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[Any thoughts on this?]

When we think of how Creation was initiated, religious people generally refer to holy texts that give accounts that typically cannot be verified. Atheists tend to refer to scientific theories about e.g. Big Bang and such.

When we read the Quran we come to the verse 29:20, which is translated as:

Pickthall
    Say (O Muhammad): Travel in the land and see how He originated creation, then Allah bringeth forth the later growth. Lo! Allah is Able to do all things.
Sahih Intl
    Say, [O Muhammad], "Travel through the land and observe how He began creation. Then Allah will produce the final creation. Indeed Allah, over all things, is competent."
Yusuf Ali
    Say: "Travel through the earth and see how Allah did originate creation; so will Allah produce a later creation: for Allah has power over all things.
Arabic
    قُلْ سِيرُوا۟ فِى ٱلْأَرْضِ فَٱنظُرُوا۟ كَيْفَ بَدَأَ ٱلْخَلْقَ ۚ ثُمَّ ٱللَّهُ يُنشِئُ ٱلنَّشْأَةَ ٱلْءَاخِرَةَ ۚ إِنَّ ٱللَّهَ عَلَىٰ كُلِّ شَىْءٍ قَدِيرٌ

To me, it says that if we just roam the world and investigate it, we can reveal how Creation was initiated, i.e. through the method and disciplines of science, we can learn about how Creation was brought forth into existence.

This means that there is no need for holy texts or mythology, which religion tends to be all about, in regards to this topic.

Any thoughts on this?
The Quran seems to disfavor mysteries and other things religious people say we simply have to have faith in (blind).

Peace

[The fact that objects at all fall downward in vacuum shows that the density theory is not just flawed, but faulty.]

The case of objects falling even in vacuum where density is not at play

I just wanted to inject a point into the Flat Earth debate.

I decided to create the topic in the Trash section, as it is not directly discussing verses of the Quran, although it does go well with what the Quran instructs us to do, i.e. ponder and think about the world we live in. Also, discussing about Flat Earth have a tendency to quickly derail in to emotional mud-slinging that is so typical for inter-religious apologetic debates, and it is good if that can be avoided.

Anyhow, here it goes, and it is very simple:

Some people claim that there is no gravity, and it instead is density that accounts for objects falling to the ground.
There are several ways to show the density idea faulty, but one simple way it so ponder what happens in vacuum. Just imagine having a container such as a glass cylinder from which the air has been pumped out, creating vacuum. Inside this cylinder we can keep objects.

* The fact is that objects fall downward even in vacuum.
* Vacuum is when there is no atmosphere/gas/air.
* Actually, objects of different mass/weight fall downward at equal speeds since there is no air/gas that create friction and reduce the speed more for lighter and "fluffier" objects.
* The point is that, there is no air that will displace/force the object to move downward (as the density theory would state)

* The fact that objects at all fall downward in vacuum shows that the density theory is not just flawed, but faulty.

Anyone who has attended high school science classes (or even at lower levels) would have seen this experiment demonstrated. If not, just google videos on items falling in vacuum. One example is this video. There would be thousands more on internet to watch.

Peace

Just wondering if anyone knows what happened to br. Pazuzu.
Was hoping for a continuation of his Untold Story of Arabia series.
Peace

[Urdu]

Peace

I was wondering if anyone knows places (on internet) where one can get "quran alone" stuff in Urdu. Especially articles etc highlighting the madness of sunna and hadith and then giving more sensible interpretations of the quran.

The quran and Islam are afterall poles apart, and I'd like some material on this in Urdu.

We are told to not associate anything with Allah. By associating things with Allah, we'd per definition create false images of Allah, and thus move away from reality, into delusion... away from Allah, into misery.
Now, if we should not associate anything with Allah, because this creates false images of reality, then perhaps we should ALSO not associate "anything" with ourselves. Often we associate very fleeting things with ourselves. "Who are you?".. "I'm a doctor, I'm a driver, I'm a this-or-that-profession, I'm a teen, I'm middle aged, I'm retired, I'm an athlete, I'm crippled, I'm a successful entrepreneur, I'm a mother, I'm a christian, I'm a muslim..". We associate things temporary with ourselves that are not our REAL selves. We derive our identity from all sorts of things in our life, things that can change at any moment. So, perhaps we don't even understand ourselves. Wouldn't this also be very important in the pursuit of increased understanding, truth and reality. Perhaps we are having very twisted and false images about ourselves, which makes is difficult to grasp further reality. I've never heard to approach spoken of in religious contexts before.

If anyone would like to share what they remember of what the quran says about OUR real identity, then I'd be grateful. It must be there, somewhere in the quran... perhaps overlooked or misunderstood...

How does the intelligent creative force communicate knowledge about reality to us human beings?
Is it only through the books that we have come to label as the religious books?
Can there be other ways that teachings are relayed to us?
Why have the religious books gained such a strong position among all the wisdom available the world?
Is it because these books are easy to follow by sheeple and easy to misuse for power purposes by the clever ones?
If the quran is from Allah, does this rule out other teachings as false?
Even if the quran would be the only literal text sent down by Allah, does this rule out other teachings as true?
Aren't people able to get inspiration from Allah to see the truth, through themselves, or can guidance from Allah only come through a book?

N.B. (this is bytheway not about hadith!, which is just a means for some clergy to stay in power, and for others to exhibit their perverted inner selves)

Sometimes I wonder how much of people's understanding of the quran and all concepts therein are projections from other sources and not the original meaning. Such sources could be hadith, bible, historical legends, faulty historical "truths", religious and historical fabrications, fairytales...

When I see how drastically the message can change just by aligning some words in the quran with each other through cross reference, I wonder much much or how little we actually have it right.

We have terms like insan, nas, jinn, malaika, "people of the book", "jews & christians", haroot, maroot, gibraeel & mikaeel, dhul qarnain, injeel, kauther, "smokeless fire", salsabeel, kaaba, bakka, msr, isa, iblees, shaytan... etc^etc... that many brave, honest and hard working people are working on to find out what they are.

I wonder how much we THINK we know, but that are actually just assumptions in lack of any better understanding. It is a great leap from sunnism to "quranism".... what sort of leap is it from the "current state" of quranism to a much better understanding?

Sometimes one can find clues and new directions when reading "research" by people of other religions (or atheists). Their goal is not seldom biased... to disprove islam, quran, muhammad, god or similar... but all they write may not be lies and fabrications. Sometimes they would present some inconvenient truth... which would disrupt traditional islam, but perhaps would support the quran. Cannot really give any examples. I've hardly put in any scholarly time into research myself up till now (apart from reading lots of mtrl on this forum, which I find is a marvelous gold mine), but I suspect things are certainly not what they seem... especially in religion.

peace

[Disclaimer]

Dear all, and peace,

I would like to share an idea I had about the difference between 'worship' and 'service'. I will explain by painting a mental picture, sort of an analogy.

Disclaimer:
I'm sharing this only because I think that some people might enjoy the example. I'm not trying to show or prove some theory, and I have no particular reasons, evidence or other things to validate it. I'm not basing it on any particular verses from the quran, although I believe the concept of 'service' as I see it is supported by the quran.
I also realize that there can be many different interpretations of the word 'worship', but as I aim to show my idea of the difference between two concepts, the words I use to represent these concepts are not the important thing. The difference of the concepts is the important thing.

So here it goes, in a nut shell...

Imagine yourself as a transmitter who can send out, or project, a beam of 'something'. This 'something' emanates from you and is caused by your intention, attention and action. Perhaps you wish to visualize it as a green laser beam.

1. Worship
In the case of worship, you have a concept in your mind of a deity at which you direct words of praise and ritual acts. I would like to liken this with you sending your green laser beam - your beam of 'something' - up trough the sky into space, away and out of sight.... gone. After your session of worship, there is no apparent result or effect, apart from perhaps as a temporary emotional state within you.

2. Service
In the case of service, you also emit the green laser beam of 'something', but this time you direct it not into space but rather straight into the biosphere, the "sociosphere". You aim it on your surroundings and society. Instead of disappearing into space, it will now hit for example your fellow human beings. The result is that the beam will now cause an effect. It will hit and interact with what it hits. This interaction may express itself as charity, a helping hand, teaching others, or any other constructive event. After your session of service, you have actually caused something to happen, in a very practical way. This is what makes 'service' poles apart from 'worship'.
(Even if you in the concept of 'service' includes your personal studies and work on yourself for improvement, it would still, in a secondary step, affect the surrounding through your now improved actions.)

When one sees it like this, there is a world of difference between 'worship' and 'service'. The difference is between 'useless' and 'useful', 'empty' and 'purposeful'. Naturally, this idea of mine stems from the whole discussion about the worshiping of or serving Allah, and how one can and should go about doing this.

Part of this topic is also that we do not serve Allah for any other reason than our own benefit, as Allah has no needs. This part about us growing and benefiting from our 'service' is however another discussion, and my analogy above does not touch upon that.

Perhaps I have stimulated someone's imagination...

Best regards 

Peace all,

I just wanted to share a reflection I had. Perhaps obvious to some, but still worth thinking about.

There are many stories and accounts of events in the Quran. For many of these there are many different understandings and interpretations. Some may never be known fully.

BUT, if there is a story in the Quran, e.g. about malaika being ordered to submit to adam, and iblees refusing, then it must obviously mean that this story can have benefit for the reader. Otherwise it is useless. Why would there be a story just for entertainment or for information sake of what once happened?

My idea was that every story should be interpreted in a way that it provides some useful knowledge to us.
It could give us an insight about us as human beings and our nature, making it easier for us to handle and control our rebellious selves.

Or the other thing I can think of is that the purpose of a story may be to help explain or define something else mentioned in the Quran.

Like I said, this may be obvious to many in this forum, but I'm sure many in the world just take their quranic stories as nothing more than historical accounts to pass on to the offspring... all for the sake of cultural homogeneity and "coziness".

I do believe it is important to ponder the relevance of what one reads, and the purpose it is relayed to us. Why would I bother for example that 'iblees' was created from 'smokeless fire' unless my understanding of 'iblees' and 'smokeless fire' somehow helps me in understanding myself and my situation in this world and how to go about improving it?

I was thinking about the traditional and christian concept of God vs a more metaphysical non-associative concept, and linking it to the concept of the Devil.

Traditionally and simplistically it is portrayed that you have God and the Devil as two opposing forces of good and evil. At the same time it is taught that God created all, including the Devil.

Then we also hear people "proving" that the Devil exist by quoting that "the devil's greatest trick was to convince people he doesn't exist".

Now, if we should not associate ANYTHING with Allah, then why is it so common to have mental images of the Devil as some sort of ghostly, flaming, evil master spirit that lurks around and traps people in evil schemes.

Wouldn't it be sensible to stop associating also the Devil with such "personified" images?

This is of course just a general idea questioning the traditional/christian way of thinking. I know there are plenty of interpretations of iblees and shaitan that are very much non-traditional. This was just a thought I had.

peace

[nly in one house at a time]

Peace,

I want to know from people who know arabic something regarding 'buyut' and the way Aidid Safar understands it vs the mainstream understanding and also the a grammatical viewpoint.

Aidid Safar writes:
Quote: "In 24:61 the word buyuti is mentioned ten times in a command spoken to many people to refer to their
fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, fathers? brothers, fathers? sisters, mothers? brothers, mothers? sisters and
friends. Each of them dwells only in one house at a time. The word buyuti refers to the house each of them
owns." End qoute.

Does his assertion work at all as far as grammar is concerned? Can one say e.g. 'the house (singular) of your fathers (plural)'? Of course person X's father lives in one house (sg.), but doesn't people X, Y and Z's fathers (pl.) live in houses (pl.)?

I just want to know if Aidid Safar's idea of 'buyut' being singular for house at all works grammatically? If so, what the heck would the plural of that be? And what the heck would the plural of 'bayt' be then? It's hard to swallow all this as it doesn't seem to work out properly.

Anyone, please help me out

thanks

Peace all,

Wanted to share a reflection of mine on levels of faith or belief in God. I'm basing this reflection on experience from my own life and stages I have gone through myself.

It has recently occurred to me that just believing in God... that there is a God who is almighty etc etc, is, in a way, just the lowest level you can be at... having faith. This faith is mostly intellectual, i.e. you understand it intellectually, but there is not much feeling behind it and not much conviction through experience. This is ok, as all things start this way, weak... but it is only the beginning from where you start your journey of struggle of self-improvement and self-purification, on the way back to Allah.

I don't know the current depth of my faith in Allah... as I cannot, and don't want to, compare with others. Only Allah knows, and that's the only thing that matters. However, I feel a huge difference between myself now and myself when I just started being able to put words on my faith.... I had just discovered the quran, after not having known anything at all about it. Even before I discovered the quran, there was some seed of faith in me, I can remember, but it was totally shapeless. I thank God anyway that I wasn't shaped in any religious school of thought.

I have also gathered that the degree of one's faith depends on how much you can handle... how mature you are in terms of being capable of believing. I'm sure it's also a gradual process to evolve and develop into deeper and stronger faith in Allah. I call it the softening and opening of the heart. It can start with a small seed, and then you can develop further and further, if you have the right intentions and desire. What I'm doing is that I continuously pray to my Creator for better and better understanding, to be a better and better person, to become closer and closer to Allah. I always ask God to show me the truth, and to be able to handle it... and this happens in stages, gradually... as I have seen in myself.

I'm also sure the quran is built the same way. It has many many different levels of understanding to it. Regardless of what dictionaries and research findings say, everyone will not understand the same things from the quran... and it all depends on their level of faith.

My point is that the dichotomy of either having or not having faith is very simplistic. It may be true, but only at the most crude level. Having belief in Allah can be expressed on an infinite number of different levels, one higher/deeper than the other.... and it's in the end a highly personal journey.

Peace!

Peace all,

I just wanted to share one thing which I just a few minutes back discovered for myself. It is Ubuntu, which at the first glance seems very very much like the universal and non-religious approach that humans are encouraged to have as per the Quran. I just read a few paragraphs about it on the website linked to below. The more I understand of the Quran and Allah's design of the worlds, the more distant I feel from religions.

http://www.learnmindpower.com/articles/ubuntu/
http://www.learnmindpower.com/articles/ubuntu-african-wisdom-how-be-human-being-part2/

Peace

Peace all,

I came across the work of Carl Johan Calleman on the Mayan Calendar, and I must say I find it extremely interesting.

I believe it is definately worth a study, especially in reference to what is written in the quran.
Hajj this year (oct 29?) also occurs on a very significant time spot in this calendar.

And this is NOT about the populistic hollywood propaganda about dec 21, 2012.

I would suggest any one who is even remotely interested in things like calendars, evolution, universe, time, spirituality etc, to go through the articles on the website below... and one can even find audio interviews by googling "breakfornews audio calleman".

http://www.calleman.com/content/articles/CosmicConvergenceSeptember23-26.htm
http://www.calleman.com/


peace

Peace all,

I just wanted to share a youtube clip I found. It is about proving that God is apart from time, space and matter.. i.e. outside the universe and creation.
I really liked the clip because it helps in thinking about Allah as something which is not like anything else... i.e. outside creation.
Perhaps the logic has flaws.. I don't really know.. because my point is not the validity of the logic. You will of course also find loads of clips proving the clip in question wrong. There will never be a proof of Allah that everyone will accept... that's impossible due to the very nature and purpose of this world.
Also, the guy who made the clip is christian... but if you only focus on the things that help you 'not associate anything with Allah' then the clip is really good.
The only "stretch" of imagination you need to do is to let your mind accept there is something outside time, outside matter and outside space... i.e. something you simply cannot imagine... Some people would argue this is 'nothing' while others can believe this is Allah, something real but beyond our comprehension...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sr5lY0TcdAw&feature=related

best wishes