2053 – the Deadline?

In the Name of Allah, the Gracious, the Merciful

The Qur’aan poses the question afalaa yatadabbaroonalqur’aan [don’t they then ponder over the Qur’aan?]

Well, I have pondered over the Qur’aan to the best of my capacity and honesty. All my writings are the results of this pondering. One of these writings is depicted as a page, A Miracle, of the site, INVITATION TO SALVATION. Please click here to go to that page.  I am presenting this page as the Friday Sermon for this week, albeit under a different title.

I urge my readers to ponder over the Verses quoted in that page. It doesn’t matter even if they differ with my conclusions, so long as they ponder honestly.

And I request feedbacks.

Mohammad Shafi

Friday, the 4^th of January 2019.

Moon Landing

In the Name of Allah, the Gracious, the Merciful

Extract from Chapter 54 of QUR’AANIC STUDIES – A Modern Tafsir PART II:

1. Iqtarabati alssaAAatu wainshaqqa alqamaru

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54:1. The Hour (the time when the present world will end and the Hereafter begin) has drawn near and the moon is breached.¹

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1. The Arabic word shaqqa has several meanings. Most translators have given it here the meaning of ‘split’ and thus attributed to Prophet Muhammad [peace on him] the performing of the miracle of splitting the moon in two and then rejoining the two parts. Such a miracle – if it did happen – would have indeed been a unique one! The Qur’aan does say that the earlier Prophets were endowed with the gifts of performing various miracles. But none of such miracles involved moon or any other heavenly body! All those miracles were restricted to things of this earth. This miracle attributed to Prophet Muhammad is preposterous on another count as well. Nowhere else in the Holy Book does Allah Almighty mention performance, by Muhammad, of any miracle as those performed by earlier Prophets like Moses and Jesus. The Book, on the other hand, points out the fact that the earlier peoples had failed to follow their Prophets despite the latter showing them the miracles! The stress was therefore laid on Prophet Muhammad’s Ummah to look for miracles in the natural creation of their own selves and of all things around them, and thus attain to faith in Allah Ta’ala. That being the unmistakable tenor throughout in the Qur’aan, it was indeed preposterous for the Prophet to come up suddenly with such an unlikely miracle. Moreover, shaqqa alqamar is meant in this Verse to be the Sign for the approaching end of this world.  There were no signs of the approaching Doom over 1400 years ago when this Verse was revealed. But there definitely are such signs now when nation after nation is engaged in piling up weapons of mass destruction [WMD]. And this piling up was preceded by Man’s first visit to the moon in the late sixties [Watch the Video]. This Verse foretold that visit, when the virginity of the surface of the moon was for the first time breached by human steps and man-made tools.

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Mohammad Shafi

Friday, the 27^th July 2018.

Signs

In the Name of Allah, the Gracious, the Merciful

Extract from Chapter 2 of QUR’AANIC STUDIES – A Modern Tafsir:

164. Inna fee khalqi alssamawati waal-ardi waikhtilafi allayli waalnnahari waalfulki allatee tajree fee albahri bima yanfaAAu alnnasa wama anzala Allahu mina alssama-i min ma-in faahya bihi al-arda baAAda mawtiha wabaththa feeha min kulli dabbatin watasreefi alrriyahi waalssahabi almusakhkhari bayna alssama-i waal-ardi laayatin liqawmin yaAAqiloona

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164. Indeed, in the creation of the heavens and the earth, in the contrast between the day and the night, in the ship that sails on the sea with things beneficial to mankind, in what Allah sends down of water from the sky bringing the earth back to life after it was dead, in every kind of animals dispersed therein, in the winds changing their directions, and in the clouds under divine control between the sky and the earth, are compelling signs for people who make use of their intelligence.^{264 to 268}

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264. A study of the Qur'aan reveals that the Messengers, who came before Muhammad (peace be upon him and upon them all), were given some extraordinary signs to convince people of the existence of an absolute solitary Power controlling the entire Universe and also to convince them of the Messengers being the really authorised ones from that Power. The earlier Messengers came when the level of general knowledge among the people was low. Their (people's) knowledge therefore needed to be supplemented by divinely given 'miracles'. But the last Messenger, Muhammad, came at the threshold of an era in which human knowledge would proliferate. The proliferation of human knowledge, combined with the divinely endowed human intelligence, became sufficient for people to recognise the Absolute Solitary Power. The supplement of 'miracles' was no more needed. The people are now in a position to recognize the Power from the signs that abound in Nature.

265. This divine exhortation made in this Verse for study of Natural phenomena, moreover, imbibed the scientific spirit, of reason and research, in the minds of the believers. Consequently, a number of thinkers in various fields like medicine, mathematics, physics, astronomy, literature etc. arose in the Muslim world, who were instrumental in laying the foundation of the scientific renaissance that the world is witnessing today. It was from the works of those great Muslim scientists and thinkers of the middle Ages that the Western world got the basics to develop from. And it makes one sad to think that while the Westerners built the scientific edifice of the modern world on the foundation laid by the Muslims, the Muslim world itself lost the scientific spirit with the weakening of their Faith in the Qur'aan!

266. 'The creation of the heavens and the earth' is the first Aayat (Sign) referred to in this divine Verse. And we have already seen in Chapter Notes 20 and 21 how the seven layers of the earth's atmosphere have been meticulously and correctly designed to act as a protective shield and a provider of sustenance for all living creatures on the earth. Only an unreasonable fool would dismiss this wonderfully exquisite arrangement as a mere accident of nature. And then we have this mind-boggling spectacle of innumerable heavenly bodies floating in their respective orbits with such mathematical precision that they never bump into one another accidentally. We cannot but marvel at the Power Who no doubt made all this possible – consciously and purposefully. It would be irrational and unscientific for anyone to think of it as a mere accident in nature.

267. As regards the other Signs mentioned in the Verse, the night, following the day in every 24-hour cycle in time, is an obvious provision made for rest, without which human life is impossible to be sustained. Further, had it not been for the facility of navigation by sea, transport of tonnes and tonnes of merchandise from one part of the world to another wouldn't have been easy. Had it not been for the periodic rains, there wouldn't be the recurring stock of vegetable products necessary for sustenance of any kind of life on earth. One who ponders deeply can easily detect that some Extraordinarily Intelligent Power is guiding the directions of the cloud-bearing winds to bring rains to regions, as desired by that Unseen Power. The sprouting of vegetation on dry earth after a rainfall, moreover, provides an indication that human life could likewise be resurrected even after death.

268. With my limited knowledge, I have barely touched on the immense significance of the Signs mentioned in this Verse. Persons with adequate knowledge and resources could write volumes and volumes on the significance – and on the sciences – of these Signs. All these Signs, however, unmistakably point to the Hidden Hand of the Supremely Super Power.

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Mohammad Shafi

Friday, the 27^th of April 2018.

Proofs of Qur'aan being Divine

In the Name of Allah, the Gracious, the Merciful

Muslims say Qur’aan is from Allah, the sole Creator of the entire Universe and of everything therein. Should they deny the divinity, they cease to be Muslims.

But are they all convinced of the divinity? Most, I am afraid, are not! Were they all so convinced, one would find no Muslim lying, stealing, abusing, deceiving, backbiting, and indulging in any act of omission or commission considered a vice, an obscenity, or a dereliction of duty, in the Qur’aan.

Muslims, so convinced and so pious, are so few that their percentage may be less than 1, even!

Improvement of the status of Muslims among the world communities would be directly proportional to increase in that percentage.

The YouTube video, Miracles of the Qur’aan, may, I feel, help increase that abysmally low percentage, inshaAllah!

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Mohammad Shafi

Friday, the 6^th of October 2017.