[Islam-Online- College]

Righteousness is not to turn your faces toward the East or the West, but this is righteousness -- to believe in God and the Last Day, and the angels, and the Book, and the messengers; to give one's wealth out of love for Him, for your family and for those without family, the needy and the wayfarer, and those who ask (out of need) and for the freeing of slaves; and to be steadfast in prayer and to practice regular charity; and those who keep their promises when they promise (something), and the patient in pain (or suffering) and adversity, and throughout all periods of panic. Such are the people of truth, and those are the God-conscious (surah 2:177).

This is the statement of a Muslim. There are no complicated theological involutions to go through, no necessity to have some kind of degree in esoteric knowledge. A simple soul can grasp it immediately.

So, what is the problem? Basically, it is this. A faith that is summed up so simply and directly has immediate and straight-forward appeal to the ordinary person, for no reason other than that it is simple and direct. The trouble is that today the majority of people are being educated to a level at which such a simple statement as this causes just a shade of embarrassment.

Are some of the concepts in it too simplistic? This is the Age of Science, and in the West it is still the Age of Atheistic Materialism, even though at long last scientists are beginning to admit publicly that they will have to go back to the 'drawing board,' because so many annoying spiritual 'facts' that upset materialistic theories have refused to go away, and consequently it is now no longer possible to ignore them and still call oneself a scientist.

God? Maybe He does exist. After all, some great Force was needed to make the Big Bang go bang in the first place, and who put into 'infinite space' the original ingredients of whatever it was that 'banged'?

Okay, let's say we can still keep God as some kind of a Force 'out there' -- but angels? Messengers? Holy Books that consist of revealed messages from this supposed Original Energy Source? Come, come, now! Does that really still make sense, after all that scientists have taught us, and after rational humanity has managed to weed out all superstitious and primitive theological mumbo-jumbo?

Well, does it? To a Muslim, the answer is a resounding 'Yes!' Most Muslims wouldn't stop to think about it for a moment. The awareness of the existence of God has grown up with them from childhood. If they were born into observant families, the name of God was one of the first words they heard, and they would have been trained by conscientious parents to be aware of God in everything they do. The remembrance of God has become automatic for them, a part of their routine, as natural as breathing.

That's for the lucky one. But apart from such convinced Muslims or convinced people of any other faith, in every society, no matter how scientific or rationalist it may be, there are still countless thousands of people who feel a need in the depths of their souls to believe in God, yet nonetheless find that they cannot do so because they do not have reasonable answers to certain basic questions.

For example, if God exists, why can't anyone see Him? This is not intended as any disrespect or an affront; it is surely a fair question, if He really is 'there.' Why doesn't He show Himself and prove that He exists once and for all? Then everyone would realize how foolish they'd been in rejecting Him, and they would repent of their sins and wicked ways and turn to Him in worship, and the world would go on as it should.

Another thing - why is it that innocent people get hurt or catch painful diseases if it's true that God loves people? Why does He allow people to starve to death, or drown in disastrous floods, or be buried by earthquakes or smothered by volcanic eruptions? Why does He allow accidents to happen, or terrible wars? Surely all these catastrophies simply prove that either God doesn't exist at all, or, if He does, He must be pretty impotent not to save people from all these disasters.

In any case, He can't be very kind. We wouldn't torture people like that, especially not people whom we know love and care about us. Therefore, one may conclude, He can't really be as kind as we are, unless He's just plain helpless to do anything about it all - in which case, why are we supposed to worship Him? It doesn't make much sense.

And what about all the things science has taught us? Did God really create the universe, or did it just come about by chance? Did God have anything to do with creating us, or could we just as well have been produced in a test tube? Do we really have a soul inside us, or are we no more than merely a collection of atoms? Can we really go on living after the death of our bodies, when we know they just rot away in the ground or are consumed by fire? Are there really places such as Paradise and Hell, and if there are, how can we reach the one and avoid the other?

All these questions are very important, and yet they are often ignored because the answers seem difficult to arrive at. So many people give up trying to find the answers even before they start, assuming that the whole business is just too complicated for their minds and that the simplest thing is to forget it about it all, or otherwise to settle for believing the wise words of some teacher whose pronouncements have caught their interest. Others seem to think that science has proved all religion to be wrong, so it's quite all right to either ignore it or laugh at it.

But the believer has a different perspective.

The Muslim believes in his or her heart that there are answers - true and correct ones. People who are 'born Muslims' have grown up with a particular world-outlook and life-view based on the teachings of the Qur'an, the collection of messages revealed over a period of more than twenty years to the prophet Muhammad, who was a direct descendent of the prophet Abraham through Abraham's son Ismael.

Seekers after truth who come into Islam from some other faith often do so with an immense feeling of relief: they have always wanted and tried to believe in God and to serve Him correctly, but were discouraged by doctrines and practices in their previous faiths which left them feeling uncomfortable, things which they could not rationally accept. Any such converts to Islam always claim that, to them, the beauty of Islam is that it is so rational. Indeed, many of them would not have become converts at all if they had found some aspects of the faith that did not appear rational. Hence before they embrace it, Islam is submitted to truly stringent criteria by these people.

In this day and age, when religion is under constant attack and is so often regarded as old-fashioned superstition that should really be done away with by any intelligent and educated person, it seems necessary to arm believers with a little knowledge and a rational examination of certain suppositions concerning the existence of God, so that they can both think through their position more thoroughly for themselves and also acquire the ability to answer sensibly the accusations and questions of those who seek to attack their belief.

A closed, gullible mind is ill-equipped to come with such questions, just as a closed cynical one is. Some of the ideas that were laughed at by scientists only yesterday are now taken very seriously - fascinating ideas, some important and some just downright odd and interesting. That solid, dependable stuff of life that we have known as 'matter' has suddenly become a complete mystery once again; scientists are no longer convinced that it is either solid or dependable.

A definition of a believer as someone who 'accepts by faith what he knows in his heart cannot be true' is really the definition of a fool. If God exists and if He gave us intelligence, presumably He would like us to use it. The know-it-all, conceited veneer of some adults will have to go; the shallow hypocrisy, the selfishness, the laziness, the refusal to listen to others - all these must be set aside and replaced with the open, inquiring mind, an attitude of trust that there are answers to be found, and the sheer joy of discovery.

No amount of gimmickry will make a person believe in God. The answer does not lie in communal activities, clubs, or trying to latch on to whatever is popular among an in-group at any particular time. No person can justifiably be asked to believe in anything unless it seems reasonable to do so because of some personal insight which he or she has experienced.

Ask any average child to do anything and he or she will, in all probability, immediately and sensibly think, 'Why should I?' even if he or she is not impolite enough to voice the question. And such a question is actually quite reasonable. A person cannot justifiably be asked to believe anything in terms of a religion unless it seems reasonable.

The old questions our forefathers used to ask about religion remain just as valid today, or perhaps even more so, for this is an age that demands some kind of proof for everything. Defensive arguments meet with nothing but contempt. So let's go on the attack. Let's make, as our primary statement, the suggestion that perhaps, if a little more knowledge were given out first to someone who was going to criticize a belief in God, a lot of the grounds for the criticism would be cut out from under his feet.

Let's get down to it and have a real think about God. Why do believers, and specifically Muslims, believe the things they do?

College Bound