The Islamic Journal
The Islamic Journal begins with a historical background of Islamic society and how it developed and then went on to develop the rest of the world. Islamic society didn’t simply advance scientifically, excelling above other societies; it gave the world the social, legal and moral tools needed to create the modern world. The Journal then covers the topics relating to the Islamic science of Tasawwuf at the heart of everything Islamic. It came about as a result of a book I was writing called “The Knowledge Behind The Terminology and Concepts in Tasawwuf and Its Origin”, the title is as descriptive as possible because the book was written in the same style as classical Islamic texts, a single document without any chapters, as they were a later invention which hindered the flow of the book.
That book looked into the Islamic science of Ihsan, Human perfection, where its terminology and concepts came from, what they mean, and the knowledge and science they were based on. I started researching the subject some five or so years ago, and it resulted in a book whose current length is over 300,000 words.
Towards the end of the book I realized that the scientific subjects, at the heart of Islam, needed to be looked into further because I had learned some interesting things which needed to be investigated, so the book was put on hold as I looked at more research papers to gain deeper knowledge.
The work was done entirely feesabililah, and because of that I wanted to share what I already understood rather than having it sitting there, so I decided to write a separate book with a smaller scope entitled “Who Was al Khidr”. The prophet Khidr (ra) was the perfect role model for the topic because his story in the Quran is the essence of what a Muslim is trying to achieve. The book was about how man gains knowledge from the world around him through his physiology (man’s body and senses), essentially how Maarifa (gnosis) works from its scientific aspects, a subject at the heart of this Journal but not its entire scope.
The original book was the heart of all my research, and this second book represented its end product, but I felt it was too technical for many people so this resulted in me writing three introductory works on the subject to ease people into its context, the first was “Human Physiology and Its Relationship To Baraka”, “What is The Unseen World and Where Is It: Explaining The Technical Terminology Of The Scholars”, and “How Is Allah The Light Of The Heavens and The Earth”.
These works were only finished recently and are the reason why I decided to put this Journal together. The Book itself was 80% complete when I put it on hold, but because of its large scope I needed to do more work on connecting its many topics together, but this would take almost another year given its length so I came to realize the best way to present the book would be to create a Journal and present all the information through this medium, in small portions rather than a giant book that people would find hard to read from cover to cover.
So before reading this journal one should read my other work “The light Of Allah In The Heavens and The Earth”, which combines the three articles I mentioned earlier into one book that explains what the Light of Allah is in relation to modern science and the universe. All of the books mentioned can be downloaded from my website and blog, SunnahMuakada.wordpress.com under the books section.
Because of how the original book was written, each article has a title that wasn’t originally there and created simply for this Journal, which I have tried to make as descriptive as possible, the Journal should also be read in order starting from the first issue, although some articles within could be understood out of sequence, others in the later editions may not as they require prerequisite knowledge that builds upon prior information that would have already been explained.
This won’t be necessary for the earlier editions of the journal but eventually it will cover deeper knowledge regarding the unseen world (ghayb) which in today’s language is called the subatomic world or the Quantum Universe, discussing topics like what Allah’s Arsh (throne) is, what Allah’s Kursi (footstool) is, many verses in the Quran mention them, and ahadith even explain them, but they were not understood by the early scholars of Islam who didn’t have the scientific understanding of the Universe we have, hence they declared them unknowable, but Allah reveals things to mankind so they can be known and surprisingly the Quran itself explains what they are once we understand the knowledge about space that has been missing from man for 1400 years.
The prophet (saws) himself understood the subatomic world and the quantum universe. This is clearly indicated by many ahadith found in the History of Tabari, the first volume begins with the creation of the universe and what the prophet (saws) said about it, but how do you explain that knowledge to desert Arabs except in their vocabulary? Hence while we have the Prophet’s (saws) words, we were missing his understanding of space.
His understanding of space is outlined in the work “How Is Allah The Light Of The Heavens and The Earth”. In it you will find a very significant hadith mentioned by Imam Tabari which shows that the prophet (saws) not only understood the rotation of the earth, sun and moon, but the rotation of the Stars and Galaxy itself and how this is related to the expansion of the universe.
Allah said regarding the prophet Muhammad (saws) when He saw Him on Isra wal Miraj, the night He was taken into Heaven, “His sight (of the spiritual world) never wavered, nor was it too bold, and He saw some of the greatest signs of his Lord (in the Universe).” (53:17-18).
“Allah is He, Who is the only God, the knower of the Unseen and the Observed.”(59:22). It then should not be a surprise that the Unseen is the subatomic world: all those extremely small particles that exist in space, and while man is made from atoms and molecules Allah has created an entire Universe of things from the finer particles in space, the most significant of this creation are the Angels, created from a single type of particle, in contrast to man, the Photon more commonly known as Light.
So when Allah makes a promise in the Quran that “In time We shall make them fully understand Our messages [through what they perceive] in the utmost horizons [of the universe] and within themselves, so that it will become clear unto them that this [revelation] is indeed the truth.”[Qur’an 41:53], it means just that, eventually it would be possible for man to understand everything about the Universe, and we are now living at the end of time when Allah promised to mankind that he would unravel the mysteries of the Universe for them, the prophet having been shown them earlier.
All of this relates to how man gains knowledge through his physiology, something Allah mentions in clear terms in Surah al Shams (91) in the Quran, but man before our time could not understand the relationship between the things being mentioned.
The Islamic journal will present the result of my research into this subject. Each edition will be a part of the original Book, slightly changed and split into articles so it can be read independently as much as possible.
Jazak Allah Khairan, wa Ramadan Kareem wa Mubaraak.
Sayyid Rami al Rifai
