Could the Ottomans be any more practically poetic…
From
Other Matters http://othermatters.wordpress.com/2007/12/17/poached-ottoman-recycling/
Looking at the domed ceiling of the Suleimaniya mosque I marvel at the ingenuity of Ottoman architecture: In the past the interior of the mosque was lit by huge braziers and wicker lamps. The damp, oily black smoke would rise to the ceiling, to be collected as it cooled into hidden ducts that were built within the dome itself. Slowly the liquid smoke would filter down and was collected in tiny pots, to be sifted, mixed with oil and gum, to be made into ink. That ink would then be used to write the Qur’ans that were read by the Ottomans themselves. An economy of resources at work: light to smoke, smoke to ink, ink to books, books that were read in the same light that would produce the ink. Truly, the hermetically sealed world of the Ottomans was a riddle that kept its answer to itself.
Farish Noor, Wonders of Islamic Civilization
slayed, slayed, and slayed again
btw that is a horrible post-fajr ungroomed picture of me 
Marifah.Net shares letter 50 from Imam Ahmad Sirhindi, available here:
http://www.marifah.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=111&Itemid=53
Sacred Law Has Both a Form and a Reality
Praise be to Allāh Most High and peace be upon His chosen servants.
Know that the Sacred Law has both a form and a reality. The form of the Sacred Law entails the fulfillment of the rulings encompassed by it after having belief in Allāh Most High and His Messenger and in all that has come from Allāh Most High (i.e. as revelation and all that it requires). Faith (imān) co-existing with the nafs al-`amāra and its admixed disputation (munāzaha), licentiousness (ibāha), transgression (tughyān) and denial (inkār) is simply a form of faith. Likewise ritual prayer (salāh) and ritual fasting (sawm) with their prerequisites and integrals are similarly simply forms of ritual prayer and ritual fasting. In this vein follow the other rulings encompassed by the Sacred Law.
This was an interesting article in light of the understanding of maturity within Islam, which conflicts with the notion of modern day adolescence.
http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/index.php?term=pto-4311.html
The whole culture collaborates in artificially extending childhood, primarily through the school system and restrictions on labor. The two systems evolved together in the late 19th-century; the advocates of compulsory-education laws also pushed for child-labor laws, restricting the ways young people could work, in part to protect them from the abuses of the new factories. The juvenile justice system came into being at the same time. All of these systems isolate teens from adults, often in problematic ways.
Our current education system was created in the late 1800s and early 1900s, and was modeled after the new factories of the industrial revolution. Public schools, set up to supply the factories with a skilled labor force, crammed education into a relatively small number of years. We have tried to pack more and more in while extending schooling up to age 24 or 25, for some segments of the population. In general, such an approach still reflects factory thinkingget your education now and get it efficiently, in classrooms in lockstep fashion. Unfortunately, most people learn in those classrooms to hate education for the rest of their lives.
yursil on 
Ranu on 
Frank Talk on 
Zeynep on 
isah musa ibrahim on 
Alija on 