Judging Others In Islam Quotes

Forgiveness, by its nature, must often go into very hard places. I know. I’ve gone there. But forgiveness is not foolish and blind, an unthinking make-nice. Wisdom sometimes must tell even people who’ve genuinely forgiven to take ongoing steps that are hard to implement and apply and which to others may not look very forgiving. The heart of forgiveness can’t be judged in black-and-white, cookie-cutter dimensions that work fine in a spiritual lab but not in real life.

As Rumi says, “Raise your words, not your voice. It is rain that grows flowers, not thunder.” As Muslims we are called to guide one another, advise one another and to celebrate one another. The Qur’an’s command toward “enjoining what is right and forbidding what is wrong” (Qur’an 3:104) is not an excuse for judging and shaming each other. As my teacher once said, “If you can’t counsel someone from love, then don’t counsel them because if you advise others from a place of judgment then you are fostering the quality of arrogance within you.

[M]ost Americans are still drawing some water from the Christian well. But a growing number are inventing their own versions of what Christianity means, abandoning the nuances of traditional theology in favor of religions that stroke their egos and indulge or even celebrate their worst impulses. . . . Both doubters and believers stand to lose if religion in the age of heresy turns out to be complicit in our fragmented communities, our collapsing families, our political polarization, and our weakened social ties. Both doubters and believers will inevitably suffer from a religious culture that supplies more moral license than moral correction, more self-satisfaction than self-examination, more comfort than chastisement. . . . Many of the overlapping crises in American life . . . can be traced to the impulse to emphasize one particular element of traditional Christianity—one insight, one doctrine, one teaching or tradition—at the expense of all the others. The goal is always progress: a belief system that’s simpler or more reasonable, more authentic or more up-to-date. Yet the results often vindicate the older Christian synthesis. Heresy sets out to be simpler and more appealing and more rational, but it often ends up being more extreme. . . . The boast of Christian orthodoxy . . . has always been its fidelity to the whole of Jesus. Its dogmas and definitions seek to encompass the seeming contradictions in the gospel narratives rather than evading them. . . . These [heretical] simplifications have usually required telling a somewhat different story about Jesus than the one told across the books of the New Testament. Sometimes this retelling has involved thinning out the Christian canon, eliminating tensions by subtracting them. . . . More often, though, it’s been achieved by straightforwardly rewriting or even inventing crucial portions of the New Testament account. . . . “Religious man was born to be saved,” [Philip Rieff] wrote, but “psychological man is born to be pleased.” . . . In 2005, . . . . Smith and Denton found no evidence of real secularization among their subjects: 97 percent of teenagers professed some sort of belief in the divine, 71 percent reported feeling either “very” or “somewhat” close to God, and the vast majority self-identified as Christian. There was no sign of deep alienation from their parents’ churches, no evidence that the teenagers in the survey were poised to convert outright to Buddhism or Islam, and no sign that real atheism was making deep inroads among the young. But neither was there any evidence of a recognizably orthodox Christian faith. “American Christianity,” Smith and Denton suggested, is “either degenerating into a pathetic version of itself,” or else is “actively being colonized and displaced by a quite different religious faith.” They continued: “Most religious teenagers either do not really comprehend what their own religious traditions say they are supposed to believe, or they do understand it and simply do not care to believe it.” . . . An ego that’s never wounded, never trammeled or traduced—and that’s taught to regard its deepest impulses as the promptings of the divine spirit—can easily turn out to be an ego that never learns sympathy, compassion, or real wisdom. And when contentment becomes an end unto itself, the way that human contents express themselves can look an awful lot like vanity and decadence. . . . For all their claims to ancient wisdom, there’s nothing remotely countercultural about the Tolles and Winfreys and Chopras. They’re telling an affluent, appetitive society exactly what it wants to hear: that all of its deepest desires are really God’s desires, and that He wouldn’t dream of judging. This message encourages us to justify our sins by spiritualizing them. . . . Our vaunted religiosity is real enough, but our ostensible Christian piety doesn’t have the consequences a casual observer might expect. . . . We nod to God, and then we do as we please.

[Say], "Then is it other than Allah I should seek as judge while it is He who has revealed to you the Book explained in detail?" And those to whom We [previously] gave the Scripture know that it is sent down from your Lord in truth, so never be among the doubters.

Can the West regain its optimism? If the answer is no – and most of the portents are skewing the wrong way – liberal democracy will follow. If the next few years resemble the last, it is questionable whether Western democracy can take the strain. People have lost faith that their systems can deliver. More and more are looking backwards to a golden age that can never be regained. When a culture stops looking to the future, it loses a vital force. The search for Eden always ends in tears. The German author Thomas Mann once accused his peers of cultivating a ‘sympathy for the abyss’. Cultural pessimism is rarely a helpful state of mind. Where one stands is inherently subjective. One person’s Gomorrah might be another’s hundred flowers in bloom. There is no precise measure of the health of liberal democracy. But we can be sure that America will not become great again under Trump. There will be a lethal mood of betrayal and frustration when he fails. Who knows where that could lead. It is comforting to assume, as many do, that the US system will simply revert to pre-Trump mode. The chances are at least as great that Trump will be able to pin the blame on elites, foreigners, Islam, minorities, unelected judges and other handy saboteurs.

Wars have been waged over millions of square miles, significantly larger than the British Empire at its peak. Historically, Islamic conquests stretched from southern France to the Philippines, from Austria to Nigeria, and from central Asia to New Guinea. The Muslim goal was to have a central government, first at Damascus, and then at Baghdad, later at Cairo, Istanbul, and other imperial centres. The local governors, judges, and other rulers were appointed by the central imperial authorities for far off colonies. Islamic law was introduced as the senior law, whether or not wanted by the local people. Arabic was introduced as the rulers’ language, while the local languages frequently disappeared. Then, two classes of residents were established. The native residents paid a tax that their rulers did not have to pay. In each case, these laws allowed the local conquered people less freedom than was given to Muslims.

Most people love their country, so honestly, looking at the errors of one’s own homeland is not easy. Many American expatriates who have chosen to live in other parts of the world write that it was only from the viewpoint of living outside America that they could clearly see America’s failures. Seeing America as it really is, though, may be quite difficult, even for God’s people. If we ask our loving Lord to open our eyes and show us the true condition of our church and our nation, we will better see the abominations of both.          As for the reference in Revelation 17 to Babylon as the “Mother of Prostitutes,” insight into its meaning is found in Judges 2:17:            “Yet they would not listen to their judges but prostituted themselves to other gods and worshiped them. Unlike their fathers, they quickly turned from the way in which their fathers had walked, the way of obedience to the LORD’s commands.”            What is meant in Revelation 17 goes beyond the physical act of prostitution and applies to the spiritual aspects of turning away from the true God, “to other gods.” The United States has turned away from the God who founded and birthed us, “to other gods.’ Founded as a Christian nation, as our Supreme Court acknowledged over one hundred years ago (Holy Trinity Church v. U.S., 12 Sup. Ct. 511 – 1892), we have become anything but.

In retrospect, Obama’s intervention in Libya was an abject failure, judged even by its own standards. Libya has not only failed to evolve into a democracy; it has devolved into a failed state. Violent deaths and other human rights abuses have increased severalfold. Rather than helping the United States combat terrorism, as Qaddafi did during his last decade in power, Libya now serves as a safe haven for militias affiliated with both al Qaeda and the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (isis).

Abu Abdullah Ibn Battuta came from a prominent family of judges who studied thick tomes of Islamic law and wrote legally binding opinions on how to live out the law in daily life.

Islam (i.e., The Islamic Constitution, God's Law) automatically excommunicates its adherent when willingly and consciously he/she transgresses its boundaries while modern Judaism (i.e., Aryan: European and Russian) does not even have such an apparatus of a human judicial mandate over its subjects. In other words, the fully aware Muslim of God's statutes is obliged to act as a Judge before other Muslims yet according to her/his own capacity and area of expertise; even if she/he were aware of a one single divine statute -while not fearing any damages on her/his own life, she/he is ordered by The Lord to proclaim it.

Jinnah had, among other things, criticized the singing in government schools of the patriotic hymn ‘Vande Mataram’. Composed by the great Bengali writer Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, the poem invoked Hindu temples, praised the Hindu goddess Durga, and spoke of seventy million Indians, each carrying a sword, ready to defend their motherland against invaders, who could be interpreted as being the British, or Muslims, or both. ‘Vande Mataram’ first became popular during the swadeshi movement of1905–07. The revolutionary Aurobindo Ghose named his political journal after it. Rabindranath Tagore was among the first to set it to music. His version was sung by his niece Saraladevi Chaudhurani at the Banaras Congress of 1905. The same year, the Tamil poet Subramania Bharati rendered it into his language. In Bengali and Tamil, Kannada and Telugu, Hindi and Gujarati, the song had long been sung at nationalist meetings and processions. After the Congress governments took power in 1937, the song was sometimes sung at official functions. The Muslim League objected vigorously. One of its legislators called it ‘anti-Muslim’, another, ‘an insult to Islam’. Jinnah himself claimed the song was ‘not only idolatrous but in its origins and substance [was] a hymn to spread hatred for the Musalmans’. Nationalists in Bengal were adamant that the song was not aimed at Muslims.The prominent Calcutta Congressman Subhas Chandra Bose wrote to Gandhi that ‘the province (or at least the Hindu portion of it) is greatly perturbed over the controversy raised in certain Muslim circles over the song “Bande Mataram”. As far as I can judge, all shades of Hindu opinion are unanimous in opposing any attempts to ban the song in Congress meetings and conferences.’ Bose himself thought that ‘we should think a hundred times before we take any steps in the direction of banning the song’. The social worker Satis Dasgupta told Gandhi that ‘Vande Mataram’ was ‘out and out a patriotic song—a song in which all the children of the mother[land] can participate, be they Hindu or Mussalman’. It did use Hindu images, but such imagery was common in Bengal, where even Muslim poets like Nazrul Islam often referred to Hindu gods and legends. ‘Vande Mataram’, argued Dasgupta, was ‘never a provincial cry and never surely a communal cry’. Faced with Jinnah’s complaints on the one side and this defence by Bengali patriots on the other, Gandhi suggested a compromise: that Congress governments should have only the first two verses sung. These evoked the motherland without specifying any religious identity. But this concession made many Bengalis ‘sore at heart’; they wanted the whole song sung. On the other side, Muslims were not satisfied either; for, the ascription of a mother-like status to India was dangerously close to idol worship.

Amal, it's naïve to think that because somebody is ignorant they are a bad person. I feel so much for Leila because I know that she understands that she can be all she wants to be, not in spite of Islam, but because of it." "It's her mum's stupid fault." "Amal, Gulchin's just trying to bring up Leila in the only way she knows how. She married young. She never had the opportunity to gain an education. She can't read. She can't write. Her world has always been about raising her children and looking after her home. There's nothing wrong with that, if that's what she chooses." "Yeah, but she's forcing it on Leila!" "Which is wrong. But try to expand your mind and think about things from other people's perspectives. Everything is relative, If you want to understand a problem you look at its cause. You don't look at its manifestation." "How is that supposed to make Leila feel better?" She sighs, playing with my hair. "God knows... Sometimes, Amal, people are paralysed by their traditions and customs It's all they know, so you can't judge them for following and believing what they know." "Come off it, Mum! Any moron would realize that she following her village's culture, not Islam. So for her to g around and tell the world it's Islam when it's the exact opposite is so dumb!" "Yes, I know that. But from her point of view I believe she thinks she is simply trying to protect Leila." "Protect her from what? It's a crappy shopping spree" "Everybody's scared of what they don't know, Amal.

Consider the modern-day case of the Egyptian Muhammad Hegazy. Not only did he convert to Christianity, but he also took the unprecedented step of trying to update his government I.D. card to reflect his conversion. (In Egypt and many other Muslim countries, a person’s religion is indicated on his I.D.) Both family and clerics alike threatened him with death. Then in February 2008, a judge ruled that Hegazy “can believe whatever he wants in his heart, but on paper he can’t convert”—in other words, he cannot rock the boat.25

The point here is not that Marco Polo should thus be seen in a good light, according to leftist expectations. It is rather that the ‘Orientalist’ charge is wrong, and that this Italian of the Middle Ages was a typical European in showing greater curiosity about other cultures, while exhibiting a unique European disposition to seek out and learn about the world. By contrast, Larner judges that Ibn Battuta’s tale ‘is not a geography like Marco’s work, but essentially an autobiography.’ Visiting unknown or unfamiliar lands, writing about the ways of others, was not Ibn Battuta’s ‘overriding impulse’; rather, it was to visit ‘illustrious sanctuaries’[40] in the Muslim world. He makes the crucial point that Ibn Battuta ‘is always at home’ in his travels, ‘wherever he goes he is in the House of Islam’.

In this way, she learned, Islamic law regulated the public sphere: if a couple committed adultery, they knew to keep their own betrayal private, so as to avoid gradually tearing away at the sanctity of marriage for others. It was inconceivable to her that a judge would have been able to meet the evidential standards required to correctly implement the punishment for adultery.

In a review entitled ‘When Religion Makes It Worse,’ Yael Sela and colleagues (Sela et al., 2015) observed that various parts of both the Old Testament, to which Muslims in part adhere or which have influenced Islam, and the Islamic scriptures, therefore, unsurprisingly render it God’s will that you can rape the daughter of your enemy if you invade their land. It would surely elevate the damaged self-esteem of Muslim refugee males to believe that they are part of an invading force. It is indeed a common belief among fundamentalist Muslims that they must colonise the West under Islam (Armstrong, 2001). Leviticus 20: 13 tells believers that in a situation of war, you should kill every male in the opposing tribe and take all the females for yourself. Zechariah 14 is explicit that the enemies of Jerusalem are to be vanquished while their womenfolk are to be raped and enslaved. Judges 21 tells those who fear the Lord to invade the place of their enemies and kill every male as well as every female who is not a virgin. Virgins, however, are to be forcibly married to the soldiers who have slaughtered their families. The Koran 4:3 is quite clear that a man should take multiple wives: ‘Marry of the women, who seem good to you, two or three or four; and if you fear that you cannot do justice (to so many) then one (only) or (the captives) that your right hands possess.’ In other words, you can do what you like with female infidels, with the womenfolk in the country which you have invaded.

In times of strife, taliban have usually mobilized in defense of tradition. British documents from as early as 1901 decry taliban opposition to colonialism in present-day Pakistan. However, as with so much else, it was the Soviet invasion and the US response that sent the transformative shock. In the 1980s, as guns and money coursed through the ranks of the Kandahar mujahedeen, squabbling over resources grew so frequent that many increasingly turned to religious law to settle their disputes. Small, informal bands of taliban, who were also battling against the Russians, established religious courts that heard cases from feuding fighters from across the south. Seemingly impervious to the lure of foreign riches, the taliban courts were in many eyes the last refuge of tradition in a world in upheaval. ... Thousands of talibs rallied to the cause, and an informal, centuries-old phenomenon of the Pashtun countryside morphed into a formal political and military movement, the Taliban. As a group of judges and legal-minded students, the Taliban applied themselves to the problem of anarchy with an unforgiving platform of law and order. The mujahedeen had lost their way, abandoned their religious principles, and dragged society into a lawless pit. So unlike most revolutionary movements, Islamic or otherwise, the Taliban did not seek to overthrow an existing state and substitute it with one to their liking. Rather, they sought to build a new state where none existed. This called for “eliminating the arbitrary rule of the gun and replacing it with the rule of law—and for countryside judges who had arisen as an alternative to a broken tribal system, this could only mean religious law. Jurisprudence is thus part of the Taliban’s DNA, but its single-minded pursuit was carried out to the exclusion of all other aspects of basic governance. It was an approach that flirted dangerously with the wrong kind of innovation: in the countryside, the choice was traditionally yours whether to seek justice in religious or in tribal courts, yet now the Taliban mandated religious law as the compulsory law of the land. It is true that, given the nature of the civil war, any law was better than none at all—but as soon as things settled down, fresh problems arose. The Taliban’s jurisprudence was syncretic, mixing elements from disparate schools of Islam along with heavy doses of traditional countryside Pashtun practice that had little to do with religion. As a result, once the Taliban marched beyond the rural Pashtun belt and into cities like Kabul or the ethnic minority regions of northern Afghanistan, they encountered a resentment that rapidly bred opposition.