Ways
of
Blame

You know,

we are surrounded by people

who don't want anything to do with any kind of religion,

and listening to the public spokespersons of most religions

that's quite understandable.

In fact,

listening to unofficial, self-appointed spokespersons is often even worse,

as ignorance and bigotry are no barrier to membership of a religious community.

In fact

it often seems that associating oneself with one religion or another

is more a case of disparaging everyone else

rather than having any great knowledge,

belief or commitment of one's own.

So nominal muslims

as well as Christians

will often spend much of their time fighting with others

of different variations of the same faith

that they consider to be heretical.

People like that don't necessarily think too much

about what they mean when they say they believe in God.

But most people get their religious identity from their parents,

their family and cultural group,

and they will believe in some kind of power greater than themselves,

even if they only define it as being something different

and better than

what other people believe in.

Ignorance and bigotry is not of its nature unbelief.

But considering the dreadful things that are done in the name of religion,

why do muslims consider the worst attribute a person can have is unbelief?

Well, if we're going to work that out we'll have to consider what we mean by unbelief.

Now those who reject religion tend to fall into a number of different camps,

giving themselves labels

to distinguish themselves from followers of a religion,

labels like agnotic, atheist, or humanist.

Agnostics are not usually aggressively committed against belief in God,

they just don't know one way or another.

They are confused, but open to persuasion,

and if we are unable to persuade them

we need to look to our own arguments and explanations for our own belief.

It's not their fault if we can't persuade them.

And just because someone is an agnostic

doesn't mean they aren't a good person,

kind and generous,

loving and caring

for their fellow humans.

So what's wrong with that?

And what about atheists?

They can be nice people too can't they?

Indeed they can.

People can still be nice

even though they completely misunderstand the way the world works,

and as a general rule people who claim to be atheists

do so on the basis of a completely spurious argument.

Their most common response to a believer is to say

'you're the one who believes in something,

so you are the one who has to prove it',

suggesting that atheism is simply not believing in something that others call God.

The suggestion is

that for God to exist it must be possible to prove it on their terms,

according to their methods.

God needs to fit within the way they understand the world.

But it is impossible to fit God into their narrow understanding.

And of course

their way of arguing breaks down even before we get to defining God,

as to say

'I don't believe there is a God'

is an exact equivalent to saying

'I believe there is no God',

and that is still just a belief.

So they can't demand proof from those they disagree with

and yet dismiss any need for proof with regard to their own belief.

If proof is what counts, when they say there is no God

then they also have to prove it,

and of course they can't.

Believing there is a God or isn't a God

is not a matter of proof,

it is a matter of faith,

and muslims believe that the existence of God

gives a better understanding of the universe we see

and the human life experience we go through

in all its subtlety

and with all its immaterial qualities.

For without God

how can we justify the need for any kind of morality?

Why do we call some things good

and some things bad?

Why shouldn't we just do as we like?

Humanists try to come up with a solution to this problem,

but it really doesn't work.

In the end it just comes down to

'this is what we think is right

and everyone should agree with it',

and it may even be that a majority agree with what they say,

but how does that apply to those who disagree?

Is a majority always right?

How big a majority?

Can 51% dictate the morals of the rest?

Or is it all down to the individual?

Do I get to choose my own understanding of what is good and bad?

If we don't have something outside of ourselves that we submit to

then the result is that we see ourselves as our own judge and jury,

and that has an inevitable tendency towards vanity and arrogance.

But humanists can be nice people too,

so we still haven't found any reason to think that not believing in God is so terrible as such.

The trouble is where relying on personal judgement of what is good and bad can lead you.

What feels good to a person

is not necessarily very good at all,

even for themselves, let alone other people.

In the time of Jahilliya they thought it was best to bury their newborn baby girls alive

rather than care for them,

and it took Divine intervention to get them to think otherwise.

The Qur'an was sent as guidance to humankind

to make clear that what was required for us springs from love,

compassion and mercy,

and that our lives have a purpose

and our actions are judged when our lives are done,

and at that time we will get what our actions have earned during our lives.

We will get what we deserve for the way we have treated others.

The Arabic word used in Islam that we translate as unbeliever is

Kafara,

and it means to be ungrateful and to cover over.

Not believing in God makes it impossible to truly understand the Creation,

and being ungrateful is damaging to our well-being,

it makes us unhappy,

the opposite of Hamd,

the praise that springs from gratitude

and that brings joy.

But Kafara also has the idea of covering over the truth

and so preventing someone else from believing,

denying someone else the information they need to believe,

and by extension denying them their freedom to believe,

through physical violence to believers and their places of worship,

or exclusion from society and its benefits,

and down to simple mockery and ridicule.

When Muhammad began to speak the Message that was being revealed to him,

the unbelievers didn't just live and let live and leave him to it.

They ostracised his community and tortured and killed his followers, and when he left Makkah to form a community elsewhere

they tried to eliminate it by force of arms and war.

But they didn't succeed,

as challenging the Will of God

proved not to be as easy as they thought it would.

Now even though the Hand of God may not seem so obvious today,

and the forces of the Kafirun that would try to overcome and destroy the believers

tend to be more subtle than armed conflict,

as mostly the Kafirun are happy to leave the muslims to kill each other,

those forces of the Kafirun are still in play,

and to resist them we need to be vigilant.

But now as then, the way of the Deen

guides us as to how best to resist them.

We need to deepen our knowledge and understanding

to be able to face down any intellectual challenge,

and face the world with courage on those occasions

when we are greeted with persecution or mockery.

And we need to trust in God's Will for us

in order to live in peace and contentment

whatever the challenges we face.

And God is the Truth,

our Friend and Protector.

The atheists say

"There is no God",

but muslims know better.

muslims say "There is no God

if not the One God".

and that's the Truth