Something about faith is, you either have it or you don't. Those who don't have it won't believe no matter how much they want to; and those who have it cannot disbelieve no matter how difficult it is for them to comprehend the difficulties or confusions they go through. [...]Allah sends astray [thereby] whom He wills and guides whom He wills[...] (14:4)
The faith part, true. The Quran quote part, I don't believe in something I don't subscribe to in the first place.
This is contradictory considering you considered yourself a Muslim at one time, and considering that there are people who do stray from the religion.
With all due respect, people who stray from the religion, they don't fully submitted themselves to Allah at the moment, don't they. Basing on my experience, I didn't 'disagree' with Allah when I was doing sins but rather I decided not to 'think about anything' when I was doing it to eliminate the guilt in my chest, and just having fun doing sins without thinking clearly. I meant,
you are not supposed to doubt Allah, because using your own intellect is less favorable when it comes to islamic rulings, the intellect of human is only used to
confirm the islamic teachings, for making fatwas, other things/practices unstated in islamic sources, and what not.
However, to say that people believe in God or religion simply because it is "comforting" is not true. As you know, people can live very comfortable lives without religion.
Rather, what I meant about "comforting" was the idea of living eternally in heaven after death, for the righteous at least. I
completely do find the appeal. I
very much want heaven to exist. However how much life is throwing so much difficulty, suffering and pain to me, the 'comfort' I meant in the religion is that this is all temporary and is just tests after tests to test my imaan. If I successfully went through it then the next life will be eternally all garden and pleasures, a world without pain. Who wouldn't find comfort in this? To know that my memories will be forever preserved, to live eternally with my loved ones, yes, who wouldn't?
All of us be it believer or unbeliever go through a lot of hardships but we also do have a very comfortable stable life, at least most of us do. In islam, like you said, everything is a test. A secure life is a test, wealth is a test, good grades is a test, good children is a test, everything is. It's not fair to say only the bad things are the tests. And for us non-believers, things are just the way it is , we just work to achieve our goals while minimizing conflicts as much as possible and that's it. There are so many ways to look at this. And also the comfort in this for those who doesn't believe he is 'good enough of a muslim', faith alone is sufficient as Allah said grab anyone from the hell whom has part of an atom weight of iman. Surely even you are unsure if you're going to hell or heaven, but finds solace that you've tried your best and leaving it to Allah.
if you have faith, you will have it despite anything and everything you go through because you have an untouchable faith, not because of how you "feel" or what you were equipped with in life. In fact, if anything, people LEAVE their religion because they are seeking comfort
Couldn't agree more with the faith part. This is what I admire about religious people is that they have this 'faith', correct me if I'm wrong, I think it's more about having 'taqwa' . A friend of mine once explained this to me about taqwa. If a path full of sharp-pointed broken glasses is in front of you and you need to get to the other side, what will you do? You will go through that path very carefully and slowly trying to avoid scarring yourself at all even if it takes you so much time and effort. Now imagine having faith and taqwa while in the hindu religion, mann you COULD NOT convince them anything. Often times I would talk to some hindu acquaintances and they go "I have my strong hindu faith and you have yours, you could not convince me anything, for me my religion, for you your religion (while quoting quran), pls stay away from our affairs and in turn we will respect islam".
Some people do leave religion just because they don't want to believe in god, some people do leave because they found comfort outside of islam.. Lets be real here, the true comfort is knowing you HAVE A CHANCE to get into the paradise however much of a bad person you are as long as you have faith. You are right, I do find comfort leaving Islam because all of a sudden the baggage attached to me suddenly falls off and it felt good. But as a human being I can confirm that the ultimate comfort/satisfaction is living in a world without pain but only eternal pleasures and happiness. But I ask myself, does that make heaven immediately real? No, but then we have to look at other aspects.
Because let's be honest here, it's much easier to say "this religion can't be true because it doesn't correlate with who I am/what my family believes/how I was born/my society/etc." than to say "this religion is true despite of who I am."
Also, you're right that as Muslims we'll be biased towards the faith and path we have chosen for ourselves. However, please do give thought to examining your own biases on what you think religion is/should be and why and what you believe what you do at the moment; because trust that self-reflection and introspection will specifically better move you towards the direction of truth if you're searching for truth and improve the condition of your heart than generally extrospection.
Right now, I
don't know if god, heaven, or hell, exist or don't exist. I'm open to all sorts of possibilities. I would say, 'the
truth is right here, right now, in front of me despite what all religions says but is invisible'. So I wouldn't know.
"The truth is true despite what religions say" but muslims already equate islam with the 'truth' so I won't have a proper argument in a muslim forum where the principle here is "this
islamic religion is true despite of who I am", because what if the same principle is applied in other religion? It will be biased.
I'm not saying because of this Islam will be inherently wrong, but rather solely for the sake of avoiding bias. And okay I'll be honest, it's much easier to say that, but in my case, I don't find this islamic religion to be true because
I personally think some of its teachings are
unfair and wrong to the very nature of humanity itself,and a
just God wouldn't do something like that, just like you would find hinduism is wrong thus saying their god doesn't exist. I'm not saying ALL of its teachings are wrong, many of it are good and true but if something wrong exists in it, this belief couldn't be true. It's plain and simple logic, I couldn't get any more neutral than this.
I'd like to think this is all the 'basic' before anyone is considering to get deeper into a particular religion, or just discussing any matter relating to that religion at all. I appreciate all the replies, people here gave me the ideas and insights on the many possibilities of ways to look at this mainly from the islamic perspective but I think the only way I can accept them is ultimately going back to this religion, then only I can subscribe to its views.
Therefore, I do not think you should take them as examples of what you can or cannot think about religion.
I'm sorry , I shouldn't have take them as examples. Indeed we are unique as individuals as our journey are different and very little I know about them.
Moreover, I think you should pray as sincerely as you can the typical atheist/agnostic prayer, which goes something like, "O God, if there is a god, if you're there, guide me to your Guidance." Of course, you can change the prayer to suit your spiritual needs or feelings of whatever at the moment, but I think this prayer is a good prayer to pray for whoever is a doubter because it is leaving the responsibility of being given the guidance to the Guide.
Thank you for this suggestion. Believe it or not, I've been doing this for the past couple months. I don't actively disbelief in god so
if there is a god, why not pray in general, maybe my prayer could be answered if he does exist.
Greetings Kazu,
It seems that at an early age rather than learn correct knowledge of Islam in order to solidify your imaan and clarify your misconceptions, you referred instead to atheist and anti-Islamic perspectives, sources, websites and mainstream media.
Greetings, I'm sorry I don't believe I'm doing that. Rather, at such an early age I
only learn knowledge about Islam until I'm a bit older and started to come across the opposite types of medias, I realized I've been very biased all along the same way these medias are biased. So I believe I started to adopt the more neutral side to it.
With regards to why you think God allows "evil" things to happen then firstly everything only happens by the will. God allows people to live the way they want to live and make the choices they want to make in life. Whether that is evil or good. Is that not what freewill is? On top of that we in our limited capacity, do not understand why things happen just as science can try to explain how some things happen but never why. Similarly we do not understand the wisdom of God in why certain things happen but know that we are responsible for our actions and whatever hardships and trials we go through in this short and temporary life then it is nothing compared to the ever lasting joy and bliss of Paradise. If you compare then the evil inflicted upon people then this is nothing compared to the punishment they will recieve for their crimes.
My first post was longg way back, I asked why God allows evil to happen while giving the impression I believed in god (at least somewhere in my heart) while hating him for letting evil things happen so that's just pure bs. I didn't realized I was giving this impression when I asked the question so I should have gone with a better way of saying it.
However this is not what Atheists believe. To believe in life after death is to believe in justice for those who were wronged. It is only God who will ensure those who were wronged are given true and proper justice. Not an atom of injustice will there be in the court of Allah. Whereas this world is full of injustice and corrupt people who do not allow proper justice for those who are wronged.
So do you think that the many millions of people who have died whilst wronged on this Earth will get no justice after they died?
That is a very good explanation and I would definitely subscribe to that IF ONLY I subscribe to this religion in the first place. I wouldn't subscribe to this religion just by reading your explanation because it happens to be biased as well and apparently I don't have enough reason to believe it.
Essentially Atheists do not believe that there is any difference between the worst and best of mankind because they will both just "disappear" after death, hence there will be no justice for anyone. Hence atheism believes in complete injustice. What a miserable, purposeless way to live life.
When I was muslim I once thought that a god
must exist because if he doesn't, then ultimate justice is impossible. Ultimate justice
must prevail because if it doesn't, then the world will be so messed up and to a point it's impossible the world could even exist without ultimate justice. Now come to think of it, what if the world is
meant to not have ultimate justice? What if the world is
meant to be miserable and messed up? On what basis can I relate the existence of both ultimate justice and god thus confirm it? Because of one of the 99 names of Allah? Well, that is
your version of god. God could very well be just, in this case, Allah, and could also be unjust, if he
chose to. Allah could
choose to just give everyone a very very clear evidence of his existence so only the ones refuses to accept will go to hell because he clearly rejects the
absolute truth presented right in front of him, but now Allah
chose not to because he is giving us this gift of free will and mind.
So to say that we believe in complete injustice, no, justice is what we make ourselves, we try to be just to as much people as possible. Common sense dictates we should treat others just like how we like to be treated. But in the context of
what we want, in truth we want complete justice to prevail, and very much regret that this could not happen. Does wanting to believe in complete justice immediately makes it real? No
Though this is not a good argument as we have different definitions of what justice is.
It is most unfortunate that you have allowed your heart and soul to be corrupted in such a way and I can feel that your heart and soul is crying out for help. For it yearns for Allah again.
I'm sorry but what are you talking about?
I'm not an atheist.. everyone seems to stereotype me with a typical modern day atheist, anti-islamist.
These Atheists and anti-Islamists will always try to come up with all sorts of reasons not to believe in religion and God and this is because they also want everyone else not to believe like they don't.
So are you not always trying to come up with all sorts of reasons to believe in god and ignoring absolutely everything else? and telling me not to befriend non muslim except what is necessary? telling me what to do and what not to do? what if they do the same thing to you to strengthen their own faith, even though in your thinking they are the wrong ones.
ay Allah guide you and all those who have deficiencies and doubts in their hearts. Ameen
Ameen.