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https://mailchi.mp/36f564bfa8f7/salim-newsletter-1-1-2019-handbook-islam

Salim's Newsletter – Anniversary Celebration Shaykh Nâẓim Efendi (Q)

Salim's Newsletter - Anniversary Celebration Shaykh Nâẓim Efendi ق

Salim's April 2017 Newsletter

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE SUNNA

NEW TITLES AVAILABLE

As-salâmu alaykum,
Dear friends of Spohr Publishers,

We wish to inform you that there are three new English titles available at Spohr Publishers. They are presently in production and will be ready to leave our Hungarian printer November 30, insha’ Allah. 

The first item is a precious gift from Mawlana Sheikh Nazim Efendi, the only book that is actually by his own hand. First published in the 1950ies, the book contains the basic knowledge that every Muslim should have. Sheikh Nazim, To Be a Muslim. The Basics of Faith. Lympia 2016, 84 pages, 8,- Euros. ISBN 978–9963–40–122–2

(This title is also available in German language.)

The second one is by Nabil Ibrahim who for 15 years devoted himself to the service of his Sheikh. He found the words to express something of the love and gratitude we all feel for an incomparable Master. This is Nabil’s picture of a Saint, and also an account of some of the events occurring during their daily tours in the hills around Lefke. Nabil Ibrahim, Dawriya. Keeping Company with a Saint. Lympia 2016, 160 pages, 16,- Euros. ISBN 978–9963–40–124–6

The third one: In response to many requests Hajja Amina Adil’s beautiful collection of texts has beeen translated into English language. "This book contains some of the most beautiful traditions concerning the holy months Rajab, Sha’bân, and Ramaḍân in particular. The reader will understand that its blessings descend not only upon the Muslims, but upon all of mankind, indeed upon all creatures and everything brought into existence by the Creator. He will begin to fathom why even stones weep at the passing of this holy month.” Amina Adil, Ramadan. The Three Holy Months of Rajab, Sha‘bân, Ramaḍân. On Fasting, Prayer and Other Matters. Lympia 2016, 80 pages, 9,- Euros. ISBN 978–9963–40–125–3

Here you will find an overview of the new publications.

We'd love to hear from you.
With many salams, may Allah protect
you and your families, 

Salim & Hagar

NEW TITLES AVAILABLE

As-salâmu alaykum,
Dear friends of Spohr Publishers,

We wish to inform you that there are three new English titles available at Spohr Publishers. They are presently in production and will be ready to leave our Hungarian printer November 30, insha’ Allah. 

The first item is a precious gift from Mawlana Sheikh Nazim Efendi, the only book that is actually by his own hand. First published in the 1950ies, the book contains the basic knowledge that every Muslim should have. Sheikh Nazim, To Be a Muslim. The Basics of Faith. Lympia 2016, 84 pages, 8,- Euros. ISBN 978–9963–40–122–2

(This title is also available in German language.)

The second one is by Nabil Ibrahim who for 15 years devoted himself to the service of his Sheikh. He found the words to express something of the love and gratitude we all feel for an incomparable Master. This is Nabil’s picture of a Saint, and also an account of some of the events occurring during their daily tours in the hills around Lefke. Nabil Ibrahim, Dawriya. Keeping Company with a Saint. Lympia 2016, 160 pages, 16,- Euros. ISBN 978–9963–40–124–6

The third one: In response to many requests Hajja Amina Adil’s beautiful collection of texts has beeen translated into English language. "This book contains some of the most beautiful traditions concerning the holy months Rajab, Sha’bân, and Ramaḍân in particular. The reader will understand that its blessings descend not only upon the Muslims, but upon all of mankind, indeed upon all creatures and everything brought into existence by the Creator. He will begin to fathom why even stones weep at the passing of this holy month.” Amina Adil, Ramadan. The Three Holy Months of Rajab, Sha‘bân, Ramaḍân. On Fasting, Prayer and Other Matters. Lympia 2016, 80 pages, 9,- Euros. ISBN 978–9963–40–125–3

Here you will find an overview of the new publications.

We'd love to hear from you.
With many salams, may Allah protect
you and your families, 

Salim & Hagar

The Christians' fear of the Apostle's testimony

Christians are afraid of the testimony of the Apostle Barnabas, peace be upon him, because if what he says is true, namely that not Jesus but Judas Iscariot was crucified, then the whole new Christianity would collapse.

What is repeatedly claimed by professional Christians like Schirrmacher or Slomp, that the Gospel of Barnabas is the forgery of a 16th-century Jewish convert to Islam, is, as they say in Cologne, “old hat,” dating from yesterday and long since refuted by research. The reason for the stubbornness of these people is simply that they have a bestial fear that this legacy might be true.

Among Christians, more precisely, Pauline-influenced Christians (which today means almost all of them), the Gospel of the Apostle Barnabas is rightly considered the most feared document of all. For if it is true that there was never a killing of Jesus, peace be upon him, and he was never crucified, which, as is well known, is also claimed by the Holy Quran, the Last Testament of the Merciful God to humanity, then this Christianity is finished, over, done. For without the death on the cross, there is no resurrection, no Easter.

While the Quran only says that Jesus was not killed and not crucified, but that it only "appeared" so to them at the time ("wa lakin schubbiha lahum" (4:157)), the explosiveness of the testimony of the Apostle Barnabas, which is more than a thousand years older, lies precisely in the fact that it tells in great detail what that appearance was all about and how it came to be that it appeared so to them. Namely, that when the henchmen came to arrest him, the Lord Jesus was taken up to the third heaven by four angels, while Judas Iscariot, the traitor, received Jesus' appearance and voice by divine command, so that not only the soldiers but even the disciples themselves and Jesus' family believed that it was he who had been arrested, crucified, and killed (cf. Gospel of Barnabas, Chap. 216 ff., p. 298 ff.), since all this actually happened to Judas. This is precisely the precise meaning of the Quranic "shubbiha", and it also makes the back and forth of Judas's suffering between the Sanhedrin and Governor Pilate understandable with unprecedented clarity.

And it is also precisely this that almost forces Christians today to deny the authenticity of the Gospel of Barnabas and to cling like a drowning man to the thesis that this sacred legacy is in truth a forgery by a Jewish convert to Islam from the 16th century, which the Schirrmachers and Slomps still propagate today, even though recent research has long proven the unique status and great age of the Gospel of Barnabas.

The text of this particular scripture, known as the "Gospel of Barnabas," has increasingly attracted the interest of high-profile researchers from various disciplines because much suggests that, apart from a few marginal changes from more recent times, it must be a testament dating back to the earliest times of Jewish Christianity.

THE TOMB OF APOSTLE BARNABAS NEAR SALAMIS (CYPRUS)

Religious scholars, linguistic analysts, and experts in ancient languages, especially the crucial Aramaic, who have studied the Gospel of Barnabas, have come to the conclusion that the work is an authentic expression of a Jewish-Christian tradition which, temporarily silenced in Pauline Christianity, has curiously continued to develop in Islam to this day. That the Gospel of Barnabas surprises both Muslims and Christians by appearing "Islamic" is not the result of an Islamic forgery, as the aforementioned lobbyists would have it, but rather a beautiful expression of the fact that Jewish Christianity and Islam unexpectedly prove to be intimately related, indeed representing a consistent line of development of redemptive revelations, in contrast to which Pauline Christianity can only appear as a heresy.

A very important study on the significance of the Gospel of Barnabas was a dissertation submitted by Luigi Cirillo and Paul Fremaux in 1975 at France's elite university, the Sorbonne. Luigi Cirillo's work, graded summa cum laude – he later became Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Naples and an expert in the fields of Jewish Christianity and Manichaeism – was preceded by a detailed introduction by Henry Corbin, one of the leading Orientalists of his time. In this study, Cirillo was able to show that the Viennese text of the German edition of the Gospel of Barnabas published by Spohr Verlag [cf. Vienna State Library: Cod. 2662 Eug] is based on a Jewish-Christian gospel of Eastern origin, which, however, like all early Christian texts, had undergone several metamorphoses during its long history.

In fundamental agreement with the Catholic Cirillo is the Jewish religious scholar Professor Shlomo Pinés, who found traditions in the Gospel of Barnabas that are known from apocryphal Jewish-Christian writings of the first centuries. A good example is the story of Abraham's childhood, which finds its parallel in the Apocalypse of Abraham, a rare apocryphon from the first century AD, which, having remained unknown for many centuries, reappeared in the public eye in the 19th century in the form of an Old Church Slavonic translation. The latest edition of this text refers several times in its apparatus to the Gospel of Barnabas, which, increasingly recognized by outstanding scholars, unexpectedly gains in significance.

In a series of lectures given at the Christian University of Jerusalem in 1976, Professor Henri Corbin revealed astonishing parallels between the Gospel of Barnabas, Shiite prophetology, and the early Christian journeys of Peter, which are still misleadingly referred to as "Pseudo-Clementine" in the terminology of Pauline-influenced religious studies.

Finally, the Aramaic specialist Jan Joosten, Professor at the University of Strasbourg, published a detailed study in the January 2002 issue of the Harvard Theological Review entitled "The Gospel of Barnabas and the Diatessaron," which provides clear evidence that large parts of the Gospel of Barnabas correspond to Tatian's "Gospel Harmony," which was compiled in Aramaic around 180 AD.

The indicated works of the scholars just mentioned now deserve to be decisively weighed with the answers they provide and the far-reaching questions they raise. Compared to them – it can already be said – the forgery accusation pamphlets of the Slomps and Schirrmachers and all those who mindlessly parrot them will prove to be second- or third-rate and factually unsustainable agitations full of errors and arbitrary assumptions, an unpleasantly tedious read. That both Christians and Muslims fall victim to such stereotyped and incorrigible forgery propaganda is, in this respect, somewhat bitter, as it is precisely Muslims who could have most easily discovered the special value of the Gospel of Barnabas, since they are factually and genealogically so close to it, as the religious historian H. J. Schoeps clearly recognized, who concludes his groundbreaking work "Das Judenchristentum" with the remarkable sentence: «And thus, as a paradox of truly world-historical dimensions, the fact emerges that Jewish Christianity, though it perished within the Christian church, has been preserved in Islam and thereby extends some of its driving impulses into our present day.»

In other words, it can be said that the true heirs of Jesus Christ, the true Christians of today, are those who are now called Muslims.

In conclusion, it should be said that the stunningly wonderful legacy of the Apostle Barnabas, which we encounter in his Gospel, still carries a very specific blessing today, which profoundly uplifts and delights the reader, regardless of their religious affiliation.

Here our new edition of the Gospel: 

The Precious Pearl - Imam Ghazali's Rediscovered Masterpiece

 "The Precious Pearl in the Knowledge of the Afterlife" (ad-dûrat ul-fâkhira fi kashfi ‘ulûm al-âkhira) by Imâm al-Ghazâlî is one of the works of world literature, and it reveals knowledge of the path of the human soul after death in descriptions of astonishing, horrifying, and also refreshing things, the knowledge of which is of central, even existential importance for all living beings. – Especially today, we should know it. See here! 

The Arrival

We are happy to tell you that the book of The Forty Questions, Prophet Muhammad’s (s) Response to the Jews of Medina, has arrived at our place in Cyprus. It was one of Hajja Anne's most beloved books, and after twenty years hereby we are to release this important book in a new edition, al-hamdu li-Llâh! Shaykh Efendi has been given some of the very first publisher's copies of the book, the printer has sent to us before they, palletised, started their journey to the United Kingdom and Cyprus. And Mehmet Nazim, his grandson, told me that our Shaykh likes the new book very much. And one of the first of the readers in UK has been so happy with the book that he ordered just another one. Everyone is free to do the same. :-)

Welcome English Speaking Customers!

Dear Customers, as-salamu alaykum.

We hope you are well. For about twenty years, we have been publishing magazines and books for German-speaking people, especially Muslims. Following the classic rules for creating good books that people enjoy reading, we are now taking our first tentative steps into the English market. As with our German publications, our goal is to publish books of the highest quality at affordable prices.