1. ‘Islam is not Islamism – never forget this – but the latter operates in the name of the former, and this is the grave question of the name.’ (Derrida)
2. Maimonides made the Mishnah out of the Talmud; Sayyid Sabiq made a Talmud out of the Mishnah.
3. Some drink deeply at the Fountain of Life; others merely gargle.
4. Political Islam? It would be a good idea.
5. Because of self there is suffering.
6. De coeli: alterities are only nominal. De terrae: realities are only nominal.
7. Terrorism is to jihad what adultery is to marriage.
8. Truth is stronger than faction.
9. Formalism is an excuse.
10. Exoterism offers only literalism or liberalism.
11. The idolator is he who takes symbols literally.
12. Against Urizen’s shield, bullet points avail more than the sword.
13. After the khalaf there is only the Mahdi.
14. Culture builds the ceiling of religion higher.
15. Beware the word that is an excuse for not making dhikr.
16. Compliance is no excuse for strictness.
17. Prefer the rukhsa when it leads to recollection. Fear the azima when it leads to turbulence of the heart.
18. Literalism is defensible on all levels save the sacred.
19. Tradition: esoterism is subject to the exoteric. Reform: the esoteric is subject to exoterism.
20. The failures of exoterism are not usually the victories of esoterism.
21. True humanism: the Real is known only through mu‘amala.
22. Exoterism cannot see that nothing is strong enough to limit His self-disclosures.
23. Self-knowledge without Divine knowledge? Divine knowledge without self-knowledge?
24. Paradise is occupied mainly by the stupid and the Sufis.
25. The Law upholds the Umma better than the Umma upholds the Law.
26. Uncertainty is only superficial.
27. Modernity: the nuclear winter of the Reformation.
28. A madhhab is a grammar of the Law.
29. For ignorance to submit to knowledge, the many must submit to the One.
30. Scripture provides the consonants, and culture the vowels, of a sacred civilisation.
31. Being hard is the soft option.
32. The existence of God is proven by existence. The existence of existence is proven by the one for whom it exists.
33. Heresy is the gad-fly that makes the horse trot.
34. Detachment from the need to conform is perfect only when it yields perfect conformity.
35. Literalism: have you seen him that worships God on a harf?
36. Without the batin, the zahir is an idol.
37. The lower cannot cause the higher, but it can be adequate to receive it.
38. Only those who dislike formalism can bear it.
39. No meditation without mediation. No self without the Zulf.
40. Those that sell Tornadoes shall reap the whirlwind.
41. Religion is not what we do, but what we mean.
42. The Prophet carries all of great Islam.
43. Les Lumiéres? Mais nous sommes la derriére-garde!
44. Liberals make mercy colder than justice.
45. A god is any site of independent volition.
46. The Sutra is a zunnar. The Sura is for the ahrar. (‘Say: my Lord enjoins justice.’)
47. The impermanent cannot be devoid of suffering.
48. The internal, not the external, reaches the eternal.
49. The formalist is the corpse of an angel.
50. Modernity: ‘a world full of Christian ideas gone mad.’ (Chesterton.)
51. Prayer shows us what we truly desire.
52. Never trust a leadership position you find convenient.
53. Popular culture dwells in deep pockets.
54. Tajdid involves liposuction, not resurrection.
55. The zulf is the truth of the Self. The Dhat is the truth of the That.
56. The Liber Asian trumped the Manu mission.
57. Morality means more-reality.
58. Modern Islam: triumphalism without a triumph.
59. It is better to flourish as a second-class citizen than to be threatened as an equal.
60. Conformity can be more radical than alienation.
