:bism: (In the Name of God, the Most Beneficent, the Most Merciful)
:sl: (Peace be upon you)
format_quote Originally Posted by
ChosenTCO
I never did follow any specific scholar or anything like that. The stuff I follow is the stuff I learned from my father. He was a graduate of Al Azhar, so he knows quite a bit when it comes to fiqh. The rulings that I was referring to were ones I discovered when I started searching intensely about islam (during the period were I wanted to improve my relationship with God)
I agree with brother Zafran that the scholars whose answers you read, as per when you say you started searching intensely about Islam, seem to be giving extremely rigid answers. Early Muslims used to say, "This knowledge is a matter of
deen, so be careful who you take your
deen from." For example, I use the site
Seekershub.org or
eshaykh.com for
fiqh rulings on contemporary issues as they better reflect my understanding of Islam specific to emerging issues in our times.
Also, I want to provide you an insight on why you might have disliked, for example, the
fatwa on playing video games. I am a voracious reader, though nowadays I have less time to engage in this favorite hobby/passion. However, I once read a
fatwa on reading fiction, which seemed to say that I was entirely wasting my time and instead should be engaged in more beneficial Islamic activities. I became upset and angry with the both the
fatwa and the issuer of the
fatwa; and it took me a long time to realize and admit even to myself why I'd become upset and angry. In Islam, human beings' purpose on this earth is to worship Allah and while we all at some level understand or accept that as a spiritual truth, we're not all on the same level of knowledge or understanding or practice of our
deen. Therefore, when we're called to a higher mode of behavior, we feel personally attacked as we feel what we're doing already is not good enough. And nobody likes feeling that they're either (a) not good enough or (b) what they're doing is not good enough. And for a while, when I didn't have free time to engage in any leisurely activity, even reading, I realized I didn't miss it and perhaps indeed I'd been wasting my time. But it took me to reach to a higher level of
iman (faith) and being kept busy in other matters to realize this truth. Perhaps scholars feel that they should be calling people to be a better or even the best version of their selves as Muslims, which is perhaps why unfortunately sometimes their
fatwas means that they are either (a) alienating or (b) engaging in the risk of alienating Muslims who are not at that same level as the higher call to submission that they're asking us to make for the sake of Allah. Please understand I'm not saying that you should not be playing video games; rather, I'm saying that perhaps you might later recognize why the
fatwa is less about what you shouldn't do and more about what you have in yourself to be were you to fulfill your potential in that direction.
By the way, I do celebrate birthdays and do not see anything wrong with celebrating wedding anniversaries; I follow the understanding and
fatwa that these occasions are permissible to celebrate given no subversion of rules of Allah. I am not an avid watcher of movies, and I especially dislike the movies that are made today with nudity and strong language. However, I have not given up entirely watching movies as I dislike for myself to engage in any type of stringent mode of behavior that might breed an insidious hypocrisy. It is relayed that Prophet Isa
(Jesus) :as:
(peace be upon him) once said, "If the bowstring is always taut, the bow will eventually break." I would rather be flexible than break or be breakable. Islam is meant to be easy and we should strive to make it easy on ourselves and others inasmuch as possible while acknowledging our weaknesses; that said, we should keep striving to do all that we within our capacity to escape our weaknesses without at any point overburdening ourselves or others so that we either burn out or turn to
kufr (disbelief). Remember the story of the tortoise and the hare: slow and steady wins the race. (And if we're contemplative, we'll realize that this is not even a race but a journey to our Lord. Bumps and humps here and there are much preferable to entirely turning away or giving up, because in the end we still can never escape judgment of the Judge when called upon for our individual judging on Judgment Day.)
Thank you SO much for the response brother. Great advice and I agree to it in general, but when u look at it in reality … it is much more difficult than it sounds. Even muslim countries don’t encourage muslims to stay in them. A lot of these countries favor western nationalities and give them extra benefits in work when compared to a regular arab or Asian people. Add to that the harsh and strict laws in some of these countries that make people turn away from islam. We’ve all seen the reaction of the masses to a man in a viral video who was talking to a woman behind a restaurant in SA. He got arrested for simply talking to a woman. (dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5093115/Saudi-police-arrest-man-SPEAKING-woman-break.html). May Allah guide us to what is best for us in this world and the hereafter
I, like many other people, are not in a financial or even a cultural position to make
hijrah to Muslim lands. I had in the past thought that I would always be free to practice my religion as I see fit in the U.S. However, over time, I realize that there's a more pronounced discomfort that I feel living here, and I think it is because I don't think the culture reflects a space and openness for acceptance of my unique identity. Rather, I'm becoming more and more aware that I'm an "outsider" and will always be, because I am Muslim
Alhamdhullilah (
thanks, gratitude and credit to Allah) and plan to continue being so.
If I were given an opportunity in time to move to a Muslim land wherein I could practice my religion freely and listen to
adhaan and had pragmatic plans in place for supporting myself financially and a good living situation, I'd do it in a heartbeat. The truth is that Islam is free from all blame and aspersions that people cast on it, but Muslims are not free from following non-Muslims in their sins as the culture in non-Muslim countries is generally inundated with freedoms that are designed to oppress the soul and free the inner beast that seeks to roam free from all restraint without thought to what freedom
is; and some of the sins that we're now seeing becoming more pervasive in Muslim communities is due to not being able to teach Muslims that freedom can never come at the cost of not fulfilling responsibilities to others and ourselves (especially as believers) and there is no freedom without consequence. For example, a person is free to drive a car if he has a license and is an adult (that is, 18 years of age) in the U.S. But the person is not free from the responsibility of acquiring car insurance to see that if there's an accident, coverage exists for both parties. And the person is not free from the possibility of losing a limb should he get into a bad accident on the highway when he's speeding. The culture here, however, uses the word freedom for sloganeering without accompanying understanding of attached responsibilities and consequences. Therefore, hollow chants of "freedom" enslave the unthinking mind to the chains of materialism and hedonism. What is the use of your body being free
if shaitaan instead shackles you to himself and especially so in the hereafter? The truth is that freedom lays only in submission to Allah; for otherwise you'll be submitting to things other than Allah, which is
never a recipe for peace or contentment. Otherwise, the happiest and most contented creature on earth would be
shaitaan, because he's willfully disobedient to Allah and has no plans of submission; instead,
shaitaan, despite having freely chosen disobedience, is tirelessly running after us because he's submitted to the act of making us to disobey instead. In perhaps what can only be described as supreme irony,
shaitaan is defeated not by us but by his own choices.
Sarcasm … Ok I will take it. As such, I will reply in a similar way …
So lets all not question any of the information we are given and follow blindly that which the scholars say, even if its against our very nature. Lets all ignore the fact that the west is 100 times more advanced than us and pretend that we are still better than them. Let’s pretend that this extreme segregation between the sexes isn’t turning the youth into homosexuals and rapists. Let’s pretend that the majority of the sexual assaults and rape cases in Europe isn’t done by muslim immigrants who have been their suppressing urges for years and turning them into perverted creatures with no morals.
Brother, please understand … I am looking for moderation in our religion. Im not calling for liberation, just being in the middle. This (what the scholars are doing to people and the youth specifically) isn’t moderation
Please don't be duped by how "advanced" you find the West. The West is only technologically and scientifically advanced. But that is not the measure of success, remember. What use is technology or science if all you have emerging out of it are people who reject either wholesale belief in
Allah (God) or live their lives on the principle of YOLO because they believe themselves already forgiven in the hereafter, as if God has guaranteed any human being Paradise without following through on the intention and action that epitomizes that belief. The West comprises of a declining culture that no longer seems to (a) know itself or (b) be able to reflect on its failings or (c) contemplate self-correction.
Believe it or not, the West had the same morals and values that Muslims hold in regards to aspects of opposite gender interaction about a 150-200 years ago; non-Muslims used to engage in courtship rituals under the proper supervision of chaperones which are not unlike meeting arrangements contemplated in Muslim families. Then, women and men used to value families and neighbors; however, as time moved forward, the familiarity between human beings, especially as once extant in families and neighbors, eroded as an observance. And what you see today is born from the decline of a culture that once valued the same values that Muslims even today value.
Restraint is not harmful and does not turn people into rapists and homosexuals; rather, the culture of expecting youth to attain higher and higher educating without giving them a permissible outlet for their sexual desires is turning people (of all self-identified sexual orientation) into frustrated human beings who are turning to pornography or premarital relationships and sex. In the meantime, the pervasiveness of everyday-type "soft pornography" like perfume ads or beer ads are showcasing gorgeous women in basic states of undress and desirability to sell products, desensitizing men further to women's spiritual role as respected daughters, sisters, mothers, and wives, and heavenly companions of men. The type of illicit promotions seen in the ad world today would never have been contemplated even in Western culture a few hundred years ago, because such bombardment of illicit images would have been considered immoral and even illegal.
Today, from what I understand though, the Muslim world is one of the front-runners in terms of downloading pornography, mainly an invention of depravity which are bringing top dollars to the handful of Western elite in the adult entertainment industry who are creators and exporters of such scandalous and salacious material; and on top of that, many men in Muslim countries have never been taught how to properly address or respect women when guests in a foreign land or even to know to lower their gaze specific to women who do not seem to be reflecting a modest dressing style or demeanor. So, therefore, these "men", (a) free to roam as singles in countries so different from their own and (b) freed from all cultural restraint so ingrained in their country of origin and also (c)
not religious or practicing, feel themselves entitled to prey on women who they don't know and contemplate from an eye that objectifies the opposite gender due to desensitization from pornography. By the way, unarguably, "men" who prey on women are beastly and immoral and evil; and I'm not trying to justify such perverted behavior. I use "men" in quotation marks because they're quite clearly ignorant of what it means to be truly men, because they prove themselves little more than boorishly oversexed trolls, in the abject state of looking at the world through boyishly selfish voyeuristic fantasies. In other words, I'm trying to tell you very clearly and simply that to blame Islam at the root of such perversions is to miss the truth that Islam never endorsed such behavior but rather strongly condemned such. Of course, it goes without saying that just because a country is populated with Muslims does not mean that Islam is the backbone of it; the sad truth is that the wider culture in Muslim-majority countries is often steeped in
jahilliyah (ignorance) because most Muslim-majority countries are rather un-Islamic once you delve beyond a superficial level to see that there are (a) mosques but without the widespread willingness of the people to congregate and fill the prayer halls and (b) scholars indubitably arrogant on account of their amassed knowledge and adding titles to their names, (c) speakers on the
deen who speak without imparting wisdom on advanced topics at level of the common folk and c) imams, mostly inaccessible to the common public, who are also incidentally no longer teaching people about
tazkiyaah known as purification (of the soul) or
adab known as Islamic manners.
Islam is already a religion of moderation; if we move the needle more towards other than that which is already the baseline thread within Islam, then we'll risk moving towards a direction that is not moderation but laxity which is neither Islamic nor desirable in terms of outcome (under the guise of moderation).
Sincere Regards & Best Wishes,
:wa: (And peace be upon you)