Ramadan Mubarak – and under Siege

Ramadan, the focal point or heart of the year for Muslims around the world —— for although the Hajj (pilgrimage) to Makkah is the high point of the year, the heart of the Islamic year is Ramadan —— is a month of sacrifice, atonement, restraint, forgiveness and asking for mercy, of compassion and consideration for others, of spending more time in worship and prayer, of fasting of course, of thinking about eternity, the Hereafter, and taking time away from this world and its demands. At the same time, Muslims must work to survive, live in societies that may not be Muslim or even friendly or accepting of Muslims. They must make accommodations for unfriendly or even hostile societies.

Meaning vs Meaninglessness: How Islam Connects Us to Meaning

The mathematical constants of our universe and their evidence that the universe is fine-tuned for life has been considered proof that the most reasonable explanation for the creation of the universe is not random events or necessity but design. And design means, essentially, God. Christians have taken this up and added further embellishments to support beliefs unrelated to the physics. The Quran however teaches that God “has no similitude”, the meaning of God defined as unlike anything or anyone else. This is the one fact that is revealed in the “fine-tuning” discovery. Truth-seekers would do well to consider that such a God would also communicate with the life God created: with divine revelation such as the Quran. 

Quranic Architecture in Islam, Nature, and Ourselves

One need only to see an aerial view of the Ka’aba in Makkah with Muslim pilgrims circling the central shrine in tawaf to recall how central the circle is in Islam. This is in effect the center of the Islamic world, and in a form of worship, the pilgrims or Hojjaj must circle it, thus also participating in the making of a circle. Now we recall that the architecture of the Quran is also circle-based, one could even say in three dimensions as in the shell of a chambered nautilus. But the scope of this discussion is so far reaching, the symbolism contained in Quranic architecture so profound, it may be more enlightening to include more graphics to do justice to the idea of dynamic symmetry in relationship to cycles, returning (to our Creator Allah), the creation, the divine Message itself, and last but not least (as you shall see in the Quran), us.