Islamic Terms:
This glossary had its beginnings from the information contained in the booklet Introducing Islam to Non-Muslims by Hussein Khalid Al-Hussein and Ahmad Hussein Sakr. Other terms not in that booklet are continually being added to this list now. A substantial number of terms were donated by ISL Software, makers of the Alim database.
If you would like to see a term explained, please drop us a note.
As a religious movement, it appears to have started in 11th century France, and then spread to Spain and elsewhere. It influenced the development of Hasidism in the 18th century, and continues to play a role in contemporary Judaism.
In the doctrine of "cutting the shoots", evil is believed to result from man coveting one of the Sefirah in preference to others. In this particular case, man's coveting of Malkhut suggests that man wants dominion for himself.
An extended description of the Sefirot (including an illustration) is available if you are interested.
Moses had asked from God ... what was his proper name. The answer had been indirect, even elusive: "I am that I am", 'ehyeh 'ashér 'éhyeh (Ex 3:14). In the third person, "I am" becomes "He is", Yahweh... "He is", Yahweh, would henceforth serve as a substitute for God's proper name, which remains unknown and unknowable...Just as men cannot see God, neither can they call him by his proper name, for only those beings can be named whose finite essence is perceived in opposition to others and which are, so to speak, delimited by them. But He who is fullness of being and from whom all essences derive by an act of his creative will cannot possibly be measured, defined, or named by his creature. This is why a Jew is forbidden to pronounce the name "Yahweh", and why the four consonants YHWH which form the skeleton of the name are punctuated in the Massoretic Bible with the vowel points of 'Adonai, "the Lord," or 'Elohim, "God", vocables which can actually be pronounced without profanation of the Ineffable One... Thus we find in the episode of the Burning Bush the foundation of an apophatic, or negative theology, common to the three religions issued from the biblical revelation {i.e. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam}.
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