THE RELIGION OF ISLAM
DEFINITION OF RELIGION: (42:13) sura Ash Shura (the Consultation)
“SharaAAa lakum mina alddeeni ma wassa bihi noohan wa allathee awhayna ilayka wama wassayna bihi ibraheema wamoosa waAAeesaan aqeemoo alddeena wala tatafarraqoo feehi kabura Aaala almushrikeena ma tadAAoohum ilayhi Allahu yajtabee ilayhi man yashao wayahdee ilayhi man yuneebu”.
“He has prescribed for you the same religion which He prescribed for Noah, and which We have now revealed to you which we enjoined on Abraham, Moses, and Jesus, with same assertion:”Adhere to this religion (in your lives) and do not create divisions in it . Those who worship other things than God, hard is the way to which thou callst them. God chooses to Himself those whom He pleases, and guides to Himself those who turn to Him”.
KEY WORDS:
al din = religion
al mushirkina = shirk= those who attribute equals to God, those who worship others than God (objects, planets, money, power ect).
Noah, Abraham, Moses, Jesus, Muhammad = different form but same message, different kitab but same hikmah.
HIKMAH AND KITAB: (4,113) sura An Nisa (the Women)
“Allahu Aaalayka alkitaba waalhikmata”
“God sent down the Book and the Wisdom”
al Hikmah = wisdom, ethics, spiritual message.
al Kitab = book, form, sharia, rules, rituals, prescribtions (worship rituals, social rules, economic rules, preaching, dietary rules).
Through the revelations of the prophets and messengers al-Hikmah never changed, the main messages are “Belief in one God”, Tawhid.
The Jewish prayer “Shema” expresses Tawhid
The Christian prayer “Pater nostrum” expresses Tawhid
The Muslim sura al Ikhlas expresses Tawhid
Al-Kitab did change due to the evolution and change in human civilization and societies.
We should always consider the historical, geograpihcal, social and cultural circumstances of the time when studying religious books and lives of porphets and messengers in order to fully understand the message, in order to have a correct interpetation.
Torah contains mostly Kitab (law), infact Torah means “law” or “teaching”.
(although we could have a debate on if the 10 Commandments should be interpreted as Kitab or Hikmah”).
Gospel and Psalms of David (Injil and Zabur) are Hikmah.
Quran, as last message, includes both Kitab and Hikmah.
The correct way to approach Islam is through a good balance between Hikmah and Kitab. “I taught the Book and the Wisdom, the Law and the Gospel” (5,110).
If we pray mechanically without any inner feeling our prayer will be “sterile”.
If we have inner feeling but we don’t pu it into practice it will be useless.
How can we put it into practice? We have a body so that we can put our spirituality and our wisdom into practice in this world. So doing good deeds is very important.
INNER WORSHIP: praying, remembering God, devoting to God
OUTER WORSHIP: doing good deeds, encouraging others to do good deeds (only after we do them in first person, if we don’t care about what we do and then we tell others to do good deeds we become hypocrites).
When we forget the spiritual message and we only concentrate on form we tend to bring it to extremism....extremism is the hypertrophy of form and it often turns into intollerance and violence.
We should always remember the difference between a religious message (which is sent by God) and a religious institution (which is created by humans and is corruptable). Paradoxically today religious institutions are far away from the traditional spiritual message.
DIFFERENCE BETWEEN MORAL AND ETHIC:
MORAL= it’s based on pre-concepts, it’s far from reality, it has no practical implication, it’s far from people. It’s often hypocrite and in history it has been used to kill many innocents (ex: the Inquisition, the Taliban).
ETHICS= it has a human dimension, a practical example and is understandable and affordable to all human beings.
Examples: moral says “don’t steal because it’s a sin”
Ethic says “don’t steal because you will damage someone”
PROPHETS AND MESSENGERS:
Prophet (nabi):a person who, after receiving divine revelation teaches the truth to people. He gives tidings of good fate to those who accept the message of God and warnings to those who reject it, warnings of the bad fate that awaits them in the hereafter.
Messenger (rasul): he is assigned to his people and decides their fate through divine sanctions and the sovreignity of the truth upon them by God’s judgement IN THIS VERY WORLD.
Through messengerhood God selects his messenger and the rewards and punishments take place in this world. It’s like a small day of judgement.
In this way God gives proofs so that nobody can find excuses not to accept the truth.
Examples: Noah and the flod, Moses and the punishments of the Pharao, Muhammad and Mecca-Medina (Quraysh)
PURPOSE OF DIVINE BOOK:
To judge between what is right and what is wrong. (2:213) (57:25).
PURPOSE OF RELIGION:
Tazkiyah (purification); people should be purified through religion and belief. They should do good deeds and stay away from evil.
The inner feeling we get when we do good is a synthom of purification.
ESSENCE OF RELIGION:
Ibadah (worship): in order to worship we have to follow humilty and modesty, we have to recognize the power of God and we have to stay away from arrogance.
(16,326).
ALWAYS REMEMBER!!!!!!
In order to make a statement meaningful and valid, we need to be able to support it with logical, certifiable concepts that have foundations. Without this, the statement will turn into a baseless conglomeration of sentences with a lack of objectivity.