Prejudice And Unfairness Of Non-Islamic Traditions Towards Islam
THE INALIENABLE AND INCURABLE PREJUDICE AND UNFAIRNESS OF NON-ISLAMIC TRADITIONS TOWARDS ISLAM
One of the incredible blindnesses plaguing non-Islamic religious (and sometimes also secular) thinkers is their habit of exaggerating Islam’s own so-called barbarisms while playing down or totally ignoring those of others.
Basically speaking, the only two non-modern features of Islamic law, namely polygamy and the stoning to death of adulterers are regarded as ammunition givers to Islam’s critics.
The fact is that polygamy has been practiced all over the world and in the West has been practiced in its very worst form- adultery, debauchery, prostitution and- promiscuity, which is today’s the greatest trait of Western sexuality. The word polygamy comes from two Greek words poly which means many and gamy which means not so much marriage as sexual union in its coarsest sense. Greeks to this day swear at others they are angry with by shouting at them ‘gammodo manassu etc.” , i.e., “Let me f… your mother etc.” and polygamy more fully and realistically means copulation of one person with many others in the same period. This was exactly what the Westerners have been doing all centuries and today they are doing it more than ever before. In the heyday of Christianity even popes and bishops were polygamous and often openly so and kings and princes to this day have been famous for their polygamous feats, again often openly.
Recent British history is no exception. Why? Because some men and to a lesser extent some women are in-sa-ti-able and no matter who says what they will go out and hunt for new sexual partners. What Islam did is to re-cog-nise this unalterable fact and re-gu-late it so as to minimise its unavoidable ill effects. The Prophet sws himself noted this when he comforted Muslim women in his Medina who were complaining about the pains of sharing a husband with other women. He in effect said “Men are inconvenienced by having to go to war and possibly get killed. Keeping patience with polygamous status are the women’s equivalent of such inavoidable suffering”. Why some men can have up to four wives while no women may have more than one husband? Chiefly because marriage is chiefly about producing and bringing up genuine offspring in the sense that a man must feel sure that what his wife bears is his own child and not somebody else’s who somehow accessed his wife. In the case of a woman having more than one husband the offspring cannot be reliably identified as belonging to any of them. Additionally the practical problems, many of them social as well as psychological and medical, make Islamic polygamy the only viable option and not the other way round, i.e., a woman having many husbands.
Lastly Islamic polygamous marriage has always been a rarity except among the royalty and the rich, who always formed a small minority over the vast masses who could mostly remain monogamous. As such it served to divert the excess sexual appetite of the in every sense powerful males from indiscriminate sexual adventures to a regulated and responsible arrangement in the best interests of all parties potentially affected- the polygamous husband himself, his wives (and sometimes also concubines), the children born to them and the other men spared cuckolding and other women spared seduction or rape! The optimality of Islamic polygamy in an incurably imperfect world should be beyond doubt. By disdaining and rejecting such a masterpiece of realism Western culture ended up causing social, sexual and moral problems at least ten times as worse than polygamy- all sexually possible practices have broken loose like floods breaking their dams and from paedophilia to incest all the foulest and most deprived tastes and practices exploded on the society.
The second objection to Islam, namely the terrible punishment for adultery.
With few exceptions, throughout history marriage has been the honoured medium of human reproduction and even many mammalian and bird species based their reproduction on stable unions of one kind or another. But confining ourselves to the humankind the reason seems obvious. So start with both men and women are normally and often intensely sexually jealous for self-reproduction is a form of personal survival and when it comes to survival people become ferocious.
To make the picture more concrete let us look it this way. A man wants to reproduce himself for surviving by proxy and if he is reasonable he realises that he must (i) find and choose a woman who appeals to him as a sexual partner- we must remember that beauty is basically based on bodily symmetry and economy which causes us to find a person handsome. Since handsomeness is not too common and each wants to get the best possible competition for beautiful people becomes intense. Everything being relative we may generalise this observation that, like the buyers of commodities each customer wants to get the best he can possibly get. This competition creates tension and jealousy (women also compete similarly given the chance (ii) Because marriage is the most serious and permanent invrestment one can normally make, once married a husband need feel sure that he has exclusive access to his wife so that what she bears is his genuine offspring and not another man by way of seduction or rape. After all the husband not only will foot the bill of raising another’s child for no good reason and if he knows the wrong ancestry suffer terrible agonies of being cheated in a mortal way (iii) Lastly, incest (sexual relations between to closely related persons) is regarded a curse among almost all races and civilisations and that is based in good genetic reasons- it seriously compromises genetic health. Additionally and at least equally importantly it destroys the most desirable numinous love and respect and honour between the participants. Hence the mere idea is horrendous in the eyes of all reasonable and honourable people raised on the right principles and who have always been the overwhelming majority.
With this compelling biological, social and spiritual basis underlying it marriage and the intense sexual jealousy underpinning and enveloping it can only be justified. For this reason all major civilizations regarded marriage and marital fidelity as morally very precious and always supported their sanctity by legal sanctions which often included death penalty for a gross violation. Adultery and its possible production of a bastard has been seen as a form of murder because it normally destroyed both a marriage and the welfare of any offspring from that marriage and these on top of the terrible psychological shock and indelible sense of lost honour caused to the betrayed and cheated parties- because there shall be at least two such parties- the cheated spouse and the legitimate offspring.
Because jealousy is such an unpredictable source of terrible behaviour, left to its own devices murder may and often does follow it in the case of sexual jealousy at least. This often becomes unwritten law in tribal societies and compounded by other tribal competitions and tensions lie behind the notorious frequency and ferocity of bloodshed among tribes. This still is the case for the majority of mankind because most of the countries making up our modern world are still tribal in social structure and ethos. Almost all Africa and most of Asia are tribal while South America retain the same sexual ethos despite being mostly non-tribal.
It was to such tribal world that Muhammad sws had come and what he tried to do in the matter of ameliorating the sexual attitudes and conduct of his countrymen as compared what he actually could achieve is simply mind boggling.
We should firstly note that the Qur’an almost totally ignore the terrible sexual habits of the then Arabs and in its regulations of sexual matters lies down incredibly lenient punishments for sexual offences. To start with, execution is out of question for any degree of sexual offence. Without making any distinction between the two, the Qur’an prescribes a hundred lashes in public for the punishment of full sexual union between any two adults, whether married or single. But it soon became alarmingly obvious that the new Islamic public would have none of such lenience. They were, for centuries, used to mercilessly killing the culprits with their own hands without recourse to public prosecution and trial. Although the Prophet sws tried his best to hold his ground of leniency he eventually realised that the prejudices against the sexually fallen were simply murderously strong and implacable. Some told him bluntly that Allah or Revelation ot not, they were going to kill their offending spouse and the offender on the spot!
This arbitrary and summary justice could not be allowed to prevail. So, he did the next best thing and tried to institutionalise the punishment of sexual offences thereby taking it away from the hands of the persons affected and carry it into public care. In other words he was creating a modern state where offences could only be punished by the public authority after a proper trial at a court of law. No other civilisation had done this before Muhammad sws in the matter of sexual offences at least and this alone puts him above all reformers in history. Then, without the Qur’an changing its lenient stance on sexual offences the Prophet sws reluctantly allowed the Jewish practice of stoning to death of an adulterer, i.e, a married person willingly having sexual relations with a person other than his or her marriage partner.
What is more, the offence should be brought to public arena and proven at a court of law which, if it found the accused guilty would sentence him or her to execution in public in the form of a public stoning to death. And still additionally the proving of the accusation was made very difficult by stipulating that four reputable witnesses had to be brought to give witness against the accused swearing that they have seen the act fully and explicitly- which in practice proved very difficult to realise. Lastly, whenever a man or woman came to the Prophet sws to confess to an adulterous act he sws tried his desperate best to dissuade them from admitting it in public but instead go away and ask forgiveness from Allah in private and never say anything about it to anybody. How much more understanding, enlightened and civilised can anybody be short of abolishing all sexual restraints? Yet, he fully defended sexual jealousy and honour and invoked Allah as equally adamant on sexual propriety at all times. What he was actually was doing was removing the arbitrary, frequently mistaken and regularly too terrible punishment of sexual offences in private hands.
To sum up: Islam has been the most lenient in sexual matters without in the least decriminalising the terribly unjust and hurtful act of marital betrayal and left to time the ruling out of a punishment like stoning to death which actually became very rare as and when Muslim societies attained higher and higher levels of civilisation like in the Abbasid and the Ottoman times. Ironically on the other hand, the pre-Islamic private and arbitrary punishment of real or suspected sexual offences is continuing among all Islamic tribal societies from Pakistan to rural Turkey which proves what a tough job the Prophet sws had on his hands. Allah did prescribe very lenient sanctions against sexual offences but some otherwise good Muslims could not stomach such leniency in their sexual extremism and the Prophet sws had apparently to use his Prophetic prerogative of making a realistic wise if hopefully temporary modification (legitimate and quite not too infrequent when the Qur’an and the Hadith are comparatively studied in depth) and allow the yet incurable jealousy have its say. And such extreme sexual vengeful traditions are not confined to Muslims.
From Sicily in Italy to all parts of Latin America they still are the norm among the lower masses which form the majorities. Men often cannot advance as fast as even the wisest and most realistic reformers would wish them to. In this we have a most authoritative lesson in wisdom from Allah and His Messenger sws in that we must not be carried away in our enthusiasm in any ideal however noble but often stop abd consider our audience’s qualities and capabilities and rather than blowing up the bridges settle for any gains already achieved and wait for newer and better times and opportunities to realise more of the ideal as far as realistically possible.
MUSLIMS’ OWN SICKNESS
This brings us to our own sickness. As already said, no ideal can ever be fully realised however possible in theory. So, Islam’s theoretical perfection, like in all other ideals, is no guarantee that it will be fully realised in any one person except perhaps the likes of the Prophet sws himself and the very best among his followers. Yet, we do not need be pessimistic because of this but take comfort and courage from the fact that Islam did bring about very great and substantial improvements in only very many of its adherents from the day one to this day. It can be argued that no religion has caused more rational, reasonable and practical improvement in its believers as a community (umma) than Islam and that by a wide margin. For example, Islam, when compared with its nearest rival Christianity did not produce anywhere near the malignant hysteria and divisiveness Christianity has always been notorious for nor committed the atrocities.
Inter-Muslim sectarian strife and bloodshed has always been far lower than in Christendom and no Muslim holy was ever approached the ferocity and scope of the Crusades. To this day and despite the far superior acculturation of Christians in an academic and social sense Christian divisive fanaticism like in the recent Waco tragedy has not been the case among Muslims. Almost anybody among the Christians can appoint himself a ‘prophet’, make converts, found a sect and church, collect religious taxes and legislate any laws from free love to committing suicide when the ‘prophet’ asks. And these have not remained in the Middle Ages but still go on unabated. More to the point, there has been Christian sects which diametrically go against Christianity’s sexual Puritanism, for example, and almost enforced most abject promiscuity and sometimes even human sacrifice in one form or another. True, sometimes such sick sects admit to being Satanic but sometimes they don’t and claim to be Messianic. Remember the ‘Children of God’ sect!
The sickness of Muslims rather lies in another direction. Islam’s sources the Qur’an and the Hadith are so well-preserved and entrenched that nobody can interpret Islam in a too far away way than the orthodox interpretation that Allah is one and Muhammad sws is the last and final prophet of Allah and the Law of Islam (the Sharia) as developed and codified by classical ulema is here to stay in a fundamental sense, i.e., its details fine are subject to new interpretations and modifications in the light of new experiences and realities but not the overall frame and main planks. So, the sickness in Muslims is not caused by futuristic strains but the reactionary!. Most Muslims, thanks to their cultural and economic backwardness not only still linger in tribal social structure but also retain a lot of their pre-Islamic tribal attitudes and traditions. We have already touched upon the sexual attitudes and traditions which refuse to Islamise. Still, the punishment for a pubescent girl attempting or accepting an amorous interest in a wrong boy can be execution by her family. In Islamic law on the other hand, unless there is independently proven sexual intercourse there is no case to answer except perhaps a fatherly rebuke being given and even if there has been sexual intercourse then only a hundred lashes in public. Muslims will have none of such leniency. Equally, almost all sexual offences by men, except the seduction of another’s woman, are not only usually ignored but often written to his credit. It is regarded as part of his manly prowess and envied. So, if a man goes and lives in a non-Muslim country and comes back to boast of his sexual conquests there even the local imam may not be too upset. But if a woman is the adventurer she cannot escape public condemnation and vengeance.
Politically and financially also the pre- Islamic tribal selfishness lingers on. In a country like Afghanistan tribe attack, plunder and kill tribe much in the same way as it was before Islam and only sheer physical power gained by suitable tribal alignments determine who dominates the whole nation. The power so determined becomes actual often after protracted tribal wars. Similarly the pre-Islamic blood feuds are still alive and kicking despite the Prophet’s sws categorical prohibition and most vehement condemnation of them. Alternatively kings, revolutionary dictators and even supposedly democratically elected presidents may rule equally arbitrarily and although kings may be forgiven their limited autocracy (for tribal loyalties rivalries check him goin too far) any revolutionary dictators or ‘elected’ presidents are often more autocratic than kings on top of being often very corrupt.
The sickness list is too long, therefore let us add only one more symptom. This is the almost universal corruption among Muslims. From the falsely inflated prices quoted at marketplaces and followed by tough bargaining until the price falls more than half to the general plunder attitude towards public property i.e., anything whose ownership is not personal may be pocketed. So, public companies are routinely robbed by all coming in contact with it, from its employees to its customers and even passers- by. Public lands are built upon to build extensive shanty towns by the poorer immigrants to the cities while patently rich may equally appropriate choice public lands to erect sumptuous villas and seek their eventual legitimisation by bribing politicians. Forests are deliberately burnt to create farmlands or new towns as those in power look on or sometimes connive in for the sake of votes. Falsehood and fraud are not only everywhere among Muslims but those prospering on account of them face little danger either to their freedom or prestige of sorts. Riches almost sanctifies and there are enough hopeful beggars to ensure that the thieves can always buy enough grateful worshippers. Build a mosque here and a school there and all the haram you acquired becomes legitimised in the eyes of the prayerful beneficiaries. Again, this is not a Muslim disease but common to all backward nations like those of Latin America.
No doubt the rich West shares in all these but often less and that must explain at least in part why they are more successful as nations and less just as societies. For example, in Muslim and non-Muslim underdeveloped countries (African, Latin American etc.) even appointment to many public offices are filled (and also sometimes especially created to be filled) on nepotic and simoniacal (bribery) grounds and public administration and enterprises suffer as a result. Public companies and banks linger in loss-making or go to the wall altogether. Armies are beaten because high command go to favourites or ideological stooges while funds earmarked to armed forces are squandered in nepotic or corrupt purchases and anything so bought may additionally be sold to crooks by crooks in the army. No doubt in the prosperous and better educated and regulated West such corruptions are on much lower a scale or they couldn’t survive either.
If a summing -up is needed for the Muslim case so far we can say that one trouble with us is the tenacity of many sections of Muslim societies holding on to their pre-Islamic attitudes and bad habits and the other is corruption which boils down to a lack of enough sense of communal responsibility and solidarity and excess personal, family and clan selfishness. A saying in Turkish says it all “Devlet mali deniz, yemeyen domuz”, i.e, “Public property is a sea (so uncountable and inexhaustible); the one who does not help himself to it is a pig-headed fool”. So they eat, eat and eat…. Until and unless these two maladies are done away with neither Muslims nor their non-Muslim moral and social look-alikes can prosper and compete with the Westerners. The only hope otherwise is a negative one; the West may well destroy itself by its ever increasing and accelerating hedonism and waste and fall down until all of us are equally bad and poor. In fact the West’s ascendancy may well prove unsustainable because they are taking too many too bold risks both materially and spiritually (morally) and history always punished that combination.
SOME SYMPTOMS OF MODERN SICK SOUL MORE PECULIAR TO THE WEST BUT SPREADING ERRATICALLY ALSO TO THE REST
Not quite throwing off the sick legacies of paganism and Christianity and adding to any retentions from the two new sicknesses the following list can only be a rough and by no means complete list of the soul sickness of the Western civilisation. Explicit or implicit assumption of inalienable superiority to those outside it and a consequent patronising and imposing attitude. For example only Western views about politics and human rights are correct and those outside either adopt them or pay the price for believing and acting differently
That scienctific opinions, however half-baked and controversial are the ultimate arbitrers of disputes about everything. Beliefs based on tried and tested intuition and/or long practical experience are worthless. Following Revelation is out of question.
All political, social or spiritual… prejudices are justified by haughty references to science and as a result and for example, both Faschism and Marxism were presented by their respective champions as undeniably scientific and unassailable in their conclusions. The same neo-dogmatism keep breeding at bacterial reproduction speeds many new ideologies from many forms of Feminism and justifications for homosexuality to justifications for playing God with anything scientific discoveries may insinuate. One of the earliest has been the sexual revolution facilitated by the pill while the latest fad is designer babies and a possible future one is the creation and employment of artificial eggs and sperms in human reproduction. Any universal traditional objections to these realized or proposed developments are simply pushed aside and ideas are put into practice no matter the risks which must be long term and proportionate to the magnitude of the offences to Natural Order. For example, animals and people will have to eat increasing amounts of GM food and if very terrible diseases emerge and begin killing many then no guilt feelings but invention of cures will come on the agenda. All who horribly perish in the testing of various Frankenstein creations will be dying for good causes. Remember, Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot… all belived and insisted that the victims of their ‘scientific’ beliefs were rightly killed- the creation of an utopia called for it
Education for the masses have been reduced to mere employment-skills training and pupils’ any existing traditional spiritual values are masterfully subverted by subjecting them to anything and everything which could corrode them, like explicit and totally amoral (in fact totally immoral) so-called sex education and faith-destroying philosophies like the Theory of Evolution. The latter is presented as proven scientific fact while the reality is that it is only a theory and under rigorous enough scrutiny it has no real feet to stand upon (How actually the species came about is another matter and scientifically speaking yet nobody knows for sure). Which means the secret agenda behind public education is the destruction of religious faith and social traditions however reasonable and edifying and their replacement by passing fashions in political correctness however woolly and silly and even malicious under scrutiny. For example, because of extremist feminist pressures it is sometimes men now who are discriminated against and put under female domination- which domination is sometimes helped by women taking testesteron to enable them to build enough aggressiveness in themselves
Individual in all his or her whims and lusts is being cultivated and social links and responsibilities are being minimised to enable the individual to lead a solitary life of self-indulgence as increasingly facilitated by the letting loose all sexual restraints (making both indiscriminate promiscuity as well as sexual ambivalence and adventurism increasingly the norm) and to even more individualise indulgence popping up electronic and other devices to make all who want and can afford it autistics. In the Internet a new irony is being fielded. While it puts more people in contact, what these people share are more about exchanging autistic perversions than constructive socialsing so that they can contribute more to social good to be socially enjoyed by all, like popular sports and pastimes or the improvement in social facilities like health or schooling. All perversions are reinforced and aggravated via Internet connections and even cannibalism is taught and practiced thanks to the reinforcement of mutual perversions through it. In a recent example two total strangers agreed to meet and one of them kill and eat the other which plan they fully put into practice! What if another two men, this time nutty electronic geniuses, agree tomorrow to blow the world up by electronically manipulating the world’s nuclear arsenals from the comfort of their homes in the belief that after the holocaust Messiah will come to rule over the few survivors as predicted by the Revelation of John. There is no doubt that social pulverisation caused by the increasing isolation of individuals may lead their very possible Satanisation; for the Satan as an archetypal figure stands for the evil madness caused by stark social isolation. In fact the Internet is flooded more by perverted and depraved material than any other type and police forces all over the world are goind mad trying to identify the satans behind them having seen that crimes of cruel obscenity and depravity are mushrooming
EXCESS AND WASTE in everything is both encouraged by those who manufacture and sell goods and services related to them and avidly indulged by almost all thanks to the ingenuity of the advertisements put up everywhere in every medium of advertising. It is generally believed by those who know about what they are talking that world’s resources are being consumed and downgraded faster than they can regenerate themselves. The envionment is measurably far less healthy now than ever before and for example a clean sea resort for bathing is a rarity anywhere in the Western world. It is becoming rare to find any fish not containing poisons like mercury or commercial meats and crops not containing extraneous hormones. Hence the organic farms some of which are suspected to be so only in name and made to cynically exploit the desire on the part of some to eat healthy food. Hypocrisy, demagogy and fraud are massively practiced in many economic enterprises and even medical drug firms cannot be trusted too much to care more about our health than their profits. For example, it is persistently said that they prefer the development of drugs which only alleviate the symptoms instead of curing the underlying diseases because the palliatives will have to be taken for a long time while curatives will cut down the lucrative profits from the former. Whether true or not only God and manufacturers know but that waste is massive in Wesrern economies, is encouraged still more and both the environment and people’s health are suffering is both undeniable and not denied.
Because of the increasing obsession with social isolation and self-indulgence keeping one’s delicious bent lifestyle going on became the prime policy agenda of modern citizens. The notorious resistance of the British against identity cards and privacy laws may have some justifications but as the crime rates and seriousness are skyrocketing the resistance seems more suspect than ever now. It seems now it is more to do getting away with private crimes because committing them is more possible and tempting than ever before. The hedonistic obsessions made lifestyles more and more reckess and daring. For example, some kill others or are killed while trying new and bold methods of increasing sexual pleasure (like near strangulating the experimenter). Brawls and fights or accidents under the effect of an intoxicant or other mind-bender drugs are becoming more common. Police statistics show that some drug is involved in every one in four traffic accidents now. Thieving or embezzling to feed a drug habit is definitely the number one reason why people are committing crimes. Rape is suspected to be at least ten times more than actually reported. Child abuse and incest are becoming commonplace for the new god sexual satisfaction at all cost is becoming bmore and more insatiable.
Therefore to minimize both the chance of conviction and the severity of punishment if convicted there must be an unspoken consensus among the moderns to give every legal assistance to criminal offenders to enable them to avoid conviction or get away as lightly as possible and throw the victim to the dogs. As a result and unlike in the Islamic Law, there is neither mandatory nor measured provision for compensation to the victims of crime and the victim or his or her guardians must themselves sue for any damages at their own risk to their own cost. Certain quarters of the public who still have reason and decency are increasingly voicing their digust with the offender-doting and victim-ignoring bent of the law and the court system. The police has recently been savaged by a judge for trapping drug traffickers by setting up a bogus money laundering firm and set the criminals free never considering that to crack down on big crime which depends on extreme and sophisticated secretiveness equally secretive and extreme surveillance and intelligence are necessary or the society cannot be saved from its bloodsuckers.
CAN MIRACLES HELP?
Miracles only help the believers and not the unbelievers. What is even more ironic, it is not the believers who ask for them but the unbelievers. And tragic is the fact that even when given the miracles the unbelievers are unable to believe their senses, they argue that what they are witnessing is magic. Mind you, magic means a creation of an illusion based on the inability of the minds and sense organs of some simple folks to detect the tricky background of what they are witnessing. The simplest and commonest magic in our day are the motion pictures. When they were first invented and projected people were so much taken in that if for example when a train was shown to chuf chuf towards them they would panic and dive for not to be hit by it! Allah explains in His Qur'an that what the magicians of the Pharaoh was showing to Moses and people around were tricks of scientific illusion.
Even Moses (pbuh) was impressed and Allah had to assure him that they were illusions and He was about to cancel them. It takes a very experienced scientific mind to decipher and explain away an illusion. All magic shown by the likes of David Copperfield or Uri Geller can be so exposed. David's disappearing locomotive from under a shroud can be explained by the shroud being of silk, charged electrostatically so that it becomes a rigid copy of the loco (itself of cardboard) and when the loco is removed from under it the cloth retains the shape. Then the electric charge is removed, the cloth collapses and the 'miracle' of the vanishing locomotive witnessed. All tangible 'miracles' shown by yogis, gurus, mediums and false sheikhs are of this kind. Perhaps the greatest showmen of them, an Indian, has been filmed in slow motion by video cameras hidden by the TV crews attending; on playing back the tapes his tricks were laid bare for all to see and laugh. This man is worshipped by millions all over the world and money and other favours flow like rivers to his person and his ashrams both in India and all over the world.
Apart from these 'tangible' miracles are the 'miracles' of knowledge. Here the claimant uses tactics like collecting information on people whom they expect to attend their shows or alternatively they plant informers among the audience which informers chat up or listen to some more emotional-looking members and learn about their problems and questions, posing as sympathetic persons with their own problems and questions and then relay these to the magician. He or she then stands up and addressing these chatted-up people by their own names tell them the things they need or want to hear- then come wonder, cries and sobs- AND....... FORTUNE AND FAME!
What is Allah teaching about the miracles and His prophets' relation to them and His enemies response to them? Let us read from Surat al Isra vv. 91- 93:
"They say: We will not be believing you (o Prophet sws) until you make a spring gush forth from the ground or you are given a garden of date palms and vines between which you make gush forth water, or you cause a solid part of the sky fall upon us as you claim or YOU BRING ALLAH AND THE ANGELS rushing to us, or you are given a golden house or soar to the sky- but unless you bring us a book from there we can read we will not believe your ascent. SAY: High Exalted Allah is (over your silly tests and challenges), I AM BUT A MAN SENT (by Him)".
In other places in His Book Allah explains that not a single nation except the nation of Jonah (and when it was almost too late) could bring themselves to believe in a prophet sent to them with the miarcles they had asked for and as a result they had to be destroyed. In His Good Patience and Compassion Allah was sparing the Quraish of the same eventuality and instead addressing their common sense and conscience in view of the the Light Muhammad sws was offering them on behalf of their Creator. In still other places Allah is making His prophets say that it is not in their personal power to produce miracles to order but the matter entirely rests with Allah. Why we are expounding these? This is why:
In your spiritual pursuit do not seek miracles either from the teachers you want to guide you or miracles flowing from you. Be especially wary of supposed guides who seem to manufacture 'miracles' of the tangible or the knowledge kind, for they are all crooks and cheats and in fact you can confirm your suspicions when you learn that money and gifts are flowing to them and worshippers are doting on them. Theirs is an inofficial business exploiting the credulity and helplessness of people. In fact it is a bad sign on your part to seek such 'proofs' for the existence a spiritual world and its masters. A truly good candidate of spiritual advencement is one whose heart thirsts after personal moral elevation and refinement, who constantly nags himself for not being a good enough emulator of the Prophet's beautiful character and gracious conduct and also for not being a good enough worsipper of Allah and keeper of His Commandments. Such a man or woman, unbeknown to himself or herself is already a saint grade 1 and is destined, if he or she persists, to attain all the real miracles and lights are kept in store by the All-Gracious Lord for His best and most favored servants. Amen.
HIGHER REALITIES
Faith is belief in realties which neither our senses can perceive nor our minds can conceive. The witness of these Higher Realities is possible only when this body is demolished and something else we have takes over fully and finally. Witnessing the Higher Realities while still wearing this body is impossible; Yaqeen (certainty) does not always mean witness but sometimes only conviction. We are basing these remarks on Allah's Own Words which we find at the very beginning of His Qur'an after al- Fatiha. Al Fatiha is a prayer taught us by our Creator with which He gives us a key to His Path. The rest of the Qur'an is the whole very answer to this prayer. Therefore the very verses which follow al Fatiha can be regarded as the second key to all that follows them. And it is in the first five verses of al Baqara that we find the infallible definition both faith (iman) and certainty (yaqeen).
"Alif. Lam. Mim. This is the Book in which there is no doubt, a Guidance for the pious,
Those who believe in al Ghaib (the imperceptible Higher Realities) and perform the salat and spend in charity from what We provide them
Those who believe in what has been sent down on thee and what has been sent down before thee and of the Hereafter are convinced (muqinoon, have yaqeen)
It is those who are on the Guidance from thier Lord and it is those who are the successfully saved".
So, all claims and boastings about going beyond these limits while still on this earth must be spurious and impious. This body of ours is simply incapable of doing more than it is designed for. Our witnessing the Higher Realities as they are must await our release from this body. Neither ambition nor hurry can change this.
Yet many too ambitious and too curious servants tried and keep trying to cheat this law and burgle their way into the Realm of the Higher Realities. They think that by starving themselves of food, sex, social contact and sometimes -can you you believe it- normal religious learning and in fact torturing themselves in all imaginable ways like living on a bed of nails their bodies will be like dead and the Higher Realities shall greet them and be theirs. That such silly tactics don't work we see from the a thousand results reported by a thousand ascetics trying this burglary of the Heavens. A yogi reports having seen his Hindu gods and veryfying his belief in reincarnation while the Christian monk 'verifies' that Jesus is both God and Son of God that he will be descending from the sky on march the 5th 1674. Of couse nobody turns up. A false Sufi who thinks he is true 'sees' God in his dream who tells him that he is the greatest ever saint who will never be surpassed by anybody else etc. etc. Still another more than replicates the Prophet's sws Mi'raj, watches all great stars while flying them past and describes them in a thousand fanciful details like being made of gold or hanging from gold chains fixed at the firmament and eventually learning that all mankind must regard him as the greatest culmination ever of all Divine gnosis. Even prophets must defer to him when it comes to gnosi. Some report seeing long dead pious celebrities in hell or paradise, talk to them and can explain their condition. You see, nothing remains hidden or unknown to them.
What can we make of such methods and claims about their efficacy?
Alhamdulillah we have modern medicine to give us a clue. Many medical conditions are known which cause exactly similar sensations. Schiophrenia is one. Many drugs like those from opium or hemp (marijuana) as well as mescalin and SLD can cause similar mystic 'discoveries' including a sense of 'knowing everything there is to know'. But there are even safer and cheaper as well as legally allowed ways of achieving the same grandiose delusions. Religious use of music, chanting and dancing, rocking and jumping can send a participant into the delusional mode of religious experience.
That is not all: One can also access the same mode by DIY carbon dioxide poisoning. If you inhale and then not exhale for a long enough time and repeat the exercise a time comes when you have high enough carbon dioxide against low enough oxygen; carbon dioxide is a narcotic, therefore under its influence your sleeping mind takes over and delivers all the dreams you have conspired to see; again, with this method a shaman sees the totem god of his tribe, say the leopard or ancestral spirits and gets messages from them for his clients while a Christian monk sees Jesus bleeding to death on the cross and telling him that he the monk can say this and that to people when he moves to the normal ways again.
None of these are either Higher Realites nor valid in a religious legal sense. They are simlpy the various forms of the dreaming mode of the mind moving and invading the waking mode. Anything you order, like in a restaurant, you may be served- nothing more, nothing less.
In fact claiming such gaudy discoveries or powers as the fruits of religious practices gives the wrong signal and motivatio to spiritual seekers; thier sincerity may be replaced by a profane aim for seeking magical knowledge and powers instead of pursuing in all humility and prayerfulness the Pleasure of Allah. So, where are the True Higher Realities. They are with Allah and only with Him. Read if you wish:
"Alim ul Ghaibi wa la yuzhiru ala Ghaibihi ahada", i.e., "The Knower of al Ghaib- He does not open His Ghaib to anybody" (S. al Jinn: 26).
So, no opium, no starvation, no carbon dioxide self-poisoning tricks do work. Like in the verses of Surat al Baqara we quoted above we must await Allah's pleasure and leisure to grant us any bits of al Ghaib we need to know- almost always through His prophets and sometimes personally to us through His angels but those for our personal needs only and not for cosmic application. He Almighty, All-Gracious consents to reveal anything cosmic of al Ghaib only to His chosen prophetic messengers and for the rest of us some of al Ghaib appears only after full and sure death. Read if you wish:
"It is not the case that Allah will make you access al Ghaib BUT ALLAH CHOOSES OF HIS MESSENGERS WHOM HE WILL to reveal what He will. Therefore do believe in Allah and His messengers (S. Ali Imran: 179).
Could it be clearer or more authoritative than that?
Al Ghaib, as much as Allah allows is broken to everybody once each die. Read if you wish:
"Worship thy Lord (o Muhammad sws) until the Certainty (Yaqeen coming with death) comes to thee" (Surat al Hijr: 99). Even for the Prophet sws had to wait.
As for the kafir, Allah says one the kafir is waked by death and resurrection:
"Indeed thou wast in ignorance of this (state of being in the Hereafter). We have now removed thy veil (thy worldly body) and thy sight today is sharp" (Surat al Qaf: 22)
Why is al Ghaib so impossibly secret? Why is it so jealously protected from even the prophets? Because it is INFINITE as Allah is, for there is no end and limit to His powers and creation and no human mind however great can be exposed to it and survive the impact.
Why we are explaining these matters?
It is because as Sufis we are the chief targets of the Satan. Nothing interests the Satan more than a man or woman seeking Allah's Pleasure. Such an ardent and serious believer is his greatest rival in claiming other souls. A true believer is the most effective sermon for persuading others to join him or her in the pursuit of Divine Grace. If the accsursed enemy of Allah can mislead the Sufi he may abort the arrival of other good servants at the scene. First the Satan tries to corrupt the intention of the seeker- he substitutes the seeker's intention of pleasing Allah with an ambition for occult discoveries and powers. If that happens we have a disciple of magic and not a true Sufi. If the Satan fails in that he tries another deception. He tries to make the Path of Allah to lose customers to his. He therefore builds his own roads with many attractive features like dizzying flyovers and spagetti junctions. Yogis, monks and some careless Sufis are deceived by these roads and ride to self-deception and destruction.
Only by sticking to the road map Allah so masterfully draws in His Qur'an that can we chart our journey to Him instead of many false journeys to the many hells awaiting the unwary. Only by emulating His Messenger sws can we avoid all traps and false turns. And the Path of the Messenger sws is so easy, so sweet.
May Allah inspire us with true sincerity leading to true humility and true piety until We look at Him with joy.
Amen.