One of the richest, and simultaneously most difficult, teachings of the Islamic tradition is that the path to the Divine presence goes not through an institution, or a creed, or a location, but through humanity.
This close connection between God and humanity goes back to the very foundation of Islam. The Quran records the creation of humanity as a conversation between God and the angels. Unlike the angels made of light, and the Jinn made of fire, the human would be a composite being, made of both clay and spirit.
Ever hear of people describe their relationship as "it's complicated" on Facebook? We humans were complicated from the very beginning.
It is this humanity that it is the ultimate paradox, the being that is created in the image of God and has Divine breath inside. We are the beings that God intended to put as vicegerents on Earth, the beings that led to the bewilderment of the angels, who exclaimed: "Why would you put one therein who will shed blood and cause mischief" (2:30). We humans are the beings that Satan rebelled against, because he looked at the human and refused to see the divine presence inside the human.
As the great Muslim thinker Suhrawardi said, we are taught these stories to help us figure out what kind of manners, what type of "adab", we will follow in life. If we look at a fellow human being, and only imagine the worst case scenario -- that the human in front of us "might cause mischief" -- we are imitating the manners of the Quranic angels. If we look at a fellow human being, and assert our own superiority over them, we are following the manners of Satan. It was Satan that looked at the human being and said: "I am better than this!"
So what alternative is there? Divine manners. When the angels complain to God about what the human might do, God's answer to them is simply: "I know something that you don't." There is something about the potential of the human being that God knew and the angels didn't know. God worked with the human, taught the human, and redeemed the human to set up the human as God's representative. Some commentators have taken the Quranic line "secret of Heavens and Earth" in that passage to refer to the human being: If you want to know the secret of the Heaven and the Earth, you have to know the human being. To engage humanity, to work with humanity, to redeem humanity -- that is following divine manners. It is these Divine manners that the Prophet was sent to perfect in us.
This working with humanity to get to God also applies to our own being. The mystics of Islam were fond of saying that to know God, we have to truly know our own selves. Yet again, the path to God goes through the human.
A key component of this comes in what Buber called "Projecting the I into the Thou." Brother West said at one point that of any person one can should ask two questions: "How deep is your love? What is the quality of your service to others?" Muslim sages through the centuries have agreed with Brother West. A great Muslim ethicist and Persian poet, Sa'di, said:
Service to humanity is the whole of worship:
The worship of God is not done by rosary beads,
robes of piety or prayer carpets.
What is it about service to humanity that leads to God? How is service worship itself? Service forces us to rise above attachment to our own ego, to our own "nafs," and instead devote ourselves to another. It moves us to shatter the ultimate idol -- the idol that is not made of stone or wood, but is rather that illusory sense of being the Lord and Master of All. To reach out in love and service to even one other human being is the beginning of shattering the idol of the self, recognizing our shared humanity, and making room for the real God to enter the temple of the heart.
If you want to be great, learn to serve. Dr. King was right: "Everybody can be great because anybody can serve. ... You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love."
Anybody can serve. Service can take on any form. A mother nursing a child, nourishing a child, that is service. A father changing a diaper is service. Taking care of an elderly parent is service. Teaching is service. Stopping a war and waging peace, that is service. Providing health services to those without, that is service. To speak for the weak, that is service. To be the voice for the voiceless and marginalized, that is service. Feeding one's neighbor is service. Any profession, if done with love and a desire to serve humanity, can become a form of service. Again, Martin:
If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, here lives a great street sweeper who did his job well.
Service is not the same as pity. We don't serve because we feel sorry for someone. Pity is unworthy of us. We were made out of love, made to love and made for love. We serve because we recognize the dignity of divine presence in others, and in ourselves. We serve because we recognize that we can't be who we ought to be without others being who they ought to be. We serve because we recognize that our humanity is connected together. As our Prophet said, we are members of one body. Not just Muslims, the whole of humanity. As God is One, so is humanity.
As God says in the Quran: "I created humanity and the jinn so that they may come to worship me." May we come to fulfill our cosmic duty, to worship God, by going through the difficult and most challenging path, the path of humanity. May we do better than Satan did, better than angels did, by living as a true human being who recognizes that we are part of the inescapable network of shared humanity. We just might find, simultaneously, the secret of humanity and the secret of the Divine.
Reverend William E. Flippin, Jr.: When Does Worship Happen?
The Qur'an contains no instance of the phrase "service to humanity," or any equivalentÂ. That is not what the Qur'an is about. The message of the Qur'an is that everyone must accept Muhammad.
The Qur'an was dictated by Muhammad, not by God or Allah. Muhammad's paramount concerns are very easy to see, since he repeats them tirelesslyÂ, over and over, again and again, with little variation. "Service to humanity" is not one of them.
Muhammad's Qur'an endlessly repeats the same three ideas:
1) That everyone must accept Allah as the One God,
2) That everyone must accept Muhammad as Allah's Messenger, and
3) That Allah has prepared the means of inflicting an eternal punishment in a blazing fire on those who deny, reject, oppose, resist, or annoy Allah and his Messenger, Muhammad.
For Surah after Surah, the Qur'an concerns itself almost exclusivelÂy with impressing on us the almightineÂss of Allah, and the dreadful penalty to be paid for rejecting Allah and his Messenger.
Why did Safi not include any quote from the Qur'an about "service to humanity?" - Because it doesn't contain one. That was never any part of the purpose of the Qur'an, at all.
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Surah 107
107:0 In the name of God, Most Gracious, Most Merciful
107:1 Do you know who really rejects the faith?
107:2 That is the one who mistreats the orphans.
107:3 And does not advocate the feeding of the poor.
107:4 And woe to those who observe the contact prayers (Salat) -
107:5 who are totally heedless of their prayers.
107:6 They only show off.
107:7 And they forbid charity.
Asking people to be generous to needy neighbors is not quite the same as asking people to "serve humanity."
After coming to Medina, Muhammad spent the remainder of his life demanding that everyone he encountered (who survived the encounter) either accept him as the Messenger of Allah, or become a very second-class citizen, or move elsewhere. That is not asking for "service to humanity," it is asking for service to Muhammad. And that is just what the Qur'an asks - or rather, demands.
That makes no sense, and shows a pretty primitive understandÂing of nature. For starters fire IS light (and heat) from a chemical reaction. You might as well say they are made of boiling.
Not even going to get into the made of clay part, as that should be obvious.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-hTxDvRVlo&feature=results_main&playnext=1&list=PL0A1E7D4C94E3E5E5
Why is this not seen as awfully as the statement "I had my kids so that they may come to worship me." would be? I'll never understand religious whackanoodle ideas.
As St. Paul says we know what is good for us to be done but when the time comes we do just the opposite. He further says who can save me from this dilemma . It is Christ Crucified!
www.alislam.org
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This very important Islamic doctrine is interpreted in two ways by Muslims. Islamists like Yusuf Qaradawi see Islam’s destiny to be the divinely ordained political control of all religions by Muslims, achieved by dawa and jihad, and administered according to Sharia law.
"The world is divided into two parts, separated only by time: the lands under Muslim rule and those which will eventually receive the Islamic dawa and come under Muslim rule. page 4"
http://www.currenttrends.org/docLib/2006Â1018_MonographFishman2.pdf
Other Muslims interpret vice regency to mean that Muslims must model righteousness to non Muslims, who are free to accept or reject the dawa without earthly consequence.
This describes the dividing line in the civil war within Islam and the fundamental reason why Islamists are at war with the West.
The West is the source of the main obstacle to Sharia rule, liberal democracy.
Otherwise, this is a factual statement on Islamic thoughts... well-stated, thank you. I think, however, that stating the West as the main obstacle to the Islamist/extreme Shariah rule is a bit adversarial. I would, alternatively, encourage the fostering of a relationship between the more moderate/progressive Muslim populations and the West.
An overwhelming majority of Muslims are in favor of a liberal democratic rule because many come from places where the extremist views (the first interpretation you've stated) have been made law. Often, because of that governmental corruption of Islam it is difficult to speak out in favor of moderation. Embracing ties with moderate, Quranic Islam only causes more trust between that population and the West.
That is a virgin link, but it has been unstable in the past. Google
Alamiyyat al-Islam, the principle in fiqh al-aqalliyyat
if the link rots. The pdf is worth the trouble.
stating the West as the main obstacle to the Islamist/eÂxtreme Shariah rule is a bit adversariaÂl.
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The ultimate political question is "Who rules?" Of course it is adversarial, by definition. I would appreciate your opinion on what Western society has to gain from fostering a relationship with moderate Muslims who prefer Sharia values.
The conflicts between Koranic societies and liberal democratic societies are not trivial. I see zero interest in liberal democratic societies—excepting perhaps the Archbishop of Canterbury--in altering social values to accommodate Koranic values in a synthesis--and vice versa.
When two competing value systems attempt to occupy one society, there is an inherent adversarial quality to the competition. One must eventually accommodate the other.
An overwhelmiÂng majority of Muslims are in favor of a liberal democratic rule
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The recent elections in North Africa tell a different story.
If you mean American Muslims, why are anti Islamist organizations like AIFD alternately attacked and ignored by the mainstream national Muslim organizations? Why are so many of those organizations off shoots and ideological allies of the Muslim Brotherhood?
To people new to studying Islam, one might read a post like this and conclude the rest of the Islam scripture is more of the same. Conversely one might read an Old Testament verse and think it is "fire and brimstone" from here on out. I suppose the only way to address the question of the meaning or significance of "cherry picked" verses or interpretations such as Mr Safi's is to understand the predominate message of each body of teachings, by understanding what is repeated and emphasized.
For those Huff Post readers interested in conducting such a study of Islam, I recommend the following link:
http://www.politicalislam.com/blog/category/statistical-islam/
"The ignorance of Islam extends to the detailed history of the Islamic destruction of Christianity for 14 centuries."
We do not need to destroy Christianity when it is destroyed from within by various heretics who twist and turn the teaching of Jesus. It is not the desire of Muslims to eradicate Christianity at all. If you believe in God, that's fine. The revelations made to Jesus all those centuries ago is sound doctrine. What is later added is utter nonsense like the verse Romans 6:14.
Romans 6:14 says For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.
Not sure how this relates to the post.
Political Islam is the website of Bill Warner, aka Bill French ... a man so non-objective that he recently made a list of the "Who's Who of Anti-Islam Pundits".
http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2011/summer/the-anti-muslim-inner-circle
Not at all a good resource for objective information about Islam or Muslims.
And violent, radical Muslims (aka terrorists) are no more representative of their religion than terrorists in any religion are.
Especially since the terrorists themselves say that religion is not their primary motivation (and even if they did -- that would tell us about the terrorists, not about the religion, obviously --- only about 1% *of* 1% of all Muslims are terrorists).
http://vimeo.com/31213605
Not to mention the fact that mainstream Islam utterly condemns terrorists and terrorism.
http://clarifyingislam.com/2011/04/30/600-page-fatwa-condemning-terrorism-by-internationally-respected-islamic-legal-scholar/
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Translation:
"He doesn't agree with me, so everything he says is suspect. Do not read this man. He is one of Them."
Bill Warner is like everyone else, Doug--right sometimes and wrong sometimes. It's up to us readers to pick and choose, rather than slavishly follow the politically correct party line as you do.
None of them cite any of those incidents, which are usually found on anti-Muslim websites.
They come from writings known as hadith, which are allegedly details about the life of Muhammad - *but* (and this is critical) ... there is a vast range of credibility with respect to hadith.
If certain stories, such as the ones that you cite, are utterly out of sync with the majority of information about the life of Muhammad ---- they're probably not true.
If the only place you find information about them is on anti-Islam websites .... the non-truth of those hadith is obviously even more likely to be the case (people who hate other people tend to make up stuff about them, or point to non-representative examples, etc.).
You might want to Google around a bit, and check out non-anti-Islam sources, to fact-check his information.
1-not read it
2-ignore it.
3-kill you.