A Muslim Convert Once Before

بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ Dr. Colin Turner wrote, “I cannot pretend that this is an academic paper, although at some point it may grow into one.  At the moment it is merely an exercise in thinking aloud, so please bear with me.   In a sense, this paper represents the confluence of two streams of thought.  The first stream, the smaller of the two, concerns the notion of uswatun hasanah or the ‘excellent pattern’, which is an epithet given to both the Prophet Muhammad ( s.a.w. ) and the Prophet Abraham ( a.s. ), in the Qur’an.  The second stream, and the more substantial one, concerns an on-going research interest of mine in the concept of the ‘vital lie’, popularised by Ernest Becker, a cultural anthropologist who died some forty years ago now and whose main claim to fame is the Pulitzer Prize-winning book, ‘The Denial of Death’.   Let me start with the first stream of thought, which concerns this notion of uswatun hasanah – the notion of th...

بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ   Dr. Colin Turner wrote, “By God, as Muslims our enemy is not the West; our enemy is not the USA or Europe or Russia or China; as Muslims our enemy is not capitalism or poverty or the questionable morals of modernity.   By God, as Muslims our misfortunes are not caused by this or that external force, or this or that external cause.   Our problems are not the result of colonialism and imperialism, of failed ideologies such as socialism and communism.   By God, our enemy is none of these.   As Muslims, we should not look outside our own community and experience for scapegoats, because by God it is a digression.   We Muslims are our own worst enemies.   We are beset by ignorance, by spiritual detachment from God, by a chronic aversion to critical thinking.   We are beset by religious externalism, by dry, hide-bound legalism and jurisprudential superficiality.   We are beset by sectarian hatred, by racism ...

بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ Dr. Colin Turner wrote, “Imagine a boat with twenty people in it, and one of them is a murderer.   Now imagine how horrifically unjust it would be if, in order to punish the murderer, we were to sink the whole boat and kill all twenty passengers.   Now imagine a man with nineteen good character traits and one bad one.   Imagine how unjust it would be to dismiss this man completely, just because of that one negative character trait.   But this is what we do all the time.   We focus on a person’s negatives and disregard all the positives.   This is particularly unjust when we reject everything a scholar says, simply on account of one misguided word of his, or one opinion of his that we disagree with.   We need to take care not to ‘sink’ a person’s boat, just because of one bad character trait out of twenty.   And even if there were nineteen bad traits, and just one good trait, sinking the boat of that person...

بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ   Dr. Colin Turner said, “Imagine it has been raining and, after the rain stops, you see thousands of drops of water on the grass in your garden.   Now assume, just for the sake of argument, that the tiny images of the Sun that you can see in those drops of water are not attributed to the Sun, but to the drops themselves.   In other words, if the images of the Sun in those drops of water are not attributed to the Sun, in order to account for the images that we are seeing, we have to accept that there is a real, miniature Sun in every drop of water on the grass.   Is this not an absurd idea?   What is easier to accept: a single Sun that reflects on those drops of water and makes its image visible in them?   Or is it easier to believe that inside every raindrop there exists a miniature Sun?   Now think of billions of living creatures and the attributes that they reflect, such as life, power, knowledge, wisdom and...

بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ   Dr. Colin Turner wrote, “At the time of the wise king prophet, Solomon ( a.s. ), a barber was out walking in the streets of Jerusalem when he suddenly spotted the Angel of Death, who looked at him with such surprise that the barber screamed with fright and ran away.   Knowing that the Prophet Solomon ( a.s. ) had special powers, the barber ran, still shaking and screaming, to Solomon’s ( a.s. ) palace and demanded to see the king.   ‘Oh Solomon,’ he cried, ‘I have just encountered the Angel of Death, who gave me such a terrible look that I thought I would die there and then!   Please do something and save me!   Summon a cloud to take me to India so that I may escape the Angel of Death, I beg you!’   And so, Solomon ( a.s. ) called on the wind and the clouds, and commanded them to pick the barber up, and take him thousands of miles away to India.   Later that day, Solomon ( a.s. ) was out walking with his ...

بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ Brother William Voller posted, on The Sharing Group, on the 29 th May2016, “Are there such a thing as absolute truths or universal laws in this universe?   Brother Colin Turner, I was reading ‘In the Name of the Rose’.   All those years of study could have been achieved by simply reading this book!   Paraphrasing the character, William, he poses the question I do, and answers that logic works only within a logical framework, since it presumes something to be true based on a logical truth not an actual one.   For example, this is a triangle because it has three sides, but God need only interrupt this with an angle to change ‘triangle’ from having the need of three sides and thus make the logic false once more.”   Brother Abdul-halim Vaz : What does it mean for a triangle to not need three sides?   Brother William Voller : The definition is changed.   Essentially a triangle is, when we give it the logical defi...

بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ Dr. Colin Turner said, “Even the most accurate map does not show a city as it really is.  Study a map of Istanbul, for example, before you go there for the first time and you will get a good idea of how the roads and avenues of that city are arranged, but nothing will prepare you for the reality of the place.  This is natural: no non-illustrated, two-dimensional representation can possibly portray perfectly a multi-dimensional entity such as a city of the size, area and complexity of Istanbul!  All a map can do is give you an outline, an idea, an impression.   In the same way, even if we are given the most accurate description of God, until we actually experience Him, there is no way that we can understand Him properly.  There is no ‘map’ of God more perfect than the Qur’an, yet even with the Qur’an, it is impossible to prepare ourselves fully for the Reality of His Being, or to understand Him as He really is.”