Charles Upton

Charles Upton (born December 13, 1948

After his first two volumes of poems were published, Upton became involved with the Sanctuary Movement for Central American refugees.

Activism In 2013 Charles Upton conceived of The Covenants Initiative, based on the book The Covenants of the Prophet Muhammad with the Christians of the World by his colleague Dr. John Andrew Morrow. The Covenants Initiative urges Muslims to abide by the covenants concluded between Muhammad and the Christian communities of his time. Upton and Morrow joined a panel at the seventh Parliament of the World's Religions at Toronto in November, 2018 to speak about the covenants and the initiative.

Marriage and family Upton married fellow poet Jennifer Doane. They lived in a house a block away from where Upton grew up in Marin County, California for many years.

Reception Reviewing The Virtues of the Prophet for the journal Philosophy East and West in January 2010, Muhammad Ahsen notes that Upton (who is a traditionalist) only makes passing reference to the modern era, which the author describes as a source of evil, whereas the reviewer suggests that given the example set by the Prophet Muhammad, the Muslim has nothing to fear about modernity. The reviewer also queries Upton's "treatment of evil, with which the Commanding Self (Nafs Ammara) seems to be equated." The reviewer instead suggests that we might look upon the Commanding Self – our human impulses – as "ethically and religiously neutral", "by themselves neither good nor evil". He is of the opinion that "Although rather alluring, these commentaries prolong the work unnecessarily. When combined with the Arabic and Morrow’s translation, the text becomes rather long-winded," and that, the sayings being "rather lengthy and advisory in nature, not to mention self-explanatory, there is little need to try and derive any esoteric meaning for them."

Reacting to Upton's YouTube video entitled "The Psychic and Spiritual Dangers of AI", Carlos Perona Calvete wrote in The European Conservative that "this video provides the most thorough understanding of AI and contemporary 'big data' crunching technology from a spiritual perspective I have encountered" and calling it "a delineation of relevant concepts so penetrating as to deserve canonical status in the analysis of, and resistance to, the denaturing developments of post-modern global civilization."