Monday 12 January 2015

Door to Eternal Paradise

God has said in the Quran:
 And give good news (O Muhammad) to those who believe and do good deeds, that they will have gardens (Paradise) in which rivers flow....  (Quran, 2:25)
God has also said:
 Race one with another for forgiveness from your Lord and for Paradise, whose width is as the width of the heavens and the earth, which has been prepared for those who believe in God and His messengers.... (Quran, 57:21)
The Prophet Muhammad  told us that the lowest in rank among the dwellers of Paradise will have ten times the like of this world,1 and he or she will have whatever he or she desires and ten times like it.2  Also, the Prophet Muhammad  said: {A space in Paradise equivalent to the size of a foot would be better than the world and what is in it.}3  He also said: {In Paradise there are things which no eye has seen, no ear has heard, and no human mind has thought of.}4  He also said: {The most miserable man in the world of those meant for Paradise will be dipped once in Paradise.  Then he will be asked, “Son of Adam, did you ever face any misery?  Did you ever experience any hardship?”  So he will say, “No, by God, O Lord!  I never faced any misery, and I never experienced any hardship.”}5
If you enter Paradise, you will live a very happy life without sickness, pain, sadness, or death; God will be pleased with you; and you will live there forever.  God has said in the Quran:
 But those who believe and do good deeds, We will admit them to gardens (Paradise) in which rivers flow, lasting in them forever.... (Quran, 4:57) 

Story of Jerald F. Dirks, Former Minister of United Methodist Church, USA(part4)



It was now March of 1993, and my wife and I were enjoying a five-week vacation in the Middle East.  It was also the Islamic month of Ramadan, when Muslims fast from day break until sunset.  Because we were so often staying with or being escorted around by family members of our Muslim friends back in the States, my wife and I had decided that we also would fast, if for no other reason than common courtesy.  During this time, I had also started to perform the five daily prayers of Islam with my newfound, Middle Eastern, Muslim friends.  After all, there was nothing in those prayers with which I could disagree.
I was a Christian, or so I said.  After all, I had been born into a Christian family, had been given a Christian upbringing, had attended church and Sunday school every Sunday as a child, had graduated from a prestigious seminary, and was an ordained minister in a large Protestant denomination.  However, I was also a Christian who didn’t believe in a triune godhead or in the divinity of Jesus, peace be upon him; who knew quite well how the Bible had been corrupted; who had said the Islamic testimony of faith in my own carefully parsed words; who had fasted during Ramadan; who was saying Islamic prayers five times a day; and who was deeply impressed by the behavioral examples I had witnessed in the Muslim community, both in America and in the Middle East.  (Time and space do not permit me the luxury of documenting in detail all of the examples of personal morality and ethics I encountered in the Middle East.)  If asked if I were a Muslim, I could and did do a five-minute monologue detailing the above, and basically leaving the question unanswered.  I was playing intellectual word games, and succeeding at them quite nicely.
It was now late in our Middle Eastern trip.  An elderly friend who spoke no English and I were walking down a winding, little road, somewhere in one of the economically disadvantaged areas of greater ‘Amman, Jordan.  As we walked, an elderly man approached us from the opposite direction, said, “Salam ‘Alaykum”, i.e., “may the mercy and blessings of God be upon him”, and offered to shake hands.  We were the only three people there.  I didn’t speak Arabic, and neither my friend nor the stranger spoke English.  Looking at me, the stranger asked, “Muslim?”
At that precise moment in time, I was fully and completely trapped.  There were no intellectual word games to be played, because I could only communicate in English, and they could only communicate in Arabic.  There was no translator present to bail me out of this situation, and to allow me to hide behind my carefully prepared English monologue.  I couldn’t pretend I didn’t understand the question, because it was all too obvious that I had.  My choices were suddenly, unpredictably, and inexplicably reduced to just two:  I could say “N’am”, i.e., “yes”; or I could say “La”, i.e., “no.”  The choice was mine, and I had no other.  I had to choose, and I had to choose now; it was just that simple.  Praise be to God, I answered, “N’am.”
With saying that one word, all the intellectual word games were now behind me.  With the intellectual word games behind me, the psychological games regarding my religious identity were also behind me.  I wasn’t some strange, atypical Christian.  I was a Muslim.  Praise be to God, my wife of 33 years also became a Muslim about that same time.
Not too many months after our return to America from the Middle East, a neighbor invited us over to his house, saying that he wanted to talk with us about our conversion to Islam.  He was a retired Methodist minister, with whom I had had several conversations in the past.  Although we had occasionally talked superficially about such issues as the artificial construction of the Bible from various, earlier, independent sources, we had never had any in-depth conversation about religion.  I knew only that he appeared to have acquired a solid seminary education, and that he sang in the local church choir every Sunday.
My initial reaction was, “Oh, oh, here it comes.”  Nonetheless, it is a Muslim’s duty to be a good neighbor, and it is a Muslim’s duty to be willing to discuss Islam with others.  As such, I accepted the invitation for the following evening, and spent most of the waking part of the next 24 hours contemplating how best to approach this gentleman in his requested topic of conversation.  The appointed time came, and we drove over to our neighbor’s.  After a few moments of small talk, he finally asked why I had decided to become a Muslim.  I had waited for this question, and had my answer carefully prepared.  “As you know with your seminary education, there were a lot of non-religious considerations which led up to and shaped the decisions of the Council of Nicaea.”  He immediately cut me off with a simple statement:  “You finally couldn’t stomach the polytheism anymore, could you?”  He knew exactly why I was a Muslim, and he didn’t disagree with my decision!  For himself, at his age and at his place in life, he was electing to be “an atypical Christian.”  God willing, he has by now completed his journey from cross to crescent.               
There are sacrifices to be made in being a Muslim in America.  For that matter, there are sacrifices to be made in being a Muslim anywhere.  However, those sacrifices may be more acutely felt in America, especially among American converts.  Some of those sacrifices are very predictable, and include altered dress and abstinence from alcohol, pork, and the taking of interest on one’s money.  Some of those sacrifices are less predictable.  For example, one Christian family, with whom we were close friends, informed us that they could no longer associate with us, as they could not associate with anyone “who does not take Jesus Christ as his personal savior.”  In addition, quite a few of my professional colleagues altered their manner of relating to me.  Whether it was coincidence or not, my professional referral base dwindled, and there was almost a 30% drop in income as a result.  Some of these less predictable sacrifices were hard to accept, although the sacrifices were a small price to pay for what was received in return.
For those contemplating the acceptance of Islam and the surrendering of oneself to God—glorified and exalted is He, there may well be sacrifices along the way.  Many of these sacrifices are easily predicted, while others may be rather surprising and unexpected.  There is no denying the existence of these sacrifices, and I don’t intend to sugar coat that pill for you.  Nonetheless, don’t be overly troubled by these sacrifices.  In the final analysis, these sacrifices are less important than you presently think.  God willing, you will find these sacrifices a very cheap coin to pay for the “goods” you are purchasing.

Story of Jerald F. Dirks, Former Minister of United Methodist Church, USA(part3)



Nonetheless, I hesitated.  Further, I rationalized my hesitation by maintaining to myself that I really didn’t know the nitty-gritty details of Islam, and that my areas of agreement were confined to general concepts.  As such, I continued to read, and then to re-read.
One’s sense of identity, of who one is, is a powerful affirmation of one’s own position in the cosmos.  In my professional practice, I had occasionally been called upon to treat certain addictive disorders, ranging from smoking, to alcoholism, to drug abuse.  As a clinician, I knew that the basic physical addiction had to be overcome to create the initial abstinence.  That was the easy part of treatment.  As Mark Twain once said:  “Quitting smoking is easy; I’ve done it hundreds of times.”  However, I also knew that the key to maintaining that abstinence over an extended time period was overcoming the client’s psychological addiction, which was heavily grounded in the client’s basic sense of identity, i.e. the client identified to himself that he was “a smoker”, or that he was “a drinker”, etc.  The addictive behavior had become part and parcel of the client’s basic sense of identity, of the client’s basic sense of self.  Changing this sense of identity was crucial to the maintenance of the psychotherapeutic “cure.”  This was the difficult part of treatment.  Changing one’s basic sense of identity is a most difficult task.  One’s psyche tends to cling to the old and familiar, which seem more psychologically comfortable and secure than the new and unfamiliar.
On a professional basis, I had the above knowledge, and used it on a daily basis.  However, ironically enough, I was not yet ready to apply it to myself, and to the issue of my own hesitation surrounding my religious identity.  For 43 years, my religious identity had been neatly labeled as “Christian”, however many qualifications I might have added to that term over the years.  Giving up that label of personal identity was no easy task.  It was part and parcel of how I defined my very being.  Given the benefit of hindsight, it is clear that my hesitation served the purpose of insuring that I could keep my familiar religious identity of being a Christian, although a Christian who believed like a Muslim believed.
It was now the very end of December, and my wife and I were filling out our application forms for U.S. passports, so that a proposed Middle Eastern journey could become a reality.  One of the questions had to do with religious affiliation.  I didn’t even think about it, and automatically fell back on the old and familiar, as I penned in “Christian.”  It was easy, it was familiar, and it was comfortable.
However, that comfort was momentarily disrupted when my wife asked me how I had answered the question on religious identity on the application form.  I immediately replied, “Christian”, and chuckled audibly.  Now, one of Freud’s contributions to the understanding of the human psyche was his realization that laughter is often a release of psychological tension.  However wrong Freud may have been in many aspects of his theory of psychosexual development, his insights into laughter were quite on target.  I had laughed!  What was this psychological tension that I had need to release through the medium of laughter?
I then hurriedly went on to offer my wife a brief affirmation that I was a Christian, not a Muslim.  In response to which, she politely informed me that she was merely asking whether I had written “Christian”, or “Protestant”, or “Methodist.”  On a professional basis, I knew that a person does not defend himself against an accusation that hasn’t been made.  (If, in the course of a session of psychotherapy, my client blurted out, “I’m not angry about that”, and I hadn’t even broached the topic of anger, it was clear that my client was feeling the need to defend himself against a charge that his own unconscious was making.  In short, he really was angry, but he wasn’t ready to admit it or to deal with it.)  If my wife hadn’t made the accusation, i.e. “you are a Muslim”, then the accusation had to have come from my own unconscious, as I was the only other person present.  I was aware of this, but still I hesitated.  The religious label that had been stuck to my sense of identity for 43 years was not going to come off easily.        
About a month had gone by since my wife’s question to me.  It was now late in January of 1993.  I had set aside all the books on Islam by the Western scholars, as I had read them all thoroughly.  The two English translations of the meaning of the Quran were back on the bookshelf, and I was busy reading yet a third English translation of the meaning of the Quran.  Maybe in this translation I would find some sudden justification for…
I was taking my lunch hour from my private practice at a local Arab restaurant that I had started to frequent.  I entered as usual, seated myself at a small table, and opened my third English translation of the meaning of the Quran to where I had left off in my reading.  I figured I might as well get some reading done over my lunch hour.  Moments later, I became aware that Mahmoud was at my shoulder, and waiting to take my order.  He glanced at what I was reading, but said nothing about it.  My order taken, I returned to the solitude of my reading.
A few minutes later, Mahmoud’s wife, Iman, an American Muslim, who wore the Hijab (scarf) and modest dress that I had come to associate with female Muslims, brought me my order.  She commented that I was reading the Quran, and politely asked if I were a Muslim.  The word was out of my mouth before it could be modified by any social etiquette or politeness:  “No!”  That single word was said forcefully, and with more than a hint of irritability.  With that, Iman politely retired from my table.
What was happening to me?  I had behaved rudely and somewhat aggressively.  What had this woman done to deserve such behavior from me?  This wasn’t like me.  Given my childhood upbringing, I still used “sir” and “ma’am” when addressing clerks and cashiers who were waiting on me in stores.  I could pretend to ignore my own laughter as a release of tension, but I couldn’t begin to ignore this sort of unconscionable behavior from myself.  My reading was set aside, and I mentally stewed over this turn of events throughout my meal.  The more I stewed, the guiltier I felt about my behavior.  I knew that when Iman brought me my check at the end of the meal, I was going to need to make some amends.  If for no other reason, simple politeness demanded it.  Furthermore, I was really quite disturbed about how resistant I had been to her innocuous question.  What was going on in me that I responded with that much force to such a simple and straightforward question?  Why did that one, simple question lead to such atypical behavior on my part?
Later, when Iman came with my check, I attempted a round-about apology by saying:  “I’m afraid I was a little abrupt in answering your question before.  If you were asking me whether I believe that there is only one God, then my answer is yes.  If you were asking me whether I believe that Muhammad was one of the prophets of that one God, then my answer is yes.”  She very nicely and very sportively said:  “That’s okay; it takes some people a little longer than others.”
Perhaps, the readers of this will be kind enough to note the psychological games I was playing with myself without chuckling too hard at my mental gymnastics and behavior.  I well knew that in my own way, using my own words, I had just said the Shahadah, the Islamic testimonial of faith, i.e. “I testify that there is no god but God, and I testify that Muhammad is the messenger of God.”  However, having said that, and having recognized what I said, I could still cling to my old and familiar label of religious identity.  After all, I hadn’t said I was a Muslim.  I was simply a Christian, albeit an atypical Christian, who was willing to say that there was one God, not a triune godhead, and who was willing to say that Muhammad was one of the prophets inspired by that one God.  If a Muslim wanted to accept me as being a Muslim that was his or her business, and his or her label of religious identity.  However, it was not mine.  I thought I had found my way out of my crisis of religious identity.  I was a Christian, who would carefully explain that I agreed with, and was willing to testify to, the Islamic testimonial of faith.  Having made my tortured explanation, and having parsed the English language to within an inch of its life, others could hang whatever label on me they wished.  It was their label, and not mine.

Story of Jerald F. Dirks, Former Minister of United Methodist Church, USA(part 2)

As the years passed by, I became increasingly concerned about the loss of religiousness in American society at large.  Religiousness is a living, breathing spirituality and morality within individuals and should not be confused with religiosity, which is concerned with the rites, rituals, and formalized creeds of some organized entity, e.g. the church.  American culture increasingly appeared to have lost its moral and religious compass.  Two out of every three marriages ended in divorce; violence was becoming an increasingly inherent part of our schools and our roads; self-responsibility was on the wane; self-discipline was being submerged by a “if it feels good, do it” morality; various Christian leaders and institutions were being swamped by sexual and financial scandals; and emotions justified behavior, however odious it might be.  American culture was becoming a morally bankrupt institution, and I was feeling quite alone in my personal religious vigil.
It was at this juncture that I began to come into contact with the local Muslim community.  For some years before, my wife and I had been actively involved in doing research on the history of the Arabian horse.  Eventually, in order to secure translations of various Arabic documents, this research brought us into contact with Arab Americans who happened to be Muslims.  Our first such contact was with Jamal in the summer of 1991.
After an initial telephone conversation, Jamal visited our home, and offered to do some translations for us and to help guide us through the history of the Arabian horse in the Middle East.  Before Jamal left that afternoon, he asked if he might use our bathroom to wash before saying his scheduled prayers; and borrow a piece of newspaper to use as a prayer rug, so he could say his scheduled prayers before leaving our house.  We, of course, obliged, but wondered if there was something more appropriate that we could give him to use than a newspaper.  Without our ever realizing it at the time, Jamal was practicing a very beautiful form of Dawa (preaching or exhortation).  He made no comment about the fact that we were not Muslims, and he didn’t preach anything to us about his religious beliefs.  He “merely” presented us with his example, an example that spoke volumes, if one were willing to be receptive to the lesson.
Over the next 16 months, contact with Jamal slowly increased in frequency, until it was occurring on a biweekly to weekly basis.  During these visits, Jamal never preached to me about Islam, never questioned me about my own religious beliefs or convictions, and never verbally suggested that I become a Muslim.  However, I was beginning to learn a lot.  First, there was the constant behavioral example of Jamal observing his scheduled prayers.  Second, there was the behavioral example of how Jamal conducted his daily life in a highly moral and ethical manner, both in his business world and in his social world.  Third, there was the behavioral example of how Jamal interacted with his two children.  For my wife, Jamal’s wife provided a similar example.  Fourth, always within the framework of helping me to understand Arabian horse history in the Middle East, Jamal began to share with me:  1) stories from Arab and Islamic history; 2) sayings of the Prophet Muhammad, may the mercy and blessings of God be upon him; and 3) Quranic verses and their contextual meaning.  In point of fact, our every visit now included at least a 30 minute conversation centered on some aspect of Islam, but always presented in terms of helping me intellectually understand the Islamic context of Arabian horse history.  I was never told “this is the way things are”, I was merely told “this is what Muslims typically believe.”  Since I wasn’t being “preached to”, and since Jamal never inquired as to my own beliefs, I didn’t need to bother attempting to justify my own position.  It was all handled as an intellectual exercise, not as proselytizing.
Gradually, Jamal began to introduce us to other Arab families in the local Muslim community.  There was Wa’el and his family, Khalid and his family, and a few others.  Consistently, I observed individuals and families who were living their lives on a much higher ethical plane than the American society in which we were all embedded.  Maybe there was something to the practice of Islam that I had missed during my collegiate and seminary days.
By December, 1992, I was beginning to ask myself some serious questions about where I was and what I was doing.  These questions were prompted by the following considerations.
1)   Over the course of the prior 16 months, our social life had become increasingly centered on the Arab component of the local Muslim community.  By December, probably 75% of our social life was being spent with Arab Muslims.
2)   By virtue of my seminary training and education, I knew how badly the Bible had been corrupted (and often knew exactly when, where, and why), I had no belief in any triune godhead, and I had no belief in anything more than a metaphorical “sonship” of Jesus, may the mercy and blessings of God be upon him.  In short, while I certainly believed in God, I was as strict a monotheist as my Muslim friends.
3)   My personal values and sense of morality were much more in keeping with my Muslim friends than with the “Christian” society around me.  After all, I had the non-confrontational examples of Jamal, Khalid, and Wa’el as illustrations.  In short, my nostalgic yearning for the type of community in which I had been raised was finding gratification in the Muslim community.  American society might be morally bankrupt, but that did not appear to be the case for that part of the Muslim community with which I had had contact.  Marriages were stable, spouses were committed to each other, and honesty, integrity, self-responsibility, and family values were emphasized.  My wife and I had attempted to live our lives that same way, but for several years I had felt that we were doing so in the context of a moral vacuum.  The Muslim community appeared to be different.
The different threads were being woven together into a single strand.  Arabian horses, my childhood upbringing, my foray into the Christian ministry and my seminary education, my nostalgic yearnings for a moral society, and my contact with the Muslim community were becoming intricately intertwined.  My self-questioning came to a head when I finally got around to asking myself exactly what separated me from the beliefs of my Muslim friends.  I suppose that I could have raised that question with Jamal or with Khalid, but I wasn’t ready to take that step.  I had never discussed my own religious beliefs with them, and I didn’t think that I wanted to introduce that topic of conversation into our friendship.  As such, I began to pull off the bookshelf all the books on Islam that I had acquired in my collegiate and seminary days.  However far my own beliefs were from the traditional position of the church, and however seldom I actually attended church, I still identified myself as being a Christian, and so I turned to the works of Western scholars.  That month of December, I read half a dozen or so books on Islam by Western scholars, including one biography of the Prophet Muhammad, may the mercy and blessings of God be upon him.  Further, I began to read two different English translations of the meaning of the Quran.  I never spoke to my Muslim friends about this personal quest of self-discovery.  I never mentioned what types of books I was reading, nor ever spoke about why I was reading these books.  However, occasionally I would run a very circumscribed question past one of them.
While I never spoke to my Muslim friends about those books, my wife and I had numerous conversations about what I was reading.  By the last week of December of 1992, I was forced to admit to myself, that I could find no area of substantial disagreement between my own religious beliefs and the general tenets of Islam.  While I was ready to acknowledge that Muhammad, may the mercy and blessings of God be upon him, was a prophet (one who spoke for or under the inspiration) of God, and while I had absolutely no difficulty affirming that there was no god besides God, glorified and exalted is He, I was still hesitating to make any decision.  I could readily admit to myself that I had far more in common with Islamic beliefs as I then understood them, than I did with the traditional Christianity of the organized church.  I knew only too well that I could easily confirm from my seminary training and education most of what the Quran had to say about Christianity, the Bible, and Jesus, may the mercy and blessings of God be upon him.

story of Jerald F. Dirks, Former Minister of United Methodist Church, USA (Part !)

The early life and education of a Harvard Hollis scholar and author of the book “The Cross and the Crescent”, disillusioned by Christianity due to the information learnt in its School of Theology. Part 1.
By Jerald F. DirksPublished on 16 Jan 2006 - Last modified on 27 Jan 2014
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Story


One of my earliest childhood memories is of hearing the church bell toll for Sunday morning worship in the small, rural town in which I was raised.  The Methodist Church was an old, wooden structure with a bell tower, two children’s Sunday School classrooms cubby-holed behind folding, wooden doors to separate it from the sanctuary, and a choir loft that housed the Sunday school classrooms for the older children.  It stood less than two blocks from my home.  As the bell rang, we would come together as a family, and make our weekly pilgrimage to the church.
In that rural setting from the 1950s, the three churches in the town of about 500 were the center of community life.  The local Methodist Church, to which my family belonged, sponsored ice cream socials with hand-cranked, homemade ice cream, chicken potpie dinners, and corn roasts.  My family and I were always involved in all three, but each came only once a year.  In addition, there was a two-week community Bible school every June, and I was a regular attendee through my eighth grade year in school.  However, Sunday morning worship and Sunday school were weekly events, and I strove to keep extending my collection of perfect attendance pins and of awards for memorizing Bible verses.
By my junior high school days, the local Methodist Church had closed, and we were attending the Methodist Church in the neighboring town, which was only slightly larger than the town in which I lived.  There, my thoughts first began to focus on the ministry as a personal calling.  I became active in the Methodist Youth Fellowship, and eventually served as both a district and a conference officer.  I also became the regular “preacher” during the annual Youth Sunday service.  My preaching began to draw community-wide attention, and before long I was occasionally filling pulpits at other churches, at a nursing home, and at various church-affiliated youth and ladies groups, where I typically set attendance records.
By age 17, when I began my freshman year at Harvard College, my decision to enter the ministry had solidified.  During my freshman year, I enrolled in a two-semester course in comparative religion, which was taught by Wilfred Cantwell Smith, whose specific area of expertise was Islam.  During that course, I gave far less attention to Islam than I did to other religions, such as Hinduism and Buddhism, as the latter two seemed so much more esoteric and strange to me.  In contrast, Islam appeared to be somewhat similar to my own Christianity.  As such, I didn’t concentrate on it as much as I probably should have, although I can remember writing a term paper for the course on the concept of revelation in the Quran.  Nonetheless, as the course was one of rigorous academic standards and demands, I did acquire a small library of about a half dozen books on Islam, all of which were written by non-Muslims, and all of which were to serve me in good stead 25 years later.  I also acquired two different English translations of the meaning of the Quran, which I read at the time.
That spring, Harvard named me a Hollis Scholar, signifying that I was one of the top pre-theology students in the college.  The summer between my freshman and sophomore years at Harvard, I worked as a youth minister at a fairly large United Methodist Church.  The following summer, I obtained my License to Preach from the United Methodist Church.  Upon graduating from Harvard College in 1971, I enrolled at the Harvard Divinity School, and there obtained my Master of Divinity degree in 1974, having been previously ordained into the Deaconate of the United Methodist Church in 1972, and having previously received a Stewart Scholarship from the United Methodist Church as a supplement to my Harvard Divinity School scholarships.  During my seminary education, I also completed a two-year externship program as a hospital chaplain at Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston.  Following graduation from Harvard Divinity School, I spent the summer as the minister of two United Methodist churches in rural Kansas, where attendance soared to heights not seen in those churches for several years.
Seen from the outside, I was a very promising young minister, who had received an excellent education, drew large crowds to the Sunday morning worship service, and had been successful at every stop along the ministerial path.  However, seen from the inside, I was fighting a constant war to maintain my personal integrity in the face of my ministerial responsibilities.  This war was far removed from the ones presumably fought by some later televangelists in unsuccessfully trying to maintain personal sexual morality.  Likewise, it was a far different war than those fought by the headline-grabbing pedophilic priests of the current moment.  However, my struggle to maintain personal integrity may be the most common one encountered by the better-educated members of the ministry.
There is some irony in the fact that the supposedly best, brightest, and most idealistic of ministers-to-be are selected for the very best of seminary education, e.g. that offered at that time at the Harvard Divinity School.  The irony is that, given such an education, the seminarian is exposed to as much of the actual historical truth as is known about:
1)   the formation of the early, “mainstream” church, and how it was shaped by geopolitical considerations;
2)   the “original” reading of various Biblical texts, many of which are in sharp contrast to what most Christians read when they pick up their Bible, although gradually, some of this information is being incorporated into newer and better translations;
3)   the evolution of such concepts as a triune godhead and the “sonship” of Jesus, may the mercy and blessings of God be upon him;
4)   the non-religious considerations that underlie many Christian creeds and doctrines;
5)   the existence of those early churches and Christian movements which never accepted the concept of a triune godhead, and which never accepted the concept of the divinity of Jesus, may the mercy and blessings of God be upon him; and
6)   etc.  (Some of these fruits of my seminary education are recounted in more detail in my recent book, The Cross and the Crescent:  An Interfaith Dialogue between Christianity and Islam, Amana Publications, 2001.)
As such, it is no real wonder that almost a majority of such seminary graduates leave seminary, not to “fill pulpits”, where they would be asked to preach that which they know is not true, but to enter the various counseling professions.  Such was also the case for me, as I went on to earn a master’s and doctorate in clinical psychology.  I continued to call myself a Christian, because that was a needed bit of self-identity, and because I was, after all, an ordained minister, even though my full time job was as a mental health professional.  However, my seminary education had taken care of any belief I might have had regarding a triune godhead or the divinity of Jesus, may the mercy and blessings of God be upon him. (Polls regularly reveal that ministers are less likely to believe these and other dogmas of the church than are the laity they serve, with ministers more likely to understand such terms as “son of God” metaphorically, while their parishioners understand it literally.)  I thus became a “Christmas and Easter Christian”, attending church very sporadically, and then gritting my teeth and biting my tongue as I listened to sermons espousing that which I knew was not the case.

None of the above should be taken to imply that I was any less religious or spiritually oriented than I had once been.  I prayed regularly, my belief in a supreme deity remained solid and secure, and I conducted my personal life in line with the ethics I had once been taught in church and Sunday school.  I simply knew better than to buy into the man-made dogmas and articles of faith of the organized church which were so heavily laden with the pagan influences, polytheistic notions, and geo-political considerations of a bygone era.

life of prophet MUHAMMAD (S.A.W.S)

If we compare the life of Muhammad  before his mission as a prophet and his life after he began his mission as a prophet, we will conclude that it is beyond reason to think that Muhammad  was a false prophet, who claimed prophethood to attain material gains, greatness, glory, or power.
Before his mission as a prophet, Muhammad  had no financial worries.  As a successful and reputed merchant, Muhammad  drew a satisfactory and comfortable income.  After his mission as a prophet and because of it, he became worse off materially.  To clarify this more, let us browse the following sayings on his life:
n  Aa’isha, Muhammad’s  wife, said, “O my nephew, we would sight three new moons in two months without lighting a fire (to cook a meal) in the Prophet’s  houses.”  Her nephew asked, “O Aunt, what sustained you?”  She said, “The two black things, dates and water, but the Prophet had some Ansar neighbors who had milk-giving she-camels and they used to send the Prophet some of its milk.”1
n  Sahl Ibn Sa’ad, one of Muhammad’s companions, said, “The Prophet of God  did not see bread made from fine flour from the time God sent him (as a prophet) until he died.”2
n  Aa’isha, Muhammad’s  wife, said, “The mattress of the Prophet , on which he slept, was made of leather stuffed with the fiber of the date-palm tree.”3
n  Amr Ibn Al-Hareth, one of Muhammad’s companions, said that when the Prophet  died, he left neither money nor anything else except his white riding mule, his arms, and a piece of land which he left to charity.4
Muhammad  lived this hard life till he died although the Muslim treasury was at his disposal, the greater part of the Arabian Peninsula was Muslim before he died, and the Muslims were victorious after eighteen years of his mission.
Is it possible that Muhammad  might have claimed prophethood in order to attain status, greatness, and power?  The desire to enjoy status and power is usually associated with good food, fancy clothing, monumental palaces, colorful guards, and indisputable authority.  Do any of these indicators apply to Muhammad ?  A few glimpses of his life that may help answer this question follow.
Despite his responsibilities as a prophet, a teacher, a statesman, and a judge, Muhammad  used to milk his goat,5 mend his clothes, repair his shoes,6 help with the household work,7 and visit poor people when they got sick.8  He also helped his companions in digging a trench by moving sand with them.9  His life was an amazing model of simplicity and humbleness.
Muhammad’s  followers loved him, respected him, and trusted him to an amazing extent.  Yet he continued to emphasize that deification should be directed to God and not to him personally.  Anas, one of Muhammad’s companions, said that there was no person whom they loved more than the Prophet Muhammad , yet when he came to them, they did not stand up for him because he hated their standing up for him,10 as other people do with their great people.
Long before there was any prospect of success for Islam and at the outset of a long and painful era of torture, suffering, and persecution of Muhammad  and his followers, he received an interesting offer.  An envoy of the pagan leaders, Otba, came to him saying, “...If you want money, we will collect enough money for you so that you will be the richest one of us.  If you want leadership, we will take you as our leader and never decide on any matter without your approval.  If you want a kingdom, we will crown you king over us...”  Only one concession was required from Muhammad  in return for that, to give up calling people to Islam and worshipping God alone without any partner.  Wouldn’t this offer be tempting to one pursuing worldly benefit?  Was Muhammad  hesitant when the offer was made?  Did he turn it down as a bargaining strategy leaving the door open for a better offer?  The following was his answer: {In the Name of God, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful}  And he recited to Otba the verses of the Quran 41:1-38.11  The Following are some of these verses:
 A revelation from (God), the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful; a Book whereof the verses are explained in detail; a Quran in Arabic, for people who know, giving good news and warning, yet most of them turn away, so they do not listen.  (Quran, 41:2-4)
On another occasion and in response to his uncle’s plea to stop calling people to Islam, Muhammad’s  answer was as decisive and sincere: {I swear by the name of God, O Uncle!, that if they place the sun in my right-hand and the moon in my left-hand in return for giving up this matter (calling people to Islam), I will never desist until either God makes it triumph or I perish defending it.}12
Muhammad  and his few followers did not only suffer from persecution for thirteen years but the unbelievers even tried to kill Muhammad  several times.  On one occasion they attempted to kill him by dropping a large boulder, which could barely be lifted, on his head.13  Another time they tried to kill him by poisoning his food.14  What could justify such a life of suffering and sacrifice even after he was fully triumphant over his adversaries?  What could explain the humbleness and nobility which he demonstrated in his most glorious moments when he insisted that success is due only to God’s help and not to his own genius?  Are these the characteristics of a power-hungry or a self-centered man?

Miracles Performed by the Prophet Muhammad (S.A.W.S)

Many miracles were performed by the Prophet Muhammad  by God’s permission.  These miracles were witnessed by many people.  For example:
n  When the unbelievers in Makkah asked the Prophet Muhammad  to show them a miracle, he showed them the splitting of the moon.1
n  Another miracle was the flowing of water through Muhammad’s  fingers when his companions got thirsty and had no water except a little in a vessel.  They came to him and told him that they had no water to make ablution nor to drink except for what was in the vessel.  So, Muhammad  put his hand in the vessel, and the water started gushing out between his fingers.  So, they drank and made ablution.  They were one thousand five hundred companions.2
There were also many other miracles that were performed by him or which happened to him.

Sunday 11 January 2015

Biblical Prophecies on the Advent of Muhammad (S.A.W.S)

The Biblical prophecies on the advent of the Prophet Muhammad  are evidence of the truth of Islam for people who believe in the Bible.
In Deuteronomy 18,Moses stated that God told him: “I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brothers; I will put my words in his mouth, and he will tell them everything I command him.  If anyone does not listen to my words that the prophet speaks in my name, I myself will call him to account.” (Deuteronomy 18:18-19).1
From these verses we conclude that the prophet in this prophecy must have the following three characteristics:
1)  That he will be like Moses.
2)  That he will come from the brothers of the Israelites, i.e. the Ishmaelites.
3)  That God will put His words in to the mouth of this prophet and that he will declare what God commands him.
Let us examine these three characteristics in more depth:

1)  A prophet like Moses:

There were hardly any two prophets who were so much alike as Moses and Muhammad .  Both were given a comprehensive law and code of life. Both encountered their enemies and were victorious in miraculous ways.  Both were accepted as prophets and statesmen.  Both migrated following conspiracies to assassinate them.  Analogies between Moses and Jesus overlook not only the above similarities but other crucial ones as well.  These include the natural birth, the family life, and death of Moses and Muhammad  but not of Jesus.  Moreover Jesus was regarded by his followers as the Son of God and not exclusively as a prophet of God, as Moses and Muhammad  were and as Muslims believe Jesus was.  So, this prophecy refers to the Prophet Muhammad  and not to Jesus, because Muhammad  is more like Moses than Jesus.
Also, one notices from the Gospel of John that the Jews were waiting for the fulfillment of three distinct prophecies.  The first was the coming of Christ.  The second was the coming of Elijah.  The third was the coming of the Prophet.  This is obvious from the three questions that were posed to John the Baptist: “Now this was John’s testimony, when the Jews of Jerusalem sent priests and Levites to ask him who he was.  He did not fail to confess, but confessed freely, “I am not the Christ.”  They asked him, “Then who are you?  Are you Elijah?”  He said, “I am not.”  “Are you the Prophet?”  He answered, “No.” (John 1:19-21).  If we look in a Bible with cross-references, we will find in the marginal notes where the words “the Prophet” occur in John 1:21, that these words refer to the prophecy of Deuteronomy 18:15and 18:18.2  We conclude from this that Jesus Christ is not the prophet mentioned in Deuteronomy 18:18.

2) From the brothers of the Israelites:

Abraham had two sons, Ishmael and Isaac (Genesis 21).  Ishmael became the grandfather of the Arab nation, and Isaac became the grandfather of the Jewish nation.  The prophet spoken of was not to come from among the Jews themselves, but from among their brothers, i.e. the Ishmaelites.  Muhammad , a descendant of Ishmael, is indeed this prophet.
Also, Isaiah 42:1-13 speaks of the servant of God, His “chosen one” and “messenger” who will bring down a law. “He will not falter or be discouraged till he establishes justice on earth.  In his law the islands will put their hope.” (Isaiah 42:4).  Verse 11, connects that awaited one with the descendants of Kedar.  Who is Kedar?  According to Genesis 25:13, Kedar was the second son of Ishmael, the ancestor of the Prophet Muhammad .

3) God will put His words in the mouth of this prophet:

The words of God (the Holy Quran) were truly put into Muhammad’s  mouth.  God sent the Angel Gabriel to teach Muhammad  the exact words of God (the Holy Quran) and asked him to dictate them to the people as he heard them.  The words are therefore not his own.  They did not come from his own thoughts, but were put into his mouth by the Angel Gabriel.  During the life time of Muhammad , and under his supervision, these words were then memorized and written by his companions.
Also, this prophecy in Deuteronomy mentioned that this prophet will speak the words of God in the name of God.  If we looked to the Holy Quran, we will find that all its chapters, except Chapter 9, are preceded or begin with the phrase, “In the Name of God, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful.”
 
Another indication (other than the prophecy inDeuteronomy) is that Isaiah ties the messenger connected with Kedar with a new song (a scripture in a new language) to be sung to the Lord (Isaiah 42:10-11).  This is mentioned more clearly in the prophecy of Isaiah“and another tongue, will he speak to this people” (Isaiah 28:11 KJV).  Another related point, is that the Quran was revealed in sections over a span of twenty-three years.  It is interesting to compare this with Isaiah 28 which speaks of the same thing, “For it is: Do and do, do and do, rule on rule, rule on rule; a little here, a little there.” (Isaiah 28:10).
Note that God has said in the prophecy of Deuteronomy 18“If anyone does not listen to my words that the prophet speaks in my name, I myself will call him to account.” (Deuteronomy, 18:19).  This means that whoever believes in the Bible must believe in what this prophet says, and this prophet is the Prophet Muhammad .

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