I have an interesting story to share; It has to do with a girl I had met a few years back while I was studying in Montreal. At the time I had a small 1 bed apartment where I used to live, so in order to make ends meet, I used to rent out the bedroom and live in the living area my self. It was during one such time when I was looking for an apartment mate that I met a young lady who had reverted/converted to Islam. She had been a Christian Catholic and her parents and her husband were still Christian. She had little boy and she was looking for a place to rent for a few months because as she told me her husband had taken a keen interest in Islam and wanted to study it now and she did not want to influence his decision on becoming a Muslim or not. I was very impressed by this young lady. I had asked her what had influenced her to become muslim and she had told me that she had started to read about the Islamic civilizations and she was so impressed that she read the Quran translations and that caused her to convert. At the time I had not thought much of this incident probably because my own knowledge about islamic civilization was quite low and I did not really understand her fascination with it.
I guess because I was born in a muslim family and the world sees me as muslim I have never really cared to look beyond the surface and find out for my self what it was all about. These last few weeks I did get a chance to read up on the Islamic civilization and it amazed me. Islamic civilization at its zenith occupied an area larger than the Roman Empire at its peak. It spaned an area starting from China all the way to Southern Spain. It had gone all the way to the gates of Vienna in Europe. I understand now why that girl had been prompted to read the Quran after she had read about the islamic history, it was only because of this miraculous book that muslims managed to do all that they did. The reason for this is simple in the Quran the world most used after the word Allah is ILM which means knowledge. Islam is based on reason; one of the factors that differentiates the Quran from all other sacred texts is its stress on reason as a valid way to faith as well as its insistence on the inseparability of the spiritual and physical and therefore social spheres of human existence. The inseparability of man's daily actions and intentions with his destiny.
The Quran has fundamentally affected the religious, social and political history of the world. No other sacred scripture has ever had a similarly immediate impact upon the lives of the people who first heard its message through them and the generations that followed them, on the entire course of civilization. It united the warring tribes of Arabia and made them into a nation within a few decades, it spread its world view far beyond the deserts of Arabia and produced the first ideological society known to man, through its insistence on consciousness and knowledge. It engendered among its followers a sense of intellectual curiosity and independent inquiry. Ultimately resulting in that splendid era of learning and scientific research which distinguished the world of Islam at the height of its cultural vigor. The culture thus fostered by the Quran penetrated in countless ways and by ways into the mind of medieval Europe and gave rise to the revival of western culture, which we call the Renaissance, and thus became in the course of time largely responsible for the birth of what is descried as the the age of science. The age of today...
I was quite surprised to learn that it was the Muslims zeal for knowledge which prompted them to preserve texts written by Greeks, Hindus and other and it was from Arabic that such texts were translated into Latin which was the basis of the Renaissance.People from all over the world came to study at universities established in Baghdad, Egypt and Southern Spain.
The Islamic civilization was at its pinnacle during the 14 and 15th century, it started to go down in the middle of the 15th century. I believe one of the main reasons for the downfall were the infighting which arose because Muslims had forgotten the important stuff, they were no longer focusing on acquiring knowledge but were now busy with acquiring wealth. The had turned their back on the most important message of the Quran and that message was ILM.
Well the long and short of my blogpost today are basically two things.
This whole event and my subsequent study has made me realized
a) When some one want to come into Islam i.e submit his will to Allah he does so on his own accord and no amount of talking, preaching and pressuring can make some one muslim as was the case with the girl I had met.
b) We have to take time to study the Quran, its the guide book, instruction manual for our life in this world and as most of us are not Arabic speakers we are going to rely a lot on translations for guidance, we need to not just read one translation but as many different ones as we can and approach islam from as many different schools of though as we can because when we are using a translation and its commentary we are getting a specific view point. The point of view of the translator who no doubt is giving us the best that he can depending on his command of the Arabic language, his knowledge of Sunnah and Hadith and History and as the Quran is a book for all times his knowledge of the world in general. The uniqueness of the Quran consists in the fact that the more our worldly knowledge and historical experience increase, the more meaning hitherto unsuspected reveal themselves in its pages.
Hence it is only natural that the way in which one commentator understood a particular Quranic statement or expression differed occasionally and sometimes very incisively from the meaning attributed to it by another commentator. In short, they often contradict them selves in their interpretations but they do so without animosity, being aware of the element of relativity in human reasoning, and of each other's integrity.
As the prophet said "The difference in opinion Ikhtilaf among the learned men of my community(are an outcome of) divine grace (Rahmah)" which clearly imply that such differences of opinion are the basis of all progress in human thinking and therefore a most potent factor in man's acquisition of knowledge.
On my part this Ramadan I have made a pact with my self to not just stand in prayer at night and read the Quran in Taraweeh, to not only fast but to read a commentary of the Quran and try and understand its meaning better because as I understand it, that is the true purpose of Ramadan to begin with. It was in this month that the Quran was revealed to us and we are to use this month to reaffirm our relationship with the Quran.
I had quoted liberly from the Foreword by Mohammad Asad from the Message of the Quran and if you want to learn more about the scientific feats accomplished by muslim scientists get the book "1001 inventions muslim heritage in our world."
websites
www.1001inventions.com
www.MuslimHeritage.com
The documentaries by PBS on islamic civilization and the city of light are a great resource as well as the ones done by the History Channel.
Until next time.....
