By Bilal Ali Ansari

It is January 3rd, 2023 (10th of Jumada al-Thani, 1444 AH). Mortality’s cloud has obscured a peerless source of compassion and service from our eyes. For seventy-six years, this archetype of feminine virtue illuminated the world with her blazing light. Now a sizable crowd patiently waits under dark skies and a cold, steady rain as her body’s final resting place is prepared. It is shortly after noon, but the sun is hidden behind gray clouds. The mood, like the sky, is deservingly dreary. 

Mawlana Ahsan Syed, waiting amongst a closely huddled mass of men, reminds me in his distinctively gentle tone of the spectacle we witnessed fifteen years ago, when Shaykh al-Hadith Mawlana Muhammad Naeem (or Abba Ji), the father-in-law of the now deceased, had his own funeral. Mawlana Ahsan refers to the scene of hundreds of worshippers clothed in sunnahdress marching towards the cemetery, braving heat and scorching sun, only to be met with torrential rain, moments after the last handful of dirt was placed on his grave. I am reminded of the reflections I composed about that day: taking a lesson from the sky’s furious complaint, witnessing the signs in the heavens, and the sinking reminder to appreciate a worthy soul before they depart from this world.¹ 

MERAJ MOHIUDDIN’S REVELATION: THE STORY OF MUHAMMAD (PEACE AND BLESSINGS BE UPON HIM): A CRITICAL REVIEW

In the name of Allah, Most Merciful and Compassionate.

Despite its relatively recent publication, Dr. Meraj Mohiuddin’s Revelation: The Story of Muhammad (Peace and Blessings Be Upon Him) has quickly become one of the more popular, publicized, and widely-distributed additions to the growing corpus of English literature on the prophetic biography (sīrah). Boasting an aesthetically-pleasing, simple, and modern design, Revelation enjoys a long list of endorsements by well-recognized Muslim personalities in the West and a foreword by the American Muslim academic Dr. Sherman Jackson. 

The author, a physician by training, has taken great pains to design a book that is rich in illustrations to complement a condensed chronicle of the Messenger of Allah’s life (may Allah bless him and grant him peace). Mohiuddin includes a wealth of graphics: maps, family trees, and timelines that help visualize complex lineages and familial relationships, track the movements of armies, and contextualize significant events in time. Deceptively large in size, the book’s historical material is in fact quite concise, providing first-time readers of the sīrah a summarized version of the contents of, for the most part, Martin Ling’s Muhammad: His Life Based on the Earliest Sources and Ṣafī al-Raḥmān al-Mubārakpūrī’s The Sealed Nectar: Biography of the Noble Prophet (al-Raḥīq al-Makhtūm). Continue reading →

I am now posting some thoughts I wrote up about the previous post (Mawlana Tariq Rasheed Sahib’s interview on madrasa reform) after our brother and friend Abdul Sattar (may Allah bless him) asked the following:

“I was wondering if you could offer your thoughts on the ideas he discusses concerning the curriculum itself, and the cultural issues he touches upon and what your disagreements/concerns are?”

In responding to the question, I prefer to mention specifically certain portions of the interview that I particularly would like to highlight and then subsequently provide my own thoughts, while also noting that my tone at the time I wrote the post was relatively defensive given the request to provide my concerns and potential disagreements. I have incredible respect for the Mawlana and I hope that my thoughts are perceived not as a refutation but as a contribution to an important -and hopefully ongoing – discussion. Continue reading →