New Literature for a New Era

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QUOTE OF THE DAY – 143

Muslim or Non-Muslim, Ignorance about Islam Is Not Bliss

“One reason why the world understands so little about Islam is that Muslims don’t tell – and Non-Muslims don’t ask. So, between Muslim silence and non-Muslim indifference, Islam remains a stranger to much of the world, which will be fine if all of us, Muslim and non-Muslim alike, did not have to pay such a heavy price for our ignorance and or our indifference.” (Dr. Pasha)

Those who spend endless hours and days debating if a woman can be a leader or not; and if she can be in charge of something or not; and then they drag the glorious and blessed name of Islam in this perverse, foolish and futile debate; all they need to do is just think about one thing.

That is all they need to do. Think about one thing. Answer one simple question. [...]

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“Generally, what people do or don’t do in their lives is a reflection of their priorities. When you see Muslims doing or not doing certain things in their lives, it is simply a reflection of where their priorities stand.” (Dr. Pasha)

“All too often, nothing stands in the way of our being able to make great things happen in the world except us.

All too often, it is our laziness, our lack of clarity and focus, our lack of understanding, our fears and prejudices, our hesitancy and timidity, our lack of courage and confidence in ourselves, our lack of determination and purpose, our lack of discipline, and, “ultimately” as they say, our lack of trust in Allah that holds us back.

Nothing else can or does.”  (Dr. Pasha)

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QUOTE OF THE DAY – 45

Islam and Feudalism Don’t Mix

“I have never been able to understand how a society can be loudly Muslim and rigidly feudal, both at the same time. What is equally puzzling is that you don’t hear a squeak about it from any of the Muslim sources that act as if they hold a patent on Islam.” (Dr. Pasha)

“If It Is Extreme, It Is Not Islam!” (Dr. Pasha)

“To love God and not to love his creation is an oxymoron. It is a contradiction in terms. It simply does not make sense.” (Dr. Pasha)

“Imagine yourself living in a place where the temperatures dip to 30 below in Winter and soar to 100 or more in Summer – all Fahrenheit of course. And then it happens to be your day to water the plants, smack in the middle of a Summer scorcher.

So you went outside, on and across the lawn, but wearing sandals and not sneakers or boots. You then came inside, having done your good deed by the plants, and headed straight to the bathroom. There, in the bathroom, it made sense to you that you should wash your hands, which you did.

Then as you were pulling away from the sink and soaking up the moisture in your favorite towel, you asked yourself: What about my feet, with all that stuff from the lawn sticking to them? So, you proceeded to wash your feet. And it felt good to wash them.

And then a little voice inside you spoke, and said: How wonderful it would be to splash some water on your face. And your face lit up at the thought. And you did just that: bathed your sun-baked face in generous splashes of cold water. And did that feel good!

Then, all of a sudden, the memory came flooding back to you: Wasn’t there a man in Arabia, 1400 years ago, where of course there wasn’t much water to talk about in those days, and frankly there isn’t even now, who taught the world precisely the stuff you were struggling with right now?

Didn’t he bundle up this whole washing up business in a neat package and call it Wudu? And didn’t he say that it was God’s way of washing up which he wanted us to learn? He practiced it himself every day and showed everybody how to do it.

So, you said to yourself: You know what? I am going to do Wudu one time. For, all I have to do is add a couple of more details and I have the whole package sealed and signed.

So you went ahead and did a complete Wudu anyway, starting out with Intention and then quickly following that up with the recitation of God’s Blessed Name. Bismillah, you said: In the Name of God.

And then you washed your hands up to your wrists; rinsed your mouth; rinsed your nostrils; washed your face; washed your hands up to the elbows this time; wiped your head by passing your hands over it; wiped your ears; and then finally washed your feet and walked out of the bathroom, your slippers wet and dripping.

You realized that you were wrestling with two opposite emotions. On the one hand, you were elated that you had done a complete Wudu, as a result of which you were now not only physically clean but also morally and spiritually clean.

And then you marveled what a neat and complete package it was – Wudu I mean, the way you washed up following the way of the prophet, Sallallahu Alaihi wa Sallam. It covered all bases and did not leave a single thing to chance.

You could hardly believe that this package was put together by Prophet Muhammad, Sallallahu Alaihi wa Sallam, in the deepest heart of a waterless Arabian desert and that too 1400 years ago. Every inch, it sounded like a miracle, if ever anything looked or sounded like a miracle at all.

You felt grateful to God that you were a Muslim and thus were privy to the secret of this miraculous bundle of washing up called Wudu. A set of hygienic protocols and practices you could not improve upon no matter how you tried. And that is what brought on the second emotion and made you sad.

“Why can’t people see this?” you kept repeating to yourself, shaking your head all the time, as if in a trance. “It is so simple and it is so clear!”

You told yourself repeatedly it would not have made the least amount of difference if you had a medical or engineering degree or if you were the bearer of a Ph.D. Nor would it have mattered if, on the other hand, you were a carpenter, a butcher, a baker or a florist.

Anyone anywhere can see, you realized, how severe and imminent and pervasive the need is for people to wash up whether they lived in the Tropics or in the Snow-bound prairies of Montana and Wyoming. And how not one of them can improve upon the divine Wudu package that Prophet Muhammad, Sallallahu Alaihi wa Sallam, taught in Arabia all these countless centuries ago.

You were glad that on this particular day you did not just wash your hands, face and feet and exited the bathroom, but stayed a couple of minutes longer and decided to do the entire package of Wudu – your God’s gift to you and to every other human being like you who ever needed to wash up.

You said Alhamdulillah and you said Subhanallah – Praise be to God and Glory be to God respectively. If you were a Christian instead of being a Muslim you probably would have said something like Hallelujah. And that, you realized, would have meant pretty much the same thing: God in his glory!

Deep down in our soul, we are not all that different, are we, you thought.

Thank God for Wudu, you said, for this most perfect and most divine way of washing up, which no human being can do without or improve upon even now, after the passage of 1400 years to its being taught at the hands of God’s last and final messenger to humanity, Prophet Muhammad, Sallallahu Alaihi wa Sallam.” (Dr. Pasha)

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• Why are Muslims killing each other?
• The legacy of colonisation all over the world.
• When the world burns, what are the Muslims doing? And where is the Muslim voice? Where are the Muslim prayers?
• Escapism by running off to holy places to find God – the case of Muslims.
• Can turning to God and praying help? Asking God directly for help rather than go to all kinds of Intermediaries.
• Just when we thought there were no tyrants left in the world. Concentration Camps in today’s world?
• These people are fighting for their rights and freedoms.
• If people do not have fundamental rights and freedoms then they have nothing.
• How people lie to distort reality – an example of the devil and two sons of Adam.
• Ingredients of making of a tyrant haven’t changed.
• Two types of people – ignorant ones and charlatans.
• Tyrants use people as fodder for their own greed and lust for power.
• Examples of recent and current dictators.
• Great tragedy of our times: Sources of information are tainted.
• Examples of democracy in the world and how nations are progressing.
• Other places have democracy. Why don’t Muslim countries have the same democracy?
• The land of the Pharaohs: Egypt – so many dictatorships continuously for over a century or more. The story of Mubarak’s own people calling for his trial and blood for all the murders he ordered of innocent protestors.

“Democracy, people say, is “Government of the People, by the People.” At least that is how Abraham Lincoln defined it in his Gettysburg Address in 1963.

And that is a pretty good definition too. But is that all there is to democracy?

For too many people, democracy is a political theory or model.

But could it be more? The Qur’an tells us it is.

The Qur’an tells us that democracy is more – much, much more.

In fact, the Qur’an is nothing if not an elaborate manual of democracy.

That is why in Islam democracy is an entire way of life, and not just a political plank.

And that is what the Qur’an came into this world to teach us: How people should live their lives on earth in peace, amity and harmony.

Can you think of a better alternative? Brute force? Rabid tyranny? Endless mendacity? Eternal lying and deceiving?

Think for a moment of Thomas Jefferson’s oath: “I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility to all forms of tyranny over the mind of man.”

The Qur’an came to set our minds free. And to show us how people should conduct their business of living on earth through mutual talk, discussion, debate, respect, consultation, negotiation and give-and-take.

And how they – people that is – should do all that based on truth, justice, compassion, freedom and equality.

And based on something else, believe it or not, that the Qur’an refers to as “Non-Aggression.”

“And do not commit aggression,” says the Qur’an openly and bluntly.

And, also, based on something else, most people would not suspect even in their wildest dreams: total and unconditional renunciation of force and coercion in the persuasion process.

“There can be no coercion or force when it comes to dealing with people’s beliefs,” is how best I can paraphrase a passage in the Qur’an on that subject.

You want to hear the original words of the Qur’an? Here they are, and they are pretty clear and categorical. And so far as my limited knowledge goes, they are not duplicated anywhere else.

So here goes – the Qur’an: “Laa Ikraaha Fid-Deeni.”

So, democracy in Islam pertains not only to government and politics but to every single aspect of human life on earth – individual or collective; private, personal or public.

In sum, there is no better way to live life on earth than the divinely ordained way of democracy.

And its divinely mandated pillars of truth, honesty, integrity, transparency and accountability.

And that, in a word, is Islam.

That is because Islam is an interlocking system of rights – political rights; human rights; civil rights; economic rights; all kinds of rights including personal rights and animal rights.

That means in Islam, everything in existence has rights. And that is the core foundation of democracy: acknowledgment of pre-existing rights for all; enshrining them in governing documents such as constitutions and statutes; and commitment to honoring and delivering them in practice.

Does anybody know that you too have rights and claims on you? Hear the Prophet, Sallallahu Alaihi wa Sallam, say it, which I paraphrase here: “And your body too has rights on you, as do your visitors, your family members…and others.”

“So,” says the Prophet, Sallallahu Alaihi wa Sallam, “Aati kulla dhee haqqin haqqahu – give every right-holder their right.”

What a statement!

What a concept!

Do I need say more?

Except, maybe, to admonish my fellow-human beings:

“People! Let us hurry and catch up – with Islam; with the fuller and truer dimensions of democracy; and with all the rights some of even the best of us never thought we had.”

“Have we not already lost enough time?”

“Have we not frittered away enough energy?”

“Have we not squandered enough resources?”

“And have we not, by turning our back on the Qur’an, and on the true teachings of Islam, done enough damage to ourselves and to the world?”

“So, let us not let our Pandora’s Box of fears and prejudices hold us back any longer from discovering what is best in humanity’s common heritage and opening our hearts and minds to it!”” (Dr. Pasha)

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“For those who know – and for those who don’t – everything in the Qur’an is a miracle.

How can it be otherwise if Qur’an is really the word of God as it claims to be?

By miracle I mean an event or outcome that is least likely to occur in the real world. Stated differently, a miracle is something that is most improbable in nature.

Here, take a closer look at the following six things and ask how likely or probable is each one of them:

1. How likely is it that an illiterate man would emerge out of a trackless desert and proclaim that he is offering the world “A Book”?
2. Or that he would say that this book is “That Book”?
3. Or that he would call that book “A Book of Reading”?
4. Or that he would declare that “Everyone Must Learn to Read”?
5. Or that he would say that “God Made Pen the Instrument of Knowledge”?
6. Or that “God Taught Humans Everything They Did Not Know before”?

Now, how likely do you think any of these things is?

And yet that is what the Qur’an says. And it has been saying that for the past 1400 years.

And the Qur’an is full of miracles of this and all other kind in every page.

Don’t you think we should be aware of that fact? Don’t you think we should try and find out if any of this is true or not?

And don’t you think we should take that fact seriously if it turns out to be true?

And in order to do that, does it matter whether we are Christians, Jews, Hindus or Muslims – or Atheists or Agnostics or something else?” (Dr. Pasha)

“Want to know what Islam is really all about? Here is a glimpse:

In the beginning, as the Good Book says, there was God. And God created man.

And God, says the Qur’an, breathed in Man his spirit. And then, the Qur’an says, God armed Adam, the Man, with the knowledge of the names and properties of all things.

And, then, from that One Soul, which he first created, God created its mate. And from the two of them he caused a multitude of men and women to spring forth and populate the earth.

Therefore, those who cannot sense the greatness of the human spirit on earth cannot see the greatness of the divine spirit in heaven. Those who cannot see the divine spark in the hearts and lives of their fellow-humans right here on earth below, they cannot sense the great divine effulgence up above, no matter what their professions of faith and no matter what their pursuits of life.

For example, those who cannot sense the greatness of any or all of the following individuals, whose names I list below, to mention only a few from humanity’s rich and glorious heritage of greatness and goodness, cannot sense the greatness and goodness of any or all of the Prophets or their God:

• Thomas Paine, a Deist and a Skeptic, and a White Scotsman or Englishman most likely, and arguably a Father of Two Revolutions, back to back, one in America and one in France, and the author of The Rights of Man and an inveterate and inspired foe of the evil institution of Hereditary Monarchy everywhere.
• Thomas Jefferson, another Deist and Skeptic, and a White American Revolutionary and the author of the American Declaration of Independence.
• Abraham Lincoln, a man who gave the American Nation its unity, and gave Black Slaves of America their freedom, and who, though a White Christian American, established on firm footing on earth in modern times the fundamental Islamic Institution of the Government of the People by the People.
• Mahatma Gandhi, a devout Hindu, and a nationalist and freedom fighter, and a Brown Indian and a Conqueror of the British Empire.
• Albert Schweitzer, a medical doctor, musician and a White Swiss Christian missionary in Africa who devoted his life and career to serving those afflicted with leprosy.
• Martin Luther King, a Black Christian Minister, and a Liberator of the Oppressed and Dispossessed in America, brutally butchered by White Supremacists in Memphis, Tennessee, USA.
• Nelson Mandela, a Black leader of all lovers of freedom and peace on earth and among people, from South Africa.

As I said, these are just few names from a long and most impressive list of Human Greats on earth at different times in history and in their own different ways.

If you cannot see the spark of greatness, and light of goodness, in any or all of them, irrespective of your own faith or race or nationality or politics, then you cannot hope to sense God’s greatness or his light in Heaven.” (Dr. Pasha)

Trinidad and Tobago, W.I.  – June 03, 2011 [This material is being edited for quality and accuracy] Download

“Now, this is going to raise some eyebrows. I mean what I am about to say here. As if we have not raised eyebrows before by what we have had to say earlier.

In any case, if you are looking for Best Science, then, ab initio, or from the word go, Islam is your best hope.

I don’t mean Muslims make the best scientists. It would be unreal and quite possibly fanatical to make such a sweeping claim. Maybe the Brahmin Community in India has a much stronger Education Ethic than the Muslims anywhere have had in a long time.

What I am trying to say instead is that Islam will offer you the best science there is, if by science you mean a collection of robust truth-based models of reality in any aspect of life.

That means with regard to anything in this world, Islamic teachings are likely to be the best you possibly can find in the marketplace of science and ideas – scientifically speaking that is.

That is why the American Society of Microbiology (ASM) found it necessary to summarily steal – or should I say borrow, without so much as “By Your Leave” – the practice of hand-washing from Islam and Muslims. But after a great deal of research and after spending vast amounts of money.

But by then Islam had already made the method of hand-washing a household word in every Muslim home throughout the world by a millennium and a half and Johnny ASM was 1400 years late in coming to the water fountain from which the world of Islam washed it hands.

That is to say ASM’s reinventing of that wheel occurred after generation after unbroken generation of Muslims all over the world had been practicing hand-washing for all those 1400 years without a moment’s interruption or letup.

Whether or not ASM acknowledged its debt to Islam and Muslims is a question to which I do not know the answer. And whether any Muslim source ever demanded an answer or an explanation from ASM I have my doubts.

But the fact remains that you cannot improve upon the Islamic practice of Wudu as the most thorough and effective means of washing up and cleansing the often open human peripheries much exposed to the elements and a growing array of modern toxins, pathogens and pollutants.

What miracle could be more powerful than the fact that what an illiterate Prophet Muhammad (Sallallahu Alaihi wa Sallam) from the Arabian sands had so freely given the world in the middle of the Seventh Century, a most highly educated body of men and women like the ASM had to go through the motions of re-inventing at the end of the 20^th Century.

So, when it comes to body cleansing, the Islamic method of Wudu remains the gold standard. And you cannot do a thing to make it any better than the desert-dwelling Prophet of Arabia (Sallallahu Alaihi wa Sallam) made it fourteen centuries ago.

Nor can you, to cite another instance of how Islamic teachings are at the cutting edge of the best and the most functional in this world, improve upon the two-piece white-cotton-sheet-Ihram that Muslim men wear during annual Hajj pilgrimage to make it a better or more fascinating exemplar of human equality transcending all time and space. Again, that clock has not stopped ticking for 1400 years.” (Dr. Pasha)

Related article: Continuity and Change in Islam

Trinidad and Tobago, W.I.  – Apr 30, 2010 [This material is being edited for quality and accuracy] Session 1 Download Session 2 Download

Trinidad and Tobago, W.I.  – Mar 27, 2011 [This material is being edited for quality and accuracy] Download

Trinidad and Tobago, W.I.  (Khatam at Qur’an Literacy Camp) [This material is being edited for quality and accuracy] Download