Salaam
I had been working to finish part two of the "To Question Or Not To Question" topic, however a recent experience has hit me hard and I feel I need to write about it while the emotion is still raw.
Last Friday I had the opportunity to experience a most interesting Khutbah (sermon) at Juma (Friday's congregational prayer). The Imaam is someone I have a lot of respect for, even though I have never personally met him. He always dedicates time to translate his Khutbah to English for the benefit of the vast majority of non-arabs who frequent this mosque, and he was visibly empassioned about this recent topic for his Khutbah. The topic was 'the influence of the Internet on muslims' faith and understanding of Islam'.
His manner suggested he may have recently had to respond to someone's questioning on some topic, with the questioner having resorted to the Internet for all or part of his argument. The Imaam began by acknowledging that the Internet does now provide muslims a medium to read the Quran and Hadith. But he goes on to express his serious concerns with anyone attempting to gain any actual knowledge or understanding through this medium, and does so with more than a bit of contempt. So disgusted was he by this that he openly declared in his Khutbah that such attempts to gain Islamic knowledge over the Internet will most likely "guide you to hell".
As I've said already, I hold this Imaam in high regard due to his principled and unwaivering spirit which are expressed in his Khutbahs, however I was deeply disappointed and very disheartened to meet the reality that scares me the most about our "ummah" and that is the lack of "freedom" for the muslim. Freedom, in it's most essential form, is the freedom of thought or opinion. And this, unfortunately, is sorely lacking in our ummah. The Ulemah's (the Order of islamic scholars) aims to suppress this freedom suppresses the very core of our Islamic concepts of freedom, justice and the universality of Islam.
The Imaam in his explanation offers the figurative which simply goes as "From the bosom of the Alim (scholarly teacher) to the bosom of the student". And goes on to explain that Islamic knowledge and understanding is too complex for lay investigations to be able to yield the wisdom which the famous Islamic Universities and Alims of the world have dedicated centuries to achieve. And then recommends that people seek out distinguished Alims, while using an anecdote of the respected Imaam Malik, to quench their need for knowledge.
One thing which the Imaam did not and could never provide, is Quranic guidance to support his view. Because they all forget that when the Quran was being revealed, there was only the Prophet (peace be upon him), and the muslims, there were no Alims. Here they will say that this was because the Prophet was the greatest Alim, so there was no need for any other Alims at the time. But they forget that with all his knowledge and inspiration, the Prophet never established any order of Alims. In fact, what he did do was insist that the people hold the Quran to their hearts and seek guidance through it themselves, and his most famous "farewell sermon" will attest to this where he asks the people to "hold fast to the Quran and Sunnah (the Prophet's practices) and judge wisely".
This established two very important points that go directly against all of our Ulemah's attempts to monopolize the understanding of the Quran, and these are; firstly this points out that judgement, or the use of intellect and reason, is indispensible in the matters of the Quran and Sunnah, and secondly, that the Prophet expected the people to make their own calls when he addresses his entire ummah and asks them all to "judge wisely". If he did not want people to use their own minds regarding the Quran and Sunnah, he would have rather warned the people to adhere to the Ulemah when he had the opportunity for it.
My Imaam, in his empassioned contempt for individual judgement on Quranic matters, insisted that muslims rely only on Alims for their Islamic knowledge, understanding or judgement. He forgot that by doing this, he put himself on the wrong end of the following Quranic ayat in Surah Yunus (Jonah) 10:99-100:
"And [thus it is] had thy Sustainer so willed, all those who live on earth would surely have attained to faith, all of them: dost thou, then, think that thou couldst compel people to believe, notwithstanding that no human being can ever attain to faith otherwise than by God's leave, and [that] it is He who lays the loathsome evil [of disbelief] upon those who will not use -their reason?"
I understand, and the ummah generally does understand, why the Ulemah have always maintained this stance of authority over religous knowledge. Of course no one really believes that they are after political power over the believers through this authority (even though some may have tried it). I do understand and sympathize with their concern that the Quran is too dynamic to rein the minds of all muslims, and others who have access to Islamic scripture, to prevent conflicting judgements, understanding, and translations about the source of our concept, the Quran. They want to ensure their authority maintains unity regarding knowledge gained from the Quran. Well, I've got news for them, look around and tell me if the past millenium of Ulemah control has been able to provide this unity? We are more divided now then ever, and the trend is growing!
While the Ulemah know very well that they cannot defend their positions as divinely sanctioned, the muslims need to understand that their monopoly over religious knowledge achieves this status anyway and that is why they rely on zeal and not reason to defend their monopoly. And we all know that divine sanction was not even afforded to the Prophets, they all were only allowed what was expressly instructed, and there are numerous examples of these for all the Prophets we know of.
So while I do understand their concerns for the ummah's unity, I will not, and the ummah should not, afford them any excuse for abusing what they now enjoy as "revered authority". Any attempts to tell us that we cannot rely on our intellect to understand the Quran is a lie against the Quran itself where Allah repeatedly exhorts the reader to use his "reason", his intellect. For no alim, no secret, no system can provide a muslim with understanding like the "reason" and clearly understandable "truths" provided by the Quran which appeals to a muslim's own logic and his own understanding.
I hope that one day we rise up from our laziness and take responsibility for our beliefs, or we will all be very good "followers", who do not "believe" anything ourselves. Any calls to blindly follow Islam are full of illogical nonsense, because you then have to ask whose Islam do we follow? The Sunni way, or the Salafi way, the Shia way, the Maliki way or the Hanifi way? Don't they all have their own established Ulemah? I hope you see the problem this system of reliance on the Ulemah will cause and the division that it has already created. For reliance on anything but the Divine exposes us to not only the good that this authority can achieve, but also the bad, which is corruption. And we can never become ignorant of the corruption that has, at certain times in our history, creeped into our political and dawah (ideological) systems. Examples of such corruption calls for its own article, however I will highlight just one, the Yazid/Muawiyah saga. This period led to congregational cursing of Hazrat Ali (may Allah forgive us), as a fixed part of the Khutbah at Juma prayers throughout the Muslim Caliphate (which was a huge part of the civilized world at that time) for 60 years before this caliph sanctioned practice was repealed and Hazrat Ali's honour restored! This is the history of our reliance on men for religious authority, and one of the very first and worst examples of corruption that we suffered.
No doubt we need to maintain our knowledge systems and the infrastructure the Ulemah system has developed over the years, but this should never be confused with any sort of religious authority, for only the Divine can command this level of authority, and the only thing Divine in our possession is our Holy Quran. And I will not relinquish this gift from Allah by passing it on to someone else to read it for me. Imagine the insult for a gift to man from his creator. For they have nothing more than what we all have that is important, which is the Quran and Sunnah, and everything else is mere opinion of "men". However pious and wise these "men" are/were, they are still men. And I hope that we as muslims all still believe that all men are equal.
I would finally like to bring your attention back to my Imaam, and others like him, who are afraid of change and progress. The Internet is just another medium of information, just like Print, so if Print was good enough for the distribution of the Quran, then why the fuss over the Internet? Just because it opens the way for interactive research (as opposed to the uni-directional flow of traditional media), where the audience can dictate this flow of information, does not mean they can change the Quran. We need to have faith in Allah that he did not create a Quran to be defeated by mere men.
However, my friends, we live in an Islam not guided directly by the Quran and Sunnah, but under the authority of our Ulemah, who time and time again have vigorously insisted that under no circumstances are we to rely on our own research, our own understanding, our own intellect... we are not free to do so yet! Not while we still have our Ulemah to dispense intellect for us.
Monday, November 2, 2009
Monday, October 5, 2009
To Question Or Not To Question - Part 1
Salaam.
Is there room in Islam for muslims to question it? Does a need to question amount to doubt and disbelief? Can some things be questioned while others cannot? These are some of the disconcerting questions that come to mind when a muslim is driven to try to understand a particular aspect of Islam that maybe bothering him or has come to light through normal life experience. These are the very questions that bothered my mind when I first began my own journey of rediscovery into Islam.
Whenever I have felt the need to question something in Islam, I would discuss my concerns with my father hoping he would quell my concerns through his own knowledge and research or clarification by virtue of ‘second opinion’. One thing that I have always maintained with him is my belief (through social observation) that there are two types of muslims (regarding their hold on faith), there is the Follower and then there is the Believer. It is not easy to differentiate between the two, but there is an important difference which reaches out to the core of Islam. I will elaborate on this “core” in a while.
The difference is that the “Follower” resigns his mind to Islam even before he considers it. The reasons for which are varied but limited and mainly due to cultural persuasions. He follows because he believes in the one who preaches, or because it is his family legacy, or simply because everyone else does, and there are many such “cultural” reasons provided for the Follower.
The “Believer” is one who needs to understand, and resigns his mind to Islam after he has considered it, therefore “believing” in the true sense of the word. His reasons are varied also, but due to the fact that he will try to understand Islam through the lenses of his time (since he can never truly grasp the understanding of a time in the past or in the future), and all that the dynamics of history and science impose on his particular period, so his reasons, cultural or intellectual, will nevertheless be dictated by the dynamics of his time. Therefore, Islam as a universal message, has to stand the test of time, since it will be questioned by muslims of very different times. This “universality” is that core of Islam which I had mentioned earlier and no muslim today will question this universality.
A more detailed differentiation between Followers and Believers calls for its own article and inshaAllah I will get to that some day. For now, my purpose is to highlight the fact that there are some muslims who believe first and think later (or more commonly not think at all), while there are others who need to think first and then determine their beliefs. My intention is not to berate Followers here, for I truly believe that I myself was in this category not too long ago and such an approach to faith has benefitted both Islam and the world. My aim is merely to show that Islam has room for both, and mainly to prove that the implication of denouncing “questioners” is to go against the very core of the universality of Islam. All this without affecting the standing of the Follower.
The universality of Islam is evidenced in the many miracles of the Quran. The scientific prophecies in particular come to mind here. One of them is in Surah 57, Al-Hadeed in verse 25:
“...and We bestowed upon you from on high iron, in which there is awesome power as well as benefits for man...”
Here the Quran tells us that Iron was sent to us on earth, the amazing thing here is that the literal meaning of the verse was not clear until recent scientific research has proved that Iron as a material is not native to earth and rather arrived through various space phenomenon like asteroids and meteoroids. This scientific discovery gave new light to the words “We bestowed upon you from on high...” (often also translated as “We sent down to you Iron...”)
The other scientific miracle I wanted to mention was the verse in the Quran which explains the various stages of baby foetal formation in perfect order which has been the most popular miracle of the Quran quoted these days. (I will provide the verse reference and translation soon)
These two verses and the recent scientific discoveries prove the universal nature of the Quran and Islam for these scientific facts were not known (nor was it even possible to find out 1400 years ago considering the state of technology and scientific knowledge at the time) when the Quran was sent down. And more importantly to our topic, nor were these verses comprehensible when they were revealed to Muhammad (peace be upon him) at that time. And this universality of the Quran is attested to by our wise Prophet himself in his final Khutbah (sermon) where he says “...and may the last ones understand my words better than those who listened to me directly...”.
Now that we have affirmed that Islam is a universal message, we need to understand how it opens the door to future generations whose social values and behaviours will undoubtedly be different to ours (as testified to by history itself). This is where the need to question comes in. For without questioning through the various ‘lenses’ of different times, Islam’s universality will diminish while muslims adopt a rigid, inflexible, un-dynamic, interpretation of Islam. An approach that is doomed to failure. And we can see this already in the apathy of our youth and the hopelessness of our seniors towards Islam. While they still practice it as part of a social norm, the understanding and “belief” in it is withering under the pressure of a modern world that demands scientific reasoning of everything worth holding on to. When such reasoning cannot be provided for a particular aspect of social life, that aspect is either forgotten, enshrined in museums as snippets of history, or set aside from normal life and resigned to ceremonial significance to quench the cultural soul of mankind, but never allowed to interfere with life or society or politics or anything else deemed worthwhile in today’s modern world.
Muslims need to realise that this is the very time for Islam to shine for it fully quenches this “modern” outlook on life. Universality demands flexibility and dynamics, and Islam alone (as a religion and way of life) can stand through the test of time and the cultural, social, psychological, political and economic changes that are inherent in the very nature of time. And this has been proven time and time again by History. This is the crux of my argument, that ‘questioning’ is the very doorway to this universality. Without being able to question (and there can be no exceptions or we will fall into bigotry), without exerting the dynamics of Islam’s universality, we diminish Islam to the same mere “ceremonial significance” that has happened to the other major Religions of the world.
My friends this is where Islam is different, this is where we can hope to have Allah still in our lives and hearts and not only in our rituals. This is why Allah promised to protect the Quran so we always have access to the pure message throughout history and time, so that it can be applied, and we cannot apply it dynamically to every different stage in human history and scientific and modern development by keeping the Quran closed. We cannot resign our minds to stop thinking when we read the Quran when the Quran itself exhorts you to think, to reason! Why would we open the Quran except when we want to gain guidance from Allah? How can we expect to gain guidance when we open it only for ceremonial or cultural reasons, like reading for the sake of reading it (even when we don't understand it)? How can we ourselves expect to believe in the Quran when we leave the interpretations to “experts” we have no personal access to? Do they have something more than the Quran? Do they have something more than the lay muslim? And finally, as a believer of the Day of Judgement, do we not believe that Allah will hold us individually accountable for our beliefs and actions? Then how can we provide a time-specific interpretation (since all human endeavour to understand the Quran is bound to the natural dynamics of that particular time as explained earlier and as evidenced throughout history) for the entire future generation of mankind? How can we make sense, how can anything make “sense”, without being open to question? How can we close Islam to questioning when Allah opens Himself to questioning in the Quran and exhorts us to use our reason to see not only His existence, but His power as well? I will close this first part of the topic with the following verse from Surah 16, An-Nahl, verse 90 of the Quran:
“Behold, God enjoins justice, and the doing of good, and generosity towards [one’s] fellow-men; and He forbids all that is shameful and all that runs counter to reason, as well as envy; [and] He exhorts you [repeatedly] so that you might bear [all this] in mind.”
Is there room in Islam for muslims to question it? Does a need to question amount to doubt and disbelief? Can some things be questioned while others cannot? These are some of the disconcerting questions that come to mind when a muslim is driven to try to understand a particular aspect of Islam that maybe bothering him or has come to light through normal life experience. These are the very questions that bothered my mind when I first began my own journey of rediscovery into Islam.
Whenever I have felt the need to question something in Islam, I would discuss my concerns with my father hoping he would quell my concerns through his own knowledge and research or clarification by virtue of ‘second opinion’. One thing that I have always maintained with him is my belief (through social observation) that there are two types of muslims (regarding their hold on faith), there is the Follower and then there is the Believer. It is not easy to differentiate between the two, but there is an important difference which reaches out to the core of Islam. I will elaborate on this “core” in a while.
The difference is that the “Follower” resigns his mind to Islam even before he considers it. The reasons for which are varied but limited and mainly due to cultural persuasions. He follows because he believes in the one who preaches, or because it is his family legacy, or simply because everyone else does, and there are many such “cultural” reasons provided for the Follower.
The “Believer” is one who needs to understand, and resigns his mind to Islam after he has considered it, therefore “believing” in the true sense of the word. His reasons are varied also, but due to the fact that he will try to understand Islam through the lenses of his time (since he can never truly grasp the understanding of a time in the past or in the future), and all that the dynamics of history and science impose on his particular period, so his reasons, cultural or intellectual, will nevertheless be dictated by the dynamics of his time. Therefore, Islam as a universal message, has to stand the test of time, since it will be questioned by muslims of very different times. This “universality” is that core of Islam which I had mentioned earlier and no muslim today will question this universality.
A more detailed differentiation between Followers and Believers calls for its own article and inshaAllah I will get to that some day. For now, my purpose is to highlight the fact that there are some muslims who believe first and think later (or more commonly not think at all), while there are others who need to think first and then determine their beliefs. My intention is not to berate Followers here, for I truly believe that I myself was in this category not too long ago and such an approach to faith has benefitted both Islam and the world. My aim is merely to show that Islam has room for both, and mainly to prove that the implication of denouncing “questioners” is to go against the very core of the universality of Islam. All this without affecting the standing of the Follower.
The universality of Islam is evidenced in the many miracles of the Quran. The scientific prophecies in particular come to mind here. One of them is in Surah 57, Al-Hadeed in verse 25:
“...and We bestowed upon you from on high iron, in which there is awesome power as well as benefits for man...”
Here the Quran tells us that Iron was sent to us on earth, the amazing thing here is that the literal meaning of the verse was not clear until recent scientific research has proved that Iron as a material is not native to earth and rather arrived through various space phenomenon like asteroids and meteoroids. This scientific discovery gave new light to the words “We bestowed upon you from on high...” (often also translated as “We sent down to you Iron...”)
The other scientific miracle I wanted to mention was the verse in the Quran which explains the various stages of baby foetal formation in perfect order which has been the most popular miracle of the Quran quoted these days. (I will provide the verse reference and translation soon)
These two verses and the recent scientific discoveries prove the universal nature of the Quran and Islam for these scientific facts were not known (nor was it even possible to find out 1400 years ago considering the state of technology and scientific knowledge at the time) when the Quran was sent down. And more importantly to our topic, nor were these verses comprehensible when they were revealed to Muhammad (peace be upon him) at that time. And this universality of the Quran is attested to by our wise Prophet himself in his final Khutbah (sermon) where he says “...and may the last ones understand my words better than those who listened to me directly...”.
Now that we have affirmed that Islam is a universal message, we need to understand how it opens the door to future generations whose social values and behaviours will undoubtedly be different to ours (as testified to by history itself). This is where the need to question comes in. For without questioning through the various ‘lenses’ of different times, Islam’s universality will diminish while muslims adopt a rigid, inflexible, un-dynamic, interpretation of Islam. An approach that is doomed to failure. And we can see this already in the apathy of our youth and the hopelessness of our seniors towards Islam. While they still practice it as part of a social norm, the understanding and “belief” in it is withering under the pressure of a modern world that demands scientific reasoning of everything worth holding on to. When such reasoning cannot be provided for a particular aspect of social life, that aspect is either forgotten, enshrined in museums as snippets of history, or set aside from normal life and resigned to ceremonial significance to quench the cultural soul of mankind, but never allowed to interfere with life or society or politics or anything else deemed worthwhile in today’s modern world.
Muslims need to realise that this is the very time for Islam to shine for it fully quenches this “modern” outlook on life. Universality demands flexibility and dynamics, and Islam alone (as a religion and way of life) can stand through the test of time and the cultural, social, psychological, political and economic changes that are inherent in the very nature of time. And this has been proven time and time again by History. This is the crux of my argument, that ‘questioning’ is the very doorway to this universality. Without being able to question (and there can be no exceptions or we will fall into bigotry), without exerting the dynamics of Islam’s universality, we diminish Islam to the same mere “ceremonial significance” that has happened to the other major Religions of the world.
My friends this is where Islam is different, this is where we can hope to have Allah still in our lives and hearts and not only in our rituals. This is why Allah promised to protect the Quran so we always have access to the pure message throughout history and time, so that it can be applied, and we cannot apply it dynamically to every different stage in human history and scientific and modern development by keeping the Quran closed. We cannot resign our minds to stop thinking when we read the Quran when the Quran itself exhorts you to think, to reason! Why would we open the Quran except when we want to gain guidance from Allah? How can we expect to gain guidance when we open it only for ceremonial or cultural reasons, like reading for the sake of reading it (even when we don't understand it)? How can we ourselves expect to believe in the Quran when we leave the interpretations to “experts” we have no personal access to? Do they have something more than the Quran? Do they have something more than the lay muslim? And finally, as a believer of the Day of Judgement, do we not believe that Allah will hold us individually accountable for our beliefs and actions? Then how can we provide a time-specific interpretation (since all human endeavour to understand the Quran is bound to the natural dynamics of that particular time as explained earlier and as evidenced throughout history) for the entire future generation of mankind? How can we make sense, how can anything make “sense”, without being open to question? How can we close Islam to questioning when Allah opens Himself to questioning in the Quran and exhorts us to use our reason to see not only His existence, but His power as well? I will close this first part of the topic with the following verse from Surah 16, An-Nahl, verse 90 of the Quran:
“Behold, God enjoins justice, and the doing of good, and generosity towards [one’s] fellow-men; and He forbids all that is shameful and all that runs counter to reason, as well as envy; [and] He exhorts you [repeatedly] so that you might bear [all this] in mind.”
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Usra and Freedom
Assalaamu'Alaikum
I have started this blog to bring together muslims who wish to express their concerns with regard to living as a muslim in today's modern world in the era of science and logic, and who cannot ignore their feelings for the need to believe and to understand as opposed to simply being content with following what's been prescribed over the ages. Others are welcome as well. I hope to create a platform for dialogue that will help people understand their own concerns. This is because it took me years of questioning myself before I developed the courage to think and make up my own mind about things that I just couldn't agree with. I will discuss more on this matter in later posts.
My aim is to promote discussion and thinking on Islamic topics in particular, and social issues in general from an Islamic perspective. Ofcourse the guidance sought will be from Allah and His Quran. My posts are completely random and this blog is merely a platform to put my views out to muslims who are struggling as I am. My purpose is simply to strengthen my faith through discussion, knowledge and reason.
I grew up in a little Pacific Island nation in a very tolerant, multi-cultural and colourful atmosphere. During my later years on this Island I had the privilege to be part of an Islamic youth organisation which, among other things, conducted weekly discussions and readings of the Quran and Hadith. The members of our little branch of this organisation consisted mainly of friends who had grown up together, boys and girls of families that had grown up together as well. As such, the membership was made up of boys as young as 7 years of age to guys as old as 28. So there were people of very different levels of intellect, experience and priorities involved in the discussions of something Divine, Pure, Perfect,...the word of Allah, the Quran. At this point one would surely think this as a misguided effort of ignorant little boys to improve their social standing amongst a supposedly "religious" society and organisation. Could a fool-hardy bunch of school boys and girls even hope to comprehend the Holy Word of the All-Mighty, All-Knowing Allah? Surely not, one would think! Well, nothing could be further from the truth. The desire for truth that drew all the boys and girls together was never clearer as when we met for our weekly "Usra".
That was more than 3 years ago. I have since left that little island nation, just as most of the other boys and girls who grew up and moved away to follow their academic dreams and career goals. The purpose of this "FreeUmmah" blog is to revive the "feeling" of that Usra, that "discussion", that passion for truth, to show that having the freedom to question and the freedom to think are the greatest of freedoms. That thought and reason (assuming Allah has blessed one with these) together with revelation are the only means to true belief and to strengthen existing belief. Indeed, over the many centuries, our concerned elders have employed the use of many methods to safeguard the ummah and to prevent disbelief. Unfortunately, many of these methods have eventually come at the cost of the paramount freedoms of speech and thought (as faculties of reason). The Quran has an interesting say on this, after explaining that the ummah of Yunus (AS) was the only ummah to have been given faith entirely when all of them attained to faith at once by Allah's will, the Quran continues in Surah Yunus 10:99-100:
"And [thus it is] had thy Sustainer so willed, all those who live on earth would surely have attained to faith, all of them: dost thou, then, think that thou couldst compel people to believe, notwithstanding that no human being can ever attain to faith otherwise than by God's leave, and [that] it is He who lays the loathsome evil [of disbelief] upon those who will not use -their reason?"
To be continued...
I have started this blog to bring together muslims who wish to express their concerns with regard to living as a muslim in today's modern world in the era of science and logic, and who cannot ignore their feelings for the need to believe and to understand as opposed to simply being content with following what's been prescribed over the ages. Others are welcome as well. I hope to create a platform for dialogue that will help people understand their own concerns. This is because it took me years of questioning myself before I developed the courage to think and make up my own mind about things that I just couldn't agree with. I will discuss more on this matter in later posts.
My aim is to promote discussion and thinking on Islamic topics in particular, and social issues in general from an Islamic perspective. Ofcourse the guidance sought will be from Allah and His Quran. My posts are completely random and this blog is merely a platform to put my views out to muslims who are struggling as I am. My purpose is simply to strengthen my faith through discussion, knowledge and reason.
I grew up in a little Pacific Island nation in a very tolerant, multi-cultural and colourful atmosphere. During my later years on this Island I had the privilege to be part of an Islamic youth organisation which, among other things, conducted weekly discussions and readings of the Quran and Hadith. The members of our little branch of this organisation consisted mainly of friends who had grown up together, boys and girls of families that had grown up together as well. As such, the membership was made up of boys as young as 7 years of age to guys as old as 28. So there were people of very different levels of intellect, experience and priorities involved in the discussions of something Divine, Pure, Perfect,...the word of Allah, the Quran. At this point one would surely think this as a misguided effort of ignorant little boys to improve their social standing amongst a supposedly "religious" society and organisation. Could a fool-hardy bunch of school boys and girls even hope to comprehend the Holy Word of the All-Mighty, All-Knowing Allah? Surely not, one would think! Well, nothing could be further from the truth. The desire for truth that drew all the boys and girls together was never clearer as when we met for our weekly "Usra".
That was more than 3 years ago. I have since left that little island nation, just as most of the other boys and girls who grew up and moved away to follow their academic dreams and career goals. The purpose of this "FreeUmmah" blog is to revive the "feeling" of that Usra, that "discussion", that passion for truth, to show that having the freedom to question and the freedom to think are the greatest of freedoms. That thought and reason (assuming Allah has blessed one with these) together with revelation are the only means to true belief and to strengthen existing belief. Indeed, over the many centuries, our concerned elders have employed the use of many methods to safeguard the ummah and to prevent disbelief. Unfortunately, many of these methods have eventually come at the cost of the paramount freedoms of speech and thought (as faculties of reason). The Quran has an interesting say on this, after explaining that the ummah of Yunus (AS) was the only ummah to have been given faith entirely when all of them attained to faith at once by Allah's will, the Quran continues in Surah Yunus 10:99-100:
"And [thus it is] had thy Sustainer so willed, all those who live on earth would surely have attained to faith, all of them: dost thou, then, think that thou couldst compel people to believe, notwithstanding that no human being can ever attain to faith otherwise than by God's leave, and [that] it is He who lays the loathsome evil [of disbelief] upon those who will not use -their reason?"
To be continued...
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