AL - 'ILAAJ EDITORIAL BOARD, MSSN UCH, IBADAN

All praise is due to Allah alone, far exalted is He above whatever partners people ascribe to Him in worship. May peace and salutations be upon His Messenger ﷺ , through whom the message of pure and uncompromising Tawḥīd (monotheism) was perfectly conveyed. One of the subtle yet dangerous threats to pure monotheism is minor shirk (polytheism), acts that do not expel a person from Islam but corrupt the perfection of their Tawḥīd and may serve as a gateway to major shirk if left unchecked.  Allah Swears by His Creation But Do We? Allah, in His infinite majesty, swears by elements of His creation in several verses of the Qur’an, and these oaths stand as testimonies to His greatness and absolute authority.  “By Al-‘Aṣr (time).” {Surah Al-‘Aṣr v 1} “By Mount Sinai.” {Surah At-Tīn v 2} These divine oaths raise an important question. Do human beings share this privilege, or are we commanded to swear only by Allah? The answer is clear from the Qur’an and Sunnah. Swearing by other than...

  From the end of my secondary school days through university, I had several non-Muslims, during conversations, attempt to convert me to their religion. Those who knew me personally could not accuse me of vices such as gambling, drinking, or reckless living, things conversion was often said to “save” people from. So, more often than not, the conversation shifted to terrorism. “Why is terrorism usually linked to Islam?” “Why are terrorists usually Muslims?” From 9/11 to Boko Haram and then Hamas, these examples were repeatedly raised. My response was always simple: there is no part of Islam that commands Muslims to kill non-Muslims. The only context in which fighting is sanctioned is warfare, specifically defensive war, when Muslims are attacked and must defend themselves. One can only imagine how many Muslims, over this same decade, were subjected to similar conversations. For those with little grounding or conviction, many may have quietly drifted away from Islam, especially after...

  Although contemporary feminists have raised a lot of prepositions against liberalism, one cannot deny the historical framework liberalism provided for feminism and how it influenced its development (Baehr, 2004). If liberalism is the root of feminism, it begs the question: “What is Liberalism, and what is the Islamic perspective on it?”  Liberalism is a political doctrine that takes protecting and enhancing the freedom of the individual to be the central problem of politics (Minogue et al., 2023) whereas, Allah says in suratul Ahzab verse 36,  “It is not for a believing man or woman—when Allah and His Messenger decree a matter—to have any other choice in that matter. Indeed, whoever disobeys Allah and His Messenger has clearly gone ˹far˺ astray” . This is the first loggerhead between liberalism and Islam, while liberalism places its fulcrum on individual freedom, Islam restricts it and even calls whoever places personal freedom over her astray. Feminism is often descri...

 One fateful evening in the year 323 BC, a man lay dying from a disease that can easily be cured with antibiotics today. All his wealth and all his power could not save Alexander the Great from what was likely typhoid fever. Humanity has come a long way since then. We now have the upper hand in our war against microbes that cause diseases capable of killing many people at once. We have better understanding of these pathogens, we have improved sanitation and perhaps most importantly, we have antimicrobial drugs. Most people know the famous story of the discovery of penicillin. Sir Alexander Fleming was growing a bacteria colony on a petri dish. Unknown to him, the dish had been contaminated with penicillium mould which secreted a substance that inhibited bacteria growth. Fleming named this antibacterial substance penicillin and the rest, as they say, is history. Antimicrobials have quite literally revolutionized modern medicine. A cut, a scrape, stepping on a rusty nail and many oth...

Yesterday I went to the shrink and I wasn’t diagnosed as mad. She just said, “You’re tired from holding your storms too long, from pretending the thunder is applause.” I laughed, because in my head I’d already rehearsed a thousand verdicts of madness. But she smiled and said, “It’s okay to cry without reason, to rest without guilt, to talk before you break.” She didn’t hand me pills or labels. She handed me silence and told me to fill it with truth. Yesterday I went to the shrink and I learned that healing isn’t weakness. That you can walk into a room with heavy thoughts and walk out lighter, not because they vanished, but because you finally shared their weight. So if you ever feel like your mind has become a maze of noise, go. Not because you’re mad, but because you deserve peace. In a world where physical health gets applause and mental health gets whispers, visiting a therapist often carries the weight of stigma. Many still believe that walking into a psychiatrist’s office means yo...

Have you ever noticed how some people stay in the same spot for years, not because they lack ideas, but because they never move? They wait for perfect conditions that never come. It is like living in balance, yet never breaking free. Chemists have a name for this balance. It is called Le Chatelier’s Principle. The principle states that when a system at equilibrium is disturbed, it shifts in a direction that counteracts the disturbance and restores balance. Add more reactants, and the system produces more products. Change temperature or pressure, and it adjusts to restore stability. This law not only applies in laboratories but also plays out every day in our lives. We all live in a kind of personal equilibrium. Our habits, comfort zones, and routines create a steady state. But this same balance can also keep us from growing. I once knew someone who always had access to funds she could borrow for business. She had good ideas but never acted on them. She only borrowed when emergencies ca...