Sufism: Origins, Orders and Critiques
What Sufism is, where it came from and how the orders work, from al-Junayd and al-Ghazālī to Konya, Ajmer and Broken Hill, with the critiques from Ibn Taymiyya to the Salafis and the Sufi replies.
Sunni, Shia and History
How Muslims came to differ and how Islam spread: the Sunni and Shia series, Salafism and Sufism, and the debated questions argued from the sources.
Latest posts
Salafism: Origins, Beliefs and the Arguments Around It
Where the name came from, what Salafis actually believe, and what Ashʿarī, Sufi and madhhab scholars say against it. A careful look at a word heard as praise and as insult in the same masjid.
The 15th of Shaʿbān: What the Texts Say
What the Qur'an, the hadith and the scholars actually say about the night of mid-Shaʿbān, Shab-e-Barāt, its prayers and its fast, with gradings checked and both sides heard.
How Islam Travelled
What came first, what came after, and how each school reached the countries it holds today, the routes, the mechanisms, and the dates.
The House and the Schools
One family, a hundred branches, and an honest attempt at the question everyone actually wants answered: who stays closest to Qur'an and Sunnah.
How Sunni and Shia Came to Be
The succession question, the scriptural evidence on both sides in their own terms, and the timeline of a divergence that took three centuries to finish.
Sunni and Shia
Origins, anatomy, diffusion. Three long reads that try to explain the divergence without taking a side, and that say plainly where the evidence runs out.
The Mawlid Sourcebook
The full record on marking the Prophet's ﷺ birth: the Quranic and hadith texts both camps rely on, the history from Fatimid Cairo to the Ottomans, the disputed date, and each side's scholars in their own words, with sources.
مسألة المولد النبوي (The Mawlid, Session by Session)
Did the salaf mark the Prophet's birthday, and does it matter that they didn't? The Quran and Sunnah on both sides, Ibn Taymiyyah and al-Suyuti in their own words, the disputed date, and a simple test for any gathering you're invited to.