Basic Faith, Not Dogma

The first word revealed to the Messenger of God, Muhammad (peace and God’s blessings upon him) was “iqraa!” (= Read!), which means: examine and grasp the meaning of written characters. More than that, it can have the meaning of: examine and try to understand how this creation has been created. The first five verses of the Qur’an revealed to the Messenger (God’s blessings upon him) were as follows:

“Read in the Name of your Lord who has created. He has created human being out of a germ cell. Read, for your Lord is the Most Bountiful One. Who has taught (man) the use of the pen. He taught man what he did not know!” (96:1-5).

It shows that even preaching the basic faith has to be done by convincing people with knowledge. Knowledge should be spread among people. Observation should be encouraged, however not by asking people to believe in a dogma, nor to follow the Messenger blindly. In the Qur’an, God ordered the Messenger to declare his way of preaching:

“Say, This is my way: I call to God with full perception, I and whoever follows me. Limitless is God in His glory, and I am not among those who associate partners (with God)” (12:108).

God ordered His messenger to invite people to the Way of Him, the Lord, not with dogmatic method, but with wisdom and fair exhortation. He asked His messenger to argue with them reasonably in the most kindly manner: “Call to the Way of your Lord with wisdom and fair exhortation, and argue with them by way of that which is best. Truly your Lord knows best those who stray from His way and He knows best those who are guided” (16:125).

Although the main preach of the Messenger of God (and all God’s messengers before him) was about the basic faith, that “there is no other god than the One God”, that preach was never in a type of dogma. To convince people to that basic faith in that Unique God, the Qur’an turns their attention to God’s creation that lies in front of them. Can they claim that their deities have created the heavens and the earth? Can they claim that their idols sent down water causing rows of those splendid gardens to grow with different kinds of trees and plantations?

The Qur’an draws their attention to the earth, their planet, how can it be stable in space among other planets; and to the rivers, which flow throughout the earth; and to the mountains, which make this planet firm; and how those waters in the seas vaporize to create clouds so they can then water the earth; who orders all those things regularly to revivify the barren land, except God alone? And when a person or a group of persons are desperate, in whatever bad condition, call God urgently to take away their suffering, who except God could respond and help? And there are hidden realities, of which we only know a trace, is there anyone except God, the Creator, who controls them and keeps them hidden? (See: Qur’an, 27:59-65).

The Qur’an also draws the attention of those who doubt the resurrection to their own nature, or to the nature around them:

1)   To their own nature. How wonderful is the human physical and intellectual growth, from lifeless matter to seed, to fertilized ovum, to fetus, to child, to youth, to adulthood, to old age and finally to death. How could one doubt that the Author of all these wonderful stages of his life in this world can also easily give him another kind of life after death, on the Day of Resurrection!

2)   To the nature around. If one looks at the external nature, he or she will see the earth dead and barren, then comes down the rain to fertilize and bring it to life, growth and beauty in various forms of herbs, vegetables, fruits, trees and palms. Surely, the Creator of all these wonderful things can create yet another and a newer world. (For reference, see Qur’an, 22:5). “That is because God, He is the Truth, and because He is reviving the dead, and has power over all things” (22:6).

The Qur’an is full of verses encouraging and urging people to use their faculty of reason. Hundreds of verses ending with “will you not use the reason?”, or  “will you not reflect?”

Even forbidden things, God explains with arguments why they are forbidden: “They ask you about intoxicants and games of chance. Say: In both there is great evil as well as some benefit for man; but the evil, which they cause, is greater than the benefit, which they bring. And they ask you as to what they should spend (in God’s cause), say: Whatever you can spare. In this way God makes clear unto you His Signs so that you might reflect” (2:219).

“O you who have attained to faith! Intoxicants, and games of chance, and idolatrous practices, and the divining of the future are but a loathsome evil of Satan’s doing: shun it, then, so that you might attain to a happy state! By means of intoxicants and games of chance Satan seeks only to sow enmity and hatred among you, and to turn you away from remembrance of God and from prayer. Will you not, then, desist?” (5:90-91).

This belief and these ordinances are reasonably explained in the Qur’an and in the guidance of the Messenger of God, whereas a dogma is a belief or a set of believes that is taught by a religious organization.

In this article, I plead that faith, even the basic faith in Islam, is given by God through His messenger, explained in the Qur’an and preached with full perception of arguments, by the messenger and his faithful followers. The Qur’an itself does not allow people to believe without conviction brought by reason. The truly God-conscious are deeply desirous to understand the teachings of the Qur’an with perception, and therefore, to listen to it with wide open ears, and to look into it attentively:

“And those (who have attained to faith), whenever they are reminded of their Lord’s signs (= Qur’anic verses), they do not droop themselves down, as if they were deaf and blind” (25:73). 

This shows that they think about what they listen to or what they read and reflect deeply upon it.

MONSTERS In History & In The Present Time

Although God has created human beings in the best form, has honored and preferred them above other creations, yet we see in history and in the present time, people, rulers or non rulers who humiliate others.

There are persons who attack human dignity as individuals or as a group of people, or a nation’s integrity and its sense of identity.

In the Qur’an we find a record about what the Pharaoh (in the time of Prophet Moses) did in Egypt, as follows: “Truly, Pharaoh had exalted himself in the land and had divided its inhabitants into sects, abasing one party of them, slaughtering their sons, and sparing their women; indeed he was of the workers of corruption. And We desired to bestow Our favour upon those that were abased in the land, and to make them the inheritors” (28:4-5).

In 1944, the Soviet government (on the order of Joseph Stalin) evicted the Crimean Tatars from Crimea. A total of 238'000 people were deported in two days. More than 32,000 Soviet troops participated in this action. The forced deportees were only given 30 minutes to gather personal belongings, after which they were loaded onto cattle trains and moved out of Crimea to Uzbekistan, Mari, Kazakhstan, and to various oblast (= province) of Russia. Nearly 200'000 of the deportees perished while they were in the way. And most of the Crimean Tatar men who were fighting in the ranks of the Red Army were demobilized and sent into forced labor camps in Siberia and in the Ural mountain region. From May to November 1944, more than 10'000 Crimean Tatars died of starvation in Uzbekistan; 30'000 died in exile during the following year. Between July 1944 and January 1947 about 101'000 Crimean Tatars of the deportees died due to starvation and disease.

On August 6th, 1945 the USA dropped an atomic bomb (called “Little Boy”) on Hiroshima in Japan. Three days later a second atomic bomb (called “Fat Man”) was dropped on the city of Nagasaki.

Estimates of total deaths in Hiroshima ranged between 100'000 and 180'000 out of a population of 350'000. About 63% of the buildings in Hiroshima were completely destroyed and nearly 92% of the structures in the city had been destroyed or damaged. Estimates of casualties from Nagasaki ranged between 50'000 and 100'000 persons.

Many reasons were given as to why the US administration (under the presidency of Harry S. Truman) decided to drop the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, for example: The US wanted to force Japan’s surrender as quickly as possible to minimize American casualties. Another arrogant reason was to use the atomic bomb before the Soviet Union entered the war against Japan, to establish US dominance there afterwards.

Yet people in the West only talk about the cruelty and notoriousness of Hitler, who of course has done a lot of inhuman persecution and humiliated a part of the population (the Jews). He put them in concentration and extermination camps to persecute and kill them systemically by gassing.  But it is also unfair to ignore the cruelty of Harry S. Truman and his politician colleagues who did all these cruel deeds in Japan and who supported boldly the creation of a Zionist State called “Israel” in Palestine, by evicting two thirds of Palestinians from their homes and their country, and by putting that planted “state” like a cancer germ inside the Arab World.

Nor people in the West talk about the cruelty of George Bush (the father) and George Bush (the son) while Presidents of the USA, killed a lot of innocents and blindly destroyed their homes in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq.

International media does not blame President Barak Obama who followed his predecessors in his crazy wars. Instead of blaming him, an esteemed organization has even given him the Nobel Prize for Peace, in advance! (when he first took office).

We cannot either forget Gamal Abdel Nasser (1918-1970) who ruled Egypt from 1954 until his death. He treated his political opponents with such cruelty. Prisons were full of members of the Muslim Brotherhood Organization. Persecution in prisons was famous for its severe torture.

Of course there is also the cruelty of Saddam Hussein al-Tikriti (1937-2006) who ruled Iraq (1979-2003) and killed and tortured thousands of people.

Then there is also Hafez Al-Asad (1930-2000) who ruled Syria (1970-2000) and dared to destroy half of the city of Hamah and killed around 20'000 human beings and surely as many animals and agriculture.

And his cruelty was inherited by his son Bashar Al-Asad who took power after his father, and while writing this article this monster is still bombing most cities and villages of Syria and killing and torturing innocent people who want to live with freedom and dignity.

There are so many other monsters in this world, we cannot mention all of them in an article like this, but last and not least we have to mention the great monster of Libya, Gaddafi, who had made a lot of harm to the people of Libya, before they revolted. But even after the Revolution, his harm is still continuing.

There are also terrorists unfortunately bearing the “Islamic” slogan (ISIS), with their obvious cruelty and humiliation of human beings.

According to the Qur’an, all human beings belong to one human family, without any inherent superiority of one over another. So each one should respect and safeguard the other’s dignity, rather than to humiliate him or her:

“O mankind, We have indeed created you from a male and a female, and made you nations and tribes that you may come to know each. Truly the noblest of you in the sight of God is the most God-fearing among you. Truly God is Knower, Aware” (49:13).

“And do not think that God is unaware of what the evildoers are doing; He is only postponing them until when eyes shall stare wide-open; as they come hastening with their heads turned upwards, their gaze returning not to them, and their hearts shall be hollow. And warn the people of a day when punishment will come upon them, and the wrongdoers will say: Our Lord, give us  respite for a short term, and we will respond to Your call and will follow the messengers; is it not that you had sworn oaths earlier that you would suffer no decline?” (14:42-44).

Al-Quds: The Plundered City

Al-Quds (Jerusalem), the city of “Al-Aqsa” Mosque, half of it is already occupied by the Zionists (backed by USA and European countries) since 1948, and the rest since 1967, which is considered by Al-Qur’an as a blessed environment... Today we could also call it The Plundered City.

In these last weeks, Jerusalem and its Arab population have been suffering a lot. The Israeli aggression is increasing daily. Al-Aqsa Mosque is often attacked by Jewish settlers, guarded by Israeli army or police. Sometimes the police close it and prohibits Muslims under 45 years old from entering the Mosque. More and more settlement homes are built and more are planned to be build. Many Jerusalemites are arrested every day and many Palestinian houses and olive trees belonging to the Palestinians are destroyed.

In this situation of calamity, we remember what happened to the natives of Jerusalem, at the time when it was under the occupation of the Romans, then Byzantine, more than 500 years ago no Jews were allowed to live in this city. So that when Umar ibn Alkhattab (the head of Islamic State in Medina) came to Jerusalem at the invitation of Sophronius, the Patriarch of Jerusalem who was also the representative of Byzantine, he could not avoid to mention in his famous “Umar Assurances Charter” that he would not allow Jews to live in the city. But later on, this restriction was no more valid, since in Islam there is no such dismissal.

Let us go through that charter, to compare it with the Israeli occupation laws and practices of today:

“In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate. This is the assurance of safety, which the servant of God, Umar, the Commander of the Faithful, has given to the people of Aelia (Jerusalem). He has given them an assurance of safety for themselves: for their property, their churches, their crosses, the sick and healthy of the city and for all the rituals, which belong to their religion. Their churches will not be inhabited by Muslims and will not be destroyed. Neither they, nor the land, on which they stand, nor their cross, nor their property will be damaged. They will not be forcibly converted. No Jew will live with them in Jerusalem. …”.

In early 637, the Muslim army encircled Jerusalem. Patriarch Sophronius refused to surrender unless Umar, the Khalifah himself were to come to Jerusalem.

Umar then travelled alone with his servant and they had only one single donkey to share for their journey. When he arrived in Jerusalem, he was greeted by Sophronius, who was amazed to see Umar dressed in no more than a simple robe and as such was indistinguishable from his servant.

Umar was given a tour of the city, including the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. When the time for prayer came, Sophronius invited Umar to pray inside the Church, but Umar refused. He insisted that if he prayed there, later Muslims would use it as an excuse to convert it into a mosque – thereby depriving Christendom of one of its holiest sites. Instead Umar prayed outside the Church. (Summarized from: “Lost Islamic History” by Firas Alkhateeb).

Palestinian expulsion

Palestinians are people whose ancestors had lived there for millennia. This ended in 1948 with their forcible expulsion when over 700,000 indigenous people (about three quarter of the population) were expelled by the Haganah (= the armed Zionist militia that later became the Israeli Defense Forces) to make room for the influx of Jews from Europe and create a purely Jewish State. This event was called the Nakbah, or the catastrophe, when David Ben-Gurion, the head of the Jewish Agency, proclaimed the establishment of the State of Israel. US President Harry S. Truman recognized it the same day.

In June 1967, Israel (with its armed forces supported by the US, France, Britain and Germany) managed to defeat combined forces of Egypt, Syria and Jordan and also overran large tracts of territory, including East Jerusalem where stands Al-Aqsa Mosque, the West Bank and Gaza. Later another exodus of Palestinians took place, with more than 250,000 people fleeing to the eastern bank of the Jordan River. However, roughly 600,000 Palestinians remained in the West Bank, and 300,000 in Gaza. Thus the 300,000 Israeli Jews came to rule some 1,200,000 Arabs in Palestine.

Today there are more than five million Palestinians living in exile from homes and land their families had inhabited for generations. Many still suffer the legacy of their dispossession: destitution, penury and insecurity. The ethnic cleansing of Palestinians is going on until now. Those in the Gaza Strip (their number has already reached 2,820,000 in a space of 365 square kilometers only) are under nearly complete blockage.

This is a pity, because even though “Israel” was a seed that has clearly been planted by the “West” to continuously have control over all Arab countries through that “plant”, yet the Arab “nations” (with their so many advantages: territory, richness, population, common language, in majority a common religion, etc.) are not capable to defend Jerusalem and its Al-Aqsa Mosque. If they really intended to, they could have the support of many Muslim and non-Muslim nations.

Reasoning ... A Moral Requirement In Islam

There are multifarious kinds of thoughts among people in this world. For instance you will find people who are called deists who belong to the Deism. “Deism is the belief in the existence of God based solely on natural reason, without reference to revelation” (Collins English Dictionary).

One of those deists was the famous English philosopher Sir Antony Flew (1923-2010). He was a prominent atheist until December 2004 when he declared astonishingly that he had become a deist. He rejected the ideas of a life after death, of God as the source of good. He was particularly hostile to Islam. In a December 2004 interview he said: “I’m thinking of God very different from the God of the Christian and far and away from the God of Islam, because both are depicted as omnipotent Oriental despots, cosmic Saddam Husseins” (Associated Press, 10 December 2004). In 2007 Harper Collins, New York, published  “There is a God” written by Antony Flew with Roy Varghese.

Those people claim boastfully that their belief in God is by natural reason. But if they sincerely use their natural reason they will find out that God is the Creator and Sustainer of the universe. They think that religion does not let its adherents use their reasoning. Islam, however, not only lets them do that, but most of the Qur’anic chapters are full of verses urging the readers to use their faculty of reason given by God. Hundreds of verses in the Qur’an urge the readers to observe nature around them, and ponder on their own nature thoroughly.

“Have they not reflected upon the dominion of the heaven and of the earth, and what things God has created, and that it may be that they term is already near? In what fact then after this will they believe?” (7:185).

“And on earth there are signs, visible to all who seek truth to believe. And within your own selves, will you not then perceive? And in the heaven is your provision, and (there is also) what you are promised. So by the Lord of the heaven and the earth, it is as assuredly true as (the fact) that you have (power of) speech” (51:20-23).

God urges people in the Qur’an to contemplate and look at the wonderful things unfolding around them: the space in the heavens above, the globe of the earth; and to consider that all things God created in pairs: gender in humans, plants and animals, by which one individual is complementary to another, by the subtle forces of nature. There is also day and night, positive and negative electricity, forces of attraction and repulsion. Everything in the universe has its counterpart, pair, or complement. God alone is One, with none like Him or needed complement. There are many noble things to contemplate!

“He (it is who) brings forth the living out of that which is dead, and brings forth the dead out of that which is alive, and gives life to the earth after it had been lifeless; and in such (a manner), you shall be brought forth. And among His signs is that He created you of dust, and then, lo, you become human beings spreading. And of His signs that He created, for you from yourselves mates that you might find peace by their side, and He ordained between you affection and mercy. Surely in that there are signs for a people who reflect. And of His signs is the creation of the heavens and the earth and the differences of your tongues and your colors. Surely in that there are signs for all who are possessed of (innate) knowledge!” (30:19-22).

Philosophers like Antony Flew, although they have already proved scientifically that there is a God who created the universe, that God has excellent attributes, and wisely has given all creation its natural laws, however at the same time, they do not believe that this God, the Creator, is continuously sustaining His creation, giving orders to human beings and has given them certain free-will and power as a trial, and will question them and will give them requital in the hereafter.

“O mankind, if you are in doubt about the Resurrection, then lo (consider that) We have created you from dust then, from a drop, then from an embryonic lump complete and incomplete, that We may make clear to you. And We establish in the womb whatever We will for a specified time, then We bring you forth as infants, and then that you may come of age. And there are some of you who are taken away, and there are some of you who are relegated to the most abject time of life, so that after (having had) some knowledge, he no longer knows anything. And you see the earth torpid, yet when We send down water upon it, it stirs, and swells, and grows (plants of) every delightful kind. That is because God, He is the Truth, and because He revives the dead and has power over all things; and because the Hour will come, whereof there is no doubt, and because God will resurrect those who are in the graves” (22:5-7).