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[quote] Written by the renowned Scholar and Sufi of Aleppo, Imam ‘Abdallah Sirajuddin al-Husayni (ra), The Testimony Of Faith elegantly portrays the beauty of the Shahada, the Islamic testimony of faith: There is no god but God and Muhammad (asws) is the Messenger of God. Going beyond cursory explanations, the author provides a precise explanation of its meanings and conditions, and presents an exhaustive discussion on its merits, virtues, and benefits in this life and the Hereafter. Effortlessly taking readers through the depths and details within this basic tenet of faith, Imam ‘Abdallah Sirajuddin unravels the secrets of La ilaha illa Allah, showing how it can purify minds, hearts, and bodies, uplifting them to lofty spiritual realities that are often veiled from man. Called by his contemporaries ‘the Pole of Prophetic love,’ Imam ‘Abdallah demonstrates the inseparable link between affirming Allah’s Oneness and affirming the primordial rank of the Messenger of Allah s as the first of the Messengers created, the last of them sent to mankind, and the first of them to be resurrected. With the precision of a Hadith scholar and the love of a Gnostic, Imam ‘Abdallah Sirajuddin (ra) presents readers with this outstanding work: an authoritative look at the first pillar of Islam that will satisfy students of Islamic theology and spirituality alike.

[i]How strange it is, how can God be disobeyed

And how can the obstinate disbeliever deny Him

When in every movement and stillness

There is always for Him a witness

And in everything there is a sign Showing that He is One[/i]

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Table of Contents

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Preview

[i]La Ilaha illa Allah[/i] entails that Muhammad (asws) is the Messenger of Allah

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Author’s Biography

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The argument of this fascinating and deeply provoking book is easy to summarise: among rich countries, the more unequal ones do worse according to almost every quality of life indicator you can imagine.

The evidence that Wilkinson and Pickett supply to make their case is overwhelming. Whether the test is life expectancy, infant mortality, obesity levels, crime rates, literacy scores, even the amount of rubbish that gets recycled, the more equal the society the better the performance invariably is.

US, as the most unequal society, comes last on many measures, followed by Portugal and the UK, both places where the gap between rich and poor is relatively large, with Spain and Greece somewhere in the middle, and the Scandinavian countries invariably out in front, along with Japan

Part of the problem, I think, is that the argument is not as straightforward as its authors would like. Despite their obvious sense of conviction, and maybe even because of it, they fudge the central issue at crucial moments, whereas at others, perhaps in order to compensate, they overstate their case, which only makes things worse.

Is the basic claim here that in more equal societies almost everyone does better, or is it simply that everyone does better on average? Most of the time, Wilkinson and Pickett want to insist that it’s the first. ‘Reducing inequality,’ they argue, ‘is the best way of improving the quality of the social environment, and so the real quality of life, for all of us.’ They also contend that inequality takes its toll on almost everyone because of the increased stress of living in a society where rewards are unequally distributed, leading to constant worries about our place in the pecking order, even if we are quite high up it. So that’s why, in unequal societies, even many of the rich are getting fatter and dying younger than they might otherwise.

However, most of the data they rely on doesn’t exactly say this. Instead, the graphs rank different countries’ performance according to life expectancy rates, incarceration rates, obesity rates, etc, which are simply average measures. What these graphs tell us is that overall there is a better chance of getting fat or dying young if you live in an unequal society.

Take rates of imprisonment. Here the US has the worst record of any rich country by far (the graph showing rates of imprisonment per 100,000 of population is the only one that has to be recorded on a log scale, because otherwise the US would be off the chart, even off the page). But, as Wilkinson and Pickett admit, ‘there is a strong social gradient in imprisonment, with people of lower class, income and education much more likely to be sent to prison than people higher up the social scale.’ The US imprisons great swathes of its poor, black population. It doesn’t follow from this that almost everyone is worse off than they would be under a more equal system. To show that, we would need to know that even members of the white middle class are much more likely to be jailed in the US than they are in, say, Canada, Israel, New Zealand, Switzerland and Ireland (other countries on the graph). Now it is almost certainly true that white middle-class Americans are more likely to be jailed than they would be elsewhere, simply because a system that is so hooked on incarceration at the bottom end of the scale is bound to suffer from a kind of ‘trickle-up’ effect. From a European perspective, it is still shocking to see the spectacular prison terms sometimes handed down to those Wall Street miscreants unlucky enough to find themselves before the courts. But if there are figures to demonstrate that almost everyone is worse off in the US than elsewhere, Wilkinson and Pickett don’t provide them, even though this is what they need to support the case they want to make.

Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better?

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[quote]The late Shaykh ‘Abd al-Qadir ‘Isa (ra) (d. 1312 H/1991 CE) was one of the revivers of the Sufi tradition in the Levant. In a time of gross materialism and imported profane ideologies into the Arab world, Shaykh ‘Abd al-Qadir ‘Isa provided the keys for a reclamation of Islam’s spiritual riches and revived the spiritual path, imparting guidance and instruction to scores of people from all strata of society. Realities of Sufism, the Shaykh’s only book, takes readers on a journey to the heart of Islam. Expositing on the foundations of Islam’s spiritual path, Sufism, Shaykh ‘Abd al-Qadir simultaneously describes the workings of the path of excellence—ihsan—and answers the doubts of the orientalists, modernists, and would be Islamic revivalists. Some of the topics in this book include: the history and etymology of Sufism, the conditions of a true spiritual guide, the proper manners of a spiritual seeker, the outer manners of the path, the inner manners of the path, the deeds of the heart, spiritual unveiling, miracles, oneness of being, and historic testimonies to Sufism’s key role and efficacy in purifying the souls and elevating the Sacred over the profane in the lives of man.

[i]Sufism is good character

He who is ahead of you in good character

Is ahead of you in Sufism[/i][/quote]

PREVIEWS:

[b]* [url=http://www.sunnipubs.com/index.php?option=com_weblinks&task=view&catid=… & Union[/url]

* [url=http://www.sunnipubs.com/index.php?option=com_weblinks&task=view&catid=… During Dhikr[/url]

[url=http://www.sunnipubs.com/toc/toc-ros.pdf]TABLE OF CONTENTS[/url]

[url=http://www.sunnipubs.com/authors/a-ros.pdf]ABOUT THE AUTHOR[/url][/b]

From here:

They are the Family—fundamentalism’s avant-garde, waging spiritual war in the halls of American power and around the globe. They consider themselves the new chosen, congressmen, generals, and foreign dictators who meet in confidential cells, to pray and plan for a “leadership led by God,” to be won not by force but through “quiet diplomacy.” Their base is a leafy estate overlooking the Potomac in Arlington, Virginia, and Jeff Sharlet is the only journalist to have written from inside its walls.

The Family is about the other half of American fundamentalist power—not its angry masses, but its sophisticated elites. Sharlet follows the story back to Abraham Vereide, an immigrant preacher who in 1935 organized a small group of businessmen sympathetic to European fascism, fusing the Far Right with his own polite but authoritarian faith. From that core, Vereide built an international network of fundamentalists who spoke the language of establishment power, a “family” that thrives to this day. In public, they host prayer breakfasts; in private they preach a gospel of “biblical capitalism,” military might, and American empire. Citing Hitler, Lenin, and Mao, the Family's leader declares, "We work with power where we can, build new power where we can't."

Sharlet’s discoveries dramatically challenge conventional wisdom about American fundamentalism, revealing its crucial role in the unraveling of the New Deal, the waging of the Cold War, and the no-holds-barred economics of globalization. The question Sharlet believes we must ask is not “What do fundamentalists want?” but “What have they already done?”

Anyone read it?