He (Allah) it is Who has sent His Messenger with the guidance and the Religion of truth, that He may cause it to prevail over all religions, even if those who associate partners with God hate it.” (Al Quran 61:10)
Source/Credit: Calgary Ahmadiyya Muslim Examiner
By Deeba Chaudhry | October 11, 2012
Man has always been dependent on the Providence of God. However, the prosperity generated by the industrial revolution in the last two centuries created an illusion of human self-sufficiency. This illusion and the reaction against the contradictory and irrational Christian dogma gave rise to Deism of the Founding Fathers of our beloved USA, especially the stalwarts like President Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine. Deism in the philosophy of religion is the standpoint that reason and observation of the natural world, without the need for organized religion, can determine that a supreme being created the universe.
Further the term often implies that this supreme being does not intervene in human affairs. Our universe came into being at the time of the Big Bang and is after all not eternal as Aristotle proposed, which created a basis for atheism until the discovery of the expansion of the universe by Edwin Hubble. It is now becoming increasingly known in the scientific circles that there are countless physical constants in the blue print of our universe that make our universe basophilic or suitable for life, once again highlighting the Creator of our universe. All these scientific discoveries highlight the need of a Deist God who created our universe.
But, does He have anything to do with His creation? Is He a Personal God who participates nano-second by nano-second in the affairs of one species among the millions on the planet earth? The recent natural disasters one after another with an increasing frequency in the last decade have, if nothing else, emphasized the vulnerability of human life and the need for a consoler; if not for every human then at least for those who have been immediately affected by such calamities. In the first three months of 2011 alone we have seen disasters in Australia, Brazil and New Zealand and now in Japan. If Tsunami and earthquakes were not enough, the concern for a nuclear disaster is looming large after several explosions in the Fukushima nuclear plant. The agnostics and atheists can preach their theology from the security of their ivory towers but as there is a saying there are no atheists in the foxholes or the observation that the atheists start praying when their plane hits turbulence, the vulnerable who are suffering in these calamities find no choice but to pray for help from Almighty God.
To move from Deism to Monotheism and Personal God in a rational fashion, one needs to consciously decide between Islam and Christianity, rather than fall back in a mindless fashion to the religion that one inherits. The followers of Judaism and Sikhism, the other monotheistic faiths, do not proselytize, perhaps a subtle acknowledgement of lack of universality and perfection. At any rate here the focus is on Christianity and Islam. The lack of the preservation of the word of God in the Bible is becoming increasingly well known in the West, thanks to the university scholars of the New and the Old Testament. Likewise, the dogma of Christianity, like Trinity, atonement and resurrection are increasingly being scrutinized in the light of modern science and rationality of the information age. To give you a sample of these profound and relatively new developments, let me present to you a quote from one of our Founding Fathers, Thomas Paine, the legendary writer of Common Sense in 1776, at the time of independence of USA: “From the time I was capable of conceiving an idea, and acting upon it by reflection, I either doubted the truth of the Christian system, or thought it to be a strange affair; I scarcely knew which it was: but I well remember, when about seven or eight years of age, hearing a sermon read by a relation of mine, who was a great devotee of the church, upon the subject of what is called Redemption by the death of the Son of God. After the sermon was ended, I went into the garden, and as I was going down the garden steps (for I perfectly recollect the spot) I revolted at the recollection of what I had heard, and thought to myself that it was making God Almighty act like a passionate man, that killed his son, when he could not revenge himself any other way; and as I was sure a man would be hanged that did such a thing, I could not see for what purpose they preached such sermons. This was not one of those kind of thoughts that had anything in it of childish levity; it was to me a serious reflection, arising from the idea I had that God was too good to do such an action, and also too almighty to be under any necessity of doing it. I believe in the same manner to this moment; and I moreover believe, that any system of religion that has anything in it that shocks the mind of a child, cannot be a true system.” The theological vulnerability of Christianity is being increasingly exposed in the West and a large portion of sensible population is becoming unaffiliated with Christianity or agnostic. If they genuinely review the basic beliefs of Islam and its scripture they will realize that Islam does not share the vulnerabilities of Christianity outlined above. It is not only theology of Christianity that is defenceless but we find that there is melting away of institution of marriage in the West and break down of other family values, with numerous deleterious effects including almost two million children in foster care in USA. Also, with millions of people losing their homes the revaluation of financial and economic thinking cannot be over emphasized.
At a time when we in the West are exporting freedoms to the Middle East our own religious freedoms are being questioned in USA as well in Europe, with banning of minarets in Switzerland and considerations to do the same in Italy. At a time when the West is introducing democratic values at the point of sword in Iraq and Afghanistan, the very institutional instrument of these wars, the United Nations, remains deeply undemocratic; with five countries with veto rights to crush the common conscience of all the other 200 countries.
Notwithstanding these vulnerabilities, the West has certainly been the creator of the industrial and the information age and it will be a great human loss if the West were to implode like the Roman Empire in the fourth and the fifth centuries. Here we are not only reassured by the human efforts in the broad spread of science and technology in our global village, but by the very word of God, the Holy Quran promises that whatever is useful for humanity is given permanence in the world: He (Allah) sends down water from the sky, so that valleys flow according to their measure, and the flood bears on its surface swelling foam. And from that which they heat in the fire, seeking to make ornaments or utensils comes out foam similar to it. Thus does Allah illustrate truth and falsehood. Now, as to the foam, it goes away as rubbish, but as to that which benefits men, it stays on the earth. Thus does Allah set forth parables. (Al Quran 13:18)
Whatever is frivolous in the Western civilization will fade away over time, but the useful and essential will be preserved as the sun of Islamic teachings will rise from the West. The Holy Prophet Muhammad (Pbuh) had provided the light for the Dark Ages of Europe and the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community believes that his revelations also offer the necessary solutions for our contemporary world. All this information is not meant to serve as fuel for the Islamophobes to drum up their hate mongering. It is not about politics as the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community clearly believes in the separation of Mosque-Church and State. The future of humanity, Islam and the Western world has been prophesized in the Holy Quran and in Hadith. The Hadith, from the famous book of Bukhari, “In the Latter Days, the sun shall rise from the West,” is not the only prophecy about the Latter Days in Islam and Christianity, but, is a part of several prophecies about the Latter Days. Many have been fulfilled in the form of new means of transportation, printing presses, and technologies to transform our planet into a global village and making of zoos, this gives hope to the Muslims that others in the scriptures will be fulfilled in due course of time. Islam will play a pivotal role in the development of the West and the whole of humanity at large. New ideas to transform the humanity have always come from minority groups; this idea is generally attributed to the famous British historian Arnold Toynbee. The Pope Benedict XVI writes in his book Without Roots: The West, Relativism, Christianity, Islam: “We do not know how things will go in Europe in the future. The Charter of Fundamental Rights may be a first step, a sign that Europe is once again consciously seeking its soul. Here we must agree with Toynbee that the fate of a society always depends on its creative minorities.
Christian believers should look upon themselves as just such a creative minority, and help Europe to reclaim what is best in its heritage and to thereby place itself at the service of all humankind.” The key question is whether the Catholic Christianity, any other group or the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community is the ‘creative minority,’ for the future of mankind? To repeat the words of the Pope, “Here we must agree with Toynbee that the fate of a society always depends on its creative minorities. Christian believers should look upon themselves as just such a creative minority, and help Europe to reclaim what is best in its heritage and to thereby place itself at the service of all humankind.” To state the obvious, with 1.3 billion Catholic Christians in the world, the Catholics are not minority. Also, the Catholic Church has been reactive to the forces history for centuries. The fact that the Church has been a timid follower rather than a leader, specially in the last few centuries since the Enlightenment and European renaissance, does not leave her with creative credentials.
Therefore, the role of rescuing mankind does not belong to her. We believe that the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community is that creative minority, given its 125 years of non-violent tradition, its constant emphasis on Universal Brotherhood, its genuine interpretation of pluralistic message of the Holy Quran and the rich tradition of annual Hajj in Islam. This is also a Divine promise: “He (Allah) it is Who has sent His Messenger with the guidance and the Religion of truth, that He may cause it to prevail over all religions, even if those who associate partners with God hate it.” (Al Quran 61:10)
When it comes to ethical and moral teaches, there is more that joins Islam and Christianity than separates them. Once we clean Christianity of the false doctrines of Trinity, Original Sin, and Atonement introduced by St. Paul and St. Augustine then what remains is purely a true subset of Islam. What wonderful news for bringing 3.5 billion people together, Muslims and Christians, almost half the world population, as the sun rises from the West in accordance with the prophecies of the Holy Prophet Muhammadsa. In the words of Sir George Bernard Shaw, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1925, “I have always held the religion of Muhammad in high estimation because of its wonderful vitality! It is the only religion which appears to me to possess that assimilating capacity to the changing phase of existence which can make itself appeal to every age. I have studied him - the wonderful man and in my opinion far from being an anti-Christ, he must be called the Savior of Humanity.” At another occasion he said, “I have prophesied about the faith of Muhammad, that it would be acceptable to the Europe of to-morrow as it is beginning to be acceptable to the Europe of today.”
Read original post here: The Holy Prophet Said: “Sun of Islam Will Rise From The West In The Latter Days"
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