It's a matter of either/or. Either you have blind faith in the existence of an all powerful, all exclusive and a one God, or, you don't. There is no space for vacillations and doubts and buts, and's, and if's. This is one incontrovertible fact I have come to realize after my Umra pilgrimage recently. And, mind you, that isn't the last thing I have come to realize during the journey. Hence, I think it a good idea to revisit one's core values and beliefs - Am I now as full of doubts and contradictions as I was before about the tenets of Islam or am I truly converted?
The things that are true and have always been so - the very fact that I accepted them as such or not is as insignificant a thing as it could be, for it makes no difference to veracity of it all.
1) This universe and all that is in it is created by ALLAH. Even science today believes, that the universe was created out of nothing, the very fact religion has been propounding from the very start. If we go the way of atheists and start to conjecture on the fact that there isn't an all-encompassing creator and designer of the universe, and, that all started somehow inexplicably we are placing ourselves in a self-defeating position. It is fashionable these days to be anti-religious - and I will explain how and why - leaving apart the hijabi's and the born-again Muslims in our society mushrooming in the past decade, the general trend amongst the 'educated' and liberal people is an inability to reconcile their modern world view with orthodoxy in Islam. If there is only one GOD and he is good (of course) then why is there Evil? If there is a GOD and he is all loving and forgiving, then why the senseless suffering? Why is good not always rewarded? and so on. These are very valid questions and Islam welcomes debate and queries and inquiry, though, it places a precondition to coming to the truth, first and foremost you must have absolute and complete 'blind' faith in the existence of GOD. If this seems illogical and unfair then think about it - God, in the Quran says very categorically that what is true and what is false is hidden and will be known only after the day of judgement. So the initial position as a Muslim must be to accept what is said in the Quran and start from there, since we cannot have complete knowledge about anything then why speculate? For, is there is absolute proof of God's non-existence? NO!
2) The life in this world is temporary and transient, and the real life will begin after the day of judgement. Hmmmm, sounds a bit over the top when one puts it this way? well it did to me previously, for who has the papers, the guarantees, the valid proof that one fine day god will start to take our accounts? It hasn't happened so far in the millions of years man has treaded upon this earth so when will it come to pass if ever? Well, the fact remains, when we say and believe in the unity of God and his plans and his words, then it all makes perfect sense. Our knowledge is limited and flawed (a fact propounded by every philosopher since the inception of philosophy) the only thing we know certainly is that we know 'nothing'! Therefore if we don't know for a fact that there isn't a day of judgement then how can we prove that there will never be one in the future?
3)We have to believe that Quran is the very word of God. It is not an allegory or a fabricated story, or a parable through which the prophet is trying to lure us into believing. No, absolutely not. The prophet is merely a man who is a messenger. He is the recipient of God's revelations through the angel Jibrael and his job is to pass the message forward both by repeating the words of Allah and by living them. He has no more authority, it is his goodness and exemplary performance that makes him dear to God and important for us for in him we find the perfect guide as the the message of Allah. Now, some people find it hard to digest that God will send angels with messages to prophets over the course of time. Why would he do that? We again come to the same position, the basic stance of complete trust in God and his words. He has done it and we cannot understand why and how and why not in any other way? We must understand that our mind and intellect is imperfect and unable to comprehend the vast knowledge of God and his purposes, so we must take his word for it.
4) Heaven and Hell are not allegorical representation of a state of mind, they are actual and real destinations, they exist as a matter of fact and will be experienced by us in real time. Now this is a hard one to deal with - for who has seen Utopia? and who has witnessed the blazing fires of hell? One is tempted to think that God is merely trying to scare us in behaving good by giving tortuous pictures of hell, and luring towards a heaven with all that is forbidden on earth. In the Quran, this isn't so - heaven is a place in real time and so is hell - we can think and believe and accept or reject but the fact remains intact. Again, here comes the concept of blind faith - let's take an example, we are told by the scientists that the universe is expanding, it is full of trillion of billion stars, that there are planets orbiting round the stars just as in our solar system and so much more - we choose to believe them but we haven't experienced these facts, we know that the earth is revolving around an imaginary axis, but we don't even feel that! let alone feeling heaven or hell in this life.
What about HOORS?
ReplyDelete