مشاور شما

Let’s talk frankly.  Almost never do non-Muslims study Islam until they have first exhausted the religions of their exposure.  Only after they have grown dissatisfied with the religions familiar to them, meaning Judaism, Christianity and all the fashionable “-isms”—Buddhism, Taoism, Hinduism (and, as my young daughter once added, “tourism”)—do they consider Islam.

Perhaps other religions do not answer the big questions of life, such as “Who made us?”  and “Why are we here?”  Perhaps other religions do not reconcile the injustices of life with a fair and just Creator.  Perhaps we find hypocrisy in the clergy, untenable tenets of faith in the canon, or corruption in the scripture.  Whatever the reason, we perceive shortcomings in the religions of our exposure, and look elsewhere.  And the ultimate “elsewhere” is Islam.

Now, Muslims would not like to hear me say that Islam is the “ultimate elsewhere.”  But it is.  Despite the fact that Muslims comprise one-fourth to one-fifth of the world’s population, non-Muslim media smears Islam with such horrible slanders that few non-Muslims view the religion in a positive light.  Hence, it is normally the last religion seekers investigate.

Another problem is that by the time non-Muslims examine Islam, other religions have typically heightened their skepticism: If every “God-given” scripture we have ever seen is corrupt, how can the Islamic scripture be different?  If charlatans have manipulated religions to suit their desires, how can we imagine the same not to have happened with Islam?

The answer can be given in a few lines, but takes books to explain.  The short answer is this: There is a God.  He is fair and just, and He wants us to achieve the reward of paradise.  However, God has placed us in this worldly life as a test, to weed out the worthy from the unworthy.  And we will be lost if left to our own devices.  Why?  Because we don’t know what He wants from us.  We can’t navigate the twists and turns of this life without His guidance, and hence, He has given us guidance in the form of revelation.

Sure, previous religions have been corrupted, and that is one of the reasons why we have a chain of revelation.  Ask yourself: wouldn’t God send another revelation if the preceding scriptures were impure?  If preceding scriptures were corrupted, humans would need another revelation, to keep upon the straight path of His design.

So we should expect preceding scriptures to be corrupted, and we should expect the final revelation to be pure and unadulterated,for we cannot imagine a loving God leaving us astray.  What we can imagine is God giving us a scripture, and men corrupting it; God giving us another scripture, and men corrupting it again … and again, and again.  Until God sends a final revelation He promises to preserve until the end of time.

Muslims consider this final revelation to be the Holy Quran.  You consider it … worth looking into.  So let us return to the title of this article: Why Islam?  Why should we believe that Islam is the religion of truth, the religion that possesses the pure and final revelation?

“Oh, just trust me.”

Now, how many times have you heard that line?  A famous comedian used to joke that people of different cities cuss one another out in different ways.  In Chicago, they cuss a person out thisway, in Los Angeles they cuss a person out that way, but in New York they just say, “Trust me.”

So don’t trust me—trust our Creator.  Read the Quran, read books and study good websites.  But whatever you do, get started, take it seriously, and pray for our Creator to guide you.

Your life may not depend on it, but your soul most definitely does.

Copyright © 2007 Laurence B. Brown; used by permission.

In recent years, a small piece of cloth has managed to cause quite a stir.  The scarf or hijab that Muslim women wear on their heads is making headlines around the world.  Hijab is banned in French public schools and other European countries have adopted, or are drafting similar legislation.  In Australia, a radio presenter triggered both debate and outrage when he called for the face veil (niqab) to be banned from banks and post offices.  Even predominantly Muslim countries such as Turkey and Tunisia ban the hijab in certain government buildings.  When a small piece of fabric causes such controversy and conflict, wouldn’t it be easier to remove it?  Why then, under such circumstances, do Muslim women wear scarves?

There are a myriad of reasons why, but the easy, one sentence answer is, because they believe God has made it an obligation for believing women.  In the Quran God tells the believing men and women to lower their gaze and to dress modestly.  He (God) specifically addresses women when He asks them not to show off their adornment, except that which is apparent, and draw their veils over their bodies.  (Quran 24:30-31)

These verses of Quran are known as the verses of hijab and it is the consensus of Islamic scholars that they make the wearing of hijab mandatory.  Some countries, such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar do enforce a dress code.  Women there are expected to cover their hair and wear some sort of loose fitting, full-length garment over their clothes.  However, for the majority of Muslim women around the world, to cover, or not to cover, is a freely made choice. God requires Muslim women to dress modestly and to wear the hijab in public and in the presence of men who are not close relatives. 

Although the English word scarf and the Arabic term hijab have become interchangeable, it is worth noting that hijab is more than just a scarf.  It is a term that covers a variety of clothing including scarves, but also a variety of different dress styles from around the world.  Many have cultural connotations such as the Pakistani shalwar khamis or the Afghani burqa, but whenever a Muslim woman covers “her adornment”, she is said to be wearing hijab.

The literal meaning of hijab is to veil, to cover, or to screen.  Islam is known as a religion concerned with community cohesion and moral boundaries, and therefore hijab is a way of ensuring that the moral boundaries between unrelated men and women are respected.  In this sense, the term hijab encompasses more than a scarf and more then a dress code.  It is a term that denotes modest dressing and modest behaviour.  For instance, if a Muslim woman was wearing a scarf but at the same time using bad language, she would not be fulfilling the requirements of hijab.

The majority of Muslim women wear hijab, to obey God, and to be known as respectable women. (Quran 33:59)  However, in the last 30 years hijab has emerged as a sign of Islamic consciousness.  Many women see wearing the hijab as indicative of their desire to be part of an Islamic revival, especially in countries where the practice of Islam is discouraged or even forbidden.

While those who seek to ban hijab refer to it as a symbol of gender based repression, the women who choose to don a scarf, or to wear hijab, in the broadest sense of the word, do so by making personal decisions and independent choices.  They view it as a right and not a burden.  Nor do these women regard hijab as a sign of oppression.  Women who wear hijab often describe themselves as being “set free” from society’s unrealistic fashion culture. 

Hijab frees women from being thought of as sexual objects of desire or from being valued for their looks, or body shape rather then their minds and intellect.  No longer slaves to consumerism, hijab liberates women from the need to conform to unrealistic stereotypes and images dictated by the media.  Women wearing hijab have expressed that dressing modestly and covering their hair, minimises sexual harassment in the workplace. The aura of privacy created by hijab is indicative of the great value Islam places upon women.

It is true that in some families and in some cultures women are forced to wear hijab but this is not the norm.  The Quran clearly states that there is no compulsion in religion (2:256).  Women who choose to wear hijab do not make the decision lightly.  In fact many women testify that they faced great animosity from their Muslim or non-Muslim families when they decided to cover.  Across the globe there are numerous instances of women having to defend their right to wear the hijab.

Hijab can be a symbol of piety and it can be a sign of great inner strength and fortitude.  A woman wearing hijab becomes a very visible sign of Islam.  While Muslim men can blend easily into any society, Muslim woman are often put on the line, and forced to defend not only their decision to cover, but also their religion.  Nevertheless, women who wear hijab insist that the advantages far outweigh any disadvantage conjured up by media bias or general ignorance.

Among the blessings and favors that God has bestowed upon humanity is that He endowed them with an innate ability to recognize and acknowledge His existence.  He placed this awareness deep in their hearts as a natural disposition that has not changed since human beings were first created.  Furthermore, He reinforced this natural disposition with the signs that he placed in creation that testify to His existence.  However, since it is not possible for human beings to have a detailed knowledge of God except through revelation from Himself, God sent His Messengers to teach the people about their Creator Who they must worship.  These Messengers also brought with them the details of how to worship God, because such details cannot be known except by way of revelation.  These two fundamentals were the most important things that the Messengers of all the divine revelations brought with them from God.  On this basis, all the divine revelations have had the same lofty objectives, which are:

1.    To affirm the Oneness of God - the praised and glorified Creator – in His essence and His attributes.

2.    To affirm that God alone should be worshipped and that no other being should be worshipped along with Him or instead of Him.

3.    To safeguard human welfare and oppose corruption and evil.  Thus, everything that safeguards faith, life, reason, wealth and lineage are part of this human welfare that religion protects.  On the other hand, anything that endangers these five universal needs is a form of corruption that religion opposes and prohibits.

4.    To invite the people to the highest level of virtue, moral values, and noble customs.

The ultimate goal of every Divine Message has always been the same: to guide the people to God, to make them aware of Him, and to have them worship Him alone.  Each Divine Message came to strengthen this meaning, and the following words were repeated on the tongues of all the Messengers: “Worship God, you have no god other than Him.” This message was conveyed to humanity by prophets and messengers which God sent to every nation.  All of these messengers came with this same message, the message of Islam.

All the Divine Messages came to bring the life of the people into willing submission to God.  For this reason, they all share the name of “Islam”, or “submission” derived from the same word as “Salam”, or “peace”, in Arabic.  Islam, in this sense, was the religion of all the prophets, but why does one see different variations of the religion of God if they all emanated from the same source?  The answer is twofold.   

The first reason is that as a result of the passage of time, and due to the fact that previous religions were not under the Divine protection of God, they underwent much change and variation.  As a result, we see that the fundamental truths which were brought by all messengers now differ from one religion to another, the most apparent being the strict tenet of the belief and worship of God and God alone.

The second reason for this variation is that God, in His infinite Wisdom and eternal Will, decreed that all the divine missions prior to the final message of Islam brought by Muhammad, may the mercy and blessings of God be upon him, be limited to a specific time frame.  As a result, their laws and methodologies dealt with the specific conditions of the people whom they had been sent to address.

Humanity has passed through numerous periods of guidance, misguidance, integrity, and deviation, from the most primitive age to the heights of civilization.  Divine guidance accompanied humanity through all of this, always providing the appropriate solutions and remedies.

This was the essence of the disparity that existed between the different religions.  This disagreement never went beyond the particulars of the Divine Law.  Each manifestation of the Law addressed the particular problems of the people it was meant for.  However, the areas of agreement were significant and many, such as fundamentals of faith; the basic principles and objectives of the Divine Law, such as protecting faith, life, reason, wealth, and lineage and establishing justice in the land; and certain fundamental prohibitions, some of the most important of these being idolatry, fornication, murder, theft, and giving false witness.  Moreover, they also agreed upon moral virtues like honesty, justice, charity, kindness, chastity, righteousness, and mercy.  These principles as well as others are permanent and lasting; they are the essence of all the Divine Messages and bind them all together.

Some of the biggest misconceptions that many non-Muslims have about Islam have to do with the word “Allah.”  For various reasons, many people have come to believe that Muslims worship a different God than Christians and Jews.  This is totally false, since “Allah” is simply the Arabic word for “God” - and there is only One God.  Let there be no doubt - Muslims worship the God of Noah, Abraham, Moses, David and Jesus - peace be upon them all.  However, it is certainly true that Jews, Christians and Muslims all have different concepts of Almighty God.  For example, Muslims - like Jews - reject the Christian beliefs of the Trinity and the Divine Incarnation.  This, however, does not mean that each of these three religions worships a different God - because, as we have already said, there is only One True God.  Judaism, Christianity and Islam all claim to be “Abrahamic Faiths”, and all of them are also classified as “monotheistic.”  However, Islam teaches that other religions have, in one way or another, distorted and nullified a pure and proper belief in Almighty God by neglecting His true teachings and mixing them with man-made ideas.

First of all, it is important to note that “Allah” is the same word that Arabic-speaking Christians and Jews use for God.  If you pick up an Arabic Bible, you will see the word “Allah” being used where “God” is used in English.  This is because “Allah” is a word in the Arabic language equivalent to the English word “God” with a capital “G”.  Additionally, the word “Allah” cannot be made plural, a fact which goes hand-in-hand with the Islamic concept of God.

It is interesting to note that the Aramaic word “El”, which is the word for God in the language that Jesus spoke, is certainly more similar in sound to the word “Allah” than the English word “God.”  This also holds true for the various Hebrew words for God, which are “El” and “Elah”, and the plural or glorified form “Elohim.”  The reason for these similarities is that Aramaic, Hebrew and Arabic are all Semitic languages with common origins.  It should also be noted that in translating the Bible into English, the Hebrew word “El” is translated variously as “God”, “god” and “angel”!  This imprecise language allows different translators, based on their preconceived notions, to translate the word to fit their own views.  The Arabic word “Allah” presents no such difficulty or ambiguity, since it is only used for Almighty God alone.  Additionally, in English, the only difference between “god”, meaning a false god, and “God”, meaning the One True God, is the capital “G”.  Due to the above mentioned facts, a more accurate translation of the word “Allah” into English might be “The One -and-Only God” or “The One True God.”

More importantly, it should also be noted that the Arabic word “Allah” contains a deep religious message due to its root meaning and origin.  This is because it stems from the Arabic verb ta’allaha (or alaha), which means “to be worshipped.”  Thus in Arabic, the word “Allah” means “The One who deserves all worship.”  This, in a nutshell, is the Pure Monotheistic message of Islam.

Suffice it to say that just because someone claims to be a “monotheistic” Jew, Christian or Muslim, that does not keep them from falling into corrupt beliefs and idolatrous practices.  Many people, including some Muslims, claim belief in “One God” even though they’ve fallen into acts of idolatry.  Certainly, many Protestants accuse Roman Catholics of idolatrous practices in regards to the saints and the Virgin Mary.  Likewise, the Greek Orthodox Church is considered “idolatrous” by many other Christians because in much of their worship they use icons.  However, if you ask a Roman Catholic or a Greek Orthodox person if God is “One”, they will invariably answer: “Yes!.”  This claim, however, does not stop them from being “creature worshipping” idolaters.  The same goes for Hindus, who just consider their gods to be “manifestations” or “incarnations” of the One Supreme God.

Before concluding… there are some people out there, who are obviously not on the side of truth, that want to get people to believe that “Allah” is just some Arabian “god”[1], and that Islam is completely “other” - meaning that it has no common roots with the other Abrahamic religions (i.e. Christianity and Judaism).  To say that Muslims worship a different “God” because they say “Allah” is just as illogical as saying that French people worship another God because they use the word “Dieu”, that Spanish-speaking people worship a different God because they say “Dios” or that the Jews worshipp a different God because they sometimes call Him “Yahweh.”  Certainly, reasoning like this is quite ridiculous!  It should also be mentioned, that claiming that any one language uses the only the correct word for God is tantamount to denying the universality of God’s message to mankind, which was to all nations, tribes and people through various prophets who spoke different languages.

We would like to ask our readers about the motives of these people?  The reason is that the Ultimate Truth of Islam stands on solid ground and its unshakeable belief in the Unity of God is above reproach.  Due to this, Christians can’t criticize its doctrines directly, but instead fabricate things about Islam that aren’t true so that people lose the desire to learn more.  If Islam were presented in the proper way to the world, it surely might make many people reconsider and re-evaluate their own beliefs.  It is quite likely that when they find out that there is a universal religion in the world that teaches people to worship and love God, while also practicing Pure Monotheism, would at least feel that they should re-examine the basis for their own beliefs and doctrines.