Islam and Islamic Laws

Ghusl in Islam | Ghusl or Ablution & its method in Sahih Bukhari

Ghusl is an Arabic word which means full ablution in Islam. Ghusl or bathing becomes necessary for any adult Muslim after having sexual intercourse, any sexual discharge or completion of menstrual cycle, giving birth or death by natural causes. Followings are some selected Hadis from Sahi Bukhari which put light on the method and importance of Ghusl in Islam.

Narrated `Aisha: Whenever the Prophet took a bath after Janaba he started by washing his hands and then performed ablution like that for the prayer. After that he would put his fingers in water and move the roots of his hair with them, and then pour three handfuls of water over his head and then pour water all over his body.
1.249:
Narrated Maimuna: (the wife of the Prophet) Allah’s Apostle performed ablution like that for the prayer but did not wash his feet. He washed off the discharge from his private parts and then poured water over his body. He withdrew his feet from that place (the place where he took the bath) and then washed them. And that was his way of taking the bath of Janaba.
1.250:
Narrated `Aisha:
The Prophet and I used to take a bath from a single pot called ‘Faraq’.
1.251:
Narrated Abu Salama: `Aisha’s brother and I went to `Aisha and he asked her about the bath of the Prophet. She brought a pot containing about a Sa` of water and took a bath and poured it over her head and at what time there was a screen between her and us.
1.252:
Narrated Abu Ja`far: While I and my father were with Jabir bin `Abdullah, some People asked him about taking a bath He replied, “A Sa` of water is sufficient for you.” A man said, “A Sa` is not sufficient for me.” Jabir said, “A Sa was sufficient for one who had more hair than you and was better than you (meaning the Prophet).” And then Jabir (put on) his garment and led the prayer.
1.253:
Narrated Ibn `Abbas: The Prophet and Maimuna used to take a bath from a single pot.
1.254:
Narrated Jubair bin Mut`im: Allah’s Apostle said, “As for me, I pour water three times on my head.” And he pointed with both his hands.
1.255:
Narrated Jabir bin `Abdullah: The Prophet used to pour water three times on his head.
1.256:
Narrated Abu Ja`far: Jabir bin `Abdullah said to me, “Your cousin (Hasan bin Muhammad bin Al−Hanafiya) came to me and asked about the bath of Janaba. I replied, ‘The Prophet uses to take three handfuls of water, pour them on his head and then pour more water over his body.’ Al−Hasan said to me, ‘I am a hairy man.’ I replied, ‘The Prophet had more hair than you’. ”
1.257:
Narrated Maimuna: I placed water for the bath of the Prophet. He washed his hands twice or thrice and then poured water on his left hand and washed his private parts. He rubbed his hands over the earth (and cleaned them), rinsed his mouth, washed his nose by putting water in it and blowing it out, washed his face and both forearms and then poured water over his body. Then he withdrew from that place and washed his feet.

Narrated Maimuna:
I placed water for the bath of Allah’s Apostle and he poured water over his hands and washed them twice or thrice; then he poured water with his right hand over his left and washed his private parts (with his left hand). He rubbed his hand over the earth and rinsed his mouth and washed his nose by putting water in it and blowing it out. After that he washed his face, both fore arms and head thrice and then poured water over his body. He withdrew from that place and washed his feet.
1.266:
Narrated Maimuna bint Al−Harith: I placed water for the bath of Allah’s Apostle and put a screen. He poured water over his hands, and washed them once or twice. (The sub−narrator added that he did not remember if she had said thrice or not). Then he poured water with his right hand over his left one and washed his private parts. He rubbed his hand over the earth or the wall and washed it. He rinsed his mouth and washed his nose by putting water in it and blowing it out. He washed his face, forearms and head. He poured water over his body and then withdrew from that place and washed his feet. I presented him a piece of cloth (towel) and he pointed with his hand (that he does not want it) and did not take it.
1.267:
Narrated Muhammad bin Al−Muntathir: on the authority of his father that he had asked `Aisha (about the Hadith of Ibn `Umar). She said, “May Allah be Merciful to Abu `Abdur−Rahman. I used to put scent on Allah’s Apostle and he used to go round his wives, and in the morning he assumed the Ihram, and the fragrance of scent was still coming out from his body.”

Muhammad Ibn Abd Al Wahhab Biography & History

Muhammad Ibn Abd al-Wahhab was a religious scholar and conservative reformer whose teachings were elaborated by his followers into the doctrines of Wahhabism. Ibn Abd alWahhab was born in the small town of Uyayna located in the Najd territory of north central Arabia. He came from a family of Hanbali scholars and received his early education from his father, who served as judge (qadi) and taught hadith and law at the local mosque schools. Ibn Abd al-Wahhab left Uyayna at an early age, and probably journeyed ﬁrst to Mecca for the pilgrimage and then continued to Medina, where he remained for a longer period. Here he was inﬂuenced by the lectures of Shaykh Abdallah b. Ibrahim al-Najdi on the neo Hanbali doctrines of Ibn Taymiyya.
From Medina, Ibn Abd al-Wahhab traveled to Basra, where he apparently remained for some time, and then to Isfahan. In Basra he was introduced directly to an array of mystical (Suﬁ) practices and to Shiite beliefs and rituals. This encounter undoubtedly reinforced his earlier beliefs that Islam had been corrupted by the infusion of extraneous and heretical inﬂuences. The beginning of his reformist activism may be traced to the time when he left Basra around 1739 to return to the Najd.
Ibn Abd al-Wahhab rejoined his family in Huraymila, where his father had recently relocated. Here he composed the small treatise entitled Kitab al-tawhid (Book of unity), in which he most clearly outlines his religio-political mission. He castigates not only the doctrines and practices of Suﬁsm and Shiism, but also more widespread popular customs common to Sunnis as well, such as performing pilgrimages to the graves of pious personages and beseeching the deceased for intercession with God. More generally, following a line of argument developed much earlier by Ibn Taymiyya, Ibn Abd al-Wahhab challenged the authority of the religious scholars (ulema), not only of his own time, but also the majority of those in preceding generations. These scholars had injected unlawful innovations (bida) into Islam, he argued. In order to restore the strict monotheism (tawhid) of true Islam, it was necessary to strip the pristine Islam of human additions and speculations and implement the laws contained in the Quran as interpreted by the Prophet and his immediate companions. Thus, Ibn Abd al-Wahhab called for the reopening of ijtihad (independent legal judgment) by qualiﬁed persons to reform Islam, but the end to which his ijtihad led was a conservative, literal reading of certain parts of the Quran.
Aspects of Ibn Abd al-Wahhab’s teachings, including asceticism, simplicity of faith, and emphasis on an egalitarian community, quickly drew followers to his cause. But his condemnation of the alleged moral laxity of society, his challenge to the ulema, and to the political authority that supported them estranged him from his townspeople and, some claim, even from his own family. In 1740, he returned to his native village of Uyayna, where the local ruler (amir) Uthman b. Bishr adopted his teachings and began to act on some of them, such as destroying tombs in the area. When this activity caused a popular backlash, Ibn Abd al-Wahhab moved on to Diriyya, a small town in the Najd near presentday Riyadh. Here he forged an alliance with the amir Muhammad b. Saud (d. 1765), who pledged military support on behalf of Ibn Abd al-Wahhab’s religious vocation. Ibn Abd al-Wahhab spent the remainder of his life in Diriyya, teaching in the local mosque, counseling ﬁrst Muhammad b. Saud and then his son Abd al-Aziz (d. 1801), and spreading his teachings through followers in the Najd and Iraq.

Jalaluddin Muhammad Akbar | Akbar the Great Biography

Akbar the Great (1542–1605)
Jalal al-Din Akbar was born in 1542 as his father Humayun ﬂed India before the forces of the Afghan warlord Sher Shah Sur. After thirteen years of exile, his father returned to rule India, but died in a fall in a matter of months. Akbar came to the throne at the age thirteen in 1555. He ruled until his own death in 1605.
Akbar’s reputation as the true founder of the Mogul empire rests partly on his own reign of ﬁfty years and partly on the writings of Abu ’l-Fazl, a loyal companion who was Akbar’s ardent supporter. Abu ’l-Fazl’s Ain-i Akbari and Akbarnamah presented the image of Akbar as a political genius. Abu ’l-Fazl saw Akbar as the “perfect man” (insan-I kamil) of Suﬁ lore: a master of both the temporal and spiritual realms. He, therefore, inﬂated Akbar’s reputation whenever possible.
In practical terms, Akbar adopted some of the administrative practices of the defeated Sher Shah. As the inﬂuence of his grandfather and father’s aging courtiers declined, Akbar was free to recruit a new corps of advisors, like Abu ’l-Fazl. These advisors depended on his patronage for their own status. During Akbar’s reign, India saw an inﬂux of silver bullion as European traders began massive purchases of Indian cloth. Because of the cash nexus created by increased commerce, Akbar was able to manage a system in which ofﬁcials received salaries either directly from the imperial treasury or through assignments of the government’s revenue allotment from the capitol of the province for speciﬁc districts.
The central authority gained an unprecedented degree of control over state ofﬁcials. Akbar’s reputation was further enhanced as the British came to rule India. They saw him as a model for their own style of rule: religiously neutral, but strict in his assertion of central power.

What Does Ayatollah Mean | Definition of Ayatullah

Ayatollah Meaning & Definition
The term ayatollah (Ar. ayatollah), literally “Sign of God,” refers to high-ranking scholars within the Twelver Shiite tradition. The term emerged in the early modern period (late 19th century) to describe the elite of the Shiite scholarly community. In modern works, many early Shiite scholars were anachronistically given the rank of ayatollah. Ayatollahs are nearly always experts in Islamic jurisprudence (ﬁqh), and are normally required to have written extensively in this area.
The requirements for qualiﬁcation as an ayatollah are not entirely clear in traditional descriptions of the Shiite hierarchy, though the rank of ijtihad and associated qualiﬁcations of learning are often mentioned. Ijtihad is a condition, though not everyone who has attained it will be called “ayatollah.” The vagueness is due to absence of rigid ranks in the Shiite hierarchy. Before and since the Islamic Revolution in Iran (1979), the term “grand ayatollah” was used for the “sources of imitation.” Since the revolution, there has been a tremendous increase in the use of the term for the Iranian clerical elite.
Ayatollahs are found at the apex of the scholarly structure, having studied in traditional seminaries (madrasas) and having passed through a number of intermediate ranks (among which is Hojjat al-Islam). A scholar seems to be granted the rank of ayatollah through general agreement among the scholars. A person might be referred to as ayatollah by one writer and, when no one disputes the appellation, most scholars subsequently refer to him as ayatollah. An ayatollah, theoretically, holds this rank until he dies, though in recent times, ayatollahs (such as ayatollahs Shari atmadari and Muntazeri in Iran) have lost their status after serious disputes with supposedly higher-ranking Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

Muhammad Ibn Ismail Al Bukhari Biography | Imam Bukhari

Muhammad ibn Ismail Al Bukhari Biography
Muhammad b. Ismail al-Bukhari, who was born in Bukhara in central Asia, compiled the most important hadith collection in Sunni Islam, called al-Jami al-sahih (The sound Collection). Al-Bukhari is said to have started to learn hadiths (“the sayings” of the prophet Muhammad) at about ten years of age, having been blessed with a remarkably retentive memory and a sharp intellect. At the age of sixteen, he made the pilgrimage and traveled to Mecca and Medina to study with well-known hadith teachers there. He next went to Egypt, and spent the following sixteen years traveling through much of Asia in the pious pursuit of hadiths. On his return to Bukhara, he began to scrutinize the roughly 600,000 reports he had collected. He is said to have applied the most stringent standards in determining the reliability of these reports, which led him to record only about 7,397 of them. His painstaking efforts resulted in the Sahih, which by the tenth century had achieved near universal recognition among Muslims, who regarded al-Bukhari’s collection as including the most reliable and sound hadiths attributed to the Prophet, based particularly on analysis of their chains of transmission.
The Sahih continues to enjoy an almost “canonical” status today, second only to the Quran in importance as the source for moral and legal prescriptions. The standard edition in use today was prepared by Ali b. Muhammad al-Yunini (d. 1302).
Numerous commentaries have been written on the Sahih; in recent times, partial and complete translations of this collection have been made in a number of languages. Al-Bukhari died in his hometown of Bukhara at age sixty.

Asabiyah Ibn Khuldun | Meaning & Definition of Asabiya in Islam

Asabiya or Social Solidarity is Islam
The English equivalent of the term asabiyya is akin to “social solidarity” or “tribal loyalty.” It is an abstract noun that derives from the Arabic root asab, meaning “to bind.” It refers to a special characteristic or set of characteristics that deﬁnes the rather vague essence of what constitutes a particular group. As a sociological principle, it would be important within the political thought of Ibn Khaldun (1332–1406). Asabiyya, according to him, is the social bond that is particularly evident among tribal groups and is based more on social, psychological, physical, and political factors than on those of genetics or consanguinity. It is not unique among the Arabs; rather, each group possesses its own distinct asabiyya. In this way, Ibn Khaldun identiﬁed a Jewish asabiyah, a Greek asabiyya, and so on. He also perceived an intimate connection between asabiyya and religion. For a religion to be effective it must evoke a feeling of solidarity among all the members of the group. In this way one could have diverse asabiyyat; for example, an asabiyah to one’s tribe, one’s guild, and ultimately to one’s religion. Ibn Khaldun argues that Islam brought a strong sense of asabiyya to the Arabs and was responsible for the beneﬁts that Islamic civilization produced.

Calligraphy & History of Calligraphy in Islam

Calligraphy In Islam
Muslims have always deemed calligraphy, the art of beautiful writing, the noblest of the arts. The ﬁrst chapters of the Quran revealed to the prophet Muhammad in the early seventh century (suras 96 and 68) mention the pen and writing. Writing in Arabic script soon became a hallmark of Islamic civilization, found on everything from buildings and coins to textiles and ceramics, and scribes and calligraphers became the most honored type of artist. We know the names, and even the biographies, of more calligraphers than any other type of artist. Probably because of the intrinsic link between writing and the revelation, Islamic calligraphy is meant to convey an aura of effortlessness and immutability, and the individual hand and personality are sublimated to the overall impression of stateliness and grandeur. In this way Islamic calligraphy differs markedly from other great calligraphic traditions, notably the Chinese, in which the written text is meant to impart the personality of the calligrapher and recall the moment of its creation. Islamic calligraphy, by contrast, is timeless.
The reed pen (qalam) was the writing implement par excellence in Islamic civilization. The brush, used for calligraphy in China and Japan, was reserved for painting in the Islamic lands. In earliest times Muslim calligraphers penned their works on parchment, generally made from the skins of sheep and goats, but from the eighth century parchment was gradually replaced by the cheaper and more ﬂexible support of paper. From the fourteenth century virtually all calligraphy in the Muslim lands was written on paper. Papermakers developed elaborately decorated papers to complement the ﬁne calligraphy, and the colored, marbled, and gold-sprinkled papers used by calligraphers in later periods are some of the ﬁnest ever made.
Almost all Islamic calligraphy is written in Arabic script. The Quran was revealed in that language, and the sanctity of the revelation meant that the script was adopted for many other languages, such as new Persian, Ottoman Turkish, and Urdu. Unlike many other scripts that have at least two distinct forms of writing—a monumental or printed form in which the letters are written separately and a cursive or handwritten form in which they are connected—Arabic has only the cursive form, in which some, but not all, letters are connected and assume different forms depending on their position in the word (initial, medial, ﬁnal, and independent). The cursive nature of Arabic script allowed calligraphers to develop many different styles of writing, which are usually grouped under two main headings: rectilinear and rounded. Since the eighteenth century, scholars have often called the rectilinear styles “Kuﬁc,” after the city of Kufa in southern Iraq, which was an intellectual center in early Islamic times. This name is something of a misnomer, for as yet we have no idea which particular rectilinear style this name denoted.
Scholars have proposed various other names to replace kuﬁc, including Old or Early Abbasid style, but these names are not universally accepted, in part because they carry implicit political meanings, and many scholars continue to use the term kuﬁc. Similarly, scholars often called the rounded styles naskh, from the verb nasakha (to copy). The naskh script is indeed the most common hand used for transcription and the one upon which modern styles of typography are based, but the name is also something of a misnomer, for it refers to only one of a group of six rounded hands that became prominent in later Islamic times. As with kuﬁc, scholars have proposed several other names to replace naskh, such as new style (often abbreviated N.S.), or new Abbasid style, but these names, too, are not universally accepted.
Medieval sources mention the names of many other calligraphic hands, but so far it has been difficult, even impossible, to match many of these names with distinct styles of script. Very few sources describe the characteristics of a particular style or give illustrations of particular scripts. Furthermore, the same names may have been applied to different styles in different places and at different times. Hence it may never be possible to link the names of speciﬁc scripts given in the sources with the many, often fragmentary, manuscripts at hand, especially from the early period. Both the rectilinear and the rounded styles were used for writing from early Islamic times, but in the early period the rounded style seems to have been a book hand used for ordinary correspondence, while the rectilinear style was reserved for calligraphy. Although no examples of early calligraphy on parchment can be sensitively dated before the late ninth century, the importance of the rectilinear style in early Islamic times is clear from other media with inscriptions, such as coins, architecture, and monumental epigraphy. The Fihrist by Ibn al-Nadim (d. 995) records the names of calligraphers who worked in the Umayyad and Abbasid periods, and both coins and the inscriptions on the ﬁrst example of Islamic architecture, the Dome of the Rock erected in Jerusalem by the Umayyad caliph Abd al-Malik in 692, show that from earliest times Umayyad calligraphers applied such aesthetic principles as balance, symmetry, elongation, and stylization to transform ordinary writing into calligraphy. Calligraphers in early Islamic times regularly used the rectilinear styles to transcribe manuscripts of the Quran. Indeed, the rectilinear styles might be deemed Quranichands, for we know only one other manuscript—an un-identiﬁed genealogical text in Berlin (Staatsbibliotheque no. 379) written in a rectilinear script. None of these early manuscriptsof the Quran is signed or dated, and most survive only in fragmentary form, and so scholars are still reﬁning other methods, both paleographic and codicological, to group and localize the scripts used in these early parchment manuscripts of the Quran.
The major change in later Islamic times was the gradual adoption and adaptation of round hands for calligraphy. From the ninth century calligraphers transformed the round hands into artistic scripts suitable for transcribing the Quran and other prestigious texts. The earliest surviving copy of the Quran written in a rounded hand is a small manuscript, now dispersed but with the largest section preserved in the Chester Beatty Library in Dublin (ms. 1417). It bears a note in Persian saying that the manuscript was corrected by a certain Ahmad ibn Ali ibn Abu ’l-Qasm al-Khayqani in June 905, and it is tacitly accepted that the rounded hand was developed in Iran or nearby Iraq, heartland of the Abbasid caliphate. In the ensuing centuries calligraphers continued to develop and elaborate the rounded style, and from the fourteenth century virtually all manuscripts of the Quran were written in one of the six round scripts known as the Six Pens (Arabic, al-aqlam al-sitta; Persian, shish qalam). These comprise three pairs of majuscule-miniscule hands, thuluth-naskh, muhaqqaq-rayhan, and tawqi-riqa, and calligraphers delighted in juxtaposing the different scripts, particularly the larger and smaller variants of the same pair.Variousexplanations have been proposed for this transformation of rounded book hands into proportioned scripts suitable for calligraphy ﬁne manuscripts. These explanations range from the political (e.g., the spread of orthodox Sunni Islam) to the socio-historical (e.g., the new role of the chancery scribe as copyist and calligrapher), but perhaps the most convincing are the practical. The change from rectilinear to rounded script coincided with the change from parchment to paper, and the new style of writing might well be connected with a new type of reed pen, a new method of sharpening the nib, or a new way that the pen was held, placed on the page, or moved across it. In the same way, the adoption of paper engendered the adoption of a new type of black soot ink (midad) that replaced the dark brown, tannin-based ink (hibr) used on parchment. From the fourteenth century calligraphers, especially those in the eastern Islamic lands, developed more stylized forms of rounded script. The most distinctive is the hanging script known as nastaliq, which was particularly suitable for transcribing Persian, in which many words end in letters with large bowls, such as ya or ta. Persian calligraphers commonly used nastaliq to pen poetic texts, in which the rounded bowls at the end of each hemistich form a visual chain down the right side of the columns on a page. They also used nastaliq to pen poetic specimens (qita). These elaborately planned calligraphic compositions typically contain a Persian quatrain written in colored and gold-dusted inks on ﬁne, brightly colored and highly polished paper and set in elaborately decorated borders. The swooping strokes of the letters and bowls provide internal rhythm and give structure to the composition. In contrast to the anonymous works of the early period, these calligraphic specimens are frequently signed and dated, and connoisseurs vied to assemble ﬁne collections, which were often mounted in splendid albums.

Calligraphy continues to be an important art form in modern times, despite the adoption of the Latin alphabet in some countries such as Turkey. Some calligraphers are trying to revive the traditional styles, notably the Six Pens, and investigate and rediscover traditional techniques and materials. Societies teaching calligraphy ﬂourish. The Anjuman-e Khushnvisan-e Iran (Society of Iranian Calligraphers), for example, has branches in all the main cities of the country, with thousands of students. Other artists are extending the calligraphic tradition to new media, adopting calligraphy in new forms, ranging from three-dimensional sculpture to oil painting on canvas. More than any other civilization, Islam values the written word.

Allah Meaning & Definition | Allah in Islam Religion

ALLAH Meaning & Definitions
Allah is the Arabic equivalent of the English word God, and is the term employed not only among Arabic-speaking Muslims but by Christians and Jews and in Arabic translations of the Bible. A contraction of al-ilah, meaning “the god,” Allah is cognate with the generic pan-Semitic designation for “God” or “deity” (Israelite/Canaanite El, Akkadian ilu) and is particularly close to the common Hebrew term Elohim and the less frequent Eloah. It is thus, strictly speaking, not a proper name but a title.
In the Islamic context, as in Jewish and Christian usage, Allah refers to the one true God of monotheism. This is how the term occurs in the shahada or “profession of faith,” the simplest, earliest, and most basic of Islamic creeds, in the ﬁrst part of which the believer afﬁrms that there is no “god” (ilah) but “God” or “the god” (Allah). However, the shahada itself seems to imply that Allah was already known to the ﬁrst audience of the Islamic revelation, and that they were called upon to repudiate other deities. And this is precisely the picture given in the Quran. “If you ask them who created them,” the Quran informs the prophet Muhammad regarding his pagan critics, “they will certainly say ‘Allah.’” (43:87; compare 10:31; 39:38). Pagan Arabs swore oaths by Allah (as witnessed at 6:109; 16:38; 35:42).
Pre-Islamic Arabs believed in supernatural intercessors with God (10:18; 34:22), for whom they appeared to claim warrant from Allah. Indeed, Allah seems (in their view) to have headed a pantheon of pre-Islamic deities or supernatural beings, not altogether unlike El’s rule over the Canaanite pantheon, and, like El, he seems to have been rather distant and aloof. While the data are fragmentary and open to some question, pre-Islamic Arabs seem to have paid more attention to Allah’s daughters and to the jinn (or genies) than to him. Even the Quran seems to concede genuine existence to a divine retinue (as at 7:191–195; 10:28–29; 25:3). However, just as the Canaanite gods are replaced by an angelic court in Israelite faith, Islam rejects the independent deities of pagan Arabia in favor of a very much subordinated “exalted assembly” (see 37:8; 38:69) that exists to carry out the decrees of the one true God, who is, says the Quran, nearer to the individual human than that person’s jugular vein (50:16). In this, as in other respects, Islam regards itself as a restoration of the religion taught by earlier prophets but marred by successive human apostasies (see 42:13).
The Quran identiﬁes Allah as the creator, sustainer, and sovereign of the heavens and the earth. (See, for example, 13:16; 29:61, 63; 31:25; 39:38; 43:9, 87.) Following the scriptural text, Muslims characterize him by the ninety-nine “most beautiful names” (7:180; 17:110; 20:8), which serve to identify his attributes. (Eventually, repetition of and meditation upon these names became an important practice in the tradition of Suﬁ mysticism.) They portray a being who is selfsufﬁcient, omnipotent, omniscient, eternal, merciful yet just, benevolent but terrible in his wrath. The picture of Allah in the Quran employs distinctly anthropomorphic language (referring, for example, to the divine eyes, hands, and face), which, virtually all commentators have long agreed, are to be taken ﬁguratively.
Allah has revealed himself throughout history via messages to various prophets by means of both the seemingly routine processes of nature and the periodic judgments and catastrophes directed against the rebellious. He will reveal himself even more spectacularly at the end of time when, as judge of humankind, he pronounces doom or blessing upon every individual who has ever lived. The faith of Muhammad and the Quran is centered on absolute “submission” (islam) to his will.
The Quran describes God as “Allah, one; Allah, the eternal refuge. He does not beget nor is He begotten, and there is none equal to Him” (112:1–4). In subsequent Islamic Thought, such straightforward denial of divine family life (probably aimed at both the pre-Islamic pantheon and Christian concepts of God the Father and God the Son) was expanded into a much broader doctrine of the divine unity, denoted by the non-Quranic word tawhid (“uniﬁcation” or “making one”). Philosophers and theologians debated such Questions as whether God’s attributes were identical to God’s essence, or whether, being multiple, they must be additional and in a sense external in order not to compromise the utter and absolute simplicity of the divine essence. They debated how the undeniably manifold cosmos had emerged out of the pure oneness of God.

The issue of whether God’s speech (i.e., the Quran) was coeternal with him, or subsidiary and created, rising to political prominence in the second and third centuries after Muhammad. The overwhelming personality depicted in the revelations of Muhammad became the Necessary Existent (wajib al-wujud), and the obvious dependence of life on his will (particularly apparent in the harsh desert environment of Arabia) was taken to point to the utter contingency of all creation upon a God who brought it into being out of nothing. Perhaps not unrelated was the rise to dominance in Islam of a doctrine of predestination or determinism, which had obvious roots in the Quran itself (as, for example, at 13:27; 16:93; 74:31). In the meantime, though, while the philosophers were elaborating a view of Allah tending to extreme transcendence, Suﬁ theoreticians were emphasizing his immanence and experiential accessibility and, in practice, often breaking down the barrier between Creator and creatures—and occasionally shocking their fellow Muslims.
The famous “Throne Verse” (2:255) offers a ﬁne summary of basic Islamic teaching regarding God: “Allah!There is no god but he, the Living, the Everlasting. Neither slumber nor sleep seizes him. His are all things in the heavens and the earth. Who is there who can intercede with him, except by his leave? He knows what is before them and what is behind them, while they comprehend nothing of his knowledge except as he wills. His throne extends over the heavens and the earth. Sustaining them does not burden him, for he is the Most High, the Supreme.” The depth of Muslim devotion to Allah is apparent virtually everywhere in Islamic life, including even the use of elaborate calligraphic renditions of the word as architectural and artistic ornamentation.

Masjid Al Aqsa HD Wallpapers 2012 | Holly Mosque in Jerusalem

Al Aqsa Mosque or Masjid Al Aqsa is the third holliest site in Islam. It is located in old city of Jerusalem. This silver doomed mosque along with Dome of the Rock also referred to as Al-Haram Ash Sharif. Al Aqsa mosque has capacity of over 5000 people and it has four large minarets along with amazing golden doom. Here are some expertly designed wallpaper of Masjid Al Aqsa which you can download free here.

Al Aqsa Mosque Wallpapers

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Masjid Nabawi HD Wallpapers | Pictures of Prophet Mosque 2012

Al-Masjid Al-Nabawi (Arabic word which means “Mosque of Prophet”) is second most sacred place for Muslims after Kaaba Sharif. It is situated in Madina and one of the largest mosques in the world. It was established in 622 by Holy Prophet PBUH. We have designed some latest hd wallpapers of Masjid Nabavi (also known as Prophet’s Mosque). Check out these amazing pictures of Masjid Nabawi and download them free. Keep remember us in your prayers and we appreciate your feedback.

Masjid Nabvi Wallpapers