Archive for the 'Reminiscing' Category

Classic commentaries on Talut

So it’s been a rather long time but now that I’m back I wanted to pick up on the story of David and Goliath as told in surat al-Baqarah. If you click on the “Quran” tag you’ll be able to see the earlier two entries in this thread. But in quick summary I am recalling […]

Lives in the balance

“Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves.” This was today’s quote: the words of Abraham Lincoln. Fitting given today’s world.
One Friday halaqa early in my days at Stanford the main segment was a PBS Frontline documentary about various aspects of American foreign policy. As the end credits rolled music was playing […]

Five only answers

Apologies for staying away for so long. I’ve been trying to write my 3rd episode in the discussion on humor, and it’s taking a long time. The primary reason for that is that when I decided to do just a little bit of research I found many more sources, and so many more examples, than […]

Classic Humor — Step Two

When I referred to humor in classic texts in my first review of LM (seems so long ago now) I was thinking specifically of humor literature and humor in literature written by credible (in terms of scholarship and/or piety) authors in pre-modern times. When I started to think more carefully about what a piece on […]

Back to the story of Taloot

Last week was a rather slow week for the blog :( . Last weekend was the LTP in Montreal, this weekend was the one at McMaster. Between preparing for these and catching up on work stuff I’m now falling behind again on my emails and on responding to comments. I did get a chance to […]

Saul, Goliath, David

When the Quran tells the story of David and Goliath, it’s really the story of King Saul. The Quran speaks of Taloot (طالوت), which is the Arabicized name of Saul. Jaloot (جالوت) is the Arabicization of Goliath - it rhymes with Talut, so if you’re just reading along the parallelism that is set up is one of Talut vs. Jaloot - […]



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