Re: Straight Answers to the Controversial Questions about Islam
:bism: (In the Name of God, the Most Beneficent, the Most Merciful)
I take your point about the invisibility of the deity to whom I'm directing but my two responses to this are the following:
1. In the aftermath of Virigina shootings in the U.S., one of the things that universities started implementing is sending out emails to students' and faculty's and staff's accounts if there was any specific concerning incident. So, for the purposes of the discussion, let's revise the scene and then put in an email that comes to you from an unknown man without an identifying name that tells you there is a security situation versus an email that comes to you from campus security telling you there is a security situation. My entire point is that you'd have assumable have differing reaction in the two different scenarios because you are aware of the
who and
why. In the case of Islam, the
One God is not asking you to believe blindly
. This is a misapprehension you seem to have developed, and I don't know if it is because you have not come across this
ayat or verse from the Quran:
كِتَابٌ أَنْزَلْنَاهُ إِلَيْكَ مُبَارَكٌ لِيَدَّبَّرُوا آيَاتِهِ وَلِيَتَذَكَّرَ أُولُو الْأَلْبَابِ
“It is a Book We have sent down to you, full of blessing, so let people of intelligence ponder (liyaddabbaru) its Signs and take heed” (Quran 38:29).
Obedience (not though blind obedience) is considerable the highest and most desirable state of being
AFTER you have
verified (1) the existence of this One God and (2) have given thought and time to contemplating the Revelation which is considered the highest Sign though you may ask for your own signs or whatever you personally require to guide you to make this decision on the existence of the One God, and (3) then submit to the authority of the One God with certitude.
Why? Because faith develops on the basis or foundation of knowledge. There is a reason that the first command given to Prophet Muhammad :saws:
(peace and blessings be upon him) was "Iqra." Iqra means in Arabic to "recite," "read," or "rehearse," underscoring and memorializing the importance of knowledge. As you know, the
Sunnah (prophetic foosteps) and
ahadith (prophetic sayings or traditions) inform our understanding and application of Quran.
And Prophet :saws:
(peace and blessings be upon him) said, “People are either possessors of knowledge or seekers of knowledge, and only those two groups are of any use to humanity.”
The Quran mentions the word “knowledge” in various forms 854 times. Let's compare.
Do you know how many times the verb "believe" is used in the Quran? 537.
Do you know how many times the verb "follow" is used in the Quran? 136.
Also, there are only 25 times in the Quran when God asks us to "obey" the messenger.
Do you know what the most frequently occurring injunction is in the Quran? Some variation of "ponder", "reflect," "learn," "teach," "think," "infer," and "imagine."
Do you know what is the most frequent invitation in the Quran? Some variation of "travel in the earth" and "observe" and "see."
Prophet :saws:
(peace and blessings be upon him) said, “God makes the way to Paradise easy for him who treads the path in search of knowledge.”
Prophet :saws:
(peace and blessings be upon him) said, “He who goes forth in search of knowledge is considered as struggling in the Cause of God until he returns.”
Prophet :saws:
(peace and blessings be upon him) has said, “Acquire knowledge and impart it to the people.”
Quran (20:14) also includes a prayer that a human being should make, "My Lord! Enrich me with knowledge."
So, hopefully, you now realize that Quran does
not blindly asks us to obey.
That said, what I was taught by an Islamic scholar is that we cannot only balance on the level of mind this knowledge of which we're speaking because the belief in the One God requires both our minds and hearts to work together in synchrony.
Iman (faith) is said to either exist or not exist in the
qalb (heart),
not the mind, because
qalb is ultimately that which rejects or accepts ultimately the unseen.
2. I am sure you know that 7 + 1 = 8. Now, what if I repetitively give you this mathematical sum to solve 7 + 1 = ? You will keep answering 8 because you have 100% certainty or certitude that 7 + 1 = 8.
How though did you get this certitude? To get this certitude, you had to first obtain knowledge of basic count. Then you were given the foundation of arithmetic that probably started with 1 + 1 = 2. After obtaining this knowledge, you exercised your mind and were able to see the interpreted probabilistic assignment. This interpreted probabilistic assignment is really "belief" which turned to certitude as you increased in both knowledge and belief with further advancement in mathematics so that you probably no longer even think about answering the sum with the number 8.
In this case, certitude did involve obedience. Can you guess obedience of what? Obedience to the immutable law of mathematics where an increase in one number will give you the next number.
So, certitude and obedience go hand in hand together, because certitude is informed by both belief and knowledge.
I would like to distinguish certitude from belief, because belief may not involve certitude or knowledge, but certitude involves both knowledge and belief.
Examples of certitude:
1. Jesus (peace be upon him) says in Matthew 11:22-24, "Have faith in God! If you have faith in God and don’t doubt, you can tell this mountain to get up and jump into the sea, and it will. Everything you ask for in prayer will be yours, if you only have faith."
2. Similarly, student Habib Al-Ajami came to find that his beloved teacher Hasan Al-Basri awaiting the arrival of a boat, and he admonished his teacher and said to have faith and said the words "Bismillah Ir-Rehman Ir-Raheem" ("In the Name of God, the Most Beneficent, the Most Merciful") and walked on the water to the other side leading Hasan Al-Basri to faint at witnessing this incident.
In both these cases, when "faith" is mentioned here, it is really certitude that is being discussed.
That said, I recognize the truth in Pygoscelis's proposition when he'd said that nobody can make themselves believe what they do not believe. I know this from my days as an atheist because I could not turn myself into a theist just by waking up one day because life doesn't work that way, and I admit that usually theists have a hard time accepting that proposition because to them belief is as obvious as the nose on one's face and as natural as breathing.
That said, please know Islam recognizes that people will need to search and engage to understand. This early quest for knowledge pushed Muslims to excel once in different fields and the Muslim world witnessed the Islamic Golden Age. The importance of reason cannot be underestimated. That said, I do believe that Muslims today are less willing to engage or be engaged on reasoning because dogma has replaced desire for investment in knowledge or active furtherance of knowledge (
read both religious and worldly knowledge).
I well understand the dangers of blind obedience, but I also think Islam doesn't ask for blind obedience because obedience must be informed if the matter is of
ihsan (excellence) with either combination of or progressive movement in knowledge, belief, and certitude.
Greetings, Search,
Think about how different the two situations are. Here we have a real security guard who can be seen and engaged with, who is telling us to take a sensible precaution.
Compare that with a deity who nobody has ever seen, and who has no evidence whatsoever to suggest that he exists, who is telling us to do all kinds of things, many of which have no justification outside of belief. We are told not to think, but to obey this invisible creature. Obviously, you have come to the view that it is a good idea to obey, and in your case I am sure that has had largely benign consequences. But I'm sure I don't need to remind you of the enormous dangers that this kind of blind obedience can lead to.
Peace
eace:
