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Monday, June 18, 2012

How About a Cultural Islamic Renaissance Which Includes Maximum Freedom for Women?


The other day, I was speaking with an acquaintance and they brought up a very good point, and that was; what if the Islamic World had a renaissance which exploded with culture, new freedoms, art, and the advances of science? Consider if you will that the Middle East has a net inflow of global monies for oil and resources. Consider that the Middle Decentralists make very good businessmen (and women), and more and more folks are becoming highly educated. My acquaintance asks if within the next 8-years if this is possible? Well, these are all great concepts and questions so let's talk, shall we?
In my view, I'd say it is totally achievable, especially in key areas, in fact, it's already starting. Consider the progress in Oman, Qatar, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Jordan, and Turkey. We could see the same in Lebanon, Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Iran, Iraq, and even Yemen, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. Sure, I can see it plain as day, it's doable, even on that accelerated time-table.
Let's face it the Middle East needs the United States for the inflow of money, and the US needs the oil, and therefore like it or not we are coupled, and those mutual needs will not be changing anytime soon. It's obviously best if everyone gets along, and at some point the cultural differences must be celebrated for what they are and the differences understood, not as to barrier to friendship, but as a glimpse as to how others live and the wonderful diversity amongst human populations.
My acquaintance remind me that the US would be better off to assist in any way that the Middle East would ask for our assistance to help with a renaissance within their culture, regionally, or throughout, as the "Middle East will remain vital to US National interests." Yes, I agree with my acquaintance and would add something to that statement, because I don't see it as only in the Middle East.
I'd like to say that; "Every Region of the World remains vital to the US, and every nation, region, and peoples of planet earth have human interests to all nations and peoples!" So, with that said; "Ye" and plus; "we will continue to need the resources, as that light-sweet crude is perfect for our fuel needs here at home, and abroad."
So, since they need our money for their economy, and we do need the oil, we ought to find a way to mend our differences and move forward with a peaceful and friendly future. Please consider all this.

Abuse of polygamy, abuse of women


Many people when they hear of Muslims, or the religion of Islam automatically think of this religion as a faith that sponsors abuse of women through polygamist relationships. In addition, many Muslim men have not helped in creating this false perception "That Islam is an abusive religion against women." Since I have become a Muslim many people have come to me, jokingly, asking: "When am I going to get 15 wives". Many Muslim men, particularly in the East, have taken to entering into multiple marriages as though this is something mandated in the religion of Islam. As i read my Holy Qur'an ' an I have as of yet to find justification for this act. The injunction to have multiple wives is mentioned in The Holy Qur'an ' an only once. And in this instance it is mentioned in a context that doesn't give any man the liberty to just take wives for the sake of it
The injunction for polygamy is mentioned in Sura (chapter) 4 of The Holy Qur'an ' an called A el-Nisa(The_Woman), verses 1-3. This chapter of the Holy Qur'an ' an opens with a command from ALLAH to keep your duties and to each other(Husband_and_wife) him:
"Or people, keep your duty to your Lord Who created you from a single being and created its mate of the same (kind), and spread from these two many men and women." And keep your duty to Allah, by whom you demand one of another (your rights), and (to) the ties of relationship. "Surely Allah is ever to Watcher over you." (Holy Qur'an ' 4: 1 an) The Qur'an ' an when it was revealed over 1400 years ago to the Prophet Muhammad(Peace_be_upon_him) stressed the oneness of God in response to the polytheist Arabia in popular beliefs. The Holy Qur'an ' an also came as a remedy to standing social ills. The abuse of womenfolk is common among the monotheistic faiths traditions we uphold. ALLAH (God) doesn't promote these ideas, but some men have used the word of God to fit their own desires. It may be hard to believe by looking at the Muslim world today but The Qur'an 'an and Muhammad's teachings was a liberating force to women at that stage of history. Women were allowed to own property, vote, considered equal with man, work and allowed the right of divorce. These may be common practices today, however they were revolutionary in a society(and_even_Europe) which looked down on women.
The married state of one man/one wife is the prescribed setting for family as taught by The Holy Qur'an ' an. The Qur'an ' an says to marry one "is more proper that you may not do injustice." The question may be asked how did to religion which liberated women and teaches men to marry one wife become synonymous with polygamy in the minds of most? The Qur'an ' an is a solution to both normal and ab-normal situations.
The Battle of Uhud and Polygamy The Holy Qur'an 'an, as a religious text, wasn't' t revealed at eleven but rather was revealed over a 23 year period. During this 23 year period many circumstances came up which ALLAAH would reveal a new chapter or see to address each situation. This compilation has come down to us as the Qur'an present'an.
History teaches us that once the Muslims left their homeland they had to participate in three major battles Badr-Uhud-Ahzab. These wars stand as triumphs of the smaller party (Muslims) over numerically and militarily stronger opponents.
During the battle of Uhud, in the 3rd year of Hijra, many Muslims died due to an Ambush attack by the Quarish. The odds were 700 Muslims vs. an army of 3000 strong. History teaches us during this war many Muslim women became widows. In response to this tragedy, ALLAH revealed to Quranic see (Sura 4: 3) allowing the Muslim men to take up and maintain more than one wife. Before we go any further let us review this Quranic see:
"And if you fear that you cannot do justice to orphans, marry such women as seem good to you, two, or three, or four;" But if you fear that you will not do justice, then (marry) only one or that which your right hands possess. "This is more proper that you may not do injustice."(Sura 4: 3) From reading the above be it becomes clear, in response to a situation, ALLAH allowed a limited polygamy while at the same time reminding us "One" wife is better.
We must be aware of the social condition of Arabia in the 7th century. During this period women couldn't just go get a job or some social welfare. There were few options for the maintenance of women in this society-either marriage or prostitution. So ALLAAH made an exception to normal his law to prevent fornication, adultery or prostitution, and allowed men who were spiritually, economically and mentally capable to marry more than one wife to secure maintenance of the female.
Even if you marry more than one wife, according to the Qur'an ' an you must do justice by them all. What does justice mean in this context? It simply means what you do for one wife must be done for the others. If you buy one house, car, jewelry or other item you must do the same for all otherwise you are being unjust. If we view this in modern day society with the high cost of living-we begin to see how un-practible polygamy can be to a man. It is certainly not just for sex.
It is the my - use of the institution of polygamy by some, not all, Muslim men that has led to the abuse of women in the world and the disdain that is heaped upon the religion of Islam by our enemies.
And if some want to denuncian the Prophet of Islam, Muhammad, for resorting to polygamy we only have to look to the Bible and religious history in general to discover that many Prophets of God entered this practice for God's own wise purposes.
Polygamy today Now that we have reviewed the historical incidents of the practice of polygamy and the moral-spiritual reasons why this practice was allowed, we now come to the 21st century and the modern day practice of polygamy. The picture of to "Muslim man" with his harem or multiple wives is a common image in the mind of many non-Muslims. Some even promote the idea that ALLAH will allow Muslim men to have "70 virgins" in paradise-if slain in battle. I know many may say these are the words of Prophet Muhammad(Peace_be_upon_him). However, I would like to point out the Prophet said: "After my death many false reports (hadiths) will be attributed to me, but you can judge the truthfulness of the reports by the Qur'an ' an."
I say that to say that somewhere along the line we have misinterpreted our holy book and words of our Prophet for the benefit of our personal pleasures. The heaven described by The Holy Qur'an ' an is not some great sexual orgy of Muslim men chasing virgins. We must understand by them [women] being described as virgins in heaven only means they are pure women and untouched by filth, but it has nothing to do with sex.
Thanks for reading these words!

The powerful role of women in peace-building


On October 7, 2011, the Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded the Nobel Peace Prize to three formidable women: Tawakkul Karman, a leader of anti-government protests in Yemen; Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Africa's first democratically elected female president in 2005; and Leymah Gbowee, also of Liberia who campaigned against the use of sexual assault as a weapon of war.
Karman, 32, was the first Arab woman to win the peace prize. The award was bestowed in recognition for her role in peace activism in Yemen, long before the 2011 Arab Spring revolution, and for initiating positive change in political oppression and the role of women in the rise of new democracies. The two Liberian women (Sirleaf, 72, and Gbowee, 32) were the first sub-Saharan African winners of the peace prize since Kenyan Wangari Maathai won it in 2004 for the fight against deforestation by mobilizing women to plant trees. Maathai died in 2011 at the age of 71. Sirleaf was seen as a reformer and peacemaker in Liberia, campaigning to end government corruption and to work for reconciliation after fourteen years of civil war. Gbowee, in Liberia, organized hundreds of female protesters throughout Monrovia to demand disarmament of fighters, forcing attention on women combatants exploited and sexually assaulted by warlords. She was honored by the Nobel Committee for mobilizing women across ethnic and religious dividing lines to bring an end to the long war in Liberia, and to ensure women's participation in elections. Sirleaf campaigned for peace within the government (in the country's top leadership role), whereas Gbowee and Karman worked as individuals -- Karman with limited support from her government.
It was the Norwegian Nobel Committee's hope that the prize for the three women would shine a light on the great potential for democracy and peace that women can represent.
Pakistan set an example by holding a four-day International Islamic Women Police Conference in November 2011 in Islamabad to unite women police officers from more than ten Islamic countries to build synergies and discuss context-specific gender issues. In 2010 Pakistan female law enforcers comprised less than one percent of all law enforcers. In comparison, female officers comprised a third of the total Australian Federal Police workforce. The Pakistan government now has a policy to integrate women in the mainstream police force, which is an increasing international trend in Muslim countries. Research has shown that women police officers bring a public-friendly image of police as they are much less likely than men to use extreme methods of control, such as threats, physical restraint, search, and arrest.
Richard Sennett, professor of sociology at New York University and the London School of Economics, in his book "Together: The Rituals, Pleasures and Politics of Cooperation" (2012) contends that "living with people who differ -- racially, ethnically, religiously, or economically -- is the most urgent challenge facing civil society today." That's because people tend to avoid engaging with people who are different from themselves by acting in a tribalistic manner which, he says, "involves thinking you know what others are like without really knowing them" resulting in an "us-against-you" mentality. Sennett promotes social cohesion that requires commitment to community and empathy with others: from polite social civilities such as saying "please" and "thank you" to mutual communication. It's not just about talking and listening; it's about sympathy, empathy, and above all, shared and familiar dialogue. It's a concept that women understand, naturally and innately.
Women in governments and individual women can work side-by-side to influence, promote, and sustain local, country, regional, and global peace. As governments look toward contributing to peace building, they should look no further than the women in their own communities. Without meaningful participation of women in peace processes there are less chances of durable peace. Women as peace-builders are often leaders in recovery and rehabilitation activities as post-conflict nations, such as South Sudan, transition to stability. The importance of women in peace dialogues and social cohesion cannot be overstated, not only for post-conflict countries, but also for local communities.
Healthy economies support peaceful existences. Investing in women can yield a significant gender dividend through three essential means: (1) women as workers; (2) women as consumers; and (3) women as voters.
Women make up the majority of small business owners across the globe, thus narrowing the gap between male and female employment rates. Women also often influence up to eighty percent of buying decisions in households. In addition, the number of women earning six figure salaries is increasing at double the rate of men earning large incomes. Women can affect economic competitiveness, fiscal health, and sociopolitical stability. Therefore governments that nurture female talent and decision making can become more competitive and can subsequently hasten economic growth -- which is becoming increasing more urgent in times of global financial crises. Industries that understand women's buying preferences and how to market them as consumers, through employing women in leadership positions, can substantially increase their market share. Women are therefore not a niche market -- they are the power players in the market.
A 2010 McKinsey & Co. survey found that the majority of executives believed that gender diversity would improve their company's financial performance. For years males have been dominant in executive boardrooms. In 2010 in America only fifteen percent of board members in large firms were on their boards, thirteen percent in Australia, and ten percent in Europe. This represents a squandered opportunity. Emerging is evidence that mixed-gender boards make better decisions than monolithically male ones. Mindful of this, European countries are also passing laws that would force companies to promote more women to the executive suite. A new French law requires listed firms to reserve forty percent of board seats for women by 2017. Norway and Spain have similar laws; Germany is considering one. Viviane Reding, the European Union's justice commissioner, says she wants European boards to be thirty percent female by 2015 and forty percent by 2020.
There are two main arguments for compulsory quotas. One is that the men who dominate corporate boards promote people like themselves. The second argument is more subtle. Talented executives need mentors to help them climb the ladder. Male directors mentor young men, but are reluctant to get chummy with young women, lest the relationship be misconstrued. Quotas will break this vicious cycle. The lack of role models is no longer the main obstacle to women's careers: children are. One study found that two-thirds of American women had, at some point in their career, switched from full-time to part-time or flexible time to balance work and family needs. But in doing so, they made it harder for women to gain the experience necessary to make it to the very top, and to be appointed as board members.
Some argue that quotas are too blunt a tool to solve the problem because quotas may force firms either to pad their boards with token non-executive directors, or to allocate real power on the basis of sex rather than merit. Neither is good for corporate governance. Norway started enforcing quotas for women in 2006. A study by the University of Michigan found that this led to large numbers of inexperienced women being appointed to boards. However, firms that addressed the issue by appointing women with a career path that enhanced their skills and promoted gender diversity, were more likely to reap the financial rewards.
The economic gender dividend can be reflected in increased sales, expanded markets, effective recruitment and retention of staff, and a marketing strategy that actually responds to the market. Hence, collectively, the diverse perspectives -- of men, women, youth, aged, disenfranchised, and minorities -- can lead to more effective economic growth, financial stability, social cohesion, diversity of leadership, and peace.

The Reason for Muslim Women Wearing Jilbabs


The main reason for wearing Jilbabs (also knows as Abayas in the Middle Eastern countries) as a Muslim woman is that it is a commandment of Allah (God) as can be seen by the following view from the Quran:
"Or Prophet (May Allah's peace and blessings be upon him)!" Tell thy wives and thy daughters and the women of the believers to draw over them their cloaks (veils). "That in the least so that they be recognised and not be remaining." (Surah Ahzaab be 59).
Islam is a way of life for the Muslim man or woman, they are supposed to follow the commandment of Allah, Muslims believe the Prophet Muhammad (Peace be upon him) was an example to mankind and that they are should follow the way shown by him, this is everything from how to sleep, how to eat, what to wear, how to get married and everything else that a person needs to know to live a healthy and fulfilling life as to Muslim.
There are many different sects within Islam, who all interpret Islam differently according to their understanding of the Quran and Hadith (the sayings and actions of the prophet Muhammad). This has led to some Muslims appearing more Islamic than others. The toughest stance by Muslim scholars for women's dress, is for the whole body to be covered with loose clothing and the face covered with a Niqab and even the eyes should be covered with a veil. The softest stance is for a Muslim woman to wear to loose Jilbab or clothing with a headscarf.
The way to Muslim woman is identified is by her wearing the Jilbab and Hijab (a headscarf), whilst other Muslim women may choose not to wear Islamic clothing but are practicing Islam as they deemed practical or suitable to them, which according to Islam is very sinful. This can be seen by the following saying of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him):
"Many women are clothed but naked in reality." "Such women will never enter paradise nor will they smell its fragrance."
Wearing to Jilbab or Abaya isn't easy for a Muslim woman, especially in the West due to the stares and verbal abuse that they sometimes have to suffer. It is also hard for those women who decided to start practicing Islam and start wearing the Jilbab, whilst the rest of their family wear western clothing, as they are usually ridiculed or even asked not wear such clothing that some class as backwards.

A Short History Of Islam


The teachings of Islam were passed down to humanity through Mohammed who is commonly thought of as the last, so far, in the line of Middle Eastern prophets. The first was Abraham of Judaism renown, then there was Jesus for Christianity and then came Mohammed. Mohammed was born in about 570 AD in Mecca, western Saudi Arabia and passed away 62 years later in 632 in Medina.
The Koran, or the 'Recitation' in English, consists of 144 chapters and was related to Mohammed by God. These teachings were written down by his scribes during the course of 23 years.
Like its predecessor religions, Islam is a monotheistic religion and its narrative includes stories or references to Abraham, Moses (and the Ten Commandments) and Jesus, but does not accept Christianity's declaration of his divinity.
Another major difference from the Middle Eastern religions before it, is that Jews trace their lineage through Abraham's son Isaac, whereas Muslims trace their history through Abraham's son Ishmael by another wife.
The root of the word Islam - 's-l-m' - means 'peace' and 'submission' (to God). A Muslim's association with God is determined by the 'Five Pillars of Islam'. These five pillars are: Shahadah (profession of faith); public and collective prayer five times daily; charity to the poor; fasting throughout the holy month of Ramadan and a pilgrimage to Mecca, the holiest of places to Muslims, at least one time in their lifetime.
Islam has strict dietary laws, notably about eating pork, and prohibitions against promiscuity, stealing, gambling and deceit. Muslims worship in Mosques and the services are held by Imams. The most critical time to pray is at midday on a Friday, which is the Muslim Sabbath.
The vast majority of Muslims are Sunnites, who are the traditionalists, and the rest are Shi'ites or 'partisans'. This could generally be compared with the relationship between Judaism and Christianity. The distinctions between the two sects in the both religions have caused untold misery over the centuries and there is no sign of it stopping any time soon.
There is considerably more known about Mohammed than about Jesus. Mohammed was brought up by his uncle and at the age of 25 he was a trader. At the age of 40, in 610, an angel instructed him to spread the word of God. He was not accepted in Mecca but the authorities invited him to quell the city of Medina in 622, which he accomplished.
His condition for accepting this task was that the people accept the word of God. This they did - this move is called the Hegim and it is the date from which Muslims record contemporary history - like the Western world uses the birth of Jesus.
By 632 Mohammed was dead, but by then the overwhelming majority of Arabs were Muslims. For one reason or another, Islam spread east and west from Saudi Arabia taken mostly by Arab traders probably. Islam never actually got a foothold in Europe (except Spain) but it did move East fairly extensively.

Reflections on black history month


Black History Month should be of interest to every Muslim, especially in America. It is estimated that upwards to 20% of the Africans enslaved in the Americas were Muslim. [1] In some areas, such as the coast of the Carolinas, Georgia, and parts of Virginia, the percentages of Muslims in the slave population may have approached 40%. [2] The fact that the search of a random African American, Alex Haley, for his roots led him to a Muslim village in West Africa is indicative of the widespread Muslim presence among the enslaved population here in the Americas.
At this critical time in the history of our country, it is important for Muslims, whose legitimate existence in this country is being challenged in some quarters, to connect to our American Muslim roots. As Muslims, our story in this country did not begin with the coming of Syrians, Lebanese, Albanians, or Yemenis at the turn of the 20th Century and later. It began with the lives of those courageous African Muslim slaves whose blood, sweat, and tears were instrumental in building this country. Their struggle is our struggle, and our struggle should be viewed as a continuation of theirs.
In identifying with those African Muslims, we must not allow ourselves to forget that they were part of a greater community, a community which has evolved to almost fifty million African Americans. The struggle of that community, its pain, perseverance, triumphs, and defeats, cannot be separated from the struggle of its Muslim members. If we as Muslims are moved by the suffering of our coreligionists who were exposed to the dehumanizing cruelties of a vicious system, we should similarly be moved by the plight of their non-Muslim African brothers and sisters who suffered the same injustices.
We must also be moved to work with unwavering conviction to address, within the parameters of our organizational missions, the vestiges of institutional racism which continues to disproportionately affect African Americans and other racial minorities in this country. One statistic alone should be sufficient to alert us to the presence of such racism - 50% of this nation's 2.3 million incarcerated individuals come from her 12% African American population. Similarly discouraging statistics are found in areas ranging from access to higher education, teen pregnancies, high school dropout rates, youth homicides, and many other "quality of death" indicators.
African American Muslims have a particular responsibility in addressing such racism. In beginning to do so, we can take our lead from our formerly enslaved brothers. Despite their lack of freedom, many of them were never "owned." This fact is strikingly clear in their increasingly widespread biographies. Individuals such as Ayyub bin Sulayman (Job Ben Solomon), Ibrahim Abdul-Rahman, and Yarrow Mamout, to name a few, did not allow the ravages of chattel slavery to rob them of their dignity, honor, nor their human worth.
As we endeavor to address the imperfections of society, in race relations and other areas, we must do so with dignity, honor, grace, and with free and open minds. Those of us, who hail from the historically oppressed minority communities of this land, must resist the temptation to allow the triumvirate of rage, a sense of victimization, and vengeance to distort our ability to calmly assess and then pragmatically address the many issues confronting us. When such a distortion occurs, delusional thinking and irrational politics usually result.
One of the greatest delusions challenging us lies in seeing our situation as paralleling that of our brothers and sisters in foreign lands governed by repressive, authoritarian regimes. By viewing our situation as parallel to theirs we are tempted to view the paradigm of resistance which governs their struggles as valid for our situation. Such an assessment is fallacious for a number of reasons.
First of all, most of the significant "Third World" liberation struggles pitted oppressed majorities against oppressive minorities. In this country, the white majority and significant segments of the nonwhite minorities are not so severely affected by structural violence or institutional racism that they view violent or even aggressive challenges to the status quo as legitimate forms of political expression.
Secondly, alternative means of political expression, available in this country, are unavailable in most "third world" dictatorships or authoritarian regimes. Hence, the mechanisms whereby the Jews, by way of example, once a despised and demeaned minority, were able to favorably situate themselves within the system are not available in the previously referenced countries. Although some of their advancement was facilitated by their ability to benefit from their "whiteness," most of it is due to hard work and effective planning. Similarly, the progress achieved by African Americans in affirmative action, progress which has been steadily eroded, no doubt, could not have been hoped for by oppressed minorities in many other countries. Whether we view these realities as truly empowering or ultimately cooptive does not negate the fact that they do exist, and as long as they exist, they will be powerful mechanisms to damper the appeal and feasibility of radical challenges to the status quo.
Thirdly, while the feasibility of an aggressive, or even violent challenge to the status quo may be debatable in a small, minority-based, "third world" dictatorship, in a society as large, complex, diverse, and, ultimately, as politically conservative as the United States, such challenges would be used to legitimize severe repressive measures which would serve to render even milder forms of dissent less acceptable. While presented here in hypothetical terms, this is actually a recurrent lesson which American history has taught us.
The history of "third world" revolutionary change is no more encouraging. The Algerian experience is illustrative of the legacy of revolutionary violence in Africa. Frantz Fanon, in The Wretched of the Earth, his analysis of the Algerian decolonization struggle, saw decolonizing violence as a cathartic agent which would create a new liberated man. The sad reality created by that violence is documented by Fanon in the last chapter of his work. It led to a litany of mental disorders, which Fanon, a trained psychiatrist, documented all too well, wreaked lives which the leaders of the nationalist struggle were ill-prepared to repair. Furthermore, thirty years later, the heirs of the nationalist regime which the revolution brought to power would be all too willing participants in a bloodbath that would rival anything the former French colonizers had visited upon the Algerian people.
Archbishop Dom Helder Camara, has pointed out that once a spiral of violence begins, it operates on its own internal logic. Injustice leads to revolt. Revolt induces repression. Repression leads to greater injustices, which in turn encourage more radical forms of revolt. These then induce more severe forms of repression. This spiral continues, unbroken. The challenge for theologians in this age, when the potential destructiveness of war is so great it threatens the very existence of our world, is to devise strategies which can meaningfully enhance our collective wellbeing by peacefully altering the mechanisms of structural violence and institutionalized racism. Muslim theologians, if we are truly "Heirs of the Prophets," peace and blessings of God upon them, should not shy away from this challenge. However, in attempting to meet it, we must resist the temptation to resuscitate the failed strategies, stale ideas, and outdated methods of an ineffective "Third World" revolution.
On the other hand, we must not allow ourselves to be divorced from the struggles of the less fortunate members of the human family. In a not too distant past, when standards of political correctness were more closely associated with the truth and not selfish and narrow political agendas, John Kennedy said, "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." The great theologian Reinhold Niebubr declared, "In the social struggle we are either on the side of privilege or need." If these two white Americans, who were "privileged" in every sense of that somewhat trite expression, can advocate for the need to challenge oppressive social relations, it would be an unforgivable travesty for our voices to fall silent.
The question for us is, "How can we best address the oppressive mechanisms facing us, and those facing our co-religionists in so many redoubts scattered around the globe?" In answering this question, we can gain valuable insight from the lives and struggles of our African Muslim forebears. Superior erudition was the key to the liberation of Job Ben Solomon. Herein is a sign for us. As American Muslims we have been blessed to reside in the most intellectually dynamic society in history. Also, the primal command in our religion is to read. We should enthusiastically pursue the mandate created by these twin facts and push ourselves to become the most educated community on Earth -in religious and worldly knowledge. In so doing, the miracles which were so clearly manifested in the life of Job Ben Solomon will surely bless our lives.
The dignity, nobility, an erudition of Ibrahim 'Abd al-Rahman, qualities which earned him the epithet, "Prince," were instrumental in his liberation from of shackles of bondage. Our day is witnessing the steady degradation of our collective human dignity. We should be a community whose dignity and nobility readily impresses all who deal with us, and more importantly a community whose ethics are a reflection of the true value and depth of the prophetic teachings. Sadly, as Muslims, generally speaking, we have dishonored the prophetic legacy we been entrusted with. Our ethics oftentimes reflect a utilitarian approach to life. If something proves effective, and effectiveness for many of us is increasingly viewed in terms of money or security, let us find a way to provide it with religious sanction. Such an approach may ensure our short-term prosperity, but it will never open the hearts and minds of masses of people to Islam.
Our forefathers attracted people to Islam and conquered lands with the loftiness of their character and ethics. We oftentimes repulse dignified outsiders who come into our midst. At the height of American chattel slavery, Yarrow Mamout, an elderly Muslim who had gained his freedom, so impressed the artist Charles Wilson Peale with his dignity, nobility, and grace that the latter, who painted six portraits of George Washington, was inspired to paint Mamout. Who among us would inspire a similarly placed artist today?
It is not the purpose of these ruminations to suggest a specific program of empowerment. Power, as the Qur'an emphatically affirms, is God's to give to whomsoever He chooses.[3] However, a deep knowledge of God, self, and society will certainly yield insights conducive to conformity to the divine ways God has established to invite His empowering grace upon a particular community. Furthermore, history affirms that dignity, nobility of character and courage have been the indispensable characteristics of those who were able to take the oftentimes unpopular stands which helped to usher in fundamental change -by the Will of God.
In speaking of unpopular stands, we are not merely speaking of those which may place us in opposition to an unjust power structure, but similarly those which may place us in opposition to our race, tribe, class, or even member of our faith. Popularity has never been a condition for greatness. However, the acts of a great woman may certainly render her popular to those whose lives are bettered by her acts.
In conclusion, Islam is calling us to be bigger than what the world has made us. If the world has made us members of a "disadvantaged" race, class, ethnicity, or gender, the world wants us to be dehumanized by the ensuing rage, sense of victimization, and a quest for vengeance. The collective weight of those forces can easily lead to a dehumanizing loss of hope. For our African Muslim ancestors enslaved in this land, Islam was always a source of hope, dignity, and for many, as we have mentioned, the key to their liberation. For those who never escaped the shackles of physical bondage, Islam provided the basis for their rising above the dehumanization of the chattel system. In the words of Dr. Sylviane A. Diouf, "The African Muslims may have been, in the Americas, the slaves of Christian masters, but their minds were free. They were the servants of Allah."[4] As they were so too should we be.
[1] See Sylvianne A. Diouf, Servants of Allah: African Muslims Enslaved in the Americas (New York, London: New York University Press, 1998), p. 48.
[2] Diouf, p. 47.
[3] See Al-Qur'an 3:26-27.
[4] Diouf, 210.
This article is excerpted from Imam Zaid's book, Scattered Pictures: Reflections of an American Muslim.

At Turning Point in History The Fall of Atheism - Part 2


Quantum Physics and the Discovery of the Divine Wisdom
When scientists have gone deeper into the atom, they found it shockingly "empty".

One of the areas of science that shatters the materialist myth and gives positive evidence for theism is quantum physics.
Quantum physics deals with the tiniest particles of matter, what is called the sub-atomic realm. In school everyone learns that matter is composed of atoms. Atoms are made up of a nucleus and several electrons spinning around it. One strange fact is that all these particles take up only some 0.0001 percent of the atoms. In other words, an atom is something that is 99.9999 percent "empty."
An even more interesting fact is that when the nuclei and electrons are further examined, it has been realized that these are made up of much smaller particles called "quarks," and that these quarks are not particles in the physical sense, but simply energy. This discovery has broken the classical distinction between matter and energy. It now appears that in the material universe, only energy exists. What we call matter is just "frozen energy."
There is a still more intriguing fact: The quarks, those energy packets, act in such a way that they maybe described as "conscious." Physicist Freeman Dyson, on his acceptance of the Templeton Prize, stated that:
Atoms are weird stuff, behaving like active agents rather than inert substances. They make unpredictable choices between alternative possibilities according to the laws of quantum mechanics. It appears that mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent inherent in every atom.14
What this means is that there is information behind matter. Information that precedes the material realm. Gerald Schroeder, an MIT-trained scientist who has worked in both physics and biology and author of the famous book The Science of God, makes a number of important comments on this subject. In his more recent book, The Hidden Face of God: Science Reveals the Ultimate Truth (2001), Schroeder explains that quantum physics-along with other branches of science-is the tool for discovering a universal wisdom that lies behind the material world. As he puts it:
It took humanity millennia before an Einstein discovered that, as bizarre as it may seem, the basis of matter is energy, that matter is actually condensed energy. It may take a while longer for us to discover that there is some non-thing even more fundamental than energy that forms the basis of energy, which in turn forms the basis of matter.15
John Archibald, professor of physics at Princeton University and recipient of the Einstein Award, explained the same fact when he said that the "bit" (the binary digit) of information gives rise to the "it," the substance of matter.16 According to Schroeder this has a "profound meaning":
The matter/energy relationships, the quantum wave functions, have profound meaning. Science may be approaching the realization that the entire universe is an expression of information, wisdom, an idea, just as atoms are tangible expressions of something as ethereal as energy.17
This wisdom is such an omniscient thing that covers the whole universe:
A single consciousness, a universal wisdom, pervades the universe. The discoveries of science, those that search the quantum nature of subatomic matter, have moved us to the brink of a startling realization: all existence is the expression of this wisdom. In the laboratories we experience it as information that first physically articulated as energy and then condensed into the form of matter. Every particle, every being, from atom to human, appears to represent a level of information, of wisdom.18
This means that the material universe is not a purposeless and chaotic heap of atoms, as the atheist/materialist dogma assumes, but is instead a manifestation of a wisdom which existed before the universe and which has absolute sovereignty over everything that exists. In Schroeder's words, it is "as if a metaphysical substrate was impressed upon the physical". 19
This discovery shatters the whole materialist myth and reveals that the material universe we see is just a shadow of a transcendent Absolute Being. Thus, as Schroeder explains, quantum physics has become the point where science and theology meet:
The age-old theological view of the universe is that all existence is the manifestation of a transcendent wisdom, with a universal consciousness being its manifestation. If I substitute the word information for wisdom, theology begins to sound like quantum physics. We may be witnessing the scientific confluence of the physical with the spiritual. 20
Quantum is really the point where science and theology meet. The fact that the whole universe is pervaded by a wisdom is a secret that was revealed in the Qur'an 14 centuries ago. One verse reads:
Your god is God alone, there is no god but Him. He encompasses all things in His knowledge. (Qur'an, 20:98)
The Natural Sciences: The Collapse of Darwinism and

The Triumph of Intelligent Design
Darwin: His theory is now refuted by a great deal of scientific evidence.

As we stated at the beginning, one of the main supports for the rise of atheism to its zenith in the 19th century was Darwin's theory of evolution. With its assertion that the origin of human beings and all other living things lay in unconscious natural mechanisms, Darwinism gave atheists the opportunity they had been seeking for centuries. Therefore, Darwin's theory had been adopted by the most passionate atheists of the time, and atheist thinkers such as Marx and Engels elucidated this theory as the basis of their philosophy. Since that time, the relationship between Darwinism and atheism has continued.
But, at the same time, this greatest support for atheism is the dogma that has received the greatest blow from scientific discoveries in the 20th century. The discoveries by various branches of science such as paleontology, biochemistry, anatomy and genetics have shattered the theory of evolution from various aspects. (See Harun Yahya, Evolution Deceit, 2000). We have dealt with this fact in much more detail in various other books and publications, but we may summarize it here as follows:
Paleontology: Darwin's theory rests on the assumption that all species come from one single common ancestor and that they diverged from one another over a long period of time by small gradual changes. It is supposed that the proofs for this will be discovered in the fossil record, the petrified remains of living things. But fossil research conducted in the course of the 20th century has presented a totally different picture. The fossil of even a single undoubted intermediate species that would substantiate the belief in the gradual evolution of species has not been found. Moreover, every taxon appears suddenly in the fossil record and no trace has been found of any previous ancestors. The phenomenon known as the Cambrian Explosion is especially interesting. In this early geological period, nearly all of the phyla (major groups with significantly different body plans) of the animal kingdom suddenly appeared. This sudden emergence of many different categories of living things with totally different body structures and extremely complex organs and systems, including mollusks, arthropods, echinoderms and (as recently discovered) even vertebrates, is a major blow to Darwinism. For, as evolutionists also agree, the sudden appearance of a taxon implies supernatural design and this means creation.
Biological Observations: In elaborating his theory, Darwin relied on examples of how animal breeders produced a different variety of dogs or horses. He extrapolated the limited changes he observed in these cases to the whole of the natural world and proposed that every living thing could have come to be in this way from a common ancestor. But Darwin made this claim in the 19th century when the level of scientific sophistication was low. In the 20th century things have changed greatly. Decades of observation and experimentation on various species of animals have shown that variation in living things has never gone beyond certain genetic boundary. Darwin's assertions, like "I can see no difficulty in a race of bears being rendered, by natural selection, more and more aquatic in their habits, with larger and larger mouths, till a creature was produced as monstrous as a whale."21 actually demonstrates his great ignorance. On the other hand, observations and experiments have shown that mutations defined by Neo- Darwinism as an evolutionary mechanism add no new genetic information to living creatures.
The Origin of Life: Darwin spoke about a common ancestor but he never mentioned how this first common ancestor came to be. His only conjecture was that the first cell could have formed as a result of random chemical reactions "in some small warm little pond".22 But evolutionary biochemists who undertook to close this hole in Darwinism met with frustration. All observations and experiments showed that it was, in a word, impossible for a living cell to arise within inanimate matter by random chemical reactions. Even the English atheist Nobel Prize-winner Fred Hoyle expressed that such a scenario "is comparable with the chance that a tornado sweeping through a junk-yard might assemble a Boeing 747 from the materials therein."23
Intelligent Design: Scientists studying cells, the molecules that compose the cells, their remarkable organization within the body and the delicate order and plan in the organs are faced with proof of the fact that evolutionists strongly wish to reject: The world of living things is permeated by designs too complex to be found in any technological equipment. Intricate examples of design, including our eyes that are too superior to be compared to any camera, the wings of birds that have inspired flight technology, the complexly integrated system of the cells of living things and the remarkable information stored in DNA, have vitiated the theory of evolution which regards living things as the product of blind chance.
All these facts have squeezed Darwinism into a corner by the end of the 20th century. Today, in the United States and other Western countries, the theory of intelligent design is gaining everincreasing acceptance among scientists. Those who defend the idea of intelligent design say that Darwinism has been a great error in the history of science and that it came to be as the result of materialist philosophy's being imposed on the scientific paradigm. Scientific discoveries show that there is a design in living things which proves creation. In short, science proves once more that God created all living things.
Psychology: The Collapse of Freudianism and the Acceptance of Faith
The representative of the 19th century atheist dogma in the field of psychology was the Austrian psychiatrist Sigmund Freud. Freud proposed a psychological theory which rejected the existence of the soul and tried to explain the whole spiritual world of human beings in terms of sexual and similar hedonistic motivations. But Freud's greatest assault was against religion.
Later studies showed that Freud's ideas, especially the ones about religion were totally flawed.

In his book The Future of an Illusion published in 1927, he proposed that religious faith was a kind of mental illness (neurosis) and that, as human beings progressed, religious faith would completely disappear. Due to the primitive scientific conditions of the time, the theory was proposed without the requisite research and investigation, and with no scholarly literature or possibility of comparison, and therefore, its claims were extremely deficient. Indeed, if Freud had the possibility of evaluating his propositions today, he would himself be surprised by the logical deficiency of his claims and he would be the first to criticize such senseless presuppositions.
After Freud, psychology developed on an atheist foundation. Not only Freud, but the founders of other schools of psychology in the 20th century were passionate atheists. Two of these were B.F. Skinner, the founder of the behaviorist school and Albert Ellis, founder of rational emotive therapy. The world of psychology ended up by becoming the forum for atheism. A 1972 poll among the members of the American Psychology Association revealed that only 1.1 percent of psychologists in the country had any religious beliefs.24
But most psychologists who fell into this great deception were undone by their own psychological investigations. It became known that the basic suppositions of Freudianism had almost no scientific support and, moreover, that religion was not a mental illness as Freud and some other psychological theorists declared, but a basic element of mental health. Patrick Glynn summarizes these important developments:
Yet the last quarter of the twentieth century has not been kind to the psychoanalytic vision. Most significant has been the exposure of Freud's views of religion as entirely fallacious. Ironically enough, scientific research in psychology over the past twenty-five years has demonstrated that, far from being a neurosis or source of neuroses as Freud and his disciples claimed, religious belief is one of the most consistent correlates of overall mental health and happiness. Study after study has shown a powerful relationship between religious belief and practice, on the one hand, and healthy behaviors with regard to such problems as suicide, alcohol and drug abuse, divorce, depression, even, perhaps surprisingly, levels of sexual satisfaction in marriage, on the other. In short, the empirical data run exactly contrary to the supposedly "scientific" consensus of the psychotherapeutic profession.25
Finally, as Glynn says, "modern psychology at the close of the twentieth century seems to be reacquainting itself with religion"26 and "a purely secular view of human mental life has been shown to fail not just at the theoretical, but also at the practical, level.27
In other words, atheism has been routed also on the field of psychology.
Medicine: The Discovery of "How Hearts Find Peace"
Another branch of science that was affected by the collapse of atheist suppositions was medicine.
According to results compiled by David B. Larson and his team at the National Institute for Healthcare Research, a comparison among Americans in relation to church attendance yielded very interesting results. Risk of arteriosclerotic heart disease for men who attended church frequently was just 60 percent of that for men who were infrequent church attenders. Among women, suicide was twice as high among infrequent as among frequent church attenders; smokers who ranked religion as very important in their lives were over seven times less likely to have normal diastolic pressure readings than were those who did not.28
Secular psychologists generally explain such phenomena as having a psychological cause. In this sense, faith raises a person's morale and contributes to his well-being. There may be some truth in this explanation, but if we look more closely we see something much more dramatic. Belief in God is much stronger than any other influence on the morale. In comprehensive research on the relationship between religious belief and physical health, Dr. Herbert Benson of the Harvard Medical School came up with some interesting results. Although he did not have any religious faith, Benson arrived at the result that faith in God and worship had a much more positive effect on human health than could be observed in anything else. Benson concludes that he has "found that faith quiets the mind like no other form of belief."29
Why is there such a special relation between faith and human spirit and body? The result arrived at by Benson, who is a secular researcher, was, as he put it, that the human mind and body are "wired for God."30
This fact, that the medical world is slowly beginning to notice, is a secret revealed in the Qur'an with the verse, "Only in the remembrance of God can the heart find peace." (Qur'an, 13:28) The reason why those who believe in God, pray to Him and trust in Him are physically and mentally more healthy than others is that they behave in harmony with their nature. Philosophical systems opposed to human nature always bring pain, sorrow, anxiety and depression upon people.
The basic source of the peace experienced by a religious person is that he acts in order to gain God's approval. In other words, this peace is the natural result of a person's listening to the voice of his conscience. A person does not live the morality of religion simply "to be more at peace" or "to be healthier"; a person who acts with this intention cannot find peace in its true sense. God well knows that what a person stores in his heart or what he reveals. A person experiences peace of mind only by being sincere and attempting to gain God's approval. God commands:
So set your face firmly towards the [true] religion, as a pure natural believer, God's natural pattern on which He made mankind. There is no changing God's creation. That is the true religion-but most people do not know it. (Qur'an, 30:30)
In the light of the discoveries that we have briefly indicated above, modern medicine is starting to become cognizant of this truth. As Patrick Glynn says, "contemporary medicine is clearly moving in the direction of acknowledging dimensions of healing beyond the purely material".31
Society: The Fall of Communism, Fascism and the Hippie Dream
The collapse of atheism in the 20th century did not occur only in the fields of astrophysics, biology, psychology and medicine; it happened also in politics and social morality.
Communism may be considered the most important political result of 19th century atheism. The founders of this ideology, Marx, Engels, Lenin, Trotsky or Mao, all adopted atheism as a basic principle. A primary goal of all communist regimes was to get society to adopt atheism and to destroy religious belief. Stalin's Russia, Red China, Cambodia, Albania and some Eastern block countries applied immense pressure on religious people to the point of committing mass murder.
Yet, amazingly, at the end of the 1980s this bloody atheist system collapsed. When we examine the reasons for this dramatic fall, we see that what collapsed was actually atheism. Patrick Glynn writes:
To be sure, secular historians would say that the greatest mistake of Communism was to attempt to defy the laws of economics. But other laws, too, came into play... Moreover, as historians penetrate the circumstances of the Communist collapse, it is becoming clearer that the Soviet elite was itself in the throes of an atheistic "crisis of faith". Having lived under an atheistic ideology-one that consisted of lies and that was based on a "Big Lie"- the Soviet system suffered a radical demoralization, in every sense of that term. People, including the ruling elite, lost all sense of morality and all sense of hope.32
An interesting indication of the Soviet system's great "crisis of faith" was President Mihail Gorbachev's attempts of reform. Since the time that he assumed the presidency, Gorbachev was interested in moral problems as well as economic reforms. For example, one of the first things he did was to initiate a campaign against alcoholism. In order to raise the morale of society, for a long time he used Marxist-Leninist terminology but he saw that this was of no use.
Gorbachev: His futile attempts could not heal the "crisis of faith" in the Soviet society.

Then, in the later years of the regime, he even began to mention God in some of his speeches, even though he himself was an atheist. Naturally, these insincere words of faith were of no use and the crisis of faith in Soviet society continued to worsen. The result was the collapse of the gigantic Soviet empire. The 20th century documented not only the fall of communism, but also that of another fruit of 19th century antireligious philosophy-fascism. Fascism is the outcome of a philosophy which may be called a mixture of atheism and paganism and which is intensely hostile to theistic religions. Friedrich Nietzsche, who may be called the father of fascism, extolled the morality of barbarous idolatrous societies, attacked Christianity and other monotheistic religions and even called himself the "Antichrist." Nietzsche's disciple, Martin Heidegger, was an avid Nazi supporter and the ideas of these two atheist thinkers gave impetus to the terrifying savagery of Nazi Germany. (The Holocaust, one of the greatest act of evil in human history, was the result of Nazi anti-Semitism, an ideology that hated Jews and the monotheistic faith that has been the cornerstone of Judaism-and also Islam.) The Second World War, that caused the death of 55 million people, is another example of the calamity that atheist ideologies like fascism and communism have brought upon humanity.
At this point, we must recall another atheist ideology-Social Darwinism-which was among the causes for the outbreak of both the First and the Second World Wars. In his book entitled Europe Since 1870, Harvard history professor James Joll states that behind each of the two world wars lay the philosophical views of Social Darwinist European leaders who believed in the myth that war was a biological necessity and that nations developed through conflict.33
In contrast with the theist and peaceful American Revolution, the French Revolution was atheist, neo-pagan and extremely violent.

Another social consequence of atheism in the 20th century appeared in Western democracies. In the present day there is a tendency to regard the West as the "Christian world." However, since the 19th, century, a quickly growing atheist culture has held sway with Christian culture, and today there is a conflict between these two cultures in what we call Western civilization. And this atheist element has been the true cause of western imperialism, moral degeneration, despotism and other negative manifestations.
In his book God: The Evidence, the American writer Patrick Glynn draws attention to this matter and, in order to compare the God-fearing and atheist elements in the West, he takes the examples of the American and French Revolutions. The American Revolution was carried out by believers; American Declaration of Independence states that all men "are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights". Since the French Revolution was the work of atheists, the French Declaration of Human Rights was very different, with no reference to God and full of atheist and neo-pagan notions.
The actual results of the two revolutions were quite different: in the American model, a peaceful, tolerant environment was created that respected religion and religious belief; in France the fierce hostility to religion drowned the country in blood and unleashed a savagery such as had never been seen before. As Glynn says, "there is an interesting historical correlation between atheism, on the one hand, and moral and political catastrophe, on the other hand."34
Glynn notes that attempts to turn America into an atheist country have also caused harm to society. The fact that the sexual revolution (for example) that spread in the 60's and 70's caused immense social damage is accepted even by secular historians.35
John Lennon: The world he imagined -one without religion- did not bring a happy end, neither to him nor to his followers.

The hippie movement was a demonstration of this social damage. The hippies believed that they could find spiritual emancipation through secular humanist philosophy and by such things as unlimited drugs and sex. These young people who poured onto the streets with romantic songs-like John Lennon's Imagine in which he spoke of a world "with no countries, and no religion too"-were actually undergoing a mass deception.
In fact, a world without religion actually brought them to an unhappy end. The hippy leaders of the 1960s either killed themselves or died from drug-induced comas in the early 1970s. Many other young hippies shared a similar fate.
Those young people of the same generation who turned to violence found themselves on the receiving end of violence. The 1968 generation, who turned their backs on God and religion and imagined they could find salvation in such concepts as revolution or selfish Epicureanism, ruined both themselves and their own societies.
The Dawn of the Post-Atheist World
The facts that we have briefly summarized to this point shows clearly that atheism is undergoing an inevitable collapse. In other words, humanity is - and will be - turning towards God. The truth of this assertion is not limited only to the scientific and political areas that we have written about here. From prominent statesmen to movie stars and pop artists, those who influence opinion in the West are much more religious than they used to be. There are many people who have seen the truth and come to believe in God after having lived for years as atheists. (Patrick Glynn from whose book we have quoted is one of these ex-atheists).
The fact that the developments which have contributed to this result began in the same period, that is from the second half of the 1970s, is quite interesting. The anthropic principle first appeared in the 1970s. Scientific criticism of Darwinism started to be loudly voiced at that same time. The turning point against the atheist dogma of Freud was a book entitled The Road Less Traveled published in 1978 by Scott Peck. For this reason, Glynn, in the 1997 edition of his book writes that "over the past twenty years, a significant body of evidence has emerged, shattering the foundations of the long-dominant modern secular worldview."36
Surely, the fact that the atheist world-view has been shaken means that another world-view prevails, which is belief in God. Since the end of the 1970's, (or, from the beginning of the 14th century according to the Muslim calendar) the world has seen a rise in religious values. Like other social processes, this does not happen in a day and the majority of people may not notice it because it has been developing over a long period of time. However, those who evaluate the development a little more carefully see that the world is at a major turning point in the realm of ideas.
Secular historians try to explain this process according to their own principles but just as they are in deep error with regard to the existence of God, so they are greatly mistaken about the course of history. In fact, as the following verse reveals, history moves as God as determined: "...You will not find any changing in the pattern of God. You will not find any alteration in the pattern of God." (Qur'an, 35: 43) It follows, then, that history has a purpose and unfolds as God has commanded. And God's command is the perfection of His light:
They desire to extinguish God's Light with their mouths. But God refuses to do other than perfect His Light, even though the disbelievers detest it. (Qur'an, 9: 32)
This verse means that God has sent down His light upon humanity through the religion that He has revealed. Those who do not believe want to extinguish this light by their "mouths"- intimations, propaganda and philosophies, but God will finally perfect His light and give dominion to religious values on earth.
This may be the "turning point in history" mentioned at the beginning of this article as also indicated by the evidence we have provided here, as well as the implications of various hadiths and statements by scholars. Surely, God knows best.
Conclusion
We are living at an important time. Atheism, which people have tried for hundreds of years to portray as "the way of reason and science," is proving to be mere irrationality and ignorance. Materialist philosophy that sought to use science for its own ends has been in turn defeated by science. A world rescuing itself from atheism will turn to God and religion. And this process has begun long ago.
It is clear that believers have important duties in this period. They must be aware of this major change in the world's way of thinking, interpret it, make good use of the opportunities that globalization offers and effectively represent the truth along this road. They must know that the basic conflict of ideas in the world is between atheism and faith. It is not a struggle between East and West; in both East and West there are those who believe in God and those who do not. For this reason, faithful Christians, as well as faithful Jews are allies of Muslims. The main divergence is not between Muslims and the "People of the Book" (Jews and Christians), but between Muslims and the People of the Book on the one hand, and atheists and pagans on the other. Of course, we must not show hostility to such people but view them as people who need to be rescued from their error.
The time is fast approaching when many people who are living in ignorance with no knowledge of their Creator will be graced by faith in the impending post-atheist world.

A history of the mythology of God


The question of God is a difficult one. There is no clear definition and many threads get woven into the search of God. However, it is important to go over brief history of mythology of God, the religious influence, and now scientific influence in 21 st century.
Here's a brief review about the history of mythology of God that may influence our understanding about the new concepts in search of god.
Before Judaic Christian era, with the invention of agriculture in Turkey , human society changed from hunter gathers to farmers. During this era, the God was perceived as female Goddess. Archeologist Maria Gimbutas studied how this culture of the Goddess spread. The farmers spread out from Turkey moving east into Asia and west towards the Atlantic . As the farmers spread out from Turkey , they displaced the hunter gathers that lived on the land first.
What is most interesting about the civilization of the Goddess, is the level of violence. Maria Gimbutas found little evidence of violence in the first towns the early farmers built. The towns did not have fortified walls. People were buried in egalitarian cemeteries. Their gravesites did not contain weapons of war. Their bones did not show wounds from weapons of war. This is very important. It means that war is something humans learned.
After the farmers filled up the available farmland, things began to change. With all the good farmland brought under cultivation, people in their towns begin competing for limited resources. Humans are a biological species controlled by evolution. Species evolve by producing more off spring than the environment can support. In the competition for limited resources only the fittest survive. Humans are no exception. The peaceful interlude was over. Starting in the east and moving west the towns started to become more fortified. The egalitarian cemeteries were replaced by Kurgans. A Kurgan is mound of earth containing a burial site of a ruling male and his family. These burial sites contain weapons of war. The bones of people from this period also show injuries from these weapons. Kurgan is also the name given to a tribe of horsemen who brought this transformation to the civilization of the Goddess. The Kurgans did not displace the farmers. A study of the bones shows that the same farmers lived in Kurgan towns. They were now ruled by the Kurgans. The Kurgans transformed the first farmers into a more violent society. When the environment in which humans lived changed, the mythology now changed. Myths about male gods were now added to the story of the female goddess.
As we stated above, the driving force of evolution is the survival of the fittest. For a couple of thousands years this rule was suspended. The first farmers could expand out from Turkey to bring new land under cultivation. They did not have to compete for limited resources. During this time, the worship of the goddess created a peaceful society. When the best farmland was brought under cultivation, towns started competing for limited resources. Those towns that started worshipping male gods created more violent males. The more violent towns survived. This type of mythology active in a society creates a more or less violent culture.
All this happened before the Judaic - Christian period. Karen Armstrong in her book "A History of God" picks up the story with Abraham and the stories and myths we are familiar with. If you remember, Abraham has a son late in life and then is told by God that he must sacrifice his son on an alter to God. He does not question God but takes his son up the mountain to be sacrificed. At the last moment, God tells Abraham that he can sacrifice a ram instead of Isaac and his son is spared. Other episodes where God sacrifices the sons are history of Moses and Egypt .
With the rise of God sacrificing sons, there was also a decline of the Goddess. In the face of an external threat, the Jews abandon the Goddess. Monotheism is a further refinement of the mythology of God. God is becoming only a Male God. In order to survive, the Goddess is suppressed.
This also happens later in Islam. At the time of Mohammed, the Arabs worshipped three Goddesses: Allat, al-Uzza, and Manat. Mohammed urged his followers to abandon these Goddesses and only worship Allah. Islam then goes on to conquer the Middle East, Northern Africa and Spain . Suppressing the Goddess makes a society more violent and the more violent societies survive.
Christianity adds further refinements to this myth. Paul on the road to Damascus has a revelation. He comes to see Jesus as the sacrificial Lamb of God. Jesus is the Son of God who comes to earth and lives as a human. He is sacrificed for are sins. He is crucified, dead and buried. He descends into hell, on the third day he is raised from the dead and ascends into heaven.
There were two forms of early Christianity competing for people's attention in the Rome Empire: the Gnostic Christians and the Trinitarian Christians. The Gnostic Christians still had a place for the Goddess in their tradition. The Trinitarian Christians believed only in a male God of three parts - the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost.
Under Constantine , the Trinitarians gained the support of the Roman Empire . The Trinitarian with their all male God mythology destroyed the kinder, gentler Gnostic Christians. What Christians have inherited today is the monotheism of the all male God of the Trinitarians.
This is a mythology that is needed for an era where people compete for limited resources. This mythology suppresses sexuality and creates more violence. The suppression of sexuality and the increase of violence bestow a survival advantage to people who must compete for limited resources.
The history of Hindu avatars Rama and Krishna is also based in violence of Mahabharata and Ramayana. So is the creation of Khalsa, the fighting force in Sikhism by the last of ten gurus.
Mahabharata (Mahabharat) is a great story of sibling rivalry, violence and war, of complex interwoven sub-stories, of philosophy, divinity, adventure, bravery, and betrayal. The characters are very well developed and are glorified in great works of Indian art and literature that is supposed to have happened in 5,000 BC. Hindu holy scripture, " Bhagavad-Gita" is the war time counsel of Krishna to his disciple-relative Arjuna during the Mahabharata war.
The story of Ramayana is about Rama, the prince of Ayodhya that happened before Mahabharata. Rama was the eldest son of king Dasharatha who had three wives. The youngest of the wives Kaikeyi tricked the king into making her son as the descendent to the throne and made Rama go to the forest in relinquishment.
Rama, the good son that he is, follows the word of the father and goes to the forest for fourteen years. His wife Sita and loyal brother Lakshman follow him. Rawana king of Sri Lanka What follows is the great search for Sita and violence and war, when the goodness wins with the help of the friends ( Hanuman- the flying monkey) and the brother Lakshman. The destruction of Sri Lanka and bringing Sita back to Ayodhya is glorified in the great works of Indian arts and literature. kidnaps Sita and keeps her arrested in his garden.
In the late 17 th century Mogul emperor Aurungzeb's religious policy was totally against non-muslims, Hindus and Sikhs, they had to pay more taxes than Muslims. On the site of temple he built a mosque at a great cost. All these accesses were happening around 1690. The army of Khalsa was created by tenth Guru of Sikhs in 1699 to fight against the accesses. These are latest of wars and violence of which the youngest among religions, the Sikhism is also not spared.
The Greeks gave us more than the myth of Hercules that had similarities to the Christian myth. They also gave us philosophy. Aristotle talked about the first cause, the sufficient cause and the final cause. Plato taught that there was a oneness behind the universe. The Greek philosophers also had an influence on religion. The oneness that Plato talked about got incorporated into monotheism. Monotheism for us today is the oneness behind the universe instead of choosing a male god over a female god.
It is the physicists that will understand the oneness behind the universe and the first cause that started the universe. A unified theory that can describe the universe has become the holy grail of modern physics.
The early Greek philosophers also influenced Islam. Karen Armstrong tells us of Islamic scholars who tried to use reason to find God. These Islamic scholars were called the Fulasufahs. We will look at just one. Abu Hamid Al-Ghazzali lived from 1058 to 1111. He studied all the major sects of Islam and "struggled with truth like a terrier" searching for a kind of indubitable certainty. The more he searched the more disillusioned he became. How could any of their claims be objectively verified?
The more he studied the more depressed he became. He finally was unable to continue his studies. He abandoned his prestigious teaching position and went of to join the Sufis. In Sufi dance, he found what he was looking for. A direct experience of something he could call God. After Al-Ghazzali, Islam abandoned its attempt to find God through reason.
Some people, in this modern era of science and technology, have a problem with calling this God-through-reason-quest the search for God. God could be redefined into the ground of being or a oneness behind the universe; but the word God is tangled up with the mythology of God the Father sacrificing the Son. They want to drop the word God. Instead of searching for God that is tangled up with violence and survival , today we should search for God of spirituality . We need to search for what lifts us out of depression and into being in good spirits. It is this search that will lead us into a new era. Birth control and advances in agriculture has fundamentally changed our society. We no longer need to compete for limited resources. The rule of survival of the fittest no longer applies. It is the search for spirituality that will lead us to a new mythology that will transform our society from the war and strife we have known through most of recorded history.
We are at the dawn of a new era. A better world is within our grasp. We need to find a God of spirituality that will lead into this new world.



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About the Author: Dr. Sukhraj S. Dhillon has an advanced degree in life sciences and molecular biology from the west and a fascination with yoga, breathing, religion and spirituality from the east crafted out of studies at Yale University , U.S.A. and Punjab University , India . Therefore, he is uniquely qualified to present a synthesis of eastern and western approaches towards concept of God, science, religion and spirituality. He has published over 10 books and 40 research papers, and has expressed his views in the news media and workshops. He has been the President, Chairman of the board, and life-trustee of a non-profit religious organization and has expressed his views in the congregation and at international seminars.