No god, but God

Many other classmates of mine wrote about the ‘ilah’, and I would like to do the same only because I was intrigued by the lecture. As a muslim myself I had no idea to what extent the meaning of “No god but God” was taken in consideration of. As humans, we give the role of god to many things as we randomly listed on the board on tuesday. Many people feel safe, out of the state of confusion, hopeful minded as well as living comfortable lives on this Earth as long as they have money to fulfill their necessities and their desires (hawa). Trying not to point at others, and sticking to myself I would say that I do feel safe, hopeful, comforted, and clarified as long as I am with my mother. I am certain that if my mother is with me, she will make sure nothing harmful happens to me. But I never gave her the status that I have given God. Abviously not! I have never and would never worship my mom or anyone or anything because I am brought up in a family, in an environment where I have been taught that everything is given by and taken away by God and only God. Parents/ guardians and other above authorities are just a source of God to make sure that their children are safe and protected from all evil. I was just shocked to realize that the four things that only God can fulfill are absolutely true because from any disease or an accident my mother can not protect me against it. No matter how hard she tries to keep me safe and away from all the bad stuff, she can not help it at times because she has no control over it. If mothers did have control over current situations, not even worth mentioning the future, then we children would never get sick or die at an early age, or lead to the wrong path. It is God who controls everything and it is God who knows everything and sees everything. No one and absolutely no thing can take the role of god or God.

response #2 to ilah vs Allah

I also found this conversation quite intriguing and eye-opening. Being a Muslim myself, I am quite familiar with the phrase “there is no god, but God…” and its meaning. However, I have never dissected the phrase to such an extent as we did in class. I realized in our class discussion that it is easy to forget how powerful such a statement really is and that too often, it can become a phrase of mere routine. Looking at the concept of “ilah” in greater depth revealed that, ultimately, anything that even imitates something of worthy of being worshiped is a detriment to a Muslim’s true belief of Allah. The word is more inclusive than it appears to be at a glance; it does not simply warn of worshiping false gods or idols. The word is far more comprehensive and can apply to things both abstract and physical. Money, desires, or even bad habits can threaten this foundational belief of Islam that “there is no god, but God” if diverts focus from where it should be for a Muslim– directed at Allah.

Response to Unification and Islam post

While reading the previous blog entry, every problem stated occurs not only in Islam, but in all religions. The writer stated a Muslim in NYC and another person who calls him/herself a Muslim in some other city most likely disagree on major tenets of the religion. The situation described is does not make Islam any different from any other major religion. A Christian in the Mormon sect may whole heartedly disagree with the views of another Christian in a different sect and vice versa. Religious leaders of local churches, synagogues, mosques, may all express different ideas about the religion. For many, one does not need to go to church or a priest every time he or she wants to communicate with God. In addition, a person’s relationship with God can be just as personal of that found in Islam. It depends on the person and their personal beliefs. Numerous conflicts arise in major religions due to conflicts in interpretation. All religions leave room for interpretation. Islam is no different. The “problems in Islam” are “problems” for every other religion in the world.

Response to What Did You Just Say?

When I was growing up, I was taught to believe in multiple gods, to thank them for everything we have on Earth, and to treat those who only worshipped one God as lower than me. I’ve grown up quite a bit since then, and I’ve let go of a lot of the teachings from my childhood. I respect the choice of everyone in almost every subject, faith included. It’s sad to hear people like that girl carry grudges against others because of their beliefs. I’ve met many kinds of people throughout my life, and I’ve made it a personal mission to prove my tribe wrong and find the good in them. I don’t believe the Muslim people deserve anything less than anyone else. I think there should be something done in today’s society to help people with prejudices, like the girl in the post, understand the equality of every man and woman.

Islam’s Biggest Problem in Appealing to the World: Unification.

So, I waited until 9/11 to post a blog about Islam: the dogma and the Shieks. I think Islam has one of the more confusing impressions on the general public because I believe that Islam is not a unified religion. I also think that this makes Islam a more genuine religion. I think that Islam relies on the doctrine (the Quran) and the hadith in order to direct its’ believers: the assumed word of God and supposed actions of the Prophet Muhammed. I believe that every Quran in publication is the exact same as every other Quran in publication, so I don’t think there’s been much faltering with the Quran. However, as someone commented in class on Tuesday…some hadiths (stories about the prophet) vary in their credibility. This causes confusion. Someone in Tikrit calls himself a muslim and someone in NYC calls himself a muslim but they probably disagree on some major tenent of Islam. They probably have a different view of Islam. This is probably due to their local Islamic community leaders (shieks).

A big part of Islam is the idea that your faith is between you and God. So it differs from other religions in that one doesn’t have to go through the church or the priest in order to communicate with God. However, Muslims still go to mosques and listen to sermons like Christians go to Church and Jews go to their Synagogues. They can communicate with God at anytime because God is all-powerful and is always reading your mind and they officially talk to him during the 5 prayer times. I think this makes Islam genuine, but I also think it causes conflict most importantly the opportunity for corruption within Islam. It leaves Islam largely up to interpretation and because there is no Pope or official Mosque in Islam instead little groups of thought begin to formulate all over the world based on the views of the most powerful/respected “Shiek” in the area. I think this allows Shieks (Islamic Community Leaders) to dictate the importance of a certain story about the prophet or to highlight one part of the Quran whilst they avoid another part of the Quran. Their interpretations are also opportunity for corruption because they can be interpreted just like a Supreme Court judge interprets the constitution. So, I think many Muslims disagree with many other Muslims and the Islamic community is dishelved and not unified at all and that creates opportunity for people with ulterior motives to manipulate some Muslims into believing things or doing things that they later regret.

I think Usama Bin Laden is one of those people (shieks), who took advantage of those opportunities and preached to 19 kids who ended up using our own technology to kill 3,000 American civillians.

someone had to blog on 9/11

…and it might as well be me.  The 7th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks are being comemorated today and this morning I woke up to a replay of the entire event on MSNBC.  What happened to our country seven years ago was a tagic event that will go down in the history books.  Watching it again for the first time since 2001 stirred up many feelings that I had felt when I was in 8th grade.  It’s still weird that it happened when I was only 13 and to this day I remember it and how felt.  The feeling of revenge had stirred up again; one which I had felt so many years ago.  I wanted to fight these terrorists as it became clear that they were Al Queda and still do as time went on.  I don’t want to sound like a broken record like Rudy Guiliani sounded like during his campaign and even in his speech at the RNC, but we can’t forget what happened to us and we must remember the innocent lives that have been lost.

The negative side to this happening was the fact that I couldn’t trust anybody that was from teh Middle East or anything like that, partly because I was young and didn’t know what to think at the time, but as time goes on I learned that not every single person from the Middle East is a terrorist and that only a handful give Islam a bad name.  But, one thing I could never forget especially seeing it again on the replay on MSNBC, was the celebration that was going on in Palestine where people were honking their horns and shouting in the streets praising the terrorists for what they did to us.  What shocked me more was the fact that children were there throwing up peace signs and shouting anti-american slogans and comments in front of the camera.  It truly angered me when I saw this again and I hate that image I really do.  People celebrating the destruction of another people is something that is weird to watch…

I just hope that the next President will be able to rebuild the Image of the U.S. and make other countries feel comfortable with us again because there are so many people who hate our country right now and I’m not saying that they’ll love us, but hopefully just have a mutual respect or us and vice versa.

Muslim News Media

Whilst sitting at my computer today and staring blankly at the screen trying desperately to determine what it is exactly that I planned to write about for my blog entry, I stumbled upon the website of what appeared to be a rather widely circulated Muslim newspaper.  What struck me about this was not that Muslims have an alternate source for their news (because this is entirely understandable), but that out of the ten top stories displayed on the welcome page, a full half were in regard to Israeli-Palestinian hostilities.  Upon noticing this, I spent some time clicking around and exploring the website and discovered that the newspaper for which the site is indented to promote is a weekly publication.  This means that the five acts of gross Israeli violence targeting the Palestinian community that were publicized on the newspaper’s front page all took place within a span of one week.  Now, what I find hard to believe about this news report is not that all of these violent activities took place in such a small time frame (the area is particularly unstable which makes this type of thing believable), but that there was absolutely no mention of Palestinian violence directed toward the area’s Israeli community.  Does anyone want to help clarify this for me or is it safe to assume that all media sources, even international and religious media organizations, have biases?