#allah — Public Fediverse posts

Qur’anic Calligraphy in Mosque Architecture: Text, Power and Sacred Space

Why do particular Qur’anic verses appear on a dome, a mihrab, a threshold or a lamp—and what changes when those words are read in the precise place for which they were chosen?

The new illustrated study, Qur’anic Calligraphy in Mosque Architecture, follows that question from Islam’s Three Harams—Masjid al-Haram in Mecca, the Prophet’s ﷺ Mosque in Medina and al-Haram al-Sharif/al-Aqsa in Jerusalem—through Umayyad, Fatimid, Seljuk, Mamluk, Ottoman, Safavid and modern patronage. Its chronology identifies the verse, inscription site, political order and evidential basis for each case, while distinguishing documented interpretation from careful contextual inference.

Special attention is given to calligraphic bands around dome bases: words that encircle worshippers, articulate the transition from wall to vault and turn architecture into a field of recitation. The study also examines historic mosque lamps. It corrects a common conflation at al-Aqsa: the fourteenth-century Tankiz lamp carries Qur’an 9:18, whereas the Light Verse—Qur’an 24:35—is characteristic of other Mamluk mosque lamps whose luminous function makes the text’s placement especially resonant.

The appendix consolidates 115 cited āyāt from 27 sūrahs in canonical order. Every āyah is given in verified Uthmani Arabic with Sahih International English immediately beneath it and a direct Quran.com link. The English is reproduced under the stated digital-reuse permission with attribution; Quran.com’s explanatory-note callouts are omitted, while the verse wording and punctuation are preserved. The dossier includes historic photographs, object records, governance context and 29 verified sources.

Readers are also invited to consider the larger historical horizon. The Qur’an describes the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ as al-nabī al-ummī—often translated “the unlettered Prophet” (Qur’an 7:157) but perhaps untaught Prophet is more apt —whose proclamation ignited a revolution in moral, religious and educational consciousness. Within a generation of his death, the Sasanian Empire had ended and the Christian Byzantine Empire had lost Syria, Palestine and Egypt, although the Byzantine state survived until 1453, as his message continued to spread. Across later centuries, diverse Muslim societies translated, tested and extended Greek, Persian, Indian and other inheritances, advancing astronomy and related sciences alongside medicine, mathematics, engineering, water systems and institutions of urban life. Through awqāf, lived Muslim culture redistributed wealth and endowed schools, hospitals, fountains, libraries and devotional buildings. This was not a one-cause civilisational miracle, but a cumulative human achievement within an Islamic moral and institutional worldview whose intellectual, charitable and architectural legacy remains vibrantly present today.

With its chronological tables, dome-band studies and forensic source notes, the study treats Qur’anic calligraphy not as ornamental filler, but as revelation situated within devotional architecture, worship, patronage and political history.

Download the complete illustrated study in PDF format below:

Apologetics: Flippin’ Fatwa Friday – Speed Running Surah 2:203-237

Back with speed running Surah al-Baqarah, we’re speed running verses 203-237.

We start off where we left off on verse 203. Until we get to verse 213, it pretty much the usual stuff, where we’re told that Allah doesn’t like mischief or anyone who makes mischief, and that if he’s provided a bunch of signs to prove his existence. However, once we hit 213, we find that the Quran finally gives us some lore. According to the Quran, mankind was once one people under one religion until they started having disagreements, which led to division. To ramify this and make the truth known, Allah sent a bunch of prophets (starting with Noah) to reveal the truth about where they differed, but they wouldn’t listen and continued to split.

But here’s where it gets interesting since according to the tafsir on this verse, Islam is the ultimate truth that clarifies where things are disputed. The issue with that though, is that if we look at the Quran and the Bible, even things that aren’t disagreed on by Jews and Christians get changed randomly by the Quran, for absolutely no reason. If it was sent to smooth over the theological and doctrinal rifts between the two, it just made things worse.

Moving on from that, verse 214 tells Muslims to expect adversity, 215 tells them to give alms, and 216 tells them that not only is jihad (as in fighting unbelievers) necessary, but obligatory. There is absolutely no room for being a peaceful Muslim. You are required to fight according to the Quran. And to further instill fear in Muslims of what will happen if they don’t fight are verses 217-218, which says that if they turn back and reject the faith, they will never get into Heaven. Essentially all their good deeds will be deleted by Allah, similar to how you lose all your XP if you cancel a course on Duolingo.

But don’t worry, the Quran doesn’t linger long on that warning since verses 219-221 hop back to commanding Muslims to give alms, not to gamble or drink, to help orphans, and not to marry unbelievers.

Then we have verses 222-223, which are ridiculously misogynistic. Verse 222 says that women who are menstruating are unclean and are to be treated as such. Now, I wouldn’t totally have a problem with this if it were just taking from the similar command in the Bible, which was meant for a certain time and place, but the Quran’s version of this is universal. Additionally, is the fact that in both 222-223, the Quran tells men that their wives are like a “tilth” (a piece of fertile ground) that they can take when, where, and however they want, as long as they do some good deed for Allah, first.

Handmaid’s Tale much? In today’s vernacular, that would be like calling your wife an oven for making babies (or something worse).

Verses 224-225 warns Muslims not to make oaths in Allah’s name against doing good, acting rightly, or making peace. Then 226-227 hops into what to do if you’ve taken an oath of abstention. Naturally, this only applies to men, and the Quran only says that if a man takes an oath of abstention, he only needs to abstain for 4 months…unless he’s getting divorced. In that case, he can abstain from his wife for as long as he wants.

Speaking of divorce, according to verses 228-233, divorce is completely permissible and you’re allowed to divorce the same woman up to two times. You’re also allowed to remarry, and, if both parties don’t want the kids, you can give them away to a foster-mother until they finish suckling. After that, who knows what will happen since Muhammad abolished adoption. I assume they’d be going back to one of their parents (probably the father), though that would be an awkward conversation.

Finally, verse 234 jumps to what to do if you die and leave behind a widow. After death, they are to wait four months and ten days before moving on. Then it jumps back into divorce, including divorcing someone before the marriage is consummated in 235-237.

Until next time,

M.J.

Beyond the Labels: Ibn al-ʿArabī, Divine Unity and the Question of Religious Difference

A new Truthaholics study — with the fully referenced PDF available below

There are questions that cannot be settled by slogans.

Is the recognition of divine truth across different revelations the same thing as saying that every historical religious law remains equally normative forever? Does Ibn al-ʿArabī’s extraordinary language of universality dissolve prophetic law—or does his own distinction between the ontological and prescriptive orders explain how divine universality and revealed obligation coexist?

In simple terms

This study asks a simple question:

if all true revelation comes from the one God, does that mean every religion and every religious law must remain equally valid forever?

Ibn al-ʿArabī teaches us to see that everything ultimately belongs to and returns to God, while also taking seriously the guidance God gives through His prophets. Shah Walī Allāh helps explain the difference: the source of true religion is one, even though God gave different laws to different peoples and times. So recognising truth and goodness in other revelations does not require us to pretend that all religious differences mean nothing.

The deeper invitation is to look beyond labels, follow the evidence carefully, and allow the signs of creation and revelation to turn our attention towards the one Divine Reality from whom everything comes and to whom everything returns.

Our new study, Ibn al-ʿArabī on Religious Unity and Prophetic Law, examines precisely this terrain.

It brings Ibn al-ʿArabī’s Fuṣūṣ/Naqsh al-Fuṣūṣ, al-Rasāʾil and al-Futūḥāt into conversation with Shāh Walī Allāh al-Dihlawī, while critically comparing the resulting picture with René Guénon, Frithjof Schuon, Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Titus Burckhardt, Martin Lings and William C. Chittick.

The study’s governing principle is simple:

Evidence before labels.

Rather than deciding in advance that Ibn al-ʿArabī must be an “exclusivist,” “pluralist” or “Perennialist,” the paper asks what the texts themselves actually establish—and where subsequent interpretations introduce additional premises.

This matters because Ibn al-ʿArabī’s metaphysical universality is real. His Naqsh al-Fuṣūṣ is his own summary of the celebrated Fuṣūṣ al-Ḥikam, and William Chittick’s English translation was published in the first volume of the Journal of the Muhyiddin Ibn Arabi Society in 1982. The Society itself describes the Fuṣūṣ as a major source of Ibn al-ʿArabī’s influence and notes the exceptionally large commentary tradition that developed around it. (Muhyiddin Ibn Arabi Society)

Yet the same textual world speaks seriously of prophetic revelation, sharʿ, command and obedience. The paper therefore argues that a crucial distinction must be preserved:

Nothing escapes the Divine ontologically; but ontological inclusion is not automatically identical with prescriptive approval.

Shāh Walī Allāh provides a particularly illuminating complement: the root of revealed religion is one, while prophetic laws and paths differ. Unity of divine source need not mean uniformity of historical legislation; nor does the succession of a law retroactively make an earlier genuine revelation false.

That distinction allows us to approach the Perennialist question without caricature. There are genuine and important affinities between Akbarian metaphysics and the Traditionalist recognition of transcendent unity. The narrower question is whether that metaphysical unity, by itself, proves the continuing normative equivalence of every historically distinct dispensation.

Our conclusion is deliberately proportioned to the evidence: it does not.

But this paper is not offered merely to win an argument.

At its deepest level, Ibn al-ʿArabī’s intellectual universe confronts us with something much greater than our classifications of it: the possibility that multiplicity need not obscure the One from whom it proceeds.

So we invite readers—Muslim and non-Muslim, Traditionalist and critic, believer, seeker and sceptic alike—to read slowly, follow the references, interrogate the distinctions, and resist the temptation to make Reality smaller than our inherited categories.

The point is not to manufacture an artificial sameness between religions.

Nor is it to turn religious difference into another weapon of separation.

It is to ask whether, behind our arguments about the Divine, we have actually begun to recognise the Divine.

And perhaps that is where serious inquiry becomes something more than argument:

from information to discernment,
from labels to Reality,
and from speaking about the Divine to recognising the signs that point beyond ourselves.

Read the fully referenced study

The publication edition includes the comparative matrix, methodological source disclaimer, Arabic with diacritics, inline superscript references, full source apparatus, bibliography, hyperlinks, and explicit source-critical qualifications wherever edition or manuscript verification remains incomplete.

Download / read the complete Truthaholics PDF

For readers wishing to examine the Akbarian source tradition further, the Muhyiddin Ibn Arabi Society’s collection of Ibn al-ʿArabī’s writings provides Chittick’s Naqsh al-Fuṣūṣ translation and other scholarly materials; its Journal archive provides a substantial body of specialist scholarship on Ibn al-ʿArabī and the Akbarian tradition. (Muhyiddin Ibn Arabi Society)

Truthaholics — Evidence before labels; truth before spin.

Apologetics: Flippin’ Fatwa Friday – Screw It. We’re Gonna Speed Run Surah 2:159-202.

It’s been at least three months since I last wrote a Flippin’ Fatwa Friday post criticizing the Quran. We’ve gotten 158 verses into this thing, though I hoped to be in Surah 3 by now. So, I’m going to switch tactics and instead of going chunk by chunk, I’m just going to speed run a massive chunk of it, picking out the ridiculous stuff so we can finally be done with it sooner.

Starting with Surah 2:159-171, we get a bunch of stuff about Allah’s clear guidance, both as revealed in the Quran and in nature. It talks about how wrong non-Muslims are for not worshipping Allah despite those things, how they’re cursed by Allah and the angels, and how Muslims are to stay faithful to Allah. Real fun stuff.

Moving on from that into Surah 2:172-173, we get some food laws. One would think that the section on food laws would be longer, similar to what we get in the Torah, but no. Instead, we just get two measly verses, which say:

172.O ye who believe! Eat of the good things that We have provided for you, and be grateful to Allah, if it is Him ye worship. 173. He hath only forbidden you dead meat, and blood, and the flesh of swine, and that on which any other name hath been invoked besides that of Allah. But if one is forced by necessity, without willful disobedience, nor transgressing due limits,- then is he guiltless. For Allah is Oft-forgiving Most Merciful.

Interestingly, the only reason I can think of why these food laws are here is because the Quran is the really bad fanfic of the Bible that tries to be like it but fails miserably. Other than that, I’m not sure why it’s here.

Then we have Surah 2: 174-176, which talks about people concealing Allah’s revelations for profit. These verses aren’t talking about the Quran, but, according to the Islamic scholar Ibn Kathir, are talking about the Jews allegedly hiding verses in the Torah that showed Muhammad to be a prophet. Some Muslims may try to use these verses to show how the Bible has somehow been corrupted, but in the context, it seems that the Quran is talking about them hiding these supposed verses in their oral recitations. It says nothing of the actual text itself.

Verse 177 illustrates how Islam offers a works-based salvation, giving readers a laundry-list of things to do to get in Allah’s good graces. Verses 178-179 talks about equal retribution, but not in the sense that we would think of it. The way we Westerners who have grown up in a world built on Christianity would see equality and justice would be in the sense that all men are made equal in the eyes of God. There is neither slave nor free, man or woman. However, when the Quran talks about it, it’s only referring to equal retribution for your specific group, saying:

178.O ye who believe! the law of equality is prescribed to you in cases of murder: the free for the free, the slave for the slave, the woman for the woman. But if any remission is made by the brother of the slain, then grant any reasonable demand, and compensate him with handsome gratitude, this is a concession and a Mercy from your Lord. After this whoever exceeds the limits shall be in grave penalty.

Surah 2:180-182 talks about what to do with your possessions after you die, and 183-187 talk about Ramadan. I’ve already written a post, on this, which you can check out here.

After that, verse 188 seems to be randomly thrown in, telling people essentially not to usurp other people’s wealth or possessions through various means, before jumping into the topic of times to worship Allah in verse 189 and how to enter a house.

Because how you enter a house is as important to Allah as how you pee. I wish I were joking, but that’s Islam for you.

Surah 2:190-194, however, isn’t so funny, as it commands Muslims to wage jihad. While Muslims will argue that the fighting mentioned here only refers to self-defense in cases of persecution, we need to ask what counts as persecution? Is persecution something that happens when you’re actually being attacked and your life and community is at risk just for existing? Or is it anything that you don’t like, such as mockery, and self-defense on their part? The reason I bring this up is because Islam has had a long history of its followers whining about being persecuted, even though they instigated the attack by mocking or attacking the other side.

As though that wasn’t bad enough, verse 195 then tells Muslims to spend money in the cause of jihad. The Quran literally tells them to finance wars against the infidels.

Finally, verses 196-202 talk about the Hajj, which I’ve also done a post on which you can read here.

Until next time,

M.J.