Friday Nasiha

Living The Quran

Guidance
Al-Isra (The Ascension) - Chapter 17 : Verses 9-10

"Verily, this Quran shows the way to all that is most upright and gives the believers who do good deeds the glad tidings that theirs will be a great reward, and (it announces, also), that We have readied suffering for them who do not believe in the life to come."

Islam is a religion in the sense that its tenets are based on Divine Guidance but Islam is not a religion as religion is perceived today. Since its foundation is based on logic and reasoning and not on dogma or blind faith, the fact of not compartmentalising the secular and religious spheres into separate enclosures indicates that Islam is more a God-directed whole system of life and not a religion dealing with compartments, or sections of life. Hence, on the one side when dealing with the principles of living - social, political or economic - Islam may be compared with non-religious ideologies like capitalism, communism, socialism, etc. and when dealing with the moral and spiritual development of individuals and societies, it can be compared with other religions such as Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism and Christianity.

According to Islam, the One Almighty God, Allah, created and appointed mankind as His vicegerent on earth with autonomy. Life in this world is a period of test, and reward or punishment is in the life Hereafter. Allah arranged the receiving of His guidance throughout the ages through His chosen persons known as Prophets. The first vicegerent and Prophet was Adam (peace be upon him) and the whole of mankind is his progeny. All the Prophets or Messengers had one religion, Islam, and one mission of inviting people and mobilising those who accept the invitation.

The fundamental theme of the Quran is that Allah always offers guidance to man through the Revelations which He bestows upon His Prophets. In this way the Quran leads towards principles that are central to ethical rectitude and beneficial to man's individual and social life. It is guidance for the life-span of the whole community.

Compiled From:
"Words That Moved the World" - Qazi Ashfaq Ahmad, pp. 103, 104

From Issue: 746 [Read original issue]

Understanding The Prophet's Life

Helping the Poor

Clothing

Ibn Abbas related that the Prophet said: Any Muslim who gives a Muslim a garment to wear will be in Allah's safekeeping as long as a shred of it remains on him. (Ahmad, Tirmidhi)

Feeding

Safwan ibn Salim related that the Prophet said: Anyone who looks after and works for a widow and a poor person is like a warrior fighting for Allah's cause, or like a person who fasts during the day and prays all night. (Bukhari)

Anas related that the Prophet said: If any Muslim plants something or sows seed from which a man, a bird or an animal eats, it counts as a charity for him. (Bukhari, Muslim)

Relatives who are needy

Abu Huraira narrated that the Prophet said: The best charity is that which is practiced by a wealthy person. And start giving first to your dependents. (Bukhari)

Salman ibn Amer reported that the Prophet said: To give something to a poor man brings one reward, while giving the same to a needy relative brings two: one for charity and the other for respecting the family ties. (Ahmad, Ibn Majah, Nasai, Tirmidhi)

Compiled From:
"The Quran and Hadiths on the poor and needy: a topical index" - SoundVision.com Staff Writer

From Issue: 668 [Read original issue]

Blindspot!

Ultimate Value

Our modern Western conception of "religion" is idiosyncratic and eccentric. No other cultural tradition has anything like it, and even premodern European Christians would have found it reductive and alien.

For about fifty years now it has been clear in the academy that there is no universal way to define religion. In the West we see "religion" as a coherent system of obligatory beliefs, institutions, and rituals, centering on a supernatural God, whose practice is essentially private and hermetically sealed off from all "secular" activities. But words in other languages that we translate as "religion" almost invariably refer to something larger, vaguer, and more encompassing. The Arabic din signifies an entire way of life. The Sanskrit dharma is also a "total" concept, untranslatable, which covers law, justice, morals, and social life. The Oxford Classical Dictionary firmly states: "No word in either Greek or Latin corresponds to the English 'religion' or 'religious.'" The idea of religion as an essentially personal and systematic pursuit was entirely absent from classical Greece, Japan, Egypt, Mesopotamia, Iran, China, and India. Nor does the Hebrew Bible have any abstract concept of religion; and the Talmudic rabbis would have found it impossible to express what they meant by faith in a single word or even in a formula, since the Talmud was expressly designed to bring the whole of human life into the ambit of the sacred.

The only faith tradition that does fit the modern Western notion of religion as something codified and private is Protestant Christianity, which, like religion in this sense of the word, is also a product of the early modern period. At this time Europeans and Americans had begun to separate religion and politics, because they assumed, not altogether accurately, that the theological squabbles of the Reformation had been entirely responsible for the Thirty Years' War. The conviction that religion must be rigorously excluded from political life has been called the charter myth of the sovereign nation-state. The philosophers and statesmen who pioneered this dogma believed that they were returning to a more satisfactory state of affairs that had existed before ambitious Catholic clerics had confused two utterly distinct realms. But in fact their secular ideology was as radical an innovation as the modern market economy that the West was concurrently devising. To non-Westerners, who had not been through this particular modernizing process, both these innovations would seem unnatural and even incomprehensible. The habit of separating religion and politics is now so routine in the West that it is difficult for us to appreciate how thoroughly the two co-inhered in the past. It was never simply a question of the state "using" religion; the two were indivisible.

In the premodern world, religion permeated all aspects of life. A host of activities now considered mundane were experienced as deeply sacred: forest clearing, hunting, football matches, dice games, astronomy, farming, state building, tugs-of-war, town planning, commerce, imbibing strong drink, and, most particularly warfare. Ancient peoples would have found it impossible to see where "religion" ended and "politics" began. This was not because they were too stupid to understand the distinction but because they wanted to invest everything they did with ultimate value.

Compiled From:
"Fields of Blood" - Karen Armstrong, pp. 4-6

From Issue: 822 [Read original issue]