Friday Nasiha

Living The Quran

Seeing Clearly
Al-Araf (The Heights) - Chapter 7: Verse 201

"If those who are God-fearing experience a tempting thought from Satan, they bethink themselves [of God]; and they begin to see things clearly."

This short verse is highly inspiring, pointing out some profound facts within the human soul. This is made possible only through the unique Quranic style. The way the verse is concluded adds new meanings to its beginning, which are not indicated by the opening words. The conclusion, “and they begin to see things clearly,” suggests that Satan’s thoughts can cause people to be blind, unable to see anything clearly. But fearing God and guarding against incurring His anger keeps hearts alert and reminds them of God’s guidance. When they are so reminded, they begin to see things clearly. A tempting thought from Satan is, then, a cause of blindness while the remembrance of God is a cause of opening eyes and hearts. Satan’s thoughts send people into darkness and turning to God gives them light. When people equip themselves with following divine guidance, Satan can have no power over them.

Compiled From:
"In the Shade of the Quran" - Sayyid Qutb, Vol. 16, p. 311

Understanding The Prophet's Life

Insubstantial Differences

Dissension (ikhtilaf) over the details of formal worship, including variations in the forms of the call to and 'setting up' of the canonical prayer (adhan, and iqamah); the Id prayer; prayer at times of fear for one's safety; and other such rituals which vary in form but are the same in essence are, according to Ibn Taymiyyah, a type of ikhtilaf al-tanawwu, that is, an insubstantial difference of opinion. As opposed to ikhtilaf al-tadadd (a substantial difference of opinion amounting to contradiction), ikhtilaf al-tanawwu consists of preference of one of two or more equally valid views, over the others, which should be presented and evaluated as such. The essence of preference lies in the recognition of the basic validity of multiple views, one of which may be recommended, while the others are neither denounced nor rejected as false.

Abdullah ibn Masud narrates: "I heard a man reciting a verse of the Quran which I had heard the Prophet (peace be upon him) recite differently. So I took him by the hand and led him to the Prophet and mentioned the matter to him. Then I noticed (a look of) displeasure appear on the Prophet's face and he said: 'Both of you are right (kilakuma muhsin) [so] do not disagree [over this]. For those who came before you disagreed [over trivialities] and consequently perished.'" [Mishkat]

Ibn Taymiyyah explains this hadith by saying that the Prophet forbade disagreement which consists of juhd, that is, denial of the truth and veracity of the opinion or conduct of the other party. This was the case in the foregoing Hadith, where the Prophet drew attention of the parties to the fact that disagreement over insubstantial matters is basically destructive. The parties were both reciting the Quran but with different dialectical variants, which was why the Prophet declared them both to be muhsin (doing something good and proper), but corrected them for questioning the validity of their different opinions on something non-essential - the variant readings.

Compiled From:
"Freedom of Expression in Islam" - Mohammad Hashim Kamali, pp. 144, 145

Blindspot!

Ultimate Value

Our modern Western conception of "religion" is idiosyncratic and eccentric. No other cultural tradition has anything like it, and even premodern European Christians would have found it reductive and alien.

For about fifty years now it has been clear in the academy that there is no universal way to define religion. In the West we see "religion" as a coherent system of obligatory beliefs, institutions, and rituals, centering on a supernatural God, whose practice is essentially private and hermetically sealed off from all "secular" activities. But words in other languages that we translate as "religion" almost invariably refer to something larger, vaguer, and more encompassing. The Arabic din signifies an entire way of life. The Sanskrit dharma is also a "total" concept, untranslatable, which covers law, justice, morals, and social life. The Oxford Classical Dictionary firmly states: "No word in either Greek or Latin corresponds to the English 'religion' or 'religious.'" The idea of religion as an essentially personal and systematic pursuit was entirely absent from classical Greece, Japan, Egypt, Mesopotamia, Iran, China, and India. Nor does the Hebrew Bible have any abstract concept of religion; and the Talmudic rabbis would have found it impossible to express what they meant by faith in a single word or even in a formula, since the Talmud was expressly designed to bring the whole of human life into the ambit of the sacred.

The only faith tradition that does fit the modern Western notion of religion as something codified and private is Protestant Christianity, which, like religion in this sense of the word, is also a product of the early modern period. At this time Europeans and Americans had begun to separate religion and politics, because they assumed, not altogether accurately, that the theological squabbles of the Reformation had been entirely responsible for the Thirty Years' War. The conviction that religion must be rigorously excluded from political life has been called the charter myth of the sovereign nation-state. The philosophers and statesmen who pioneered this dogma believed that they were returning to a more satisfactory state of affairs that had existed before ambitious Catholic clerics had confused two utterly distinct realms. But in fact their secular ideology was as radical an innovation as the modern market economy that the West was concurrently devising. To non-Westerners, who had not been through this particular modernizing process, both these innovations would seem unnatural and even incomprehensible. The habit of separating religion and politics is now so routine in the West that it is difficult for us to appreciate how thoroughly the two co-inhered in the past. It was never simply a question of the state "using" religion; the two were indivisible.

In the premodern world, religion permeated all aspects of life. A host of activities now considered mundane were experienced as deeply sacred: forest clearing, hunting, football matches, dice games, astronomy, farming, state building, tugs-of-war, town planning, commerce, imbibing strong drink, and, most particularly warfare. Ancient peoples would have found it impossible to see where "religion" ended and "politics" began. This was not because they were too stupid to understand the distinction but because they wanted to invest everything they did with ultimate value.

Compiled From:
"Fields of Blood" - Karen Armstrong, pp. 4-6