Sickness In Islam Quotes

Maybe he was honor-bound to lock us in, by some imagined duty? Perhaps this was an Islamic preparation to make us contended wives? Were these locks supposed to dampen useless dreams that sparked needless desires? Or, was he a mad man, sick and demented?

But the most catastrophic display of misogyny in all religion lies at the very heart of Christianity—in the story of the Virgin Mary. That Jesus was born of a virgin is a fundamental narrative upon which all Christianity is based. It is one that is carried through to Islam, where the Quran holds Mary in great esteem. The implications of this have historically been devastating to women. ...Mary gave birth to Jesus Christ as a virgin, with no man ever having touched her. She is therefore described as pure, chaste, undefiled, innocent—being the product of an “immaculate conception” herself (as per Catholic doctrine), and now hosting God’s immaculate son in her unblemished womb. What does this mean for women who are touched by men? Are their conceptions corrupted? Are their characters and bodies now impure or unchaste? Have they been “defiled”? ...Was all of Mary’s beauty, sanctity, chastity, and innocence confined to her vagina? Fetishizing Mary’s virginity—as Christians and Muslims both do—is a sickness that directly leads to a dangerous, unnatural glamorization of celibacy and sexual repression.” Excerpt From: Ali A. Rizvi. “The Atheist Muslim.” iBooks.

So-called Islamic 'fundamentalism' does not spring, in Pakistan, from the people. It is imposed on them from above. Autocratic regimes find it useful to espouse the rhetoric of faith, because people respect that language, are reluctant to oppose it. This how religions shore up dictators; by encircling them with words of power, words which the people are reluctant to see discredited, disenfranchised, mocked. But the ramming-down-the-throat point stands. In the end you get sick of it, you lose faith in the faith, if not qua faith then certainly as basis for a state. And then the dictator falls, and it is discovered that he had brought God down with him, that the justifying myth of the nation has been unmade. This leaves only two options: disintegration, or a new dictatorship ... no, there is a third, and I shall not be o pessimistic as to deny its possibility. The third option is the substitution of a new myth for the old one. Here are three such myths, all available from stock at short notice: liberty; equality; fraternity. I recommend them highly.

I die, and yet not dies in me The ardour of my love for Thee, Nor hath Thy Love, my only goal, Assuaged the fever of my soul. To Thee alone my spirit cries; In Thee my whole ambition lies, And still Thy Wealth is far above The poverty of my small love. I turn to Thee in my request, And seek in Thee my final rest; To Thee my loud lament is brought, Thou dwellest in my secret thought. However long my sickness be, This wearisome infirmity, Never to men will I declare The burden Thou has made me bear. To Thee alone is manifest The heavy labour of my breast, Else never kin nor neighbors know The brimming measure of my woe. A fever burns below my heart And ravages my every part; It hath destroyed my strength and stay, And smouldered all my soul away. Guidest Thou not upon the road The rider wearied by his load, Delivering from the steeps of death The traveller as he wandereth? Didst Thou not light a beacon too For them that found the Guidance true But carried not within their hand The faintest glimmer of its brand? O then to me Thy Favour give That, so attended, I may live, And overwhelm with ease from Thee The rigor of my poverty.

1:337-338 GREAT CHANGES IN ME I CANNOT DESCRIBE I told the local astrologer that the fact that he doesn't see something doesn't mean it doesn't exist. A lover may perceive a certain light in the beloved's face that another person can't. A healthy person tastes a variety of flavorings in food that a patient with a coated tongue cannot. To the sick everything tastes bitter. Great changes and shifts occur in me that I cannot describe, but they are very real. Ways open. A fragrance from the divine comes through. No one sees this, but it is the most profound event in my life. Friendship cannot be seen or measured, but the experience of living within it is beyond argument. Words like belief, righteousness, and faith can be used however a debater wants. With Hasan the silk-weaver recently I spoke of the power of the Islamic prophets. Then he used my words to support his free-thinking lineage. Soul comes here from the unseen to observe this world, the body, the night, and the sunlit morning landscape, saying, I have seen this; now show me your other properties, Lord of the universes (3:26).

We shall not lie on our backs at the Red Castle and watch the vultures wheeling over the valley where they killed the grandson of Genghiz. We will not read Babur's memoirs in his garden at Istalif and see the blind man smelling his way around the rose bushes. Or sit in the Peace of Islam with the beggars of Gazar Gagh. We will not stand on the Buddha's head at Bamiyan, upright in his niche like a whale in a dry-dock. We will not sleep in the nomad tent, or scale the Minaret of Jam. And we shall lose the tastes - the hot, coarse, bitter bread; the green tea flavoured with cardamoms; the grapes we cooled in the snow-melt; and the nuts and dried mulberries we munched for altitude sickness. Nor shall we get back the smell of the beanfields, the sweet, resinous smell of deodar wood burning, or the whiff of a snow leopard at 14,000 feet.

I can well remember how when someone in my family lay sick or dying—like my aunt when she contracted breast cancer—the Qur’an was chanted by the bedside, in the belief that its words alone would cure the patient. Analogies with Christian prayer are misleading because the reciter of the Qur’an is voicing God’s words, not appealing to God for intercession.

An economic blockade may cause more deaths by a factor of a hundred, but it does so silently and behind closed doors. Its first victims are the very young, the very old and the very sick. The numbers of children dying before their first birthday increased from one in thirty when sanctions were imposed to one in eight seven years later. Many Iraqis were simply not getting enough to eat. I

Words were magic. They healed me when I was sick, comforted me when I was scared, and guided me when I was lost and alone...When confused, I consulted the Qur'an through kheerah. When thirsty, I drank from the brass cup inscribed with the Throne Verse. If I lost something, I incanted the besmalah and I would find it. We hung calligraphy on the walls and wore jewelry with Islamic inscriptions. When we entered the house, we announced our arrival with "Salam" so that evil spirits would flee.

What I want to show is that because of the very nature of the historical disciplines, historians cannot show whether or not miracles ever happened. Anyone who disagrees with me—who thinks historians can demonstrate that miracles happen—needs to be even-handed about it, across the board. In Jesus’ day there were lots of people who allegedly performed miracles. There were Jewish holy men such as Hanina ben Dosa and Honi the circle drawer. There were pagan holy men such as Apollonius of Tyana, a philosopher who could allegedly heal the sick, cast out demons, and raise the dead. He was allegedly supernaturally born and at the end of his life he allegedly ascended to heaven. Sound familiar? There were pagan demigods, such as Hercules, who could also bring back the dead. Anyone who is willing to believe in the miracles of Jesus needs to concede the possibility of other people performing miracles, in Jesus’ day and in all eras down to the present day and in other religions such as Islam and indigenous religions of Africa and Asia.

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.

Now everyone knows that to try to say something in the mainstream Western media that is critical of U.S. policy or Israel is extremely difficult; conversely, to say things that are hostile to the Arabs as a people and culture, or Islam as a religion, is laughably easy. For in effect there is a cultural war between spokespersons for the West and those of the Muslim and Arab world. In so inflamed a situation, the hardest thing to do as an intellectual is to be critical, to refuse to adopt a rhetorical style that is the verbal equivalent of carpet-bombing, and to focus instead on those issues like U.S. support for unpopular client re­gimes, which for a person writing in the U.S. are somewhat more likely to be affected by critical discussion. Of course, on the other hand, there is a virtual cer­tainty of getting an audience if as an Arab intellectual you passionately, even slavishly support U.S. policy, you attack its critics, and if they happen to be Arabs, you invent evi­dence to show their villainy; if they are American you confect stories and situations that prove their duplicity; you spin out stories concerning Arabs and Muslims that have the effect of defaming their tradition, defacing their history, accentuating their weaknesses, of which of course there are plenty. Above all, you attack the officially ap­ proved enemies-Saddam Hussein, Baathism, Arab na­tionalism, the Palestinian movement, Arab views of Israel. And of course this earns you the expected accolades: you are characterized as courageous, you are outspoken and passionate, and on and on. The new god of course is the West. Arabs, you say, should try to be more like the West, should regard the West as a source and a reference point. · Gone is the history of what the West actually did. Gone are the Gulf War's destructive results. We Arabs and Mus­lims are the sick ones, our problems are our own, totally self-inflicted. A number of things stand out about these kinds of performance. In the first place, there is no universalism here at all. Because you serve a god uncritically, all the devils are always on the other side: this was as true when you were a Trotskyist as it i's now when you are a recanting former Trotskyist. You do not think of politics in terms of interrelationships or of common histories such as, for instance, the long and complicated dynamic that has bound the Arabs and Muslims to the West and vice versa. Real intellectual analysis forbids calling one side innocent, the other evil. Indeed the notion of a side is, where cultures are at issue, highly problematic, since most cultures aren't watertight little packages, all homogenous, and all either good or evil. But if your eye is on your patron, you cannot think as an intellectual, but only as a disciple or acolyte. In the back of your mind there is the thought that you must please and not displease.

Yet the homogeneity of contemporary humanity is most apparent when it comes to our view of the natural world and of the human body. If you fell sick a thousand years ago, it mattered a great deal where you lived. In Europe, the resident priest would probably tell you that you had made God angry and that in order to regain your health you should donate something to the church, make a pilgrimage to a sacred site, and pray fervently for God’s forgiveness. Alternatively, the village witch might explain that a demon had possessed you and that she could cast it out using song, dance, and the blood of a black cockerel. In the Middle East, doctors brought up on classical traditions might explain that your four bodily humors were out of balance and that you should harmonize them with a proper diet and foul-smelling potions. In India, Ayurvedic experts would offer their own theories concerning the balance between the three bodily elements known as doshas and recommend a treatment of herbs, massages, and yoga postures. Chinese physicians, Siberian shamans, African witch doctors, Amerindian medicine men—every empire, kingdom, and tribe had its own traditions and experts, each espousing different views about the human body and the nature of sickness, and each offering their own cornucopia of rituals, concoctions, and cures. Some of them worked surprisingly well, whereas others were little short of a death sentence. The only thing that united European, Chinese, African, and American medical practices was that everywhere at least a third of all children died before reaching adulthood, and average life expectancy was far below fifty.14 Today, if you happen to be sick, it makes much less difference where you live. In Toronto, Tokyo, Tehran, or Tel Aviv, you will be taken to similar-looking hospitals, where you will meet doctors in white coats who learned the same scientific theories in the same medical colleges. They will follow identical protocols and use identical tests to reach very similar diagnoses. They will then dispense the same medicines produced by the same international drug companies. There are still some minor cultural differences, but Canadian, Japanese, Iranian, and Israeli physicians hold much the same views about the human body and human diseases. After the Islamic State captured Raqqa and Mosul, it did not tear down the local hospitals. Rather, it launched an appeal to Muslim doctors and nurses throughout the world to volunteer their services there.15 Presumably even Islamist doctors and nurses believe that the body is made of cells, that diseases are caused by pathogens, and that antibiotics kill bacteria.

Islamophobia” as a weapon of jihad The charge of “Islamophobia” is routinely used to shift attention away from jihad terrorists. After a rise in jihadist militancy and the arrest of eight people in Switzerland on suspicion of aiding suicide bombers in Saudi Arabia, some Muslims in Switzerland were in no mood to clean house: “As far as we’re concerned,” said Nadia Karmous, leader of a Muslim women’s group in Switzerland, “there is no rise in Islamism, but rather an increase in Islamophobia.”5 This pattern has recurred in recent years all over the world as “Islamophobia” has passed into the larger lexicon and become a self-perpetuating industry. In Western countries, “Islamophobia” has taken a place beside “racism,” “sexism,” and “homophobia.” The absurdity of all this was well illustrated by a recent incident in Britain: While a crew was filming the harassment of a Muslim for a movie about “Islamophobia,” two passing Brits, who didn’t realize the cameras were rolling, stopped to defend the person being assaulted. Yet neither the filmmakers nor the reporters covering these events seemed to realize that this was evidence that the British were not as violent and xenophobic as the film they were creating suggested.6 Historian Victor Davis Hanson has ably explained the dangerous shift of focus that “Islamophobia” entails: There really isn’t a phenomenon like “Islamophobia”—at least no more than there was a “Germanophobia” in hating Hitler or “Russophobia” in detesting Stalinism. Any unfairness or rudeness that accrues from the “security profiling” of Middle Eastern young males is dwarfed by efforts of Islamic fascists themselves—here in the U.S., in the UK, the Netherlands, France, Turkey, and Israel—to murder Westerners and blow up civilians. The real danger to thousands of innocents is not an occasional evangelical zealot or uncouth politician spouting off about Islam, but the deliberately orchestrated and very sick anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism that floods the airways worldwide, emanating from Iran, Lebanon, and Syria, to be sure, but also from our erstwhile “allies” in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar.7

A sick person is Allah’s guest for as long as he is ill. Every day he is sick, God gives him countless rewards, as long as he says ‘ al hamdulillah’, praise be to God, and does not fight it and complain. When God returns to him his health, he expiates his sins and gives him the status of the newly-born (completely pure and free of any sin). Illness is a mercy and a blessing.

It is a stage that all of those who are striving and competing are competing for it and it is a kind of life that if you are missing it you are one of the dead. It is a light that if you are without it you are in and ocean of darkness. It is a medicine or cure that if you are without it, your heart becomes a place of sicknesses. It is a sweetness or pleasure that if you are without it, life becomes a thing of worries and of pain.

Papa, Jesus is the only prophet I know who made the blind see, healed the sick, made the deaf hear and the paralyzed walk. He can’t only be a prophet; He must be more. Jesus not only raised the dead; He was also raised from the dead Himself. His tomb is empty. He is alive. Muhammad’s bones are still buried in Mecca, and he is dead. Jesus is my Superhero!” I said to my father. Father sat back in his chair and smiled at me. “Yes, Jesus was one of the greatest prophets, even in Islam. We know in the end times He will come from heaven as a judge to judge the world,” he replied. When Papa told me Jesus would come again to judge the world, he unknowingly inspired me to learn more about Him.

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.

As she prayed on a regular basis, especially when she needed help, she didn't feel the need to officially commit to the five-times-a-day prayers. Mind you, she wouldn't roll out a rug and go through ablution, and her prayers often featured requests more than anything else, but at least she sent up some form of communication throughout the day--while in traffic, when remembering a sick friend, while appreciating the sunset over Lake Pontchartrain.

Man seeks God according to his state of mind. Some expects material reward from the Lord in the form of achievement of material gain. Others worship God to get relieve from material miseries in the form of sickness, poverty and death. “When trouble touches a man, he cries unto Us. When We solve his trouble, he passes on his way as if he had never cried to Us [Koran 10:12]”. When a person is beyond material pain and gain, he engages in God’s service without aspiring for any personal benefit.

Under the model of original monotheism we can draw three basic inferences. Figure 1.4. Decay of religions First, there is one decisive change—the move away from monotheism. This change has to be seen as a falling away, perhaps best understood as decay or corruption. Human beings turn away from God to something else: other gods, spirits, nature, even themselves. Apparently the God of the sky seemed too remote. In times of personal crises—a sick child, crop failure, marital problems—people believed that they needed more immediate help. Invoking the aid of fetishes or spirits seemed more potent. Thus God receded behind other spiritual powers. In biblical terms people worshiped the creation instead of the Creator. Second, there is no clear pattern in which this departure typically takes place. Monotheism could turn into henotheism, polytheism or animism. But one thing is certain: as monotheism was left behind, ritual and magic increased. This is not to say these elements do not occur within a fairly stable monotheistic context (of course they do!). However, once human beings abandon faith in one almighty, all-knowing God, the role that they play in attempting to find their own way in a world apparently dominated by spiritual forces becomes far more central, leading to an increase in spiritual manipulation techniques, such as magic and ritual. Third, once monotheism is abandoned, change usually continues to occur. Again, there is no mandatory sequence in which things rearrange themselves, but an increase in ritual and magic is most likely to be a part of it. Every once in a while throughout history, reform movements have called a culture back to a renewed awareness of God. Zoroastrianism and Islam are clear examples of such events. When they happen, even though there may be initial enthusiasm, chances are that there will also be an increase in tension between the idealists who are promoting the return to monotheism and those who do not feel free to give up their traditional faiths. This phenomenon may give rise to a serious tension between the ideal version of the religion and how its adherents actually practice it (they usually cling to rituals and veneration of spirits). In contrast to the neat pyramid associated with the evolutionary view (fig. 1.1), monotheism carries the liability of a tendency toward magic and ritual (fig. 1.3).

Islam campaigned against these superstitions in various ways. There were some nomadic Arabs who used to treat their sick with magical appendages and collars studded with stones and bones. When they appeared before the Holy Prophet and enquired about the treatment of the sick with herbs and medicines, the Holy Prophet said: “It is necessary for every sick person to find out the medicine, because Allah who has created an ailment has also created a medicine for it.

we need to do about this barbaric practice is raise awareness of it among Americans who have no idea that it is happening. The Aqsa Parvez memorial was the very first occasion on which non-Muslims began to take note of the victims of Islamic honor killing, and to serve notice to their killers that the victims would not be forgotten or their murders ignored. Memorials to Aqsa Parvez were planned in the Canadian town of Pelham, Ontario, and in Jerusalem. Aqsa Parvez was brutally murdered by her father and brother in December 2007 for refusing to wear the Islamic headscarf. But that was only the beginning; the abuse of this girl continued. She was buried in an unmarked grave. Her family refused to acknowledge her life, as she had “dishonored” them. In defiance of her devout father and brother, she had refused to live under the suffocating dictates of Islamic law. The eleventh grade student began taking off her hijab, a traditional Islamic headscarf, when she went to school, and would put it back on when she returned home. Her dad would go to her school during school hours and walk around trying to find her, trying to catch her not wearing Islamic garb, talking to boys, or hanging out with “non-muslims.” “She wanted to dress like us,” said one friend of Aqsa. “To be normal.” For this, her family prefers that she be forgotten—unknown, unloved, unmourned. In December 2008, when I read that Aqsa lay in an unmarked grave, I felt sick. I started a memorial fund to get her a headstone. But I had no idea how difficult

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.

Although some aspects of this scenario cannot be proved or disproved, the end of the story is public knowledge. As Captain Sick wrote, the Iranians released the remaining 52 hostages in January 1981 “exactly five minutes after Mr. Reagan took the oath of office,” and hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of “arms started to flow to Iran via Israel only a few days after the inauguration.