IslamQA: Can one read or listen to Quran online without wudu?

Do we have to get ba-wudu even if we reciting or listening Quran online? There seems to be general agreement that qira’ah (reading/listening to/reciting aloud the Quran) can be done without wudu. The only thing that most agree should not be done without wudu is touching a book of Quran (i.e. a mushaf) (however, the highly respected […]

IslamQA: Can a woman take off the hijab for an online suitor?

Salam alaikum. Brother, what are your thoughts on a man who found a woman in an online dating site, whom wants to get to know of her, felt good connection after few conversations because they have lots in common, but asks her to take off her hijab before any agreements for marriage? He didn’t force […]

IslamQA: What to do if all the negative coverage of Islam and online Islam-bashing affects you

I’m from India and I see a lot of negativity towards Islam and it saddens me very much. Filthy comments made about Islam and people who practice Islam. I usually do not indulge in such arguments/comments because there is no point but it effects me. Please help Jazakallah khair That is a promise of the […]

About

Email: contact@hawramani.com | Twitter Languages: English, Arabic, Persian / Farsi, Southern Kurdish I am a US-based Islamic studies researcher, software engineer and writer. I am currently working on completing Al-Azhar University’s curriculum for ʿālims (PhD Islamic scholars) on my own. I consider the Quran the unchanged Word of God and I derive my worldview from […]

The Muslim Plan for Western Civilization: There is No Plan

Do Muslims hope to establish a World Caliphate? It is undeniable that some Muslims, including religious scholars, look forward to one day there existing a new Islamic empire that represents “true” Islam and that brings back the glory of the olden days. As is usual with fantasy-land Islam, the thinking is top-down, the caliphate has […]

Why the Banks are So Powerful and Why the Bible and the Quran Forbid Usury: Charting How Interest Creates Obscene Wealth Inequality

Imagine if in 1913 the real economy of the US had $100 billion in capital, while the banks and money-lenders had only $1 billion. Given everyday economic circumstances, by 2017, the wealth of the real economy would have grown to $2163 billion (with a 3% economic growth rate). Meanwhile, the wealth of the banks and […]

The 12-Year Min-Max Average: A Simple Method for Calculating Real, Legitimate Economic Growth and Canceling Out Central Bank Manipulations and other Noise

Introduction Real economic growth is different from the increase in GDP that comes from monetary expansion. The 12-year min-max method that I have come up with is a way of calculating a country’s GDP growth rate over a 12-year period that aims to cancel out “fake” growth caused by monetary expansion and boom-bust cycles by […]

An Introduction to the Origins of Modern Islamic Terrorism

Were the Soviet Union to sink tomorrow under the waters of the ocean, the American military-industrial establishment would have to go on, substantially unchanged, until some other adversary could be invented. Anything else would be an unacceptable shock to the American economy. —George F Kennan, American Cold War diplomat and father of “Containment Theory” Introduction A […]

Inconsistencies in the Harry Potter Books

Introduction This page lists all of the errors and inconsistencies I’ve found throughout my many readings of the entire series (I have Stephen Fry’s reading of the books on my phone as an audiobook, to which I sometimes listen when I’m resting or trying to fall asleep). Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone What Object […]

The Sayings of Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyyah

Selected and Translated by Ikram Hawramani Copyright © 2017 Ikram Hawramani Hawramani.com All Rights Reserved A Brief Primer on Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyyah Ibn al-Qayyim[1] was born in Damascus on January 28th of the year 1292 CE, equivalent to the seventh of Ṣafar of the year 691 AH. His full name is Abū ʿAbd-Allah Shams al-Dīn […]

IslamQA: Are virtual credit cards halal?

Salaam. I was planning to create a PayPal account, but I’m unemployed, have no credit card, and thought of creating a VCC or Virtual Credit Card to get a full access to PayPal and to make overseas online payment or transfer. Unfortunately, the VCC service asks their users to take up 1,9% to 4,5% from […]

IslamQA: How to begin practicing Islam

Hello. I write to you because I don’t know what else to do. I come from a Christian family, in a very much Christian country where Islam is never regarded, not even discussed or insulted. Just ignored. Yes, people know about it but when I speak about my love for the Quran or my wishes […]

The 1599 Geneva Bible Notes or Study Bible (Downloadable eBook Versions)

Download links: PDF – Word – ePub – Mobi (kindle) The text was sourced from Sacred Texts. It uses modern spelling and the quoted verses are apparently from the KJV (only the notes come from a Geneva commentary). Michael Hoffman, in his Usury in Christendom: A Mortal Sin that Was and Now is Not, made a reference to the 1599 Geneva Bible Notes as a […]

IslamQA: Is it permissible to draw and paint in Islam?

I read your essay on the permissibility of drawing but I’m still a little confused. Is it okay to draw (animals, people etc) as long as you don’t put it up on walls? As to show it off/be proud/or idolise it? – and how can this be connected to social media, drawings should not be […]

The Ultimate Programming Crash Course (Learn with JavaScript)

Master the Basics of Coding in Under Two Hours in Interactive Steps and Visual Examples Methods for using this guide: View the online version on this page (scroll down) Download a free PDF version Download a free Mobi version (for e-readers and ebook-reading apps, zipped) Buy the Kindle version on Amazon Buy the paperback version […]

Fixing the kworker CPU usage / ACPI errors issue on a Skylake motherboard (ASRock Z170 Pro4)

In which ASRock bricks my motherboard and a random $10 Chinese device comes to the rescue, with the help of a German gentleman Since I no longer trust the spyware that is Windows 10, I have wanted to move my main PC (6700K CPU, R9 290 graphic card, ASRock Z170 Pro4 motherboard) to Linux for […]

How to moderate bbPress submissions that contain links

The most common trait of forum spam submissions is that they contain links. The code below (add it to your main wordpress install’s functions.php theme file) filters new bbPress topics and replies and if it detects a link, it marks the submission as “pending”, allowing moderators to review the submission in the back end before […]

IslamQA: Number of hadiths in the six major collections

As-salaamu ‘alaykum, wa rahmatu-llaahi wa barakaatuh. Which of the six well-known Hadith collections contain the largest number of Hadith? Jazak-Allahu khayran. Alaikumassalam wa rahmatullah wa barakatuh, The number of hadiths that are mentioned in both Bukhari and Muslim are 2514 (excluding repetitions). Below are the hadith counts from the major collections according to Wikipedia: Sahih […]

The Sayings of Ibn al-Jawzi

Selected and Translated by Ikram Hawramani Copyright © 2017 Ikram Hawramani A Brief Primer on Ibn al-Jawzi Abū l-Faraj ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Ibn al-Jawzī (1116 – 1201 CE) was a major historian, hadith scholar, jurist and popular preacher in medieval Baghdad. He is said to have written over a hundred works (some mention as many as […]

Measuring Economic and Military Potentials of World Nations with the Human Genetic-Cultural Quality Index (HQI)

Introduction What is the biggest predictor of a country’s scientific output, industrial capacity and military prowess? It is not geographic size. For instance, Kazakhstan and Mongolia are huge compared to Israel and Switzerland, yet Israel and Switzerland far outdistance them in all measures of intellectual, technological and military attainment. It is not population. India’s 1.28 […]

The Uniqueness of Western Civilization by Ricardo Duchesne

There are times when you read a book that completely change your understanding of the world, answering questions you have had for most of your life, and even better, answering questions you did not know you had. This is such a book. Duchesne unites economic analysis, anthropology, history and philosophy in order to make a […]

Medieval Female Mystics of Islam

A review of Arezou Azad, “Female Mystics in Mediaeval Islam: The Quiet Legacy.” (Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 56 (2013) 53-88). Andrea Cabrera The article, “Female Mystics in Medieval Islam: the Quiet Legacy” was written by Arezou Azad, who is a Leverhulme Research Officer of the Oriental Studies Faculty at […]

IslamQA: On conspiracy theories

What are your thoughts on conspiracy theories? According to a former US government official the CIA invented the phrase “conspiracy theory” to discredit US dissidents who criticized certain actions of the US government. It is, for example, widely known that the Roosevelt government did its best to plunge the US into World War II; they […]

IslamQA: How do Azhar-educated Muslims end up as terrorists?

I’m just wondering how come some people who graduated from Al-Azhar ended up terrorists? Many of them have founded organisations such as Islamic brotherhood. I thought terrorism breeds as result of ignorance and incorrect knowledge, but since they receive proper ilm, on a scholarly level , then why this result? I can’t find neutral books […]

IslamQA: Understanding Islam’s Sophisticated Approach to Slavery: Why Muslims Practiced Slavery in the Past, and Why They Reject it Today

Below are my preliminary thoughts on why Islam’s tolerance for slavery is not necessary unethical. It may sound like nothing but empty apologetics to defend Islam’s toleration of slavery and say that Islam’s goal was to abolish it, when Islam’s Prophet ﷺ and his companions all practiced it widely. And generally this is what much of […]

IslamQA: On Islam, Homosexuality and Homosexual Muslims

You don’t have to answer this because its a very complex question but do you think you can be Muslim and gay? And how should we as Muslims feel about gays? How shall we treat them? How do you reconcile Islam (in the sense it is a religion that discourages/disagrees with homosexuality) with homosexuality? Is […]

Is Islam really pluralistic? An Islamic defense of pluralism

If Islamic teachings can be used to defend pluralism, that tells us something very important about the future of Islam. My views are not unique; they are similar to those of the great twentieth century Egyptian scholar Muḥammad ʿAbdallāh Drāz (1894 – 1958 CE), who defended a similar vision in many of his articles and […]

A Selection from Aqiday Mardia of Mawlawi Tawagozi by Baba Ali Qaradaghi

Mawlawi Tawagozi (1806-1882, known simply as Mawlawi in Kurdish) was an Islamic mystic and one of the great poets of Kurdistan, belonging to the Hawrami minority that I belong to. This book is a 160-page commentary on a small selection of Mawlawi’s 2450-verse poem Aqiday Mardia (The Approved Aqeedah), which tries to offer a journey through the field […]

A bash script for automatically restarting an unresponsive Apache server only when needed

One of my servers responds to about 100,000 requests per day. Apache would randomly hang a few times a day, taking all of the websites down. I tried every solution I could find online to prevent Apache from hanging, but nothing helped, so I decided to stop wasting time on it and simply develop a […]

How to get a demo of the OneDrive File Picker JavaScript SDK to work on a local development server

After getting the Google Drive file picker working on the page of a project I’m working on within just a few hours, I was faced with the task of getting the OneDrive JavaScript Picker to work, which I almost abandoned because of Microsoft’s brain-dead documentation. After hours of watching Microsoft videos and piecing together documentation, […]

IslamQA: Managing stress and loneliness

Salam alaykum how may I manage stress and focus on myself, sometimes I feel lonely-no one contacts me I’m ok with it I really need to put myself first Alaikumassalam wa rahmatullah, There are hundreds of books dedicated to those topics, everyone is different so no one solution that works for everyone. You say you […]

Using PUT to RESTfully upload an image to a server with jQuery AJAX and PHP

When uploading a single image to a known location, for example a user uploading an image to use as their profile image, using a PUT request for the upload makes more sense than POST if you are trying to follow REST principles. I couldn’t find a complete solution online, so the following is what I […]

IslamQA: What to do if the Quran (in English) does not touch your heart

I have an issue I feel bad about. Whenever I read the Qur’an i can’t connect to it. At worst I haven’t even had a clear feeling it’s from God. Idk why. Maybe because I don’t know Arabic. But whenever I watch a religious video explaining the religion i feel very connected. You could try […]

Live Discussion

This is an experimental live discussion page that functions as a forum and guestbook. If no one is online, you can still leave a message and it will be saved; I will reply to it when I see it. Everything is anonymous, no personally-identifiable information is stored. [quick-chat]

IslamQA: Is the fajr prayer valid if the sun rises while performing it?

Assalamualaikum, if someone intends to pray Fajr but they wake up 5minutes before sunrise and then whilst they are praying it goes past sunrise, is their prayer invalid? Because when I first searched this online all the answers says just to wake up and pray immediately even if you’re late. So I assumed you didn’t […]

IslamQA: Learning to love God again

I want to know how to heal from the religious abuse I’ve been through in my life. I can’t find any resources online for Muslims. Most people I have read had issue with religious abuse have left. I don’t know how to heal that part. Maybe if I seek a professional they might tell me […]

IslamQA: How do I find the one who is right for me?

I decided to do a lot of istighfar for loving someone before marriage and not lowering my gaze and I’ve lost attachment to that person Alhamdulillah. how do I find the one who is right for me? That is similar to asking, “How do I become successful in life?” Each person’s life is different. Successfully […]

Why Digital Piracy is Ethical and Necessary

Disclaimer: This is an academic essay on the ethics of digital piracy. It is not a call for breaking the law by pirating. Some jurisdictions punish piracy severely, therefore the risk is entirely your own if you choose to break the law by pirating content. For my proposal for a digital library that makes piracy […]

IslamQA: How do I balance between being a programmer and a writer?

Hi,this maybe not an question asking about islam,but i am quite interested about how you manage your time between becoming a programmer and writer. I am deeply inspired and amazed by your writings as it shows your erudition. I would also like to know how you learned programming. Thank you I do not have a […]

IslamQA: She promised Allah not to talk to him then broke her promise

Asalam Walikum, I hope you are doing well. I really really need help 🙁 so i went through a heartbreak with someone i liked and wanted to marry. I made a promise to Allah about it, that ill stop talking to him until he is brought for marriage. He did come back after so many […]

IslamQA: How to learn Quranic Arabic

Assalamualaikum. Do you have any advice for someone who wants to learn Arabic in the Qur’an? I already know how to read the Arabic, but since I want to understand deeply about Qur’an maybe you have learning methods which you can suggest. Jazakallah brother Alaikumassalam wa rahmatullah, You may be interested in my book Learning Quranic […]

IslamQA: Is supermarket cheese halal? How to find halal cheese

Assalamualaikum what is your preferred opinion on whether cheese is halal or haram? I’ve read online that during the manufacturing process rennet can become mixed in with the cheese and therefore it is doubtful? It’s very hard to confirm with companies if that happened and also I read one opinion that said the companions ate […]

IslamQA: Are savings accounts halal if you give away the interest in charity?

Assalamualaikum, most reputable banks near me gives interest for a savings account, there are 2 Muslim banks but they don’t have the best customer service reviews. I need to open a savings account but I don’t want any Interest attached. A Muslim friend of mine with the same issue opened an account but records the […]

IslamQA: Is it permissible to earn interest to give it away in charity?

Assalamualaikum, most reputable banks near me gives interest for a savings account, there are 2 Muslim banks but they don’t have the best customer service reviews. I need to open a savings account but I don’t want any Interest attached. A Muslim friend of mine with the same issue opened an account but records the […]

IslamQA: Similarities between Islam and Buddhism

As-salaamu ‘alaykum, wa rahmatu-llaah. Would you be so kind as to talk about similarities between Buddhism and Islam? Jazak-Allahu khayran. Alaikumassalam wa rahmatullah wa barakatuh, I haven’t studied Buddhism in any detail, so I cannot properly answer your question. But if you search online then there are many articles that deal with your question.

IslamQA: The Islamic stance on writing novels

[1] Salam, don’t know if this is the best place to ask, but I feel you give perceptive answers that make a lot of sense, & you have answered questions relating to writing poetry etc aswell as reviewed a contemporary romantic novel Ayesha At Last on your blog. Personally I hope to one day write […]

IslamQA: Does bleeding from the body invalidate ablution (wudu)?

Hello ^^ I have a question if you don’t mind answering: does bleeding from your body (not the private parts) invalidates ablution? I’ve done research online and it seems that opinions are split in half about this matter and I have no idea which to follow! Thanks. Hello, Bleeding does not invalidate the state of […]

IslamQA: How to have the motivation to finish things

How do we finish things? Like I usually have a problem of finishing reading a book,after some time I get bored and just stop reading and completely abandoning the book. This also goes for everything else like trying to learn something. Unfortunately your motivation to finish things is strongly influenced by the neurochemical balance in […]

IslamQA: Can you take breaks between prayers in Islam?

AssalamuAlaikum, is it okay to take breaks between the units of prayer? I tend to get fatigued easily and find I need to wait before continuing. Also sau I have prayed 4 rakats of Isha and I leave to assist a family member in something quick before doing the next 4. Is that okay? I […]

IslamQA: OCD is making their practice of Islam difficult

Selam I have a problem I suffer from OCD scrupulosity aspect of it. To be honest my personal relationship to Islam is so messed up I don’t know where to start. With my prayer and wudu I am in constant doubt. I repeat multiple times because i think I passed gas or ect. I find […]

Learn Quranic Arabic

This page contains the full text of Learning Quranic Arabic for Complete Beginners by Ikram Hawramani. You can get this book on Amazon.com as a paperback and Kindle ebook. Learning Quranic Arabic for Complete Beginners ✽ A Step by Step Self-Teaching Guide to the Arabic Language of the Quran Ikram Hawramani 2019StewardsPublishing STEWARDS PUBLISHING Copyright © 2019 Ikram Hawramani First […]

The Philosophy of Pornography and Masturbation

Why is it wrong to watch pornography? Even if a person is not religious, they will still feel guilt and shame about a porn-watching habit. Where does this come from? Even the most free-thinking and atheistic person will have reservations about watching pornography with their family, even if everyone in the family is an adult. […]

IslamQA: The ruling on women riding alone in a taxi car or on a motorcycle

Salaam. In my country, there is this public transportation service called ojeg (pronounced OH-JACK). It is basically a motorcycle taxi that only counts to 1 passenger per motorcycle unit. In Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) times, he rode a camel together with a woman behind him, with a note that the Prophet and the woman rode the […]

IslamQA: Getting tattoos as a Muslim

Dear Mr.Ikram Hawramani Salam brother, i hope you find the question in good health. I have benefited from some of your blog post and i find that you have a poetic way of explaning things so here i am asking for your advice. To put in perspective i am 19 years old and i have […]

IslamQA: Her secret romantic relationship cured her depression

AOA! I had severe depression for more than 2 years that I could neither focux on my studies nor on my daily routine tasks. My family wasn’t supportive and I had no friend to talk to, as my father doesn’t let me leave home much.I was a mere dead soul. So one day I started […]