī, speaking of divine intention, writes in the Futūhāt:

"It is like water. Its station is that it descends or flows on the earth."

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“Islam moved in their limbs and veins like blood. Even their hearts pulsed for the love of this heavenly religion”

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The sun’s starting to feel dark now

Hidden by clouds

That don’t distinguish between each other

And don’t make funny shapes

in which you can pick out from the sky.

Winter’s coming

And like a caveman,

Who knows food will be scarce,

I dread it.