Teaching Islam To Nonbelievers

The Abundance (Kawther)

To thee have We granted the Fount (of Abundance).

Therefore to thy Lord turn in Prayer and Sacrifice.

For he who hateth thee, he will be cut off (from Future Hope).

I have been leading a series of lectures in Bisbee for nearly seven weeks now. My goal was to dispel some of the misconceptions people have about Islam. I also stated that my goal was not to "convert" the students in my lecture series but in that, I know that Islam itself is a system of Allah choosing whom Allah will and if something I say to my students leads them to further investigation and 'conversion', then so be it, the seed of belief was already in them, the notorious MUSTARD SEED. I told them early on about what my bias is and asked them to consider their own. My bias is that I do believe the Quran is the Word of Allah and nothing less, that I take it LITERALLY and I did my best to relate to them the logic of that. The logic of that is based in the Arabic language as the transmission mode of what the Quran refers to as "the communications" of Allah or "Our communications" as it is worded verbatim in the text.

What I've found is that the American society is far away from belief. It is far astray in terms that most people have a very, very difficult time conceiving of a Creator let alone the Angels and the Djinn. I have been really challenged over the weeks by my students because they can become irritated at what it is I have to say. They apparently do not understand that I am not the one saying it....Allah is the one saying it...in the Quran and those communications follow a distinct logic. The problem however with my students overall (with the exception of the believers in the group) is that the unbelievers (athiests and so called "agnostics") is that they possess the FIRST BIAS. The First Bias as I like to call it is that they do not believe in Allah or God (whatever word you choose to use). The first thing a person needs to UNDERSTAND the logic of the Quran is this simple belief and it is contained in the Shehada which is the statement of "WITNESS" a person makes when actually accepting/embracing Islam as a way of life:

"There is only one 'ilah (ALLAH) and he has no sons and no partners and his messenger and prophet is Mohamed". What distinguishes a monotheist from a muslim is the second part of that statement i.e. that Mohamed (SAW) is the messenger and prophet of Allah. It is also what distinguishes other "types" of believers i.e. Christians/Jews/Others from muslims. A muslim is a DISTINCT type of believer but not one that ignores the existence of other types which never accepted the communications i.e. the QURAN and accepted it as the actual word of Allah. Let alone what distinguishes a Jew from all other types of believers that accepted the next to last prophet, Jesus (Isa, SAW) and hence, they are the focus of much of Allah's attention in the Quran as complete and serial rejectors of the prophets (which originated in their demonstrable genetic line). Due to the fact that Allah "chose" them above all others (Allah chooses whom Allah will) then they are in a very serious bind when it comes to the communications. Not from me but from Allah.

My group of students is composed of one fundamentalist Christian (and anti Arab believer - a teacher from the high school), one non practicing Jew (who is very Jewish in an ethnic sense but not a religious one), one woman who desires to accept Islam, another woman who is "Islam" friendly and inquisitive, a man who has never declared to be anything really but seems to want to be something, and yet another who seems to be interested in Islam from either a historical perspective or simply one for entertainment's sake and last but not least, a Canook who left a fundamentalist background for a "universalist" one but cannot conceive of the linkage between science (nature) and religion let alone politics and the all encompassing view Islam has of humanity and the societies in which we exist in together.

Out of all the lectures I have given, it was the last one that provided for me the biggest challenge overall. It was the lecture that questions what the Quran has to say about genetics versus what Darwin had to say and how Darwin's view has become obsolete even to non believing laboratory scientists. It is the case that Darwinism and all of it that Darwinism entails as a basis for societal/political practices has caused most of the disruption in the "God Beliefs" of people in Western society in my opionion and in the opinion of the Turkish muslim philosopher, Harun Yehye. In fact, I was not in agreement with the manner in which Yehye promotes "anti Darwinism" but now that I have seen it up close and personal, I am a believer in Anti Darwinism. That is because Darwinism is taught as a 'religion' in the sense that it cannot be questioned and to question it is to become an "apostate" (kafir in Islamic terminology) to this Western society. Nothing that I can see has caused greater damage to the souls of humanity.

So when one of my students was confronted with my Darwinian challenges he asked, "So, you (muslims) do not believe in evolution?"

How can a person answer that? It isn't that muslims do not believe in evolution "per se" but is evolution really understood by the people who believe in it? Any more than Islam is understood by everyone who believes in that as well?

NO. It isn't. People seem to have confused the two things: Evolution and Adaptation.

Two different things entirely. Evolution is the COMPLETE change of one species into another regardless of the time span required for such a change. For example, evolutionists have promoted the idea that fish somehow turned completely into birds. This is truly laughable when you think about the steps required for fish to transform into land going beasts let alone, sky going and non water filtering respiratory creatures who build nests instead of deposit eggs on underwater grasses or by simply depositing them for the currents to carry this way and that. Forget the fact that fish had to learn to sit on their eggs and completely ignore that fish are COLD BLOODED and birds are WARM BLOODED. And why then are there still fish since we know that for things to evolve it is due to the EXTREME force exerted by the NEED to adapt to varying environmental changes? The list of rhetorical questions that refute the ludicrous concept of absolute evolution are quite long and I won't go into to them now. Hopefully, I wouldn't need to as people have brains and ought to investigate ALL of their beliefs (not just the ones they like either).

Adaptation though, is another matter altogether. Islam puts forth the argument that all body plans were initially created but Islam does not negate that those types of things experienced progress and vascillation through "stages" and sometimes were changed by complete changes (human beings) but that all human beings are of the same type (NOT apes/monkeys) but of different RACES which are now extinct. We humans tend to not think we are like the Dodo bird and can experience RACIAL/SPECIES SPECIFIC extinctions that are the results of the deleterious effects of HUMAN BEHAVIOR. Western systems tend to think that kind of thinking is "for the birds". Heh.

For instance, homoerectus whateveris (to paraphrase the lineages of bones discovered by the Leakey's et.al.), were simply like Eskimoes. And we know for a fact that these types of small indigenous cultures from the Aborigines to the Apaches...are at risk for not only "social" extinction but actual "genetic" extinction through intermarriage, language and social deterioration and disease (as would be the case with the serious genetic mishaps on the Arabian Peninsula where first cousin marriages are the norm and have known detrimental effects on the offspring of those individuals in terms of increasing the morbidity and mortality of specific populations i.e. Saudis the best example of that that I know of).

In a nutshell, it has become clear to me what was not clear before. The Quran states that most people will not "believe" and it is true. Most will not because most cannot as they have been given a serious handicap in their thinking by a significantly huge number of DARWIN FANATICS. Most people will not believe without the intervening periods of vast social change like the one we are experiencing now in which humans are forced (as the Quran states: willingly or unwillingly) to face the seriousness of following a certain set of dictates NOT of human origin but of DIVINE origin.

It does beg the question, "What about the Jews then?" Are we responsible for what becomes of their small "indigenous" tribe in light of the idea that Islam relates that we all originate from the same two persons, Adam and Eve (Huwa, pbut) and in all actuality are all of one species and Allah gives everyone free will to choose "his way or the highway"? That is the question and if I was a Jew or any other type of actual "rejector" then I'd be investigating very seriously what Allah has said his plan is for those who disagree with his words. I'd be what you call, "motivated". It has bothered me for some time that Christians who supposedly believe in "God" would ignore ANYTHING God might have said. I ask them, "If you knew God left a message under that rock over there, wouldn't you want to go see what it said? Wouldn't you be overwhelmed with love for God and a desire to understand his plan and turn that rock over?" That one causes most Christian believers to tremble a little in stupification of their own "ignorance" as in ignoring something very, very important to them.

As for the unbelievers and the arrogant, who cares really what becomes of them. I certainly don't and have no control over it.

How to get people to see the logic of this thing called Islam? Well, Allah knew that was not only difficult but a job for Allah only. And that is why Sura "one-o-nine" was revealed to us as muslims:

The Disbelievers (Kafr)

109:1
Say : O ye that reject Faith!

109:2
I worship not that which ye worship,

109:3
Nor will ye worship that which I worship.

109:4
And I will not worship that which ye have been wont to worship,

109:5
Nor will ye worship that which I worship.

109:6
To you be your Way, and to me mine.