Why Does the Adhan Bring Non-Muslims to Tears?

One example of several talent competitions that included calling the adhan, this on X-Factor. Another famous one was on Britain’s Got Talent. Usually the contestant is a young boy. In this case, Bilal bin Rabah.

The video above showcases an amazing adhan given in the X-Factor competition. It’s not the only one either; another is from Britain’s Got Talent, and others can be found on YouTube from other international versions of major talent shows. What is remarkable is the awed silence you can sense during the adhan, and the emotional reaction. Of course, other singers and performers have also inspired emotional responses, but there’s a feeling about these that is particular to them: the sense of something greater than the competition itself, greater than the talent, the show, the money and advertisers, greater than the celebrities.

Meaning and Truth Is So Much More than Miracles

There is much speculation about numbers in the Quran, their interrelationships, and the idea of finding “miracles” in them. In fact, my previous post was all about Quranic miracles (examples very hard to debunk), not simply because they were clearly extraordinary, but because they were relevant to the message of the Quran as a whole. Although I’ve studied numerical relationships in the Quran somewhat extensively, “finding miracles” was never my aim, but rather finding meaning. For example, what I found remarkable in studies done to show that the Quran doesn’t comply with  Zipf’s Law (then claim it is therefore a miracle) was not so much its “noncompliance” as the fact that the first two words in order of frequency in the Quran are min Allah, which means “from Allah.” This means something. Whether or not it “miraculously” complied with Zipf’s Law…in itself does not. Because what is so important about Zipf’s Law in itself? And these sorts of things can be debunked. Why? Well, mathematics itself is kind of miraculous. 

A Confluence of Miracles

This guy brings up many Quranic miracles of which I’d only heard of the “even and the odd.”

First, watch/listen. Then, I’ve parsed it out so you can delve into what you may have missed.

Absolutely Beautiful Story of a Jew’s Acceptance of Islam, his life curated by Al-Aziz Al-Hakeem

www.islamland.com/uploads/books/en-Dr. Moustafa Mould, Ex-Jew, USA.docx

In a search for something else, I ran across this amazing story about a man’s journey through life as a Jew, then atheist, scholar, professor, worker at “survival” jobs, linguist, scholar of African languages and cultures, and finally Muslim. What’s especially worthy in this narrative, along with its compelling honesty, is how it offers a more organic conversion story, even pretending to have a belief one doesn’t actually exactly have, which in turn shows us this doesn’t have to be a WOW! moment but rather a gradual process. This is what I call Allah’s “curation” of our lives, should we in some way open ourselves to something good, in his case justice and learning empathy from a world where xenophobia both victimizes and unites Jewish culture/society in particular. He also brings unique details through the history of an era I know well in America, and describes eloquently how clear of US prejudices and shortcomings African and other cultures are, how the liberal and leftish Jewish culture was both pro-Zionist and anti-right wing extremism (which to leftist Jews then included Menachem Begin). Well-worth reading, this highly insightful article I found both inspiring and informative, helping me understand certain cultural issues more deeply.

The Power of Prostration by a Convert/Revert to Islam

This short video is a powerful portrayal of how Islam both confirms “what is in the previous scriptures” and the importance and meaning of prostration. What is especially wonderful is how no one actually told him about Islam except his preacher, who spoke of it in a derogatory way, and this alone raised questions in the man’s mind. Which led him to the Quran and Islam. (Side note: Basically I dislike the word “revert” referring to converts to Islam – in English it has a definite negative connotation like “going backwards to something inferior”, and the logic of its use, that children are born Muslim, skirts the issue of how one doesn’t really “own” this or any religion until maturity, in which case one wasn’t “Muslim” except in innocence whereas Islam is a choice. The good side of its use is it expresses there is no original sin and that Islam is not an invented dogma, but simply the truth.)

Wonderful and succinct presentation of the power of prostration.