Free Will vs. Predestination?

I’m not sure if whether I am oversimplifying the matter, but I don’t feel it is that conflicting. Much like the religion vs. science debate, I feel that free will and predestination somewhat go hand-in-hand. So, if humans are bestowed with free will from God, they have the ability to choose. Predestination then just means that God knows what they will choose. God isn’t choosing for them, but just knows what will happen. Or, if we read a book, we don’t know what will happen next, what the characters will choose, or what will happen at the end. We wait for the characters to choose their actions, right? And then we are able to see what happens next. God, being All-Powerful, has already read the book and knows what will happen. Does that make sense? I know the questions of WHY? or HOW? come up, but, to me, it’s not vital to how I live. I just feel that there is no need to know everything that God has planned, nor is it even comprehensible by us mere humans. Overall, yes, there are unanswered questions. But, maybe, they are meant to be answered.

Re:Iqbal, Reformer or Radicalist?

I don’t see how advocating for an Islamic State is being radical. Then again, I guess it depends on the context of the word. If you use it as an adjective then yeah he is being radical since he’s saying we need to go back to the root of Islam to taste success again. On the other hand, if you use it as a noun then you’re off because he is in no way a person who follows strong convictions or extreme principles. I believe he is a reformer because he is calling for more use of ijtihad and states that religion and science do not have to be in opposition to one another. The guy spent a good amount of his life trying to bring a change to a group of people dejected and demoralized from the calamities that struck them. Thus, he’s a reformer since he tried to amend the wrong amongst the Muslims of the Indian Subcontinent.

Re: Fort Hood Maniac Killer

Yeah I understand where you are coming from. The whole situation is sad and unfortunate. To make the situation worse, media stations decide to resort to old tactics by saying that he is a Muslim psychiatrist as if psychiatrist is not enough. Bernie Madoff ruins hundreds of lives and not one media station described him as a Jewish stock broker and starts exploiting stereotypes about Jewish people being greedy or whatever they say about them. It’s ridiculous that people are going to start up again with stereotypes over one incident. There are good people and bad people in every group. You can’t expect everyone to be perfect and not commit any crimes. That’s totally unrealistic. A Muslim committing this crime is no different than a Hindu, Jew, Christian, etc. Sane people of ALL FAITHS will be repulsed by the actions Nidal Hasan took. Enough is enough. An individual’s faith has nothing to do with whatever crime he or she commits.

Factory Farming vs. Islamic deitary laws

I was reading an article about a rise in Muslim vegetarians. The main reason behind this is because of the things that take place within factory farms. For example, they feed the animals hormones, lipids, and animal remains. In addition to this, animals are killed using electric shocks and a second method called “captive bolt stunning”, where a gun is placed against the temple of the animal’s head and a metal rod goes into the brain. By now, I’m sure you guys know that this goes against the dietary laws of Islam. Islam states that it is haram (unlawful) to beat, mutilate, or brand animals. It also states that the name of Allah must be invoked over the animal before it is killed. Moreover, an animal must be killed by slitting its throat with a knife, severing the windpipe, gullet, and the two jugular veins in one swift motion. If the animal dies before the slitting of the throat the meat is invalid. I know that slitting ones throat sounds gruesome but believe it or not it is the least painful way to die. I brought up this topic because I thought it’d be interesting to share with you guys the Islamic perspective on how to handle the slaughtering of meat. Out of curiosity, how is meat slaughtered according to Judaism, Christianity, etc?

 

Anger is shrouded in secrecy

John Allen Muhammad, the “Washington Sniper”, will be executed soon. An article from the BBC (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8352735.stm) covers the latest and closes with a statement by a daughter of one of the victims who will be attending the execution: “He basically watched my dad breathe his last breath. Why shouldn’t I watch his last breath?”

 

This blog entry will not aim to criticize that statement or the person who made it. Her father was randomly picked out of a crowd and shot from a distance for no logical reason with any remote possibility of being identified. She is entitled to her pain and I cannot pretend to truly understand her experience. However, I do want to ask some questions about anger because the death penalty, whether you agree with it or not, is undeniably an act of violence and is very often carried out with the anger of the survivors in mind, be they loved ones of the murdered or society at large. With no value judgment in mind it is impossible to miss the sheer volume of anger in this woman’s words, and with her anger in mind the execution will have an audience.

 

Anger is this mysterious force which runs more of our world than anyone may want to realize. It is everywhere, and yet we deny its reality and pervasiveness. We wage war, not because we are angry or hurt, but because we are “right”. We may harshly discipline our children telling ourselves it is what is best for them, and not admitting that we are frustrated because our own lives are not what we had hoped for as children. We take revenge on those who have harmed us because it is “fair”. Often times, grief and anger translate into cries for justice, but “justice” (as is “right” and “fair”)  contains the ideal of objectivity, which in theory exists outside of human emotions. Then it follows: an act of “justice” carried out in anger is prone to be violent and cause harm. This begets loss and pain, which begets more anger, and in today’s world it seems as if we have learned that the proper outlet for anger is violence. Then it all continues and no one learns lessons from history because these patterns are so engrained. Instead of feeling angry, we think that we are righteous. I wish we could just realize that we are all human, and that we could look for comfort in other things besides violence.

 

What does Islam have to say about anger? At least of the individuals we have read this semester very much encouraged self-reflection and inner tranquility while discouraging actions of revenge. However, it is clear from the state of the world that some Muslims have fallen into the pattern of eye-for-an-eye which, if anything, renders East and West more similar than different. What is the chance that an Islamic revival could make the world a more peaceful place?

 

Fort Hood Maniac Killer

I wanted to start off by saying that the incident which occurred at Fort Hood was awful and sickening. God help the families of all of the victims.  And how sad is this.. the instant I heard the news, I thought to myself — Please God let it NOT be a Muslim. Lo and behold, it was a psyscopath..with the name Hasan.

Years of p.r. and showing that Muslims in America truly care about their country, one idiot shatters it for everyone. I was on the bus back to the city and was being forced to listen to ‘ Robin Meade in the Morning’ (UGH I HATE THAT SHOW). Anyway, they began reporting on the killer saying that he had ‘ connections to Islamic extremism.’  ALSO that his mother was ten years ago buried at a mosque that the 9/11 hijackers once went to. God help that poor mosque which will now face so so so so much hate and scrutiny.

I was talking to my dad about it and was bemoaning the fact that this one person has forced Muslims to be on the defensive and be apologetic about the morons who live in this world, when my dad mentioned, that unfortunately– this country has had many psychopaths who go on shooting sprees. I remember last year.. I think in, Oklahoma, there was one as well. And in Seattle some psycho put car bombs in a bunch of policemen cars. Of course, not all of these people are Muslim– in fact, most of them aren’t. But because one person is Muslim, Fox news has to get on its terror alert radar and start its hate mongering again.

AGH!

 

Re: Iqbal, Reformer or Radical

In response to all of the posts about what Iqbal’s label should be.

I had the professor who is now teaching that Catholic and Islamic perspectives course, and I definitely noted the difference in the way that historical figures were categorized in relation to Islam.

To be honest, it irritates me that anyone who advocates an Islamic state is instantly labeled ‘Radical.’ Just to be clear, this country was founded on Christian ideals..doest that make the Founding Fathers radical? Uh..no!  Of course, ignoring the fact that many of the Founding Fathers were slaveholders and so on.. I don’t want to open that can of worms right now.

Anyway, OF COURSE there will never be complete agreement on Islamic Shariah. But just to be clear, there is NEVER  complete agreement on any type of ideology. I get annoyed because by labeling any and all who advocate an Islamic state, you get blindsided and automatically assume that so-and-so must be fundamentalist or must be harsh.

As we’ve been learning in this course all along, all the reformers were concerned that there was an over-emphasis on legal jurisprudence, instead of spirituality. All of the reformers advocated a balance of the two. The overall rules of Islam are not completely foreign to our majority-Christian state. I felt like Iqbal was proposing a state that emphasized the major tenets of Islam. I could hardly imagine Iqbal, being the academic and poet he was, using militant means in order to establish an Islamic state.

He was an intellectual theorizing on what he thought the best course of action would be for the Muslims of India who were marginalized and discriminated (and still are to this day).

Class Heading

I have thus far really enjoyed the information presented by Prof. Mozaffar. This past week he mentioned that for the remainder of the semester he was going to frequently ask difficult, ‘grey’ questions. I would normally not have any objections to something like this, but I am concerned with how deep the conversations will truly be allowed to go. Although the class is relatively small I am sure that there is a large range of belief present. In my opinion there are many questions and discussions that need to be had before we as a class, and diverse group of people, can have a meaningful and progressive discussion on questions like predestination vs. freewill. I transferred from a bible institute before coming to Loyola and it wasn’t until junior/senior year before questions of this difficulty were academically dealt with. But, if the purpose is only to get us to begin to think about these questions then I retract my comments, or if Prof. Mozaffar is aiming at some endpoint that my feeble mind has yet to fathom then I also retract.

Re:Iqbal, Reformer or Radicalist?

I think it is really hard to come to a conclusion of whether he was a reformer or a radicalist without reachind all his works. I have a couple of them and am still in the same situation that you are. In some fo the thigns he has written it seems like politics was the last thing on his mind. He spoke more of the knowledge of God and making a spiritual connection with God before going on to anything else, very similar to the way Ghazali thought except Ghazali was at a a much greater level of spirituality. But then in other peices it seems like Iqbal wants that Islamic State. The question I have is does wanting a Islamic state really make you a radicalist? It seems like the definition of Radicalist needs to be defined clearly and not changed base on the topic we are talking about. In my opinion wanting a Islamic state really doesn’t make you a radicalist. I think he was more of a reformer who wanted to make things right and improve the conditions of society based on what he thought was right. Hope that helps to answer you question a little bit.

Learning the Creed before Fiqh(Law) and the Quran

A couple of days ago I was with a group of old friends and we encountered a women who wanted to embrace Islam and she asked how she could become a Muslim. Out of ignorance ofone of my dumb friends she was told that she had to complete the recitation of the whole Quran to become a true Muslim. Instead she should have been told to utter the words of testification of faith and say the shahada ” I know, I believe, and I declare that no one deserves to be worshipped except Allah and Muhammad(pbuh) is his messenger.” It is enough to show the merits of this knowledge that one who is ignorant about the fundamental aspects of belief and does not carry the correct belief about Allah and His Messenger, whatever his deeds are among the good deeds, in the hereafter he will be in hellfire forever. As for the person who has the correct belief about Allah and His Messenger, and he dies in that status he will enter Paradise, whatever his deeds are, whether he is tortured before that for his sins or he was forgiven by Allah and not tortured.

Once a man came to the Prophet(pbuh) and asked, “Should I embrace Islam first, or should I fight?” The Prophet(pbuh) said “Embrace Islam, and then fight.” He then embraced Islam and then joined the battle and he was killed. The Prophet(pbuh) said “He did so little and he gained so much.” He did not perform even one prayer but despite that, he won in the hereafter. The reason for his victory was his correct belief about Allah and His Messenger. The Prophet, “By Allah, no one departs from this life while believing in the two shahadahs without any doubt except that he will be a winner in the hereafter.”

The reason I really wanted to tell you all about this story is because this same idealogy is roaming around in the minds of those whose works we are reading especially that if Iqbal. To them a sound foundation in the love for God and his messenger is more important than knowing how to read the Quran and knowing about the laws of Islam.