Only love can defeat terrorism-4 [Archives:2007/1089/Culture]

By: Harun Yahya
www.harunyahya.com
Islam Forbids the Killing of Innocents

According to the Qur'an (5:32), it is a great sin to kill an innocent person, and anyone who does so will suffer great torment in the hereafter:

If someone kills another person)unless it is in retaliation for someone else or for causing corruption in the earth)it is as if he had murdered all mankind. And if anyone gives life to another person, it is as if he had given life to all mankind. Our Messengers came to them with Clear Signs, but even after that, many of them committed outrages in the earth.”

This verse equals the killing of one innocent to slaughtering all of humanity! Another verse (25:68) expresses the importance that the faithful attach to life:

Those who do not appeal to any other deity besides God [alone]; nor kill any soul whom God has forbidden [them to] except with the right to do so; nor fornicate. Anyone who does so will incur a penalty.

Any Muslim who believes in God with a sincere heart, who scrupulously abides by His holy verses and fears suffering in the hereafter, will avoid harming even one other person. He knows that the Lord of Infinite Justice will suitably reward him for all his deeds. In one of the hadiths, our Prophet (may God bless him and grant him peace) listed the kinds of people who are not pleasing to God:

“Those who act cruelly and justly in the sacred lands, those who yearn for the ways of the ignorant, and those who wrongly shed human blood.”i



Islam Commands People to Behave Justly

Islamic morality commands believers to behave justly and morally in making a decision, speaking, or working)in short, in every area of their lives. God's commandments in the Qur'an and the sunnah of our Prophet (may God bless him and grant him peace) describe that understanding of justice in great detail. With their warnings, all the Messengers revealed to us in the Qur'an brought peace and justice to all the communities where they were sent. The prophets helped lift cruelty and despotism from the shoulders of the community of the faithful. As God has revealed in one verse (10:47):

Every nation has a Messenger, and when their Messenger comes, everything is decided between them justly. They are not wronged.

A most important feature of Islamic understanding of justice is that it commands justice at all times, even if one is dealing with a person who is near and dear. As God commands in another verse (4:135):

You who believe! Be upholders of justice, bearing witness for God alone, even against yourselves or your parents and relatives. Whether they are rich or poor, God is well able to look after them. Do not follow your own desires and deviate from the truth. If you twist or turn away, God is aware of what you do.

That verse clearly states that to a believer, the wealth or social status of whomever one deals with is of no importance. What is important is fairness)no one should be treated unjustly)and to scrupulously implement the holy verses of God. In another verse (5:8), it is commanded:

You who believe! Show integrity for the sake of God, bearing witness with justice. Do not let hatred for a people incite you into not being just. Be just. That is closer to heedfulness. Heed God. God is aware of what you do.

In that verse, God orders the faithful to act justly always, even with their own enemies. No Muslim can make a spontaneous decision, based on the fact that the person he's dealing with has once harmed him or left him in a difficult situation. Even when he is a personal enemy, if the other side is genuinely in the wrong, any Muslim has the duty to respond with good will and to display the morality God has commanded.

To believers, God has issued the following commandment (60:8): “God does not forbid you from being good to those who have not fought you in the religion or driven you from your homes, or from being just towards them. God loves those who are just.” Here, He informs Muslims how their relationships with other people should be. These verses are the very foundation of a believer's attitude towards others, formed not by the nature of the people he is dealing with, but by God's revelations in the Qur'an. That is why Muslims with pure hearts always support what is right. Their determination on this matter is revealed in these terms (Qur'an, 7:181): “Among those We have created, there is a community who guide by the Truth and act justly according to it.”

All over the world, people are subjected to cruel treatment because of their race, language or skin color. Yet according to the view of justice as set out in the Qur'an, a person's ethnicity, race or gender are of no importance, because Islam maintains that all people are equal. Our Prophet's (may God bless him and grant him peace) words, “All of you belong to one ancestry of Adam, and Adam was created out of clay,”ii stress that there is no difference between people. Skin color, social status and wealth confer no superiority on anyone.

According to the Qur'an, one reason why different tribes, peoples, and nations were created is so that they “might come to know one another.” All are servants of God and must come to learn one another's different cultures, languages, customs and abilities. One intent behind the existence of different nations and races is cultural wealth, not war and conflict. All true believers know that only godliness )in other words, the fear of God and faith in Him)can impart superiority. As God has revealed in the Qur'an (49:13):

Mankind! We created you from a male and female, and made you into peoples and tribes so that you might come to know each other. The noblest among you in God's sight is that one of you who best performs his duty. God is All-Knowing, All-Aware.

Islamic morality aims at a society built on brotherhood and peace, freedom and security. That is why all communities that come into contact with Islam have given up their oppressive, cruel and aggressive ways and have, instead, built peaceful and civilized societies. (For further details, see Justice and Tolerance in the Qur'an by Harun Yahya.) In their works, many Western historians have documented Islam's deep and positive affects on communities that came into contact with it. In The Making of Humanity, Professor Robert Briffault discusses the relationship between Western society and Islam:

The ideas that inspired the French Revolution and the Declaration of Rights, that guided the framing of the American Constitution and inflamed that struggle for independence in the Latin American countries [and elsewhere] were not inventions of the West. They find their ultimate inspiration and source in the Holy Quran.iii

Down through the centuries, Islamic morality has taught people about peace, tolerance and justice. Nowadays, nearly everyone is seeking just such a model, and there is no reason why such a culture should not come about once again. All that is needed is people's desire to live by the morality of the Qur'an, starting with themselves and later, making efforts to convey it to others. When everyone, from the highest ranks to the very lowest, begins to implement the morality commanded in the Qur'an, they will become just, compassionate, tolerant, full of love, respectful and forgiving. That, in turn, will bring peace to all of society. (To be continued)



Quick grasp of faith

* What does “wisdom” mean?

Wisdom is the ability to determine what is right and most appropriate. All speech, decisions, and behavior of people of wisdom are wise and proper. They can explain a subject in the most correct, most concise, and wisest manner; can make the right diagnosis of an event, a person, or a behavior; react to events wisely; and can exhibit the finest behavior. Therefore, people of wisdom are also people of high intelligence.

One can have wisdom only through belief in Allah and following the Qur'an, for the Qur'an is the only source that teaches humanity the truth of events, good and wise behavior, thought, and speech.

Allah gives wisdom as a blessing to His sincere servants who turn to Him. The Qur'an points out that Allah grants this gift to whom He wills:

He gives wisdom to whoever He wills, and he who has been given wisdom has been given great good. But no one pays heed but people of intelligence. (Surat al-Baqara, 269)



* Can one refrain from enjoining the right and forbidding the wrong because of one's environment or the people one knows?

Allah commands people to call one another to good and to forbid wrong. When the believers notice a person exhibiting a behavior that Allah does not like, they should obey His command by calling that person to what is right. They should never hesitate to remind people of what Allah says and to invite them to righteousness, because Allah has told the believers to continue to remind people about His commands:

It is a Book sent down to you)so let there be no constriction in your breast because of it)so that you can give warning by it and as a reminder to the believers. (Surat al-A`raf, 2)

(For further reference, please see, Quick Grasp of Faith 1-3, by Harun Yahya)



Miracles of the qur'an

The relativity of time

Today, the relativity of time is a proven scientific fact. This was revealed by Einstein's theory of relativity during the early part of the 20th century. Until then, it was not known that time was relative, nor that it could change according to the circumstances. Yet, the renowned scientist Albert Einstein proved this fact by discovering the theory of relativity. He showed that time is dependent on mass and velocity.

However, the Qur'an had already included information about time's being relative! Some verses about the subject read:

day with your Lord is equivalent to a thousand years in the way you count. (Qur'an, 22:47)

He directs the whole affair from heaven to earth. Then it will again ascend to Him on a Day whose length is a thousand years by the way you measure. (Qur'an, 32:5)

The angels and the Spirit ascend to Him in a day whose length is fifty thousand years. (Qur'an, 70:4)

The fact that the relativity of time is so definitely mentioned in the Qur'an, which began to be revealed in 610, is more evidence that it is a divine book.



The splitting earth

[I swear] by Heaven which returns and the earth which splits. (Qur'an, 86:11-12)

The Arabic word “sadA” in the above verse means “cracking, splitting apart.” Allah's swearing by the splitting of the Earth points to an important phenomenon, as do the other scientific miracles in the Qur'an. Scientists first descended to the depths of the seas and oceans in order to study mineral resources in 1945-1946. One of the most important facts to emerge from that research was the fissured structure of the Earth. The rock layer on the external surface of the Earth was split by large numbers of cracks (faults), tens of thousands of kilometres long, running from north to south and east to west. Scientists also realised that there was molten magma under the sea, at depths of 100-150 km.

Due to these splits and cracks, lava flows from volcanoes on the sea bed. Due to this fissured structure, a significant amount of heat is also given off, and a large part of molten rocks forms the mountains under the oceans. If the Earth did not possess this structure, which allows large amounts of heat to escape from its crust, life on Earth would become impossible.1

There is no doubt that such information, which required such advanced technology to be discovered, being given 1,400 years ago is yet another proof that the Qur'an is the Word of Allah. (For further reference, please see, Miracles of the Qur'an, by Harun Yahya)



To purchase the works of Harun Yahya, please visit www.bookglobal.net

1″Arctic Explorers,” 23 June 2000, http://tea.rice.edu/schauer/6.23.2000.html; Tetsuzo Seno, Satoru Honda, “Mantle Convection and The Global Sea Level: When Did Plate Tectonics Begin on The Earth?,” www.eri.u-tokyo.ac.jp/seno/sealevel_abst.html; “Mantle Convection,”

http://theory.uwinnipeg.ca/mod_tech/node195.html; Prof. Zaghloul El-Naggar, “Scientific Signs in the Qur'an: Examples from the Area of Earth Sciences,”

www.nekkah.com/Main/EngPage/Scientific_Signs_in_the_Quran.htm.



i Sahih Bukhari Hadith

ii Prophet Muhammed's Last Sermon

iii Prof. Robert Briffault, Insanligin Gelisimi (The Making of Humanity), http://www.tolueislam.com/Shabbir/SA_WINC_4.htm, Andy Thomas, Islam Insanligin Ruhu (Islam is the Spirit of Humanity) , Timas Yayinlari, Istanbul, 1997, p. 38
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