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--- Issue: "911" Section: ID: "1" SName: "Living The Quran" url: "living-the-quran" SOrder: "1" Content: "\r\n

Material World
\r\n An-Nahl (The Bee) - Chapter 16: Verse 69 (partial)

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"Verily in this is a sign for those who give thought."

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The Quran does not include, nor should it include, ready-made scientific truths. Instead, it implies an essential scientific position, a concern for the outside world which is unusual for a religion. The Quran points to so many facts in nature and calls on man to respond to them. Man observes, searches, and perceives not the self-made nature but a world which is God's masterpiece. This is why this observation is not objective, indifferent, or free of desire. It is the mixture of scientific curiosity and religious admiration. Many of the descriptions of nature in the Quran, sometimes very poetic, are the best illustrations of this tendency. In these verses, turned entirely toward nature, we find a complete acceptance of the world, a total lack of any sort of conflict with nature. In Islam, matter is lent to so many beautiful and noble things, as is the case with the body in salah and the estate in zakah. The material world is not Satan's kingdom; the body is not the seat of sin. Even the world to come, the object of man's greatest hopes, is portrayed in the Quran in the colors of this world. This only demonstrates that the material world is not inwardly alien to Islam.

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It is impossible to carry out Islam in practice on a primitive level of consciousness. Salah can only be correctly performed if the orientation in time and space is correct. In salah, people turn toward Makkah, orienting themselves in terms of space. The prayer is made at a time defined by astronomical facts. The act has to be performed at an exactly determined set time of year - that is, at a certain position of the earth in its orbit around the sun. Zakah requires statistics, evidence, and accounting. Hajj, the pilgrimage, is connected to travel and the acquaintance with many facts that only a long journey calls for. Simply put, leaving everything else aside, the Muslim community, by practicing nothing but these four pillars of Islam, has to reach a minimal level of civilization. One cannot be a Muslim and yet remain in a state of barbarity.

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Compiled From:
\r\n \"Islam Between East and West\" - Alija Ali Izetbegovic, pp. 213-221

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