Category Archives: Theology

MOTHER: A Mirror of “Path to Spirituality” By Mirza Ashraf

Posted on by
Reply

MOTHER: A Mirror of “Path to Spirituality”

The heart of a Mother is most beautiful and the best.

It cannot be seen or even touched—it must be felt with heart.

(Ashraf)

God created the elements of: Attention, Beauty, Compassion, Devotion, Enthusiasm, Emotion, Forgiveness, Faith, Feeling, Generosity, Gratitude, Grace, Humility, Hope, Hospitality, Imagination, Joy, Kindness, Laughter, Love, Logic, Morality, Meaning, Nurturing, Openness, Piety, Peace, Patience, Quest, Reason, Reverence, Silence, Spirituality, Suffering, Teaching, Unity, Vision, Wonder, Yearning, Zeal, etc., mixed them all and formed the ‘Spirit of Motherhood.’ God then infused it in the Heart and Mind of a woman—the wife of man—the very moment she got conceived to become a Mother. Thus, the responsible life of a woman got realized in the sacred moment of her attaining the Motherhood. The Prophet of Islam (pbuh) pronounced that “Paradise lies under the feet of a Mother.”

Understanding of reason and logic through five-sensory personality originate in the mind. The higher order of understanding that is capable of meaningfully reflecting the soul comes from the heart. Discussing each of the element, mentioned above, embedded in the heart of a mother, needs a big-book size explanation. However, to explain some of them will help understand, how a mother is mirror to the path of spirituality. Reflecting upon the element of emotion, we all know that a mother is very intimate with her emotions, so far so that she is capable of perceiving the dynamics that lie behind them. Emotions reflect intentions and just like currents of energy, pass through every one of us. Awareness of these currents are the first step of learning ‘how our experiences come into being and why.’ Without an awareness of emotions, one is not able to experience Reverence. Because a mother is very intimate to emotions, Reverence becomes a way of her being.  The path to Reverence is through a mother’s heart, and an awareness of such feelings opens her heart. This higher order of logic and understanding of the multisensory personality of a mother reveals connectedness between the forty elements—and there are many more—mentioned in the beginning. It is the Reverence of a mother that the Prophet of Islam said three times, respect your mother, and after that said only one time, respect your father.

Throughout a person’s lifetime, starting from the first cry as a new born baby—the only cry that fills a mother’s heart with joy, the cry that opens her arms for the first embrace of her baby and mother’s spiritual love is transmitted to the heart and soul of the baby—to the last breath of his life, that person’s effort continues for spiritual growth and self-development. Life as a process of growth, from one stage to the next, is spiritual as well as physical. These stages may be described in many ways, but fundamentally they include: a foundation stage set by one’s mother when the knowledge of truth or the gift of salvation is first acquired; a growth stage where the person practices that truth, develops virtue, self-control, insight, and self-confidence; and finally the stage of maturity where the person realizes the fullness of perfection: the stage of oneness with his God as well as the humanity. A person may reach the final stage of perfection, even a stage where one may feel God’s presence directly, but for a mother that person is still like a newborn baby. More often in a mother’s person Divine presence manifests indirectly—as an opening of the heart, a burst of joy, an expansion of love, or feelings of deep compassion.

Spiritual maturity is an acceptance of life in relationship, first with mother, and then with the rest of humankind. Once a mother opens the door of relationship, it forms a spiritual web of one’s life with other peoples with the crucial strands of being family, friends, marriages, and partnerships. Our deepest values are expressed through the essential bond of relationship. The relationship established through marriage is a fundamental, the deepest, most mysterious, and most profound exploration open to humankind; it is plunging into one another’s Soul. The marriage of two persons is brutally intimate and closest one that it becomes a sacred adventure; an adventure that divinizes the woman when she becomes a mother. Just like God, a mother is embellished with an unconditional love for her offspring. A verse from a film song, “ay maan teri surat se alug bhagwan ki surat kaya ho gi,” beautifully portrays ‘what is a mother.’

Going to Mother’s Kitchen

Mother’s kitchen is a culinary alchemy,

a place where we cook—actually

and spiritually. We come to it

for nourishment and serenity.

We come to it as to a center—

the heart of the house,

the heart of dwelling.

In the kitchen we are one,

linked by hunger—

actual hunger and spiritual hunger.

We go to MOTHER’s kitchen to be

nourished and revealed.

What a holy place is a MOTHER’s  kitchen!

(By: Gunhilla Norris)

Mirza Ashraf

Who Needs God?

Posted on by
8

An essay by Kenan Malik and shared by Dr. S. Ehtisham.

There are three kinds of arguments that an atheist can make in defence of the insistence that no God exists. First, he or she can argue against the necessity for God. That is, an argument against the claim that God is necessary to explain both the material reality of the world and the values by which we live. Second, he or she can argue against the possibility of God, against the idea that a being such as God is either logically or materially possible. And third, an atheist can argue against the consequences of belief in God. This is the claim that religious belief has pernicious social, political or moral consequences and that the world would be better off without such belief.
Historically, much of the discussion of God has been about the possibility of God. Christian apologetics grew out of the attempt rationally to defend the possibility of God’s existence, while atheists wanted to show that the idea of God made no rational sense. Much of the contemporary debate is about the consequences of religious belief. The so-called New Atheists, in particular, have been scathing in their attack on what they see as the wicked and malevolent social consequences of faith – from the harassment of gays to mass suicide bombings. I, too, am sceptical of the possibilities of God. And, while I do not think, as many do, that faith is, in and of itself, pernicious, I do believe that there are often social and moral problems that arise from religious belief. What I want to concentrate on today, however, is on the first type of argument. And that is because for me, as it is for many other atheists, this is the primary motivation for my atheism – I simply do not see the necessity for God.
There are three kinds of reasons often given for the necessity of God. First, there is the claim that God is necessary to explain Creation and the maintenance of the cosmos. Second, that God is a necessary source of moral values; that without God we would fall into the abyss of moral nihilism. And third, that without belief in God, there can be no purpose or meaning to life.  Let us look at each of these claims in turn.
The Christian idea that God is necessary for the creation and maintenance of the universe can be traced back to pre-Christian, pagan philosophy, to the Greek tradition, and in particular to Aristotle. Aristotle argued for the existence of a First Cause or Uncaused Cause to the universe. The universe, Aristotle argued, is forever in a state of flux.  Behind every change must lie a cause, and indeed a chain of causes, that brings about that change. But such a chain of causes cannot stretch out for ever because it is impossible to have an infinite regress of causes. The first link in the chain, as it were, was what Aristotle called he Unmoved Mover, the prime cause of all change in the cosmos, but which itself was not caused by anything. This Unmoved Mover Aristotle called ‘god’, not as an entity to be worshiped, but as ‘a supreme and eternal living being’, the most powerful, intelligent and beneficent creative force in the cosmos.
This argument, which came into the Christian tradition via the Kalam school of Muslim philosophy, lies at heart of the first three of Thomas Aquinas’ famous ‘Five Ways’ of proving the existence of God. It is often called the cosmological argument, though strictly speaking this  refers only to Aquinas’ third proof, which was so labelled by Kant. The cosmological argument is of this general form:
1 Whatever begins to exist has a cause
2 The universe began to exist
3 Therefore it has a cause
There are many variations of this general argument. For instance, what is often called the contingency argument, states that
1 Whatever exists must have a cause
2 The universe exists
3 Therefore the universe must have a cause

http://kenanmalik.wordpress.com/2012/02/06/who-needs-god/

Is Secularism Protectorate of Religions ?

Posted on by
2

“In a Secular country, minorities are free in their religious matters. Saving Secularism in India is the most important task and responsibility of every Muslim voter” (Mualana Arshad Madni, head of Darul Uloom Deoband )’. It is an insightful statement and I hope the other Ulmas, especially in Pakistan will follow the advice. The article is in urdu and shared by Zafra Khizer.

 https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=746220505400147)

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=696159043759968&set=a.595360673839806.1073741828.515901875119020&type=1&theater 

 

‘Critical Muslim’ By Ziauddin Sardar

Posted on by
Reply

Ziauddin Sardar is London based modern Islamic scholar who has launched a blog ” Critical Muslim” and in this article he discusses what is a Critical Muslim.

A critical spirit has been central to Islam from its inception. The Qur’an is generously sprinkled with references to thought and learning, reflection and reason. The Sacred Text denounces those who do not use their critical faculties in strongest terms: ‘the worse creatures in God’s eyes are those who are [wilfully] deaf and dumb, who do not reason’ (8:22). A cursory look at the life of Muhammad reveals that his strategic decisions were an outcome of critical discussions – the way he decide, for example, to fight the Battle of Badr outside Medina, or, later on, defend the city by digging a trench. The Prophet’s basic advice to his followers, in one version of his ‘Farewell Pilgrimage’, was to ‘reason well’ [1]. The scholarship that evolved around collecting the traditions and sayings of the Prophet was itself based on an innovative and detailed method of criticism. It is widely acknowledged that debate and discussion, arguments and counter-arguments, literary textual criticism as well as scientific criticism was a basic hallmark of the classical Muslim civilisation [2].

Yet, with a few notable reform oriented scholars and thinkers, this critical spirit is nowhere to seen in the Muslim world.

The reasons for the evaporation of this critical thought are many and diverse. Perhaps it was all the fault of al-Ghazzali, as ‘a widely held view’ has it: he ‘strongly attacked Islamic philosophy in The Incoherence of the Philosophers’ and, as a result, ‘their role was significantly reduced in the Sunni world’ [3], along with the importance of criticism. Perhaps it was ‘the well-known decree of al-Qadir in 1017-18 and 1029’, that banned the rationalist Mutazalite school of thought, as the late Mohammad Arkoun suggests. As a consequence, ‘to this day, the ulama officially devoted to the defence of the orthodoxy, refuses to reactivate the thinkable introduced and developed by original, innovative thinkers in classical period’ [4]. Perhaps it was the closure of ‘the gates of Ijtihad’ that sealed the door to criticism: while no one actually closed the gate, it came to be treated, as Sadakat Kadri notes, ‘as a historical fact rather than a poetically pleasing way of saying that jurists were no longer as good as they used to be’ [5].  Perhaps it was because Muslim societies could not develop ‘legally autonomous corporate governance’, Arabic thought is ‘essentially metaphysical’ and incapable of developing universalism, and Muslim culture and ethos is just too reverential to religious authorities, as Toby Huff has argued [6]. Perhaps criticism died out because of a lack of any kind of state support or protection for dissent; or maybe it was colonisation of the Muslim world. However, all of these explanations of the decline of Muslim civilisation and the disappearance of the critical spirit are partial, and some are seriously problematic, as I argued in my Royal Society lecture [7].

While it is important to explore the reasons why Muslims have developed an aversion to criticism and critical thought, it is also necessary to do something about it. The absence of a critical spirit as well as philosophers, thinkers, writers and activists who constantly challenge received wisdom and take issue with orthodoxy, over many centuries, has allowed the advent and dominance of a singular interpretation of Islam. It has also contributed to an atmosphere of intolerance and allowed extremism and obscurantism to become intrinsic in Muslim societies. Much of what goes under the rubric of ‘religious thought’ or ‘culture’ in Muslim societies is a non-chemical sedative. Islam has thus been reduced to a set of pieties, rendering Muslims societies incapable of generating new and original ideas. Indeed, one can argue that Muslims no longer have a model of living genially with Otherness, accommodating difference, or adjusting to rapid and accelerating change.

But what does it mean to be ‘Critical’ anyway? We are critical in the sense of being skeptical of orthodoxy and regard all arguments as provisional and dependent on evidence. We do not understand ‘Islam’ as a set of pieties and taboos, that exists, or has existed in some romanticised distant past, in a pure, unadulterated form. For us, Islam is what Muslims, in all their diversity, make of it. The interpretations of the Qur’an, and the Sunnah of the Prophet, to use the words of the late Fazlur Rahman, are ‘essentially an ever-expanding process’ [10]. Neither do we recognise the authority of religious scholars at a loss with the modern world, issuing foolish fatwas, maintaining a stranglehold on authority, and too often giving respectability to prejudice, bigotry, xenophobia, and social and cultural malpractices. We do not label Muslims, whether they define their identity religiously or culturally and regard themselves as secular, liberal, conservatives or socialists. Rather, we embrace the plurality of contemporary Islam in all its mindboggling complexity. However, we challenge all interpretations of Islam: traditionalist, modernist, fundamentalist and apologetic to develop new readings with the potential for social, cultural and political transformation of the Muslim world.

There are two particular contexts that are of concern to Critical Muslim: what Arkoun calls the ‘unthought’ of Islam, that is received and accepted ideas not produced by the process of reasoning; and what I describe as ‘postnormal times’, the specific nature, the spirit of the age, of contemporary times.

Arkoun uses unthought to describe ‘an Islam that is isolated from the most elementary historical reasoning, linguistic analysis or anthropological decoding’ [11]. It is the main source of the power of the ulama and the ideological power of ‘Islamic states’; and is used to ensure that dogmatic, obscurantist and authoritarian versions of Islam are protected from intellectual and critical scrutiny. A good example would be the blind reverence shown to hadith literature, and how hadith is used to justify all variety of unjust and unethical laws in the name of Islam. It is assumed that ‘Islam’ would be irrevocably broken if hadith literature is subjected to the type of analysis we are familiar with in Biblical criticism, judicious judgements about the validity of religious texts. For us this type of critical analysis is essential to liberate the creative potential of Muslim thought and reformulate Islam as a more humane and human enterprise.

http://ziauddinsardar.com/2013/07/critical-muslim/

Posted by F. Sheikh