Re: Basic questions, with no malice
I'll answer based on what I've learned. I could be wrong, of course, since I'm not PhD in all this.
Why should anyone believe in the Prophet? Mind you, the question is not about believing in God. If one human is favored with the instant revealations, why not more, why not all? Or was that person more deserving than everyone else? If so in what way - I find this divine intervention very random particularly in view of the disbelief in reincarnation.
Okee.
Point 1: I agree with Destinee's analogy on a student and grades. Why did THAT kid get the A+ in organic chemistry in a class of 200 people (no joke, it happened that way at my university - only one kid got an A in the class that large)? Partly because he worked his behind off. However, its not really accurate to say that he was the only one who worked his butt off. Others did too. My poor roomie nearly had a heart attack after each test. :-(
In addition to the hard work, there was some in-built natural tendency to grasp the subject matter well - to see SN1 and SN2, and E1, and E2 reactions in a way that most other students did not see them. He could see the molecules moving around in his head, and he knew what would be the next step in the mechanism...it was just natural for him.
Likewise, its similar with the Prophet. There was some natural affinity - look at his background. He lost his parents, he made a man of himself at a very young age, he travelled a LOT, so even though he was not too learned book-wise, he still knew a lot (I just read some awesome passage by Descartes regarding this also - Descartes shed the practice of studying philosophy and decided to create his own philosophy - before he devised his famous Method, he was off travelling, fighting in armies in different countries, and basically just getting to know what human nature is all about).
point 2: If one, why not more? Well, er, there were more - there were other prophets...for other generations for other cultures...
Why not more for the arab people in particular? I always saw this in a more physics-kind of way. Its very likely that God is either made of energy or is surrounded by energy - energy so intense, that no human would be able to bear the sound of God's voice or bear the sight of God's light, etc. That's just an example - of course, I really don't know what God looks like. But a HUMAN messenger was needed. Think if God himself, or even if the Angels came to Earth to spread the message. First off, everyone would die of a heart attack, just out of fear (there is no real way to know that Angels have the ability to come in human form - that's just Hollywood-talk, really). Secondly, it wouldn't make the game of Good vs. Evil too fun, would it? Then God would win automatically. Maybe God wants to play around with the disobedient devil for a bit, and we're all caught in cross-fire? Who knows?
Point 3: You talk of re-incarnation and then somehow parallel it to a human recieving divine intervention. Those are 2 different things dude. You can have a faith that rejects the idea of re-incarnation and accept the idea of divine intervention - they're totally separate ideas.
Point 4: I don't know if this is what you're trying to get at...but muslims are supposed to believe that Prophet did recieve divine revelation and he was meant to communicate it to us. Muslims are not supposed to believe IN the prophet, in the sense of worshipping the prophet. He was a messenger, that is all. I think muslims, especially our pakistanis, go out way more than they're supposed to - they really do almost worship him to the point that they emulate petty behaviors like eating with their hands rather than forks and knives. It doesn't matter which way you eat, and its sad that muslims feel that these are the messsages that the Prophet wanted us to learn from him!
Why are there rituals and superstitions instead of mere prayers? For a religion that opposes imagery, why are there symbolisms such as East facing (yeah I know about Mecca but why should one face Mecca), hair growth etc? I feel the anti-imagery and pro-symbolisms are contradictory.
Again, how are you paralleling symbolism and imagery? They're two separate things (even in literature!). Imagery involves exalting a human figure. People make images (statues, paintings, etc) of people they feel are important, or of imaginary figures that they feel are important. The risk is not in the picture itself in fact. Its in the risk that later on after generations go by, that picture may become a worshipped object. Its happened before - its happened to the statue of Mary. I certainly don't think Mary was meant to be worshipped! You can't worship a symbol like the idea of facing East. Have you heard of anyone say "I worship the idea of facing East". No, its something we do, not something we worship.
Now if you're talking about material symbols like statues, then we dont have any of those. You'll have to provide me examples of material symbols that you are interpreting as imagery.
Since, I've clarified that symbols and imagery are two different things in Islam, I would tell you that the idea of facing East is not so much about Mecca being pure (as Destinee states). There are plenty of garbage activities going on in Mecca like porn videos - I kid you NOT.
Rather the symbol of facing East is more to unify muslims...if we all face the same direction when we pray, we're all on equal footing in the end. We're all humans - creations of God. Yes, you might be a big businessman, and I might be a mere peddlar, but in the end, we're both the same. We each have the same body organs, we have the same brain, we have the same life that will terminate soon enough. And we're both accountable for our actions.
Hair - are u talking about trimming hair or shaving your head in Hajj, etc? INterestingly, I had a muslim friend doing her masters (soon phD) in classical Islam, and she was telling me that the literature currently is in a mess. Where people come up with the ideas of Hajj rituals (like throwing stones at the 3 Satan statues), etc...no one has been able to give me a decent answer. Much of it is taken from the Hadith - almost none of the Quran, surprisingly. I personally take the Hadith with a grain of salt, and I surely don't think following the Hadith is COMPULSARY, except in the event that it echoes a principle already discussed in the Quran. Therefore, many of the symbols you will find have some basis in Islam, and many really do not. It's this obsessive focus on these small matters that really has led Muslims off their path and led to the crumbling of the Islamic empire.
But for all this, one really needs to sift thru the literature out there. And it really is in a state of mess. A lot of scholarly work has never been references - surprisingly a lot of that work has come from ancient female scholars. A lot of scholarly work was destroyed when certain regimes took over. And then you also have the problem of scholars coming up with different theories on the same subjects. For example, one guy from Iraq or Syria (can't remember) actually stated in his work that doing mathematics is Haraam. He was an ancient scholar - from the time of the Islamic empire. Then you had scholars who opposed him and claimed that Mathematics IS Islamic.
That's why, really, you need to question a lot of what you're told. I positively hate it when people on this board say "Its Islamic, you can't question it". For much of what we do and think is really not Islamic, but just a product of some scholar's work that we've taken to be the Truth.
If God made all including all humans, why after creating non-Muslims for some reason, will the revealations state non-beleavers are infidels?
The pattern goes like this. God creates a human. Each human. Each human is born with a blank slate. God KNOWS what's going to happen to this person, and if they're going to heaven or Hell, but God also allows for repentance and forgiveness...so you may start off as a 3 year old destined on the path of destruction and hell, and actually wind up on the heaven path if you somehow realized you were wrong.
This is a complicated problem which I dont think ANYONE can really sort out well enough. It involves the concept of fate and free will. If God KNOWS you're going to hell when he created you, then why give you a choice in the matter...because then you really don't have a choice...
I always thought of it as this. Let's say you have a friend. The friend has made the choice to cheat on an exam. You have inadvertently found out that they're going to cheat because you read something in a diary or because you overheard them stating it. So, even though you had no influence in the choice, you KNEW they were going to cheat. Let's say that a day before the exam, your friend decides not to cheat, and this time they just tell you "hey man, I was thinking of cheating on that exam, yo, but I figured not to do that..." They've changed their path, and you had no influence on that, but you KNOW they've changed their path. Just knowing something does not necessarily mean that you interfered in that decision.
And just based on statistical reasons, if you have billions upon billions upon billions of people (think of all the humans that have ever existed - the total number!), and each person is given a choice to do bad or good, you know that statistically there will be many that will choose to do bad! So, therefore, God knows there will be infidels. Any basic mathematician would know it, so why wouldn't God?
NOTE: I'd appreciate objective answers. No offence or insult intended.
Not at all, they're good questions.