Dear John,
On Mon, Jul 14, 2014 at 5:25 PM, John Mikes <[email protected]> wrote: > Dear Samiya, people ask the wrong questions. > Maybe, or maybe I need to study and reflect much more before I can answer properly > Why and HOW did you pick the Quran as the SOURCE of your answers, if not > because you grew up in a family/society where you heard about it day in and > day out? > In our society, Arabic is not a spoken/understood language. Children are taught to read the Arabic script, i.e. pronounce the words, without being taught the language. The Arabic script is similar to the Urdu script (the language spoken in Pakistan), so its easy to learn to read even if you cannot understand. Traditionally, people think its a means of earning blessings to recite, hence many recite without understanding the scripture. I used to think that was a flaw in our Muslim, Pakistani society, but Hindus in Pakistan and India also similarly recite their scriptures in Sanskrit. I suppose its a traditional / cultural thing of the Indo-Pak subcontinent, who started and who followed, I don't know. I started studying the Quran with meaning when I was in my late teens, comparing different translations, as when reading just one translator, some verses' translations just didn't make sense (partly due to my lack of knowledge, and partly due to the translation and partly due to my ideas of how I wanted the scripture to be). My interest in science also helped me in critically reading the scripture, looking for the correct explanation. However, reading various translations gave me the confidence that when we can't understand something, we need to look harder, not just write-off the scripture. I grew up in a different society and did not even 'think' of checking for > 'truth' in the Quran (especially not in old Arabic language of which I > really knew nothing) but was advised other 'books' for 'truth(?)'. > I went through several ones of those, liked none of them. So I became > agnostic. (=I dunno) > I did my schooling at a Convent school, from age 5 till high school, so I was exposed to Christianity since an early age. Christians and Hindus are also a substantial part of the Pakistani society, so there was this exposure to and interaction with people of other faiths. Furthermore, as I mentioned in an earlier post, since my father was studying interfaith, hence I was exposed to scriptures of various religions. Eventually, I did read scriptures of other faiths. I think all scriptures have gems of wisdom, though all except the Arabic Quran, contain a mixture of divine scripture and human additions. I started trying to learn the Arabic grammar about 15 years ago in an effort to understand the Quran on my own. I also started to attend sermons by various scholars to hears different points of view and understandings of religion and scripture. From one, I came to appreciate the Majesty of the Creator, from another I learnt about Divine Love and Mercy, and from another I learnt humility and submission to Divine Will. My most earnest study of the Quran has been in the past three years when I was faced with a roller-coaster of peculiar moral and ethical dilemmas and I needed to touch root. While holding on to the guidance, I came to appreciate the Divine love and wisdom which protects us from following desires which lead us to ruin, asking for sacrifices which are only in our own best interests. > BTW how did a Native American, or an Inuit in past centuries get to the > Prophet's teachings? > How the illiterate Aborigines? Chinese-Japanese? Easy for the Arabic > talking Mid-Easterners. > > The Arabic Quran is not the only scripture, it is the last of the divinely revealed scriptures. We believe that all communities received guidance in the form of prophets, messengers and scriptures. Isn't it true that people all over the world and all throughout history have had some form of religion, and there are some common threads which are suspiciously similar across religions? Almost all religions, or at least their scriptures, start off with the belief in one God, yet eventually morph into a polytheistic religion. To believe in the unseen God, angels, scriptures, messengers, hereafter, good and evil, etc doesn't require an Arabic Quran or a Mid-Eastern background. There are many Arabs in the Middle East who do not believe / practice Islam, and there are many people all over the world who practice the virtues exhorted in the Quran without ever having read it. As a famous poet Iqbal wrote about a century ago, to paraphrase it: when I was in the West, I saw Islam without Muslims, when I was in the East, I saw Muslims without Islam. The advantage we have in this day and age is that we all have the Quran available at our fingertips on the internet, and we also have a whole range of scriptures, translations, lexicons, etc to do our own research. Samiya > > > > On Mon, Jul 14, 2014 at 4:16 PM, Samiya Illias <[email protected]> > wrote: > >> >> >> On 14-Jul-2014, at 2:00 pm, John Clark <[email protected]> wrote: >> >> On Mon, Jul 14, 2014 Samiya Illias <[email protected]> wrote: >> >> > Why do you need to see God to believe in God? >>> >> >> You don't. To believe in God all that is needed in 99 times out of 100 is >> for your mommy and daddy to tell you that there is a God. Not only that but >> your mommy and daddy will tell you which particular God franchise is the >> one true franchise and the chances are overwhelming that is the one you >> will belong to for your entire life. Why else do you think geography has so >> much to do with religious belief? >> >> That is because most people choose the religion of their parents, as part >> of culture and are comfortable confirming to social norms, instead of >> honest intellectual inquiry and search. >> Blind following of parental faith is condemned in the Quran. >> Samiya >> >> John K Clark >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> -- >> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups >> "Everything List" group. >> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an >> email to [email protected]. >> To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. >> Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. >> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. >> >> -- >> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups >> "Everything List" group. >> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an >> email to [email protected]. >> To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. >> Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. >> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. >> > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Everything List" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. 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