DO WE NEED RELIGION?

Bismillahirrahmanirrahim

"Do we need religion?" Please give a full and complete answer to this question in twenty minutes. Now I realise that in this modern world we have to be concise and precise, but "Do" we need religion? Do "we" need religion? Do we "need" religion? Do we need "religion"? It takes five minutes to even think about the question.

Somebody asked me to put the muslim point of view, a concise way of saying would I please summarize attitudes to religion as expressed by a sixth of the world's population, stretching from Morrocco to China over the last 1400 years, a responsibility I am not too sure I can live up to in the remaining fifteen minutes, but I will try to say what I think, and hope that it covers some relevant points.

So I won't be dealing specifically with any of the questions raised by the other speakers, because as it is I'm going to have to spend my time doing an impersonation of Ben Elton.

Right - First we have to answer another question, "Do we need God?", or are we happy, along with perhaps a majority of modern western acadaemia, to let Him die a natural death and discard Him as an irrelevance. Now I hope you'll forgive me if I don't get too engrossed in a refutation of Rational Atheism, Secular Modernism, Scientific Humanism, and all the otherisms, but they do tend to have one thing in common which I will say something about, as it is a false premise on which their intellectual structures are mostly based. They tend to share an arrogant assumption that man is capable of thought not based on faith.

It's all very well saying there's a God, they say, but I am a Rationalist, a Scientist, so prove it. Now even Billy Connolly can see through that one. "If you want to believe there's a God, of course there's a God." he says "Who can prove otherwise?". Certainly not the average scientist, but then he would say the difference is that he doesn't need to believe in anything that can't be proved. It's all so logical you expect them to grow pointed ears.

So what about the sun and the moon and the stars and the galaxies and the expanding universe, what do we think about it all. Well if you were an Ancient Greek, when you got up in the morning what did you see? Somebody driving a blazing chariot across the sky, a really big blazing chariot mind, and at the end of the day, when it splashed into the ocean, there was no light left down here so you could see through the holes in the pudding bowl sky to some bright region beyond. And why not? Who could prove otherwise?

Now we in the west know that no-one in the world was thinking about such matters apart from Western Europeans, so we know that it was Galileo and Isaac Newton who found out where the Greeks had gone wrong. There was Sir Isaac, doing his experiments, all very logical, when down comes an apple, or so the story goes, and whacko there was gravity. Now you may say that such a moment of inspiration was not strictly speaking the product of scientific experiment and logical analysis, but everyone knew that this time we'd got it right, there were all these balls of stuff going round each other, all held together by gravity, and experiments proved it. Well they didn't prove otherwise.

Most of them didn't anyway, but as any good scientist knows, if the results don't fit the theory you throw them away, as there must be something wrong with the way you did the experiment. The theory is presumed to be right, and in this a scientist puts his faith. Based on acquired understanding they may be, but the great changes in scientific thought come from inspiration not logic and experimentation, just as Newton's ideas were changed by Einstein, but I won't go into that as I don't have the space or time. And can we prove that the nearest star is four light years away? Until we build the Starship Enterprise to warp our way there to measure it we really can't prove that what is there conforms to our present scientific consensus as opposed to a hole in an Ancient Greek pudding bowl. But there again, we can't prove otherwise.

It is He who made the sun a radiance,
and the moon a light,
and determined it by stations, that you
might know the number of the years
and the reckoning.
God created that not save with the truth,
distinguishing the signs 
to a people who know.

In the alternation of night and day, and
what God has created in the heavens and
the earth - surely there are signs for
a godfearing people.

He splits the sky into dawn,
and has made the night for a repose,
and the sun and moon for a reckoning.
That is the ordaining of the All-mighty, the All-knowing.

It is He who has appointed for you the stars, that
by them you might be guided in 
the shadows of land and sea.
We have distinguished the signs for a people who know.

Whether the logicians can answer How? is irrelevant anyway, as the question you know that they cannot hope to answer is Why?, and attempting an answer to that brings us to religion. For the questions defy our logic and experience, like what happens when we die for instance, whatever the answer you can be sure it will need faith. As the priests used to say when I was younger, "When the bombs are falling all around, hardened atheists have been known to cross themselves" Well why not?" they say "It can't do any harm." If there's one thing that sorts out the men from the boys, it's the close prospect of the Day of Judgement, or as the muslims put it, the Yaumideen. The Day of Deen, about which more later.

and they say "Woe, alas for us! This is the Day of Deen."

Now I've talked a bit about the need for God, but what do we mean by a need for religion? What is this thing religion? The muslims don't actually have it, it's an english word that we use to translate various words in arabic, but they don't mean quite the same thing. There is one word Millah which can be translated as religion, and may well be close to many peoples view of the same, as it based on a root word meaning to be bored or weary, and the word that most non-muslims associate with our religion is Islam, which has a formal meaning relating to the five pillars of our worship, the acceptance of the Unity of God and the Messengership of His servant Muhammad, the five time daily Prayer, the Fasting of Ramadan, the Zakat or tax to provide for the needy, and the Pilgrimage or Hajj. Islam also has a more general meaning of Peace, or Submission, and the way that peace comes with submission. But the term that really is closer to the meaning of religion is Deen. As in Yaumideen.

As well as faith and the customary rites of religion, Deen also implies the ideas of indebtedness, duty, and obedience, as well as judgement and justice, the idea of each person receiving his precise and just earnings, and all the inequalities of this life being redressed.

This justice is not something other worldly that comes to you on the Day of Deen, but is to be fought for in this life.

Say: "My Lord has commanded justice. Set your faces in
every place of worship and call on Him, making your
deen sincerely his"

Fight them, till there is no persecution and the
deen is God's entirely

But when it comes down to it, all we can do in this world is try our best, and in the end it is up to God. The deen belongs to God alone.

Judgement belongs only to God; He has commanded that
you shall not serve any but Him. That is the right
deen; but most men know not.

To Him belongs all that is in the heavens and the earth; His is the deen for ever.

As Abraham spoke of
the Lord of all Being, who created me, and
Himself guides me, and Himself gives me to eat and
drink, and, whenever I am sick heals me, who makes me
die, then gives me life, and who I am eager shall
forgive me my offence on the Day of Deen

Because the deen is not something that started with Muhammad

He has laid down for you as deen that He charged
with, and that We have revealed to thee, and that
We charged Abraham with, Moses and Jesus: "Perform the
deen and scatter not regarding it."

The deen is something that was taught by all the prophets, so what is there that we can see to be common to them all? It is the idea of submission to the will of the Creator

Say: "We believe in God, and that which has been sent
down on us and sent down on Abraham and Ishmael, Isaac
and Jacob, and the Tribes, and in that which was given
to Moses and Jesus, and the Prophets, of their Lord; we
make no division between any of them, and to Him we
surrender." Whoso desires another deen than submission
it shall not be accepted of him

They were commanded only to serve God, making the
deen His sincerely, men of pure faith, and to
perform the prayer, and pay the alms - that is the
deen of the True.

Those who have made divisions in their deen and
become sects, thou art not of them in anything

So it is our duty to the Creator to submit to His will, and this binds us to Him (as religion means that which binds), and to all men who are sincerely trying to do the same, in bonds of brotherhood.

If they repent, and perform the prayer, and pay the alms,
then they are your brothers in deen.

It can be seen from this that prayer and repentance is balanced by worldly action in the form of alms, or charity. We are not in any position to judge our neighbours sincerity of worship, and this sincerity is of course essential

I have been commanded to serve God, making my deen His sincerely.

He is the Living One; there is no god but He.
So call upon Him, making your deen His sincerely.
Praise belongs to God, the Lord of all Being.

It is a bit easier to judge someone's sincerity, however, when you are considering their worldly behaviour. Their selflessness in the various forms of charity.

Hast thou seen him who cries lies to the Deen?
That is he who repulses the orphan and urges not the
feeding of the needy. So woe to those that pray and are
heedless of their prayers, to those who make display
and refuse charity.

So to such expressions of the Will of God, a man is bound by duty. He is not forced to accept these bonds, he is a free man.

There is no compulsion in deen

But sincere submission to the bonds of brotherhood, the duty to give your wealth in charity, and fight for justice, are the deen that will show you the truth about the way this creation functions.

There is no changing God's creation.
That is the right deen; but most men know it not.

It is He who has sent His Messenger with the guidance
and the deen of truth, that He may uplift it above
every deen. God suffices as a witness.

God has promised...that He will surely establish their
deen for them that He has approved for them, and
will give them in exchange after their fear, security

In the last few weeks of his life, the Prophet Muhammad, peace and blessings be upon him, made what is known as the Final Pilgrimage, though it was in fact his only Hajj. Before a vast crowd of his friends and followers, he received the last few lines of the Qur'an, with the words of God which say

Today the unbelievers have despaired of your deen;
therefore fear them not, but fear you Me.
Today I have perfected your deen for you, and I
have completed My blessing upon you, and I have
approved Submission for your deen.

(Today I have perfected your religion for you, and I
have completed My blessing upon you, and I have
approved Islam for your religion.)

But whosoever is constrained in emptiness and not
inclining purposely to sin - God is All-forgiving, All-compassionate

But I will finish with another piece of Qur'an to bring us back to this world of Einstein and Mr. Spock.

When comes the help of God and victory, and you see
men entering God's deen in throngs, then proclaim
the praise of thy Lord, and seek His forgiveness;
for He turns again unto men.