OpenHikma
Translated works of Islamic scholarship, made readable.
Your Soul Is the Only Book That Will Ever Be Read to You
Classical Islamic thought insists that nothing you learn or do simply passes through you — it becomes permanently written into your soul, an eternal scroll that outlives the body. The piece traces what that claim actually demands: a different reckoning with sin, youth, pleasure, and the time you assume you have left.
You Can Eat Chicken a Thousand Times and Still Not Be Able to Describe Its Taste — That's What Self-Knowledge Is Like
A saying of Imam Ali frames a question most people never stop to ask: what does it actually mean to know yourself, as opposed to merely reasoning about yourself? Drawing on Qur'anic distinctions, Tabataba'i, and stories from the mystics, the piece opens up why witnessed knowledge cannot be borrowed, argued into, or put into words.
Denying God Is Denying Yourself: A Beginner's Map of Tawhid
Affirming that the universe has a cause, the piece argues, is not the same as tawhid — even idol-worshippers managed that much. Working through contingency, necessity, and the ceaseless renewal of existence itself, this beginner's map asks what a person is actually denying when he denies God, and why reciting the shahada may be easier than truly meaning it.
Why You Can't Know Anything Until You Know Yourself
A hundred dense sentences open with one unsettling claim: no one who fails to know himself can truly know anything else — not a stone, not another person, not even the words "God" or "angel" that get tossed around unexamined. What follows traces why self-knowledge functions as the gate every other kind of knowing must pass through.