In the name of Allāh,
the Beneficent, the Merciful.
Peace and Blessings of Allāh on Mohammad.
DEDICATED TO
Allāh–the Glorious and the High,
Lord of the worlds
AND TO
Mohammad–who brought the world
to our feet and eternity to our arms.
*
ISLAM & JUDEO-CHRISTIAN HERITAGE
Nonie Darwish dogmatized: “Americans are ninety-five percent Christian and built their country according to their Judeo-Christian heritage and not on Muslim principles.” (Now They Call Me Infidel, pp. 179-180).
Nonie Darwish also states: “Many Western converts eventually leave Islam when they discover the ugly other side of the coin in Muslim life; three out of four Western converts, according to some estimates, eventually leave Islam. It is time for Europe and America to reach into their rich Judeo-Christian heritage and champion those values that make them strong and can sustain and give purpose to the youth of the West.” (Cruel And Usual Punishment, p. 252).
Response: To take the latter statement first.
The “three out of four Western converts” that “eventually leave Islam,” either did not study Islam or did not have a knowledgeable teacher. (There is no religion that can be shown to be superior to or equal with Islam).
There is no “ugly side” to Islam. the Divinely-crafted system cannot have an “ugly” side. It is Muslims that have an “ugly side;” the un-Islamic works of those who are misguided or unschooled.
What rich Judeo-Christian heritage?
There is nothing “rich” from the “Judeo-Christian heritage.”
-There is nothing “rich” about pluming one’s self as God’s “chosen people” to the exclusion of others –attributing injustice to God;
-there is nothing rich in enslaving “heathen” neighbors and selling daughters into bondage.
-There is nothing rich about God putting one man’s sin onto others and then having an innocent man murdered for everybody’s sin –attributing injustice to God and making him complicit in murder;
-there is nothing “rich” about stuffing God in a woman’s belly and drawing Him out her vagina to teach man –a baboon is a baboon no matter what cosmetics surgery and silk suit you wrap on him: his brain and mentality is still baboon;
-there is nothing “rich” in regarding those who are not of your race as “dogs” and “swine” and preaching in “parables” so these “dogs” and “swine” would not understand and be converted and saved;
-there is nothing “rich about a God and son of God needing to eat butter and honey so that he may know to choose the good and refuse the evil;
-there is nothing “rich” about the Book that has nothing to foster material progress;
-there is nothing “rich” about the Book that relegates woman to her lifetime of ruler-ship under her husband and in silence and “all subjection” and views her only as object of sex and as transgressor, defiler and betrayer of man; and who can be discarded just for being unclean. (See Christianity-women).
The “Judeo-Christian heritage” has no meaningful “purpose” to offer Western youths, or adults (or anyone else).
What the West and her youths are enjoying are the bequeaths of Secularism influenced by Islamic teachings. Islam is the only Divinely chosen Religion and Shari’ah is the Supreme System.
Rather than blindly follow their misguided leaders and ignorant writers “the youth of the West” (and also Muslims) need to study the Qur’an for themselves; and the best way to begin this is to obtain a copy of Muhammad Ali’s translation of the Qur’an which can be viewed, and perhaps downloaded, at: www. muslim.org (Muhammad Ali’s comprehensive work The Reli-gion of Islam has recently been translated into Arabic and can be obtained online).
2. Regarding Nonie Darwish’s statement:“Americans are ninety-five percent Christian and built their country according to their Judeo-Christian heritage and not on Muslim principles.”
Response: What “Judeo-Christian heritage”?
There is nothing in the Bible to foster material progress.
Three thousand years after Moses and a thousand years after Christ America, Europe and the rest of the world were waltzing around with flint tools and torches; whereas a mere hundred years after the advent of Mohammad Arabs/Muslims –backward camel-drivers– were sitting in “thrones of Caesars” and lording the world. From its inception Islam gave Muslims the impetus to higher learning and science. Not even Christian nations find anything useful in the Bible; that is why they torpedoed it and turned to Islamic lines before they began to make material progress.
The Doctrine that exhorts man to preach only and to depend on God to send him victuals not only impels its followers to be loafers and mendicants but is a recipe for stagnation and backwardness (and which Christianity is as her history attests: Christianity is an enemy to knowledge, see Christianity-enemy to knowledge):
-“Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth…But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven”–(Matt. 6:19-20);
-“If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell what thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven, and come and follow me”–(Matt. 19:21);
-“It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God”–(Matt. 19:24);
-(Christians are to depend on strangers for food) “As ye go (to) preach…Provide neither gold, nor silver, nor brass in your purses. Nor scrip for your journey, neither two coats, neither shoes, nor yet staves: for the workman is worthy of his meat”–(Matt. 10:7-10. Wonder how these “fishers of men” could have gold and silver seeing that they are to sell their possessions and give the proceeds to the poor and to indelibly brand on their minds that the rich will never get into heaven).
-“Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on…for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things. But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you. Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself”–(Matt. 6:25-34).
(If America and Europe were to follow such doctrines, they would plummet from the pinnacle of progress like giant lead-balls into the black hole of backwardness. If everyone was to follow these teachings of Christ to depend on others the whole world would be a place of loafers and mendicants. Not even Christians follow these ridiculous doctrines. In fact, not even the Church, the “vicar of Christ,” follows them; herself having billions in assets. And the Pope and Bishops and Bible thumpers must have loads of gold or cash or credit card(s) on them, and the best and expensive coats and shoes; and the Pope seems to have the biggest of “staves”).
Whereas Jesus advocated and encouraged loafing, mendacity, stagnation and backwardness, Mohammad taught us to be industrious, independent, educated and self-sufficient: “With the light of Islam, and through the torch of knowledge and civilization lit in Arabia, a new era dawned not only over Arabia, but also over other countries. Europe remained the longest in darkness, and it was only after the torch of knowledge had been lighted in Spain by the Muslims that both the Renaissance and the Reformation came.”1
The Qur’an is not only the Criterion between religious false-hood and truth. The Qur’an also gave man guidance for his material progress. From the panoramic pen of Khwaja Kamal-ud-Din: The “Qur’an announced as follows:
(a) The whole world was full of potentialities, (52:4; 2:22.)
(b) Everything in the universe was for a purpose, (3:190; 14:33)
(c) They all were for our service, use and benefit, (15:19-20)
(d) Not a single thing in the whole universe, however insignificant it might be, had been created without its proper use; they have been created to minister to us; and that everything we need is already provided, (3:190; 14:33)
(e) No labour is wasted, (29:58)
(f) Right actions would receive ample reward, 6:161; 7:170; 12:56; 18:30)
(g) Idleness should gain nothing, (94:7)
(h) Nothing in the universe is changeable in its nature, (30:30)
(i) The whole world is chained by the law. Everything in it follows certain laws, and we can turn everything in it to our advantage if we discover and use the said law. The laws of Nature are none other than the Will of the Most High, (3:82)
(j) The laws of Nature are unalterable, (17:77; 35:43)
(k) Knowledge and the discovery of new sciences will enable us to turn these things in Nature to our use, (2:31; 2:34; 96:5)
(l) Things in Nature stand in a complimentary relation to each other, (86:11-12)
(m) They combine with each other in a fixed proportion to create new things, (87:2-3)
(n) God’s blessings are open to all, (1:1)
(o) His ways are shown to him who seeks after them, (29:69)
(p) There are material treasures in the world for us to work upon. The word Rahman literally conveys this idea that they are open to all and ready to respond to our needs if properly approached, (1:1; 17:20; 67:3)
(q) Everything is already designed and comes to perfection under the principle of Evolution, (20:50)
(r) Man had not to create anything. Everything was already in existence. He had only to strive and use his limbs and he would have an ample reward, (53:39-40)
(s) Everything is for our good but its mishandling makes it evil, (4:79)
(t) Good or evil even in the least measure brings recompense, (7:8-9)
(u) No one will bear our burden, (17:15)
(v) The whole universe is in a measured order, and we have to observe it if we wish to invent other devices or things for our comfort, (15:21)
(w) There are limits and bounds for everything, their trespass entails loss.
(x) Human nature possesses the best of capabilities, but we need divine guidance for progress, (95:4)
(y) There are pitfalls in our ways, (95:5)
(z) True success only comes to him who exerts to excel others in his occupation of life, (79:1 to 5). (Introduction to the Study of the Holy Qur’an, pp. 15-19).
With such a guide before them, it was not surprising that early Muslims should have become keenly interested in scientific research.…They were the founders of a new civilization. Nay, further, they began to rule Nature, and through it, conquered the world. For centuries they continued supreme, but the riches they thus accumulated, subsequently made them slothful and wrought their ruin. Abuse, excess and self–indulgence shook the structure of their power to its foundations, leaving them an easy prey to others.
The early Muslims, however, bequeathed a vast heritage to their Western successors in the form of that learning which the latter have since pursued under the name of modern science.” “Algebra, Statics, Conic Sections and other branches of applied mathematics are amongst Muslim discoveries.” (Ibid. pp. 20-21).
“Muslims were admittedly the founders of modern culture. …It is also an admitted historical fact that there was nothing in pre-Islamic culture to inspire them for scientific research. The Qur’an came to advocate the acquisition of knowledge for the first time. The Holy Prophet bade his followers to go to far off countries in search of it.….In short, while St. Paul deprecated the law and called it a curse to humanity, the Qur’an respected it and made the observance of it our religion, as Islam literally means “Obedience to the Law.”….The formal Church had also to assert that sin was innate in human nature, since sin is a breach of the Law. The dictum that man is sinful by nature involves an assumption that he is incapable of observing the Law. It is a most despicable libel on our character to assert that we are criminal by nature. If sin is innate in our nature, it is an anomaly if legislation exists in Christian land. Parliament and all other legislative bodies are a mere infringement on our liberty….It was this principle, no doubt, that for centuries retarded all material progress in Christendom, which began to move forward only when the Church dogmas had lost their hold on the human mind.”
….All pre-Islamic religions dealt chiefly with a few doctrines of morality, ignoring other aspects of human nature….The Holy Book treats of all subjects –morality, spirituality, sociology, economics, politics and aesthetic matters. But the beauty of the Book lies in the fact that it does not separate one thing from the other. It creates a kind of agreement among them all, and works them out into one harmonious whole.
The Book promulgates certain principles that are broad enough to apply equally to every aspect of the question. For instance, it refers to the doctrine of Evolution and its aspects, while elucidating most of its salient truths. The principle of evolution, it should not be forgotten, was taught to the world for the first time in Islam. The Qur’an began with a chief Divine Attribute –Rabb-ul-‘Alamin. Though this Attribute, in the first place, means the Creator, the Maintainer and the Nourisher of the various worlds, the word Rabb itself is very rich in significance. Its English translation “Lord,” which we find in almost all English translations of the Qur’an, is not an adequate one….It also means the Originator of things and their Combiner to create new forms–(Qur’an 87:1-3)….Rabb also signifies One Who reposes all the faculties in things at their inception, and then brings them to perfection, to attain which they pass through various stages. (Lane’s Arabic-English Lexicon). In short, the Arabic word conveys all that is connoted by Evolution, as well as every other thing necessary for its functioning.…There is no word in any other language to convey all the meanings of Rabb adequately.” (Ibid. pp. 15-21, 23-27).
And in his Open Letters To The Bishops of Salisbury & London, Khwaja Kamal-ud-Din quotes Lord Headley: “Islam annulled fortune-telling, magic and many other obsessions which were predominant at the time of Muhammad. Reason and natural laws replaced them in ruling life. Islam eradicated the idea of a person being entitled to recognition, respect or superiority merely because he was high-born…..the present civilization owes its growth to the influence of Islam.”(p. 147).
“Muslims gave to the world Astronomy, Geology, Chemistry, Botany, the art of Navigation, History and Geography, Medicine and Pharmacy, Mathematics etc. “Muslim Universities opened their doors in Baghdad in the days of Nizam-ul-Mulk, and in Granada in the days of Abdul Rahman to students without distinction, caste, colour or creed, where they were looked after, boarded and lodged at the public expense.”(Ibid. pp.142-143).
(Islam not only gave light/knowledge to the world but in opening their universities “to students without distinction, caste, colour or creed, where they were looked after, boarded and lodged at the public expense,” Islam gave to the world honor and dignity).
Contrastingly, whatever strides secular Europe was making the Christian scourge burned, tortured and/or killed. (See Christianity-enemy to knowledge).
“Americans may be “ninety-five percent Christian” (and this may be so only for census purposes) and Christians may be doing good works but, apart from the body and mythical blood of Jesus Christ (spiritual cannibalism), the only thing “Christian heritage” has bequeathed to America and Europe and the world is evil, intolerance, backwardness, naked hate, and brutal and rabid misogyny (see Christianity-lies, evil, hate; Christianity-enemy to knowledge; Jesus-absurd doctrines).
American and European material achievements did not come from “Judeo-Christian heritage” but from Islamic principles.
Glory, Praise, and thanks to Allāh for sending us Mohammad!
NOTES
1. Muhammad Ali, comm. Qur’an 30:41.