A Muslim Convert Once More

بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ   Over a thousand years ago, the Prophet ( s.a.w. ) predicted the rise of the Wahhabi sect and its children, groups like ISIS. He said, “A people will come out at the end of times, immature, foolish and corrupt.   They will hold the discourse of the best of Creation and recite Qur'an, but it will not go past their throats.   They will pass through religion the way an arrow passes through its quarry.   If you find them, kill them, for verily whoever kills them will have his Reward from Allah the Day of Judgement.”

بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ   Hadhrat Malcolm X ( r.a. ) wrote, in “The Autobiography of Malcolm X”, “Hence I have no mercy or compassion in me for a society that will crush people, and then penalise them for not being able to stand up under the weight.”

بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ   The Catholic theologian, Gilbert Keith Chesterton said, “The Bible tells us to love our neighbours, and also to love our enemies; probably because they are generally the same people.”

بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ   The Statute of Religious Freedom became the basis of the freedom of religion enshrined in the First Amendment.   The freedom it upholds is total and without exception. It does not specifically protect Christians, nor can it specifically exempt any religion, including Islam.   Thomas Jefferson said, “The bill for establishing religious freedom, the principles of which had, to a certain degree, been enacted before, I had drawn in all the latitude of reason and right.   It still met with opposition; but, with some mutilations in the preamble, it was finally passed; and a singular proposition proved that its protection of opinion was meant to be universal.   Where the preamble declares, that coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, an amendment was proposed, by inserting the word ‘Jesus Christ’, so that it should read, ‘a departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our relig...

بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ   Dr. Wilhelm Klemperer, the son of a rabbi, and a survivor of the Nazi Occupation, said, “To me, the Zionists, who want to go back to the Jewish state of 70 CE, are just as offensive as the Nazis.   With their nosing after blood, their ancient ‘cultural roots’, their partly canting, partly obtuse winding back of the world they are altogether a match for the National Socialists.   That is the fantastic thing about the National Socialists, that they simultaneously share in a community of ideas with Soviet Russia and with Zion.”

بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ   Gilbert Keith Chesterton wrote, in “What’s Wrong with the World”, “The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting.   It has been found difficult; and left untried.”

بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ   We try to find God in the stranger, the poor, the suffering, for every soul has a hard journey.   Rev. John James Watson said, “This man beside us also has a hard fight with an unfavouring world, with strong temptations, with doubts and fears, with wounds of the past which have skinned over, but which smart when they are touched.   It is a fact, however surprising.   And when this occurs to us we are moved to deal kindly with him, to bid him be of good cheer, to let him understand that we are also fighting a battle; we are bound not to irritate him, nor press hardly upon him nor help his lower self.”

بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ   Pastor Charles Haddon Spurgeon said, “I believe that it is anti-Christian and unholy for any Christian to live with the object of accumulating wealth.   You will say, ‘Are we not to strive all we can to get all the money we can?’   You may do so.   I cannot doubt but what, in so doing, you may do service to the cause of God.   But what I said was that to live with the object of accumulating wealth is anti-Christian.”

بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ   Dr. John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was a devout Roman Catholic, and his influence was a significant factor in the conversion of Clive. Staples Lewis from atheism to Christianity, although Dr. John was dismayed that Lewis chose to become an Anglican.   According to his grandson, Simon Tolkien, Dr. John Tolkien, in the twilight of his life, was disappointed by some of the liturgical reforms and changes implemented after the Second Vatican Council, particularly the change of liturgy from Latin to English.   In fact, in Mass, he said the refrain and responses in Latin, oblivious to the rest of the congregation, who said it in English.

بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ   Dr. Isaac Asimov said, in “Asimov Laughs Again: More Than 700 Jokes, Limericks and Anecdotes”, “I am frequently asked if I have visited Israel, whereas yet, it is simply assumed that I have.   Well, I don’t travel.   I really don’t, and if I did, I probably wouldn’t visit Israel.   I remember how it was in 1948 when Israel was being established and all my Jewish friends were ecstatic; I was not.   I said, ‘What are we doing?   We are establishing ourselves in a ghetto, in a small corner of a vast Muslim sea.   The Muslims will never forget nor forgive, and Israel, as long as it exists, will be embattled.’   I was laughed at, but I was right.   I can’t help but feel that the Jews didn’t really have the right to appropriate a territory only because 2,000 years ago, people they consider their ancestors, were living there.   History moves on and you can’t really turn it back.”

بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ   Didier Francois is a French journalist who spent over 10 months as an ISIS hostage in Syria.   He said they know nothing about Islam.   “There was never really discussion about texts or it was not a religious discussion.   It was a political discussion.”   He also said, “It was more hammering what they were believing than teaching us about the Qur’an.   Because it has nothing to do with the Qur’an.”   Regarding the Qur’an, he said, “We didn’t even have the Qur’an; they didn’t want even to give us a Qur’an.”

بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ   Voltaire said, “Appreciation is a wonderful thing; it makes what is excellent in others belong to us as well.”

بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ   We should not forget history.   DeCovan Kadell “Dee” Brown wrote in “Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West”, “I heard him call to the people not to be afraid, that the soldiers would not hurt them; then the troops opened fire from two sides of the camp.”

بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ   There is no doubt that Palestine is a humanitarian crisis, and a political failure of neighbouring Muslim states.

بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ   Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde wrote, in “The Importance of Being Earnest”, “The truth is rarely pure and never simple.”

بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ   Once every so often, we meet people who have this impression that they have the right to dictate what Islam is based on their limited understanding and cultural prejudices.   If anyone begins an exchange with implied takfir , I will respond brutally.

بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ   Convertitis is a condition where someone has recently converted to Islam, and is suddenly an expert in shari’ah and the religious sciences.   It is the spiritual disease of the born again and every almost convert experiences it to a degree.