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Showing posts with label Books. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Books. Show all posts

Listen to live


Mark Nepo was struck with a rare form of cancer 25 years ago. He survived. He changed after being pulled out from the jaws of death to become one of the finest spiritual guides of our time. As a consummate storyteller, his book on listening is a riveting narrative of his first person experiences with life. He speaks of a photographer in California who tells him that there were two breaths that had changed his life the past year: his newborn’s first breath and his mother’s last breath.

“As his daughter inhaled the world, it seemed to awaken her soul on earth. As his mother exhaled her years, it seemed to free her soul of the world.” Drawing a lesson from his encounter with the photographer, Nepo says that with each exhalation, we too can free ourselves of the world that “entangles” us and with each inhalation of our breath, we too can take in the world to awaken our souls.

The book has overwhelming philosophy that requires close reading and chockfull concentration. Above all, it asks for a total surrender of our inner beings to receive the wisdom each page contains. Not all at any given moment are willing to plunge into the soul and try to excavate the hidden meaning of everyday life. Often, we live on the surface, where stress, disappointments, worries and a thousand other maladies rule our waking time.

The author speaks of his loss of hearing and how he learnt to cope with it by listening more intently to life and what it has to say. There are angels, says Nepo who present themselves in a thousand guises, each calling us to follow their song. “There is no right or wrong way to go”, says Nepo who thinks that only our heart can find the “appointments you are born to keep”. He says we should not fret about it but rather “meet each uncertainty” with an open heart that will lead us to an “authentic tomorrow”.

The book has bagged the #1 New York Times bestseller slot. People want to learn how to live. The cherry tree is a metaphor that the author uses to elaborate. He once lived upstate New York where a cherry tree blossomed on his street each year for just a few days in early May.
“Since it blossomed before everything else, the miracle of flowers sprouting from wood was shouting quietly,” he writes. But the lesson he shares with us is that how quickly the cherry tree would let go of its beauty, as “quickly gone as it had come”.

The moral from the tree is: neither the fullness nor the bareness lasts, but we return. This in a nutshell is the cycle of life. All humans and living matter is interconnected. The font of knowledge is Nature itself. The different seasons, trees, flowers and everything around us are our teachers. They reveal mysteries of life that reveal to only those who care to discover them by stalking them.

Is Nepo making any sense to you so far?

He is a strange human, as he says himself. When in college, he was asked what subject he wanted to major in, he would say “in life”. People around him thought he was a lost soul. “But this inability to locate myself on the social map enabled me to uncover a deeper tie with the pulse of everything living, a tie that has nourished me my whole life”.

He says it’s futile to plan or chalk out a path over which we have no control. Following one’s agenda with a single-mind is a no-go. “For life is tangential and circulatory like the veins on a leaf or in the chamber of the heart”. It’s the ‘unplanned unfoldings’ that make us more human, he says. To put it another way, doggedly chasing a course that you have assigned yourself because you think it will lead you to success or fulfillment merely robs you of your humanness. We well know some people who are too robotic or mechanical. Nobody would care to share a meal with the humourless android. Right?

Nepo who has entered the sixth decade of his life but is nervous each time he goes for a physical exam fearing that the cancer may have returned is determined to live a normal life despite losing his hearing and suffering a permanent damage to his digestive system after a bout of stomach flu. His book borrows heavily from the wisdom of the sages. Each chapter has quotes that reflect the thinking of philosophers, historians, poets, artists, musicians who shaped the world and left it a better place to inhabit.

Ghalib features too! “For the raindrop, joy is entering the lake”, Nepo quotes Ghalib. He elaborates by telling us that as we search for our purpose on this Earth “we are opened to a conversation about the very relationship of a single soul to the ocean of life”.

The book’s last chapter carries Van Gogh’s classic words: “I tell you, the more I think, the more I feel that there is nothing more truly artistic than to love people”.

Wonder if our squabble-infested politicians have heard of Van Gogh? Instead of coming every night on television talk shows to mouth ugly insults on their adversaries, these foul tongued men and women who are best described as Philistines should take a break from television and learn the art of decent conversation. With decency will come their sense of aesthetics and who knows, perhaps love!
By Anjum Niaz: anjumniaz@rocketmail.com
http://dawn.com/2013/03/10/dateline-islamabad-listen-to-live

  1. Mark Nepo is a poet and philosopher who has taught in the fields of poetry and spirituality for over thirty years.
    marknepo.com
  2. Mark Nepo (born February 23, 1951 in Brooklyn, New York) is a poet and philosopher who has taught in the fields of poetry and spirituality for over 30 years. Nepo is ...
    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Nepo
    Videos:http://in.video.search.yahoo.com/search/video?p=Mark+Nepo&fr=sfp&fr2=piv-web
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The complexity of Muslim culture and society & the West

In recent years, there has been a continuing tendency in the West, to regard Muslims as “the alien Other” and to slot them into convenient stereotypes. British Muslim Fictions: Interviews with Contemporary Writers by Claire Chambers, the British academic, sets out to portray the complexity of Muslim culture through a collection of interviews of 13 writers of English language fiction living in Britain whose works reflect “a Muslim civilisational heritage”.

Chambers begins with the Lahore-born Tariq Ali, a writer whose life and work has been informed by Marxism but he has also written a quintet of historical novels, about the encounter between Islam and the West across the centuries, from the syncretic Euro-Arab culture of Andalusia and Sicily, to contemporary Pakistan. Ali, an incisive and out-spoken political analyst, addresses a diversity of other topics too in his interview, such as Cold War politics, Islamophobia and civil liberties. He says: “The more I read about the history and culture of Islam, the more I find that it is a very cosmopolitan religion.”

The conversation with Hanif Kureishi includes an extensive discussion on his 2008 novel, Something To Tell You, which welds past and present and incorporates the 7/7 bombing. Chambers also picks out themes that this novel shares with Kureishi’s 1995 novel, The Black Album, exploring the radicalisation of young British Muslims. Much of Kureishi’s earlier work focused on racism and neo-fascism in Britain fostered by the rhetoric of Enoch Powell. This is a subject that the Zanzibar born Abdulrazak Gurnah has also tackled but he also speaks to Chambers of literary borrowings and his interest in “the Indian Ocean and the shared history of its coastal regions”.

Chambers supplements each interview with an introduction to the writer and his/her work. She points out that Gurnah’s 1994 novel Paradise about the colonisation of East Africa, shares with Aamer Hussein’s story, “The Lost Cantos of the Silken Tiger” an intertextual reference to the “Yusuf Zulekha” legend. Chambers’ interview with the Karachi-born Hussein refers to his interest in Sufism and the Sufi lore of Sindh: both permeate his new novel, The Cloud Messenger. Chambers talks to Hussein extensively about migration and identity, and in particular his novella, Another Gulmohar Tree. Here, the Gulmohar, which came from Madagascar and is now a part of Karachi’s landscape, becomes a metaphor for the story of Lydia, the British wife of an Urdu writer and her adaptation to Pakistan.

Pakistan-born writer, Nadeem Aslam describes the influence of Chughtai on both the imagery and texture of his writing in his novel, Maps for Lost Lovers, set in an all-Asian community in north Britain. His recent novella, Leila in the Wilderness draws on the Laila Majnun legend as does Kamila’s Shamsie’s novel, Broken Verses which tells of a women’s rights activist and her love for a Marxist Urdu poet. Shamsie also discusses her latest novel, Burnt Shadows as well as the city of Karachi which is so central to most of her writing.

Interestingly, almost half the book consists of interview with writers of Pakistani origin. Usually they are discussed in relation to other South Asian English writers, but Pakistan also has strong links with the wider Muslim world. As Chambers points out, Pakistan English fiction and English writing from the Middle East and other Muslim cultures, often reflects common themes and tropes ranging from Quranic references to political views on Palestine and Iraq.

Mohsin Hamid novels, Moth Smoke and The Reluctant Fundamentalist, provide vivid images of Lahore, but also depict New York, before and after 9/11 and include a discourse on global capitalism and market imperialism. Hamid’s interview expands on these themes, and also dwells on issues such as the welfare state, immigration and race. The Syrian-Briton, Robin Yassin-Kassab
refers to 9/11 too, in his novel, The Road from Damascus, which is set in London and Syria. His interview echoes the views of several others when he says, “ultimately, I want to be a writer, not a Muslim, Arab or British writer.”

The Sudanese-Egyptian writer, Leila Aboulela tells of the westernised milieu in which she grew up in Sudan and her decision to wear hijab, after her migration to Britain, long before it became a symbol of British identity politics. She describes the challenges of writing her recent historical novel, Lyrics Alley, which is set against the backdrop of colonial rule and leads up to Sudan’s struggle for independence: the main character, a paraplegic and a renowned singer/poet, is inspired by the story of her uncle.

Bangladeshi novelist, Tahmima Anam, has written about the 1971 War and indepen-dence of Bangladesh in her first novel, A Golden Age (2007). She followed it up with The Good Muslim (2010), exploring the growth of religious extremism in the present day: she elaborates on topics and issues related to both novels in her interview.

British Muslim Fictions culminates with an interview of Zahid Hussain, community worker, blogger, teacher, Poetry Slam champion and author of a novel, The Curry Mile which is set in Manchester. As such the interviews conducted by Chambers provide many insights into several different, talented and articulate writers whose work has consistently challenged stereotypes. Her book has much to offer both the academic and general reader — and it makes a very good read.

Different opinions, different voices: Reviewed by Muneeza Shamsie The reviewer is a writer and critic and has served two terms as the Regional Chairperson (Europe and South Asia) of the Commonwealth Writers Prize in 2010 and 2011

British Muslim Fictions: Interviews with Contemporary Writers, By Claire Chambers, Palgrave Macmillan, London, ISBN 978-0-230-30878-7, 368pp. http://dawn.com/2012/04/08/cover-story-different-opinions-different-voices-the-complexity-of-muslim-culture-and-society/

I
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British Muslim Fictions
By Claire Chambers

What does it mean to be a writer of Muslim heritage in the UK today? Is there such a thing as ‘Muslim fiction’? If so, is it cultural background or belief that makes writing (or identity) Muslim?

My book, British Muslim Fictions: Interviews with Contemporary Writers (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), is the first in a two-part book project, which seeks answers to these complex questions. It is a collection of conversations with writers who live or work in Britain and have an intimate relationship with Islam, whether they are religious, cultural, or even – paradoxically – atheist Muslims, and whether South Asian, Arab, African, or European.

Over thirteen interviews, I talked to Anglophone writers including Aamer Hussein, Fadia Faqir, Hanif Kureishi, Leila Aboulela, Abdulrazak Gurnah, and PULSE’s own Robin Yassin-Kassab. This is a group of writers who are highly diverse but, like a loosely connected and often discordant family, they have much in common, through their connections both to Islam and the United Kingdom. As well as discussing their literary techniques and the impact that their Muslim heritage has had on them, I became increasingly persuaded that this body of writing shares certain preoccupations (relating to gender, class, the war on terror, al-Andalus, the Rushdie Affair, and a cosmopolitan outlook), and is some of the most important and politically engaged fiction of recent years.

As you can tell from my name, I am not from a Muslim background myself, although I was fortunate enough to grow up in Leeds in West Yorkshire, surrounded by many South Asian Muslim friends. As clichéd as it may sound, my worldview has also been crucially shaped by my gap year, 1993-94, which I spent teaching English in Peshawar, Pakistan, at the age of eighteen. I went on to specialize in South Asian literature in English as a postgraduate student, and continue to fuel my interest by return visits to the Indian subcontinent and by working with diasporic communities.

A turning point for me came when news of the 7/7 London bombers’ identity broke in 2005. I was in Canada at the time and people kept asking about my city of Leeds, from where it emerged that three of the four bombers also came. Despite my intimate relationship with many British Pakistanis, my friends tended to be from a middle-class background and so I’d been unaware that in a place like Beeston in South Leeds there existed such politicized rage among a tiny minority of Muslims. It ought to go without saying that I and all the interviewees would condemn as horrific the violent, nihilistic path the bombers chose. Yet a desire better to understand the range of issues facing Muslims in the UK led me to embark on this research project, which is shaped by my roots in and routes out of the north of England.

Some of the interviewed authors have written about hardline Muslims who may (or may not) be violent. For example, Mohsin Hamid, the author of probably the most famous of these texts, The Reluctant Fundamentalist, argues in my interview that ‘we’re left with […] a gaping hole where spirituality used to be […] and a new politics that’s calling itself religion’. However, one key finding is that terrorism tends not to be the most pressing concern amongst writers of Muslim heritage, especially in the current political context of heavy-handed surveillance initiatives such as Prevent 2, and vociferous, often Islamophobic debate about integration and lack of community cohesion.

This is not to suggest that the writers are not self-critical; indeed, many of my interviewees were extremely outspoken about abuses directed from some dominant Muslim groups and figures towards minority groups, especially women. I am also no cheerleader for the idea of a unified global Muslim community, or ummah, and know that exaggeration of this concept can lead to the very real tensions between different Muslim groups within an equally divided Britain being underestimated. However, the chosen approach has the advantage of bringing together writers from the ‘Muslim world’ to shed light on each other. British Arabs, Africans, and Asians are discussed together, because of their shared religious heritage, without overlooking their vast contextual differences.

The book begins with an in-depth introduction, in which I outline the controversies surrounding ‘Muslim writing’ and contextualize the writers against their various cultural backgrounds. Some commentators are uncomfortable with the idea of using religious identity as a way of categorizing literature, but I suggest that in today’s literary marketplace there is no avoiding literary typologies and that, so long as it provides access to a constellation of varied writing rather than confining authors to a generic and ‘ethnic’ ghetto, the category of Muslim writing is as useful as any other. I also describe the inception and development of fiction in English by writers of Muslim heritage, paying particular attention to the controversy over Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses in 1988, and to the events of 9/11 and beyond. Despite Rushdie’s polite refusal to be interviewed, and his statement at the height of the Satanic Verses Affair that he is ‘not a Muslim’, the interviews shed new light on his perception among other writers of Muslim heritage.

What have I learnt from these interviews? Like many people influenced by the mostly negative stereotyping of Muslims in the media, I started by making airy generalizations about Islam, but my engagement with these heterogeneous authors means that I am now more likely to speak of Muslims or ‘people of Muslim heritage’. Muslims in Britain have of course found themselves centre of media attention and political concern in recent years. In my view, it is important to look at this group, but without pigeonholing individuals or according greater importance than is warranted to the religious or civilizational aspects of their Muslim identity. Yet I have had my mind opened to Islam too: the poetry of the Qur’an; Muslim dissent, scepticism, and even heresy of earlier centuries; Wahhabism, Sufi practices, cultural ‘accretions’.

Speaking briefly of my own feelings after conducting these interviews, I have learnt a great deal not only about the lives of Muslims in the West today, but also about the writer’s craft and his or her political role in society. The writers who left the strongest impressions on me interview situations were often the most politically assertive, as in the eloquent but often damning indictments of life in Britain by Tariq Ali, Fadia Faqir, Nadeem Aslam, and Zahid Hussain. Yet authors such as Tahmima Anam, Kamila Shamsie, and Aamer Hussein in their different ways made points that may have been more measured but are equally compelling. Hanif Kureishi’s young son added spice to the debate with a brief but spirited intervention, undermining some of his father’s claims!

By the time I was putting the finishing touches to the book, the Arab Spring was in full motion. These political convulsions surprised many commentators in the West, accustomed as they are to Orientalist discourse about Arabs and Muslims as backward and prone to authoritarianism. Yet the interviews reveal an entirely divergent image of Muslims as progressive, politically informed, and independently minded. As Ahdaf Soueif wrote to me (nearly a year before the Egyptian revolution and fall of Mubarak) in a comment that is startlingly resonant today, ‘Islam started as a revolutionary, dissident, progressive, egalitarian, and global idea and movement, and it continues to hold all these potentials within it’.

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A mind-boggling mix: Chinese hackers, Russian gangsters, Al Qaeda operatives and much more..

TO describe Reamde as fun would be akin to describing murder as “a little bit of mischief”. This, Neal Stephenson’s 13th novel, is literary haute couture; it’s smart, it’s edgy, it’s mind-bendingly layered, and it has a complexity that will make you weep. Whether said weeping will be from joy or frustration is debatable, but rest assured — there will be tears.

There is one really fundamental difference between Reamde and Stephenson’s earlier works. Canonical as they are, Snow Crash, Cryptonomicon and The Diamond Age are all very much ‘niche’ publications: their appeal is primarily to sci-fi aficionados. The Baroque Cycle on the other hand, steps far out of sci-fi into the realms of speculative fiction/alternate history, but is still dense and sometimes painful to read. Reamde, however, is immensely accessible, even to those of us who may still be Luddites. That said, devout Stephenson fans — those people who are constantly thrilled by his erudition and scope — will probably also love Reamde, which is in many ways a pre-cursor to his earlier cyberpunk novels.

The plot of Reamde is particularly ridiculous at first glance: Richard Forthrast, a former marijuana smuggler, founds a Fortune 500 mega-corporation based on a virtual gaming world called T’Rain that is the basis for an entire shadow economy; real-life gamers wind up treating it as a full-time job, “farming” gold pieces and developing virtual characters from within the game to sell for actual real-life currency and thereby earning a living. As the novel begins, Richard has hired Zula, an Eritrean orphan who is his adopted niece, whose boyfriend, Peter, is involved in selling stolen credit card information. The buyer of said information is an associate of the Russian mafia, and during the data transfer, finds his computer system — and by extension, those of his criminal cohorts — compromised by a virus, “Reamde”, that is the brainchild of a Chinese T’Rain player. In an
effort to recover the virus — rather than pay the $73 worth of T’Rain’s virtual currency in ransom — the Russians kidnap Zula and Peter, along with a Hungarian hacker, and fly to Xiamen in China to locate and eliminate the hacker.

While involved in tracking down the hacker and preparing to terminate him with, as spy thrillers would put it, “extreme prejudice”, the Russians come into contact with Al Qaeda operative Abdallah Jones, a wanted terrorist, who
despite being black and Welsh, seems to think that China is the perfect place to hide. Oh, and that kidnapping Zula will somehow further his goals. Seven hundred pages later, having completed a quick circuit of the world and a massive discussion of aeronautical navigation, philology, virtual economies, technology and the epistemology of colour palettes, the plot widens just a tiny bit more to incorporate a jihadist attack on Las Vegas, something odd going on in the world of T’Rain, and a Hollywood Western-style shootout with more guns than actual people. This, for the sake of perspective, is a short version of the plot.

The fact that Stephenson is able to maintain even a vestige of narrative control over this runaway juggernaut of a novel is testament to his abilities as a writer. While Reamde occasionally transitions from novel to spatterfest-in-book-form, it is constantly entertaining, and Stephenson demonstrates just how much of a polymath he really is. Between detailed explanations of T’Rain’s mythology (what, asks a remarkably pretentious English fantasy writer, is the reason for naming the Tolkien-ish elf-analogues in T’Rain “K’Shetriae”? Why the apostrophes and the uppercase letters?) and an equally detailed exposition on how T’Rain managed to convert artificial currency into real-world wealth (a sly dig at investment banking, one wonders?), Stephenson ranges far and wide over literary territory. His exposition is dense, technical and highly readable — there is no way to avoid being sucked into the text of Reamde.

The only real issue that one faces with Stephenson is his characterisation. Almost every single person in Reamde is so astoundingly competent and level-headed that it is not hard to imagine them fixing the whole planet in under a week if
given the chance. No matter what sort of psychotic-breakdown-inducing situation they are in, whether it’s plotting international flights to avoid detection by national air forces, finding a single Chinese hacker with only a smart-phone while being menaced by an unstable Russian gangster gone rogue, or hiking across inimical terrain, they radiate a sense of perspective that is practically Zen in its serenity. These aren’t protagonists; frankly, they start to seem like über-mensch. By page 500, I was wondering why they hadn’t yet solved the problems of world hunger while curing cancer and fixing the Eurozone crisis.

To his credit, Stephenson is meticulous about explaining the acquisition of each character’s particular highly-specialised skill-set. All the exposition in the world, however, is insufficient to mitigate the suspension of disbelief required as the characters of Reamde steal private jets, turn DVDs into lethal weapons, slip in and out of China without visas and — my
favourite — manoeuvre wild mountain lions into attacking their enemies. These are the people who I would want on my side if aliens were ever to invade Earth.

There is humour among all of this though. Stephenson spins dual plot-lines, allowing them to run parallel before a final act of convergence; while the real-world antics of hackers and gangsters are painfully rooted in actual events, the world of T’Rain has a hilarious civil war between “the Earthtone Coalition” and “the Forces of Brightness”, all over a question of the colour palettes used in designing virtual characters. As terrorists commit acts of grievous bodily harm on one another, authors argue about the semantics of right and wrong in a world of pixels and bytes. Spies shoot at each other and assume identities at the drop (or addition) of a hat, while a formerly obese programmer tracks his caloric intake on a multitude of computer screen.

It is difficult to not be amused — or at least engaged — on some level by Stephenson and his writing. Although Reamde admittedly falls short of the quantum meta-philosophy of Anathem or the historicism of The Baroque Cycle, it still manages to keep itself relevant and stimulating. Much like Stephenson himself, it is wide-ranging, unpredictable and clever. It may not aspire to be much more than a thriller, but Reamde manages to encompass far more than just guns and mayhem of the physical sort.

Reviewed by Mohsin Siddiqui :Reamde (NOVEL), By Neal Stephenson, William Morrow, New York, ISBN 0061977969, 1056pp.
http://www.dawn.com/2012/01/22/fiction-a-mind-boggling-mix-chinese-hackers-russian-gangsters-al-qaeda-operatives-and-much-more.html


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Treking with Adam to Moses through Bible and Qur’an

WebpageTranslator

Abraham is the common ancestor of three great faiths; Judaism, Christianity and Islam. The narratives of creation and life of Adam, Noah, Abraham, Ishmael, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph to Moses [All great prophets, May peace be upon them all] are very similar in Bible and Qur'an being from the same source, the Revelations from God:

"And, indeed, We bestowed afore time [Our] guidance on Moses, and [thus] made the children of Israel heirs to the divine writ [revealed to him] as a [means of] guidance and a reminder for those who were endowed
with insight: [Qur'an;40:53-54]

"And, verily, (the essence of) this (revelation, i.e. Qur'an) is indeed found in the ancient books of divine wisdom (as well) (Qur'an;26:196)

And We caused Jesus, the son of Mary, to follow in the footsteps of those [earlier prophets], confirming the truth of whatever there still remained of the Torah; and We vouchsafed unto him the Gospel, wherein there was guidance and light, confirming the truth of whatever there still remained of the Torah, and as a guidance and admonition unto the God-conscious.[Qur'an;5:46]

" Believe in My revelations, which are confirming your scriptures; do not be the first one to deny My revelations, and do not sell them for a petty price, fear Me and Me alone"( Qur'an;2:41).

Exploring the lands where the Adam, Noah, Abraham, Jacob, Joseph and Moses lived or travelled as mentioned in Torah [First Five books of Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) http://wp.me/PCgrB-7h ] with additional captions from Qur'an highlight the commonalities for batter understanding for interfaith harmony. In this series of 3 videos, Part-1 covers from Adam to Ishmael, Isaac till Jacob [peace be upon them].  
Torah prophesied about Prophet Muhammad [pbuh] 
1. God Calls Abraham:“I will make thee a great nation and I shall bless thee, and make thy name great and thou shall be a blessing, and I will bless them that bless thee and curse them that curseth thee; and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed”. (Genesis;12:2,3):
2. God Said To Hagar: I will multiply thy seed exceedingly, that it shall not be numbered for multitude. And the angel of the Lord said unto her, Behold thou art with child, and shall bear a son, and shall call his name Ishmael; because the Lord hath heard thy affliction.” (Genesis;17:10-12)
3. God Said To Abraham about Ishmael: “As for Ishmael, I have heard thee; Behold I have blessed him, and make him fruitful, and will multiply him exceed­ingly; twelve princes shall he beget, I will make him a great nation.” (Genesis;17:20-21)
4. Right of The First Born: “If a man has two wives, one beloved another hated; and if the first born son be hers that was hated; then it shall be that when he maketh his sons to inherit that which he hath, that he may not make the son of the beloved first born, before the son of the hated which is indeed the first born, by giving him the double portion of all that he hath; for he is the beginning of his strength; the right of firstborn is his”. (Deuteronomy;21:15-17)
[Note.—Ishmael was 13/14 years old when Isaac was born.]
5. The Blessing of Moses: “And he said, The LORD came from Sinai, and rose up from Seir unto them; he shined forth from mount Paran (Arabic: Faran) came with ten thousands of saints: from his right hand went a fiery law for them. Yea, he loved the people; all his saints are in your hand: and they sat down at your feet; everyone shall receive of your words. Moses commanded us a law, even the inheritance of the congregation of Jacob”. (Deuteronomy;33:2-4).
6. The Age of Peace: “And Jacob called unto his sons, and said, Gather yourselves together, that I may tell you that which shall befall you in the last days. Gather yourselves together, and hear, you sons of Jacob; and hearken unto Israel your father. Reuben, you are my firstborn, my might, and the beginning of my strength, the excellency of dignity, and the excellency of power: Unstable as water, you shall not excel; because you went up to your father's bed; then you defiled it: he went up to my couch. Simeon and Levi are brothers; instruments of cruelty are in their habitations. O my soul, come not into their secret; unto their assembly, my spirit, be not united: for in their anger they slew a man, and in their self-will they dug down a wall. Cursed be their anger, for it was fierce; and their wrath, for it was cruel: I will divide them in Jacob, and scatter them in Israel. Judah, you are he whom your brothers shall praise: your hand shall be on the neck of your enemies; your father's children shall bow down before you. Judah is a lion's whelp: from the prey, my son, you are gone up: he stooped down, he crouched as a lion, and as a lioness; who shall rouse him up? The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until SHILOH (Peace, Islam) comes; and unto him shall the gathering of the people be”.(Genesis;49:1-10)
7. Brethren; The Prophecy of Moses: God speaks to Prophet Moses: 
“I will raise them up a Prophet from among their brethren, like unto thee, and I willput my words in his mouth; and he shall speak unto them all that I shall command him. And it shall come to pass, that whosoever will not harken unto my words which he shall speak in my name, I will require it of him”(Deuteronomy; 18:18,19).
More on prophesies: http://wp.me/PCgrB-eF
More >>> The Grand Design of Creation

Torah:  http://wp.me/PCgrB-7h

The Messengers


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Books & Articles ספרים ומאמרים كتب ومقالات

Free e-Books and articles on Islam, Christianity, Judaism and interfaith issues:
Articles מאמרים مقالات
  1. Prophet Muhammad[pbuh]
  2. Essence of Quran
  3. What Jews believe ? הודים מאמינים מה?
  4. Islamic Art & Culture
  5. Peace & Jerusalem שלום ירושלים
  6. Why be Jew or Christian? למה להיות יהודי או נוצר
  7. Minorities in Islamic State
  8. Comparison: Three Faiths from Abraham השוואה: שלוש הדתות מן אברהם
  9. A Communique
  10. Islam Christianity
  11. Israel’s History-Slide Sow ישראל של היסטוריה
  12. Clash of Faiths התנגשות הדתות
  13. Religion & Colonialism
  14. Commonalities-3 Faiths
  15. Is Islam Really Threat to West?
  16. Promise Land & 13Th Tribe יעוד קרקע השבט השלושה עשר
  17. Islam & Judaism האסלאם והיהדות
  18. Battle for World Peace
  19. Some Militants
  20. Conflict Management
  21. Quran on Polygamy
  22. Islamic Socialism
  23. Religion and Politics
Pages صفحات
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