On Materialists, secularists, agnostics.....from Abu Jahl to Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hichen...
MATERIALISTS, SECULARISTS, and animists do not believe in divine revelation. The Arabs of Makkah were idol-worshipers who did not believe in a life to come. When the Prophet told them that he had received divine revelation which taught that the physical, as well as the metaphysical, world was bigger and more sophisticated than they had come to realize, they turned against him. The Qur'an advised them to refer to the Israelites and the Christians, earlier recipients of divine revelation whom the Qur'an refers to as 'People of the Book' and learn from their experience. This leaves us wondering as to what happened to the revelations which Moses and Jesus had brought to their respective followers?
The Old and New Testaments contain statements which are strange and inaccurate. Who, for instance , can believe the Old Testament account that God grew jealous of Adam after he had eaten from the tree of knowledge, and , fearing that he would eat from the tree of eternity and become His contender for power, had him expelled from the Garden of Eden and sent down a s a punishment for him and his offspring? Is it conceivable that God 'killed His only son, Jesus, or allowed him to be killed as atonement for Adam's sin and to facilitate his salvation? These and other myths are among some of the many fabrications which are to be found in the Old and New Testaments, books claimed to be the words of God, such that whoever rejects them " shall never enter the "Kingdom of God" !
The reason that the Qur'an referred the Arabs of Makkah to the People of the Book was only because these had had experience of divine revelation, and not in order for them to learn from their scriptures. Indeed , the Quran corrected certain claims of earlier scriptures:
By Allah, We verily sent messengers unto the nations before thee, but the devil made their deeds fairseeming unto them. So he is their patron this day, and theirs will be a painful doom. (63) And We have revealed the Scripture unto thee only that thou mayst explain unto them that wherein they differ, and (as) a guidance and a mercy for a people who believe. (64)
the Qur'an is an elucidation if the truth propounded by earlier revelation and a means of salvation for man's soul and sanity. The revelation brought by Muhammad purified and and reconciled man's thinking with earlier religious thought and closed the gap between purely materialistic belief and the belief in the unknown. The surah defines Muhammad's mission thus: "We have revealed unto thee the Remembrance that thou mayst explain to mankind that which hath been revealed for them, and that haply they may reflect. "(44) . Reflection is a healthy function of a sound and vigorous mind, and rational thinking is an essential feature of a sensible mentality. Any system of religious belief which does not address man's rational faculties, or is not in tune with the requirement, or is not in tune with the requirements and limits of human nature, can claim no divine origins.
Allah hath said: Choose not two Gods. There is only One God. So of Me, Me only, be in awe. (51) Unto Him belongeth whatsoever is in the heavens and the earth, and religion is His for ever. Will ye then fear any other than Allah? (52)
Shaykh Muhammad al-Ghazali
[ 1917 - 1996 ]
Reflection and commentary by Imam Dr Yusuf Ziya Kavakci
part 5..
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