al-firaushah

“The Whole of It is from Our Lord”

The following question was asked about how much one could believe that the Qur’an was not written by Allah (swt) and still remain a Muslim:

And if some of it [the Qur’an] was “written by man,” or a person believes that some of it was “written by man,” how much of it must fall in that category before that person is, in your view “not a Muslim.”

My answer:

The answer is quite simple:  belief that any part of the Qur’an was “written by man” will cause one to fall out of Islam (i.e., become “not a Muslim”).

“And those who are firmly grounded in knowledge say: ‘We believe in the Book; the whole of it is from our Lord:’ and none will grasp the Message except men of understanding.’” (3:7)

Islam is not a “cafeteria religion” where one can pick and choose which parts to believe in.

On Da’wah in the West

The following is a comment I wrote to Emmanuel, a Catholic Malaysian blogger, who was responding to a post written by MENJ regarding South Korean missionaries who are being expelled from Afghanistan.  After posting this comment, I thought I would cross-post it onto this blog and some others.

Emmanuel: Da’wah, as practiced by Muslims in the West, is almost invisible. I do not say this negatively, merely as a statement of fact. In the US (at least), da’wah to non-Muslims is rarely done face-to-face, unlike, say, the Mormons or JWs. We don’t ride around the neighborhood on bicycles in white shirts and dark ties, asking people to convert. We also don’t pass out cartoon tracts like Jack Chick’s or booklets like the JW’s, leaving them lying around for people to read (although I will say I don’t think badly of the JW booklets). In fact, the only Muslim da’wah group I’ve ever met members of face-to-face were only interested in meeting other Muslims, trying to get lax brothers and sisters to become more devout. Certainly no one ever came up to me and asked me to become Muslim, which is more than the Christians (including some members of my family) can say.

But far too many Christian missionaries use underhanded tactics in trying to convert people. Unlike MENJ, I do think it is constructive, both in the long- and short-term, to ban missionaries. Read the famous article, The Stealth Crusade, published in Mother Jones magazine four years ago, and you’ll begin to understand some of our concerns.

Abayas Turning Trendy

There’s an article from the Associated Press about how abayas in the Gulf states are becoming trendy. (Actually, I suspect that abayas have long been trendy, just that no Western reporter has noticed until now. Anyhoo…) One interesting passage, near the end of the article:

But advocates of fancier versions are convinced they can combine fashion and modesty.

…

Never mind that his elegant consort, sporting an abaya decorated with golden metal and matching head cover, could cause more heads to turn than a less attractive woman in a short skirt.

“Abayas are now both decent and fashionable. Everyone follows the fashion nowadays,” Mohammad said.

This is what Milady and I believed in when we started firaushah, that Muslimahs can wear modest clothing that is beautiful and fashionable.

Strike back at these ignorant non-Muslims who say you are oppressed! Wear beautiful clothing - clothing that’s better looking than theirs - and ask if “oppressed” women wear as fashionable of clothing as your own.

Extremism isn’t Islamic Law

One of the very few topics I strongly disagree with my ustaz (religious teacher) about is the issue of what should be done with apostates. I am of the opinion that apostates should be left alone (for the most part) in this world because, as Allah (swt) says in the Qur’an, leave the punishment of the unbelievers to Him (73:11 and 74:11) as, insha’allah, any punishment of His will be far worse than anything we could do ourselves.

Today, the Washington Post has an article by Kyai Haji Abdurrahman Wahid, the former President of Indonesia on this topic that I thought is worth sharing.

For a few days this year the world’s media focused an intense spotlight on the drama of a modern-day inquisition. Abdul Rahman, a Muslim convert to Christianity, narrowly escaped the death penalty for apostasy when the Afghan government — acting under enormous international pressure — sidestepped the issue by ruling that he was insane and unfit to stand trial. This unsatisfactory ruling left unanswered a question of enormous significance: Does Islam truly require the death penalty for apostasy, and, if not, why is there so little freedom of religion in the so-called Muslim world?

The Koran and the sayings of the prophet Muhammad do not definitively address this issue. In fact, during the early history of Islam, the Agreement of Hudaibiyah between Muhammad and his rivals stipulated that any Muslim who converted out of Islam would be allowed to depart freely to join the non-Muslim community. Nevertheless, throughout much of Islamic history, Muslim governments have embraced an interpretation of Islamic law that imposes the death penalty for apostasy.

It is vital that we differentiate between the Koran, from which much of the raw material for producing Islamic law is derived, and the law itself. While its revelatory inspiration is divine, Islamic law is man-made and thus subject to human interpretation and revision. For example, in the course of Islamic history, non-Muslims have been allowed to enter Mecca and Medina. Since the time of the caliphs, however, Islamic law has been interpreted to forbid non-Muslims from entering these holy cities. The prohibition against non-Muslims entering Mecca and Medina is thus politically motivated and has no basis in the Koran or Islamic law.

In the case of Rahman, two key principles of Islamic jurisprudence come into play. First, al-umuru bi maqashidiha (”Every problem [should be addressed] in accordance with its purpose”). If a legal ordinance truly protects citizens, then it is valid and may become law. From this perspective, Rahman did not violate any law, Islamic or otherwise. Indeed, he should be protected under Islamic law, rather than threatened with death or imprisonment. The second key principle is al-hukm-u yadullu ma’a illatihi wujudan wa adaman (”The law is formulated in accordance with circumstances”). Not only can Islamic law be changed — it must be changed due to the ever-shifting circumstances of human life. Rather than take at face value assertions by extremists that their interpretation of Islamic law is eternal and unchanging, Muslims and Westerners must reject these false claims and join in the struggle to support a pluralistic and tolerant understanding of Islam.

All of humanity, whether Muslim or non-Muslim, is threatened by the forces of Islamist extremism. It is these extremists, masquerading as traditional Muslims, who angrily call for the death of Abdul Rahman or the beheading of Danish cartoonists. Their objective is raw political power and the eventual radicalization of all 1.3 billion Muslims worldwide. Western involvement in this “struggle for the soul of Islam” is a matter of self-preservation for the West and is critical given the violent tactics and strength of radical elements in Muslim societies worldwide.

Muslim theologians must revise their understanding of Islamic law, and recognize that punishment for apostasy is merely the legacy of historical circumstances and political calculations stretching back to the early days of Islam. Such punishments run counter to the clear Koranic injunction “Let there be no compulsion in religion” (2:256).

People of goodwill of every faith and nation must unite to ensure the triumph of religious freedom and of the “right” understanding of Islam, to avert global catastrophe and spare millions of others the fate of Sudan’s great religious and political leader, Mahmoud Muhammad Taha, who was executed on a false charge of apostasy. The millions of victims of “jihadist” violence in Sudan — whose numbers continue to rise every day — would have been spared if Taha’s vision of Islam had triumphed instead of that of the extremists.

The greatest challenge facing the contemporary Muslim world is to bring our limited, human understanding of Islamic law into harmony with its divine spirit — in order to reflect God’s mercy and compassion, and to bring the blessings of peace, justice and tolerance to a suffering world.

The writer is a former president of Indonesia. From 1984 to 1999 he directed the Nadhlatul Ulama, the world’s largest Muslim organization. He serves as senior adviser and board member to LibForAll Foundation, an Indonesian- and U.S.-based nonprofit that works to reduce religious extremism and terrorism.

French Convert on Becoming a Muslim

Click on the link to a short video excerpt (1:17) of a French woman being interviewed about her becoming a Muslim.
French Woman Talks About Becoming Muslim

Peace and Love in the Qur’an

Dr. Juan Cole, over at Informed Comment, normally blogs about modern Middle Eastern politics and current events. However, he’s recently written up some very good explanations (tafsir) regarding five (so far) Qur’anic ayat, under the general heading, Peace and Love in the Qur’an. The five ayat are:

4:90

4:94

5:82

25:63

28:55

Check it out.

Why Muslims Don’t Pronounce “Takfir”

George Carty asked: “Would it not be a good idea to refer to extremist terrorists like al-Zarqawi and the GIA as ‘takfiris’?”

Good question, George; however, the answer is no.

Both the Qur’an and the sahih ahadith collections are strong in their condemnations of this practice. We are not to judge who is a kafir unless there is extremely stringent evidence against them. Unfortunately, there are some groups, such as Takfir wal-Hijra and the GIA, who take a too-liberal approach toward pronouncing people as kafirs when perhaps they shouldn’t be; however, these same groups may suffer for their pronunciations of takfir in the hereafter.

According to the Qur’an: “O ye who believe! When ye go abroad in the cause of Allah, investigate carefully, and say not to any one who offers you a salutation: “Thou art none of a believer!” Coveting the perishable goods of this life: with Allah are profits and spoils abundant. Even thus were ye yourselves before, till Allah conferred on you His favours: Therefore carefully investigate. For Allah is well aware of all that ye do.” (4:94)

The punishment for those Muslims who kill other Muslims is severe: “If a man kills a believer intentionally, his recompense is Hell, to abide therein (For ever): And the wrath and the curse of Allah are upon him, and a dreadful penalty is prepared for him.” (4:93)

In the sahih collections are the following ahadith:

“Whenever a man accuses another of being a kafir or wrong-doer, this accusation will rebound on him if the one accused is not in reality a kafir or wrong-doer.” (Bukhari)

“The man who calls another kafir or enemy of God, and the latter was not such, this charge will indeed turn back upon the accused.” (Muslim)

“He who curses a believer, it is as if he has killed him. And he who accuses a believer of kufr, it is as if he has killed him.” (Bukhari)

There is a belief in Islam that we humans are not really in a position to judge who is a Muslim and who isn’t. One never knows who will be accepted into Jannah (heaven), even at the last moment:

“Abu Sa’id al-Khudri reported Allah’s Messenger (may peace be upon him) as saying: There was a person before you who had killed ninety-nine persons and then made an inquiry about the learned persons of the world (who could show him the way to salvation). He was directed to a monk. He came to him and told him that he had killed ninety-nine persons and asked him whether there was any scope for his repentance to be accepted. He said: No. He killed him also and thus completed one hundred. He then asked about the learned persons of the earth and he was directed to a scholar, and he told him that he had killed one hundred persons and asked him whether there was any scope for his repentance to be accepted. He said: Yes; what stands between you and the repentance? You better go to such and such land; there are people devoted to prayer and worship and you also worship along with them and do not come to the land of yours since it was an evil land (for you). So he went away and he had hardly covered half the distance when death came to him and there was a dispute between the angels of mercy and the angels of punishment. The angels of mercy said: This man has come as a penitant and remorseful to Allah and the angels of punishment said: He has done no good at all. Then there came another angel in the form of a human being in order to decide between them. He said: You measure the land to which he has drawn near. They measured it and found him nearer to the land where he intended to go (the land of piety), and so the angels of mercy took possession of it. Qatada said that Hasan told him that it was said to them that as death approached him, he crawled upon his chest (and managed) to slip in the land of mercy.
Muslim, Book 037, Number 6662

(There are slight variations to the story in hadith numbers 6663 and 6664; however, the basic story remains the same.)

Also, from Maulana Maudoodi (May 1935):

It is in Hadith that once during a military expedition a man, when he saw the Muslims, said: “Assalamu Alaikum, there is no god but Allah, and Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah.” But a Muslim killed him, thinking that the man had proclaimed the Kalima just to save his own life. When the Holy Prophet heard of this, he was very angry, and he reprimanded that Muslim. But he replied:

“O Messenger of Allah, that man read the Kalima merely to protect himself from our sword.”

The Holy Prophet said:

“Did you open his heart and look inside it?”

A companion of the Holy Prophet asked:

“If a man (in battle) attacks me and cuts off my hand, but when I attack him he recites the Kalima, can I kill him in these circumstances?”

The Holy Prophet said: “No.” The companion said:

“O Messenger of Allah, he cut off my hand.”

The Holy Prophet said:

“Despite that, you cannot kill him. If you do kill him then he will have the rank which you had before you killed him, and you will have the rank which he had before he recited the Kalima.”

In another hadith it says that the Holy Prophet said:

“If a man (in a battle) is attacking a kafir with a spear, and it has reached his throat, and at that moment he says ‘There is no god but Allah,’ the Muslim must immediately withdraw his spear.”

Another hadith records that

“to abuse a Muslim is an act of wrong-doing, and to fight a Muslim is an act of kufr.”

All these instructions were given because the strength and unity of the Muslims are based on the bond of faith and nothing else. If Muslims do not honour this bond, and they keep on cutting it on small things, the community will become disintegrated, and it will have no collective strength left to proclaim the word of God to the followers of falsehood and to invite them to good.

For more information about takfir, you might also look at:
Fitna-i Takfir (‘The mischief of calling Muslims as kafir’)
Wiki: Takfir

Turning Muslim in Texas

A wonderful little video: Turning Muslim in Texas. This is a 24-minute British documentary that looks at the lives of seven white American reverts to Islam and their families. Softy that I am, I actually started to get a little teary-eyed when the one woman (not one of the intervieweees) announced that she wanted to take the shahadah right then and there. This is a MUST SEE!

Pondering the Ways and Whys of Islam

The following article appeared recently in the Monterey County (California) Herald. Although I’m not particularly fond of naming talks or articles “Entering (or Inside) the [Insert Group’s Name Here] Mind,” I liked what Mr. Provost had to say. It’s refreshing to see a (presumed) non-Muslim giving accurate information about Islam to the public instead of misinformation presented by yet another hysterical Islamophobe.

Would David Koresh be considered a representative Christian? Are members of the IRA Christian terrorists?

These comparisons are worth pondering when looking at how Islam is often portrayed by the news media, according to John Provost, philosophy instructor for Monterey Peninsula College’s Gentrain program, who spoke Wednesday at MPC on “Entering the Muslim Mind.”

News reports of the fiery deaths that culminated in the FBI siege of Koresh’s Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, in 1993, and the ongoing war between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland, didn’t link Christianity and terrorism, he noted, but the actions of Muslim fanatics, and conflicts between Shia and Sunni Muslims, are joined in the phrase “Islamic terrorism.”

That’s a mistaken view, Provost said, and holding it won’t help get a clear view of the problem or work toward a resolution of the conflict between Islam and western secularism.

The fact that a suicide bomber believes that his act makes him a martyr bound for heaven doesn’t make that belief true, Provost said, and most Muslim scholars reject that doctrine as “a gross distortion of the Qur’an.”

Martyrdom isn’t foreign to Christianity either, he said, and suicide bombers represent “a dark side of Islam that is hard to explain.”

But it is the hallmark of the fanatic to seize on a particular aspect of doctrine and apply a literal interpretation that justifies such an action, he said.

“We need to be careful how we speak about religion and politics,” he said.

Islam, Judaism and Christianity all sprung out of the Middle East and all trace their lineage to Abraham, but as they have spread to other areas of the world, all three changed as they assimilated into other cultures, Provost said.

Islam began in Arab culture, and its sacred language is Arabic, but a Muslim in Indonesia, Iran, Pakistan or Afghanistan is not like a Muslim from Arabia, Iraq, Syria or Egypt. All adhere to the “Five Pillars of Islam” — the fast of Ramadan, recitation of the creed that “There is no God but God and Mohammed is His prophet,” prayer fives times a day, the giving of alms and making the pilgrimage to Mecca.

Islam does not recognize a separation of church and state, he said. Islam is society and culture, and therein lies the root of conflict and misunderstanding between Muslim and Westerner.

“How can you be Muslim in a modern, secular society?” Provost asked rhetorically. “It isn’t easy. It’s not easy to be Christian or Jewish either.”

He noted that Islam enjoyed its Golden Age under the Caliphate, advancing in art, literature, philosophy, science, mathematics and medicine, while Europe floundered in the Dark Ages.

Islam then entered its own dark age as Europe became resurgent after the Renaissance, and by the 1800s, nearly all Muslim nations had been colonized by Europeans, Provost said. Now they are independent and trying to find their own way.

Europe’s example, he noted, isn’t particularly admired by Muslims, who cite the 100 million killed in the wars of the 20th century as a path they don’t want to follow.

Muslims feel threatened by Western capitalism and culture, the flood of goods and ideas that they feel undermine their own civilization.

“You don’t need troops to invade a country,” Provost said. “You can do it with MTV, advertising, Marlboros, Levis, Kentucky Fried Chicken and McDonald’s.”

Muslims find this cultural imperialism “very offensive. It destroys their culture and what they feel is important. It’s why they feel attacked. There’s a reason why they call us the Great Satan.”

A strong belief system with rules and laws can be a source of comfort and support to those caught up in the rapid changes of modern life, he said.

While liberal westerners decry the status and treatment of women in Muslim countries, Provost said a study of Mohammed’s writings shows a relatively progressive view of women for his time. It was he who first preached their rights to education, inheritance, property, a dowry as a hedge against divorce, and he limited marriage to four wives in a highly polygamous culture, and then only “if the husband could treat each wife the same.”

The practical result, he said, is that 95 percent of Muslim marriages are monogamous.

While news media portray women clad in burqas, Muslim women in many countries dress as stylishly as any westerner. The Quran only requires “modesty,” Provost said, not the complete cover-up that some adherents of Islam demand. Cultures change the observance of all religions.

It has been less than 100 years since American women got the vote, he noted, and Christianity allowed slavery for 1,900 years before it was abolished.

“To live up to the founders of your religion, you have to be changed. You have to walk the talk.”

Source

Inside the Muslim Mind and the Qur’an

Below is most of a short interview with Michael Sells, Professor of Islamic History at the University of Chicago, and author of the book, “Approaching the Qur’an” (think “Controversy in 2002 at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill”). The interview appeared in the Minneapolis-St. Paul StarTribune.

Q Some Americans would see the title of your lecture, “The Politics of the Qur’an,” as synonymous with the politics of terrorism. How do you respond?

A: One of the big problems in the American society is that people do not have a sense of what the Qur’an is. So when someone commits an act of violence and cites a verse from the Qur’an, which seems to justify violence, then it’s easy for people to make the assumption that the Qur’an is a document of violence. So one thing that needs to happen is for people to have a general sense of the sacred texts of religious traditions and to see that there is violence and peace in all of the sacred texts and that people have justified violence by quoting all of the sacred texts.

Q Is there a fundamental gap in understanding between Islam and the West?

A: There are translation gaps. Muslims approach the Qur’an primarily through hearing it in Arabic. It’s a very different experience than reading the Bible, and it makes it very difficult for people, when they pick up a Qur’an and read it, to understand the spirituality that Muslims feel and sense when they hear the Qur’an.

Q Does that translate into anything practical in terms of our understanding of the Muslim world?

A: What’s often lost are the deeper feelings of tenderness, of solidarity with other human beings, of subtlety, of the ability to have many interpretations. All of these things when they are lost lead then to a very stereotypical sense … a narrow, more rigid sense of what the tradition is.

Q There was lively controversy after the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill assigned students in 2002 to read your book, “Approaching the Qur’an.” Critics said you sanitized Islam by leaving out passages commanding violent behavior in jihad. How do you respond?

A: It’s a category mistake. If someone were presenting to Muslims aspects of the Bible that most Christians and Jews find deeply personal in their private religious lives, … you would probably present something like the Book of Genesis. … You probably would not present the Book of Joshua, in which God requires his people to exterminate all of the people of the Palestine area. … I took the part of the Qur’an that Muslims learn first, that they memorize most often, and I translated that.