i have recently started reading this guys book, and i think this topic is pertinent to all Muslims, as it seems to crop up time and again in any discussion. Da'wah doesnt mean to know about politics, but it does help.
Friday, 7 December 2007
Saturday, 16 June 2007
the worth of education
We don't value our Islamic knowledge anymore. We pay a fortune on school fees, tuition etc, but when it comes to Islamic knowledge, the local mosques free 2 hour excuse for a creche suffices. They say actions speak louder than words. This is what we think of Islamic knowledge.
compare this to the story of Faroukh who was a pious predecessor of ours. He was newly married and went off to jihad. He stayed on Jihad for a long long time (30 years I think), and before he went he left a huge box of gold coins, and told his wife not to touch it, and gave her a little gold, and said spend this until he came back in a few months. The wife, spread out this little sum over 2 years, and now she had a baby to care for too. Eventually she started taking only the necessary amounts to survive out of the box.
Many years past and went Faroukh turned back homeward, the first thing he did was visit the Masjid, where he saw a crowd around a very knowledgeable scholar preaching, and he listened to him, though he didn't see him, and he was very impressed by the depth of his wisdom. Afterwards he went home to find a young man entering his house. Faroukh had a bit of an argument with him saying it was his house etc and what the hell did the guy think he was doing, who was claiming it was his house etc. But all the people came around saying it was the young mans house. Then inside a voice called out asking "Is that you Faroukh?". Then the wife and husband met up again after 30 years. Soon the conversation turned to the gold...the gold had disappeared. The wife asked "Did you see a man in the Masjid?" Faroukh answered that he had and that he was very impressed.
"would you like your son to be like that?" the mother asked, and again Faroukh agreed. Then that pious woman revealed how she had spent what in today's money is about £2 million on her son's Islamic education so that he got the very best, and the man was indeed his son.
Faroukh ran outside and started yelling that he was the son of the scholar X (i forgot the name).
These people lived their belief, their deen, their Eman showed through their actions....does ours?
compare this to the story of Faroukh who was a pious predecessor of ours. He was newly married and went off to jihad. He stayed on Jihad for a long long time (30 years I think), and before he went he left a huge box of gold coins, and told his wife not to touch it, and gave her a little gold, and said spend this until he came back in a few months. The wife, spread out this little sum over 2 years, and now she had a baby to care for too. Eventually she started taking only the necessary amounts to survive out of the box.
Many years past and went Faroukh turned back homeward, the first thing he did was visit the Masjid, where he saw a crowd around a very knowledgeable scholar preaching, and he listened to him, though he didn't see him, and he was very impressed by the depth of his wisdom. Afterwards he went home to find a young man entering his house. Faroukh had a bit of an argument with him saying it was his house etc and what the hell did the guy think he was doing, who was claiming it was his house etc. But all the people came around saying it was the young mans house. Then inside a voice called out asking "Is that you Faroukh?". Then the wife and husband met up again after 30 years. Soon the conversation turned to the gold...the gold had disappeared. The wife asked "Did you see a man in the Masjid?" Faroukh answered that he had and that he was very impressed.
"would you like your son to be like that?" the mother asked, and again Faroukh agreed. Then that pious woman revealed how she had spent what in today's money is about £2 million on her son's Islamic education so that he got the very best, and the man was indeed his son.
Faroukh ran outside and started yelling that he was the son of the scholar X (i forgot the name).
These people lived their belief, their deen, their Eman showed through their actions....does ours?
Friday, 8 June 2007
Here is an Islamicly orientated economics blog I wrote on one of my other sites:
http://economicsguide.blogspot.com/2007/06/goldsmith-opens-pandoras-box.html
its pertaining the way interest pervades the system and raising awareness about the evils of fractional reserve banking.
http://economicsguide.blogspot.com/2007/06/goldsmith-opens-pandoras-box.html
its pertaining the way interest pervades the system and raising awareness about the evils of fractional reserve banking.
Thursday, 24 May 2007
the problems of the Ummah - innovation and hypocrisy
Islam is a religion which is strongly based in a lack of conjecture in matter pertaining religion. What I mean by that is that unlike other religions Islam says that we worship Allah (God) the way He asks to be worshipped. This means that anything in religious matters is absolutely forbidden unless it has an authentic narration directly from the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) or a verse from the Qur'an. This means that as Islam is from Allah, our actions are not tainted by the base interpretations of man as when Allah says in the Qur'an "This day I have perfected your religion for you", if we change it we are naturally making it less than perfect and consequently not divine.
This brings me on to the next thing - innovations. Innovations specifically in religion are expressly forbidden in Islam and "all innovation lead to misguidance and all misguidance leads to the Hellfire" (Hadith). We should not EVER just blindly follow as a famous scholar of Islam once said (paraphrasing)- you dont respect what you just blindly follow, and something you don't respect means you Eman (faith) will be lacking, so we should all question our beliefs and see if they are actually authentic according to Islamic traditions of Qur'an and hadith. As the Quraysh said and all the misguided people said "our forefathers did this" thus we should too - what a specious argument! The obvious assumption here is that the parents were right...how do they know this? They don't. The sad thing is that these verses in the Qur'an could apply to any one of us Muslims today, as we have also lost our link with real Islamic knowledge and are currently running on an empty tank with just patchy unsettled knowledge that we can gather in passing from different people.
Why this slothfulness in educating ourselves about our very way of life? the answer is painful but needs to be said: we are all hypocrites to varying degrees. We need to realise this now and theres even a hadith that states to the effect that the hypocrite is he who thinks himself not a hypocrite, and the true believer always thinks he has hypocrisy in him and tries to get rid of it. Even Umar (rah) the person promised paradise by the Prophet (PBUH), he asked Hudaifa Bin al Yaman(rah), who was the sahabi intrusted with the names of the hypocrites, about whether or not he was on the list, such was his concern about himself! And this from a person who took part in all the Battles, was promised Jannah and was the second righteous Khalifah!
We have to sit down and take in introspective look at ourselves and look at the way we for example commit sins, every time we commit a sin this is proof that our Eman is weak, as think about it - if I were to tell you that you would be burnt for this sin , would you still do it? not likely. We don't have that belief anymore and this is leading to the endless cycle of lack of education and hence belief ,sin, more lack of belief, more sin etc.
How can we change? well lets look at the sahaba again. Why were they the great leaders they were? because the best leader is one who can govern himself. We need to start right at the basics and build it up inshAllah. For example we should try and weed out the hypocrisy in our hearts in Salah by concentrating on the meanings, and if we don't know them, then by learning them first. This will inshAllah have a huge impact on our lives, as consider 5 times a day we are unhypocritically stnading infront of our creator, meditating on the true purpose of life - to worship Allah, will we then commit more or less sins? The answer is the answer to our initial and extensive problems. Only when we actively work to stamp out this malaise of hypocrisy can we as Muslims become strong again. Lets start out with the Salah and build steadily.
Anything good is from Allah, and all mistakes are from me.
This brings me on to the next thing - innovations. Innovations specifically in religion are expressly forbidden in Islam and "all innovation lead to misguidance and all misguidance leads to the Hellfire" (Hadith). We should not EVER just blindly follow as a famous scholar of Islam once said (paraphrasing)- you dont respect what you just blindly follow, and something you don't respect means you Eman (faith) will be lacking, so we should all question our beliefs and see if they are actually authentic according to Islamic traditions of Qur'an and hadith. As the Quraysh said and all the misguided people said "our forefathers did this" thus we should too - what a specious argument! The obvious assumption here is that the parents were right...how do they know this? They don't. The sad thing is that these verses in the Qur'an could apply to any one of us Muslims today, as we have also lost our link with real Islamic knowledge and are currently running on an empty tank with just patchy unsettled knowledge that we can gather in passing from different people.
Why this slothfulness in educating ourselves about our very way of life? the answer is painful but needs to be said: we are all hypocrites to varying degrees. We need to realise this now and theres even a hadith that states to the effect that the hypocrite is he who thinks himself not a hypocrite, and the true believer always thinks he has hypocrisy in him and tries to get rid of it. Even Umar (rah) the person promised paradise by the Prophet (PBUH), he asked Hudaifa Bin al Yaman(rah), who was the sahabi intrusted with the names of the hypocrites, about whether or not he was on the list, such was his concern about himself! And this from a person who took part in all the Battles, was promised Jannah and was the second righteous Khalifah!
We have to sit down and take in introspective look at ourselves and look at the way we for example commit sins, every time we commit a sin this is proof that our Eman is weak, as think about it - if I were to tell you that you would be burnt for this sin , would you still do it? not likely. We don't have that belief anymore and this is leading to the endless cycle of lack of education and hence belief ,sin, more lack of belief, more sin etc.
How can we change? well lets look at the sahaba again. Why were they the great leaders they were? because the best leader is one who can govern himself. We need to start right at the basics and build it up inshAllah. For example we should try and weed out the hypocrisy in our hearts in Salah by concentrating on the meanings, and if we don't know them, then by learning them first. This will inshAllah have a huge impact on our lives, as consider 5 times a day we are unhypocritically stnading infront of our creator, meditating on the true purpose of life - to worship Allah, will we then commit more or less sins? The answer is the answer to our initial and extensive problems. Only when we actively work to stamp out this malaise of hypocrisy can we as Muslims become strong again. Lets start out with the Salah and build steadily.
Anything good is from Allah, and all mistakes are from me.
Sunday, 13 May 2007
Ummah Films - Pursuit of Cleanliness
this is a very pertinent video and even explores the intricacies of choosing a suitable water vessel!
Wednesday, 18 April 2007
Hifz of the Qur'an
Im sorry I've not updated for a long time, what with exams and things, here goes though...
Hifz of the Qur'an (learning the Qur'an by heart) has gone down as whole over the years. before you would find many huffaz (memorisers) across the community, but now we look and see literally only about 1 in about 150-200 people who know the entire Qur'an by heart. and i think we can look at this alarming trend of increasing alienation from the word of Allah and link it to the downward spiral Muslims are in currently.
on an historical note we can look at the Abbasid Caliphate, and can arguably trace the rise of the Iranians and Turks (nothing against them :D ), which led to the lessening in importance of the Arabic language and naturally this has an indirect effect on the importance attached to the Hifz of the Qur'an.
the answer is to start learning the Qur'an, not putting it off until we finish X or Y, but starting now and making time for ourselves to read what God as lain down for us in his own words. only then can we really understand what Islam is about. We can harp on about lectures and books, but what is more effective...a commentary on something, or reading the "something" and then listening to the commentary on it.
there are many practical benefits of learning the Qur'an, namely, you learn how to manage your time much better, you exercise your mind regularly (how many people actually know something word-for-word off by heart in a different language, indeed this is a miracle of the Qur'an that we are able to learn it as the comparison for a vast number of non-Arab Muslims is like learning a shakespeare play in chinese) and also it has been proved that singing is very beneficial to the body as it gives a workout to the entire upper body, similarly, reciting the Qur'an also helps you burn off those calories in an effective manner.
the exercising of the mind thing...I'm serious man, this is absolutely true, you will or may have noticed that huffaz (memorisers) generally punch above their weight in terms of their natural abilities and in terms of what results they achieve. This could also be linked to the barakah(blessing) that comes with reading the Qur'an, so if you want to do better at anything...do hifz ..who would say no to that really? I know people who ain't that clever and they have achieved some pretty amazing things after learning the Qur'an.
When i say "memorise the Qur'an" this may seem daunting, and rightly is, but we have to remember that we don't HAVE to memorise ALL of it, we could memorise bits we like, but keep memorising all of our lives, because, until we have finished, (and when we do inshAllah finish, we can always learn the authentic sayings of Muhammad (saw)) we should never stop.
when a person really starts to do something with a strong belief or intention it slowly becomes part of their life and affects them so deeply that sometimes their life becomes that thing, like one of my coaches once rather shockingly said "cricket is my life", now compare that to the Prophets description by his wife Aisha (rah) who said his character was the Qur'an. what would we like our "main" thing to be?
there are also many hadith that relate about the virute of memorising the Quran such as your parents being crowned with a crown more brighter than the moon. but there are certain things we should be careful about, namely to learn or try to learn it with tajweed, and this is easier than you think...just listen to a recording of a reciter and copy him syllable for syllable, the upside is you'll read with tajweed and develop a good voice, the downside...you wont have a distinctive style. second...learn with meaning, this should probably be first, without meaning this doesn't do anything to us in terms of changing ourselves. also we should try and learn Arabic too.
also when we read, we should ALWAYS read in a beautiful voice as this is a hadith. this makes us feel good and inshAllah encourage us to learn and read the Qur'an further. also we should learn about 10 ayahs (or more) and then implement it into our life after understanding it. This will make it much easier to remember as we will be doing as well as reading, this as modern teaching methods even show is much more effective and this is what the sahaba did too.
when doing Hifz, a certain amount of repetitions of words is involved and linking to previous ayahs, which makes it possible for a Hafiz to spend more than the normal time actually reflecting and pondering on the deep meanings found in the Qur'an. this means that even years after i learnt an ayah, i could read it again and glean something new from it that i never saw in it before.
finally i would like to say that a person who does hifz, makes the Qur'an his life and character
and acts upon it, this person will become a beloved person of Allah, and think about it...when reading the rulebook for life so much...is this person more or less likely to commit the sins the Qur'an forbids, or more or less likely to do the good the Qur'an advocates?
anything good i said is from Allah (swt) and anything wrong is my own error.
Hifz of the Qur'an (learning the Qur'an by heart) has gone down as whole over the years. before you would find many huffaz (memorisers) across the community, but now we look and see literally only about 1 in about 150-200 people who know the entire Qur'an by heart. and i think we can look at this alarming trend of increasing alienation from the word of Allah and link it to the downward spiral Muslims are in currently.
on an historical note we can look at the Abbasid Caliphate, and can arguably trace the rise of the Iranians and Turks (nothing against them :D ), which led to the lessening in importance of the Arabic language and naturally this has an indirect effect on the importance attached to the Hifz of the Qur'an.
the answer is to start learning the Qur'an, not putting it off until we finish X or Y, but starting now and making time for ourselves to read what God as lain down for us in his own words. only then can we really understand what Islam is about. We can harp on about lectures and books, but what is more effective...a commentary on something, or reading the "something" and then listening to the commentary on it.
there are many practical benefits of learning the Qur'an, namely, you learn how to manage your time much better, you exercise your mind regularly (how many people actually know something word-for-word off by heart in a different language, indeed this is a miracle of the Qur'an that we are able to learn it as the comparison for a vast number of non-Arab Muslims is like learning a shakespeare play in chinese) and also it has been proved that singing is very beneficial to the body as it gives a workout to the entire upper body, similarly, reciting the Qur'an also helps you burn off those calories in an effective manner.
the exercising of the mind thing...I'm serious man, this is absolutely true, you will or may have noticed that huffaz (memorisers) generally punch above their weight in terms of their natural abilities and in terms of what results they achieve. This could also be linked to the barakah(blessing) that comes with reading the Qur'an, so if you want to do better at anything...do hifz ..who would say no to that really? I know people who ain't that clever and they have achieved some pretty amazing things after learning the Qur'an.
When i say "memorise the Qur'an" this may seem daunting, and rightly is, but we have to remember that we don't HAVE to memorise ALL of it, we could memorise bits we like, but keep memorising all of our lives, because, until we have finished, (and when we do inshAllah finish, we can always learn the authentic sayings of Muhammad (saw)) we should never stop.
when a person really starts to do something with a strong belief or intention it slowly becomes part of their life and affects them so deeply that sometimes their life becomes that thing, like one of my coaches once rather shockingly said "cricket is my life", now compare that to the Prophets description by his wife Aisha (rah) who said his character was the Qur'an. what would we like our "main" thing to be?
there are also many hadith that relate about the virute of memorising the Quran such as your parents being crowned with a crown more brighter than the moon. but there are certain things we should be careful about, namely to learn or try to learn it with tajweed, and this is easier than you think...just listen to a recording of a reciter and copy him syllable for syllable, the upside is you'll read with tajweed and develop a good voice, the downside...you wont have a distinctive style. second...learn with meaning, this should probably be first, without meaning this doesn't do anything to us in terms of changing ourselves. also we should try and learn Arabic too.
also when we read, we should ALWAYS read in a beautiful voice as this is a hadith. this makes us feel good and inshAllah encourage us to learn and read the Qur'an further. also we should learn about 10 ayahs (or more) and then implement it into our life after understanding it. This will make it much easier to remember as we will be doing as well as reading, this as modern teaching methods even show is much more effective and this is what the sahaba did too.
when doing Hifz, a certain amount of repetitions of words is involved and linking to previous ayahs, which makes it possible for a Hafiz to spend more than the normal time actually reflecting and pondering on the deep meanings found in the Qur'an. this means that even years after i learnt an ayah, i could read it again and glean something new from it that i never saw in it before.
finally i would like to say that a person who does hifz, makes the Qur'an his life and character
and acts upon it, this person will become a beloved person of Allah, and think about it...when reading the rulebook for life so much...is this person more or less likely to commit the sins the Qur'an forbids, or more or less likely to do the good the Qur'an advocates?
anything good i said is from Allah (swt) and anything wrong is my own error.
Thursday, 1 March 2007
proofs that there is a God.
heres a forum convo im having about proofs that there is a God.
basically you are saying we dont need a God, its an illogical and old-fashioned idea which we use to explain the existence of the world, and now in the 21st century we are more advanced and civilised and thus need to do away with this "childish" belief.
okay well firstly, the theist always has more proof than an atheist. the atheist (which is almost a religious belief system - they believe in something that cannot be proven) cannot prove there is not a God. However we, Muslims, can.
We can do it through the following logic:
1.There had to be a source for all the matter in the Big Bang = God
(im sure with your knowledge you know the other arguments too
)
2.It makes sense that God contact us as he would have a reason for creating us.(tenable on its own but stands well when linked to the next few points)
3.If he contacted us, it would make sense to tell us what he requires off us.
4.This contact logically would be easiest if he sent them a prophet from amongst human beings.
5.These human Prophets would then have an essentially matching set of teachings at the basic level. (eg Moses-Jesus-Muhammad all preach monotheism.) As they are all from the same source=God.
6.Now these Prophets would not speak of their own...as no-one would believe them...they need authority of "God". So they have books sent down to them, which also deals with the problem of following the teachings of God once the prophet passes away-as now they have a lasting copy of God's teachings.
7.God gives these Prophets signs that would impress the people they were aimed at: eg Jesus PBUHand the healings, raising from dead etc, Muhammad PBUH came at a time sufficiently advanced enough for God to end all revelations to mankind...(eg the Torah and NT corrupted and the Qur'an isn't -also people more advanced in lots of other ways) and he came at a time when,people were getting into literature much more, and from 1400 years ago, until the end of time - ...the biggest miracle of the Prophet Muhammad, given to him by God, is the Qur'an.
8. so now we have the Qur'an as the proof of God's existence, like the people who witnessed Jesus healing lepers etc, the modern day person has to read the Qur'an and think...is this book similar to any other book i have ever read?
does it sound like its been written by an illierate and uneducated man in a desert 1400 years ago? (scientifically sound too - but thats another way to prove the existence of God)
9.the next proof is the messengership of Muhammad, his life and his motives. simple put, either Muhammad PBUH was a prophet of God, or he wasn't.
Now lets look at his motives if he wasnt a Prophet of God. Muhammad was offered enormous wealth, but he refused. He was offered kingship of Makkah but he refused. He used to darn his own clothes, and him and his family used to survive on many occasions on only water and dates. And he continued to live very very simply all his life, even towards the end, when wealth was pouring into the hands of the Muslims. He had only 2 pieces of cloth, and at the time of his death, he had pawned off his armour to someone in order to live. This is the man that could ask any Muslim to give him wealth and the Muslim would give him all his wealth - but he never did. He used to stand for hours upon hours in prayer in the middle of the night, sacrificing his own sleep, crying to his Lord for forgiveness of the Muslims, for their success in this world and the next and thanking God for all that he had given him, he used to stand so much so much that his feet used to swell up. The question is: was this man sincere or not? The answer, as even Non-Muslims have to conclude is that he most definitely was.
now the next challenge: to prove he really was from God:
firstly his message matched the other previous "selfless" and "sincere" and "monotheistic" prophets that came before him - so thats criteria 1 met.
Next, the only other option we have to go down...is that he was (naoodobillah) insane or deluded. This allegation is dealt with extensively in the Qur'an and refuted, God does deal with this as he knows that this is the only option left for people to reject him.
Also we have to look at his life...was this man really acting insane? The enemies of him at the time also had to conclude that he wasn't insane, he didn't have fits, he didn't speak or act in a strange manner and his words (if they were not Gods -the Qur'an in other words) were not something even a highly intelligent and gifted poet/orator/linguist of the time could have made up, never mind an insane person. He used to be the best in character in Makkah and his fame for this was such that he was known as "the trustworthy". -his judgement was respected (many authentic stories that i wont mention here) - why respect a madmans judgement?
Also we look at this guys achievements: he managed something that no-one had ever managed in history: uniting the arab tribes, and doing this in only 23 years.He must have been an incredible diplomat and an incredible orator -insane...doesnt add up?
What else did he do? He lay the seeds for one of the biggest empires ever seen on earth - changing those backward sheep-herders into scholars, doctors and teachers...and insane deluded man did this?
He had the following of 100,000s, this is impossible for a madman to have accomplished. Think about it: this is the most authentically reported on person ever. His entire life, from his sayings to family life to travelling to even going to the toilet, all was recorded. From here we know that if there was any even HINT of Insanity - he would have been found out straight away...and he would never have got this incredibly large following. (and remember the arabs were a tribal society - notoriously hard to unite).
Also for him to have written a book like the Qur'an, his own character and ideas, as any authors does, must be in the Qur'an. As we know...he was an incredibly humble person...but the Qur'an is an extremely authoritive book as befits something from God- why the mismatch if he wrote it?
Also If he wrote the Qur'an, he must have been secretly studying (which with the scrutiny he was constantly under - was impossible) modern scientific facts...using a non-existent microscope and a non-existent powerful telescope,
and also we have to take the advanced scientific facts to be known to him as a given right? 
He must also have been a psychologist, the like of which has never been seen since and before him,to have written a book like the Qur'an, which addresses all the thoughts of a questioning reader, giving them powerful arguments to swallow. - again ...this guy insane...deluded you say?
So we have to conclude that he wasnt insane, wasnt lying and was sincere. Therefore there remains only one option: He was the Messenger of God!
conclusion:
so basically you have many ways to prove God:
the first cause, intelligent design etc.
then you have the fact that we have a logically believable (they all match) tradition of messengers of God coming to us through history.
The life of Muhammad is another fantastic example of there being a God and him communicating to mankind.
Also the Qur'an is the miracle given to us by God, as proof that he exists.(and thats another topic on its own )
thanks for the replies btw
Quote:
| Originally Posted by lao tzu  Greetings, gugen, I don't believe in gods in general, so naturally I don't believe in your god in particular. Humans have a long history of looking for rhyme and reason in the world around them, and, failing to find explanation, they often choose to invoke causes they cannot understand by recreating them in human shape. Even when we do not dress them in our own physical form, though that's common enough, we grant them all of the other aspects of humanity. We give them a personality, a consciousness, control of their environment, and a desire to be respected. We make them in our own image. We create them with desires that we can fulfill in exchange for hope that our own desires can likewise be met. I find this process understandable, but ultimately unproductive. Over the past few thousand years, humans have slowly learned to take control of most of the aspects of divinity we once assigned to our gods. We control the lightning today. We foretell the hurricanes. We measure the earthquakes and build our structures with these stresses in mind. Our need to pray for relief from these natural disasters has consequently waned. Over the past few hundred years, humans have slowly learned to discover for ourselves, in reliable fashion, facts beyond our natural ability to discover them. From the depths of the living cell to the galactic clusters at the furthest extent of the universe, we have learned to see what could not be seen before. Our need for "revelation" as an avenue to truth has consequently abated. Islam, like the Abrahamic faiths that preceded it and followed it, is today an anachronism. The universe as we humans perceived it thousands of years ago is today as quaint as our perception of our place within it once was. We are growing up, and putting away the childish self-centeredness that sees the universe as nothing more than a place created for us. As ever, Jesse |
basically you are saying we dont need a God, its an illogical and old-fashioned idea which we use to explain the existence of the world, and now in the 21st century we are more advanced and civilised and thus need to do away with this "childish" belief.
okay well firstly, the theist always has more proof than an atheist. the atheist (which is almost a religious belief system - they believe in something that cannot be proven) cannot prove there is not a God. However we, Muslims, can.
We can do it through the following logic:
1.There had to be a source for all the matter in the Big Bang = God
(im sure with your knowledge you know the other arguments too
)2.It makes sense that God contact us as he would have a reason for creating us.(tenable on its own but stands well when linked to the next few points)
3.If he contacted us, it would make sense to tell us what he requires off us.
4.This contact logically would be easiest if he sent them a prophet from amongst human beings.
5.These human Prophets would then have an essentially matching set of teachings at the basic level. (eg Moses-Jesus-Muhammad all preach monotheism.) As they are all from the same source=God.
6.Now these Prophets would not speak of their own...as no-one would believe them...they need authority of "God". So they have books sent down to them, which also deals with the problem of following the teachings of God once the prophet passes away-as now they have a lasting copy of God's teachings.
7.God gives these Prophets signs that would impress the people they were aimed at: eg Jesus PBUHand the healings, raising from dead etc, Muhammad PBUH came at a time sufficiently advanced enough for God to end all revelations to mankind...(eg the Torah and NT corrupted and the Qur'an isn't -also people more advanced in lots of other ways) and he came at a time when,people were getting into literature much more, and from 1400 years ago, until the end of time - ...the biggest miracle of the Prophet Muhammad, given to him by God, is the Qur'an.
8. so now we have the Qur'an as the proof of God's existence, like the people who witnessed Jesus healing lepers etc, the modern day person has to read the Qur'an and think...is this book similar to any other book i have ever read?
does it sound like its been written by an illierate and uneducated man in a desert 1400 years ago? (scientifically sound too - but thats another way to prove the existence of God)
9.the next proof is the messengership of Muhammad, his life and his motives. simple put, either Muhammad PBUH was a prophet of God, or he wasn't.
Now lets look at his motives if he wasnt a Prophet of God. Muhammad was offered enormous wealth, but he refused. He was offered kingship of Makkah but he refused. He used to darn his own clothes, and him and his family used to survive on many occasions on only water and dates. And he continued to live very very simply all his life, even towards the end, when wealth was pouring into the hands of the Muslims. He had only 2 pieces of cloth, and at the time of his death, he had pawned off his armour to someone in order to live. This is the man that could ask any Muslim to give him wealth and the Muslim would give him all his wealth - but he never did. He used to stand for hours upon hours in prayer in the middle of the night, sacrificing his own sleep, crying to his Lord for forgiveness of the Muslims, for their success in this world and the next and thanking God for all that he had given him, he used to stand so much so much that his feet used to swell up. The question is: was this man sincere or not? The answer, as even Non-Muslims have to conclude is that he most definitely was.
now the next challenge: to prove he really was from God:
firstly his message matched the other previous "selfless" and "sincere" and "monotheistic" prophets that came before him - so thats criteria 1 met.
Next, the only other option we have to go down...is that he was (naoodobillah) insane or deluded. This allegation is dealt with extensively in the Qur'an and refuted, God does deal with this as he knows that this is the only option left for people to reject him.
Also we have to look at his life...was this man really acting insane? The enemies of him at the time also had to conclude that he wasn't insane, he didn't have fits, he didn't speak or act in a strange manner and his words (if they were not Gods -the Qur'an in other words) were not something even a highly intelligent and gifted poet/orator/linguist of the time could have made up, never mind an insane person. He used to be the best in character in Makkah and his fame for this was such that he was known as "the trustworthy". -his judgement was respected (many authentic stories that i wont mention here
) - why respect a madmans judgement?Also we look at this guys achievements: he managed something that no-one had ever managed in history: uniting the arab tribes, and doing this in only 23 years.He must have been an incredible diplomat and an incredible orator -insane...doesnt add up?
What else did he do? He lay the seeds for one of the biggest empires ever seen on earth - changing those backward sheep-herders into scholars, doctors and teachers...and insane deluded man did this?
He had the following of 100,000s, this is impossible for a madman to have accomplished. Think about it: this is the most authentically reported on person ever. His entire life, from his sayings to family life to travelling to even going to the toilet, all was recorded. From here we know that if there was any even HINT of Insanity - he would have been found out straight away...and he would never have got this incredibly large following. (and remember the arabs were a tribal society - notoriously hard to unite).
Also for him to have written a book like the Qur'an, his own character and ideas, as any authors does, must be in the Qur'an. As we know...he was an incredibly humble person...but the Qur'an is an extremely authoritive book as befits something from God- why the mismatch if he wrote it?
Also If he wrote the Qur'an, he must have been secretly studying (which with the scrutiny he was constantly under - was impossible) modern scientific facts...using a non-existent microscope and a non-existent powerful telescope,
and also we have to take the advanced scientific facts to be known to him as a given right? He must also have been a psychologist, the like of which has never been seen since and before him,to have written a book like the Qur'an, which addresses all the thoughts of a questioning reader, giving them powerful arguments to swallow. - again ...this guy insane...deluded you say?
So we have to conclude that he wasnt insane, wasnt lying and was sincere. Therefore there remains only one option: He was the Messenger of God!
conclusion:
so basically you have many ways to prove God:
the first cause, intelligent design etc.
then you have the fact that we have a logically believable (they all match) tradition of messengers of God coming to us through history.
The life of Muhammad is another fantastic example of there being a God and him communicating to mankind.
Also the Qur'an is the miracle given to us by God, as proof that he exists.(and thats another topic on its own
)thanks for the replies btw
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