The Way of Muhammad

"The Way of Muhammad – this was written not many years after Ian Dallas had accepted Islam, and again one finds in it this extraordinary illumination and understanding of the meaning of the various acts of worship. It draws on the Qur’an, it draws on the sayings of the Prophet, blessings and peace be on him, it draws on the writings of some of the great people of wisdom of the past. The purpose of the book is to convey something you were never taught at school – it’s actually talking about a whole zone of knowledge that has been kept at bay, if you like, by established educational institutions in what’s called the West – but west of what? Not really. I think later works by Shaykh Abdalqadir are much more critical of the dominant culture, if you can grace it with that word. But the point of this book is not to say this is what’s wrong with the world. It’s really based on the five pillars of Islam, which are all to do with the worship of the Divine. And it’s going into the meaning of what these acts of worship are and what they do to you. The more that you follow the way of Muhammad, the more you embody what he embodied – the more you will understand what he understood. And, importantly, what this book does is actually trace in detail what the path of knowledge is, and what the man of knowledge is, and what the knowledge is. Shaykh Abdalqadir has a gift of articulating knowledge one had sensed, but couldn’t put into words, and somehow when you read it you say, yes, that’s what I was trying to put my finger on."