What's in a name?
The 12th century Muslim Lexicographer Raghib Al-Asfahani, when defining in his own unique way the meaning of light, described it as “the expansive radiance that helps us perceive things as they really are”. The metaphor of light as a source of guidance and clarity has pervaded human language from the earliest times and all peoples have an array of words that suitably convey different aspects of the unique nature of light, be it as the source in and of itself, or the radiance reflected from a source greater than it.
Solas the Scots Gaelic word for light, amply reflects both the richness and meaning associations that light conjures up. Solas is used to donate the changing phases of the moon, from the birth of the new moon to the waning crescent at the end of its monthly cycle. It is also used adjectively to donate clear and pure water.
It is perhaps the use of the word Solas to convey knowledge that best demonstrates the cross-civilizational power of language to forge patterns and meaning associations that pervade across continents. “Knowledge is light“ as the 8th century jurist As-Shafi’i said. It is this that is at the core of the operational ethos of The Solas Foundation and it is this that we are committed to promoting through authoritative scholarship and learning, harnessing religious ethics in order to promote a better civic and social experience through targeted research and learning.
The Solas Foundation believes that like light itself, knowledge cuts through national and geographic boundaries to increase our appreciation of the environment we live in as well as the people with whom we ultimately share our destinies. Scotland itself defines its own identity not in some narrow puritan view of ethnic nationhood, but rather as lying in a commitment to shared ideals and concerns and through these it projects what it means to be Scottish. The Solas foundation holds that a true demonstration of Islamic teachings enriches the identity of Scottish Muslims and through it wider society.
Amongst the meanings narrated of the otherwise elusive words of the Quran “light upon light”, is that given by the muslim theologian Ibn-Qayyim, who stated that they allude to the acquisition of knowledge which then helps enrich the primordial purity of the human spirit (fitrah) to produce truly enlightened human beings and through them a sane society. “Neither of the East nor of the West” but balanced, between the extremes of wanton excessiveness on the one hand and obscurantism on the other, guided by the collective teachings of Prophetic legacy.
It is the conviction of the Solas Foundation that such a task not only achievable,but that the achievement of this will lead to another meaning of the word solas, that of real contentment and solace. What is required is the ability to attend to the needs of society as a whole and “to perceive things as they really are”.
[SHAYKH RUZWAN MOHAMMED]