Friday Nasiha

Living The Quran

Al-Hajj (The Pilgrimage)
Chapter 22: Verse 41

Islamic State
(They are) those who, if We establish them in the land, establish regular prayer and give regular charity, enjoin the right and forbid wrong: with Allah rests the end (and decision) of (all) affairs.

These are the characteristics of those who help God and who are deserving of God's aid and support. When power is bestowed on them, rather than being like those who engage in evil deeds and who strut about arrogantly exulting in their power, such people concern themselves with such noble tasks like establishing Prayer. Likewise, rather than squandering their wealth on luxury and self-indulgence, they use it in the way of Zakah. Again, they use their power to promote goodness and to remove evil.

This verse succinctly states the basic objectives of the Islamic state. It also clearly expresses the main characteristics of its functionaries and rulers. Anyone who wants to comprehend the nature of the Islamic state will be able to do so with the help of this single verse.

It is God Who decides to whom governance of a territory should be entrusted. People who are intoxicated with power are prone to misunderstand that it is they who decide the fate of people. But God, Who has the power to transform a tiny seed into a huge tree, and Who conversely, can turn a huge tree into a pile of ashes, also has the power to strike a fatal blow and make an example of those who, by their acts of repression, struck terror into the hearts of people making themselves appear too welll entrenched to be removed from power. On the other hand, He can also raise the downtrodden to heights of power that none can dream of.

Source:
"Towards Understanding The Quran" - Sayyid Abul Ala Mawdudi, Vol. 6, p. 46

Understanding The Prophet's Life

Who Created God?

People with no inner spiritual life sometimes ask: If God created everything, who created God? The Prophet, peace be upon him, said that some people would ask this very question: "A day will certainly come when some people will sit with their legs crossed and ask: 'If God created everything, who created God?'" [Bukhari, I'tisam, 3]

At best, the question is based on perceived "cause and effect" relationships. Everything can be thought of as an effect and attributed to a prior cause that, in turn, is attributed to a prior cause, and so on. However, we must remember that cause is only a hypothesis, for it has no objective existence. All that objectively exists is a particular sequence of circumstances that is often (but not always) repeated. If such a hypothesis is applied to existence, we cannot find a creator of the first cause, because each creator must have had a prior creator. The end result is a never-ending chain of creators.

The Creator must be Self-Subsistent and One, without like or equal. If any created being "causes" anything, that capacity was created within that being, for only the Creator is Self-Existent and Self-Subsistent. Only the Creator truly creates and determines possible causes and effects for His creation. Therefore, we speak of God as the Sustainer, who holds and gives life to all of His Creation. All causes begin in Him, and all effects end in Him. In truth, created things are "0"s that will never add up to anything, unless God bestows real value or existence by placing a positive "1" before the "0".

In the sphere of existence, what we call causes and effects have no direct or independent influence. We may have to use such words to understand how a part of creation is made intelligible to us and available for our use. But even this confirms our dependence upon God and our answerability before Him. God does not need causes and effects to create; rather, we need them to understand what He has created.

Source:
“Who Created God?” – Fethullah Gulen

Blindspot!

Shariah

Cleverly manipulated exposure to the imagery of a whip cracking on a naked back and a veil enshrouding a woman’s face has led many to believe that the Shariah , the divine code of Muslim conduct, is in reality no more than a collection of values and practices that are primitive, uncivilized and barbaric. What to a Muslim is the object of his longing and endeavour has been very subtly projected as a relic from the dark ages which enslaves the woman and inflicts punishments on the criminal which are cruel, inhuman and degrading.

The Quran most certainly does prescribe corporal punishment for certain serious social crimes and it does lay down the principle of retribution, or qisas; it is very emphatic, too, about the crucial role of the family in human society and therefore insists on assigning different well-defined roles to men and women; and it does lay down many other regulations and laws and expects Muslims to obey the eternally valid injunctions of God and His Prophet.

But will these and similar provisions of the Shariah really plunge society back into darkness? Are they inhuman and barbaric? Are they an indicator of Islam’s inability to keep pace with the demands of human progress? The issues need to be examined seriously to determine the place and valued of the Shariah and its provisions in the ultimate order of human civilization and happiness. The need for this examination is especially acute in the view of the dogmatic position adopted by the West on these questions. A host of Western writers have said it, and the media continue to harp on the same theme: unless Islam is prepared to relent on these and other legal provisions of the Shariah there can and will be no accommodation; only a continuation of Western rejection of Islam’. Such vehemence makes one wonder whether the loud chorus about the Shariah, and such of its specific provisions as pertain to women and punishment, is in all cases the result of genuine misunderstanding and moral indignation, or whether the issue is merely being used by some as a whipping-boy to settle scores with Islam – old and new.

No apologies or excuses are needed to explain away or make acceptable to the West what has been so clearly laid down by the Quran and the Prophet in this regard and what has been so consistently accepted and adhered to by Muslims. There should be no place in dialogue with the West for such tortuous, self-deprecating arguments as: ‘polygamy is permitted, but the conditions of justice attached to it makes it effectively prohibited’. Or: ‘Corporal punishment is prescribed but hedged in with such unworkable requirements of evidence that it is virtually impossible to carry it out. Or, at least, it cannot be carried out unless an "ideal" just society is established, when it will in any case become unnecessary’.

Why those who advance this specious logic should think that God would lay down things which were impossible to practice is not made clear. As if He does not know how to say what He means, and say it clearly! Such excuses are unfair to the Quran and the Prophet, and an affront to their wisdom, and at the same time illogical and implausible to the unconvinced.

Source:
“Shariah: The Way of Justice” - Khurram Murad