Islam

It is not­ed that in his alleged ​“reply” to our sum­ma­ry of the Bib­li­cal Prophets’ expe­ri­ences in their encounter with the Divine pres­ence, the…

Here we have two notions which appear dif­fer­ent­ly from the point of view of the prophet : the notion of his sub­jec­tive con­scious­ness, which aris­es out of his human knowl­edge, and that of Qur’an­ic con­scious­ness, which is revealed to him. It is nec­es­sary to estab­lish a clear dis­tinc­tion between these two notions in order to bet­ter clar­i­fy the Qur’an­ic phe­nom­e­non. This dis­tinc­tion is appar­ent with oth­er prophets, as we saw in the case of Jere­mi­ah when he wit­nessed Nabi Hana­nia tak­ing the exact oppo­site view of his pre­dic­tion, in reas­sur­ing the peo­ple of Jerusalem about the inten­tion of God about them. It hap­pened that Hana­nia, hav­ing met Jere­mi­ah, cried to him while break­ing the yoke which Jere­mi­ah car­ried : ​“This is what Jeho­vah said : ​‘Like­wise I will break the yoke of the king of Baby­lon”. This was in con­tra­dic­tion to all the pre­dic­tions of Jere­mi­ah. But Jere­mi­ah respond­ed spon­ta­neous­ly, ​“Amen ! May Jeho­vah do as you say.”

In their hasty attempt to obfus­cate and attack any­thing that inval­i­dates their claims regard­ing the Prophet’s (P) expe­ri­ences dur­ing the peri­od known as the Fatrah, the Chris­t­ian mis­sion­ary Sam Shamoun had released a ver­bal bar­rage of rhetor­i­cal non­sense in his (ridiculously-)titled ​“A Chris­t­ian Per­spec­tive[!] of the Fatrah of Muham­mad”. Need­less to men­tion, it is nei­ther ​“Chris­t­ian” nor it is bal­anced in its ​“per­spec­tive”, as the author sim­ply remains true to the form of the mis­sion­ary tra­di­tion. This is fol­lowed by the equal­ly-messy straw­man argu­ments by his cohort, ​“Silas”, in his com­ments to our expo­si­tion of the Fatrah.

Trans­lat­ed by Aisha Bew­ley from Muham­mad, Mes­sen­ger of Allah, Ash-Shi­fa of Qadi ​‘Iyad, Mad­i­nah Press, Grana­da (1991), pp. 352 – 354 If you asked what…

This is a short response to the mis­sion­ary’s ​‘Ish­mael Is Not the Father Of Muham­mad’ Revis­it­ed. The basic premis­es of this trav­es­ty of the…

Some Arab Chris­tians apol­o­gists false­ly claim that Prophet Muhammad(P) was lit­er­ate and even knew many lan­guages. They base their false­hood on the inter­po­la­tion of…

Muham­mad Mohar Ali Ph.D (Lon­don), Bar­ris­ter-at-Law PROFESSOR OF THE HISTORY OF ISLAM CENTER FOR THE SERVICE OF SUNNAH AND SIRAH ISLAMIC UNIVERSITY, MADINAH Excerpt­ed from Sir­at Al-Nabi and the…

It is inter­est­ing to note that most of his argu­ments ​“from a bib­li­cal [SIC] per­spec­tive” are noth­ing new. They are argu­ments rehashed from ori­en­tal­ists in the last cen­tu­ry who allege that the Prophet’s(P) reli­gious atti­tude and prac­tices pri­or to the com­ing of the Rev­e­la­tions were no dif­fer­ent from his peo­ple. Most of these claims were spear­head­ed by D.S. Mar­goli­uthD.S. Mar­goli­uth, Mohammed and the Rise of Islam (3rd ed., 1893) and sub­se­quent writ­ers fol­lowed him, includ­ing this mis­sion­ary whom we are address­ing. While the moti­va­tions of Mar­goli­uth and the mis­sion­ary in mak­ing these alle­ga­tions are not the same, the sim­i­lar­i­ties of Mar­goli­uth’s claims and the mis­sion­ary arti­cle in ques­tion are based on sev­er­al points.

The Chris­t­ian mis­sion­ar­ies and the ene­mies of Islam have alleged that the Prophet Muhammad(P) was an ​“assas­sin” who would ​“kill his oppo­nents in the…

Prayer (salat) is the first duty imposed by God Almighty upon mankind after that of the belief in tawhid and con­sti­tutes a pil­lar of the Islam­ic faith. The posi­tion of prayer is very impor­tant and unpar­al­leled by any act of oth­er wor­ship. Like the pole of a tent with­out which it can­not stand straight, Islam can­not stand with­out prayers. Prayers are also an act where­by it will be account­ed for on the Day of Judgment.

Mus­lims do not believe in Muhammad(P) as God or ven­er­ate and wor­ship him as God. We believe that he is a Mes­sen­ger of God, just like Moses(P) and Jesus(P), and that he brought God’s Words to us. He nei­ther con­ceived his own con­cep­tion of God nor did he told Mus­lims to estab­lish Islam with force. Mus­lims do not believe that Muhammad(P) is the Mes­si­ah. We believe that Jesus(P) is the Mes­si­ah. The only thing that we do not agree about him with Chris­tians is that Jesus(P) is a Liv­ing God and/​or a part of the Trin­i­ty along with God (The ​“Father”) and the Holy Spirit.

Mus­lims believe that God gave mankind an inborn nat­ur­al pre­dis­po­si­tion which can­not change and which exists at birth in all human beings, a reli­gio nat­u­ralis which is called ​“fitrah” in Arabic.

The Qur’an is the last revealed word of God and the basic source of Islam­ic teach­ings and laws. It deals with a vari­ety of sub­jects includ­ing the basic beliefs of Islam, moral­i­ty, wor­ship, knowl­edge, wis­dom, God and man’s rela­tion­ship, and rela­tions among human beings. Com­pre­hen­sive teach­ings on which sound sys­tems of social jus­tice, pol­i­tics, eco­nom­ics, leg­is­la­tion, jurispru­dence, law and inter­na­tion­al rela­tions can be built form an impor­tant part of the Holy Qur’an. Although Prophet Muhammad(P) did not receive a for­mal edu­ca­tion, the Qur’an as soon as it was revealed to him in the spo­ken word, was com­mit­ted to writ­ing by his sec­re­taries. In this way every word was writ­ten down and pre­served dur­ing his life­time by his Com­pan­ions. The orig­i­nal and com­plete text of the Qur’an is in Ara­bic and trans­la­tions of its mean­ing in most known lan­guages are avail­able in major libraries and bookstores.

Islam, as we had ear­li­er explained before, con­sists of belief and Laws. We have pre­vi­ous­ly men­tioned some pil­lars of the Laws. These pil­lars are the basis of Islam­ic Law. As for the Islam­ic ​‘Aqeedah (creed), its pil­lars are : Believ­ing in Allah, His Angels, His Books, His Mes­sen­gers, the Last Day and the good or bad that Qadar (pre­des­ti­na­tion) brings.

The Pil­lars of Islam are the cor­ner­stones on which Islam is built. There are five pil­lars of Islam. This is men­tioned in a hadith on the author­i­ty of Aboo ​‘Abd ir-Rah­maan ​‘Abdul­laah, the son of ​‘Umar ibn al-Khattab(R), who said : ​“I heard the Mes­sen­ger of Allaah say : Islaam has been built on five [pil­lars]: tes­ti­fy­ing that there is no deity wor­thy of wor­ship except Allaah and that Muham­mad is the Mes­sen­ger of Allaah, estab­lish­ing the salaah (prayer), pay­ing the zakaah (oblig­a­tory char­i­ty), mak­ing the Hajj (pil­grim­age) to the House, and fast­ing in Ramadaan.” [relat­ed by al-Bukhaari and Muslim]