Do
Humans Think They Sin Forever?
Does Man
think that he will be left uncontrolled (without purpose)?
Was he not
a drop of sperm in lowly form?
Then did he not become a clinging clot?
Then did
not Allah make and fashion him?
And did He not make him of two sexes?
Male
and female.
Has not He
the power to give life to the dead?
surah 75:36-40 Al
Qiyamah (The Resurrection)
(Abdullah Yusuf Ali, The
Holy Qur'an, Amana Corporation, 1989.)
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Do humans think that they
will be left uncontrolled without purpose? without moral responsibility?
without accountability?
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Do humans think that they
will be left uncontrolled to destroy righteousness? corrupt His Earth?
defy His messengers?
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Do humans think that they
will be left uncontrolled to challenge His Plan? mock His Compassion?
mislead His children?
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Do humans think that they
will be left uncontrolled to deny His Existence? mutilate His Good News?
resist His Warning?
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Do humans think that they
will be left uncontrolled to
deviate True Believers (Al-Mu'minun)?
from the Straight Path? twist the Truth?
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Do humans think that
they will be left uncontrolled to conjecture innovations? inspire rejection?
devise divisions?
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Do humans think that they
will be left uncontrolled to speculate the Hereafter? guess Revelation?
rationalize mysteries?
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Were you not a drop of
sperm in lowly form?
-
Then did you not become a
clinging clot?
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Then did not Allah
make and fashion you?
-
And did He not make
you of
two sexes? male and female.
-
Hasn't He the power to
give life to the dead?
-
Doesn't He have the
Power to give life to the dead?
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Doesn't Allah have the
Power to resurrect the living?
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Doesn't Khudda have the
Power to strengthen you with His Spirit?
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Doesn't His
Ruh have the
Power to complete His Al-Qadar (Divine Predeterminations)?
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Doesn't His
Ruh have the
Power to reveal all His Parables?
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Doesn't the Mahdi
have the Power to complete all His Prophecies?
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Doesn't His Adi Shakti
have the Power to lead all to His Kingdom?
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Doesn't His Spirit have
the Power to grant the eternal life of His Promised Paradise?
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Doesn't God Almighty
have the Power to destroy all that is false, misleading, divisive,
delusive and satanic?
"The
Day of Judgment appears across the spectrum of world
religions in various shapes and forms. In Islam, it is
said that a denial of its coming is a direct denial of
the foundations of Islamic conviction."
www.islamicminds.healthekids.net/
"Allah
has given frequent warnings against Evil and want of
Faith in all ages, through Signs and through
inspiration - the latter ("the Word")
being even more direct and personal than the former.
Those who did not heed the warning found to their cost
that it was true, and they perished. Such contumacy is
the rejection of Truth only yields when the actual
penalty is in sight. . . .
If Faith results from an active exertion of our
spiritual faculties or understanding, it follows that
if we let those die, Allah's Signs in His Creation
or in the spoken Word which comes by inspiration
through the mouths of His Messengers will not reach us
anymore than music reaches a deaf man. . .
The Furqan, the Criterion between right and wrong, has
been sent to us from Allah. If we accept guidance, it
is not as if we confer favours on those who bring us
guidance. They suffer unselfishly for us, in order
that we may be guided for our own good. On the other
hand, if we reject it, it is our own loss. We have a
certain amount of free will, and the responsibility is
ours and cannot be shifted to the Teachers sent by
Allah."
Abdullah
Yusuf Ali, The Holy Qur'an
"Generally,
Muslims are taught not to use their minds in religious matters. This
teaching is spread through some false hadith. Purportedly, the use of the
mind in religious matters would lead us astray. If the mind may not be
used in religious matters, why may it be used in other matters? Are
religious and secular matters to be kept separate? Indeed, this is what
has paralyzed the intellects of Muslims in comparison with others. The
minds of Muslims have been dead for a thousand years, killed by these
false hadiths. On the contrary, the teaching of the Quran give the mind a
noble place. God deems human beings who do not use their minds worse than
animals! (7:179) God bars those who do not use their minds from the fold
of the faithful. (10:100)"
Dr. Rashad
Khalifa, Ph.d, (Masjid
Tucson, USI, Tucson, AZ, USA.)
"Because
the Ottoman state was based on the principles of the religion it began
everything with madrasa education. In madrasas today, Arabic, sarf, nahw,
logic, fiqh, badi', bayan, ma'ani are taught. They teach them in order to
understand the religious books which are in Arabic correctly. They say
that the gate of ijtihad have been closed. The majority of those who got
education in the madrasa have remained on the first steps of these
branches of knowledge. [Even] one out of a hundred hodjas does not know
how to read and write correctly. Many of the hodjas, whose lives elapse in
the madrasa, cannot pass beyond reading and writing as if it were a sea
without shores, and the meaning remains unknown to them like the poles.
They are lazy, ignorant and fanatical. I wish their fanaticism were for
something which they knew. They are fanatical in defending something which
they do not know. And their purpose is to exploit Muslims and live
comfortably. Though these hodjas are ideally and morally ignorant, they
are in the disguise of religious scholars. There are real scholars among
them. It is a debt for us to respect them. Today, there is nothing left of
Islam in madrasas. Pulpits, made in order to teach the religion, decency
and the Qur'an, are used for nothing but deceiving Muslims."
Waqf
Ikhlas,
Istanbul, 21 June 1995.
"Salvation"
is a term which arises most clearly in the Christian tradition
- the idea that God's love through Jesus Christ will save
humans from their sinful state. However, other religions have
parallel concepts. Rather than salvation, Jews speak of
"redemption" for individuals, for Israel and indeed for all
nations. In Islam the closest parallel is found in the term
najat which means "escape or
deliverance from the fires of hell to the pleasures of
paradise by following God's guidance." In Judaism,
Christianity and Islam the human condition from which we all
begin is one of sin or disobedience to God, and it is from
that state that we need to be saved. When we turn to Hinduism
and Buddhism, however, it is human ignorance rather than sin
that is our baseline human experience. Our ignorance traps us
in a seemingly unending series of lives - of birth, aging,
sickness and death repeated over and over. This apparently
endless series of suffering, death and rebirth is the human
condition that leads one to long for "release from rebirth" -
the Hindu and Buddhist functional parallel to the idea of
salvation. "Release" for Hindus is referred to as
moksa, while Buddhists call it
nirvana.
In his classic work, The Varieties of Religious Experience,
the psychologist William James suggests that we humans
innately seek for a wider sense of ourselves through which
saving experiences come. This "wider self," says James, might
well be the door that the divine uses to enter into the lives
of humans here on earth. In the chapters that follow we are
introduced to different perceptions of the divine, of our
human condition, and of the "wider sense of self" through
which salvation may come. In the history of the human search
for salvation we find not only differences between religious
but also a great variety of understandings within each
tradition. What is common, however, is the basic insight found
in all the religious traditions "that this world is not a
place in which we are hopelessly lost, that evil or illusory
as the world may be, and sinful or ignorant as we are, there
is a way, a path, that leads from darkness to light, from
lostness to salvation."
Harold Coward
Sin and Salvation in the World
Religions: A Short Introduction
LAA
UQSIM BI-YAWM AL-QIYAMAH;
WA-LAA UQSIM BI-AN-NAFSAL-LAWWAAMAH
I do
call to witness the Resurrection Day;
And I do call to witness the
self-reproaching Spirit.
