[domeffire]

I think the matter is being quite muddled. Lets just put the takfir, fatwa of the great Allama Anwar Shah Kashmiri on the side for a bit.

Lets come back to Fons Vitae, in the about us section:

Fons Vitae, a non-profit, academic press, publishes interfaith scholarly works focused primarily on world spirituality.

A peer-reviewed publishing house, Fons Vitae is distinguished for its significant English translations of key Arabic and Persian works, especially in the field of Sufism. Its award-winning books and DVDs are used throughout the world in university classrooms and by the general public, including in its prison outreach.

Fons Vitae seeks to broaden understanding and admiration of all the world’s sacred traditions by sponsoring lecture series and educational programs, as well as by participating in interfaith congresses worldwide.

When I read this, they are not an authority on islamic spirituality, in fact they don't even focus on Islamic Spirituality exclusively but publish works on world spirituality from all faiths and traditions. Secondly 99% of what they do are translations, there is very few original works.

Now Shaykh Hamza is on the Scholarly Advisory Board:

http://www.fonsvitae.com/AdvisoryBoa...1/Default.aspx

Now, do these two facts, when added up, mean he rubber stamps everything they publish? titles they chose to translate? the choice of translator? methodology of the translator? the level of arabic and english of the translator? Does he approve every sentence in every book that is published by Fons Vitae? Does he have veto power as a scholarly advisor? And when he does support them, is it absolute support or specific support? or a general support to the general good that they do? Does the good they do overwhelm reservations he may have regarding certain aspects of certain passages? and does simply translating 'saying of saints' that are often problematic automatically associate him with it all? We should know by now that saints say some funny stuff, you may chose to hide it, but is there academic integrity in it? and in translating it does it automatically mean support and agreement of what they said? does an aqeedah change if one translates something? or supports a larger organization that does many translations? Does the fact it is translated mean 100% support from every single person associated with the whole organization of Fons Vitae? or is his intended involvement to keep them on straight path, is he advising them, tolerating their mistakes to hope to have a positive impact on them?

I'm not saying they, Fons Vitae is correct nor am I defending Shaykh Hamza. I'm saying that its incorrect to jump to conclusions without first doing much more due diligence than reading a few passages from the saying of saints, or any other book for that matter, then seeing him on Advisory Scholarly Board and then proceed to associate the two as though the publications were coming from his own pen and his own personal publishing house.

There is a serious hole in the logic, research and overall make up of this argument that Shaykh Hamza supports Fons Vitae unequivocally and thus their minhaj is his minhaj. Complete Fallacy, and until more research is done, personal interviews of Shaykh Hamza, personal interviews of those in charge of Fons Vitae, assessment of his involvement, speaking to him about problematic books, passages and translations, his view on all this. Until that is undertaken, then thread is pretty much a complete waste of time.