Six Pillars: 4
God exists. God is One in His Lordship. God is One in His Right to be Worshipped. God is Unique in His Names and His Attributes. Through His Mercy, He sent prophets to us to teach us how to worship Him, and he sent revelations to some of them, messages to pass down to later generations. These revelations tell us more about Him and the creation, about our role in the world and our purpose, about the seen and the unseen.
Just how did God transmit these messages to His servants here on Earth? To answer this, we need to turn to the unseen world, the realm of Angels and others. This is the fourth pillar of Iman: the belief in Angels and the unseen.
Sophie Harris-Taylor – ‘MTWTFSS’
Sophie Harris-Taylor’s M T W T F S S: Chapter 1. 2010-2015, according to the cover, “is an autobiographical, fragmented, sporadic photo diary.” I was initially hoping for a bit more diary—there are scribbled snippets of what might be diary entries in the front and back, but no other text beyond page numbers, plus a list of titles and some publication info at the end—and so was a bit disappointed at first, but looking again, there’s quite a bit here to enjoy and even inspire.
Continue reading “Sophie Harris-Taylor – ‘MTWTFSS’”What happened?
Back in 2006, I built some pinhole cameras out of coffee cans and shot some photographs with them directly to photography paper. Concurrently to that, built a foam core cap for the 50mm lens on my K1000 and shot a couple of rolls of film. I shared those not too long ago, but the paper negatives stayed in an envelope, tucked into the front flap of my negative storage binder until very recently…
I’m still playing with the negatives, but I wanted to share this one straight away and wonder some about it…
Six Pillars: 3
God: One in His Lordship and His Right to be Worshiped; One in His Names and His Attributes; He who sent to us prophets to teach us about Him and how to worship Him appropriately, to remind us of Him, to serve as examples for how to move through the world. Out of His infinite wisdom and mercy, He also gave revelation to some of these prophets. He passed His Revelations through the angel Gabriel,* to Abraham, Moses, David, Jesus, and Muhammad (likely among many others, though their texts and records of them disappeared or were changed beyond recognition long ago), and this gift of Revelation forms the third pillar of Iman, the belief in His Books: the (lost) books given to Abraham and Moses, the Torah, the Psalms, the Gospel, and the Quran. Continue reading “Six Pillars: 3”
Into the Woods…
…with the Hanabibti (and Tania, not pictured,) at the Trinity River Audubon Center. Continue reading “Into the Woods…”
Six Pillars: 2
The first pillar of Iman establishes the baseline belief in Islam: the belief in God.
This belief in God is made up of four parts. First, we believe He exists. Once we have that established, we believe He is One in His Lordship, One His Right to be worshiped alone, without any partners, and One in His Names and His Attributes. It’s very simple, really, but given all the idol worship in our collective human history, it seems like we sometimes get the wrong idea about God, decide on strange methods of worship and all.
As the Creator, God knows this about us, knows that we’ll get it wrong, or not get it at all, and so out of His Mercy—and One of His Blessed Names in Arabic is “Ar Rahman,” the Most Merciful One—we believe He gifted us prophets and messengers to remind us of Him, teach us how to worship Him, and receive and relay messages from Him.
This is the second pillar of Iman: the belief in the prophets and messengers, may the peace of God be upon them all.
Who are these prophets and messengers, and what does this belief entail? Read on: you might be surprised… Continue reading “Six Pillars: 2”
