5.8.11
Hajja Aisha Bewley on the importance of Quran in Ramadhan
This speaker is the author of a great many quality translations of islamic literature, from the Quran itself to ibn Arabi. Currently gettign my head aroung Ibn Arabi on the Secrets of fasting.
Translated by Aisha Bewley, Edited by Laleh Bakhtiyar, Foreward by Seyyed Hossein Nasr.
Goodness.
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3 comments:
Oh well, I guess the sentiment's a good one.
But she's like some kind of sunday school nun, listing her hadiths on the benefits ...
We get a "bonus" for reading in Ramadan?! "Twice the reward" for attempts ... schedules ... Man what a load of sunday school capitalism.
With her age and experience, Aisha is capable of delivering something better than this (which could be located on any Salafist blog).
I'd prefer Rabia's Islam (not the embodied desire for values, bonsues and rewards that she's going on about). As the poetess wrote:
If I adore You out of fear of Hell, burn me in Hell!
If I adore you out of desire for Paradise,
Lock me out of Paradise.
But if I adore you for Yourself alone,
Do not deny to me Your eternal beauty.
Islam = value free zone
Qur'an = bonus free immediate baraka
Qur'an is like a psychedelic drug, only healthier. You don't get a capitalist bonus for failing to take it, you just don't get the physical high.
could have guessed youd have reacted to the language of bonus.
am looking for more video footage of this scholar, but i think she prefers to write and translate books.
yak yak :) There's a lot in Qur'an to do with money, bounty, spoils of war, etc ... but none of it is valuative, it's all Rabia-esque.
Aisha knows her stuff, surely. I think this video is her doing the Sufi trick I (still) find a bit patronizing -- "hiding" the Truth she has learnt behind a facade of traditionalism. The idea is to "reel" the fishes in and then -- wallop! -- smack on the head/ibn Arabi translation.
It's a standard trick -- in fact, Salafis warn against it -- but ... y'know, maybe it's better just to let people make up their own minds by telling them how it all stands. If it doesn't stick, let the fishes swim away.
It's one of the points where I diverge from Sufism, though I recognize the validity of the approach.
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