The Helping Guide - Concerning Essential Religious Knowledge

About The Helping Guide:

Ibn Ashir's didactic poem on creed, basic fiqh and tasawwuf is perhaps the single most memorized text in the African Maliki tradition. It has been used for over four hundred years throughout North and West Africa and is noted for the ease with which it is memorized and the clarity that it provides in the three central tenets of Iman, Islam and Ihsan. This is the first translation to be accompanied by a critical Arabic edition as well as an unprecedented biography of the author and his times. It includes excellent charts and other useful tools for the student of sacred knowledge and will be of interest to a wide range of students, teachers and researchers.

The text is the second completed work of the Zaytuna Curriculum Series.

About the Translator:

Hamza Yusuf is an American convert to Islam who studied for several years under leading scholars in the Muslim world. He is the co-founder of the Zaytuna Institute in California and has translated into modern English several classical Arabic texts and poems, including the latest rendering of the thirteenth-century devotional poem, The Burda: The Poem of the Cloak. His most recent works include Purification of the Heart, a translation with commentary of a nineteenth-century text that examines the spiritual conditions and treatments of the heart; and The Content of Character, a collection of sayings from the Prophet Muhammad   regarding the essence of character and behavior. The Creed of Imam al-Tahawi is the first text in the Zaytuna Curriculum Series.

Agenda to Change our Condition

First published in 1999, this expanded edition provides clear and effective guidance for rectifying our state as conscientious and productive Muslims. With an emphasis on Taqwa (God-consciousness) and Ikhlas (sincerity), Agenda To Change Our Condition is an indispensable handbook for all Muslims striving for excellence in character and self-refinement. Topics covered include: Taqwa: Its Definition and Its Benefits, The Heart and its Treatment, Practical Steps to Change Our Condition, a series of exercises for achieving Taqwa as well as three new appendices.

Submission - Faith & Beauty

Written by the Muslim scholar, Dr. Joseph Lumbard, and co-edited by Imam Zaid Shakir and Shaykh Hamza Yusuf, this thoughtful and well-written work beautifully and succinctly summarizes the core beliefs of the Muslim faith.

From The Back Cover: 
 

Islam is the most maligned religion in the West. We have grown accustomed to assertions about Islam that appear almost daily in the media or in the statements of Western leaders that would be considered unacceptable and condemned as the bigoted and racist remarks that they are, if they were made about any other major world religion.

The Western view of Islam is rooted in centuries of mistrust, ignorance, and stereotypical attitudes—the inherited biases of the premodern clash of civilizations. These attitudes are no longer viable or warranted given the immense interdependence shared between the West and the Muslims. In addition, there is the very real presence in the West of millions of law-abiding Muslim citizens, now threatened and feared by large numbers of people who see them as adherents of a fierce and fanatical faith that demands of its followers blind obedience to a system of belief rooted in hatred.

The civilizational project will not be secure until there is mutual understanding between the three militant civilizations of the West, Islamdom, and China. Knowledge of Islam has, in effect, become a serious security issue in geopolitics. It is to forward this mutual understanding that Zaytuna Institute commissioned this thoughtful and well-written work that beautifully and succinctly summarizes the core beliefs of the Muslim faith.

This small book can do much to edify those concerned citizens in the West about the beauty and truth of Islam—and, by doing so, help guide the Western understanding of the religion from one based upon distortions, to one rooted in authentic knowledge.