March 25, 2009, 10:18 pm by dc-agape.

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Surāh 109 Al Kāfirūn: The Disbelievers

With little doubt this surāh is about polytheism.  Maulana Muhammad Ali makes it clear that a disbeliever was anyone who worshipped idols.  As a result, the revelation of this surāh is most definitely out-of-date for most of the world.  If you want to push the issue…this surāh could include the Trinity of Christianity and the US worship of the Almighty Dollar. 

Basically, the gist of this surāh is how those who serve Allāh are different than those who do not.  The followers of Islam serve a different supernatural being than the other people do.  Do to this, those who worship and follow Allah will receive recompense.  Oddly, this revelation of the Prophet says the exact same thing of the Disbeliever…they will receive recompense.  The definition of recompense (Dictionary.com) is “to repay or reward”.  The English translation does not differentiate positive or negative reward in this surāh.

Since this surāh applies to polytheism and has a lack of differentiation, this revelation is meaningless to both Atheist and Christians.  Neither group receives any new concept from this surāh.  Even the Hinduism religion is left wondering what recompense they will receive.  It turns out a Hindu proverb says:

Success comes to those who make sincere efforts.

This quote tells the followers of Hinduism the exact opposite of what the meaning of surāh 109 attempts to imply.  When different religions contradict each other, no one changes their minds.  That, of course, is the problem with any disagreement (religious or not).  Without significant, overwhelming evidence no difference can ever be overcome.  In the end no religion can provide that significant, overwhelming evidence.  Many have vague verses like surāh 109; others claim that something exists after death.  In both cases, no evidence is present.  Even the evidence that is provided is so ambiguous that contradictions exist.  Since religion is unchanging it does not have the mechanisms to adjust to these conditions.  Only science has the mechanism to adjust to these problems.  That mechanism is the ability to adjust to new information.  But when science is faced with “unchanging” religion neither wins.  It is impossible for science to adjust to the unchanging, for when that happens it is no longer science.

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March 25, 2009, 8:57 am by dc-agape.

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Surāh 110 Al-Nașr: The Help

In the commentaries we are told that this was the last revelation to the Prophet.  As a result, he has experienced the massive influx of believers from across the all the Arabian nations.  Even with this great paradigm shift, this revelation is directed at requesting help from the supernatural. 

I find it surprising that M Muhammad Ali would “brag” about this accomplishment being such a “wonderful transformation”.  The reason I call it “bragging” is that if he believed there was a supernatural explanation for this, of course the outcome would be exactly this!  But I also call it bragging because he says that no other religion had affected so many people so quickly.  The comparison of Islam to other religions is slightly skewed in Islam’s favor.  Judaism was directed at one specific family.  Christianity was also slow because it was directed at the Jewish community.  If you look at the history of Buddhism (Buddhist Temples) you will see that it spread within 100 years to encompass most, if not all, of India.  This occurred 1000 years before the Prophet.  So using the words electrifying or rapid is exaggeration.  The expansion of Islam (barkati network) was carried out in a much more “brutal” fashion than these other three examples.  Christianity spread rapidly, within the lifetime of Paul (religious tolerance organization), to encompass the entire Mediterranean civilization as far as Asia Minor (The Known World – angelfire.com).

The “help” that the Prophet sought was three-fold.  First it was for himself.  He was asking for help to protect himself from becoming over elated by the swift progress of his revelations.  Second, he recognized that the new converts needed help.  They needed protection for both spiritual and physical harm.  Third, this revelation included help to the oppressors of the religion.  Helping the enemy to understand their error and even forgiveness for the crimes they had committed.

From an Atheistic point of view, these revelations and those of Christianity are not supernatural in origin.  Both men were changing the perspective of corrupt civilizations.  In the Islamic case, polytheism was rampage and lead to fragmentary communities.  In the case of Christianity, Israel was attempting to throw off the shackles of the “oppressive rule” of the Roman Empire.  Both needed something to unify the people, both needed something to give the people hope.  Just as when the Buddha came and created a paradigm shift in India, so too did Jesus and the Prophet.  Remember, the old religions were losing ground and could not explain the problems that were happening to the new generation of people.  Things had changed in all three societies, yet the old way of seeing the world had not changed.  The old religions were just “lip service” to how things were done in the past.  The same thing is occurring today.  Many “Christian” nations are no longer religious (Pew Global Attitudes Project).  And this has been happening for some time.  Just read this from William Butler Yeats in 1920:

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