How to Relate With Non-Muslims As a Muslim

It's appropriate for a Muslim to know how to relate with his non-Muslim friends, relatives or neighbors in today's heterogeneous world of ours. Non-Muslims - Christians and Jews - have been the companion of Muslims right from the inception of Islam. In Mecca and Medina; for example, we have seen how our noble Prophet Muhammad (Peace and Blessing of Allah be Upon Him) relates with them kindly. Therefore, knowing how to engage and interact with them, be it at work, at home, or in your neighborhood is not anew; it's a fourteenth century sociology found nowhere but within the Quran and Sunnah. Following are five important relationship guides that can help you interact peacefully and lawfully with non-Muslims:

1. You Must Deal Justly with Them

Non-Muslims must be treated fairly by Muslims. Christians and Jews aren't enemies to Muslims; therefore, Muslims must deal with them justly. The Holy Quran says: "Allah forbids you not, with regard to those who fight you not for (your) faith nor drive you out of your homes, from dealing kindly and justly with them: for Allah love those who are just" (Quran 6:8).

2. You Can Give Zakaat (Almsgiving) to Non-Muslims

There is nothing wrong in helping the non-Muslims; in fact, there is a huge reward in sympathizing with them and helping the poor and the needy amongst them. Giving charity and alms to non-Muslims is a good virtue of Islam that helps tremendously in drawing the non-Muslims to Islam. The Quran says: "Zakaat is only to be given to the needy, the poor, those employed to collect (the funds); and to attract the hearts of those who have been inclined (towards Islam)... " (Quran 9:60).

3. You Can Congratulate and Exchange Gift with Them

You can congratulate your Christian friends, neighbors, or colleagues during their festive occasions. In fact, you can even exchange gifts with them (on condition that these gifts are not unlawful such as being alcohol or pork). You can greet them on their X-mass or New Year gala. This becomes more so an obligation, especially if the non-Muslims offer their greetings to your Islamic occasion such as Eid Mubarak or Ramadan Kareem. The Quran says: "when you're greeted with a greeting, greet in return with what is better than it or at least return it equally... " (Quran 4:86).

4. You Can Eat From Their Food

You can accept and eat the food of your non-Muslim friends or neighbors. There is nothing wrong with that in Islam. The Quran says: "... The food of the People of the Scripture (Christians and Jews) is lawful to you and yours is lawful to them... " (Quran 5:5).

5. You Can't Participate in Their Religious Festivities

You can congratulate the non-Muslims of their festivities, exchange gift with them, and even eat from their food; but you can't participate in their religious commemorative. This is haram (unlawful) because Islam doesn't endorse such festivities. Ibn Taymiyah and his student, Ibn-ul-Qayyim, "adopted stringent measures and restricted the permissibility of Muslims' participation in non-Muslims' occasions".

The relationship between Muslim and non-Muslim is a healthy one. A Muslim never takes other religious adherents as his enemies; he considers them as his fellow humans who deserve to be treated fairly, judiciously, and equitably.

The Certainty Delusion - Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Believe in Everything

Do you believe in God? Ghosts? Free will? Evolution? Intelligent design? Ancient aliens? Life after death? Oblivion? I do - and I don't. You see, I've devised a new belief system as likely to fox a magistrate as it is a four-year-old child. It occurred to me how irrational it is to believe in anything totally, especially since the laws of physics have broken down and renowned physicists don't know whether we are living in a universe of our own imagination or whether we are the play-things of a higher intelligence. And apparently, our steady old reliable universe is now a layered multiverse.

According to hirsute Japanese-American theoretical physicist, Dr Michio Kaku, I may be sitting in my office right now, but I could also simultaneously be in the middle of a desert and at the bottom of an ocean with flesh-eating monsters swimming around - and through - my unsuspecting head. Luckily I wouldn't be able see, hear, touch or smell these monsters, nor they me, as their atoms would be vibrating at a different frequency from my own.

If all this is true, you are probably thinking to yourself, then could there not be a blue cheese moon occupying the same space as our own moon? It's possible, but that's not for here.

So where does all this uncertainty leave Belief? For me, the solution is simple. I no longer say I believe in one thing and disavow another. I give a percentage of credibility to each and every idea. If an idea seems plausible, I may give it 60% credibility, if it sounds outlandish I'll merit it with a lowly 12%.

Needless to say, once I got into this new mode of thinking, the world became a far more unreasonable place. I found humans, with their unconditional faith in one thing and rejection of another, were having trouble fitting in with me. And some began really to rub me up the wrong way.

Geneticist Richard Dawkins wrote a very interesting book called The Selfish Gene. I even read most of it. Later, he went off the rails, academically speaking, and wrote The God Delusion. And I can only assume it was Satan himself who possessed Dawkins to write this book, likely in order to discredit all his previous scientific work and bring humanity back to religion and the belief in God and His nemesis, the Devil. But I'm speculating.

Professor Dawkins' argument, as far as I can recall, is that God doesn't exist because the Old Testament stories are crazy fairy tales featuring grossly immoral people masquerading as saints. Since the book's publication, Dawkins has popped up all over the place preaching fanatically about the inexistence of the reality of an abstract concept. The man is like a dog with a bone. He will not let it drop. If only Dawkins had adopted my system, he could have saved himself much polemical angst. But the question remains: what exactly is accountable for the man's fundamentalism?

Perhaps Dawkins believes in the trite and erroneous notion that religion is at the root of all war, and that by campaigning against the former he can help to eradicate the latter. You could thus argue that it is he who is suffering from a God delusion. And most wars that I know of were fought over land and resources, or the fear of domination by the other. 'War is a Racket', wrote Major Gen. Smedley D Butler. And if religion does play a part, it is simply a convenient way of identifying the enemy.

No, Dawkins cannot be that shallow. I sense a psychological defence mechanism brought on by the cabin fever and monomania to which many scientists are prone. Theoretical physicists, on the other hand, get out and about, metaphysically speaking.

Nobel Prize winner, Max Planck wrote:

'There is no matter as such. All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particle of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together. We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent mind.'

Then there's the measurement problem, which seems to confirm the above. What this means, as far as I can fathom, is that atoms behave differently when being observed by people; or, you could say, influenced by consciousness. In short, consciousness affects matter and may even be responsible for its existence. Therefore, if you are keen on the idea of an afterlife, your best bet would be to believe in it.

Now, Dawkins may have got a theological bee in his bonnet, but we can be sure that when he closes his eyes at night and drifts off into fairyland, there will be one Being notable for His absence. You see, I have never met anyone who has dreamed about God. I'm sure there are those who claim to have done, but I would give their story a feeble 2% credibility. It would be counterproductive to create beings with free will and then allow them to dream about you since they would constantly be trying to interpret what it was you wanted them to do.

There is one exception to my new custom of affording percentages of credibility, and that applies to God Himself. In the case of His existence I prefer to afford 100% credibility. After all, His belief in me may be holding my atoms together. I would rather err on the side of caution just in case He is a vengeful God - and I'd say there's a good 50% chance of that.

Terrorism, the True Face

When I was in Air Force Intelligence we heard the sordid news that the CIA director in Beirut in 1985 was kidnapped, taken to Iran and beheaded. There was no trial, nothing, just a barbaric act. This is terrorism and is defined as illegal use of force to overawe the civilian population to make it do or not do an act against its will and well-being. In this case the idea was to instill fear in the mind of US officials.

Islamic terrorism in the world is presently the number one problem. Despite the death of Bin Laden a successor to the dreaded terrorist is already in place. This man has declared that the USA is the priority target for that terrorist attacks as he feels the USA is the great Satan. He would like the USA to go home so that an Islamic caliphate is created.

Fanatic Muslims consider the defeat of the USA as an unfinished chapter of Islamic conquests. The aim of the Islamic terrorists is to spread so much terror that the people of the USA and almost the entire world convert to Islam. There dream is to establish an Islamic caliphate.

In one sense, I do not blame the Muslim fanatics for targeting the USA. Many Americans do not realize the true nature of Islamic Jihad and holy war. I have heard some people talking after the death of the terrorist Anwar al Awlaki in a drone attack, that he did not get a fair trial. I wonder how many are aware that given the chance the Islamic terrorists kill western hostages by a ritual beheading. I don't think any trial or fair play crosses the minds of these men. Some people in the west and the USA in particular temporize by saying that there are terrorists in Spain, Sri Lanka and other places also. Why single out Islamic terror groups?. Yes they are there, but we are talking of percentages and the harsh fact is that 98% of all terrorists are Muslim. Secondly the other terrorist groups are not fighting with a religious invocation.

Any policy to combat terrorism must begin with requiring each and every citizen of the world realizing the inherent danger of militant Islamic terrorism. For this, the mind set has to change. Guru Gobind Singh showed the world how just five fearless persons under spiritual guidance can transform a society. This was in the year 1699 when he created the Khalsa.

Why 99% of the terrorists caught profess the Muslim faith? A deeper study will show that the seeds of this lie in the spiritual books of Islam itself. In these books the beheading is recognized as a normal punishment for a Kafir, non believer. In addition there are injunctions to annihilate Jews, Christians and non Muslims.

As we all know there are Muslims who are opposed to the policy of the Islamic terrorists, but they are overawed by the gun and the mullahs. They may be in a minority but they are there. These are the men and women who must be reached out to.

Islamic terrorists are men who believe in what they are doing is right. Recently a terrorist Abu Hamza who was caught for the Mumbai Carnage of 26/11 commented that he had no regrets and if required he would like to kill again. He felt this was his duty as he would go to paradise after that. 166 people were killed at that time including Jews and US citizens. Even the detainees at Guantanamo have not expressed any regret for their terrorist actions. This shows the type of opponent the world is facing.

Walking After Emptiness   

In The Time Of Greatest Need

In the world today, distrust has become the order of the day. This is happening among peoples, within families, among nations, in work places, religious organizations and in social circles. But one thing people are not aware of is that the main cause of such distrust is fear-- fear of the unknown, fear that others may possess qualities that elude them, qualities that they have lost during the process of their evolution as human beings, not necessarily within one earth life. Such fears of being dominated by others result in a kind of aggression that's to force domination over such individuals so fears.

Hence distrust is a higher manifestation of fear-- fear and anger that it is just this person, group, family, nation or organization that has the abilities and knowledge that he could no longer muster. The only option is to suppress such abilities, or prevent it from coming to light, even if it is what it is need by the individual organization for its advancement. Those of pure minds will always want to align with the one with these abilities for the progress of all, but the out and out intellectuals will employ persecution to silent the troublesome group. The only option is if such groups or individuals will become completely subservient to them and make them take whatever glory that may come from the unfolding of such abilities. Driven entirely by distrust, which is a product of fear, their anger and hatred reaches so high that they develop from being bullies to being tyrants. This has been the fundamental course of the crisis on earth today. In the final analysis it has become the outer ramifications of the war between the good and evil, the so-called Armageddon war that is currently fought in the plains of Megiddo-- or gross matter; the war between the materialists and the intellectuals whose perceptive abilities cannot go beyond the material sphere.

Strange to say, this war has been on for decades now and is intensifying with the greatest alarm. Part of the bye product of this war is the illusion that the current universal distress can only happen

to others and that we are immune. But the distress will leave he world completely changed, so that the prophecies of a new earth will be fulfilled. In a matter of only years, Europe will have changed so much as not to be recognizable while a new confinement arises at the centre of Atlantic Ocean. All the intellectual calculations of things to come, with its skepticisms of spiritual issues, will collapse on its own. The power of money will be broke, or, as Mother Shipton, the sixteenth century prophet puts it, Gold will no longer buy a plate of food. This is going to be a time of unprecedented crisis on earth. The current Arab spring will escalate until it reaches and takes over America due to acute and unprecedented food crisis. Those who are rich enough to store up food will have an additional crisis of protecting their lot, for there will be complete breakdown of law and order. Those employed to protect people will use their power for one major cause: acquiring food as members of "the brotherhood of the gun". Everywhere you go there is crisis since unprecedented natural disasters-- earthquakes, floods, volcanoes, hurricanes and landslides-- will become the order of the day. Crime will become so normal among human beings desperate for survival.

Again, Mother Shipton says that men, ugly in their fears, hides to kill marauders thieves and spies It is only then, when human dignity has gone to the winds, when belief in the power of money crashes, then humanity, struck by an enormous crisis that defies logical intellectual solutions, will be forced to recognize the omnipotence of the almighty. They will also recognize that differences in religion are due to errors introduced by human beings, and that all religions are but steps to the recognition of the Most High. After thunder and lightening, then the earth will be purified and only the laws of the Almighty will rule the world in uniformity. That will be the time of promise, the longed for Millennium.

Walking After Emptiness   

Is Nymphomania Real? It Depends - How About Religion? Is Billy Graham Real?

Introduction: Irrationality in America

My position on nymphomania is fully described in the summary. It is one example of irrationality that is pervasive in America. I want to describe another kind of irrationality that is vastly more injurious to individuals and to our society and nations around the world, namely, organized religions and those who promote them. I wish to do so by contrasting the lives of two individuals, one dead and the other nearly so. One embodies reason; the other superstition and other qualities of irrationality. First, however, a few words on critical thinking or its absence.

While the influence of religion is reported to be waning, or so it seems if the latest Pew findings on religious affiliation in America are accurate, certain elements of religious dogmas are as pervasive as ever. Consider, for example, belief in miracles or even demonic possession. The strength of these ancient superstitions is on the rise.

In addition, there has been an increase in conspiracy thinking, led by birthers, moon hoaxers, antivaxxers, Holocaust deniers, young Earth creationists and so on.

H. L. Mencken had a term for the propensity of our citizenry to embrace nonsense - Boobus Americanus. The Boobus strain is a national embarrassment.

Republicans are fond of claiming a quality of exceptionalism for our nation. We're exceptional all right, but not in a good way. We are exceptionally irrational. Of course, this criticism does not apply to all Americans. Mencken believed America was populated by a small elite of educated, cultivated and intelligent human beings - and then there were the masses. The latter he considered frighteningly ignorant and capable of being led and bamboozled.

In a recent personal message, Perry Street Palace blogger SJ expressed more or less the same idea, explaining that rational, evidence-based critical thinking takes practice, lots of it for most people. SJ rhetorically asked, And just who in the public domain is modeling evidence-based reasoning? I'm waiting for your answer. His point was that Americans are in thrall to absurd notions about supernatural forces.

Which brings me to two figures in recent American history - one a paragon of reason, science, free inquiry and wonder; the other a model of fear-mongering, ignorance and superstition. I'm thinking of Dr. Carl Sagan and Reverend Billy Graham, respectively.

Billy Graham

I first encountered the televangelist as a teen in the 1950's. My parents were spellbound by Graham's televised revival performances. His hell-fire and brimstone condemnations of sinners was captured beautifully by Bert Lancaster in the movie Elmer Ganty.

My childhood was deeply immersed in the Roman Catholic culture of the time. In that context, the Catholic masses (conducted in Latin) and other rituals were mind-numbingly boring; Billy Graham, on the other hand, was a showman. While I was appalled others, including my Catholic parents, were spellbound. Not getting it, I wondered: How could my parents watch this foolishness?

Well, I now suppose that, compared with Catholic ritual, Graham must have been both entertaining and effective. After condemning sin, sinners and backsliding Christians, Graham would soften his tone and, with a little help from an orchestra, a choir and George Beverly Shea, invite the fallen to come forward, renounce their wicked ways and be saved. All the audience members had to do was accept Jesus as their personal savior. Not much was said as to what that meant, but the assumption seemed to be that everything would be all right once they did so - and especially after they wrote a check for Billy Graham's crusade and sent it off to the address conveniently shown on the television screen. Shea would sing, How Great Thou Art at this critical point as the revival audience moved toward the stage. For a sense of what a Godgasm the show provided, go to YouTube and search for a video of Mr. Shea reprising this big time Christian hit. It's powerful stuff for the faithful - and a truly toxic hallucinogen.

And that was the nature of all Graham's crusade shows - singing and healing after condemnations and visions of a vengeful God exacting a terrible wrath on sinners. Babble, fantasy and irrationality were the gate passes to peace with the Lord, until the next Billy Graham show a week later. Then TV viewers and the revival audience would have to undergo once more a condemnation as sinners, the visions of hell-fire and, cue the music, Billy's forgiveness simply by proclaiming once again their surrender to Jesus as Lord and Savior - with another check made payable to the Graham Crusade.

Unlike my parents, the effect for me was confirmation that religion was nonsense. More than the nuns, the priests, the bible stories or the work of Lucifer, I have Billy Graham to thank for a deep-seated conviction that religion really is pretty much what Bertrand Russell declared it to be - a disease born of fear and a source of untold misery to the human race.

In 2007, books by William Hughes' and Cecil Bothwell appeared entitled, Rev. Billy Graham: A Prince of War Exposed and The Prince of War: Billy Graham's Crusade for a Wholly Christian Empire, respectively. Both dealt with Graham's role promoting the Evangelical Right. The books documented how Graham amassed a multimillion dollar media empire while never encountering a U.S. war he couldn't bless. Graham was also dedicated to eliminating separation between church and state and rebranding the U.S. as a Christian nation. He saw America's armies as rightful instruments of a Christian crusade and a Christian empire.

Sound familiar? That's essentially what today's jihadists of the Islam persuasion seek for their religion, as well.

In the half century or so since observing my parents being taken in by this preacher's totally irrational television rants, Billy Graham has symbolized religion as a great barrier to reason, skepticism, science and rational thinking. It's almost as if Auguste Chartier (1868-1951) had Billy Graham in mind when he wrote, Nothing is more dangerous than an idea, when a man has only one idea. I would add - especially a religion as put forward by this crusader for theocracy.

Carl Sagan

Carl Sagan (1934 - 1996) was a professor of astronomy at Cornell University, a Pulitzer Prize winning author and creator of the Emmy and Peabody award-winning PBS television series, Cosmos. His life was devoted to the same qualities Graham's life undermined - reason, science, free inquiry and wonder. Freethinkers celebrate Sagan Day annually on November 9, the good man's birth date.

Carl Sagan played a key role in NASA's robotic spacecraft missions. As a consultant and adviser to NASA since the 1950's, Sagan briefed Apollo astronauts before their flights to the moon. A participant in the Mariner, Viking, Voyager and Galileo expeditions to the planets, he designed the Golden Record embedded in the two Voyager probes, now departing our solar system. This record contains the sounds and images of life and culture on Earth. Perhaps, someday, this record will be discovered and enjoyed by advanced life forms from a wondrous spacefaring civilization. What a thought.

Sagan won nearly as many honors in his lifetime as Billy Graham conducted religious revivals. He was awarded NASA medals for Exceptional Scientific Achievement and for Distinguished Public Service. An asteroid was named after him. He was given the John F. Kennedy Astronautics Award of the American Astronautical Society, the Public Welfare Medal (the highest award of the National Academy of Sciences), the Explorers Club 75th Anniversary Award, the Konstantin Tsiolkovsky Medal of the Soviet Cosmonauts Federation and the Masursky Award of the American Astronomical Society. The latter included a plaque that read, in part: For his extraordinary contributions to the development of planetary science. As a scientist trained in both astronomy and biology, Dr. Sagan has made seminal contributions to the study of planetary atmospheres, planetary surfaces, the history of the Earth, and exobiology.

Many of the most productive planetary scientists working today are his present and former students and associates. Carl Sagan helped millions recognize and appreciate the wonder and importance of science, in part by writing best-selling books, including Cosmos, The Dragons of Eden: Speculations of the Evolution of Human Intelligence and The Demon-Haunted World. The latter work by itself hich would be a certain antidote that would protect the mind against the folly of a Billy Graham revival. Anyone who read this book would be 100 percent immune to the fear-mongering, ignorance and superstition employed by Graham to enrapture vulnerable victims of this fundamentalist genre of magical thinking.

Who better to summarize Carl Sagan's legacy than his co-collaborator and spouse, Ann Druyan?

I think that his voice was a great, great service to our culture and to our society, because not only did he convey the importance of skepticism, but also the importance of wonder. People think that if you are a scientist you have to give up that joy of discovery, that passion, that sense of the great romance of life. I say that's completely opposite of the truth. The fact is that the real thing is far more dazzling, far more goose-bump-raising, than any myth or childish story that we can make up. The Universe revealed by science is one of far more awesome grandeur than any religion has ever posited.

Walking After Emptiness   

The Sermon That Walked

"I'd rather see a sermon Than hear one any day. I'd rather one would walk with me Than merely tell the way." Edgar A. Guest, I'd Rather See a Sermon

We know the power of example, all of us do. Certainly both our negative and positive example has a ripple effect. We could go so far as to say that without example we have no vested power of God to see transformations occur in Jesus' name. Everything we say and do bears a constant scrutiny. And everything we think has potential to spill into the world of action.

We are blessed to walk a good sermon. We walk the best sermons by guarding our hearts, watching our thoughts, disciplining our minds, and finally by acting in godly ways.

THERE IS NOTHING BEYOND WHAT WE SAY AND DO

Our sermons from the pulpit may be preached with purpose and punch, complete with the fire of the Holy Spirit. But if we miss the mark in the other 167 hours that the rest of the week consists of, our sermons lack the fundamental substance of integrity.

This is why Paul writes to Timothy and Titus about the crucial qualities of Bishops and Elders in the church. Not only are they to know their doctrine, but they are - most importantly - to be peaceable people in the family, in the community; real to the core.

There is nothing beyond what we say and do.

It doesn't matter what we think - the piousness of our thoughts - if we fly off into a rage and burn people with our temper. It doesn't matter what we believe if we hold on to resentments. It doesn't matter what we have achieved if we lack the moderation of self-control to the point of damaging our lives or others' lives.

Actions speak as a megaphone and the words we say remain.

Our harshest judge is ourselves, by the actions we take that we cannot withdraw. Once we do something it's done.

When we value and highly prize our actions we become more accountable, and we grow in wisdom. We make fewer excuses. And we gain perspective. When we see nothing beyond what we say and do, we take God at his Word. We are ready to live life in the land of the living.

***

There was no better sermon preached than the sermon that walked; that lived by example; that exemplified justice, mercy, humility, and grace. When we go beyond the words we preach and we adopt what we preach in our lives, other lives are blessed by our example.

© 2012 S. J. Wickham.

Walking After Emptiness