i thought you'd never ask
Reader comment on item: "Death to America"
in response to reader comment: I suffer no illusions

Submitted by bayezid (Bangladesh), Aug 2, 2008 at 13:35

May the ALMIGHTY bestow peace upon you. It would've been way simpler if u merely asked me questions like you have in your last response . I would've been more than happy to oblige.

But before I get down to answering your very reasonably posed questions I would like to apologize for any insults I might have thrown at you. Although I was careful not to amidst all those wrong accusations about Muhammad peace be upon him and islam, I was vexed.

1."Is it true that the Koran says, "If you pray to the Trinity, then your abode will be fire?" If it does, please explain it." ----- I would, at first, like to present before you what ALLAH HIMSELF has said in the al qur'an regarding the trinity and then get down to justifying it. O People of the Book, commit no excesses in your religion; nor say of God anything but the truth. The Messiah Jesus son of Mary was (no more than) a Messenger of God, and His Word, which He bestowed on Mary, and a Spirit proceeding from Him; so believe in God and His Messengers. Say not "Trinity": desist! It will be better for you: for God is One: Glory be to Him! (far exalted is He) above having a son. To Him belong all things in the heavens and on earth. And enough is God as a Disposer of affairs. (Qur'an 4:171) They do blaspheme who say: God is the third of three (thālith thalātha): for there is no god except One God. If they desist not from their word (of blasphemy), verily a grievous penalty will befall the blasphemers among them.(Qur'an 5:73) When God says, 'Jesus, son of Mary, did you say to people, "Take me and my mother as two gods alongside God"?' he will say, 'May you be exalted! I would never say what I had no right to say - if I had said such a thing You would have known it: You know all that is within me, though I do not know what is within You, You alone have full knowledge of things unseen (Qur'an 5:116) Man worships GOD alone naturally. It is the ONENESS, the pure INDIVISIBILITY, which stands as testament of the greatness of GOD (ALLAH). When someone imagines a trinity they are saying oh hey there guess what we did we divided GOD in 3 parts. I would like to remind you here that we are talking about the ONE GOD who is beyond all understanding and beyond all imperfections imaginable and unimaginable. How can we worship something which can fall under scrutiny, and can be actually analyzed in the same way a frog or an eel is dissected in a lab under a microscope? Can one worship such a thing? I mean worship is a devotion… a commitment and an obsession which is meaningful. It is reserved for the ONE who is unique in every sense. A being you can divide and scrutinize and observe is infinitely short of being worshipful. Another logical problem with trinity is that it stifles the infiniteness of ALLAH. Its saying that infinity has 3 parts or four parts or 10000 parts.

Anything that you can give a numeric value to is not infinite. So trinity is something which naturally goes against the idea of ALLAH. Besides… ALLAH addresses our souls here. No soul can be happy worshipping something like a being with 3 understandable parts.it can be good storytelling for, lets say, a board game of dungeons and dragons.

So it is actually a crime against ones own self. And ALLAH, needless to say, will definitely punish the wrong doers. I hope this does it but if you are not content I will try harder to explain this to you more later.

2. "Is it true that the Koran says' "If you are friend to the Christian or the Jew, then you are one also?" If this is true, no explanation is necessary." ----- ALLAH does not speak on this matter the way you have presented it. Allow me to lay some ayahs from the quran for you on this topic . O you who believe! take not for friends and protectors those who take your religion for a mockery or sport,- whether among those who received the Scripture before you, or among those who reject Faith; but remain conscious of God, if you are (truly) believers. (Quran 5:57) O YOU who have attained to faith! Do not take the Jews and the Christians for your allies: they are but allies of one another and whoever of you allies himself with them becomes, verily, one of them; behold, God does not guide people who are unjust. (Quran 5:51) .. Then is it only a part of the Book that ye believe in, and do you reject the rest? but what is the reward for those among you who behave like this but disgrace in this life? - and on the Day of Judgment they shall be consigned to the most grievous penalty. For God is not unmindful of what ye do. (Quran 2:85) what ALLAH means by friendship here is clearly an alliance of people. It is certainly not natural for people of conflicting beliefs to be helpers of each other.

But I must also warn you not to think of these ayahs as precedents for aggression against non believers by Muslims. It merely states that only a believer who believes in the ONENESS of ALLAH can be a true ally to another believer who believes in the same. Worship of GOD is at the core of every human. Great care has to be taken so as not to defile it with opposing beliefs. Muslims strictly observe the truth of the tawheed (ONENESS of GOD) which many Christians or Jews do not.

Almost all Christians believe in the trinity and the Jews go far enough to say that GOD's hands are tied. These present a less than desirable idea of the truth of ALLAH. So you tell me, how can it be possible for someone to befriend a people that believe in a distorted picture of GOD ALMIGHTY? ALLAH simply speaks of a basic fact here. And in case it might wrongly occur to you, the muslims are not !! allowed to be aggressive to jews or Christians or anybody else if they haven't been attacked first. ALLAH has forbidden it.

I present to you another ayah. As for such [of the unbelievers] as do not fight against you on account of [your] faith, and neither drive you forth from your homelands, God does not forbid you to show them kindness and to behave towards them with full equity: for, verily, God loves those who act equitably. (Quran 60:8) As I said earlier this friendship is a friendship of alliance in the sense that there is integration of two people where one may have to forgo its beliefs for the other. ALLAH also refers to those righteous jews and Christians and sabeans in the quran which must be presented. And they are as follows.

Of the people of Moses there is a section who guide and do justice in the light of truth. (Quran 7:159) Not all of them are alike: Of the People of the Book are a portion that stand (For the right): They rehearse the Signs of God all night long, and they prostrate themselves in adoration. They believe in God and the Last Day; they enjoin what is right, and forbid what is wrong; and they hasten (in emulation) in (all) good works: They are in the ranks of the righteous. (Quran 3:113-114) And there are, certainly, among the People of the Book, those who believe in God, in the revelation to you, and in the revelation to them, bowing in humility to God. They will not sell the Signs of God for a miserable gain! For them is a reward with their Lord, and God is swift in account. (Quran 3:199) Verily, those who have attained to faith [in this divine writ], as well as those who follow the Jewish faith, and the Christians, and the Sabians - all who believe in God and the Last Day and do righteous deeds-shall have their reward with their Sustainer; and no fear need they have, and neither shall they grieve. (Quran 2:62) ALLAH qualifies those Christians and sabeans and jews who believe in ALLAH alone and do not trifle with this matter, as the righteous.

I pray that these ayahs from the speech of ALLAH will stay in your memory. Please read them carefully as this might remove the negative impressions you have about the quran. Questions 3 to 7 have the same answer. These are but a number of confusing and shameful events that may have given you a bad impression of islam. Let me say that it would be understandable by me if you had no way of being acquainted with islam. But I take it that you are an American and ALLAH has given you all the world's facilities.

You could do your very own verification by picking up the quran and the sunnah. You could have very easily seen the contrast between what ALLAH said and what so called muslims today are doing by juxtaposing them together. Please do not take any offence to what I am saying but you have an abundance of libraries and ‘faster than light' internet connection speed which we third-worlders lack. Allow me to also point out that islam is not what people do. It is what they are supposed to do. Its the way of life from ALLAH which HE wished us to adopt. By we I mean human beings in general. As in all of us. U and me and everyone.

Followers of islam are the called muslims. Muslims being human can be less than desirable in their way of doing things. So yes, you will have muslims that do not live up to the expectations of ALLAH. You will have so called muslims commiting atrocities. People being gifted with that slippery thing known as free will can abuse this trust placed by ALLAH. But are they what ALLAH asks of us? Are they what the Prophet of humanity has taught us? Do we learn about blowing things up or taking hostages in the quran or in the sunnah? Definitely not !!

I am afraid you have judged islam by the irresponsible acts of some muslims or they could have been a set up by other forces trying to defame islam and muslims as a whole. This may sting you but you have to consider the possibilities. Only today…after so many days are people in America getting to know that muslims did not fly that plane on that ill fated spt11. you may not know this but documentaries even from your country have proven this fact. I request you delve deeper into that matter yourself. And I am hurt myelf to know that you were so prompt in pointing to me the evil deeds of muslims which we are not even sure about to be quite honest, but failed to see the aggression against muslims even today .

Don't forget Afghanistan. You are aggrieved for your oil tankers and these people actually lost their entire infrastructure in war with the soviets which was the brainchild of the American government. Tell me I am lying. Don't forget bosnia. Kosovo. Chechnya which does not even exist today. You are worried about your capitol hill and your air tanker, when these people actually lost their families and their cities to invading Serbians. Oh let us not forget the extermination of the muslims there either. Don't forget Palestine where the muslims invited the European jews back inside only to get kicked out of their rightfully owned lands themselves.

I want to hear you tell me I am wrong. I want you to correct me when countless old women and children are actually bulldozed into shreds becoming a part of the grotesque scenery themselves. So I think you know that it is at least a wee bit understandable when they cheer after friends of the Israelis suffer a set back. Don't you think? Don't forget iraq where Americans started the whole mess by budging in. meddling with affairs not even theirs.

I am glad saddam Hussein is out of the picture but lets not forget that if u hadn't interfered…. Countless children wouldn't have to be bombed to oblivion in their sleep. The death toll that took place in Iraq in the two gulf wars was far greater than what would've happened if Americans decided not to join in. Almost forgot about the sabra and shatilla massacres in Lebanon. Israeli troops wrongly occupied the entire Lebanon and sent in Christian bigots into muslim camps mostly populated with women and young men and women.the rest, as you may know, is history. I don't feel I need to go on mentioning such atrocious events hoping that I have proved my point.

You know, muslims were witness to a lot of maltreatments from people of other religions more than they would like to remember. You have history books so lets focus on the present. The fact that france actually banned wearing headscarf for muslim girls is an act of intolerance stands out burning. So yeah I burn too. But then I have the hadith of Muhammad peace be upon him : Let not the injustice of other people prevent you from being just. And it also behooves me to present some ayah again from the book of ALLAH, which was written by HIM alone. "Fight in the cause of Allah those against those who fight you, but do not transgress, for Allah loves not the transgressor. Fight in the way of Allah against those who fight against you, but begin not hostilities. Lo! Allah loveth not aggressors. And slay them wherever ye find them, and drive them out of the places whence they drove you out, for persecution is worse than slaughter. And fight not with them at the Inviolable Place of Worship until they first attack you there, but if they attack you (there) then slay them. Such is the reward of disbelievers. But if they desist, then lo! Allah is Forgiving, Merciful. And fight them until persecution is no more, and religion is for Allah. But if they desist, then let there be no hostility except against wrongdoers." (Al-Baqarah 190-193)[1] To those against whom war is made, permission is given (to fight), because they are wronged;- and verily, Allah is most powerful for their aid;- (They are) those who have been expelled from their homes in defiance of right,- (for no cause) except that they say, "our Lord is Allah". Did not Allah check one set of people by means of another, there would surely have been pulled down monasteries, churches, synagogues, and mosques, in which the name of Allah is commemorated in abundant measure. Allah will certainly aid those who aid his (cause);- for verily Allah is full of Strength, Exalted in Might, (able to enforce His Will). surah 22, verses 39-40:[30]

you are more than welcome to correspond with me if you so please. I am going to leave it all here and I certainly hope it wasn't too painstaking for your read. And need I mention, any questions you may have please feel free to ask. That way I am being a better slave to ALLAH and so are you. Salaam.

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