Despair Islam Quotes

Always walking along despite the dangers and adversities, despite the injustices and horrors, trusting in God so as not to despair of men and events.

O Lord, have Mercy and Compassion, for if Thou dost not have Mercy, who will have mercy?” The heartfelt prayer of this simple pilgrim epitomizes the quintessential Islamic attitude toward God as the source of compassion and mercy. No matter what one has done in life, one should never lose hope in His Compassion and Mercy, for as the Quran states, “And who despaireth of the Mercy of his Lord save those who go astray” (15:56), and “Do not despair of God’s Mercy” (39:53).

Pascal's scientific achievements, therefore, did not give him much confidence in the human condition. When he contemplated the immensity of the universe, he was scared stiff: 'When I see the blind and wretched state of man, when I survey the whole universe in its dumbness and man left to himself with no light, as though lost in this corner of the universe, without knowing who put him there, what he has come to do, what will become of him when he dies, incapable of knowing anything, I am moved to terror, like a man transported in his sleep to some terrifying desert island, who wakes up quiet lost with no means of escape. Then I marvel that so wretched a state does not drive people to despair.

Why doesn't the pope convert to Calvinism? Why doesn't the Dalai Lama, convert to Christianity, why doesn't Billy Graham convert to Islam, Why doesn't the Ayatollahs convert to Buddhism, Why isn't Buddhism swept away? Religious leaders know that all religions are equal; they know that no one of them has the monopoly to the knowledge of God. They know that each religion is trying to find the hidden God and that no one religion can claim to have found him beyond doubt. That's why they remain where they are and respect each other.

The Yogic path is about disentangling the built-in glitches of the human condition, which I'm going to over-simply define here as the heartbreaking inability to sustain contentment. Different schools of thought over the centuries have found different explanation for man's apparently inherently flawed state. Taoists call it imbalance, Buddism calls it ignorance, Islam blames our misery on rebellion against God, and the Judeo-Christian tradition attributes all our suffering to original sin. Freudians say that unhappiness is the inevitable result of the clash between our natural drives and civilization's needs. (As my friend Deborah the psychologist explains it: "Desire is the design flaw.") The Yogis, however, say that human discontentment is a simple case of mistaken identity. We're miserable because we think that we are mere individuals, alone with our fears and flaws and resentments and mortality. We wrongly believe that our limited little egos constitute our whole entire nature. We have failed to recognize our deeper divine character. We don't realize that, somewhere within us all, there does exist a supreme Self who is eternally at peace. That supreme Self is our true identity, universal and divine. Before you realize this truth, say the Yogis, you will always be in despair, a notion nicely expressed in this exasperated line from the Greek stoic philosopher Epictetus: "You bear God within you, poor wretch, and know it not.

Perhaps we are all living inside a giant computer simulation, Matrix-style. That would contradict all our national, religious and ideological stories. But our mental experiences would still be real. If it turns out that human history is an elaborate simulation run on a super-computer by rat scientists from the planet Zircon, that would be rather embarrassing for Karl Marx and the Islamic State. But these rat scientists would still have to answer for the Armenian genocide and for Auschwitz. How did they get that one past the Zircon University’s ethics committee? Even if the gas chambers were just electric signals in silicon chips, the experiences of pain, fear and despair were not one iota less excruciating for that. Pain is pain, fear is fear, and love is love – even in the matrix. It doesn’t matter if the fear you feel is inspired by a collection of atoms in the outside world or by electrical signals manipulated by a computer. The fear is still real. So if you want to explore the reality of your mind, you can do that inside the matrix as well as outside it.

Praise be to Allah, who revealed the Book, controls the clouds, defeats factionalism, and says in His Book: 'But when the forbidden months are past, then fight and slay the pagans wherever ye find them, seize them, beleaguer them, and lie in wait for them in every stratagem (of war)'; and peace be upon our Prophet, Muhammad Bin-'Abdallah, who said: I have been sent with the sword between my hands to ensure that no one but Allah is worshipped, Allah who put my livelihood under the shadow of my spear and who inflicts humiliation and scorn on those who disobey my orders. ...All these crimes and sins committed by the Americans are a clear declaration of war on Allah, his messenger, and Muslims. And ulema have throughout Islamic history unanimously agreed that the jihad is an individual duty if the enemy destroys the Muslim countries. This was revealed by Imam Bin-Qadamah in 'Al- Mughni,' Imam al-Kisa'i in 'Al-Bada'i,' al-Qurtubi in his interpretation, and the shaykh of al-Islam in his books, where he said: 'As for the fighting to repulse [an enemy], it is aimed at defending sanctity and religion, and it is a duty as agreed [by the ulema]. Nothing is more sacred than belief except repulsing an enemy who is attacking religion and life.' On that basis, and in compliance with Allah's order, we issue the following fatwa to all Muslims: The ruling to kill the Americans and their allies -- civilians and military -- is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it, in order to liberate the al-Aqsa Mosque and the holy mosque [Mecca] from their grip, and in order for their armies to move out of all the lands of Islam, defeated and unable to threaten any Muslim. This is in accordance with the words of Almighty Allah, 'and fight the pagans all together as they fight you all together,' and 'fight them until there is no more tumult or oppression, and there prevail justice and faith in Allah.' ...We -- with Allah's help -- call on every Muslim who believes in Allah and wishes to be rewarded to comply with Allah's order to kill the Americans and plunder their money wherever and whenever they find it. We also call on Muslim ulema, leaders, youths, and soldiers to launch the raid on Satan's U.S. troops and the devil's supporters allying with them, and to displace those who are behind them so that they may learn a lesson. ...Almighty Allah also says: 'O ye who believe, what is the matter with you, that when ye are asked to go forth in the cause of Allah, ye cling so heavily to the earth! Do ye prefer the life of this world to the hereafter? But little is the comfort of this life, as compared with the hereafter. Unless ye go forth, He will punish you with a grievous penalty, and put others in your place; but Him ye would not harm in the least. For Allah hath power over all things.' Almighty Allah also says: 'So lose no heart, nor fall into despair. For ye must gain mastery if ye are true in faith.' [World Islamic Front Statement, 23 February 1998]

More muslims die from Islamist extremism than any other people. So don't you dare tell me, Islam is the same as Islamism! Islam is a people, Islamism is a sickness, just like Christianity is a people, Christian nationalism is a sickness - Hinduism is a people, Hindutva is a sickness - Atheism is a people, militant atheism is a sickness. And unless the peaceloving humans from each of these communities reach out to one another with a hand of integration, the nutcases from each of these communities will drag us all down the road of death and despair.

Fundamentalism is the philosophy of the powerless, the conquered, the displaced and the dispossessed. Its spawning ground is the wreckage of political and military defeat, as Hebrew fundamentalism arose during the Babylonian captivity, as white Christian fundamentalism appeared in the American South during Reconstruction, as the notion of the Master Race evolved in Germany following World War I. In such desperate times, the vanquished race would perish without a doctrine that restored hope and pride. Islamic fundamentalism ascends from the same landscape of despair and possesses the same tremendous and potent appeal.

It was common among Muslim scholars to discuss the delicate balance between hope and fear. If one is overwhelmed with fear, he enters a psychological state of terror that leads to despair (ya’s)— that is, despair of God’s mercy. In the past, this religious illness was common, but it is less so today because, ironically, people are not as religious as they used to be. However, some of this is still found among certain strains of evangelical Christianity that emphasize Hellfire and eternal damnation. One sect believes that only 144,000 people will be saved based on its interpretation of a passage in the Book of Revelations. Nonetheless, an overabundance of hope is a disease that leads to complacency and dampens the aspiration to do good since salvation is something guaranteed (in one’s mind, that is). According to some Christian sects that believe in unconditional salvation, one can do whatever one wills (although he or she is encouraged to do good and avoid evil) and still be saved from Hell and gain entrance to Paradise. This is based on the belief that once one accepts Jesus a personal savior, there is nothing to fear about the Hereafter. Such religiosity can sow corruption because human beings simply cannot handle being assured of Paradise without deeds that warrant salvation. Too many will serve their passions like slaves and still consider themselves saved. In Islam, faith must be coupled with good works for one’s religion to be complete. This does not contradict the sound Islamic doctrine that “God’s grace alone saves us.” There is yet another kind of hope called umniyyah, which is blameworthy in Islam. Essentially, it is having hope but neglecting the means to achieve what one hopes for, which is often referred to as an “empty wish.” One hopes to become healthier, for example, but remains sedentary and is altogether careless about diet. To hope for the Hereafter but do nothing for it in terms of conduct and morality is also false hope.

Fundamentalism is the philosophy of the powerless, the conquered, the displaced and the dispossessed. Its spawning ground is the wreckage of political and military defeat, as Hebrew fundamentalism arose during the Babylonian captivity, as white Christian fundamentalism appeared in the American South during Reconstruction, as the notion of the Master Race evolved in Germany following World War I. In such desperate times, the vanquished race would perish without a doctrine that restored hope and pride. Islamic fundamentalism ascends from the same landscape of despair and possesses the same tremendous and potent appeal. What exactly is this despair? It is the despair of freedom. The dislocation and emasculation experienced by the individual cut free from the familiar and comforting structures of the tribe and the clan, the village and the family. It is the state of modern life. The

The humiliation of the ummah was not merely a political catastrophe, but touched a Muslim’s very soul. This new weakness was a sign that something had gone gravely awry in Islamic history. The Quran had promised that a society which surrendered to God’s revealed will could not fail. Muslim history had proved this. Time and again, when disaster had struck, the most devout Muslims had turned to religion, made it speak to their new circumstances, and the ummah had not only revived but had usually gone on to greater achievements. How could Islamdom be falling more and more under the domination of the secular, Godless West? From this point, a growing number of Muslims would wrestle with these questions, and their attempts to put Muslim history back on the straight path would sometimes appear desperate and even despairing. The suicide bomber—an almost unparalleled phenomenon in Islamic history—shows that some Muslims are convinced that they are pitted against hopeless odds.

As everyone knows, Islam set up a social order from the outset, in contrast, for example, to Christianity. Islamic social teachings are so basic to the religion that still today many people, including Muslims, are completely unaware of Islam's spiritual dimensions. Social order demands rules and regulations, fear of the king, respect for the police, acknowledgement of authority. It has to be set up on the basis of God's majesty and severity. It pays primary attention to the external realm, the realm of the body and the desires of the lower soul, the realm where God is distant from the world. In contrast, Islamic spiritual teachings allow for intimacy, love, boldness, ecstatic expressions, and intoxication in the Beloved. All these are qualities that pertain to nearness to God. (...) In short, on the social level, Islam affirms the primacy of God as King, Majestic, Lord, Ruler. It establishes a theological patriarchy even if Muslim theologians refuse to apply the word father (or mother) to God. God is yang, while the world, human beings, and society are yin. Thereby order is established and maintained. Awe and distance are the ruling qualities. On the spiritual level, the picture is different. In this domain many Muslim authorities affirm the primacy of God as Merciful, Beautiful, Gentle, Loving. Here they establish a spiritual matriarchy, though again such terms are not employed. God is yin and human beings are yang. Human spiritual aspiration is accepted and welcomed by God. Intimacy and nearness are the ruling qualities. This helps explain why one can easily find positive evaluations of women and the feminine dimension of things in Sufism. (...) Again, this primacy of yin cannot function on the social level, since it undermines the authority of the law. If we take in isolation the Koranic statement, "Despair not of God's mercy surely God forgives all sins" (39:53), then we can throw the Sharia out the window. In the Islamic perspective, the revealed law prevents society from degenerating into chaos. One gains liberty not by overthrowing hierarchy and constraints, but by finding liberty in its true abode, the spiritual realm. Freedom, lack of limitation and constraint, bold expansivenessis achieved only by moving toward God, not by rebelling against Him and moving away. Attar (d. 618/1221) makes the same point more explicitly in an anecdote he tells about the great Sufi shaykh, Abu'l- Hasan Kharraqani (d. 425/1033): It is related that one night the Shaykh was busy with prayer. He heard a voice saying, "Beware, Abu'l-Hasan! Do you want me to tell people what I know about you so that they will stone you to death?" The Shaykh replied, "O God the Creator! Do You want me to tell the people what I know about Your mercy and what I see of Your generosity? Then no one will prostrate himself to You." A voice came, "You keep quiet, and so will I." Sufism is concerned with "maintaining the secret" (hifz al-sirr) for more reasons than one. The secret of God's mercy threatens the plain fact of His wrath. If "She" came out of the closet, "He" would be overthrown. But then She could not be found, for it is He who shows the way to Her door.

As you know, the public conversation about the connection between Islamic ideology and Muslim intolerance and violence has been stifled by political correctness. In the West, there is now a large industry of apology and obfuscation designed, it would seem, to protect Muslims from having to grapple with the kinds of facts we’ve been talking about. The humanities and social science departments of every university are filled with scholars and pseudo-scholars—deemed to be experts in terrorism, religion, Islamic jurisprudence, anthropology, political science, and other fields—who claim that Muslim extremism is never what it seems. These experts insist that we can never take Islamists and jihadists at their word and that none of their declarations about God, paradise, martyrdom, and the evils of apostasy have anything to do with their real motivations. When one asks what the motivations of Islamists and jihadists actually are, one encounters a tsunami of liberal delusion. Needless to say, the West is to blame for all the mayhem we see in Muslim societies. After all, how would we feel if outside powers and their mapmakers had divided our lands and stolen our oil? These beleaguered people just want what everyone else wants out of life. They want economic and political security. They want good schools for their kids. They want to be free to flourish in ways that would be fully compatible with a global civil society. Liberals imagine that jihadists and Islamists are acting as anyone else would given a similar history of unhappy encounters with the West. And they totally discount the role that religious beliefs play in inspiring a group like the Islamic State—to the point where it would be impossible for a jihadist to prove that he was doing anything for religious reasons. Apparently, it’s not enough for an educated person with economic opportunities to devote himself to the most extreme and austere version of Islam, to articulate his religious reasons for doing so ad nauseam, and even to go so far as to confess his certainty about martyrdom on video before blowing himself up in a crowd. Such demonstrations of religious fanaticism are somehow considered rhetorically insufficient to prove that he really believed what he said he believed. Of course, if he said he did these things because he was filled with despair and felt nothing but revulsion for humanity, or because he was determined to sacrifice himself to rid his nation of tyranny, such a psychological or political motive would be accepted at face value. This double standard is guaranteed to exonerate religion every time. The game is rigged.

هاكونا ماتاتا - Hakuna Matata”، كلمة سيمبا اتعلمها من تيمون و بومبا أول يوم قابلهم في الغابة بعد ما هرب من أهله. معناها بالأنجليزي “No Worries”، أما في مصر عندنا ليها مرادفات كتير زي “نَفّض”، “كبّر”، “طَنّش”، “إحلَق”، “أفْكِس”.. حسب الجيل والمستوى الإجتماعي اللي بننشأ فيه.. وفي الأغنية الشهيرة اللي في نص الكارتوون شرح تيمون لسيمبا lifestyle هاكونا ماتاتا كالتالي: It means no worries for the rest of your days, it's our problem-free philosophy. بمعنى أنه ابتكر فلسفة حياة مبنية على اللامبالاة وعدم الاكتراث بأي حاجة حصلت في الماضي او بتحصل دلوقتي او هتحصل في المستقبل وبالتالي عايش هو وبومبا بدون مشاكل.. أُعجب سيمبا جداً بالفسلفة دي لأسباب كتير، أولها الأسلوب المُسلّي اللي تيمون وبومبا قدموها بيه، وأهمها أنه لقى فيها حل فوري لحالة الإكتئاب اللي عنده من ساعة ما تسبب في موت باباه، وبدل ما يواجه الواقع تبنى فلسفة التنفيض؛ “هاكونا ماتاتا”، وأول حاجة قرر “ينفضلها” هي أهله، بما فيهم مامته.. ومن خلال إخراج الأغنية اللي مليان رموز ومعاني بنشوف إزاي تيمون وبومبا بيغيروا فكر سيمبا بشكل مؤسف جداً في حين أن ظاهر المشهد مُبهج ومُفرح في تناقد شديد ميفهموش غير المشاهد المتأمل خلاصته أن الentertainment - بمعنى اللهو - هو مفتاح لتحويل نظرة أي شخص تجاه حاجة مذمومة إلى محمودة. فنلاقي مثلاً أن تيمون طلّع مَبرد وبَرد لسيمبا مخالبه كرمزية لإنتكاس الفطرة وتبدُّل السنّة. كمان بعد ما Mufasa بابا سيمبا ما كان بيربيه على معاني الصبر والتركيز والتأني في درس الصيد في أول الفيلم دلوقتي تيمون بيعلمه يستسهل وياكل دود وخنافس وصراصير وحاجات مقرفة جداً كرمزية للإستغناء عن العلم والعمل. الملفت للنظر أن “تيمون” اللي كان طول الوقت متزعِم سيمبا وبومبا هو في الحقيقة أصغر وأضعف واحد فيهم، لكنه قدر يتزعمهم بسهولة لأنهم نسيوا هويتهم. وبعد flash forward سنين لقدام بنشوف سيمبا كبر وبقى شاب لكن للأسف بشخصية ضعيفة وهايفة واضحة في مظهره وتصرفاته وتطلعاته، فبعد ما كان بيعتز جداً بكلام باباه وشايفه قدوة ليه بقى بيتكسف وبيسخر منه بينه وبين صحابه، وبعد ما كان حلمه أنه يُحكم الغابة بالعدل ويحرر “مقبرة الفيلة” من إحتلال الضباع بقى هدفه الوحيد في الحياة أنه “يقضّيها” مع صحابه الفاشلين الهايفين، وبعد ما كان أكتر شخص مميز في الغابة وفي نظر كل الغابة ليه مستقبل مشرق، بقى ملوش لازمة ولا أهمية.. وفضل عايش سنين على الحال دا، لحد ما في يوم قابل Nala. “نالا” في الكارتوون هيا رمز حطه المؤلف العبقري لحاجة جميلة بتفكر سيمبا بأصله وفطرته وأحلامه، ممكن بالنسبالنا تكون شخصية او مكان او كتاب او ثورة او اي حاجة بنحس فيها بمعاني التغيير، المهم أنها بتواجهه بحقيقته اللي كان ناسيها.. أنه أسد والمفروض يكون ملك الغابة، وأن كل الغابة بتناديه، وحلمه بيدور عليه، ارجع تاني الدنيا محتجالك، ارجع تاني ونور الحياة - فبيتصدم سيمبا في نفسه والحال اللي وصله ويقرر أنه يتغيّر، ويبدأ يدور على الصراط المستقيم. “But the sun rolling high - through the sapphire sky Keeps great and small on the endless round It's the Circle of Life, and it moves us all Through despair and hope, through faith and love Till we find our place on the path unwinding In the Circle of Life” — The Lion King

Notice how the Shaytan said that he will ambush us on “the straight path.” Just as a thief only robs a house with expensive goods, the Shaytan comes strongest after those who are on the spiritual path and have fostered a sense of faith. Another commentary on the verse suggests that when the Shaytan says he will come from “behind” us it means he will delude us regarding our divine origin, suggesting we are nothing but an accidental creation of a Godless universe. This can also suggest that he will pull us away from the present moment, into a past we cannot change, by fanning the flames of regret and inciting us with feelings of despair. When the Shaytan says he will come from “before” us this implies that he will delude us regarding the Day of Judgment, attempting to convince us that there will be no accountability in the future for our actions, both good and bad.14

King and Ali were not willing allies. Doctor King denounced the Nation of Islam for encouraging African Americans to abandon Christianity. He criticized it for its refusal to include Whites in any resolution of civil rights issues. He declared that ‘the hatred and despair of the black nationalist’ was inimical to the cause, which should be based on love.

There are many turning points in the Middle East’s modern history that could explain how we ended up in these depths of despair. Some people will identify the end of the Ottoman Empire and the fall of the last Islamic caliphate after World War I as the moment when the Muslim world lost its way; or they will see the creation of Israel in 1948 and the defeat of the Arabs in the subsequent Six-Day War of 1967 as the first fissure in the collective Arab psyche. Others will skip directly to the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 and point to the aftermath as the final paroxysm of conflicts dating back millennia: Sunnis and Shias killing each other, Saudi Arabia and Iran locked in a fight to the death. They will insist that both the killings and the rivalry are inevitable and eternal. Except for the “inevitable and eternal” part, none of these explanations is wrong, but none, on its own, paints a complete picture.

In addition to that, a question is sometimes raised that if Allah knows and has power over all things, then why He does not stop the evil actions before they cause suffering. In reflecting on this, it is important to understand how the faith-based worldview explains life in this world. Human life in this world is a trial in which if we remain faithful and morally conscious individuals in carrying out all normal duties of life, then we will be rewarded in life hereafter. If we do otherwise and live immoral lives, then we will not escape divine justice in the afterlife. Since the trial nature of this life requires the exercise of free will, that is why, Allah does not intervene to provide absolute justice in this world. However, faith-based teachings in Qur’an urge and compel moral and pro-social behaviour. The knowledge of perfect accountability boosts hope and aspiration and reduces despair of worldly misfortunes and temptation towards unrestrained material pleasures.

Injustice is suffered by both sides. The Palestinians have suffered much. And when the Israelis come and describe to us their suffering, we are able to see that they too have suffered. That kind of understanding is crucial. Once understanding and compassion are born in our heart, the poisons of anger, discrimination, hate, and despair will be transformed. That is why the only answer is to remove the poison and to allow the insight and compassion in. Then we will discover each other as human beings and we will not be deceived by outer layers like "Buddhism," "Islam," "Judaism," "pro-American," "pro-Arab," and so on. This is a process of liberation from our ignorance, ideas, notions, and our tendency to discriminate. When I see you as a human being who suffers so much, I will not have the courage to shoot you. I will ask you to come and work with me so that we have a chance to live peacefully together. It is a pity—the Earth is so beautiful and there is enough room for all of us, yet we are killing each other.

God does not need us to pray for Him, therefore our prayer is not for God, but for the protection of our own souls (45:15). If every time we committed a sin we stopped praying, no one on this Earth would pray. It is human to sin, so the faithful are not those who are perfect, but those who return to God after they have gone astray. “Come, come, whoever you are. Wanderer, worshiper, lover of leaving. It doesn’t matter. Ours is not a caravan of despair. Come, even if you have broken your vows a thousand times. Come, yet again, come, come.” RUMI The salat is not about achieving a specific outcome; rather, it is about stepping into the waterfall of Allah’s mercy, which has been and always will be pouring down upon us. We should never hold back from praying to God because we feel too imperfect, unworthy, or sinful, because although our honoring of God is limited by our fallible mortal nature, God’s mercy for us is endless and infinite. We

Prayer should not be used as a means to an end, because connection and conversation with God is the whole purpose of life. Salat can be one of the greatest opportunities to foster patience and gratitude, because we are called to pray to God regardless of how we feel or what we are going through. We are called to be consistent in prayer, even on the days when we feel disconnected from God, because He is not disconnected from us. When we are grounded in the soil of prayer, we are able to be grateful in times of blessing, and graceful in times of difficulty and despair.

These conferences are the unwavering record of our action and inaction, of our beliefs and dreams, and of our determination and despair. At the end, the record always prevails.

Giustiniani pointed toward the rows of tents. “By my estimations, there are almost two hundred thousand men out there.” Cyprian let out a breath, as though he had been hit in the stomach. “That many?” Radu nodded. “But roughly two men in support for every one man fighting.” “That still leaves sixty thousand? Seventy thousand?” Cyprian covered his mouth with his hand. Radu was shocked to see tears pooling in his gray eyes. “So many. What could Christianity accomplish with a mere fraction of the unity Islam has? How can our God ever withstand the ferocity of this faith?” “Do not blaspheme, young man.” Giustiniani’s tone was sharp, but it softened when he spoke again. “And do not despair. The odds are not so against us as they look.” He patted the stone in front of them with one thick, callused hand. “With a handful of men and these walls, I could hold back the very forces of hell itself.

When the family of Pharaoh found him in the river by the tree, Pharaoh called him Musa. Mu is water in Coptic and sha is tree. He named him by where he found him, for the ark stopped by the tree in the river. Pharaoh wanted to kill him. His wife, speaking by divine articulation in what she said to Pharaoh about Musa since Allah had created her for perfection as Allah said about her when He testified that she and Maryam, daughter of 'Imran, have the perfection which men have (8) - said, "he may be a source of delight for me and for you." (28:9) She would be consoled by him with the perfection which she received as we have said. The consolation of Pharaoh was with the belief Allah gave him when he was drowning. So Allah took him pure and purified. There was no impurity in him since He took him in his belief before he had acquired any wrong actions. Islam effaces what was before it. He made him a sign of His concern so that none might despair of the mercy of Allah, for "no one despairs of solace from Allah except for the unbelievers." (12:87) If Pharaoh been of those who despair, he would not have embarked on belief. Musa, peace be upon him, was, as the wife of Pharaoh said, "a source of delight for me and for you. Do not kill him. It may well be that he will be of use to us." That is what happened. Allah gave them use of Musa, although they were not aware that he was a prophet who would destroy the kingdom of Pharaoh and his family.

illiterate. Al Qaeda recruiters make use of their poverty, despair, resentment, and eagerness to take revenge against the American troops to recruit them.53 The women are exploited based on three factors: tribal affiliation, financial pressure, and revenge for the loss of family. In traditional Islamic societies,

Further, a discerning and discriminating person must realize that a man who possesses knowledge is nobler in every conceivable respect than a man of wealth. If he is given knowledge, he need not despair of money, of which a little suffi ces, or greatly worry about the loss of it. Knowledge exercises control. Wealth is something over which control is exercised. Knowledge belongs to the soul. Wealth is corporeal. Knowledge belongs to a man in a more personal manner than wealth. The perils of the wealthy are many and sudden. You do not see a man who possesses knowledge robbed of his knowledge and left deprived of it. But you have seen quite a few people whose money was stolen, taken away, or confi scated, and the former owners remained helpless and destitute. Knowledge thrives on being spent. It accompanies its possessor into destitution. It makes it possible to be satisfi ed with little. It lowers a curtain over need. Wealth does not do that.

President Obama’s recent claim that Islamic State has nothing to do with Islam was nothing new. Since 9/11, we have heard from both ends of the political spectrum that jihadist terror has material causes and psychological conditions created by social, political, or economic dysfunctions. This argument is an old one, and was common in the aftermath of 9/11. Typical of such thinking was Bill Clinton’s claim that “these forces of reaction [al Qaeda] feed on disillusionment, poverty, and despair.” Left unexplained is the fact that billions of other people around the world even more impoverished and hopeless have not created a multi-continental network of groups dedicated to inflicting brutal violence and mayhem on those who do not share their faith or who block their visions of global domination.

Father Joe grinned. “What is good, and what is evil?” People shifted uncomfortably in their chairs. “Islam says good is doing whatever Allah has decreed is good. Evil is the opposite. Hinduism talks about ignorance that causes one to err and those errors are the karma of past lives that hurt one in the present. Not only is evil inevitable in creation, but it is said to be a good thing, a necessary part of the universe, the will of Brahma, the creator. If the gods are responsible for the existence of evil in the world, they either create it willingly—and are thus evil themselves—or are forced to create it by the higher law of karma, which makes them weak. “Buddhism disagrees. In fact, the whole of life for the Buddhist is suffering that stems from the wrong desire to perpetuate the illusion of personal existence. The Noble Truth of Suffering, dukkha, is this: ‘Birth is suffering; aging is suffering; sickness is suffering; death is suffering; sorrow and lamentation, pain, grief, and despair are suffering; association with the unpleasant is suffering; dissociation from the pleasant is suffering; not to get what one wants is suffering—in brief, the five aggregates of attachment are suffering.’ Samyutta Nikaya 56, 11. According to that belief, good is the complete abolition of personhood, because that is what ends suffering. “The monotheistic religions go another route. Now listen to this: “‘When you reap your harvest, leave the corners of your field for the poor. When you pluck the grapes in your vineyard, leave those grapes that fall for the poor and the stranger. Do not steal; don’t lie to one another, or deny a justified accusation against you. Don’t use My name to swear to a lie. Don’t extort your neighbor, or take what is his, or keep the wages of a day laborer overnight. Don’t curse a deaf man or put a stumbling block before a blind man. Don’t misuse the powers of the law to give special consideration to the poor or preferential honor to the great; according to what is right shall you judge your neighbor. Don’t stand by when the blood of your neighbor is spilled. Don’t hate your fellow man in your heart but openly rebuke him. Do not take revenge nor bear a grudge. Love your neighbor’s well-being as if it were your own.’ “And overarching all these commandments is the supreme admonition not to be good but to be holy, ‘because I am holy.’” The class looked stunned. “Pretty specific, no?” He smiled. “Especially in contrast to the detachment from life of the Eastern religions. In this, we find perhaps the greatest piece of moral education and legislation ever given to mankind in all human history. Do any of you recognize the source?” “Gospels?” someone guessed. “It’s from the Old Testament of the Jews. From the book of Leviticus.

Modern Western art, particularly in the form of the novel, has become an instrument of self-exposure and, in most cases, what is exposed is inner sickness. The novelist works out his 'complexes' in writing. He exteriorises his despair and parades before the public all the elements of ugliness and disease present in his soul. Muslims can only find this unspeakably wicked if they recognise it for what it is, but for the most part they are unlikely to recognise something so totally alien to their faith and to their culture. The freedom of artistic expression appears, from the Islamic perspective, no more than a license to vomit in public.

According to the great and decisive discoveries of Bachofen and Morgan in the middle of the nineteenth century, and in spite of the rejection their findings have found in most academic circles, there can be little doubt that there was a matriarchal phase of religion preceding the patriarchal one, at least in many cultures. In the matriarchal phase, the highest being is the mother. She is the goddess, she is also the authority in family and society. In order to understand the essence of matriarchal religion, we have only to remember what has been said about the essence of motherly love. Mother's love is unconditional, it is all-protective, all-enveloping; because it is unconditional it can also not be controlled or acquired. Its presence gives the loved person a sense of bliss; its absence produces a sense of lostness and utter despair. Since mother loves her children because they are her children, and not because they are 'good,' obedient, or fulfill her wishes and commands, mother's love is based on equality. All men are equal, because they all are children of a mother, because they all are children of Mother Earth. The next stage of human evolution, the only one of which we have thorough knowledge and do not need to rely on inferences and reconstruction, is the patriarchal phase. In this phase the mother is dethroned from her supreme position, and the father becomes the Supreme Being, in religion as well as in society. The nature of fatherly love is that he makes demands, establishes principles and laws, and that his love for the son depends on the obedience of the latter to these demands. He likes best the son who is most like him, who is most obedient and who is best fitted to become his successor, as the inheritor of his possessions. (The development of patriarchal society goes together with the development of private property.) As a consequence, patriarchal society is hierarchical; the equality of the brothers gives way to competition and mutual strife. Whether we think of the Indian, Egyptian or Greek cultures, or of the Jewish-Christian, or Islamic religions, we are in the middle of a patriarchal world, with its male gods, over whom one chief god reigns, or where all gods have been eliminated with the exception of the One, the God. However, since the wish for mother's love cannot be eradicated from the hearts of man, it is not surprising that the figure of the loving mother could never be fully driven out from the pantheon. In the Jewish religion, the mother aspects of God are reintroduced especially in the various currents of mysticism. In the Catholic religion, Mother is symbolized by the Church, and by the Virgin. Even in Protestantism, the figure of Mother has not been entirely eradicated, although she remains hidden.