Excellent Video Explains “the Uphill Climb” – to be Truly a Good Person

He gives a more in-depth exploration of the same ayat I discussed yesterday 90:11-13!

Today is (for me, it may be different for WordPress lol) the 2nd of Thul-Hijja and I was just sent the above video basically discussing the very same ayat I mentioned in yesterday’s post about Juneteenth and freeing slaves. But he takes the topic in more depth, explaining the meaning of the words in ways I had not been aware of, despite studying it. But I recognized the similarity of the “uphill climb” with the “steep climb” (I had changed the static “path” to the more expressive “climb”), and was even more impressed with his explanation of the ayat that follow, explaining 90:11-20 to describe the entire message of developing mercy and concern for others. It’s well-worth listening to! If a person developed this depth of concern, then advised others to be patient (sab’r, a word he uses but didn’t translate, although the talk is in English) and compassionate toward others. Highly recommended especially at this time.

Islam Is Transforming America for the Better

C. J. Werleman explains how Islam is bringing communities together that were previously enemies.

This is a true, real-world phenomenon: by simply giving people a welcoming, compassionate, truthful and exemplary way of finding purpose and meaning and mutual cooperation without all the materialistic hype, Islam is growing in America with surprising speed. And with many new converts, new energy and insights are also transforming the way even Muslims born of Muslim parentage view their religion. Excellent video!

The Meaningful Universe, Part 1 – Interconnection with Purpose

We are living in a strange, almost desperate time. What we thought was reliable and true seems upended. How many people are suffering psychologically, mentally, and physically, but drugs and other medical interventions don’t seem to work? So much hostility and death, even in places supposedly at peace. In the modern world, there’s a sense of meaninglessness, of not knowing what or whom to trust. This was described by the poet W.B. Yeats:

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold.
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed,
and everywhere the ceremony of innocence is lost.
The best lack all conviction,
while the worst are filled with passionate intensity.
(W.B. Yeats, “The Second Coming”)

Note: the title of this poem is “The Second Coming,” an idea I just debunked! But its description and prediction of the modern world, a literal “second coming” aside, is indeed true. Because what he was describing is actually the very real approach of the Hour. Incidentally—or not—this poem was written in 1919.

Does this description in the poem sound familiar? This is in essence the harvest of a world that denies meaning, the idea that everything is random; instead of God, we have the uncertainty principle. But there is meaning all around us, although it often may feel like we’re being pushed away from it. In fact, in reality the entire universe is highly integrated. In quantum “mechanics,” things that are light-years apart are connected. In truth, everything is interconnected, and within this matrix there is meaning. The Quran helps us get our bearings on the meaning of the worlds He created and how our connection to the One Who is singularly connected to everything, brings that meaning, connectivity, and its immense value and power to us mere mortals—enlightening and healing our immortal souls to see into and beyond this world of time, thus find our way to Allah/God. This is Part One of a Series.

Video: Were Native Americans Muslim?

A long but fascinating look throughout history showing both African and Muslim influence on the Americas.

This eye-opening video gives us another look at the history of exploration in the Americas, focusing on Muslim influence in history that has been largely ignored. It’s well-worth the time to learn about this. The massacres inflicted by Spanish conquistadors as well as during the Spanish Inquisition in Andalus also tell us who the truly violent ones were. This video is well-researched and presented.

Another video mentioned very briefly the existence of Amazonian tribes adopting Islam and even building mosques in the jungle region. But there were few details, so I would need to research the matter. After watching the video above, however, it does seem possible.

Muslims Should Not Stand Idly By to Oppression

There is much conflict and egregious oppression going on in the world right now, yet it seems most Muslims are oblivious, content to go and pray in the mosque and Friday, work and live their lives, take care of their families, and that’s it — and this is for the “better” Muslims who actually pray and give Zakat and are certain that Allah is One. And I’ve seen wonderful responses to drives for charity for those abroad suffering from natural disasters. But oppression — the tyranny of those in power over innocent populations — should also concern us. Often it seems beyond help; what can we do about, for example, the Uighurs in China? Or the Rohingya escaping from Myanmar and living (the lucky ones!) in refugee camps? There are agencies to help the Rohinjya and others, but we also need to speak out about oppression and call out those in power who could make a difference. And what about the Palestinians? Where is the Muslim support and activism? Young people and minors are being slaughtered and the media is not covering it. Israel is conducting an “operation” called “Break the Wave” and its name says it all — it’s “not only targeting members of certain factions, but any semblance of confrontation to its colonization of Palestine. Intensifying its use of live ammunition, Israel loosened its shoot-to-kill policy last year. ” Is this even legal?

Mistranslation Alert: The Quran Does Not Condone or Advise Wife-Beating

One of the most controversial ayat of the Quran that does not have anything to do with war/fighting but rather marital relations and recommendations for resolving disputes is Al-Nisa’ 4:34. A specific word daraba is used to refer to a “last resort” action to be taken when a husband is dealing with a situation where he feels an attitude of nushooz (ill-conduct/rebellion) from his wife. Most translations as well as tafseer have interpreted it to mean that as a last resort a man can or should “strike/beat” his wife. The Monotheist Group’s Quran translation (4th version, 2020) gives the best explanation in its preface (cited below) for why this interpretation is not the best or most reasonable/applicable one, but rather is entirely mistaken, from both a linguistic standpoint and in the context in which it is used. All the following quotes are from this source. 

Quran’s Rules to Live By

This page from the Quran annotated in Chinese illustrates the universality of Quranic guidance and law. Featured image above from a wall at Harvard University.

The list below of most of the Quran’s basic rules to live by strikes me as one of the best in its clarity, each with a Quranic reference. Found on the Quora website in an answer to a troll-type question: “if Islam is a good religion, why does it say kill kafirs (non-Muslims)?” Of course this is the lie promoted by the Islamophobia industry, which is used to torture, kill, and defame Muslims or to eradicate their freedom of mind. Those who work for such an industry often do the same with other groups they want to scapegoat as well. It is often used as a tactic to divert attention away from their own crimes and oppression to a boogeyman in other people whom they neither know nor were harmed by, so they can continue their evil deeds without being held accountable. But maybe they also hate the list below from the Quran. 

Surat Al-Sharh 94: Ring Composition

Ring Composition of ”The Expansion” Surah 94

This surah’s title has been translated in English variously as “The Expansion,” Al-Sharh in Arabic (also I’ve seen written Al-Inshirah), which does mean something like “expansion” but more of a “spiritual/ soul” opening with a sense of “relief” than the English word.  Al-Sharh gives the sense as if God were widening one’s inner “chambers” so one could “take a deep breath” again. We are all familiar with a kind of “tightness” in one’s chest from anxiety or discomfort from a difficult situation. It is the relief from that tightness which inshirah or sharh accomplishes. It was the first thing Prophet Musa (Moses) asked Allah for (TaHa 20:25) when Allah the Exalted gave him the mission to bring Allah’s message to the Pharaoh; the meaning implied was that inshirah would enable Musa to alleviate his anxieties so he could accomplish this task. It is a way of strengthening one’s resolve by Divine reassurance. Thus sharh is variously translated as “uplifted your heart,” “relieve the tightness in your chest,” “expand for thee thy breast,” and “comfort your chest,” among others. The title is variously translated Solace, Consolation, Relief, and The Expansion. 

In the Company of Prophets: The Raised Status of Mary in the Quran

Mary gave birth to Jesus alone, beneath a date palm, and her pain is described in the Quran.

In order to show how Allah the Exalted raised up the status of Mary/ Maryam the mother of Jesus/ ‘Eissa and why this is significant, it’s imperative to know the characteristics of true prophets. This is because after examining these characteristics and comparing them with Mary’s life as narrated in the Quran, it is clear that she meets all the qualifications of a prophet; all that prevented her from being called a prophet was her gender which in the society of her time could not assume a traditional leadership role or earn the degree of respect required for that role. Both her story and that of the prophets contain fascinating and revealing details often disregarded or not given much study.

Why Do People Find Healing in Nature?

Photo by Author

أَلَمْ تَرَ أَنَّ اللَّهَ يُسَبِّحُ لَهُ مَن فِي السَّمَاوَاتِ وَالْأَرْضِ وَالطَّيْرُ صَافَّاتٍ ۖ كُلٌّ قَدْ عَلِمَ صَلَاتَهُ وَتَسْبِيحَهُ ۗ وَاللَّهُ عَلِيمٌ بِمَا يَفْعَلُونَ

Do you not see that Allah is exalted by whomever is within the heavens and the earth and the birds with wings spread? Each has known his salat prayer and his exaltation (of Allah), and Allah is Knowing of what they do.

Surat Al-Nur (Light) 24:41

The healing and restorative power of nature is well-documented, and it is essentially free and without side effects. Nature therapy, also called ecotherapy, is the well-documented treatment of many health disorders by immersion in or interaction with “nature”, which refers to any part of creation, especially living things, even when represented in videos, pictures, sounds, or scents from pleasing natural sources. Another article is one of many discussing how such therapy works or can be applied, the how often confused with the why, which is rarely addressed. When children ask “why is the sky blue,” the answer nowadays is usually a scientific explanation of the how. But the child’s probing why may ask a different question: for what purpose or meaning is the sky blue? So in that spirit we ask here the question why is nature such a healing force not so much to know how it works as a mechanism, but what is the root cause and the purpose/ intention of this phenomenon. 

Who Owns the Kaaba? Saudi Regime Allows Only Select Saudis to Hajj 2021

The Kaaba, the holiest site in Islam, is that tiny black cube—can you spot the not?—dwarfed by the imposing 2-billion-dollar clock tower built as a commercial complex, making the holiness of the Kaaba, which was built by the prophet Ibrahim (Abraham) eons ago, seem rather paltry in capitalistic terms. This monstrosity was built at a cost that could have fed—forget about the rest of the world—those non-royal Saudi citizens who have neither sufficient food nor appropriate shelter, estimated at about 20% of the Saudi population.

Compassion and Justice: Their Essential Symbiosis in Islam

Compassion cannot coexist with Injustice. Justice is at the heart of compassion.

Several years ago, I posted this piece about compassion being the “overriding principle” of Islam. It was written in response to the destruction of Muslim societies by the hand of brutal dictatorships imposed on the citizens of majority-Muslim countries, as well as the Islamophobia Industry’s branding of Islam and the Quran as “promoting violence,” and more specifically, “terrorism,” a term which has strayed far from its original application, for acts of violence perpetrated by an aggrieved party against civilians in response to acts of oppression by a government or army. Now it has become a classification of crime outside the normal justice system of due process and protecting the rights of the accused. Instead, such rights are cancelled by then Patriot Act and other elements of the so-called Global War on Terror, allowing governments including the United States to avoid democratic norms of justice, legalizing torture, long prohibited in democracies, against people who had been accused but not duly convicted of “terror”-related crimes. In other words, the War on Terror had become a justification for subverting and thwarting justice itself. That in turn became a war on compassion and truth, into which the ascendancy of Trump became both emblematic and promotional.

And the number one suspect category for this exemption from justice and human rights? Muslims. Whose religion prioritizes justice, human rights, and compassion more than modern democracies or even religions do.

Eid Al-Fitr Mubarak! And How We Can Mark the Occasion in This Difficult Time

Eid Mubarak! This year in mosques around the world Muslims are praying for Palestinians and Palestine, for Al-Quds and Al-Aqsa to be free from oppression and being hijacked as pawns to a political agenda posing as a religious one: a “divinely-ordained right” to usurp land at will and displace entire communities of men, women, children, and the elderly, to invade their holy places to maim and blind peaceful worshipers while they are praying in a holy site.

The Quran’s Message for the Anthropocene

(Actual nuclear explosion superimposed on city.) Anthropocene: a name given to the modern era where human activity has caused major possibly irrevocable systemic changes to planet Earth.

Empiricism as scientific method excludes values, scrupulously avoids assigning value and meaning to things as these are “non-objective” or non-empirical and cannot be scientifically proven, but if a system of knowledge actively denies or excludes meaning, always preferentially validating (thus in fact assigning value to) randomness and coincidence as explanations for phenomena or observed things—in effect limiting their search for knowledge to that which is meaningless—, they have created in effect a system that is systematically avoiding meaning or in another sense purpose in any wholistic sense, thereby rendering the entire system, as a guide to living, invalid (considers nothing as intrinsically “valuable”) and meaningless. The point was to avoid the illogical interpretations associated with religions. At the same time, God is by definition uncontainable by the limits of empirical evidence. Thus we have a “guidance system” whose knowledge has been used for destroying the balance and system of our “home” source of survival, the Earth.

What Is the Law of Reciprocity in Islam?

Of all the major guidelines given us in the Quran, one of the most important is the Law of Reciprocity, repeated frequently in the Quran but of course, not using that term. I use the English term to convey its universality, as it is the Divine comprehensive application we discuss here, analogous to Newton’s Third Law of Motion: “for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.” What makes it so fundamental is that it applies not only to the physics, biology, and human social behavior of this life, but also to Al-Akhira, the Hereafter, insofar as what we do in this life brings consequences in the next. Not only that, but Allah the Exalted applies it not only to humans, but to all of creation in a sense, and even more stunningly, Allah applies this principle to Himself, as in the expression that Allah has “decreed mercy on Himself.”

Eid Mubarak!

Eid Al-Adha, The Feast of the Sacrifice, commemorates the occasion when Prophet Ibrahim (Abraham), in accordance with a dream he saw and interpreted as a divine command, was about to sacrifice his son Isma’il when Allah called him to stop, and replaced Isma’il with a great sacrificial animal, thus sparing the life of his son, a future prophet. There is more to this narrative than meets the eye, more than one usually hears in discussions regarding this event.

Ramadan Mubarak – and under Siege

Ramadan, the focal point or heart of the year for Muslims around the world —— for although the Hajj (pilgrimage) to Makkah is the high point of the year, the heart of the Islamic year is Ramadan —— is a month of sacrifice, atonement, restraint, forgiveness and asking for mercy, of compassion and consideration for others, of spending more time in worship and prayer, of fasting of course, of thinking about eternity, the Hereafter, and taking time away from this world and its demands. At the same time, Muslims must work to survive, live in societies that may not be Muslim or even friendly or accepting of Muslims. They must make accommodations for unfriendly or even hostile societies.

The Quran is Clear and Unambiguous

It should make sense that the Quran, as a divine message, is mubeen or clear and unambiguous.

طس ۚ تِلْكَ آيَاتُ الْقُرْآنِ وَكِتَابٍ مُّبِينٍ

Ta, Seen. These are the verses (ayat) of the Qur’an and a clear Book. (Quran 27:1)

The word “mubeen” here is translated “clear” for readability but the exact meaning has stronger implications than merely “clear.” It is unambiguous and the opposite of occult. That in turn is important because the Quran is a book sent for people to understand, not to create mysteries that require a special clergy or priest-like caste of scholars to interpret.

What Does “Islam” Mean?

It’s a common statement, used to counter non-Muslims’ erroneous idea that Islam is a warlike religion, that “Islam Means Peace.” Others, including many scholars and translators, assert that “Islam means submission——to submit to Allah.” But do either of these words convey the meaning of Islam in Arabic as used in the Quran? An examination of the possible translations for a Quranic word can often lead to a better understanding of Islam and/or the Quran and its message. And so I will introduce what I believe to be another possible interpretation/ translation of the word “Islam” in English, which is the word “surrender.”

The “Holy War” Lie

Syria’s Tragedy Exposes Dark Side of War

The Quran is unequivocal and mubeen (perfectly clear) on the subject of war: it is prohibited to be fought as a means of converting people to Islam——

لَا إِكْرَاهَ فِي الدِّينِ قَد تَّبَيَّنَ الرُّشْدُ مِنَ الْغَيِّ فَمَن يَكْفُرْ بِالطَّاغُوتِ وَيُؤْمِن بِاللَّهِ فَقَدِ اسْتَمْسَكَ بِالْعُرْوَةِ الْوُثْقَىٰ لَا انفِصَامَ لَهَا وَاللَّهُ سَمِيعٌ عَلِيمٌ

(Surat Albaqara 2:256)

There is no compulsion in religion; the proper way has been clearly distinguished from the wrong way. Whoever rejects evil, and believes in Allah, indeed he has taken grasp of the strongest hold that will never break. Allah is Hearer, Knower.

Islam, according to the Quran, does not permit the acceptance and adoption of a belief system to be by force. All true belief must be freely chosen from the heart. Free will is an essential component of faith. Allah prohibits forcing people to convert to a particular religion or to adopt a belief system. To force others to convert to Islam (or any belief, for that matter) is oppression, and hence incurs Allah’s wrath. Contrary to what is being promulgated by some, the above aya unequivocally states that such use of force is both “wrong” and “evil”.