Islamic openings..

Reading a good primer on Islam and learning lots. Didn't know that the Kaaba was constructed by Ibrahim/Abraham and that the meteorite only came much later (the placement of the rock being a matter of intense dispute, solved by Mohammed getting all the groups to share in the task with a carpet); didn't know "Allah" is an ungendered concept, and that the masculine reference is simply a linguistic convention not found in the pristine Arabic of the Book. I was only semi-aware of the explicit equality between men and women within Islam, in contrast to the marked patriarchy found within the Bible.

Various theological pathways and questions open up the more I read. I'm not sure how "Allah" can be omnipotent/omniscient and yet humans be granted free will, except through a form of deist withdrawal which plays against the purported omnipotence. I like the way that Islam is portrayed as a set of cultural/aesthetic forms and a worldview, as much as a religion (I guess that plays to liberal sensibilities). There is a strange tension, at least to an interested and sympathetic outsider, between the non-linear nature of the Koran (it doesn't begin with a Creation myth) and the emphasis on linear causation that posits Allah as the prime mover or fundamental cause. I also wonder whether Islam is at all compatible with evolution. I look forward to the sections on Sufism. The idea that the force that truly binds us, that we can only name by approximation, is nonetheless best thought of as Love - celebrated through dancing to a trance - cannot fail to appeal..