"This is Jihad?" - The Crisis of Understanding Islam

Here's a link to a series of seven audio tracks from a lecture Shaykh Nuh Ha Mim Keller gave to a London audience on August 29th, 2005 — courtesy of Masud Khan's renowned website. The general topic of the lecture is the current crisis of understanding Islam within the Muslim Ummah. In this context, the Shaykh presents the origins of the Wahhabi movement and discusses the so-called "Salafi" Islam that unfortunately has become the default brand of Islam in many places today. Additionally, he touches upon the methodology of the so-called "Jihadi" movement and various related topics from tawassul (use of intermediaries to approach Allah) to suicide bombing.

Since I'm always on watch for good book recommendations, I took serious note of the fact that during the lecture two books were recommended by Shaykh Nuh for those wanting to learn more about what's going on in the world today. The first one he mentioned was Al-Qaeda: The True Story of Radical Islam, by Jason Burke, which "has a lot of things right and not very many things wrong in it". Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror, by Michael Scheuer (although initially published anonymously), is the next book Shaykh Nuh recommended "for everyone who wants to understand anything about the current situation." That's more than enough of an endorsement for me, so I plan to get hold of both these titles as soon as possible, insha'llah.

Based on all of this, I highly recommend that all interested parties (and if you're not interested, you should be) download (they're just over 35 MB total) and listen to (total running times is 1:25:24) all seven ([1][2][3][4][5][6][7]) of these very informative and highly relative tracks (which are in MP3 format).

Deen On...