From: aldo@ips-server.Eng.Sun.COM (Aldo Castillo)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.spain,soc.culture.portuguese,soc.culture.caribbean,soc.culture.brazil,soc.culture.bulgaria,soc.culture.netherlands
Subject: Re: CALL OF THE QUR'AN TO THE PEOPLE OF THE BOOK
Date: 8 Sep 1992 21:24:54 GMT
Organization: Sun Microsystems Inc., Mountain View, CA
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: ips-server

What does this have to do with soc.culture.spain, soc.culture.portuguese,
soc.culture.caribbean, soc.culture.brazil, soc.culture.bulgaria,
soc.culture.netherlands?

BTW, that was a rethorical question.

Aldo Castillo


In article <1992Sep4.165516.2417@doug.cae.wisc.edu> irfan@maxwell.ece.wisc.edu (Irfan Alan) writes:
>THE CALL OF THE QUR'AN TO THE PEOPLE OF THE BOOK   
>
>
>(Especially for Christians)
>
>STATEMENT OF INTENTION
>
>"Invite (all) to the way of your Lord with wisdom and beautiful instruction; 
>and reason with them in ways that are best and most gracious:"  (Qur'an 16:125)
>Allah says in Qur'an:   Say You: "We believe In Allah, and the revelation 
>Given to us, and to Abraham, Ishmael , Isaac, Jacob, and the Tribes,  and that
>given to Moses and Jesus, that given to all prophets from their Lord:  We make
>no difference Between one and another of them: And we bow to Allah (in Islam)  
>So if they believe As you believe, they are indeed On the right path;  but if
>they turn back, it is they who are in schism;  But Allah will suffice you as
>against them,  and He is the All-Hearing, the All-Knowing.    (Q.2:136-137)
>
>"Say: O People of the Book!  Come to common terms as between us and you: That
>we worship none but Allah;  That we associate no partners with Him; That we
>erect not, from among ourselves,  Lords and patrons other than Allah. If then
>they turn back,   Say you: 'Bear witness that we at least are Muslims bowing to
>Allah's Will'.  (Qur'an 2:64.)
>
>This call of Qur'an has been propagating for more than 14 hundred years.  We,
>Muslims, today, take great pleasures and fulfillment in our hearts when we see
>that, finally, the People of the Book, especially the Christians, are breaking
>the barriers of their largely enforced misconceptions, and coming out,
>knowingly or not, to listen to and reason with the call of Qur'an.
>What do Muslims understand when it is said the People of the Book?  At first,
>People of the Book refers to the Christians who claim to follow the teachings
>of Jesus (A.S.), Jews who claim to follow the teachings of Moses (A.S.).  Then,
>it also refers to the people devoted to learning, the people of wisdom, the
>people in quest for the truth, and those who renounced the world and
>selfishness for their transience, and give up their arrogance (see Qur'an
>5:82-86).  In meaning, the Qur'an asks the People of the Book:
>
>"O People of the Truth!  Believe in Muhammad (ASM) and the Qur'an just as you
>should also properly believe in the previous prophets and scriptures.  For they
>all gave the glad tidings of the coming of the last prophet Muhammad (ASM), and
>all that gives evidence to the truthfulness of them are truly, accurately, and
>purely found in the Qur'an and Muhammad (ASM).  Affirm, then, that the Qur'an
>is Allah's Word, and Muhammad (ASM) is His Last Messenger, for all the reasons
>you believe in the previous scriptures and messengers.
>
>O Christians and Jews!  There is no difficulty for you in accepting Islam if
>only you would follow the pure teachings of your prophets; do not let it appear
>hard to you.  For the Qur'an does not order you to abandon your faith on One
>Almighty Creator.  It asks you, indeed, to complete and purify your affirmation
>of the essentials of the religion.  This is because the Qur'an combines in
>itself all the true virtues of all the previous books and the essentials of all
>the previous revealed religions; it is thus a modifier, a purifier, and a
>perfector over them.  
>
>As for Islam having established a new final Law, this only concerns such
>details which were subject to change and alteration (only by the Law Giver)
>because of time and place.  This is not unreasonable at all.  With the change
>of seasons, food and costumes need to be changed.  Also the methods for
>educating a person change in accordance with his age.  A certain kind of
>medicine may also be a fatal poison for one while it heals another.  So, too,
>such details which harmonize human life and mind with the requirements of the
>time are rightly and reasonably subject to change.  For this reason the Qur'an
>has changed some details of the previous religions and prepared the humankind
>for a new and final quest -a quest that of fulfilling the purpose of creation
>in its full potential, that is, establishment of complete justice and answering
>all the questions asked by the tongues of wisdom, reasoning, and sound
>judgement."
>
>A Muslim affirms the Existence of One Creator by sound judgement and
>contentment coming from the certainty of knowledge of Allah's Attributes, and
>thus fully submits to His Will.  A true declaration of faith in Allah is not
>just to say 'There must be a God', and then divide up His sovereignty among
>causes and nature, associate His absolute Attributes to the number causes and
>intermediaries, to fail to perceive His Absolute Will and Knowledge as present
>with all things; to refuse to acknowledge His Commands, to belittle or reject
>the prophets He has sent, and not to make sincere repentance, seek pardon, and
>feel genuine regret for every disobedience.
>
>Not denying is one thing, believing and affirming is something completely
>different.  The declaration of a Muslim by saying "There is no god but Allah,
>and He has no partners" carries an affirmation by heart and mind in the way
>taught by the Qur'an the Miraculous Exposition.
>Actually, Jesus (AS) also encouraged his followers to have certainty in their
>belief in the Creator through wisdom and contentment of the heart and the mind.
>He facilitated understanding of his people by appealing to their wisdom and
>thinking through many simple stories and examples.  
>
>For example, see in Matthew 7:24-27.
>"Therefore whosoever hears these sayings of mine, and does them, I will liken
>him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock: And the rain descended,
>and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell
>not: for it was founded upon a rock.  And every one that hears these sayings of
>mine, and does them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man, which built his
>house upon the sand: And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds
>blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell: and great was the fall of it."
>
>How about what Paul -self-appointed apostle- says about wisdom?  We read in the
>book he wrote (Corinthians 1:19):  "For it is written, I (God) will destroy the
>wisdom of the wise, and will bring to nothing the understanding of the
>prudent."  This is why the Church was so much allergic towards wisdom, and made
>Christians approach their own wisdom as devilish.  We all know the historical
>events which are witnesses to this.  It took for the Church 3 centuries to
>accept its error in denouncing Galilee.  We, Muslims, are waiting patiently to
>see how long more it will take for the Church to recognize the truth of the
>Miraculous Qur'an and the Prophet of Islam, Muhammad (ASM)!  Of course, such an
>acceptance of the Church means its very end.
>
>In exactly the same manner, at a time when the materialist ideologies came
>exploiting and interpreting scientific knowledge, since today's Christianity is
>more of a Pauline Doctrine, and since pure teachings of prophet Jesus (AS) are
>largely distorted with many irrational (often paganish) ideas and rituals, and
>since the Christian faith is often a mere imitation and acceptance of what the
>clergy, or so-called godly men, dictates, many hearts and minds are lost to the
>pressures of an increasingly harsh world and attacks of atheism.
>
>Scorpion Example:
>-----------------
>We, Muslims, see our Christian friends as carrying a scorpion on their
>shoulders.  When you face such a dangerous situation, you slap on your friends
>shoulder immediately, instead of hugging him or scratching his back! 
>Similarly, we do not waste time with beautiful words and gestures as signs of
>our love towards them.  Our consideration of Christian friends comes from our
>compassion towards them.  We, Muslims, do not love them with their current
>dangerous status in regard to their blasphemy.  Since Islam does not give the
>true ownership of virtues and qualities to people themselves or any effect to
>causes, Muslims love other fellow human beings for the sake of Allah.  With no
>expectation of benefit in return, we invite all peoples to the Straight Path in
>Islam only out of compassion for them.   
>
>Ship Example:
>-------------
>We, Muslims, are told by Prophet of Islam, Muhammad (ASM), that a time will
>come when Christians will eventually join the ranks of Islam by purifying their
>faith.  We are also told in the Most-Wise Qur'an that the closest people to
>Muslims in friendship will be those Christians who are devoted to learning of
>the truth, who are not arrogant, and who have denounced the world.  With these
>information and guidance in mind, we regard our Christian friends as travelling
>in a ship called "Christianity" in the dark, stormy waters of Western
>materialist ideologies and atheism.  However, we see that this ship is sinking,
>and groups of people are committing suicide by jumping out into those dark
>waters.  The ship is sinking because some people inside have been opening up
>holes in it out of their own various reasons, and because secular philosophies
>outside have been torpedoing it harshly.  We, Muslims, do not want to sink the
>ship, rather we want to patch up its holes, throw away all the poisonous
>weights in it, and change its name to Islam, whose captain will be Jesus (AS)
>himself, InsaAllah Teala!  . The Message of All Prophets were all same:  'There
>is no god but Allah.'
>
>If four people who have arrived via four different routes all speak of the same
>event, it suggests, with a certainty born out of unanimity, that that event
>definitely occurred.  Thus, although their ways, dispositions, abilities,
>circumstances, and times were all completely different, all the prophets of
>Allah, starting from the first human and prophet Adam (AS), up to the last
>prophet Muhammad (ASM), including all the prophets sent to all nations
>throughout the world, all authentic revelations and scriptures all give this
>unique message:  "There is no god but Allah; He is One, He has no partner; His
>is the dominion and His is the praise; He alone grants life and deals death,
>and He is living and dies not; all good is in His hand, and He is powerful over
>all things and with Him all things have their end." Know O Dear Friend!  To
>discover a treasure which contains embellished and valuable variety of
>jewellers, several people dive into the deep sea.  While searching, one of them
>finds a long piece of a diamond.  He then comes to the conclusion that the
>treasure completely consists of diamonds.  Later, when he hears from his
>friends about other kinds of minerals, he would surmise that those minerals
>found are the stones of the diamond that he found.  The other one finds a
>spherical ruby, and another fellow finds some other kind, and so on.  Each of
>them believes that the whole treasure consists of the kind that he found, and
>other kinds found by his friends are superfluous and minor details of the
>treasure.  After such conclusion is made, the balance is lost and the
>proportion is diminished.  They eventually start making false explanation, and
>forced interpretation in order to discover and understand the truth of the
>matter based on  their own observation.  Even some of them ended up denying the
>treasure altogether when their understanding did not suit the reality.  
>Friend, the Miraculous Qur'an too dived into that sea to discover the treasure.
>That treasure is the Names and Attributes of the Creator, Allah, and the
>purpose of Creation.  However, the eyes of the All-Wise Qur'an is open, it sees
>the treasure completely with an embracing view, and in a manner suitable to the
>truth regarding the balance and proportion.  It presented the truth with
>perfect order and regularity.  It preserved Tawheed (Oneness of the Creator)
>with all its ranks as much as required and necessary.  It fulfilled the
>requirements and proportions of the Beautiful names of Allah, taught them in a
>harmony according to the Will of Allah.  Allah Subhanehu wa Teala makes the
>High truths about His Names and Attributes known in the Qur'an in the perfect
>way.  The Qur'an, therefore, teaches the Lord (Uluhiyyet), Sustainer, and
>Cherisher Names (Rububiyat) in the most harmonious and effective way.
>