UI – Part 374 – Is There Happiness Outside Islam

Preference for Living

Contrast what seems most persons seek in their lives, peace or war, humility or superiority, love or hate, God or Allah, Jesus or Muhammad, Christian or Muslim, heal or wound, civility or Holy War, kind or mean, good or evil, co-existence or Jihad, happiness or dread, joy or fear, security or terror, safety or danger, and calm or violence.  To the left we have a more desired choice, such as peace over war, and to the right there is the downside, such as fear versus joy.  I strongly feel no one desires violence, but have been proven wrong too often. As an intelligent choice, if available, is there a preference that would lead you to alter your current course of life? I believe it would go without saying all persons would like to live in their homes, dormitories, apartments or shelters, their localities or cities, knowing they are safe, their loved ones and children are safe, their valuables are also, and they can sleep with both eyes shut comforted that no one is after them or their stuff.  They can rest peacefully without concern others want to do them harm.

A Question for Muslims

I ask this of Muslims? You are a target.  If your faith is based on a Scripture that suggests that all Muslims, to be true Muslims, must carry out jihad in expanding the territory for Allah, and you do not comply, are you safe?  Such jihad is not simply a personal commitment or devotion to Allah, but an active overt forceful attack on those who are infidels and heretics.  The conduct of a Muslim’s personal life is to take on the character of Muhammad and his methods to carry our the objective of a world All for Allah.  The source documents are the Quran, and Hadiths.

Devotion to Allah and Muhammad requires Muslims to be on both the offense and defense regarding Islam.  This is how Muhammad ordered his followers.  Devout Muslims are to live primarily for Allah, applying the five pillars of Islam in their lives without deviation, and being careful not to make non-Muslims friends.  Any challenge to the messages and suggestions in the Quran are to be resisted as acts of persecution and or acts of hatred towards Muslims. Free speech is to be controlled so language used is only favorable towards Islam.

If that is not possible can a Muslim remain a Muslim or would they otherwise be ignoring the facts, history and fundamentals of this ideology?  Can a Muslim be apathetic to the facts? if so, would they be doing themselves a disservice?  Would they bring to their doorstep the Islamists, the fundamentalists or the radical Muslims? Are the aforementioned all the same?

To be less than devout, as a choice, opens the floodgates of doubt and makes the pathway seeking peace and happiness different.  Islam in its proper form, without modification from modernity or advances in the world since the 7th century, true Islam, is not the Islam the majority of Muslims prefer or know.  Or, are they just ignorant of the facts, not ignorant as individuals, but lacking the knowledge of the truth that exists in the books of the faith.  There is no other Islam that I am aware of. Islam is Islam.

A New Furqan

If the moderates, a label I am applying to those who are either apathetic to true Islam or unaware/ignorant of the truth, imagine an Islam that fits more the desires and wants of most people, including living among others in a plural universe, and can articulate that new Islam in a fashion that would provide a new foundation, then who is it that will lead such an awakening?  I believe a New Furqan would be necessary, and that is unlikely.

Last of the Suras

There are 114 Suras, or chapters of the Quran.  Most copies of this Scripture are not in chronological order, but in the order of the length of each, except for the 1st.  The last, actually next to last (110 is the last), chronologically is Sura 9.  No others came after. This is essential to understanding Islam.  This is the most violent of all the texts within this Scripture.  The practice in writing the Quran was that language that differed from earlier statements, contrary to such statements, took precedent, thus abrogating that which came prior.  110 is the last revelation of Muhammad before his death.  It happened in Mecca, after the invasion of and conversion of those of his hometown, Mecca. Faced with the arrival of 10,000 militant Muhammadians, the people gave up.

Each Sura begins, “In the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful.” This is referred to as the Bismillah. That is not so for Sura 9.  It is entitled, “The Immunity”.  Obligations, oaths, treaties were declared null and void due to resistance arising towards the incursions by Muhammad. The parties were to be bound by agreements that the infidels (idolaters) were to remain on peaceful terms with Muslims.  This included any who repaired or rebuilt their houses of worship, not mosques. It tells of the gains Muhammadians were making in the Arabian Peninsula, their superiority, a tribute to the success of their ideology.  It continues to attack Christians and Jews in their belief, that of the Christians and the Trinity, and the Jews (dealing with Ezra), their God and form of monotheism. The final triumph of Islam is forecast. The duty of a Muslim to Allah and the Prophet is stressed. Picture this book as the last chapter of how Muslims are to conduct themselves and treat the hypocrites, heretics and non-believers. It is all about fighting, jihad, war and the obligation that every Muslim community must contribute men to carry out the message of Truth to the whole world.  This is the object of Islam.   The book contains the last and most violent commands of all put forth in this Scripture.  It is unlike the New Testament, a book of peace.  It is jihadaic, a constant call for war, for Jihad, the pen writing this chapter could well have been a pointed and well sharpened sword dipped in blood and aimed at the hearts of those not in accord with Muhammad.

A few  verses, paraphrased:

9.5 …Slay the idolaters wherever you find them.  Arrest them, besiege them, and lie in ambush everywhere for them. If they repent and take to prayer and render the alms levy (the jizya tax) allow them to go their way. (The Verse of the Sword)

9.23 Take no Infidels as friends – even if Father or Brother.

9.26 Chastise unbelievers.

9.29 Fight those who disbelieve

9.29 Superiority – Fight….until they (non-believers/Christians and Jews) pay the tax (jizya) in acknowledgement of superiority and they are in a state of subjection.*

9.30 No Son of Allah

9.49 Hell encompasses the disbelievers.

9.61 Do not mess with Mohammed – a painful chastisement

9.66 No mocking – chastisement

9.68 Allah promises the Fire of Hell for the hypocrites and the disbelievers

9.73 Be hard, strive hard, commit jihad, on the hypocrites and disbelievers.

9.74 Do not turn away from Islam – to the apostates (repentance is preferred), “Allah will chastise them with a painful chastisement in this world and the Hereafter.”

9.88, 9.89 – Commit Jihad, do your duty.  Paradise awaits.

9.122 Missionaries, proselytizing for Islam, is to precede to let people know what may happen when the Islamists arrive.  A precaution to the Jihad to follow.

9.123 To stop persecutions – Believers, fight the disbelievers, “let them find firmness in you.”

Can a peaceful Muslim today ignore this chapter?

NT and OT

If you considered the New Testament as replacing the Old Testament, as it is the new covenant for all who believe, you find a book of love and the life of Christ, god-incarnate. He appeared on earth as a human so others could know him, but acted and lived unlike any other.  He was perfect, never tempted, never a sinner. He was the example, and, he was God.  We are all sinners. He dedicated his entire life to being a sacrifice for mankind.  He did not fear death.  He resisted the evil of Satan. He provided comfort to lepers, prostitutes, tax-collectors, cripples, and other forms of humanity frequently ignored or shunned. He loved his neighbors.  He shared stories with others that brought disbelief, but were proven true. “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” (John 14:6)  He aggravated leaders at the time who then sought to have him killed, an effort to protect their sanctuary, their stature and their power. He never took up a sword to resist.  He never harmed another or proclaimed intent to do so to those who would not comply with his directives.  He was humble at all times, even when he turned water into wine, or fed thousands with but a few fishes and loaves of bread, healed sick persons, or raised some from the dead.  Called upon by the zealots to lead a revolution against the Romans, he declined, that was not his purpose.  His purpose was to serve God.  He became the sacrificial substitute for the sins of all mankind and was then punished accordingly by the secular Romans, put to death on the cross, and buried, only to rise, as promised, three days later and after 50 days be with the God. Then came the Holy Spirit.

Jesus overcame the sins of man, the sinning that began with Adam, and did not punish humans, he loved them.  He took it upon himself, as man, to die, accepting the punishment man/we deserved, a son sacrificed by his father for the crimes committed by others.  God’s quest was to make his children right anew with him.  His son made that possible.  Accepting our sin nature and the role God played to restore our spirituality provides believers with a life eternal, a choice to live according to God’s wishes, the example of Christ, and find the joy and hope in the Good News.

Christ made Himself Available to All

There is happiness outside Islam.  I do not see happiness within the walls of the dominantly Muslim countries.  I worry too about the encroachment by Muslims who are now emigrating into Europe, Canada and the United States.  I pray the Muslims who currently are unaware of the depth of violence they are to commit to advance Islam, as called for by Allah in the Quran, and Muhammad, as the example, will further explore their history and foundations.  May they discover that the life they now lead is an offense to true Islam.  May they also realize the life they lead, when kind and accepting of others, as friends, and others of other faiths, is the life they prefer, and not the life of an Islamist, a radical Islamist or a fundamentalist Islamist, and thus not the life of a Muslim.  If not the life of a Muslim, then what.  There is the right choice, the right way, the way of peace, joy and hope.  There is no mystery in it.  It is the life of Christ and the grace he provided so we believers may have, and be assured, of a life eternal, salvation, with the true God.  God and Allah are not the same!

To the Question:  Is there happiness outside Islam?  The Answer:  Yes.  More concerning is whether there is happiness within Islam.  There I would say the answer is NO.  Why, because the call to hate others is too pervasive, too invasive and a gross negative on the soul of any human.  Hatred is the tar that blackens the heart even more than the nicotine of a cigarette. Love is the answer.  That answer is not found in the Quran or the example of Muhammad.

God Bless.

Grace and Peace