Re (3): The Rushdie Knighthood Affair - Islam isn't as reasonable as you make it sound

Question:
1. As a Kafir, I do have doubts on your claim that your religion teaches you not to doubt the intentions of anyone. If I am not mistaken, Allah does forbid Muslims to make friends with Kafirs because as per him Kafirs would try to mislead Muslims from the right path.

I would like to add that I have read your article on the issue of friendship with non- Muslims. While being commendable, it runs against the commonly held belief of Muslims who, no doubt, are taught the traditional view by the innumerable imams all over the world. Seems to me that you do need to be more pro-active on this issue and maybe enter into debates with those who hold the traditional view in order to establish the correct view.

2. As you say, the negative feelings of mine are due to justifiable reasons. However, it is wrong to say that I am not taking the case of Islam seriously. Believe me, I am dead serious about it otherwise I would not have bothered to spend my time and energy on it.

3. I am really amazed when you say that Quran is fully preserved while other books are not. Are you aware of the so called satanic verses of Rushdie? Are you aware of how Quran was compiled and after how many years after Muhammad's death? If you deny the claims that Quran was compiled much later than Muhammad and many verses were left out of it, you will have to answer the questions like who, how and when the other books were corrupted?

4. My rational thinking makes me doubt each and every claim unless it is proved to be right. I remember Ali Sina mentioning, in the debate with you, that Bahaullah fulfilled many more prophecies than Mohammad. I do not remember you addressing this point. Secondly, Quran has been proved to contain errors so it is not that true. Thirdly, your investigations were intended to prove the claims of others false. If you are already convinced that Mohammad was the last prophet, how can you prejudicelessely investigate the later claimants of prophethood? The fresh investigations would mean something only if you still had open mind. As a devout Muslim, you cannot doubt the Quran or Mohammad's claims and as a corollary, you cannot see whatever truth others' claims contain.

As regards doubting your intentions, I am bothered by the concept of "Taqqia" in Islam. I would love to know your views on this issue.

5. As I just said, once you preclude the possibility of another messenger from God, your statement above does not sound much convincing. You debated this issue with Ali Sina and pardon me for saying so, but you could not answer his criticisms on this issue.

6. Would you agree that the source of your understanding of what God decided or not decided is Quran and sayings of Mohammad? Don't these require any proof for their authenticity? Does Quran explain why God decided that Mohammad was to be the last prophet? Has he explained why he would not send any more prophet? Has he said how many more hundreds or thousands or lakhs of years this world will last and therefore there would be no need to send any messenger again? If I rephrase my questions: who said that Quran was word of God? You would say, "Mohammad". Who said that Mohammad was a messenger? Again Mohammad. Though he claimed that Allah was using him to pass this message. Can these statements be considered as a proof enough? If yes, then by what logic?

7. Have you read any psychology? Are you aware of the term "Auto-suggestion"? The statement of strong emotional prejudice can be equally applied to those who are able to see the moon. Where is the question of willingness? Any physical thing needs a set of good eyes to be viewed. If it depends on willingness or unwillingness of the viewer, it must be subjective.

8. Sorry, but I cannot believe it as it is the muslims who will lose because of their faulty logic. In the arena of logic, beliefs do not hold much water. Nobody knows what will happen in the future, but going by the current trends your belief seems to be a bit misplaced.

Response:
1. I have clarified it earlier that Islam is described in the original sources of its understanding namely Qur’an and Sunnah. What Muslims are doing worries me but it is in no way representative of Islam. I am responsible for what I honestly understand has been described in the original sources. I have mentioned it in many articles that I have authored that not all non-Muslims are Kafirs while even some Muslims are Kafirs; I taught this understanding to my students for ten years at LUMS; I preach this ideology even now in the religious workshops I conduct all over the country; I don’t mince words in describing my honest understanding in my live television program when a question on that area is asked. I do so because I am convinced that the book of God describes this understanding most clearly. How else should I convince you that I really mean what I am saying and writing? How else can I be pro-active?

2. I admit that your negative feelings are for justifiable reasons because the way Muslims are behaving today. The way Islam is being presented by them, it makes it extremely difficult for non-Muslims to take Islam and its message seriously. I along with other friends feel it to be our responsibility that we continue to present the true message of Islam properly.

It is extremely encouraging that you are serious about knowing more about my position. I am motivated to give your queries top priority because of the seriousness of purpose I can see in your attitude. I have already asked my team to get your questions, comments, and my answers to them uploaded on my website. Believe me, had Ali Sina been half as decent as you are in presenting your views, his views would have been likewise accommodated in my site and, probably, I wouldn’t have discontinued communicating with him.

3. The way Qur’an was preserved was amazing; it has left the question of its authenticity beyond any shadow of doubt. Please consider the following explanation carefully: Muhammad, God’s mercy be on him, did not leave this world before communicating the entire Qur’an to the Muslim community. Many of its members memorized it completely. Why did they do so? There were several reasons for it: i) It is a book of God and there was a lot of religious merit attached to its memorizing. ii) Because its verses were poetically rhymed, it was amenable to memorizing quite the same way as poetry is. iii) Every Muslim must memorize some part of Qur’an because some part of it has to be recited in the formal prayers. Many devout Muslims thought it to be an excellent idea to memorize it fully so that their prayers become more spiritually rich. This process continued in the subsequent generations with the same zeal. In fact it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to claim that with each subsequent generation the number of huffaz (those who had memorized the entire Qur’an) grew larger. If you ever want to have an evidence of this claim, visit a Muslim community during the month of Ramadan (starting in mid-September this year) and you will be amazed to see Muslims in different mosques reciting the same very Qur’an during prayers without looking at the written text. There is no reason why this text that is being memorized and recited unanimously by all Muslims in most part of the Muslim world today was not recited similarly in the previous generation, and the one previous to it and so on. This living experience of the preservation of Qur’an is a proof of the fact that it was the same text as was given to Muslims by their prophet. The interesting thing is that even though all Muslims agree that the sequencing of Qur’anic chapters and verses has been substantially altered in the existing, final text from the way it was originally revealed, they all agree that the later version of the text was given to them by their prophet. Unsurprisingly there were no disputes amongst Muslims in that area of understanding.

Now let’s look at the allegations that the Qur’an was presented much later after the prophet’s death and that there were several disputes on a number of verses on the question whether they were from Qur’an or not. Where did we get that information from? The answer is that such information is contained in the scattered pieces of reports communicated from one individual to another in the historical record of that period. A careful look at that record reveals several contradictions. While the version of Qur’an we have with us has been communicated from generation to generation, the scattered and confused historical record was communicated from one individual to another. This latter, distorted version of the story of Qur’anic collection can be attributed to several reasons: i) There were anti-Islam conspirers who wanted to create controversies against the message of Islam. ii) There were well-meaning people who transmitted information in a manner that they didn’t communicate the precise message. iii) Some people did make mistakes in getting Qur’an correctly in the first generation, but couldn’t get the correct versions of it and they on their part communicated what they thought was the correct version of Qur’an and insisted that theirs was the right version. However, Qur’an, the book of God, was communicated in its fully pristine form through the process of memorizing and transmitting to later generations which completely takes care of all doubts that have been created by the understandable problems created by humans. Many non-Muslims are unaware of this amazing phenomenon of memorizing the evidence of which Muslims witness every day and therefore find no difficulty in acknowledging that the book they are reciting is the very same text that was given to them by the prophet of God.

4. Let’s look at what Bahaullah said and what the prophet of Islam said. I admit that at times I did not respond to all that Ali Sina mentioned. I don’t even want to present any excuses.

Your statement above is indicative of the same predisposition about my way of thinking: You think that since I already believe, I won’t accept anything that disproves my belief. My responses are two: I did not begin my conscious life by believing in Islam as the right religion of God. It was my objective investigation of it that led me to gradually believe in it. Even after believing in it, my religious book allows me to look at any other religious claim, past or present, with an open mind.

Please let me know where Bahaullah mentioned that he was another messenger of God who was given the inviolable promise that he and his men were bound to prevail over their enemies such that the enemies shall be destroyed as happened to be the fate of the adversaries of the earlier messengers? Also show me how did this prophecy actually come about? As mentioned earlier, I can show you clearly that the most dominating theme of the Qur’an was this very prophecy, which started getting communicated from the first day of the messenger’s prophetic mission.

Taqiyyah is a religious term of Shia Muslims. Sunni Muslims who constitute eighty percent of the Muslim population don’t accept it as Islamically correct to conceal vital religious information from others as a matter of religious principle. I am not too sure if all Shia Muslims believe in the same version of Taqiyya. In my exchanges with Ali Sina I had confronted the same problem over and over again: He had formed his opinion about Islam through his background as a Shia Muslim and took all the views he was taught as the true Islamic views. So obsessed he became in his hatred for Islam thereafter that he did not want to entertain the idea that Islam could be on the right for a single moment. Be rest assured, in Islam the ideal behaviour of disseminating Islamic message is to mention intelligently everything that the Almighty has communicated to us through his messenger. Only the weaker believers are allowed on exceptional situations when their life was threatened that they could temporarily declare themselves as non-Muslims to save their skins. That exception too was a lesser option and was most certainly not allowed as a strategy to deceptively disseminate the message of Islam.

As for the claim of contradictions in Qur’an, let’s find out what they are. A fully preserved text for more than fourteen centuries stands tall and clear for all to see apart from other reasons because of the fact that not a single conclusive evidence has been produced by its detractors to show that any part of its text was wrong. Isn’t it amazing?

5. I hope I have explained my position on the issue more clearly now: I believe in Islam and yet I am open to new suggestions. I have learnt this stance from Qur’an and, not surprisingly, it allows me to have a greater degree of confidence in the authenticity of its message.

As I said earlier, you have every right to form your own judgment on who was the more convincing in our debate. I am not an expert in debating; I just mention what I think is right.

6. God wants those people to believe in his messenger who want to know the truth. Anyone who approaches Qur’an with a clear question in mind whether it was from God and neither gets biased against the message unnecessarily nor goes unduly in favour of it is bound to be impressed by Qur’an as the book of God. The proof of Qur’an doesn’t lie in the fact that Muhammad claimed that it was from God. Indeed a claim from as noble man as he made it strong enough for an honest seeker after truth to take it seriously. The proof of the fact that Qur’an was from God lies in the fact that an open-minded reader can see God speaking to him/her through it. The conviction comes through a process that doesn’t take place overnight. I have seen it happen to me; and I have seen it happen to several non-Muslims who converted to Islam after reading the book.

Indeed when you believe that a book was authored by God, you accept the information it provides you for which you don’t have any other source of information to confirm. If I am convinced through arguments that Neil Armstrong did set his foot on moon, I will also accept his claim about the details of the surface of the moon. The fact that Muhammad was the last prophet has been clearly given by Qur’an and makes sense to me because now that Qur’an is fully preserved, you don’t need any further source of guidance.


7. No, I am afraid, I am not aware of the term. However, I can assure you that sometimes terminology can be a serious barrier in learning. You just need to be a part of the group that gathers to witness a new moon to understand what I was trying to say. Those interested in seeing the moon extend their ability to see to the maximum limits. Those not interested in viewing it, and their lack of interest can be caused by several factors, don’t stretch enough to see the moon. Likewise, those who are able to empty their minds of prejudices while reading Qur’an to find out if it was from God would definitely know the truth. Those who are not interested in doing so, God has vowed that He would not allow such people to see truth.

8. Muslims can lose the battle of arguments for two reasons: If they continue to misbehave the way they are doing right now and if they don’t correct their views on Islam in the light of Qur’anic teachings. My hope that Islam is going to win the battle of ideas is based on my expectation that good Muslims and good people from the west who would embrace Islam on reading Qur’an properly would come together to provide the religion of God with the support of proper presentation it deserves. How can an ideology lose the battle of arguments when it condemns those people who do not use their intellect as worse than beasts and urges its followers to always make the best use of this most significant God-gifted ability?

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