tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-52391421065181231952024-02-08T09:19:38.801-08:00Uncover Your HeartDialogue With An Atheist - Dr. Moustafa MahmoudRamezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02530868481200967934noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5239142106518123195.post-32778114619231180812011-03-11T08:50:00.000-08:002011-03-11T08:50:08.148-08:005 - Paradise and Hell<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:View>Normal</w:View> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:TrackMoves/> <w:TrackFormatting/> <w:PunctuationKerning/> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:DoNotPromoteQF/> <w:LidThemeOther>EN-US</w:LidThemeOther> <w:LidThemeAsian>X-NONE</w:LidThemeAsian> <w:LidThemeComplexScript>AR-SA</w:LidThemeComplexScript> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:SnapToGridInCell/> <w:WrapTextWithPunct/> <w:UseAsianBreakRules/> <w:DontGrowAutofit/> <w:SplitPgBreakAndParaMark/> <w:DontVertAlignCellWithSp/> <w:DontBreakConstrainedForcedTables/> <w:DontVertAlignInTxbx/> <w:Word11KerningPairs/> <w:CachedColBalance/> </w:Compatibility> <m:mathPr> <m:mathFont m:val="Cambria Math"/> <m:brkBin m:val="before"/> <m:brkBinSub m:val="--"/> <m:smallFrac m:val="off"/> <m:dispDef/> <m:lMargin m:val="0"/> <m:rMargin m:val="0"/> <m:defJc m:val="centerGroup"/> <m:wrapIndent m:val="1440"/> <m:intLim m:val="subSup"/> <m:naryLim m:val="undOvr"/> </m:mathPr></w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" DefUnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">My learned friend was perfectly sure of himself as he delivered his bombshell in slowly-pronounced but strongly-stressed words:</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoListParagraph" style="direction: ltr; margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt 36pt; text-align: left; text-indent: -18pt; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span>-<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><span dir="LTR"></span><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">How is that God, the compassionate and Merciful, punishes us for a transgression committed in a moment of limited time with eternal and infinite torment- 'In Hell they dwell forever'? Who are we and what is our worth in comparison to God's greatness to deserve such vengeance? Man is only an atom or a speck of dust in the universe and relative to God's Majesty he is infinitely more insignificant than that-he is, in fact, nothing in the full meaning of this word.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: justify; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">Our learned friend conceptions are in obvious need of correction.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: justify; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">We are not like atoms or specks of dust in the universe. Our standing in the sight of God is not insignificant but considerable. Didn't he breathe in us of his spirit? Didn't he command the angels to bow for us? Didn't he promise us the inheritance of the earth and the heavens? Didn't he say of us?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: justify; unicode-bidi: embed;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; margin-left: 36pt; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span> </span><b>"We have bestowed blessings on Adam's children</b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; margin-left: 36pt; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><b><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span> </span>And carried them over land and sea. We have provided</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; margin-left: 36pt; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><b><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span> </span>Them with good things and exalted them above many of</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; margin-left: 36pt; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><b><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span> </span>Our creatures."<span> </span>Al-Esra'a, 70</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; margin-left: 36pt; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><b><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span> </span></span></b><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">We have, then, something of God's spirit in us. Nor are we atoms or specks of dust in relation to the universe. If we consider our bodies only we may well be like grains in the wide, spacious world. But don’t we contain this universe in and comprehend it with our minds realizing its laws and defining the orbits of its planets and starts? The astronauts who landed on the moon ascertained that all our calculations and designs have been true and accurate. Doesn't this indicate that in so far as our spirit in concerned we are larger than the universe and that we 'contain' it? The Arab poet was right when he spoke of man in the well-known verse:</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; text-indent: 36pt; unicode-bidi: embed;"><b><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">You deem yourself a tiny body</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><b><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span> </span>While the great world is within you contained</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">Man as the Sufis say, is the comprehensive book while the entire universe is but some of its pages.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">Man, then, is of great standing and importance. He comes from the spirit of God. His deeds necessitate accountability. As for the finite sin in time for which God visits us with infinite</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">Torment in eternity, this is simply another fallacy of my friend's-the self –confident Ph-D!</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">God speaks about those immortalized in Hell-fire who begs to be returned to earthly life so as to change their deeds to the better:</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span> </span><b>"But if they were sent back, they would return to that which they </b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><b><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span> </span>Have been forbidden. They are liars all"<span> </span>Al-An'am ,28</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">Their guilt, according to this verse, is not confined to one moment of time. It is, in fact, a permanent feature of their makeup that repeats itself at anytime. Indeed, if they were returned to a new life they will commit the same transgressions all over again; therefore, they lie in their promise of improvement. Their sinning is an innate and enduring attribute of their psyche and not a momentary slip in the context of some exceptional life circumstance.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span> </span><b>In another Quranic verse, God describes those inveterate sinners:</b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><b><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span> </span>"On the day when God restores them all to life, they will swear</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><b><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span> </span>To him as they now swear to you, thinking that they have some</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; text-indent: 36pt; unicode-bidi: embed;"><b><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">Standing. Surely they are liars all." <span> </span>Al-Mogadala, 18</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">This is a flagrant from of perversity and impudence which motivated them to lie even to God and to swear falsely before him on that Day of the Great stand when veils are lifted and covers are removed; indeed, this is most audacious and overbearing.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">We are definitely not dealing with a transgression limited to a point in time but one that continues through time and after time itself has ended. We are really confronting a psyche that carries within itself its eternal evil. Hence, everlasting torment is only equitable for such souls. The Quran candidly puts it; 'but (they) shall never come out of Hell. (Al-Baqara, 167). Ibn 'Arabi says that mercy for those souls lies in their habituation to Hell-fire which will become their appropriate abode through infinite ions.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span> </span>There is undoubtedly an affinity of element between certain transgressing souls and fire; some of these souls are in reality blazes of envy, grudging, voluptuousness, jealously, and bitterness; they are flames of wrath, resentment, rebellion, and other animal passions that flare and rage as a veritable fire. Such souls can never live at peace or endure just one hour without causing conflict and setting fire to everything that surrounds them; <span> </span>for fire is their element and natural habitat. It is a just judgment that Hell be their final abiding place</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">It will be like placing a thing in its rightful element. If they were admitted to paradise they would not be able to enjoy it. Didn't they disdain peace while on earth?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span> </span>We ought to be broad-minded in our conception of either Hell or Paradise.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"> Hell-fire In the other world is not a 'grill' and what goes on there is not burning in its earthly sense. God says that the damned in Hell-fire speak with and curse each other. Hell has in its midst a tree with 'fruit': the Zaqoum tree which grows from the bottom of Gehena. In Hell there is also scorching water for the tormented to drink of. Such place where a certain kind of tree and of water exist and where the damned talk must be another sort of fire than the one we know:</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span> </span><b>"As it enters every nation will curse the one that went before it,</b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><b><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span> </span>And when all are gathered there, the last of them will say of the</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><b><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span> </span>First: 'There, Lord, are the men who led us astray. Let their punishment</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><b><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span> </span>To be doubled in Hell-fire"</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><b><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span> </span>Al-A'araf, 37-8</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; text-indent: 36pt; unicode-bidi: embed;"><b><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">The tormented talk while in Hell-fire; a fire 'whose fuel is men and stones'</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><b><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span> </span>Al-baqara. 24</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">This fire, then, is something that belongs to the unseen (<b>Gaib</b>); all references to it can be taken as symbolic. It must not, however, be understood that we deny physical torment</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">Advocating, instead, a 'psychic' punishment. Physical torment is so clearly indicated that no one dare contest or doubt it. We certainly believe in its occurrence. What we suggest is only that the nature and particulars of such torment as well as the qualities and features of the Hell-fire mentioned belong to the hidden<b> Gaib</b> or unseen. As it seems from Quranic references, it is a fire unlike that we know in our world just as the bodies exposed to it will be different from the frail, clayey bodies we now have.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span> </span>The same view can apply to paradise. It is not a market display of vegetables, dates, pomegranates, and grapes. These Quranic descriptions of it are mere symbols, approximations, or illustrations that bring its truth within the conceptual compass of human minds:</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span> </span><b>"This is a similitude of Paradise which the righteous have been</b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><b><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span> </span>Promised. There shall <span> </span>flow in it rivers of unpolluted waters, and rivers</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><b><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span> </span>Of milk for ever fresh."<span> </span>Muhammad, 15</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">in my understanding of the first sentence of this verse God is only giving our minds an approximation of heaven; but the true details of heavenly bliss remain in the unseen:</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span> </span><b>"No mortal knows what bliss is in store for them as a reward for their labors."</b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><b><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span> </span>Al-Sagda, 17</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><b><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span> </span>"A paradise as vast as heaven and earth."<span> </span>Al-Imran, 133</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">Paradise cannot be a mere garden. Its fruits are abundant, 'unforbidden, never-ending' (Al-waqe'a, 32); they are certainly unlike our own earthly fruits which can be forbidden and which cease from season to season. The wine of Paradise 'will neither pain their heads nor take away their reason', it is, undoubtedly, very much different from the wine known to us which leaves a hangover and unsettles the mind. The Quran goes on to say that God 'shall take away all hatred' from the souls of the blessed in Paradise (Al-A'araf, 43). Here again we confront an unknown means of purifying hearts.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span> </span>Paradise, then, is just like Hell: a matter belonging to the Unseen. This view does not, nevertheless, imply any denial of physical bliss. We believe that paradise contains both physical and spiritual bliss just as Hell is physical and spiritual torment at one and the same time. What we would rather emphasize is that the details and nature of such bliss or torment are unknown to us that paradise is not just a fruit and vegetable market nor is Hell an oven for banking meat.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span> </span>Torments in the hereafter are not a form of tyranny God exercises over his creatures but a kind of purification, enlightenment, correction, and mercy:</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span> </span><b>"And why should God punish you if you render thanks</b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><b><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span> </span>To him and truly believe in him?"<span> </span>Al Nessa'a, 147</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">Men were not all predestined for torment when they were created. God does not punish the believer who has knowledge of him; He only visits his torment on the obdurate disbeliever with whom all means of guidance and acquainting with the faith and all explanations of it have failed:</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span> </span><b>"But we will inflict on them the lighter punishment of </b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><b><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span> </span>This world before the supreme punishment of the world</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><b><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span> </span>To come, so that they may return to the right path."</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><b><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span> </span>Al-Sajda, 21</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">It is God's law that these men should taste the minor punishments of this world to be roused from their torpor and lightened out of their deafness and slumber 'so that they may return to the right path'.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">If all such approaches fail, with the disbeliever persisting in his attitude, there remains only one option opens: to inflict the promised torments on him so that he may come to know the truth. Acquaintance with the truth is the essence of mercy. Should God neglect those obstinate disbelievers in their blindness and ignorance, he would be unjust-far removed is he from this. To be led to Hell-fire is a kind of care for such benighted souls. All God's actions are merciful. He shows the mercy of correction and of enlightenment to the benighted in Hell; and he is merciful with his generosity and blessings to the knowing in paradise:</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span> </span><b>"I will visit my scourge upon whom I please: yet my mercy</b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><b><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span> </span>Encompasses all things".<span> </span>Al-A'araf, 156</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">God encompassed everything with his mercy even those under punishment</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">Let us, in our turn, ask our learned friend: would God, in your opinion, be more just if He treated both sinners and sinned against, murderers and murdered in the same manner throwing up a tea-party for all on the Last Day? Is justice, in our friend's view, synonymous to equaling black with white? To those that find it impossible for God to inflict punishment we may say: Doesn't He actually inflict suffering on us in this world? Aren't old age, sickness, cancer … etc. basic forms of torment? Who created the microbe? Aren't these all warnings that we are dealing with a God who can torment?</span></div></div>Ramezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02530868481200967934noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5239142106518123195.post-38456934201884007002011-03-10T07:02:00.000-08:002011-03-10T07:36:08.610-08:004 - What about those unreached by the Quran?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: "Andalus","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">My learned friend started to scratch the top of his head. He was, evidently, thinking hard to find a pitfall what would finish me off this time. He began to speak slowly and deliberately:</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: "Andalus","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">Very well, what can you tell me about the fate of a person whom the Quran or, for that matter, any other revelation or prophet did not reach? What fault can you lay at him? What in your creed will be his fate on the Day of Judgment? I have in mind, for example, an Eskimo in far away Polar Regions or a Negro deep in the jungle. What will befall such a person at the hands of your God on Doomsday?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: "Andalus","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"> - I began my answer to him at once:</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: "Andalus","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">Let me; first of all, correct your view of the issue involved here. You have based your questions on a false premise. God informed us in the Quran that he deprived no one of his mercy, revelation, words, or signs:</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: "Andalus","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"> <b>"For there is no nation that has not been warned by a messenger."</b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><b><span style="font-family: "Andalus","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"> Fater, 24</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><b><span style="font-family: "Andalus","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"> "We raised a messenger in every nation."</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><b><span style="font-family: "Andalus","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"> The Bee, 36</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: "Andalus","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">The prophets mentioned in the Quran are not all whom God sent. There are thousands of others about whom we know nothing. Concerning those messengers, God says to his prophet Muhammed:</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: "Andalus","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"> <b>"Of some you have already heard, of others we have told you nothing."</b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><b><span style="font-family: "Andalus","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"> Ghafer, 78</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: "Andalus","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">God in fact, sends intimations to everything; to bees, for instance:</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: "Andalus","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: "Andalus","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"> <b>"Your God inspired the bees, saying:</b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><b><span style="font-family: "Andalus","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"> Build your homes in the mountains,</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><b><span style="font-family: "Andalus","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"> In the trees, and in the thatching men</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><b><span style="font-family: "Andalus","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"> Make." Al nahl, 68</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: "Andalus","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">This inspiration may be a revelation, a book delivered by Gabriel, or an illumination caused by God in a person's heart. It can be a state of 'relief' in mental disposition, an insight into truth, or an understanding of things. Again, it can take the shape of reverence towards and fear of God as well as an attitude of piety. Indeed, no one that ever 'tunes up' his heart and sense will be deprived from receiving a favor from God.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: "Andalus","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">Those, however, who block their ears and hearts will not benefit from any number of books, messengers, or miracles.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: "Andalus","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"> God says that he blesses whomever he wills of his creatures with his mercy and that he is accountable before none for his deeds. For a wisdom known only to him, he may send warnings to some but not to others so that these latter may be excused in his sight and the slightest indication of faith accepted from them.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: "Andalus","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"> We can really never know. A mere fearful glance at the sky by that primitive Negro may be more redeeming with God and acceptable to him than our prayers. Nevertheless, a closer consideration of the creeds of such primitive Negroes reveals that they had messengers and revelations like our own. We know, for instance, that the Mau Mau tribe believers in a God it calls 'Mogabe' and describes him as a single being that was neither begotten nor begets and that has no equal or like. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: "Andalus","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">This divinity is invisible and only known by his deeds and effects. He is a creator, a donor of livelihood, a bestower, and compassionate being who heals the sick, relieves the distressed, sends the rain down, and hears prayers. According to tribal lore, lightning is that deity's dagger and thunder the sound of his football.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: "Andalus","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">Isn't this 'Mogabe' almost the same as our own God? From what quarter did those tribesmen receive such conception unless a messenger and a revelation came to them at some period of their history? As usual, this message must, with the passage of time, have fallen victim to superstitions that corrupted its original purity.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: "Andalus","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">We similarly know that Niam Niam people believe in a single divinity they call 'Mbole' who, according to their sayings, moves everything in the jungle, visits the evildoers with thunderbolts, and rewards the virtuous with livelihood, blessing, and security. The shylock tribe, we also know believes in jok, a single deity whom they describe as both invisible and manifest. He abides in the sky and everywhere and he is the creator of everything. The denkas believe in a single God, Mialok, whose name literally means 'he who is in the sky' or the sublime. By what name other than Islam can we call such creeds? What else can they be but messages delivered by prophets who came to those peoples?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: "Andalus","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"> <b>"Believers, Jews, Christians, and sabaeans-whoever believes in God</b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><b><span style="font-family: "Andalus","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"> And the last day and does what is right-shall be rewarded by their lord</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><b><span style="font-family: "Andalus","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"> They have nothing to fear or to regret."</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><b><span style="font-family: "Andalus","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"> Al baqara, 62</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: "Andalus","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">Even the sabaeans (or those among them who worshipped the sun as one of god's signs and believed in the oneness of God, in resurrection, in judgement, and performing good deeds) will have their wages from God.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: "Andalus","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">It is well-known that god's mercy varies in how it is bestowed. There are those born blind and others who enjoy sight. Some have lived in the age of Moses and saw him with their own eyes parting the sea with his staff; others have lived in the time of Jesus and witnessed how he raised the dead. As for us, we only know of these miracles by hearing about them. Receiving a report of something is surely not equal to seeing it with the eye; for to see is other than to hear of a certain event' nevertheless, belief and disbelief do not hinge upon miracles. Obdurate non-believers witness wonders from the prophets sent to guide them but have no more to say of these miracles than describing them as 'fabricated sorcery'.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: "Andalus","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">It is certain that our learned friend, who has just returned from France, has known three books-the Torah, the bible, and the Quran-in his own language. These revelations, it seems, only exacerbated his indulgence in disputation. To evade the entire subject he shifted the discussion to a hypothetical primitive in the jungle unreached by any revelation and went on to ask us the following question:</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: "Andalus","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">"Why does God's mercy vary? Why should God reveal his signs to some while others know of them only through reports?"</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: "Andalus","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">We reply to him by observing that revealing miracles to some may not be a blessing but a temptation. For didn't God warn the companions of Christ who asked for a table to descend among them from heaven?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: "Andalus","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"> <b> </b><b>"God said: 'I am sending one to you. But whoever of you disbelieves</b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><b><span style="font-family: "Andalus","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"> Hereafter shall be punished as no man has ever been punished."</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><b><span style="font-family: "Andalus","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"> Al-Ma'ada, 115</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: "Andalus","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">The reason for this warning is that the coming of miracles is always accompanied by an increase in the severity of punishment for those who disbelieve after seeing them. Happy indeed are those who believe from hearing of revelation without witnessing any miracles. And woe to those who see them but persist in disbelieving.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: "Andalus","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">The Quran you have with you is a witness against you and a warning for you. On the day of Reckoning it will not be a mercy but the contrary. Sparing the Eskimo of the Polar Regions such an irrefutable witness may be a sign of mercy, pardon, and alleviation on the Day of Judgment. A look at the sky from this ignorant Eskimo even once in his life may be sufficient for God to accept him as a sincere believer.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: "Andalus","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"> As for the reason why God shows more mercy to some than to others, it is a dispensation he bases upon his knowledge of hearts:</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: "Andalus","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"> <b>"He knew what was in their hearts.</b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><b><span style="font-family: "Andalus","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"> Therefore he sent down peace upon</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><b><span style="font-family: "Andalus","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"> Them and rewarded them with a speedy victory."</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><b><span style="font-family: "Andalus","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"> Al-Nasr, 18</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: "Andalus","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">God's knowledge of us and of our hearts precedes our creation in the wombs; it goes back to when we were spirits around his throne. Some of us were attracted to his light and were completely absorbed in it, while others directed their attention away from him to enjoy the spectacle of the universe (<b>malakoot</b>) shunning the splendor of their creator.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: "Andalus","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">Ever since that time immemorial the latter have deserved the lower degree and were predestined to perdition. Thus said those who 'see' (<b>Ahl el-Moshahada</b>).</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: "Andalus","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"> What we experience in our short life on earth is not everything that there is. Knowing the wisdom behind every suffering and privation is something that belongs only to the Omniscient. If I were asked why god created the pig in that shape we know, I can only reply that God chose for it a 'piggish' form because its nature or 'self' is swinish. It was right and just that this animal be created in that shape we are familiar with.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: "Andalus","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"> All the dispensations we see around us are just but realizing the all-encompassing wisdom and discovering that hidden justice is a task that is not within our ken. It is for this that the last day was decreed; when the "scales" will be set up and the Omniscient tell us of everything we disputed about.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: "Andalus","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"> And now, my friend, I shall set your heart to rest with the decisive argument in this question. God said in his book that he will punish only those whom he warned beforehand through his messengers:</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: "Andalus","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"> <b> </b><b>"Nor do we punish a nation until we have sent forth a messenger</b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><b><span style="font-family: "Andalus","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"> To warn them." Al-Esra'a, 15</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: "Andalus","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">Have I thus quieted your fears? Allow me further to add that the most peculiar aspect of your questions in this connection is their deceptive pretense of belief and pity for the poor negro deprived of the light, mercy, and guidance of the Quran. In truth, they indicate your disbelief in the Quran or its light and guidance. They are designed more for inveiglement And subterfuge. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: "Andalus","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">They run contrary to your own inner conviction and I can only describe this attitude as perversity in its quintessence. You are endeavoring to persuade us of an argument of which you personally do not have any proof. Don't you agree with me that your reasoning is in need of mending? </span></div></div>Ramezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02530868481200967934noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5239142106518123195.post-52635223860033089382011-03-09T22:51:00.000-08:002011-03-09T22:51:22.566-08:003 - Why did God Create Evil?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:View>Normal</w:View> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:TrackMoves/> <w:TrackFormatting/> <w:PunctuationKerning/> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:DoNotPromoteQF/> <w:LidThemeOther>EN-US</w:LidThemeOther> <w:LidThemeAsian>X-NONE</w:LidThemeAsian> <w:LidThemeComplexScript>AR-SA</w:LidThemeComplexScript> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:SnapToGridInCell/> <w:WrapTextWithPunct/> <w:UseAsianBreakRules/> <w:DontGrowAutofit/> <w:SplitPgBreakAndParaMark/> <w:DontVertAlignCellWithSp/> <w:DontBreakConstrainedForcedTables/> <w:DontVertAlignInTxbx/> <w:Word11KerningPairs/> <w:CachedColBalance/> </w:Compatibility> <m:mathPr> <m:mathFont m:val="Cambria Math"/> <m:brkBin m:val="before"/> <m:brkBinSub m:val="--"/> <m:smallFrac m:val="off"/> <m:dispDef/> <m:lMargin m:val="0"/> <m:rMargin m:val="0"/> <m:defJc m:val="centerGroup"/> <m:wrapIndent m:val="1440"/> <m:intLim m:val="subSup"/> <m:naryLim m:val="undOvr"/> </m:mathPr></w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" DefUnhideWhenUsed="true"
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</style> <![endif]--> <div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: "Andalus","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">My friend resumed his arguing in a derisive note of voice.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: "Andalus","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">- How dare you speak of your God as the perfect, the omnipotent, the merciful, the bounteous, and the ruthful while he is the creator of all evils in the world: disease, old age, death, earthquakes, volcanoes, microbes, poison, scorching heart, freezing cold, and the torments of cancer that spare neither new-born babe nor decrepit senile. If God is truly love, beauty, and goodness, how then did it come that he created hatred, ugliness, and evil?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: "Andalus","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span> </span>- The problem, raised by my friend, is among the basic questions of philosophy; opinions differed and schools of thought split over it. We say that God is all mercy and goodness. He did not enjoin evil but suffered its existence for a wise end:</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: "Andalus","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span> </span><b>"God does not enjoin what is indecent. Do you tell of god that you</b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><b><span style="font-family: "Andalus","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span> </span>Do not know? Say: My lord ordered you to act in injustice. Turn to him wherever you</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><b><span style="font-family: "Andalus","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span> </span>Kneel in prayer and call on him with true devotion"</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><b><span style="font-family: "Andalus","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span> </span>Ala'araf, 28</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: "Andalus","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">God only enjoins justice, amity, charity, forbearance, and benevolence. He only accepts what is good. Why, then, does he suffer the unjust, the murderous, and the thieving to perpetrate their deeds? The answer is that he wanted us to be free; freedom necessitates error; it would be meaningless if it did not allow us the right to trial, error, and right judgment and the unrestricted choice between sin and obedience.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: "Andalus","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span> </span>God was quite capable of making us all benevolent by compelling us to obey him. This, however, would have entailed that he deprive us of the freedom to choose. But in his plan and law, freedom with suffering is more honorable to man than slavery with happiness. That is why he let us sin, suffer, and learn; this is the wisdom in his sufferance of evil to exist.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: "Andalus","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span> </span>Nevertheless, a just and objective consideration of the matter would reveal to us that benevolence is the rule in the universe while evil is the exception. Health is the rule, disease the exception; we spend most of our life enjoying health and are visited by sickness only for few days in comparison. Similarly, total of the time during which earthquakes have struck would amount to only a handful of minutes in relation to the age of our planet which is measured in many millions of years. In the same reckoning, volcano eruptions or wars are but short-lived convulsions in the life of nations interrupting long periods of quiet and peace.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: "Andalus","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">Moreover, we can discern a benevolent aspect in almost everything. Sickness bequeaths immunity; suffering engenders hardiness, fortitude, and endurance; earthquake relieve the pent-up pressure inside the earth preventing its crust from blowing-up and restoring mountains to their places as '<b>belts</b>' and '<b>weights</b>' that stabilize the crust; volcanoes spew up minerals and other hidden resources thus covering the land with rich soil; was unify and amalgamate nation's leading to their gathering in blocks and alliances and then in a league of nations and finally, in a security council which is like a universal tribunal where complaints are aired and settled. The greatest inventions were made during wars; penicillin, atomic power, rockets, jet planes and many others came out of the crucible of war. The ancient wisdom still hold true: <b>"out of the snake's poison comes the antidote."</b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: "Andalus","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">Even now we manufacture the serum from microbe. If our forefathers have not met their death we would not have attained the positions we now hold. Evil in the universe is like the shaded space in a painting; if you come very near to the painting, you will see these parts as defects and fault in it; but if you draw back to a distance and take a general view of the painting as a whole, you will discover that the shades are necessary and indispensable fulfilling an aesthetic function within the structure of that artwork.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: "Andalus","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span> </span>Could it be possible for us to know health if disease did not occur? Health glitters as a crown on our heads that is only known when we are ill. Likewise, it is impossible to know beauty but for ugliness or to know that which is normal without getting acquainted with the abnormal. This is why the philosopher <b>Abu Hamed El-Ghazali</b><span> </span>said that the universe's imperfections are the essence of its perfection just as the curving shape of the bow is the -essential feature of its usefulness since a 'straight-shaped bow' would be unfit for shooting arrows.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: "Andalus","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span> </span>Another use of hardships and sufferings is that they sort out men and reveal their true nature. As Arabic verse eloquently put it:</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: "Andalus","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span> </span><b>"But for hardships all men would rule supreme bounty beggars</b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><b><span style="font-family: "Andalus","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span> </span>And boldness kills."</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: "Andalus","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">These tribulations are trials by which we know ourselves; they are tests which determine our degrees in the sight of God.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: "Andalus","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">This world is but one act of a play that has many; death is not the end of the story but its beginning. It is inadmissible to judge a play on the testimony of just one act or to reject a book because its first page did not appeal to us. The judgment in both cases is incomplete.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: "Andalus","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">The entire significance of any such work can only be known at its end.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: "Andalus","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span> </span>One wonders at the alternative that our scoffing friend has in mind. Does he, for instance, envisage for us a life without death, sickness, senility, deficiencies, disability, grief, or suffering? Is he seeking absolute perfection? But the latter is for God alone. The really perfect being is one and cannot be many. Indeed, why should be multiply? What can be possibly lack in himself to seek for it in others? The upshot is that my friend will not be satisfied except by becoming God which is presumption <b>par excellence</b>.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: "Andalus","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">Let us, in our turn mock him and those, like him, who scoff at everything. We ask those who dream of our life becoming a flawless paradise, 'what have you done to deserve a paradise on earth?'<span> </span>Indeed, what services did our friend render to humanity so as to set himself up as God, the one and the vanquisher who order everything to be and creates all by his <b>flat</b>?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: "Andalus","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">My grandmother had more sense than our French-educated, 'learned' friend. She used to say in all simplicity: 'Good comes from God, evil from ourselves.' A terse remark, indeed, but what a true view of the entire matter is contained here in a nutshell! God sends the winds and makes the river flow but a greedy captain may overload his ship with people and goods and when it sinks, he curses fate and destiny. What is God's fault here? He sent a benevolent wind and caused the river to flow smoothly but greed and avarice turned his good into evil.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: "Andalus","serif"; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span> </span>Indeed, what beautiful and fine words; 'Good comes from god, evil from ourselves'.</span></div></div>Ramezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02530868481200967934noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5239142106518123195.post-62366453215230865812011-03-06T11:46:00.000-08:002011-03-09T09:13:22.060-08:002 - If god preordained my deeds, why should he judge me?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:View>Normal</w:View> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:TrackMoves/> <w:TrackFormatting/> <w:PunctuationKerning/> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:DoNotPromoteQF/> <w:LidThemeOther>EN-US</w:LidThemeOther> <w:LidThemeAsian>X-NONE</w:LidThemeAsian> <w:LidThemeComplexScript>AR-SA</w:LidThemeComplexScript> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:SnapToGridInCell/> <w:WrapTextWithPunct/> <w:UseAsianBreakRules/> <w:DontGrowAutofit/> <w:SplitPgBreakAndParaMark/> <w:DontVertAlignCellWithSp/> <w:DontBreakConstrainedForcedTables/> <w:DontVertAlignInTxbx/> <w:Word11KerningPairs/> <w:CachedColBalance/> </w:Compatibility> <m:mathPr> <m:mathFont m:val="Cambria Math"/> <m:brkBin m:val="before"/> <m:brkBinSub m:val="--"/> <m:smallFrac m:val="off"/> <m:dispDef/> <m:lMargin m:val="0"/> <m:rMargin m:val="0"/> <m:defJc m:val="centerGroup"/> <m:wrapIndent m:val="1440"/> <m:intLim m:val="subSup"/> <m:naryLim m:val="undOvr"/> </m:mathPr></w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" DefUnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">My friend spoke gloatingly thinking that his arguments would hold me captive by the scruff of my neck.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">- You say, he argued, that God manages everything in this creation with fate and predestination and that he has preordained our deeds. If this applies to me, for instance, in the sense that all my actions have been preordained by him, why then should I be accountable before him? Don't give me the usual reply that choices are open before me. Nothing is more preposterous than this lie. Let me ask you: have I had any choice in my birth, sex, height and build of body, color, and country? Do I choose that the sun rise and the moon set? Is it by my choice that a blow of fate descends on me, that death surprises me, or that I can only escape from pitfall of calamity by committing crime? Why should God force me to do a certain deed and then hold me responsible for it?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">If you argue that I am free and that I have a will besides that of God wouldn't that be considered a kind of polytheism since you are led to admit the multiplicity of wills? Moreover, what can you say to counter the ideas of historical materialism concerning the determinism of environment and circumstances as well as the various forms of 'inevitabilities' that adherents of that philosophy advocate?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">- having blurted out these words like bullets, my friend breathed in relief thinking that I have been completely vanquished and that he had only to shroud my creed before the burial. I, however, began to speak in a quiet voice:</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span> </span>You are victims to certain fallacies. Your deeds are foreknown to God in his record but they are not preordained for you against your will. They are only preordained in his prescience just as you may foresee, in the light of your knowledge, that your son will commit fornication and he actually goes on to do it. Have you compelled him to it? Or was it, in fact, a foreknowledge which came true because founded on your comprehension of the situation?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">Another confusion you fall in is your description of the freedom of the will as a lie arguing that you had no say in determining your birth, sex, height, color, or country and that you cannot will the sun to move from its orb. The cause of the confusion is that you conceive freedom differently than we, the believers, see it. You have absolute freedom in mind; therefore, you ask whether you can have a choice in making yourself white or black, tall or short or whether you can will to move the sun from its place or stop it in its orbit. Hence, you enquire plaintively, "where is my freedom?"</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span> </span>You are, in fact, talking about absolute freedom, the freedom to do as you will in the universe-such a kind of freedom is God's alone. We don not hold this view of freedom as we are guided by the Quranic verse:</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span> </span><b>"Your Lord Creates what he will and chooses freely,</b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><b><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span> </span>But you have no power to choose."</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span> </span><b>The story, 68</b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">No one has any choice in matters relating to creation because it is God who creates what he wills and pleases. He will not hold you responsible for your short or admonish you for your long stature, nor will he punish you for failing to stop the sun in its orbit.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span> </span>The sphere of accountability is the area of <b><u>Taklif</u></b> or Divine injunction.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">Within this area you are free and your argument should be confined inside its compass. You are free to repress your appetites, to bridle your rage, to resist the prompting of your ego, to deter your evil intentions, to enhance your benevolent tendencies.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span> </span>You can be generous with your money and self.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span> </span>You can tell the truth or lie.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span> </span>You can restrain your hand from forbidden gains.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span> </span>You can divert your eye from prying into sensitive spots of others.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span> </span>You can hold your tongue and refrain from cursing, back-biting, and slander.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">In this area we are free; and it is in this area that we are liable to account and questioning.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">The freedom we should be discussing is relative and not absolute; it is man's freedom within the sphere of <b>TAKLIF</b> or injunction. This latter kind of freedom is real and the evidence for its reality is your innate, intuitive sense of it. We feel responsibility and contrition for our wrong-doing and we feel relief over our good deeds. We sense in every moment of our lives that we are involved in weighing and choosing from among several possibilities. The primary function of our mind, indeed, is to choose and favor from among alternatives.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span> </span>We clearly and decisively distinguish between the trembling of our hand as result of fever and its movement as it writes a letter describing that trembling. We are conscious of the shivering as determined and compulsory and of the letter-writing as free and voluntary. If we were compelled or conditioned in both cases we wouldn't be able to make distinction. This freedom is further affirmed by our experience that it is impossible under any pressure to compel the heart to accept anything it does not want to. You can force a woman with threats and beating to undress but no pressure whatsoever can make her love you with all her heart. This indicates that God has safeguarded our hearts from all forms of compulsion and duress and that he created them free. This is why God judge according to what the heart harbors and the intentions bear. The believer who is forced to utter expression of <b>shirk</b> (polytheism) or blasphemy under threatening or torture will not be held accountable for them as long as his heart is steadfast in faith. In the following verse God absolves such person of responsibility:</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span> </span><b>"Those who are forced to recant while</b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><b><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span> </span>Their hearts remain loyal to the faith</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><b><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span> </span>Shall be absolved"</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><b><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span> </span>The bee, 106</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span> </span>A further element of confusion in connection with question of freedom of will is that some people understand human freedom as meaning of transcendence of divine will and a management of affairs independent of God.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">Consequently, they accuse the advocates of freedom with <b>Shirk</b> (polytheism) and with setting up equals to God who bid and dispense like him. This view, my friend, is what you echoed in your talk about multiplicity of wills. It is a mistaken conception; for human will does not transcend divine will. Man, in his freedom, may act contrary to what satisfies God, but he cannot do anything in contradiction to his will. God granted us freedom to transgress against His wishes (we disobey Him) but he gave none the freedom to transcend his will. In fact, we encounter here another facet of relative nature of human freedom.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">All our actions are within the sphere of divine will and are subservient to it even if they go against God's wishes and violate the <b>shari'a</b> (religious law). Our freedom itself is a divine gift that god willingly bestowed and it was not forcefully extorted from him. Indeed, our freedom is exactly what he willed; and this is how we can understand this Quranic verse:</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span> </span><b>"You cannot will but by the will of God"</b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><b><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span> </span>Man, 30</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">Our will is subservient to his; it is a grant from him, a gift of his kindness and Generosity. It lies within his own will; there is no duality, opposition, or competition between our wills and God's will and judgment.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span> </span>Understanding freedom in this way does not go against <b>Tawhid</b> (faith in the oneness of God) or sets up equals to God who bid and dispense like him. Our freedom is precisely what he wills and decides.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span> </span>A third point of confusion about issue of freedom is that some people who tackled the question of fate and predestination or the controversy of determinism versus freedom have understood fate as a compelling of man to that which is contrary to his nature and bent. This is an error into which you have also falled, my friend; God hasa unequivocally denied that he resorts to compulsion:</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span> </span><b>"If we will, we can reveal to them a sign from heaven before which</b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><b><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span> </span>They will bow their heads in utter humility"</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><b><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span> </span>The Poets, 4</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">The meaning here is clear enough: God could have compelled men to believe by revealing incontestable signs (<b>ayat</b>) or miracles but he did not choose this path because compulsion is not one of his laws:</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span> </span><b>"There shall be no compulsion in religion. True guidance is now distinct from <span></span>error"</b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><b><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span> </span>The Cow, 256</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">"Had your Lord pleased, all the people of the earth would have believed in him. Would you then force faith upon men?"</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span> </span><b>Jonah, 99</b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">Compulsion, it is plain, is not part of Divine Law.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span> </span>Fate and predestination should not be conceived as a forcing of people to what is against their natures; on the contrary, God destines each human being to a fate which corresponds to his intentions – He wills him to what he himself really wills and He desires for him what he himself desires. There is no duality here. God's preordination is identical to creature's freedom of choice because God predestines every man according to his own desires and intentions:</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span> </span><b>"Whoever seeks the harvest of the world to come, to him we will give in great <span> </span>abundance; and whoever desires the harvest of this world, a share of it shall be <span> </span>his."</b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><b><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span> </span><span> </span>The Counsel, 10</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span> </span><b>"There is a sickness in their hearts which God has increased"</b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><b><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span> </span>The Cow, 10</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><b><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span> </span>"As for those who follow the right path, God will increase their guidance."</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><b><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span> </span>Muhammad, 17</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">In the Quran, God addresses the captives of war thus:</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span> </span><b>"If God finds goodness in your hearts, He will give you that which is better</b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><b><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span> </span>Than what has been taken from you"</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><b><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span> </span>The Spoils, 70</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">God preordains according to the intentions and heart of man:</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">If these are evil, man will come to evil; if good, good will be his fate. There is no duality or opposition; predestination is freedom of choice as God predestines us to what we choose with our hearts and intentions. There is no injustice, compulsion, or duress in this regard and there is no subjection to what is against our natures:</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span> </span><b>"For him that gives in charity and guards himself against evil and believes in </b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><b><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span> </span>Goodness, we shall smooth the path of salvation; but for him that neither gives</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><b><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span> </span>Nor takes and disbelieves in goodness, we shall smooth the path of affliction."</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><b><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span> </span>The Night Journey, 5-10</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; margin-left: 36pt; text-align: left; text-indent: 36pt; unicode-bidi: embed;"><b><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">"It was not you who smote them; God smote them."</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><b><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span> </span>The Spoils, 17</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">The last verse indicates that the strike effected by man and that preordained by God merge into one and the same strike. This is the solution to the puzzle of fate and predestination:</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">Man is to intend while God is to enable and dispose, good for good and evil for evil.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">Human freedom is not a fixed sum but a relative potential which is capable of increase.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">Man can enhance his freedom with knowledge. By inventing tools, instruments, and means of transportation, he has managed to traverse our planet, to defeat distance, and to overcome the limitations of time and space. Through study of the laws of environment, he could control and exploit it for his benefit; he knew how to resist heat, cold, and darkness thus compounding his freedom in the sphere of action.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">Knowledge, thus, has been one means of breaking bounds and restraints and unshackling freedom. Another means to those ends has been religion: invoking god's aid by taking the path leading to him and receiving revelation, support, and guidance from him. This was the way of the prophets and their followers. Solomon utilized the jinn. Mastered the wind, and spoke with birds by God's aid and gifts. Moses parted the sea while Christ raised the dead, walked on the water, and healed the blind-born, the leper, and the sightless.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">We read about the <b>Walis</b> (men of God) and the blessed for whom the 'terrain is folded' and the unseen made known. They attain to these levels of freedom by perseverance in God's worship and by endearing themselves to him. He responds by endowing them with emanations of his hidden knowledge. Once gain we encounter knowledge but this time it is <b>Ladduni</b> knowledge (one peculiar to God).</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span> </span>Abu Hamed El-Ghazali sums up and solves the problem of freedom and predestination in two sentence: Man has freedom of choice in relation to what he knows, he is preordained with regard to what he knows not. EL-Ghazali means that the more knowledgeable man becomes the freer he is – and this holds true whether the knowledge meant is objective (Worldly) or <b>Ladduni</b>, coming from God alone.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">Materialistic thinkers commit a grievous error when they conceive man as prisoner to historical and class determinism thus turning him into a link in a chain of economic and social laws and movements from which he cannot escape or extricate himself. Man becomes, in their view, a straw blown about helplessly in a violent air-current with no aid to steer himself with.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span> </span>The phrase they tirelessly invoke as if it were a natural law is "the inevitability of class conflict." A according to scientific analysis, this is a fallacy since there are no inevitabilities in the human sphere but, at best, there are only probabilities and expectations. Indeed the distinction between man and all the prophecies of <b>Karl Marx</b>, for instance, have proven wrong: communism did not rise in an advanced country, as he predicted, but in a backward one. The conflict between capitalism and communism did not intensify but both camps were led by rapprochement to a state of "peaceful co-existence".</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">Communist countries have even gone so far as to open their doors before American capital.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">The sharpening of contradictions that Marx expected to occur in the capitalist society leading to its bankruptcy did not materialize; on the contrary, the capitalist economy flourished while discord and dissention spread among the members of the socialist camp.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">Marx's calculations were mistaken in their entirety proving the error of his deterministic system. The 'history-moving' conflict of our age is that non-class confrontation between the Soviet Union and china and not the class struggle proclaimed by Marx as the <b>leitmotiv</b> of his system. All this indicates the failure of materialistic thinking to understand man and history and the error of its predictions about the future. The failure resulted from a basic fallacy: namely, the materialistic conception of man as a fly caught in a net of inevitabilities and the total disregard of the reality of man's freedom.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">There are, still, the materialists' arguments about the conditioning of man by the environment, society, and circumstances. Man it is claimed does not live alone and his freedom is not practiced in a vacuum. In reply to these arguments we say that the influence of the environment, society, and circumstances as factors antagonistic to human freedom confirms the dialectic nature of that freedom and does not negate it. The freedom of the individual can only assert its existence in the face of an opposing force seeking to displace it. If man moves in a vacuum where no resistance of any kind exists, he will not be free in the logical meaning of the word since there will be no obstacles for him to overcome and thereby manifest and emphasize his freedom.</span></div></div>Ramezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02530868481200967934noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5239142106518123195.post-13305132048374589502011-03-06T02:29:00.001-08:002011-03-06T02:39:02.849-08:001 - He begot none, nor was He begotten<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: center; unicode-bidi: embed;"><b><br />
</b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">My friend is a man who likes to argue and delights in talking. He thinks that we, naïve believers as we are, feed on illusions and miss the pleasures and attractions of this world beguiling ourselves with paradise and houris. He studied in france where he got a ph.D. Degree, consorted with hippies, and came to disbelieve in everything.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"> He addressed me sarcastically:</span></div><div class="MsoListParagraph" style="direction: ltr; margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt 36pt; text-align: left; text-indent: -18pt; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">-<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">You say that god exists. The chief among your proofs is the law of causation which stipulates that every artefact, creature, or existent must have been brought into being by a maker, creator, or efficient cause: a piece of fabric points to the weaver, a painting to the painter, an engraving to the engraver. The universe, according to this logic, is the most cogent proof of puissant God who created it.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; margin-left: 18pt; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">Granted that we believe in this creator, aren't we entitled, according to the same logic, to ask, "Who created the creator; who created that God you talk about?" Doesn't your own reasoning and in keeping with the same law of causation lead you to this question? Now, what have you to say about this dilemma?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; margin-left: 18pt; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; margin-left: 18pt; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">I replied to him by making clear that his question was meaningless.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; margin-left: 18pt; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">There is no dilemma or anything of that sort. You grant that god is a creator and then you ask about who created him making him both creator and created in the same sentence, which is a contradiction.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; margin-left: 18pt; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; margin-left: 18pt; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">The other side of your question's meaninglessness is that you imagine the creator as being subject to the laws which govern his creatures. Causation is a law for us who live in space and time. God, who created space and time, is necessarily transcendent in relation to both and it is an error on our part to think that he is bound either by them or by their laws. It is God who created the law of causation and we cannot consider him as subject to the law he created.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; margin-left: 18pt; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; margin-left: 18pt; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">In this sophistry of yours you are like those dolls that, seeing they move by springs, imagine that the human who made them must also derive his motion from the action of springs. If they were told that he is self-moved, they would retort that it is impossible for anything to move spontaneously since everything in their world is moved by a spring. Just like them, you cannot imagine that God exists in his own Essence with no need of an efficient cause; and this is because you see everything around you in need of such a cause. It is as if you thought that God needs a parachute to descend among men or a fast car to reach his prophets; God is infinitely exalted above such conception.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; margin-left: 18pt; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; margin-left: 18pt; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"> The German philosopher, <b>Immanuel Kant</b> realized, in his Critique of Pure Reason, that the mind cannot comprehend infinite realities and that it is by nature fitted only to apprehend particulars. It is incapable of apprehending such a universal or total existence as that of the divinity. God was known by conscience not by reason. Just as our thirst for water is a proof that it exists, our yearning for justice is proof to us that a just being exists.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; margin-left: 18pt; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; margin-left: 18pt; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><b><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">Aristotle</span></b><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"> followed the chain of causality tracing the chair from wood, wood from the tree, the tree from a seed, and the seed from the planter. He had to conclude that this chain which regresses into infinite time must have begun with an 'uncaused' cause, a primum mobile in no need of a mover, a creator who has not been created. This is the same thing we assert of God.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; margin-left: 18pt; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; margin-left: 18pt; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"> From another quarter, <b>Ibn Arabi</b>, the Muslim mystic, replied to the question as to who made the creator by saying that it can only occur to a disordered mind. According to him, it is God that substantiates existence and it would be erroneous to point to existence or the universe as a proof of God. This is the same as saying that light indicates day and it would be lopsided argument to claim that day proves the existence of light.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; margin-left: 18pt; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; margin-left: 18pt; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"> God says in a Divine Utterance (<b>Hadith Qudsi</b>): "<b>It is I who aids in proving and finding, there is no proof leading to me"</b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; margin-left: 18pt; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; margin-left: 18pt; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">God is the proof which is in no need of another proof. He is the self-evident truth; He is manifest in order, precision, beauty, and regularity; in tree leaves, in the feathers of a fawn, in the wings of the butterfly, in the fragrance of flowers, in the chanting of the nightingale. In the harmony of planets and stars which makes up that symphonic poem we call the universe, if we allege that all this came into being by chance, we would be like a person who believes that blowing-up the types of a press into space can result in their spontaneous assembly into an authorless Shakespearean sonnet.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; margin-left: 18pt; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; margin-left: 18pt; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"> The Quran spares us all these arguments with a few, expressive words. It says without sophistry and in a decisive clarity:</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; margin-left: 18pt; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; margin-left: 18pt; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"> <b>"Say that God is one, the eternal.</b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; margin-left: 18pt; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><b><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"> He begot none nor was he begotten.</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; margin-left: 18pt; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><b><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"> None is equal to him"</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; margin-left: 18pt; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; margin-left: 18pt; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"> My friend continued to question me in his sarcastic tone:</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; margin-left: 18pt; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">"Why do you say that God is one? Why shouldn't there be many gods sharing the 'work' among themselves?"</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; margin-left: 18pt; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; margin-left: 18pt; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">I chose to reply to him not with the aid of the Quran but with the logic he accepts: that of science. My answer was that God is one because the entire universe is built out of one material and according to a unified plan. The ninety two elements in the Mendelev table are built from hydrogen and in the same manner in which stars and sun flame-up in space; namely, by fusion and the emission of atomic energy.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; margin-left: 18pt; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; margin-left: 18pt; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"> All forms of life are built of carbon composites- they are all charred when burned-according to one anatomical plan. An anatomy of a frog, a rabbit, a pigeon, a crocodile, a giraffe, and a whale reveals the same anatomical structure in all. The same arteries, veins, cardiac chambers, and bones correspond in all of them. The wing of the pigeon is the fore-leg in the frog: the same bones with only slight transformation. The long neck of the giraffe contains seven vertebrae; we find the same number in the hedgehog's neck. The nervous system in all consists of the brain, the spinal cord, and the motor and sensory nerves. Their digestive apparatus contains the stomach, the duodenum, and the small and large intestines, the genital apparatus has the same components: the ovary, the uterus, the testicles and their ducts: while the urinary system in all consists of the kidney, the uriter, and the bladder. The anatomical unit in each of these creatures is the cell. Whether we are dealing with plants, animals, or humans, we meet with the same features; they all breathe, breed, die, and are born in the same way.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; margin-left: 18pt; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"> What is so strange, then, in asserting that the creator is one? Does he suffer from a deficiency to need completion? It is the imperfect only who multiply. If there were more than one god, they would fall among themselves, each taking his own creation to his side and the world would be ruined. To God is sublimity and compelling-attributes which brook no associates.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; margin-left: 18pt; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; margin-left: 18pt; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"> My friend mocked the concept of divinity (<b>Robobyya</b>) that we entertain. He wondered at that God who interfered in every-thing big or small mastering all creatures and "intimating to the bees to abide in mountains". No leaf falls but he knows of it and no fruit grows out of its bud He takes count of it. No female conceives and gives birth without his knowledge. It is he who causes the foot to stumble over a hole and the fly to fall in a plate of food. Even if the phone is dead or the rain doesn't fall or, conversely, if it pours down, He is behind all these events. "Don't you keep your god busy", asked my friend, "with too many trivial things under such conception of him as that?"</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; margin-left: 18pt; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; margin-left: 18pt; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"> I don’t really understand my friend. Would god, in his opinion, be more of a divinity if He relieved himself of all responsibility and, turning his back to the world he created, left it unattended to destroy itself in conflicts? Is the true divinity in his estimation that idle, unconscious being who does not hear, see, or respond to his creatures and look after them? It is to be further asked: from what quarter did he know that certain affairs are important and serious enough to so deserve such attention?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; margin-left: 18pt; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; margin-left: 18pt; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"> The fly, which appeared to the enquirer so insignificant that it doesn't matter whether it falls in a plate of food or not, can change history with such an unimportant fall. It could thus infect an army with cholera giving victory to the other side and, consequently, totally altering the course of history. Wasn't Alexander the great killed by a mosquito? The most trivial premises can lead to the most serious consequences, whereas the most important beginnings can issue in nothing. The knower of the unseen alone realizes the value of everything.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; margin-left: 18pt; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"> It remains to be asked whether my friend has set himself up as a trustee over God defining his prerogatives for Him; our Lord is most holy and high above such a naïve conception.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; margin-left: 18pt; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; margin-left: 18pt; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">The god worthy of divinity is he whose knowledge comprehends all; who misses not one atom either in earth or sky.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; margin-left: 18pt; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; margin-left: 18pt; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="font-family: Andalus; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">He is God, the All-Hearing, and the Responder, the mindful of his creatures.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="direction: ltr; margin-left: 18pt; text-align: left; unicode-bidi: embed;"><br />
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</div></div>Ramezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02530868481200967934noreply@blogger.com2