I am Abdul-Baqi

Stewardship of the Earth

what Quran tells us about our relationship with earth

Posted on April 4, 2018

The Earth is like our mother. Allah has created us from the soil of the earth 1, and after we die we return to earth 2, and on the day of resurrection we will raise from our graves and proceed to the event of judgment 3. see for example Quranic... [Read More]

Attitude towards work in Islam

Posted on March 18, 2018

Prophet Muhammad -peace be upon him- said in a hadith that the most truthful names are cultivator and thinker. In this tradition, prophet Muhammad is summing up the progressive and dynamic nature of human being as someone who always thinks, and does jobs. He thinks how to grow plants and... [Read More]

Tags: work employment

The Divine Calculus of History

Posted on March 11, 2018

We already know mathematical formula to describe precisely the magnitude and direction of gravitational forces between two heavenly bodies in the universe knowing their masses and distance. The task becomes tremendously complicated when we add another body and with further addition of new bodies, we soon reach to chaos and... [Read More]

Tags: sociology

How to unleash human resources

touches of spirituality on human civilization

Posted on March 7, 2018

Natural resource and human resources: these two are often postulated as the economic pillars for any country. Here I would like to emphasis that human resources is the main pillar and much more important. There could be two countries equal in natural resources, yet one is poor and the other... [Read More]

Tags: happiness spirituality

Faculty X and Spirituality

In search for the sweet test of peak experience

Posted on February 22, 2018

If you read Colin Wilson you already know what I am talking about. He talks about some sweet extraordinary feelings a person sometimes reaches when s/he focuses on something very deeply and reaches to a very high level of consciousness. He calls it Faculty X. Very often we do things... [Read More]

Tags: wilson faith Quran existentialism

Rich and the Secular

Why affluent countries opt for secularism

Posted on February 20, 2018

Norris and Inglehart in their 2004 book Sacred and Secular proposed that secularism prevails more in affluent societies because these societies experience existential security and hence take security for granted, and as such they do not need to resort to religion or spirituality to comfort them at times of insecurities.... [Read More]

Tags: happiness money secularism

Thoughts on poverty, development and Islam

Posted on February 1, 2018

One of the central covert themes of neo-liberalism is to keep the money at the hand of the rich few and keep the rest poor. An unhealthy symptom of any society is when money is revolving and remaining in the hand of the rich. Read how eloquently it is pointed... [Read More]

Tags: poverty development islam

The best inaugural speech

How Abu Bakr prescribed the ingredients of good governance in 50 seconds

Posted on January 20, 2018

` “O people, I have been appointed over you, though I am not the best among you. If I do well, then help me; and if I act wrongly, then correct me. Truthfulness is trust, and lying is treachery. The weak among you is deemed strong by me, until I... [Read More]

Tags: capitalism inequality

Language: a divine gift

snippets of Quranic verses on the acquision of language

Posted on January 19, 2018

I have talked about the acquisition of language from a Chomskian perspective in a previous post. Here I want to discuss few Quranic verses that shed light on this subject. [Read More]

Tags: language quran chomsky

Chomsky and the Nature of Language

Posted on January 11, 2018

Noam Chomsky revolutionized linguistics in the mid-twentieths century. His views on the nature of language and its acquisition brought a paradigm shift to linguistics akin to the shift Copernican brought at his time on the nature and position of earth, sun and other planets. [Read More]

Tags: language quran chomsky