To Shakeel: No coherent answers yet

Submitted by Plato (United Arab Emirates), Jun 27, 2007 at 05:49

Shakeel you wrote (in inverted commas):

"---The context of Surah 9 is that pagans had a treaty with Muslims, but they violated it. In turn Allah asked Muslims to declare that this treaty now does not hold anymore. If you have read carefully, you will soon know it but you always stopped reading in the middle and that's why so much confused.---"

Shakeel, you are a master at evading answers. You seem to think that I have not read Surah 9, which is not true as you would have realised if you had read my post a bit more carefully. If I have read any Surah with care it is Surah 9. Since you have charged the pagans with breaking a treaty you should have been a bit more forthcoming and given us a bit more information. Let me give you some information about this alleged treaty breaking. The people who broke the treaty were the Muslims when the Prophet refused to send back women who came to Medina from Mecca and their guardians demanded they be sent back. Since the treaty said man rather than people or persons the excuse is that women are excluded. Even today when we say men it quite often includes women. And as so often with Allah his Rasool got a convenient ayat allowing this unilateral change to the treaty. Could not Allah have warned his Prophet beforehand instead of sending the ayat after the fact to exclude women specifically from the wordings instead of making the Prophet suffer the opprobium of a treaty-breaker?

Your reference to treaty breaking is perhaps to the later attack by allies of the Quraish on allies of the Muslims.

"---Quran is teaching to reject the ties of kinship with kafir parents not non-Muslim parents. Let me tell you, you are not kafir, you are just a non-Muslim. Kafir is a person who gets a Rasool and Rasool makes the Truth apparent to him, but then he rejects it for no valid excuse but because of personal motives and obstinacy.---"

Now you tell us! There are no more kafirs around, they all disappeared when the Prophet died? They must have been a peculiar brand of kafirs. The Rasool proved convincingly to them that he was THE messenger and they also knew that if they rejected his message they would burn in hell for ever. I can't think of a stupider group of people. I think I asked you before, how could Allah with all his wisdom create such cretins in the first place? The Rasool proved to them that they would have their skins burned off and regrown to be burned off again ad infinitum or maybe they would be hung on iron hooks and made to drink molten brass and putrid water. Hats off to those foolhardy kafirs for their bravery.

"---I think, I have already answered your question. I said to you earlier that God judges people with intentions. God punishes only those people who rejects Rasool with wrong intentions for example because of personal motives and obstinacy once truth is apparent to them.---"

No you did not answer anything, you just made a statement. The statement tells me that you seem to know the mind of God since you are so categorical about how God judges or punishes people. Where did you get this information from. It is neither in the Koran nor is it part of the Sunnah. Can you please cite your source.

"---When God says, there is no compulsion in religion; He does not mean to say that He accepts every religion. He means that no Muslim is allowed to force his faith on any other. He also does not allow it to Rasool before the Itmam-ul-Hujja. But after Itmam-ul-Hujja, truth is clear to people and they did not have any valid excuse to deny it. If they deny it, they deny it because of wrong intentions like personal motives and obstinacy, and as I said, God judges people through intentions, so such people are punished.---"

Itmam ul-hujja is such a handy term. Itmam ul-hujja seems to have burst like a thunderclap on the people of Arabia the moment the Prophet escaped to Medina. Thirteen years of preaching was not enough to complete his argument but the moment he manages to gather an armed group his arguing days were over (i.e. complete) and the sword takes over. What seems obvious to me is that the Rasool realised that arguing with people was not getting him anywhere (he had very little to show for 13 years of arguing)

"---Since Itmam-ul-Hujja can only be done by Rasool through the power of God, so Islam does not teach any intolerance towards any other faith.The first rightly guided Caliph did not break this law. He punishes those people who were preached by Muhammad in his life time. If Caliph punishes those people who were not preached by Muhammad, like Hindus, Persians, then he would be violating the law.---"

What you are saying is that only Rasool was authorised by Allah to be intolerant towards other faiths. This practice of the Rasool of being intolerant towards pagans and People of the Book you are now conveniently deleting from the Sunnah. This I put down to some Muslims having grave doubts about this practice of the Prophet and so conveniently a time limit has been placed on it without any scriptural authority. Hopefully more and more Muslim scholars will adopt this stance of yours and it will go a long way in taming and reforming Islam.

Plato

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