ONCE YOU'VE read the Quran, your knowledge of the core Islamic teachings will affect the way you perceive the world, allowing you to understand things which would otherwise be perplexing.Islam is becoming a more prominent part of society in every country of the world, and this will only increase as time goes on. More Muslims are moving to Western democracies, Muslims are having far more babies than any other group in the world, and they're using underhanded tactics like love jihad to persuade non-Muslim women to marry Muslim men to increase their numbers.
Not only are innocent people dying in jihad-inspired terrorist attacks around the world, but Muslim action "for the sake of Allah" has a significant influence on world events, like what OPEC does to world oil prices, what the Saudis do with their oil billions, what Iran may do with nuclear weapons, and what mainstream Muslim organizations do to change laws within free nations.
What people do in the name of Islam is not a peripheral or minuscule issue any more. It is impacting world events in a major way, and more so all the time. All the Muslims working toward their political goals are following the commands, so they say, from the Quran. What does it say in that book? Can it be interpreted some other way? Are they taking it all out of context? Or should we take what they're saying at face value?
How will you know the answers to these questions? By listening to others? You never know what agenda someone is following, or why they say what they say. You don't need any more opinions about Islam. You don't need someone's biased opinion about the Quran. You don't need anyone scaring you or trying to comfort you or trying to deceive you. You need to know what it actually says. You need to know the content of what 1.5 billion people on the planet consider to be their primary holy book.
People have political agendas. They have personal agendas. They have reasons to bias or misrepresent their information about the Quran and about Islam. Some even go out of their way to give the impression they don't have an agenda when they really do.
The only people you can honestly trust and believe are people you personally know and trust. Do you know anyone that you trust who has read the Quran? If not, you can read it yourself. You can go to the source and find out what's really true and who is distorting the facts about Islam.
And after you've read the Quran, when you talk about Islam, you will be able to speak with some authority. You're no longer going on second-hand knowledge. You've gotten your information directly from the Quran.
You can then help educate your friends and family, who are in the same boat — they don't have anyone they can trust to tell them what's really true about Islam. Once you've read the Quran, they'll have you.
Reading the Quran is a harmless, peaceful, and yet productive way to do something about what's going on in the world. You can become a source of solid information in a sea of rumor and opinion. It is doing something positive about something negative.
When you decide to take this step and read the Quran, please see our recommendations for which Quran to read. You can save yourself a lot of time and frustration to read a version written in modern English, put in chronological order, and with the missing historical details filled in. Read more about that here.
Reading the Quran is an act of heroism. It is not pleasant or easy. But it will make a difference. Please consider it carefully, and if you are ready, take the pledge to read the Quran.
Excellent post.
ReplyDeleteRe the GZM controversy:
Rauf: "I condemn everyone and anyone who commits acts of terrorism, and Hamas has committed acts of terrorism."
Why does he refuse to directly connect the verb "condemn" with the noun, "Hamas"? "I condemn Hamas."
Why does he instead turn his answer into the beginning of a syllogism, where he states only the two premises, and then leaves it to us to assume he is also making the syllogistic deduction that he condemns Hamas? Why does he refuse to actually say he condemns Hamas?
It's interesting in this context to note that Ibn Taymiyyah, a Muslim thinker influential on the Muslim Brotherhood, Wahabism, and Salafism, thought that syllogism was an inferior and uncertain form of logic.
Is Rauf, by stating only those two premises, but refusing to state the conclusion, counting on the unconscious assumption Westerners will make that he, like them, believes in the validity of syllogism? But what if he doesn't believe in syllogism, and does not think the deductive conclusion follows necessarily?
Is Rauf telegraphing to Wahabist and other Islamic scholars that he doesn't mean what he seems to be saying to Westerners about Hamas?
In any event, I think Rauf's above statement is part of playing a double-game. By leaving the conclusion unspoken, he telegraphs to the world's numerous Muslim Hamas supporters that he is resisting actually saying it. He's telling them that he is answering under duress, but fundamentally still on their side. That's why he refuses to come right out and say it. But naive Westerners assume he is, like them, drawing the obvious deductive conclusion.
If I'm being overly suspicious, well, that's what Rauf deserves for refusing to speak simply and directly in a situation where trust is obviously in short supply.
Two persons read quran and made this change! One was muslim and one non-muslim! A good read:
ReplyDeletehttp://santoshbhatt.wordpress.com/2010/10/08/from-mosque-to-sanatan-dharma/