[yawn.its been like more than two months since my last post? yeah, dat and its been dat long since i started this post. it was hanging there unfinished, till tonight i finally decided to complete and publish it.so here goes another post. and there are more stuff (not about religion) in the drafts.as i said earlier,im just too lazy to blog anymore.or maybe i say it all in on twitter,facebook and other people's blogs.]
Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses, Catoons of Mohamed on the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, a film made by Theo van Gogh (for which he was mudered) and many other such events lead to protests and bloodshed. Sorry that i have only mentioned only incidents related to Islam..its just that we get more news about Islamic intolerance than any other religion (you can blame it on the western media if you like or blame it on me or say there are more muslims in the world or simply accept the fact ..your choice. I am not implying anything here). Besides, this religion is closer to me than any other religion......Alrite, here is a Hindu intolerance incident; last year Bajrangdal activists attacked christian churches and people, responding to mass convertion of Hindus to Christianity. And the moral policing thing by hindutva activists who attacks women in pubs and attack people celebrating Valentines day.Generally speaking, most religions have these 'issues' with non believers... but followers of some religions express them more openly. it should also be noted that some religions have been reformed and evolved over the centuries, to fit in to the modern pluralistic societies..
why all these violent reaction?. why dont you guys let god protect his religion , and just calm down for sometime? Maybe he will strike these people with a thunder bolt or inflict eternal and uttermost torture when they die and go to his hell. O ye who believe; i hate to break this for you but if that is your religious obligation to make sure those who insult your religious sentiments are punished, then you are doing a really crappy job. because these insults are inevitable. Even if one dont say it out loud, everyone who dont follow your religion are 'saying' it. You have to punish em all. so we can say religious tolerance for the most part is kind of an oxymoron...atleast amongst the major religions. These major and dominant religions of the world aint capable of tolerance by their very nature but they all demand respect and tolerance. how exactly does one tolerate and respect a religion? im not really sure, but people say we should be respectful of other people's believes and never say anything which could insult them. but this is very wrong. religious tolerance is defined as "the condition of accepting or permitting others' religious beliefs and practices which disagree with one's own". permitting and accepting is not the same as respecting and not saying a word against them.
unbelievers are always insulting believers:
Let me expalin; religious groups have their own set of beliefs which they say are certainly true. For example religion X claims that person xx is a prophet and he was contacted by God. For those who dont believe in this claim usually there are two logical explanations:
(1) this guy (xx) is lying. or (2) this guy is crazy...or maybe both.
usually if they rule out these 'accusations', then they become believers in that religion. So, everyone who dont believe in that religion are accusing prophet xx to be either insane or a liar. This applies to all religions (almost). ..(dearest peaceful, sword wielding protectors of the most peaceful religion; i am talking about all religions in general. mmmkayyy?all of them. so calm down)
an example:
This can be applied to more detailed stuff about a belief system and not just prophethood. Here is a good example; Polygamy is permitted in mormonism and it is said that their founder Joseph Smith took more than 30 wives (including already married women). This could not be seen in a good light unless you are a mormon. you will probably think this guy is a selfish horny bastard who took advantage of superstitious, gullible people and his authority over them.What else could one think? This is so obvious. Ofcourse like all religions, mormons try to deny or justify it. For the believers of this religion, their prophet is the holiest and is infallible. Either this report is untrue or there is some other 'explanation' for this. Some of them say it is God's will and quotes what mr.smith said was the reason behind it; "by revelation—the saints of the Lord are always directed by revelation".
It does not take a second for a non-believer in Mormonism to recognise what is going on here. But the believers, blinded by their faith, do not smell anything fishy here. When a non-believer in their religion points out the obvious fact, they are insulted and hurt. Everyone is hurting them unless they believe it was infact God's will and done in accordance to revelation. So the only way to respect and honour a religion is believing them. as most religions claim to be the only true religion, one cant really believe in all religions....and this is how respecting religions (in the sense they demand us to)become impossible.
Freedom of Speech and feelings of believers:
What ive said so far does not mean religious tolerance is impossible.It is possible and necessary, but not at the cost of eliminating freedom of speech. A line should be drawn somewhere, and i dont think that line should be drawn by making religions too respectful to be even criticized. Because religions have an opinion about every single thing, and if we find it unacceptable, we are entitled to say so. That is freedom of speech. And if a group of people are insulted because of an opinion someone else hold against their personal beliefs, then every single human being will be insulted all the time. because every individual is different from the rest. If religion has to be respected so much that we cant even talk about them, so should the political ideologies, operating systems,taste of music, art or food, web browsers etc. And then we will all end up being hypocrites who praise even the things that we dislike and despise.
holy crap!
the religious texts of some religions are full of insults to people of other faiths, unbelievers or people who disobey their religious commands or leaves it totally. These insults and threats are cut out in their holy books. Now can we alter the word of God to make sure there is tolerance? no we cant. so these will remain as they are.This is rooted in the fact that most religions claim to be the only way to salvation and the only true religion. By this claim they are accusing others to be misguided, saying they will burn eternally in hell, they are dumb for not seeing the ‘obvious’ truth, they need to be guided or forced towards the right path etc. The Bible have a passages where Jesus calls jews the children of the Devil, liars etc. Church leaders have called Jews 'Christ killers'. Muslim recite Surah Al-Fatihah atleast 17 times every day. In this surah they call Jews 'those who have earned God's anger' and the Christians are called 'those who went astray'. Fearing that i may 'insult' some people i will not mention the several Hadiths which will hurt the feelings of non-muslims and people of certain faiths here. There are prophecies, like the muslim belief they will kill all jews before the judgement day comes, or fundamentalist christian belief that the temple mount will be reconstructed before the second coming of Christ (which means muslims will lose the middle east conflict in the end)…all these insult other religions. True, today we do not find wars among religion like earlier times. but we still have the same texts with us, will this hypocrisy of undeserved and childish respect for all religions hold off the violence? i dont think so.
respect? what respect?! thou shalt earn respect!
Respect is something which has to be earned. give respect to get respect! when you are cursing people for their personal choices which does not harm any other human being, for simply not believing what you believe, for expressing their opinions etc... dont you dare talk about respect. I dont really understand why the fuck we have to be respectful about religions. after all blasphemy is a victimless crime. one man's prayers is another man's blasphemy. one man's eternal truth, for another could be the biggest load of bullshit hez ever heard. (dont believe me? how many maldivians think scientology is NOT bullshit and NOT stupid?)
let us say... human beings ends up (because of some UN resolution like this maybe?) being hypocrites who cannot say anything critical of religions...then what happens? would there be religious tolerance?? They say religions need to be protected and respected unconditionally, even when they are plain stupid or when people of these beliefs dont respect other people's beliefs and ways of life. hell, they dont even respect another human being's right to live sometimes (sometimes based on their beliefs, sexual preference..etc). some beliefs just cannot be respected, or tolerated. for example jihadi islam which calls for war and world domination.
So, where exactly do we draw that line about respecting? wafa sultan said it all to a mullah while speaking live on jazeera tv. She said; "brother, you can believe in stones, as long as you don't throw them at me". right there. believe what ever the fuck you want to, but dont try impose it on others or to mess with other people's lives. That is where the line should be drawn. If someone says your religions sucks you need not be insulted, because it is a fact that he/she thinks so. But if someone attack you on the street because you believe a certain thing, that is a problem. well...not always...depends on what kind of crap you believe in. if they are violent and threatening other people, you deserve it. rational fear of a religion is no phobia at all. and it is definitely not hate. it is a justified fear...for example fear of a religious group who practice human sacrifice or terrorism is only natural. then again, stereotyping and generalising aint good either. its a totally different issue which i may discuss some other time.
i dont respect your beliefs.i think they are fuckin stuhpid!
personally i dont respect beliefs of other people because if dont believe it, i think they are fuckin stuhpid and unworthy of my respect. otherwise i would believe it in the first place. the reason i dont believe it is because it is unbelievable and stupid. however, i DO respect people's right to believe whatever they want to believe, as long as it does not harm anyone else. believe what ever the hell you want. believe in the flying spaghetti monster or the invisible pink unicorn. believe in barney the pink dinosaur and tinkerrbell. believe in your personal god who protects your family and lives under your bed. believe everything you can. i respect your right to believe. but there is no way on earth i will respect irrational beliefs. i will not just disrespect those beliefs which i think are dangerous to the society, i will despise them and refute them.some one believing that he will rise from the dead and smoke two ciggarettes does not really bother me. but beliefs that are widely accepted and are related to my life, our lives, our problems,suffering in the world..etc everyone should speak against them.i may hate a belief system for the harm it does, but it does not mean i hate the believers. I may sympathize with them because they are victims of these beliefs.
in short...
... religious tolerance has it's limits and is not the same as unconditional respect for religions.respecting other people's belief is impossible and stupid but respecting other people's right to believe what ever they want to -as long as it does not harm the society- is important. Religious tolerance is important but due to the nature of most religions, very difficult to achieve. however, CAN achieve it. we abolished slavery even when in the eyes of major religions it was not a crime. the problem is not people who criticize religions, but those who act like they have been raped when ever their religion is criticized. mankind should over come this insanity in order to pursue religious tolerance. The way to peaceful coexistence of religions is not by hushing the critics of religions, but curing the lunatics who goes into a hyperventilating fit of rage everytime their personal beliefs are criticized.
[the end]
74 comments:
Good blog.
Portugal
good points. But I wonder if it'll filter through to those sensitive ones
So...is THIS what you managed to write in two months? You really are 'MOYA' dho?hehe.
Send this to UN. We can not achieve tolerance and peace with these religions perhaps.
Almost all religions are very self-centered and thats why its so powerful. There is huge self interest in it. your wife, your kids, your wealth, your blessing, your sin, your happiness, your salvation, your heaven or hell and your eternal life, your 72 virgins, blah blah. Universe revolves around earth as center of life etc you know.
Thats where they get all that arrogant and insane behavior.
Once this narrow selfcentered values are removed from religions then it could be much peaceful..
The way forward is to realize that we are all one and need one and another to survive.
Every one of us is precious in the cosmic perspective. If a human disagrees with you, let him live. In a hundred billion galaxies, you will not find another. -CARL SAGAN_
People are so much brainwashed that they don't want to believe anything which contradicts with the so-called holy scriptures. Anyway, nice post, dude...
thnx everyone.
paperclippenny; yeah may be not. i also wonder if any of it will filter through the thick shell of endless indoctrination.
muiz; whats your point man? i find ur comment supercilious.it not about me, or the quality of my writing. and fyi, it dint take me two whole months to write this.its not like i was working on this day and night, k? i may not be as educated and well versed in language as you.and im not even an 'intellectual'like you. im not sure you have ever heard this awsome dhivehi saying 'bey korakas keymeh koreh nuvaaneyey'.so if there is any thing wrong or anything you disagree about my post, please enlighten poor ol me, o wise one.
Stewie; good point about the self centered values.but i dont think it is possible to extract these from religion.and i think there is more to this. for example the value system religions present to us are outdated and does not match with the new moral values that has evolved over the long period of time. there is more, the origins of some religions and who,when and where it was practiced.and thats a very nice quote.
Naafix; i can understand.i was one of them. people with opposing views need to counter these 'arguments'.when ever and where ever possible.
dude i see u always talkin abt religion.. its borin
About bloody time, too!.
*cough*
Tolerance, and respect are both vital components of a working, lasting peace. Exploitation of the citizenry and the establishment of an authority that has been given permission to the laws of nature not.
Perhaps there was some truth to the religions back in 0BC. Peace, love and equality was what most of the Abrahamic religions taught at that time. However, religion is being used as a tool today. Take a look at $cientology, or heck, even Mormonism.
When the people use organized religion to gouge money from people, or to spread fearmongering propaganda, or hatred against another group, they become a risk group. Even worse when they bastardize local culture, destroy families, ruin childhoods and uproot livelihoods.
There is a fine line between religious freedom and censorship, as you said. And there is another fine line between "tolerance" and "a green light to commit crimes against the State."
"Religions" who do so, deserve to be exterminated, for they are not truly religions, but a pyramid scheme, hiding behind the name of "Religious community." as they exploit a large amount of people in the interests of a few "leaders".
They deserve no tolerance.
slim; i knw i knw. its for u guys that i mentioned the next post wont be about religion. u should know dat everywhere i look, what ever i talk about, religion always comes in. coz it always have something to say about everything and never expects anyone to say anythin back at it.this is all a (very small) counter reaction.
The Shadowrunner; yup! the prob is these lines aint as clear as they should be.coz of all the political correctness and hypocrisy.and no comment on what u said about abrahamic religions. :p
Wonderful post.
These things will fly right over the head of the average Maldivian.
Maldivians are way too selfish and too brainwashed to accept that other religions or beliefs can co-exist peacefully in their own society.
Nice piece of writing dude...
Btw, I would like to focus a little on the origin of the religions.
As far back as archeological evidence is available, human groups appear to have tried to understand the forces to which they and their environment were subject. The sun, the moon, the stars, wind, fire, etc were seen as possessing magical powers which could be appropriated by suitable behaviour and acts such as sacrifices. Because of this the religions were formed.
If focusing on the after life, it was made as a belief in order to minimize the effects of death of a person on the living people. According to some cultures, that afterlife is made up of a cycle of re-births and deaths,for some a second life, etc.
Great post. But I do sometimes wonder whether we are making a difference...If at least even one lost soul manages to find a direction, then I guess our efforts are not in vain. :)
Of course, theists would say we are the lost souls who have lost direction! kekeke. I guess it's a matter of perspective then.
Being formally educated to such a high level doesn't really help broaden your mind, eh, Muiz? Pathetic.
The post actually attacked islam more than anything else cos this guy knows Islam more than any other religion. But he is also brainwashed to plainly use Jihadi Islam as intolerable cos he doesn't even know what really is Jihad. He has plainly believed western media about Jihad being terrorism. Well Jihad means 'struggle' rather than 'violence' and 'world domination'. I don't think struggle against oppression or occupation is intolerable but rather necessary. If you think otherwise, do u fit in any moral society but to the group who destroy in the name of building?
I hope u publish this.
you brought up great points, good work.
I agree that we should be able to openly talk about other religions and faith systems just as we talk about sports or politics. It is however an extremely sensitive issue, especially amongst Christians and Muslims. Hence, a lot of people will feel that it is better off not to debate about such issues.
However, the examples you mentioned about Rushdie, Danish cartoons etc were not trying to inform/educate/criticise religion. I do not know the real motives behind these acts. But, whatever their motive might be, the underlying theme behind all these were to insult Islam. Hence it crosses the boundaries of free speech.
What would be the point of depicting the prophet (SAW) wearing a turban with a bomb on it? Does it really help to inform the general public about Islam? Does that even humour anyone?
My point is that it is OK to criticise religions. But it is NOT OK to insult religions/customs/cultures. I don't mind if someone points out apparent absurdities in Islam or explains why he doesn't agree with my views. But I wouldn't want someone to call me stupid or brainwashed just because I am a Muslim.
The same goes with anything in life really. If you really want to have a fruitful, intelligent conversation with someone, even if you have a completely different view of things, you wouldn't start by insulting the person whom you're going to converse with. This is where people like Richard Dawkins fail.
curl_v; maybe the guy who drew the danish cartooons believe islam is a violent religion.or mohamed preached violence.he was expressing that view. and does that humour anyone? maybe, maybe not. cartoons are not always intended to make people laugh.
you are saying it is ok to criticize but not ok to insult. thats what ive been trying to say...criticizing and insulting become the samething when it comes to religions. just because you are insulted by what somone says or draws...doesnt mean his intentions was to insult you...richard dawkins may use some words to mock religious views and persons sometimes. but that is not the basis of his works. if u wanna talk about these name calling and stuff.. what does the quran say about jews? or ask any maldivian if hindus are not dumb? they all think hindus are dumb people who thinks idols can hear. but actually they are speaking without understanding the hindu religion.criticism should be based on facts...but those which aint based upon facts also should not be refuted with violence. no one is liked by everyone.same goes for religions.but some people expect everyone to like them or their religion.that can never happen.
amir; blah blah blah yada yada yada. whatever. same shit you guys preach. get something new willya?
i did not attack islam. you are one of those paranoid guys who thinks that all nonmuslims and even muslim freethinkers are after islam...trying to set the stage for mighty dajjal. guess what, i dont care what you believe. u think everytime i mention jihad i will have to give all the meanings? everytime i mention islam i should say the root word is peace? i dont think so. the term jihadi islam was used to refer to violent forms of islam which preach and practice offensive (world domination) and sometime defensinve physical (hence violent like any war) jihad. then again im not sure it can be called jihad..moderate muslims say it is terrorism in the name of jihad. depending on your beliefs it could be anything.for some muslims these acts are ok within certain limits, for some no limits, for other it is not good.
these groups are called jihadis to distinguish them from other fundamentalists like the salafi/wahhabis and other sunni and shiah groups. i hope you understand what im trying to say. im not trying to insult muslims or talk bad about islam. i was expressing my view on religious tolerance and repecting religions.
and more evidence you are one of those paranoid guys...hope i publish this? hasanah heevaanee fulhah budun dhanyaa keyogandu kandaalaaney. ei hasanu ulhey goiy veema.
Agree with Moyameeha. There's only a thin blurry line between criticising and insulting which is why the right to offend is also a democratic right and a free speech. As Dawkins pointed out, religion is held on a high and mighty pedastal that even debate and honest criticism will amount to "insulting" Islam as far as people like Ibn Khattab are concerned.
If only people are tolerant. Just because somebody offends someone or one feel offends by something doesn't mean that one should be hurt or the offender should be oppressed. As long as the offender doesnt cause physical threat, the offender should have the democratic right to offend. If, in the event, somone feels "hurt", "psychologically effected" by such "insults" and "criticisms", that someone should see a councellor who can arm him with appropriate life skills not to be hurt or emotionally depressed just because he heard some insulting words or saw insulting cartoons.
I can't agree at any level on this article. There are several issues in this world, but it all comes down to one thing in the end, 'Religion' or the lack of it.
Do you honestly think that when an atheist does not believe in a religion or a creator, he is denying the human capability of 'faith in something'? Think a bit more and you might consider to accept that, a belief is what drives the human being. This is inherent and cannot be changed. Now comes to the limits of the human mind, of which logic and reasoning are two beautiful entities. Let us consider the whole issue based on these two parameters.
Logic tells us that we need to have a belief, and reasoning tells us that it has to be sane. If you believe in science as the only mode of creation, and that man evolved from a protozoa, you still have a faith. But if the way of Monotheism is the belief of another sect, then they have logically accepted in a superior creator, to whom they worship and dedicate their life and they have their reasons. If the polytheists prefer to believe that 300,000 might gods have set a system of livelihood for them, and they have faith in it, they should have a good reason for it. But why should any of us tolerate insults on either of our beliefs? Is that being tolerant? What if being tolerant is being indifferent? What if being indifferent means going against your beliefs? What is their is no belief and their is no purpose to life?
When science conveyed the many theories on physics, human evolution and the universe we all watched in awe. Those who could not reason and fit science in to religion either became atheists, or those who preferred religion declared science an abomination. This is what it should be all about. You either believe it, or you don't. If tolerance means, praising another belief, it is against the human compliance. Check it out from the millennium old human history and see if I am wrong? Every conflict and every issue has been about belief, namely religious. Tolerance can never co exist with humans in this accept.
Nicely put V for Vendetta.
moyameehaa: It's highly probable that the cartoonist thinks that Islam is a violent religion. But I don't think that the intention behind the cartoons was to 'inform' the public about it. He decided to depict the one figure dear to all Muslims as a terrorist, something that he knew will provoke the Muslims. It is not even historically accurate. You wouldn't find a single peer-reviewed journal article that depicts the prophet (SAW) as a terrorist.
Being humans, I agree that most people will find criticising and insulting being equivalent. This is especially true for religions because of its sensitivity. But that does not necessarily mean that these two are equivalent even when it comes to religion. The difference between the two lies in the intention.
What would be the point of insulting someone? If I tell someone that he has the intelligence of an earth worm, what purpose does it serve? Perhaps, I am trying to express my anger, frustration towards him by insulting him but does insulting him really achieve anything beyond inciting hate? Maybe that was indeed my real intention.
Same thing goes to other articles I've seen on blogs such as these that draws cartoons of Islamic scholars, writes comments such as God is gay and jokes about the 70 virgins. It serves no purpose than to incite hate. Not only is it juvenile, it just shows that the person is not even willing to have a intellectual discussion based of facts and evidences. Now don't give me the over-used reason that you want people to think. No, they won't think. If you want people to think, present them with arguments based on logic and reasoning.
My point is that it all depends on the intention. If you want to offend a group of people just for the sake of offending them, then yes, they will be offended. But if you were to inform them about something, backed by evidence and facts, then (maybe you might still offend some of them) but they will also be more willing to listen to what you have to say. I would think that this is the noble and smarter option.
Anonymous: Right to offend may be a democratic right. If I were to offend someone, yes I will only be exercising my democratic right. But what does it say about me? And how will other people perceive me? I'd be better off exercising my other 'democratic rights' such as helping the needy now wouldn't I?
Being offended from criticisms/insults is just human nature.
With religion, it becomes personal. It's a bit like insulting your mother. You get offended, and often lash out. And it's unlike criticising your favourite football club.
Was the Muslim reactions to cartoons justified? No, I wouldn't think so. We have every right to be angry, offended but there is no reason to go on a killing spree of the non-believers because of that. The reason why such actions do happen is again because we are human.
Insulting and offending others is also another sign of the imperfection of humans.
I don't think we should go around insulting others. But at the same time I think we should learn how to react to such insults. I wouldn't call it being tolerant but we've got be patient. If someone says that God is gay do we kill him for that? No, because we know that it's absurd. So let them have their laugh about their gay God and terrorist prophet.
curl v
u r definitely someone who needs life skills and psychotherapy to deal with 'hurt' and 'being offended' over something as trivial as offensive words and cartoons
as dawkins pointed out, how does one criticise and debate about religion without offending those who believe in it?
im ok with anyone believing in any bullshit (whether its allah or pink invisible unicorns or flying spaghetting monsters)...prob is when the believers who believe they are right try to force it down the throats of the rest of us.
which is exactly why we have to criticise and debate about it. if there was no islamic ministry or islamic parties in maldives or if there was no constitutional clause giving a discriminatory advantage to islam, nobody will be bothered to discuss and debate and criticise about religion because all religions will have equal protection and no particular religion will have a free reign to legally impose its beliefs on others
which is not the situation in maldives where islam is forced into our throats. u cant expect people like me to keep quiet. i will not offend, criticise, and debate about islam if maldives was a secular country. get it.
and when you talk about 'evidence' and 'proof' u expect us to believe in ancient texts and ancient history as proof and evidence? these are things written down by humans, fallible creatures. all other religions have their own ancient texts and history and 'proofs', so why do u think that only islam is the right religion and all other religions wrong?
because you can deep down inside of yourself sense that it is true, right? therefore it must be right, right? well let me tell u, christians think they are right too..deep inside they feel that it is ok for god to have a child though that may not appear normal to a muslim. if such an example doesnt wake u up, then my dear friend curl_v, know that what u r suffering from is childhood indoctrination and brainwashing. look at it this way: if you were born in afghanistan and you tend to think that islam is right and that your friend born in america is wrong becasue he's a christian, know that that american friend will be thinking the same thing about you: that christianity is right and islam is wrong.
you can fight about all this but it will be a never ending fight...because truth ultimately lies in the eyes of the believer. dont be deluded that just because u r a muslim u r on the right path, god is happy with you and u r getting an eternal life..the same belief is held by all christians and other believers in other religions. so whose side is god on? whose going to heaven?
I have to say that at various points the words you've used seemed as if they were taken directly from Richard Dawkin's mouth (flying spaghetti monster...classic!).
You seem to follow Richard Dawkin's way of thinking so much so that it reminds of someone else who blindly followed their so-called Imams. The last I heard from the poor chap was that he ended up blowing himself up.
You're trying to convey your ideology to us and perhaps you don't realise this but you're no different than a preacher. You do know that you're also following a particular belief system don't you? Atheism, perhaps the newest organised 'religion', don't you think?
I like the way Richard Dawkins points out to obvious absurdities such as unicorns and absolute truths such as religion as a source of violence to put forward his ideology of the non-existence of a God. Of course no sane person will deny these but that doesn't provide any direct link to the existence/non-existence of God now does it? I'm surprised that a person who claims to follow logic and reasoning believes in his views when he hasn't really used any logic or reasoning to deduce that God doesn't exist. All he's got is a bunch of theories that merely proves that we're humans. I'm sorry my good sir, but you have truly fell prey to his pathetic way of thinking.
How do you define believing in something stupid? Of course believing in Santa Claus or the tooth fairy is stupid and you won't see many adults believing in those now would you?
But, how is believing in God and the scripture stupid? Are you implying that majority of human beings are stupid and don't deserve your respect? Oh enlightened one will you spare me when you cleanse the Earth from our stupid kind?
Ahmed, we can see very clearly who is the stupid person here.
Just because the word God sounds beautiful doesn't make it any more beautiful than pink unicorns or flying spaghetti monsters. To put in another way, the fSM is the 'god' of the Pastafarians, so your 'logic' that it is 'stupid' that the universe was not created by FSM but God is stupid in itself because all of the above are supernatural beings, and therefore, whether you choose the term god or unicorn or fsm doesnt make a difference. thats just the 'packaging' of this supernatural being 'god'
if you can explain how this god or supernatural being or force or whatever exists, then of course, atheism will die an automatic death and religions will become fool proof.
but as of now (maybe it never was and will never be) there is no logical reason how any physical thing can exists. it cannot create itself so that rules out the creationism, and with the idea of a creator itself.
it wasnt me or dawkins who created this new 'religion' called atheism. atheism is the only natural logical explanation in the face of the fact that nothing can create itself by itself and therefore nothing was created in the first place. dont dupe yourself that just because you physically feel like a solid self you are physical being creatd out of nothing by a god whose existence has no logical answer (obviously he cannot create himself because in the beginning there will be nothing , right, and therefore since he doesnt exist, he cannot create himself) its mind boggling to even talk about this.
the fact that you religion believers has a problem with understanding the pure simple logic (on which atheism is based) that only natural laws exist, should give you an idea how much you have actually thought thru things. oh, and if you can feel yourself as a solid physical being, just try to use a little imagination that you only feel physical because you are part of these natural laws and since you exist in this form, you can of course feel your physical self. but dont be duped: the smallest 'unit' of natural laws, we call the 'atom' is not physial, there's nothing physical inside...you are just a non-physical concept, a being of no physical substance. if that doesnt get your imagination amazed, then truly your power of thinking has been damaged with the illogic and nonsense of religion
To the last Anonymous.
You've missed the point. I obviously can't just call any supernatural being a God. Whether a God exists or not, He has certain attributes ascribed to Him which is not present in, say, a unicorn. So NO it does make a difference. Unless, perhaps you assume that the said unicorn has the same characteristics as what we normally refer to as God.
Your second argument about the creation of God has now been abandoned and I'd advise you to use other, shall I say, better arguments to present your case.
Firstly, God is not subjected to physical laws, hence the word supernatural.
By definition these physical laws were created by God, i.e. these natural laws are a creation just as animals and plants. He could've created them in whatever form He desired.
As far as we know He's created us in a four-dimensional 'space' (3 spatial and 1 temporal dimension). The physical laws and the form of equations that we now use such as the conservation of mass, momentum and energy are in that particular form only by considering this four-dimensional space. If we were to live in, say, in a universe with a 5th dimension these natural laws will not apply. My point being? You can't apply the properties of the creation such as physical laws to the Being who created it in the first place.
If you do claim to be an atheist then you are making a knowledge claim that God does not exist just as we theists claim that God does exist. If so provide us with proof/reasoning behind your claim.
Most atheists are in fact agnostics, simply because they are either pure rationalists or pure empiricists.
Is atheism logical? If so how do you explain the creation of the universe? Did it just create by itself? Or was it just a random act of nature? Was it by chance that we are here?
For brevity I'll only give one example.
It is now well know that the initial conditions of the universe have been calibrated to only allow a life inhibiting universe. One explanation of this is that it is down to natural law. But as I pointed out previously the physical laws do not have to be the way it is and the universe has to exist first for the natural laws to be applied.
The second explanation is that this all happened by chance. The problem with this argument is that the universe has been fine tuned such that if it were to deviate infinitesimally it would inhibit all forms of life. As Stephen Hawking estimated, if the rate of expansion of the universe 1 second after the Big Bang had been even slightly less than what it was, life in this universe will not exist.
It leaves us with only one logical explanation, a Creator.
Ahmed, even if a god exists how do you justify all these religions. do you think it is rational to believe a man travelled on a half human half horse thingy in few seconds and that there is a hell and heaven and all other religious crap? how rational is that!
just because you cannot understand what is happening does not mean there is a creator. that is an idea from your imperfect human mind.something supernatural other than god, something beyong your comprehension may have happened.so dont jump to conclusions like that.that is your first jump, your second jump will be there is only one god, and third will be there is only one true religion, fourth will be there is only one version of that true religion that is true.by that time you will have sent all who disagree to an imaginary fire.
and about that point you raised against anonymous, about the rest of human beings being stupid; just because what you believe is stupid does not mean you are stupid.great thinkers and philosophers have also done stupid things. for example, someone i know who was a really intelligent person commited suicide.there are hindu scientists (for musilms and christians their beliefs are obviously stupid). so no, all of human beings that believe in stupid things are not themselves stupid.they have their 'resons'.
Ahmed, again you miss the point. Why do you come to the conclusion that this Universe is a PHYSICAL thing, that was CREATED?
Just ponder on what we mean by NATURAL LAWS. Laws are not physical right? They are just CONCEPTS. Whichi is perfectly in tune with the fact that there is NOTHING solid or physical inside the smallest unit of NATURAL LAWS we call the atom.
If you can use a bit of your imagination (as Einstein suggested) you will realise there is no Creation and hence no Creator. Only NATURAL LAWS exist, and since they are NATURAL, like the ratio PI, they will exist whether there is a creator or not. Don't be deluded that just because you happen to be a natural law yourself, and therefore FEELS everything around you is physical, this is not a physical Existence or Universe. The only reason physicists use the word "physical" universe is to conveniently convey ideas about these natural laws because, man being part of these laws, can only easily imagine things happening within the REAL OF THESE NATURAL LAWS only when he thinks thing in 'PHYSICAL TERMS'. Like the CONCEPT of space, time, matter in physical terms.
I think when you really ponder what is the true meaning of NATURAL LAWS you will stop talking about a Creator or Creation.
I'm sure that even for you it wont make much sense to easily state that this Creator exists outside our laws. Fine, for argument's sake, but even if this Creator sits outside our laws, my question is, what's the explanation for his own existence? Did he just pop into existence? Did he create himself? These are valid questions, even if you say he is outside our logic and laws, because there MUST be an explanation for his existence. Whether its god or anything else, if it exists, there must be a reason, an explanation. And since we can rule out, based on pure absurdity, the fact that he cannot just pop into existence, and that he cannot create himself, there's only one explanation left: there is no Creator and no Creation, the only thing that exists is NATURAL LAWS and everything that exists in the REALM of these natural laws will feel everything around it in PHYSICAL terms which, to a simple mind, because everything feels SOLID to him, will think that things we see around us and experience is created things.
This is what Dawkins and all other atheists, pantheists and naturalists have been trying to say: if you use your imagination, and when you understand what is meant by NATURAL LAWS, the idea of a Creator and Creation will vanish. The scientific proof of this is, lucky we live in the quantum age, that the small 'unit' of NATURAL LAWS, what we call the 'atom' is not physical, just empty space, just a law...
We could spend the whole day making this point, but as Dawkins said, unless somebody tries to raise his consciousness, he will simply stick the simple concept that he will be able to grasp, the easy way out which is Creationism.
Ahmed: I don't mean to contradict you but I think you've gone slightly off topic here. The topic was religious tolerance.
Now this is an advise, you're wasting your time trying to convince atheists that there is a God. It's not going to happen, just as how you won't believe that there is no God.
You both argue about rationality and logic and it appears that both rationality and logic is subjective.
Also you can't explain the existence or non-existence of God purely from science. So please don't present evidence from Stephen Hawking etc, who is at best an agnostic.
This is just an advise and constructive criticism. I'm not in anyway trying to insult you.
BTW I think you've got a typo in your last comment (even though it might be obvious from the context).
You are predictable Ahmed:
"This is where your whole argument about natural laws fail, since these laws themselves are a creation."
There is no point in arguing then, is there?
So I would let you answer my question: how does God exist?
"Read the scriptures" is no answer. It's just an easy way out. Just refering to some ancient texts and "believing" it is true does not make it true or logical.
I rest my case.
It's just too easy to make simplified claims that God lies outside natural laws and logic because that's how Creationists dodge the question of why and how God exists. Hence Ahmed hasn't still answered the question: how and why does God exist? How does an intelligent being come to exist? What's the cause for His existence? Did He create himself or he just popped into existence?
This is a valid question if we are to accept that this God exists. If there is no explanation or a cause for a God to exist, and if people like Ahmed claim that the reason why and how God exists is not something that we can logically reason out, what's the point of believing or even thinking about whether a God exists or not? We can simply accept the fact that this Universe exists (because we are in it) and then just draw a conclusion that it's too difficult to imagine why or how this Universe exists.
But people like Ahmed will not be satisfied. So they have to get a Cause as to why this Universe exists. Then from there, they conclude that a superintelligent superbeing exists but when we ask how or why, he claims it's "unknowable so therefore let's give it a rest." Wtf? Isn't that "blind faith"? And if anything is "blind" why should we accept it? Why not stop with the Universe itself? Because if we take God as the First Cause God is not a First Cause because there is an infinite regression as to who/what caused this God to exist in the first place. Which is where atheists' argument comes: that we are witnessing NATURAL LAWS, "natural" in its true meaning which means these laws, will exist whatsoever with or without the existence of a creator. That's what is meant by NATURAL LAWS. But atheists are right: if people like Ahmed cannot grasp the true meaning of what is meant by "natural" laws, they will continue to believe in illogical nonsense that "natural laws" are "created." By the very word "natural" it is meant that it is just "natural" and therefore has no need for a First Cause.
So as I said before, if people like Ahmed cannot understand the meaning of the word 'natural', there is no point in arguing with you. Don't really know why you are visiting this blog when you don't really grasp the meaning of the word 'natural.' What a pity.
ahmed.......dude talk in english plz..
juz becoz u live in the desert n copulate with the farm animalz doesnt mean that rest of us have to...
stop quoting otherz n think for urself....use that brain to embrace that inner atheist in u...u know u want to...
the only reason ure here is becoz of ur insecurity in ur own belief....if ure so sure u r right u wont be here trying to convince otherz....if ur not happy with it...why dont u juz blow urself up!
peace.
First Anonymous
QUOTE "natural" in its true meaning which means these laws, will exist whatsoever with or without the existence of a creator. That's what is meant by NATURAL LAWS. END QUOTE
What's the difference between God and natural laws then?
You're trying to say that God can't exist because He is a Being and yet natural laws exist because natural laws are not 'physical things'. You really think that's rational?
Just because we call something as being natural does not in any way imply that it doesn't have to have any initial conditions.
The following from physicist Prof. Paul Davies (who himself is undecided/agnostic) will suffice to prove the absurdity of your comment.
“The concept of law is so well established in science that until recently few scientists stopped to think about the nature and origin of these natural laws; they were happy to simply accept them as ‘given.’ Now that physicists and cosmologists have made rapid progress toward finding what they regard as the ‘ultimate’ laws of the universe, many old questions have resurfaced. Why do the laws have the form they do? Might they have been otherwise? Where do these laws come from? Do they exist independently of the physical universe?” (Davies, 1992, p. 73)
Second Anonymous.
I don't think you even deserve an intelligent reply. You're not really helping an atheistic argument.
Question from our elusive yet anonymous friend: who created God?
Firstly Islamic definition of God: He is One, the creator of all that exists, has existed and will ever exist. He has no beginning nor ending. He has existed before the creation of time and space. He not only created time and space but He is transcendentally beyond them. He cannot be 'in' a place and He cannot be 'everywhere' or 'nowhere'.
Since the definition of God is as above, the question itself doesn't make much sense. A better way to ask the question would be: if the universe need a cause then why doesn't God need a cause? Or if God doesn't need a cause why does the universe need a cause?
This is an issue of cause and effect. Everything is an effect of a previous cause, which in turn is an effect of a previous cause and so on.
But as our friend Anonymous already pointed out, this would imply an endless chain of causes and effects and hence it will be impossible to find the creator of the first cause, EXCEPT unless the first cause had no beginning.
This ties in very well with the Islamic definition, i.e. Allah has no beginning nor ending.
Now the second part of the question, why does the universe need a cause?
In the sphere of existence the idea of causes and effects does not have any direct or independent influence. We merely use such terms to understand the physical world and if we were to deny this idea of cause and effect all science and history will instantly collapse.
So the existence of God can be explained logically as above. But Anonymous posed another question: how and why does God exist?
Now these are difficult questions to deal with because for these we need to understand how the mind of God works.
We all know that our knowledge is limited and our understanding and imagination is only limited to things that we observe and experience. So how can we even attempt to understand God?
This is exactly the point where Anonymous and I will part ways. He will choose not to believe in a God simply because we cannot explain why and how He exists. I on the other hand chose to believe, even though I have no clue whatsoever to why and how this Being exists. Now does this mean blind faith?
Faith would be blind if I believed something without knowing or even thinking about what I am believing in and understanding everything about God and his plans is not a pre-requisite for faith. But purely based on logic and rationality the existence of God makes perfect sense to me. By definition this is why it becomes a belief. If we had seen God, understand how He works then there will be no reason to call it a belief. It's a bit like knowing that Nigeria is in Africa is not a belief but a known fact. Yet we believe in Lighthill's theory of jet noise even though we might not know the mathematical rigour behind his derivations. So that's what separates believers from the disbelievers. This makes all the difference of how you view the universe. For a believer everything around you attest to the existence of God but for a disbeliever it's exactly the opposite.
You folks might have read these arguments before but if you haven't give it some serious thought. You might even think that I'm completely bonkers. At the end of the day you choose to believe what's most sensible to you and you can't force someone else to believe in something.
curl_v; why the middleman? why cant the universe have no beginning? there are infinite possiblities of what the first cause could be. could be aliens? i dont think most atheists deny the possibility of existence of god.atleast i dont. something unexplainable is simply unexplainable...we dont have to give another imaginary unexplainable cause to it. even if a god does exist, we can never know what it is or how it works as you said, we can only think and imagine through things we have already seen.and apparently that is why human features like hands and legs are attributed to god in islam. but we are to believe these legs and hands are not like ours. but then the question arise, how do we jump from believing in a higher power to believing that higher power sent messages to us through some chosen people but only one of those messages are good to believe today. i think we should stop at agreeing we dont understand everything and there is possiblity of a higher power. else we will first jump to the conclusion there is a god. then there is a messenger. then it goes on till we believe we should kill people who have sex and good men who disblieve in what we believe will burn eternally and mythological creatures like buraq and jinni..and there was a man who split the moon in half. how does all this become 'logical' all of the sudden?
curl v: THAT's an answer? you are being ridiculous.
stop rationalising or justifying the existence of god since u yourself have inevitably, without even knowing, accepted the fact that the First Cause (call it god or unicorns or sphagetti monsters or whatever) is unanswerable. "Allah has no beginning or ending" is not an answer. That's dodging the question. that wouldnt satisfy anyone who uses his logical and common sense. so lets just accept the fact that there is no answer since the only "answer" you can give is that mind boggling twisted "logic" bullshit...
which brings to the conclusion that therefore everybody has a right to believe what he wants to believe, however ridiculous...which means secularism should be the rule of the day..which i think is what moyameeha here is trying to say. stop trying to impose islam on others since u cant even explain how Islam's Allah exists..your explanation of how Allah exists is as mindboggling and nonsense just as Christianity's concept of Trinity... so live and let live...
talking about Paul Davies..
Paul Davies, another religious apologist was given the Templeton Prize (a lot of money) for saying nice things about religion (which would make a rational person immediately suspicious of him)
But ironically his reference to "Why do the laws have the form they do?" is interesting.
this is the form natural laws exist. why should we be surprised? if it exists in another form, our experience of this world, ourselves, the universe and the "physical" things you "see" around you will be different...so why ask this question at all? isnt it amazing that we in this 'form' can experience all this at all?
anyway, what the hell is Davies talking about? What 'form' he wants natural laws to exist in in order to rule out the existence of God.."solid," "liquid" "gas" "waves" "particles" are all names we give to natural laws or whatever "forms" it takes for our convenience..he's just twisting words to dupe us to believe that this "form" is "physical" and hey presto therefore a God exists! nice way of winning a Templeton prize right
neynge: Yes I agree it is not stupid to think that the first cause could be aliens, Bob, natural laws or God etc. Just from this information alone it will be impossible to deduce that this first cause is God. So you use your logic and reasoning to proceed further (keeping in mind that we're out to find out if such a being exists).
Now I agree with atheists when they say humans sought out to explain things that they didn't understand through this idea of God. Hence why people worshiped the Sun, Zeus etc. This however does not imply that there could not be a God, if anything it acts as evidence to the contrary. You might ask why.
Islam tells us that all human beings are born with this idea of God hard-wired into our systems. This is something scientists have recently found evidence for (read the book by behavioral geneticist Dean Hamer titled The God Gene: How Faith is Hardwired Into Our Genes). This could explain the need to have a God or at least a higher power. You could still argue that this God gene, if it even exists, could be the result of an evolutionary process and does not justify the existence of a God.
Now this is the crucial bit and quite possibly the point where you will disagree with me. If such a Being exists it is reasonable to assume that he would have left some sort of signs for us (thinking otherwise contradicts with the whole idea of cause of effect from where we started). The first obvious place to look for will be the Holy Scriptures. If all the theists claim that's the message of God then surely it's worth a look.
If we assume at this point that these books were written by man without any inspiration from a divine being whatsoever, then my whole argument will just fail. If you have assumed that there is no God then obviously the book was written by and inspired by a human being and everything about God will just be a fiction of our imagination. But we can't assume that yet simply because we still haven't ruled out the possibility of God with certainty and it is not unreasonable to assume that the Being we're discussing about could have somehow inspired a human being to write a book.
Now you need to look for His signs in His book(s). Simple logic dictates that the first cause could only be one, hence there will only be one truth, i.e. one true message. At this point things get confusing since you've got a lot of books that says so many different things. But you start to eliminate things here.
If a book contains erroneous claims such as the Earth being flat etc. then you can safely assume that the author obviously did not have any idea of what he was talking about. Hence it couldn't have been God. So we can rule out anything that goes against proven facts. The keyword here being proven. However we can't dismiss a book because it contains supernatural things such as angels and jinns or that someone split the Moon in half. These are things, like God, that cannot be proven to be true or false. Islam asks us to beleive in them since that's what belief is. If we were able to see a man split the moon there will be no point in believing it since it will be a known fact. Furthermore the God that we're so desperately seeking out has the ability, by definition, to create/destroy the universe, which is more extreme than beleiving whether someone split the seas. The basic idea is anything that goes against proven facts must be rejected.
Remember you're goal till now is still to find out if a God exists not to understand what this God might be or all the intricate details of His religion. You don't jump straight to believing in all those details. We can't expect to understand why we have to follow certain rules until we have truly understood the fundamentals of the cause of those rules, i.e. God. This is the problem with most people because our mind gets clouded by all the details; the hijab, jihad, extremism, punishments etc.
curl_v; if a man split the moon in half certainly people will record in history regardless of their religious faith.
you are sayin these things are small things we wont understand unless we slowly cloud our minds with all the necessary foundations of islam that will take our minds hostage. then irrational things are rationalised, people do unbelievable things, people accept unbelievable things without question.
i dont wanna do that to my self or see any one suffer with such madness.
u see, if u get to books by elimination you will always find that muslims eliminate only jewish and christian faiths. what about Zoroastrian or buddhist faith? what about several other tribal religions?
and talking about quran, due to the vague language and the nature of arabic language muslims keep changing their intepretation of some verses to call is science or whatever they want.how hell did god forget to mention slavery is evil or anything about rape or childabuse in his holybook. why would he take so much interest in the prophet and his personal life and forget these?
is your god a racist god? otherwise why all the talk about jews and never even mentioned africans and prophets sent to them? apparently all prophet from lineage of abaraham through isaac were jews..only one from ishmael's side is an arab.why would he deliver jews from pharaoh and not the black slaves everywhere? was martin luther kind a prophet? i can agree that your argument is rational to the point where you say there is a possibility of the existence of god.or i can understand - though i dont agree- that there is a higher probability dat a creator/supreme power exists. but the rest of it is just jumping to bliefs. actually you dint need any of those complicated arguments to jump to that conclusion. just believe like a layman does.
Anonymous: First cause whatever it may be will not, by definition, have a beginning. That's the only logical answer to that particular question. If the first cause did have a beginning there should be a cause that made it to begin, hence it won't be a first cause anymore. The first cause could be anything like you say. But it has to be something and not nothing. Dodging the question would be to say that it's unanswerable.
If the message you've got from my comments is that I'm trying to impose Islam on you then I'm not the least surprised that you didn't understand any of what I've tried to convey. By the way, just because you use profanitly and sound arrogant doesn't make your arguments anymore plausible. Quite the contrary, it just shows that you're trying to make up for your lack of knowledge/common sense.
neynge:
Vagueness of the Quran. Is this what you learnt from the National Geographic documentary or the Channel 4's documentary? Go read it yourself.
God failed to mention rape/child abuse? Do they not fall under the general topic of extra-marital sex? So you reject Quran because it doesn't include all the psychological effects on a child or a rape victim? Do you really think that just because rape and child abuse are not explicitly mentioned in the Quran these acts are allowed in Islam? All these are violent, criminal acts that are outside the bounds of what is accepted in Islam and punishable by law.
Just because Allah didn't mention any black prophets doesn't necessarily mean there weren't any. In fact it is explicitly stated in the Quran that there has never been a people except a warner has lived amongst them. But we don't know why only certain prophets were mentioned in the Quran. Knowing it would be again knowing the mind of God.
But one thing to note is that the only companion of prophet Muhammad (SAW) to be mentioned directly by name in the Quran is Zayd Ibn Harithah who was of African descent. If God was racist will he be mentioned by name? After all he wasn't even a prophet but a mere human being. If God was racist would millions of people in Africa, China etc. practice Islam? Is this where your rationality jumps out the window?
Do you now not understand what I meant by clouding your mind? None of what you said makes any sense and all of the points you've taken can clearly be counter-argued. I'm sure you still have tonnes of these. My question to you is, why haven't you gone out to seek the answers to these? Of course you wanted to believe that Islam is a racist and barbaric region, filled with terrorists who's got nothing better to do than shout "Allah is Great" and bomb innocent civilians.
Rational to the point where I mention the possibility of existence of God? Surely this last statement is a typographical error. You mentioned in your previous post that you don't deny the possibility of God. First of all, how can you call yourself an atheist if you think there's even the slightest possibility of the existence of God? You think it's a fad to be an atheist? Secondly if this statement wasn't a typo then you're not making much sense. Thirdly my whole argument was based on the fact that there COULD be a God. If I assumed that there was no God my whole argument wouldn't make any sense. Now, you didn't even follow my initial argument did you? I knew you won't even try to understand what I say but at least I thought you'd talk sense, instead it appears that you just blurt out whatever comes to your mind. Thanks for ruining what would've otherwise being a wonderful discussion. Now go on, talk more nonsense.
Apologies, I forgot to answer the part about splitting the Moon.
I understand that splitting the Moon is by any means not a small event not be noticed, especially at a time when a huge attention was payed to the Moon. But we also need to remember that only a portion of the Earth would've been able to notice it at that particular time. If I'm not mistaken the Mayans were probably the most advanced people at the time for astronomy and it could be that their timing did not coincide with that of the split.
Apparently, there are also reports of two Indian kings noticing this Moon split and converting to Islam recorded in the India Office Library and Records in London. However, I have not seen these documents and I doubt their validity.
Anyway an event that occurred 1400 years ago not being recorded by history books does not mean that it did not occur. If we were to assume that, then the number of significant events that took place prior to the 1700s could not have been very large.
This event was mentioned in the books of Hadith with several authentic Hadiths. Of course you don't believe in the Hadiths and I don't want to go into details of how these Hadiths are even valid. I guess you could still argue that you need independent verification of the event from an independent source, perhaps an atheist. But then again how would we expect atheists to believe in that event in the present day when Abu Jahl denied it after seeing it from his own eyes?
But I'd like to share an interesting article about a finding in Syria by a Swiss-Syrian research team in 2006 (also published on National Geographic see link below). They found the bones of a huge camel in that region (The camel is believed to be the size of an elephant). The report also states the findings of bones belonging to the modern man and the whole finding was near a spring.
What's the relevance of all this? There is a story in the Quran about a prophet named Salih who was sent to Bani Thamud, who lived in a valley between Syria and Hijaz. Now these folks were apparently very stubborn and they wanted a sign from God. This sign was very specific as well, they wanted a camel to pop out from a mountain. Now this wasn't an ordinary camel, the story tells us that it was much larger than the normal camel. To cut a long story short, God sent the camel on certain conditions i.e. it needs to drink from a well etc. but these people killed the camel and God sent His punishment on them.
All this just a mere coincidence? The time and location (including the spring), the bones of the humans, the size of the camel etc. Published in NatGeo, BBC so it's clearly not a hoax.
A Muslim will believe in Quran, regardless of whether this was found. If we were to wait for proof outside the Quran for every single thing in it then what's the point of having this book? Might as well respect any other random book.
Here are the links for the article
http://news.nationalgeographic.co.uk/news/2006/10/061011-giant-camel_2.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/6035113.stm
Oh yes, just because a world renowned physicist makes a claim that was favourable to spirituality then surely there's something wrong going on here right?
Of course the whole aim of Templeton Foundation is to falsely proclaim the relevance of religion to our lives by paying large sums of money to notable scientists who are willing to say anything (however absurd it may be, thereby risking their academic career). Now you tell me, does this even remotely make sense to you?
What are you going to say next? That the Illuminati really controls the world? That the moon landing was a hoax?
This is what Richard Dawkins will have you believe. In fact your comment was taken directly from Richard Dawkins book (talk about thinking for yourself). Of course he would want to disagree with Paul Davies now wouldn't he? How else can he spread his ideology?
You're last bit of the comment is incorrect, hence proving that you don't even understand that basic argument of Paul Davies.
He didn't ask the question WHAT IF the laws were different. He asked the question WHY do these laws have the form they do? and WHERE do these laws come from?
By form he didn't mean any physical form of the law. This is what I've been saying all this time. Can you imagine living in a 5-D world? Why does it have to be 4-D? Obviously if time itself was 2-D all our physical laws will change. So is it not valid to ask the question, why does time have to be 1-D?
What he was trying to say was that by ignoring these questions in science we are reducing science to faith in the unexplained. No one would deny that these are valid questions and his argument is valid. Read the criticisms of Paul Davies by fellow theoretical physicist Lee Smolin.
curl_v; child abuse and rape are legal within limits of islamic shariah. marrying a girl of 12 years who is baaligh is legal in islam (atleast according to a majority of sunni ulema).that is child abuse. then there is rape, muslim warriors are free to rape the women of the lands they conquer.and the malakat aimaanukum sex slaves are also raped in the modern sense. you cant say extra maritial sex is same as child abuse and rape. because two people having consensual sex does not hurt ANYONE!! (except the feelings of an imaginary being). but in the eyes of islam this and rape and child abuse are all the same.hence i believe islam has failed as a moral system.even in proving justice.
about the splitting of the moon; if such a thing happened it is just like god coming down as youve said before. it is like knowing there is a god. no one will deny it.atleast hitorians will report it. there were jews and christains and zoroaterians there.
about god being racist; i dint mean to say god is racist. i asked that question because it is obvious that yahweh was a jewish tribal god (hence all the special treament to jews and all mentions of jewish prophets and kings).then it was spread among gentiles people by jesus (paul to be more accurate).after this came mohamed looking for a moral system and looking to unite the warmongering arabs of his time. i salute him for this effort but he had to copy from christian and jewish scriptures to bring forward the idea of monotheism. some few were from zoroasterian religion. this is why god seems to be racist. after all if mohamed did not know of african 'prophets' or their problems..how can he write about them? if his morality was the same as people of that time how can he think slavery is far worse a crime than usury or drinking alcohol.today we have changed a lot. we as a species have civilized and our morality have evolved to a point where some of the claims of religions are unacceptable.
i dont hate muslims or islam.i just think some muslims and some forms of islam is a threat to the rest of our species.not all. and mohamed was a great man indeed, but following every single thing from that time is madness.
and i never said i am an athiest. did i? ok i am an atheist. but athiesm is not rejecting the possibility of the existence of a superior power. it is simply not believing there is a god.a theist believes there is a god.an athiest does not. as simple as that. for details check dawkins' belief scale.im somewhere between 5 and 6.
why is god the way he is
why is the quran the way it is
why are natural laws the way it is
why is everything the way it is EXCEPT in the way i want it to be?
our existence doesnt bend to the way of our personal wants
however much you fear death, you will all die
however much you want an eternal afterlife theres no guarantee it is there
just our personal whimsies. theres no need then to think further. just enjoy this damn life without resorting to beliefs in gods or unicorns or prophets because you only have ancient texts which doesnt prove that these things (Allah or the Flying Spaghetti Monster) exists.
just becase curl v and ahmed believes the Quran to be true doesnt necessarily make it true. just as dawkins and davis' statements cannot also be proven.
why worry about this god whose existence cannot be proven nor disproven.
which leads me to the conclusion: believe in whatever stupid shit you want whether its allah or unicorns or celestial teapots. theres no proof that these things exist.
Oh my god. That there is a Epic shitstorm.
neynge: You've clearly got the wrong information about Islam. I'm not sure what your sources are. It could be the so-called extremists or what you've read/watched from the media.
Yes I agree that in Islam you can marry a very young girl, but you can only consummate the marriage when she has reached the age of puberty.
Now there are two points I'd like to note. As far as I know most so-called civilised countries have a thing called age of consent and also a minimum age you need to reach before you can marry someone.
Now is there anything special about, say 18? You could safely assume that by 18 everyone will have reached puberty. But other than that it's just an arbitrary number. For example the age of consent for Italy is 14 and for Tunisia it's 20 (surprisingly in some countries it varies if it's a homosexual sexual experience). In America this varies with the states.
So there's nothing special about 18, 16 or 14 for that matter. In Islam it is described precisely and exactly. There's no other way around it. The person should reach the puberty to marry or at least consummate the marriage. As we all know this varies from human to human.
Now you say that there's nothing wrong is sex between two consenting adults. I disagree. Think about the children that grow up without their fathers as a result of such activities. Such children are born to the world already with a disadvantage. Why do that to a child? How many stories you hear about women having unwanted babies, how this ruins the lives of both the woman, the man and ultimately the child? What about all the STDs that's just floating about? It's a known fact that in Africa, non-Muslims countries have much higher numbers of HIV positive people than the Muslim countries. Now all this just because of a temporary moment of pleasure?
This age of consent didn't always exist as you know. This is an outcome of our changing social culture. Things that were acceptable a mere 10 years ago might not be acceptable now. So if someone says that he wants to marry a 12 year old now, I wouldn't encourage the idea simply because I don't think it's socially acceptable (even though religiously it is). I think some people might use this particular ruling in Islam and use it as an excuse to marry a younger girl, but it all depends on that persons intentions.
We know that the prophet (SAW) married Aisha when she was 6 but consummated the marriage when she was 9 (there are reports that says that she was in fact much older than that). He had special reasons for doing so and it was socially acceptable then. If it wasn't the Meccan pagans would have surely made it a big issue. Now does a person living in the present time have those reasons and is it socially acceptable now? I really doubt so.
My second point is that you are assuming that marrying a young girl is equivalent to child abuse. Does that mean marriage itself is abuse? So if you marry a woman, say of age 18, will it mean that you will be abusing her?
I'm not just playing with definitions here. A lot of people claim that Muhammad (SAW) was a pedophile and a child abuser. But if that was the case would Aisha have turned out to be the woman that she became? She was one of the knowledgeable of people on Islam and a number of companions of the prophet (SAW) took advise from her on different issues. This not only shows that she was not abused (in fact it only shows that she gained the wisdom of the prophet (SAW)) but also shows that in Islam women can be knowledgeable as much as, or perhaps in this case even more than, men.
Secondly, I don't know where you've read that you can rape women during wars. Rape has the same punishment as pre/extra-marital sex. Some scholars also believe that the woman should receive some sort of payment from the rapist.
I think you got confused with the ruling in Islam that men can have sexual intercourse with female slaves. Yes this is allowed in Islam. But having sex is different from raping someone forcefully. Will a believing Muslim really rape a slave or anyone else when we are told to be kind to even the smallest of Allah's creations?
But there is a common misconception about slavery. The slavery in Islam is not in anyway similar to that existed in America or England just 100 years ago. In Islam there's no such thing as selling slaves on a market.
In Islam you can only have a slave if you fight a war with the disbelievers and you capture some of the disbelievers. Even then it depends on the ruler at that time. Other than that there's no slavery in Islam. Now think about how humane this is.
We know from the stories of the prophet (SAW) that the way Islam treats slaves are very different to how blacks were treated in America, for example. A number of slaves actually became Muslims in the end and they served in many great ways for the religion. There are stories that some of the companions refused to wear clothes better than what their slaves had or even eat food better than what their slaves ate. Also in Islam it is better to free the slaves and you'll earn rewards for doing so.
Now people claim that Islam is inhumane. Read about the recent abuses of the British Army in Iraq or the Israeli army in Gaza, how their methods go against the Geneva convention. These are nations that claim to be the most civilised, most moral and try to enforce their morality on others. Read about the terms in the Islamic rulings on prisoners of war and how you should act during wars. Did you know that it is prohibited to kill women and children during wars? It is prohibited to damage places of worship, trees and other living creatures.
All this was ordered 1400 years ago. It is still valid today and you can find numerous reports written by non-Muslims who say that the treatment of prisoners of war (POWs) is Islam is at least equally as benevolent as the Geneva convention and is some cases it's most detailed. Islam gives a number of options to the non-Muslims before a war and they have their rights after one. This also challenges the common misconception that Islam was spread through the sword.
How then can you say Islam has failed morally? I believe that the only way you can truly attain the status of a moral human being (this is what separates us, the children of Adam, from the rest of creation) is if you become a Muslim.
As you can see I'm not merely providing excuses for the rulings in Islam. These are things which become apparent just by using your own reasoning and with the right sources. I'm not distorting or making false assumptions. I urge you to read Islam in its true form, don't believe in everything you hear on the media. There are also a variety of Islamic thinking and I must admit it might sometimes be difficult to find which is the right one (even within the Sunni Islam). I sincerely hope that one day you'd be able to see Islam as how I see it. If that doesn't happen, it doesn't mean that we couldn't achieve something good for mankind together.
In Islam it is clearly stated that it is a message for all man-kind. Even though Muhammad (SAW) united the Arabs we can't assume that this was the sole purpose of his message. Contrary, over and over again you can see in his message that this was for all man-kind. Secondly Islam says that the only thing that differentiates between human beings is their piety, not the race, sex or social status. And certainly from the details it can be seen that the message itself was not restricted to Arabs. So even at the time it was revealed to prophet (SAW), Muslims would have been aware of the fact that this message applied equally as well to other people. This is also the reason why the prophet (SAW) and the khalifas after that tried to spread the word of Islam.
Now I'm not implying that there weren't tribal gods in other parts of the world at that time. There might have been African gods and demi-gods, whom of which Muhammad (SAW) might or might not have been aware of. There were also tribal gods within the people of Mecca at the time but did Islam address these gods? What difference is there between Meccan gods and African gods in the face of Islam? As far as Islam is concerned all other gods except the One true God is false, regardless of the location where of where it might have originated.
If I understand your issue correctly, your problem is with the fact that all these religions seem to have started at a particular location amongst certain people. I ask you, how else could it have happened? It has to have originated from a certain location.
What we know is that Allah sent prophets and/or messengers to people of all civilisations (even though their details are not given). Naturally these prophets were sent from their own people. For example, Muhammad (SAW) was sent within Arabs. God could just as easily have sent this last prophet anywhere in the world but He decided to send it amongst the Arabs. Does this mean He is racist? Instead of Arabs, if He had chosen it to be Africans will it make Him less racist? If in the Quran there were stories of every single prophet will that make God not racist?
You're trying to make decisions based on things which are ambiguous and unclear to you and ignoring things which are clear. It is unclear to us why certain prophets are mentioned in the Quran, why Muhammad (SAW), Isa or Moosa were sent to certain people. But what's clear in Islam is that all men are equal, except for what's in their hearts. This should be the only deciding factor about Islam being racist and nothing else. If in Islam it is said that Arabs are superior to others then yes you can say Islam is racist.
Now the Jews have altered their texts to show that they are a special species and they get more respect from YHWH. This is one reason to be a bit suspicious of their text. And Jews are not big on this whole idea of inviting other people to their religion, which you could assume is a bit racist. But then again, you can still find black Jews. I'd suspect this is an act to become more morally acceptable.
Also why Christians are even now altering their rulings to become, shall I dare say, more moral. They then argue that Islam is backward in this regard. My question is, if God sent down morality for us how then do we know when our morals change if God Himself didn't inform us that it had changed? When Christians are changing their rulings (such as homosexual priests etc), surely, indirectly they are sending out the message that God doesn't exist, even if He did, He's not in any position to influence their rulings. Perhaps why major Christian nations are turning towards Atheism.
This is why Islam makes sense. Because Allah says in the Quran that the religion has been perfected for us and He's sent his last message. Since we're not receiving any new messages from God then there's no changing of the text regardless of what we might think is more moral or not (there are certain areas of Figh that are subjected to change but the basic rulings in Islam do not).
curl_v, period vumake buddhi baaligu vumeh noon. eki kudhinge buddhi baaliguve amilla ruhumugaa jinsee gulhun hingumah ihuthiyaaru kurumuge gaabilukan libenee eki umuruga. ei nafsaanee tharaggee aa gulhifaivaakameh. ehenveemaa... gaumeh ge avrege ah balaafa umureh kanda alhanee.
condom kiyaa echeh ge vaahaka adu ehintha? noonee dheythere dhuru kurumuge vaseelaithakey kiyaa adu ahantha. faharehga arabi saharaathakah meechihi vaasilu nuvun ekasheegenvey. dhen ahaalan othee mehakaa indhegen ulhefa dharinnaa alhaa nulaa nudheveynehey? noonee meehakaa ineema STD thah birun rakkaavaanee hey?kaivenyakee jinsee gulhun hingun madhuvumeh noon ei hama ekani agreement eh. eyah hurumaiy therikoh hithaanee baeh meehun. islam dheenuga jaariyaain gengulhunves huddha. huddhanoonas ziney kruaameehun madheh noon muslimungeves.
dhen kaleymenaa vaahaka dhekkun ei beykaarukameh. muhamadhu gefaanu koffiyaa hurihaakamehves ei hama emme rangalhukanthah dho. ok dhen. kudakudhin felhumakee hama emme rangalhu kameh islaamee hudhoodhuge therey kuranyaa.
neynge: That's what I meant when I said in Islam it's defined precisely and exactly. It has defined age of puberty as the age which you can have intercourse with a married girl.
The age consent in these countries are to a large extent arbitrary. Do you really think that in Italy everyone by the time they've reached the age of 14 would have had the mentality you were talking about? Also that means a 20 year old male from Tunisia can come to Italy and have sex with a 14 year old girl but not vice versa.
In the UK children as young as 11 have sexual intercourse (albeit amongst themselves). Whereas the age of consent in the UK is 16. Do you mean that the government will now have to lower this age of consent?
I was hoping you'd talk about the condom. Condoms (depending on the type etc) might have an effectiveness ratio of anywhere between 85% to 99%. This does not in anyway guarantee that you'd not get pregnant. It merely limits the possibility. When you look at just the percentages you might think that a condom effectiveness of 99% is awesome because only 1% of the population is affected. But you need to look at the individuals and not these statistics that they use to sell these products.
If you just look at a guesstimate of the Maldivian population (assuming that every child bearing woman in the Maldives have sex using condoms ONCE during a year) this will result in 1260 UNWANTED pregnancies. (i.e. take the population to be 350,000, 60% to be females, and take 60% of these females to be of child bearing age and 1% of that). In reality it's actually twice that since two people are involved in the act. If you look at the global population that's over 21 million women a year (of course I've made the assumption that every child bearing woman have sex ONCE during the year, which wouldn't necessarily be true. The actual number of pregnancies might be more or less, but you can see the individual numbers now).
I'm not saying that condoms are from the devil and it's best not to use them. My point is that even though condoms greatly reduces the chances of one getting pregnant or STDs it is by no means a guarantee. We do hear some ignorant and naive people say, 'oh it's all good, I used a condom I have nothing to worry about'.
condom kiyaa echeh ge vaahaka adu ehintha? noonee dheythere dhuru kurumuge vaseelaithakey kiyaa adu ahantha. faharehga arabi saharaathakah meechihi vaasilu nuvun ekasheegenvey.
This statements was only aimed at mocking Muslims and/or Arabs. There's no basis of it for your argument. It just shows your anger and inability to come up with intelligent, coherent sentences. Hence you resort to insult. Nice.
"huddhanoonas ziney kruaameehun madheh noon muslimungeves."
Is this really a point? If anything it acts against you. These are classic signs that you have nothing clever to say so you resort to the 'But what about...' cases.
Is adultery allowed in Islam? NO.
Just because it's not allowed does it mean that Muslims won't do it? Muslims have the ability to do all the immoral things as other human beings. That's why in Islam we have punishments. If being a Muslim completely removes him from all these sins there would be no need for punishments now would there?
Again, don't let your anger and frustration take control of your thoughts. Take a deep breath, really think about what you're saying. I know you're intelligent enough for that.
Think about where we started and where we are now. I started the argument about logically explaining God and now we're trying to argue about the details of Islamic Fiqh.
This is always the case with you lot. You try to pick things, things which you think doesn't make sense and try to argue. Every single one of these points can be counter-argued, simply because you do not have the correct knowledge and the right resources.
I don't even think there's any reason to defend anything in Islam, but the ignorant and the uneducated has to be taught.
There are numerous reasons to follow the Islamic rulings. Let me just state a few.
We're all very much aware of the current economic crisis facing the whole world. Why did this start?
The actually beginning was in the late 1980s when an investment bank called Solomon Brothers in the U.S. made mortgage bonds and securities popular. This was made even more popular after the dot-com bubble in the early 2000s. Investment bankers made complex financial products based on mortgage securities, products which they themselves did not understand. Their whole aim was to maximise profit.
Now this was all good and well except when they started giving mortgages to people who couldn't really afford it, the so-called sub-prime mortgages. This started the economic crisis in the States in the summer of 2007 which later lead to the collapse of some of the biggest investment banks in the world.
Now what was the underlined cause of all this? It was only the greed of investment bankers, the Gordon Gecko that's inside all of us. The current economy dictates that the sole purpose of companies is just to maximise profits. Any introductory book into economics will teach you how to calculate when your profit can be maximised. This is the whole idea of capitalism. The consumers are reduced to just a variable in a differential equation. This is also the exact reason why wealth is only concentrated in 1% of the population and why Africa is still poor.
But the Islamic method is completely different. In Islam both the company and the consumers enter an agreement and they need to share the risks equally. In such a system the wealth will be shared. Yes this might mean that the companies sole aim is not to maximise profits and from the outlook it seems that they will not earn as much as they would do in a capitalist economy. But this surely favours the public as a whole. Is this not better for all of us?
The second thing I'd like to talk about is Nationalism.
We all know that in Islam there's no such thing called nationalism and Islam denounces anything that might instill nationalist tendencies in a person.
What do we see in all the so-called civilised countries?
In almost all European countries there exists nationalist far-right parties (BNP in the UK, Freedom parties of Holland and Austria, Jobbik in Hungary just to name a few). All these parties have nationalist tendencies and in their core are racists. But yet what did we observe in the latest European elections? These nationalist parties did gain popularity in these elections with the BNP getting one MEP.
Now what does this tell us about these so-called moral societies? Why do they need to have these nationalist tendencies? I agree that immigration is a big issue for countries like UK and they bring about valid points, but why does it exist?
To simplify a complex issue, the main problem is that we ignore the real cause of the problem and try to artificially put in measures to counter these.
The Islamic way is that all nations, regardless of the location should have the same privileges. Which means that just because you were born in Africa doesn't mean that you're less likely to succeed in life if say you were born in Europe. Isn't this what your view of an ideal world would be like? In fact we know from our Islamic history that this was how Muslims ruled nations. The societies themselves flourished (regardless of whether they were Muslims or not).
But what happened then? Colonialism started and Islam was confined to mosques and academic institutions. European nations became wealthy at the expense of everyone else, Muslims and non-Muslims. With this immense wealth, by the 1700 hundreds almost all of the knowledge of science and mathematics were concentrated in these countries and Islamic/Arabic/Persian contributions to science was more or less forgotten. This divided the world into different categories of countries (developed, developing, least developed etc). These aren't just the ramblings of a frustrated Muslim. These are known facts from history, which is often ignored. As long as there is this divide between the countries immigration will exist as an issue between nations, racisms will be rife and there will be hostility to people of other cultures. This will exist even in the absence of a religion.
very good points curl_v. ive got some questions tho. you mentioned that certain things are religiously acceptable whereas socialy it's not. i am a believing muslim unlike other ppl on this site. im prolly being ignorant here but i dont think ive heard of that before. could you care to elaborate?
i think these guys always claim that muslims can never have a debate about islam without offending muslims. whereas i think we can sort of see who cant debate and who cant control their anger.
i have an atheistic mate whos father is a professor of islamic theology at the university of oxford. he himself have recently changed his position from agnostic to atheist.. he argues that he knows islam inside out n no one can defeat his arguments. i think the comments made by some ppl here were very similar to things he argued about, especially quoting from dawkins book.
the debate started AGAIN ?
lol
How can we believe in the bullshit this dude is writing. In his earlier posts, its all bout defending Islam, jihad, Wahaabis and even Dr.Majeed. Now, he is criticizing Islam and smoking weed. kekeke. So, who is brainwashed. Maybe, he will be telling us tomorrow that we are dogs. I understood one thing very clearly from your posts. That u really are a mad man who is easily brainwashed. If you support freedom of speech that much, post this
@last anonymous; why is it with u guys that ur always skeptical i may publish your comments?
about your comment; yes, i was like dat and wrote those stuff...and im still gonna keep those stuff. coz this is MY blog where i express MY opinion. if you think its stupid that is your opinion...and that is what this commenting function is for.so dont hesitate to spill it out and never think even for a second dat i will reject any of your comments.
now why do you think my views change like dat? maybe im a stuhpid moron.as u pointed out, i call my self moyameehaa. but dats not it. its this really stuhpid, moron thing i do. its called THINKING? i was told that everything was clear and all answers are in their. i looked and there was nothing.then suddenly i realised i was tricked. then i started asked more questions. questions we are not supposed to asked. i got some answers i dint get others. and today...this is where i am. maybe this blogging and sharing my view with others helped me. coz i consider what everyone says. like ibn khattab says..its evidence that matters. you have to justify what you say.and if it makes sense i will accept it.and this, my friend, is called being open minded. thinking you know everything and shutting out all other information and knowledge is called being a moron. thank you for visiting my moron blog. :)
well said moyameeha
I don't think we should bash the author of the blog simply because he was, in his own words, an extremist few years ago. I don't think he's stupid or that he doesn't have the intelligence to make up his own mind about religion. I would've thought that anyone who has the intelligence to get on the interweb and access this blog has the intelligence and freedom to make up their own mind.
We can't expect everyone's view on life and religion to be the same for all eternity (it might be the case for some). For whatever reason, for good or bad, for right or wrong the author has changed his views based on what he thought was logical and rational. That's how people convert to Islam or other religions, become religious or non-religious because they follow what they think is rational and they are, hopefully, sincere to themselves. Unfortunately often our own needs and desires get in the way of what's logical and we try to justify what we believe in. Atheists will argue that I'm doing exactly that and I will argue back that it's them.
So if someone says that these beliefs are nothing but hogwash and I'm brainwashed should I really care? No, because I'm sincere to what I believe in so much so that I don't need any more convincing (i.e. it's logical etc.). The same applies to atheists.
What's important is that you access the correct information, look at all the evidences, think about it and then make your decision without any outside influence. If any one of these steps fail you wouldn't be able to come to the right decision. There's nothing more anyone else can do.
However having said all that, I do not think that we have to be smug (even though we might have the right) about what we believe in. That's why I disliked Richard Dawkins. I knew that if he really was sincere in his motivation to inform us about the truth he wouldn't make us feel like we're good for nothing idiots simply because we believe in something that he doesn't. But that's what we see in all these blogs, just bashing Islam and Muslims with carefully selected 'evidences' to back their claims, whining about how they can't 'live their life' in a religious society. I'm, hopefully, trying my bit to falsify these ludicrous comments about Islam.
I'd like to ask the author to publish an article on how his views changed, I know he described a bit in his last post but I'd like a bit more detail. In case you've already done this could you please provide me the link to that particular article? I'm just curious, I do know of a couple of people who have had similar experiences and I'm wondering whether I could see a pattern here.
To the Anonymous at 27/7/09, 18.43.
Shame about your mate. What I said earlier in my post was not from any Islamic scholars so may be my understanding is not correct here, please correct me if I'm wrong. What I really meant to say was that with changing times our perception of socially acceptable behaviour might change (not necessarily morality). For instance there are several hadiths that say that the prophet (SAW) at various times had hair that reached his shoulders, ear lobes etc. There are also hadiths that say that he braided his hair. Therefore, Islamically speaking there's nothing wrong with hair reaching the shoulders, but for some people this may not be socially acceptable. There's no obligation to follow it since the prophet (SAW) didn't command the Muslims have to have their hair a certain length (there are hadiths about different hair styles). However, things like growing a beard for men is obligatory since the prophet (SAW) commanded us to do so. Similar with marrying a 9 year old girl; we're under no obligation to seek a girl that young for marriage, because even though the prophet (SAW) did marry Aisha he didn't command us to do that. Rather, we have to follow what's more socially and culturally acceptable, within the Islamic jurisprudence. And marrying a 9 year old girl is not acceptable now. But as I said earlier, age of consent we have now is to a large extent completely arbitrary.
Peace to you all brothers and sisters,
Hi Rilwan,
First of all I would like to say that I reject all the hadith which is compiled by humans after 200/150 yrs death of prophet. Prophet's message was Quran which is from God. Shortly I would like to say I believe in only God's book. That is Quran.
Can you please tell me where in Quran it says not to respect other's religion and so on which you said?
The quran says there is no compulsion in religion.
By using Quran can you prove that it is not from God? If so please do it.
Dahin Mohamed
Please reply ASAP, tc
Anonymous
This is probably the wrong place to talk discuss this but consider these questions.
On what basis do you reject the hadiths?
Did you look at the evidences from both sides?
Doesn't the Qur'an tell us to follow the Messenger (SAW)?
The major argument for the rejection of hadiths is that it was compiled 200+ years after the death of the prophet (SAW).
Argument against this. Just because someone compiled something after 200+ years from it source does not necessarily imply that it is invalid. A rigorous process is carried out to find out which hadiths are authentic and they are categorised into different degrees of authenticity. For a hadith to be valid, there should not be a break in chain between the narrators and each of the narrators should be well known to be honest, good character etc. Furthermore there are numerous hadiths from the two Sahihs (Al-Bukhari & Muslim) which agree in wording. How can they both independently come up with the same hadiths if they were all made up by humans? From what I've read, the academic nature of the science of hadiths is no different than other scientific research such as physics or mathematics. It's all based on sound references and reviewed by a number of scholars (peers).
You reject the hadiths and yet you believe that the works of Plato, Archimedes, Newton were of their own (this is a fair assumption since assuming otherwise will go against the majority consensus). How do you verify, say, the theories in Principia of Principia Mathematica was from Newton?
The other is a hadith in which the prophet commanded the companions not to write anything from him except the Qur'an.
People who uses this as evidence is contradicting themselves. How can you use something that you believe as invalid as proof?
With regards to this particular hadiths, the prophet (SAW) said that because he didn't want the companions to confuse his sayings with the Qur'an.
Hadiths include all the authentic sayings of the prophet and his sirat includes stories about his life. Both of which needs to be authentic. Qur'an commands us to follow the prophet (SAW).
Will the Qur'an tell us to follow something if there was nothing to follow? i.e. if it were not for the hadiths what's there to follow from the prophet?
These are all based on logical reasoning, hence your statement of believing in just the Qur'an makes no sense.
Right, so Islam says it is legal to have sex with slaves from conquered nations. And Islam says that getting married to 9 year old is allright. And Islam says that babyfuck is AWRIIIIIIGH-wait, it didnt say that, sorry.
However, all these "permissions" are granted with no way to check them. A pedophile posing as a muslim may marry - then proceed to rape the fucking shit out of the girl, then, using the convenient Islamic Sharia law of "need four wommenz testimony", escape scot free.
This is why, as it presents a grave threat to my low-populated state, I am against it. You may say that I am against Islamic tenets, but I don't give a damn.
@ curl_v,
Congratulations on the worst defence of the authenticity of the Hadith ever.
Just because someone compiled something from someone else's memory 200+ years later doesn't make something invalid?
Are you kidding me? Do you realize you've just given defended the biggest argument against the various Christian Gospels?
But that's beside the point.
You mention the Sahih.
You do realize that if the Hadith were all authentic to BEGIN with, there'd be no point of having a 'sahih'.
Despite all the alleged 'rigorous processes' (?) behind compiling them, several hadith flatly contradict each other.
Bukhari is supposed to be the most 'reliable' among them. And it has the same problem of credibility as any.
Abu Hurairah (one of the prophet's companions) reported that the Prophet (pbuh) said,
"Your bad omen is in your woman, your animal, and your house" (Al-Bukhari)
However, A'ishah, the Prophet's wife, refuted this, and insisted that the Prophet had said instead,
"People during the jahiliyya (era of pre-Islamic ignorance) used to say that bad omens are in women, animals, and houses." (Al-Bukhari)
Surely, ONE of them has to be wrong?
Whichever way you think about it, One of them HAS to be a False Hadith.
One is his companion, and the other his wife. You decide which one is lying.
Or maybe it wasn't a lie. Maybe it was a mistake. And that's enough reason to worry.
The game of Chinese Whispers (or 'telephone') are based on mistakes, not lies. And the end result of the game is a hilarious mumbo-jumbo that has nothing to do with the original sentence. Charming game that one.
b) You're actually asking how do we know Principia Mathematica was written by Newton?
To begin with, it wasn't written 1400 years ago in the middle of a desert on shoulder blades. Nor was it compiled by 'consensus'.
It is strong, irrefutable science.
Besides, it was written just about 300 years ago (long after Gutenberg invented the printing press some 500 years ago) And the fact that we know what Newton looked like, where he taught, where he is buried and who buried him. We have his notes, his reputation and probably his records at the University.
And the fact that the Laws of Motion and Gravity that he put on paper weren't claimed to be divine (though Newton WAS into the occult)
They were mathematically derived works that are still valid today, and experimentally verifiable.
Never, ever use a relatively recent science to make a point about centuries old dogma.
It will never hold.
c)
As for Archimedes and Plato, some of their works are 'attributed to" them. Nobody really cares who discovered the Archimedes principle.
As long as the fluid displaces an equal volume, scientists just don't care.
Some of the legends built around plato, aristotle, socrates, archimedes (hey, even old Aesop) them are taken for precisely that. Legends.
The Qur'an says to follow the messenger, not to ape his physical appearance and movements like mindless robots.
All of today's scientists and philosophers determinedly FOLLOW Archimedes and Plato.. but nobody exactly goes around running naked screaming 'Eureka!' anymore just because they solved a problem.
But that's exactly what religious dogmatists would have done - and call science.
d) A hadith reporting that the prophet said NOT to compile his sayings IS rich.
But it's not only the Quranites who are contradicting themselves by relying on a hadith to defend themselves.
The bigger contradiction is when Hadith 'followers' accept the authenticity of this hadith, and YET carry on with their wilful disobedience!
AND FINALLY,one word of advice. Be open to reason even though you're a 'believer'.
God would approve.
Peace to curl and others;
I am here not to debate :), I am here not to win from any of you, I am here just to share what I know, I am here to give my knowledge and to increase yours if mine is true. I am here to correct myself if I am wrong.
I am here to believe you, if you come with good points with logic and evidence.
Some reasons why I reject the hadith
1. Hadith Books were written after 200 yrs after death of prophet. There's a hadith which says "do not write except anything from Quran", ok, muslim scholars says it's when the time of Quran reveled. Here I will examine one of the book which muslim scholars quote and some name it as second Quran. Well that is Sahih Bukhairi. At first Bukhairi just did not make Sahih Bukhairi, he compiled 6 lakh hadith and named the the book as "Bukhairi", later he threw out many haith and took only 4000 hadith. Only 4000, why? Cause he found from them nonsense. Eg: "God opened his two legs to show his identity". Nowadays scholars claim about some chain of narrators which Bukhairi invented. If you believe in Sahih Bukhairi, why don't you believe in Bible? It has truth too. Now, day by day Christians are changing and throwing Bible verses and making in a way which they want. Now tell me, what is the difference between Bukhairi and Bible? Now tell me the difference between the Bukhairi, Bible and the Quran?
Bible and Bukhairi has/had nonsense and so on. But the Quran? The Quran challenges in many verses by saying if this is from other than God you will find contradictions, errors from this book(4:82). Yes, God is right. Quran has no contradictions and errors, but Bible and hadiths books had(These books are modified to throw errors and contradictions).
Ask any muslim scholar, whether the hadith are in the same way which prophet said? They will say "no, but the meaning is same". How do they know the hadith are not wrong? and it is true? Then they may say to defend, any person who think can identify the wrong and correct one. Eg: Someone said that, Dahin said "each person should follow the traffic rules and those who do not follow will be punished", there is nothing wrong in this saying. But tell me, can it be said that Dahin said? Even if Dahin didn't say it? Will it be true that he said this? No, so now tell me, how can scholars make sure good statement as prophet's saying? If they claim that prophet said so so, then they are lieng. Here I don't mean all the hadith are wrong. Here my point is how do we know which hadith is prophet's saying or not. How can we follow that?
2. Almost all scholars says the Quran is not cleared without the hadith. May be scholars following the old scholars even if they know the truth. The Quran says in many verses that this Book is complete. Anyone who take the Quran as a guide, will be guided. Where in Quran says to follow any book other than Quran? In spite of this, the Quran says not to follow any other book than Quran.(6:19, 14:1, 4:105, 18:27, 12:111). Prophet's message was the Quran Only. If hadith is that much important thing, why the Quran doesn't tell us to follow any othet book than Quran? or any other thing?
I hear always muslim shcolars saying that Quran says to do things and do not give how to do it. By saying that, they are able to take only one or two example, like how to pray. I wonder whether they read Quran or not. In Quran many verses God says to stand, bow down/rukoo, and to prostrate(this is the way to pray). And to remember God as much as you can. Quran gives full detail how to make ablution, but still human are not happy and they made more extra way which makes them happy. In Bukhairi there is no saying of prophet, do like this or that to pray, instead of that, it says someone said so so and is written. Does hadith give one exact way to pray? No, you can see many prays in different ways. Here I am not going to detail anything. just contact me, I will tell you how to pray using Quran.
to be continued...
continued...
3. Just read islamic history texts, it shows that in prophet's time, Caliph Abu Bakr and Umar time no one wrote the hadith. Are muslim scholars saying prophet died without completing Islam? I mean without writing his sayings? If they were that much important, then why prophet didn't complete his sayings books? Abu Bakr and Umar Caliph did not allow to write hadith, after Umar, Abu Huraira and others did it. It is surprising that Abu Huraira who lived only 2 yrs with prophet gave most hadith while Abu Bakr, Ali, Umar etc served their full life to prophet Mohamed. Muslim scholars said can be said as, prophet didn't finish his mission and later Bukhairi and so people finished. My point is, prophet's message was only Quran. History says that many went to hear prophet's last speech. Just see the hadith books, it's not same thing on the books. Some says to follow Quran only and some says to follow both. Think, all these people witnessed speech is not written correctly in all the hadith books. Then how can we authenticate other hadith which is written as one or two withnessed as prophet saying?
4. Quran says, not to divide religion into sects 6:159. Today you can see many sects. Shaafee, Hanafi, Maliki etc <---Sunni. Sunni sects believe on Bukhair hadith, Muslim and so on, and Shii(shitte) muslims believe on some other hadith books. Tell me, are all sunni mazhabs friendly? and others? What did make them separate? What did make them think different? It's all hadith. I here call for all muslems, follow only Quran and see whether one verse fighting each other like how hadith do. Just learn so called Islamic shareeah which nowadays muslim universities teach. You will find millions of different ideas by different Imams. Even today in Maldives, some scholars fight each other by hanging a hadith. Some says to some weak, batil so so hadith. While others says they are authentic.
There are many reasons for not believing in hadith. Not believing hadith does not mean I don't believe in Prophet. Anyone who follow the Quran is following the prophet. I, Dahin Mohamed, challenge to anyone to prove anything wrong in islam by using Only Quran. Offcourse, in hadith it says prophet did this that to somone and so on. But not the Quran. Some says then why I'm using hadith? Offcourse, there is nothing wrong in reading hadith, read hadith like how you read others books of history and so on. But do not say that hadith is a source of Islam and do not depend on it by following it. Cause it may be true or not. Like how other history books.
Some atheists or secular ones says that they are making peace by talking so and so about other's religion. If someone do not believe, then be by not believing. Please do not play with others faith. Think, if atheists claim that, there is no God and so, then, will there be peace on the land? Many of those who are following religions are following because there is hell, heaven etc. If you guys play with all the believers, they may start living like animals. I hope you understand what I am saying. I respect all the views.
To get more information which I have talked, please visit
http://www.quran.org/19quest.htm
http://www.yuksel.org/
http://www.19.org/
To all christians, hadith believers and atheists, please forgive me if I have hurt your belief. Just to answer, I will have to talk so and so. Here after I won't reply here. If anyone want to ask anything or reply me, please contact me. Sorry for my bad English :)
Best Regards
Dahin Muhammad
dahinternet@gmail.com
Peace to you all,
Can you all do me a favor please! Please visit this site ( http://dahinternet.blogspot.com/ ) and read "Understanding God", an article which I have written about God Only, it is not about any religion. Just only about God. This article may change your views, or very intelligent person can prove me wrong. But I do not think anyone can prove me wrong. I hope this site admin will post it, so that all can read it. It's linked to this article. I will be very happy if all REPLY IN THIS BLOG.
Best regards,
Dahin
RE: splitting the moon.
Ibn Kathir writes: Islamic polity is unanimous on the occurrence of Splitting of the moon that it occurred during the life time of Allah's Apostle (Sallallaho alaihi wasallam). It stands proved with successive traditions carrying different chain of narrations. (Al-Bidaya wa Al-Nihaya. VOL. 3. P. 118)
The denouncers of this miracle said they could not get any reference to the Splitting of the moon in the books of history. The detailed answer to it can be found in 'Tarjuman al Sunnah' (Vol. 4. pp. 165, 166). It has also printed the map showing day and night at that hour in the world. It was almost midnight in India. In the 7th century mostly the people stayed in their houses after the day was out. The darkness took over the dwelling places then nobody sat watching the sky. However, we find a report of Splitting of the moon of Raja Bhoj of India. It is mentioned in Tafsir Haqqani. Ibn Kathir also mentioned this report in his work 'Al-Bidaya wa Al-Nihaya without naming the Raja and said: This event was recorded in the history of some part of India and that night was written in history as the night of Splitting of the moon. (Vol. 3. P.120) This means the report of Raja Bhoj had become so famous in those days that it traveled to Damascus where Ibn Kathir jotted it down in his famous and most reliable history book.
i know it is hellishly late to comment here, but this post is awesome, thanks
Abdul-Rahman
i know it is hellishly late to comment here, but this post is awesome, thanks
Abdul-Rahman
[2:256] There shall be no compulsion in religion: the right way is now distinct from the wrong way. Anyone who denounces the devil and believes in GOD has grasped the strongest bond; one that never breaks. GOD is Hearer, Omniscient.
i think tolerance n respect is needed in every aspect of life as everything is connected to everything else according to the very basic law of geography....look at wat happens in politics...look at wat happen in a normal football match even..those who loose can hardly tolerate...yes, it might b bit critical when it comes to religion...so the followers of any religion n everyone else must know it...for me i dont understand any sensible reason for someone to draw a cartoon of Prophet mohamed, jesus, or mosa in a way that represents hatred n disrespect to the followers of them or those religions n publish it on publics news papers..for me its a kind of mocking..well u dont have to mock even if u dont respect..dont u...when there is no sensible purpose to do it, after doing such a thing, if the one who did it is expectning others to tolerate n respect wat he has done, its foolish....caz by drawing it without any meaningful purpose, he has passed the border of tolerance n respect that hes suppose to maintain...its human nature that when someone hurts your feelings u just somehow try to take a revenge...thats wat happens...but there can be few who can control their emotion..who just leave it...but everyone will not b like that...so before drawing such a thing, the one who do it must b matured enouh to know wat hes doing, if hes really following the limitatios of tolerance n respect...
In religious texts, ofcourse there will be stories of wat wud happen to those who dont believe or those who go astray...i dont think this is something to be surprised n i dont know of anyone who has tried to attack another religion caz of such stories mentioned in that religion about those who dont believe this specific religion...
i think there is no problem in debating on religious matters...if someone asks me y do i believe in allah, if i am a believe it shudnt sound odd to me..or i shudnt be afraid...caz i shud hve thought about it before, thats y i shud b a believer....but ofcourse on suitable grounds.... if u re in a society where the majority believes in a specific religion or any other ideology n if u go on criticising it publicly, u shudnt expect ppl to stay calm...some of them may just debate as u do...while there can be some who just cant control themselves....thats just how some humans are...not caz of wat they believe...thats how it happens everywhere in the world i guess...n i think the way we weigh religion is lot different from other man made ideologies...
yes i totally agree with the fact that i shudnt attack someone just caz hes a disbeliever of wat i believe...
you seem like a very sensible person to me! although i need more time to read your posts. will be back to read more. cheers
you seem like a very sensible person to me! although i need more time to read your posts. will be back to read more. cheers
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