Re: Have you ever questioned your belief?
My quest for religious studies started with the question about my faith. There was a time when i could have gone to either direction,I dont know how ALLAH saved me from going towards wrong direction.
Anyway dont want to recollect those days, but it was around the time i joined GS (a year before to be exact). then i became quite harsh/agressive before normalizing(what i think) after bit of further study.
Re: Have you ever questioned your belief?
I am kind of going through such a phase right now. It’s allowed in Islam to keep non believing female prisoners of war as loundis. I know Christianity allowed slavery too but I found it hard esp knowing the Shaba had them too. I had a hard few days but kept my Iman thinking that it was the seventh century and times were different then. But it’s hard. Wishing people could shed more light on this in a positive way.
Re: Have you ever questioned your belief?
Most people will coup with this with same thought as the bold part. Even when I read second sentence in your comment, I came up with same reason. Slavery continued in Muslim world till 19th century when it was banned due to intervention from Europe. Islam did talked about good treatment of slaves and even freedom of slaves as a kaffara for certain sins, but it didn’t ban slavery.
Re: Have you ever questioned your belief?
^ Because people from that era, were not ready to ban slavery. Just like they were not ready to abolish polygamy. Telling them to treat slaves better and advising them to free slaves were means to evolve towards improvement, as was telling them to have four wives instead of dozens. So how can these teachings be interpreted and implemented in today’s society?
Over here there is a maulana, whom I converse with from time to time. He is in his early 60s, born and bred in Pakistan, moved here for about 15 years ago. He always tells me, we must reinterpret the words of god, over and over again, always in light of contemporary time. This is a continuous process, which must never come to a halt. And he conveys the same message in his khutbas.
Re: Have you ever questioned your belief?
Mercedes is not only expensive, it is not very fuel efficient. Wish you were riding on top of public transportation powered by green energy.
Re: Have you ever questioned your belief?
There appears to be predominantly two sets of responses
The analogy that comes to mind re #2](http://www.paklinks.com/gs/usertag.php?do=list&action=hash&hash=2) is the Ferguson grand jury (or other such instances). Where there is a pretense of a fact finding process. With the end result a foregone conclusion
Re: Have you ever questioned your belief?
Re: Have you ever questioned your belief?
Definitely. I had too many atheist friends and being a Muslim just didn’t make sense anymore. It was even dumber to follow something just because enough parents are. I know that I wasn’t quite ready to shed being a Muslim but a little older I know I would have.
But I have been lucky Allah gave me guidance in a very…direct way. I was pondering over Allah’s existence and in the background someone turned on Surah Rahman with translation in urdu. It was like Allah was talking to me and directly asking me keh tum koun koun si naimat ko jhutlao ge? I had goosebumps for half the day because I was so freaked out. Somebody’s prayers for me were answered that day.
In university my closest friend was a regular praying person and just by accompanying her to the Prayer room I started playing because if I was going to wait for her I might as well pray.
Re: Have you ever questioned your belief?
I don’t think they viewed them as “loundis”. If our landlord feudal families implement these ideas in that way, doesn’t mean this was how it was intended.
Interestingly, Rasulullah treated slaves with kindness and encouraged the freeing of slaves. If all of them were mandated to be freed at once, the economy would not have been able to handle thousands of indigent people in the economy. No one would give them jobs, and many of them were grown adults and elderly with no skills except housekeeping, farming, etc.
Freeing them all at once would have led to Jim Crow type laws. If you free 1000 slaves, that’s nice and dandy, but someone needs to invest education and capital in them to generate economic activity for them. But if there are only 10 extra jobs on the market in one town, then freeing 1000 slaves will be detrimental for the whole town. These people will be forced into prostitution and into crime. Which is what happened when slavery was abolished in the US and the social effects of that we see until this day.
Now yes, I think the Sahabah could have done better in hastening the end to slavery since the economy in the first century of the Islamic empire grew like crazy, but that was then, and this is now. I’m not sure if we can apply the same economic principles to that time period. Empire grew but with it’s citizens also grew too.
One thing to keep in mind is if the slave asks for freedom, for you to NOT give it, probably goes against the basics of the Quran. But I think probably what happened at the time was prisoners were commonly taken in war, and commonly raped, and so by comparison, Islamic treatment of prisoners was superbly humane. Slavery was common and mistreatment of slaves common, and that too was abolished; if you kept a slave, you had to treat them like family. So in that scenario you can imagine plenty of people wanting to stay on as servants. They probably did not see slavery the way we see it today, that is the slaves themselves. Free room/board, free meals, no trudging around to find work, small skillset - sounds like a good deal to me.
As for sleeping with them, again, there are clear verses you can’t take any woman against her will. So if there was any sex going on, it was theoretically consentual. If it wasn’t, we will never hear that side of the story anyway, but I’m sure if enough people were being raped by the sahabah, they wouldn’t have been sahabah for long, right?
Re: Have you ever questioned your belief?
^ The last para has round roti written all over it.
After reading the post, one can conclude 2 things
Hence
“Let he who has never sinned cast the first stone”
“Turn the other cheek”
“The meek shall inherit the earth”
A true liberal.
Re: Have you ever questioned your belief?
Well technically its not rape according to Islam. Also, Islam did not give rise to slavery, there was slavery before this and the bible actually mentions this and asks slaves to submits to their masters no matter how harsh they may be. In Islam, slaves are encouraged to be freed and be treated kindly and not be given more work than they can handle. They can even buy back their freedom.
However, slavery was not abolished altogether and yes, Muslims were also captured y the other sides including women and children. There are Quranic verses saying that men cannot sleep with anyone other than their wives and who their right hand posses (meaning slaves). There are stories in Sahih Buhakri and other authentic books of hadith that mention non believing female prisoners of war being kept as slaves and also that their marriages to their non believing husbands get annulled once they are captured. People from the companions of the Messenger of Allah (SW) believed it was sinful to have intercourse with them due to their husbands from the idolaters, so Allah Subhan Taalah revealed about that: “Also [prohibited are] women already married, except those whom your right hands possess” i.e. they are permissible for you, when their waiting period finishes. (4:24). In Surah al-Ahzab: “O prophet! We have made lawful to you your wives to whom you have paid their dowers; and those whom your right hand possesses out of the prisoners of war whom Allah has given to you as spoils of war.” (33:50). No captives came in the battles of Badr, Uhud or Ahzab but they did come in latter battles. The imams or commanders themselves distribute the spoils of war, the soldier is not allowed to take the spoils themselves.
Thing is everyone was doing these kind of things in those days not just the Muslims so it was the social norm, no matter how abhorrent it may sound to us now. Like in Pakistan, maids and servants are treated generally as sub humans, sitting on the carpet or floor while the master or mistress of the house sits on teh sofa etc while we in the West cannot think of doing these things.
Re: Have you ever questioned your belief?
Not sure..if you have read beginning of Surah Al Baqarah. We are instructed to believe in unseen. So you’re asking yourself something which is only and only beneficial..if you this were to raise your iman not the other way around.
Almost every other day, I do. But it’s not my faith that I question. It’s the whole concept of religion that I started questioning. But I guess I chickened out and run back to the faith.
Re: Have you ever questioned your belief?
Yes. Allah mentions belief in ghayb before salah in beginning of surah Baqarah. And that’s clever of Allah. In our salah, we worship Allah whom is ghayb or unseen. In salah, we seek refuge with Allah from the shaitan…whom we cannot see. We say salam to the angels on our shoulders whom we also can’t see. We recite durood on the Prophet SAWS whom we have never seen. Salah is a good deed among others and the accumulation of good and bad deeds can lead to heaven or hell…two places we have not seen. Our salah contains so many aspects of the ghayb that belief in ghayb is maybe like a pre-requisite to salah. So, it reflects Allah’s wisdom that he mentioned ghayb first.
Re: Have you ever questioned your belief?
Salah = karma
Ghayb = dharma?
Re: Have you ever questioned your belief?
Ghayb means invisible…or as in hindi/urdu “ghaib ho jaana” …to become invisble? Ring a bell now?
Salah is the Arabic word for namaz.
Re: Have you ever questioned your belief?
“Ring a bell” is appropriate choice of words since I knew what ghaib meant. Ghayb threw me off since I read it as Arabic (which it probably is), and my mind just turned off a switch.
Ippo purinjidu
Re: Have you ever questioned your belief?
Just saw the meaning of salah. When I saw “good deed” earlier, I just assumed it was equivalent of karma, the precursor to which is dharma.
Re: Have you ever questioned your belief?
I may have got my prepositions mixed up above - of and to sometimes throw me off. Off topic Rulez
Re: Have you ever questioned your belief?
Yes. At one point, I did question which religion was the right one and how would I know. Then I started researching the one religion I was born into and I went straight to the source and read the translation. By 2nd surah, I was amazed at the wisdom of the words. For every other line, I had to pause and ponder in awe.