The light of the day · Monday 5 October
Everyday English carries Arabic inside it
Sugar, cotton, sofa, tariff, magazine, zenith, nadir, alchemy, alkali, algebra: dozens of ordinary English words travelled through Arabic scholarship and trade into Europe's languages. The words came with the things and the ideas they named.
A shared inheritance
Monday 5 October 2026 · 22 Rabi ath-Thani 1448 AH
The word · The heart
التَّصَوُّف
Tasawwuf
The Islamic tradition of inner purification, called Sufism in English, and read very differently by different scholars.
At its origin the word names the science of the heart: sincerity, remembrance, character and struggle against the self, as taught by early figures such as al-Junayd and later organised by al-Ghazali. Over the centuries it also grew orders, practices and claims that other scholars judged to be innovations, and opinion today runs from full acceptance to full rejection, with many holding the content sound wherever it…
The Path · chapter 30 of 71
اقرأ
Iqra: First Revelation
Jibril appeared in the cave of Hira: “Read!” The first five verses of Surah al-Alaq.
The first command of the final religion is to read, in His name
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