In the Name of Allah; I seek refuge in Allah from the evil of Satan[Forgive v poor sentence structures & grammar.]
Like Imam Ghazzali (r.a.) i've immutable belief on 3 things:
- In the Existence of Allah (swt) -
is there any doubt about Allah?- The Day of Judgement
- Truth of the institution of Prophethood
With these beliefs, one may presume that there is no room for skepticism, not that kind which doubts one's own existence. But, that is not the case- one can still have doubts about one's religion with these beliefs. When we're born we become Muslims, Christians, Atheists, etc., if we were born in that particular family. But, its only with the dawn of consciousness, if you might call it, that we're sometimes forced to reexamine our acquired belief, perhaps due to external stimuli or even due to one's own disposition to question things. In this age, former is more true than the later. Nonetheless. Having watched videos/stories of so many converts to Islam - be them atheists, Christians, etc. - it was either of the two, while predominantly external stimuli played a greater role, thanks to 9/11, terrible news about Muslims, new Biblical scholarship that proves almost all the stances of Islam on Christianity such as
tehreef or human interference in Bible, etc.
Muslims rarely venture into uncomfortable waters of examination and use of intellect, especially those who're not well trained in traditional Islam, because the students of Qur'an and Sunnah know the proofs, evidences, and narrations of the truth of Islam. Nonetheless, overall atmosphere is that of
fear when it comes to talking to people of other belief and to those having no faith at all, except, perhaps, in the desires of their
nafs. (I'm not proposing that their
kufr is due to following their desires of soul, merely, but perhaps a historical process that led to 'the eclipse of soul and intellect', namely
modernity or renaissance, which has very well defined features, that really closed their eyes to Divine Realities.)
This is not how our great scholars of the past behaved. Imam Abu Hanifa used to debate (in most beautiful manner) with atheists in the
masjid saying to the effect, "Let's see what you've got." Imam Ghazzali wrote in his autobiography that he had (so deeply) analyzed the skeptics and atheists that they could not hide their real reasons for disbelief. This is very interesting.
It is high time we see/question things logically - because logic can even give us life through Islam or kill us with disbelief. It is only those confused people who're afraid of not talking to other. We've to start from understanding the hidden assumptions of this
deen and that of disbelief. Our assumption is that there is an Unseen, and we believe in it, we believe in the
ghaib. Why we believe in it and we humanity cannot risk not believing in it - this is the point from where the discussion may start. And, everything that is Islamic worldview is very logical and is very clear. Most of the rational people in US or West who came to Islam came to it because they could not bring an argument against islam that Qur'an or Muslims could not refute or at least provide an equally logical perspective on that.
In the end, i'd like to say that because of our heedlessness in acquiring both Islamic worldview and modern sciences, our own brothers and sisters are becoming mental victim of a
Dajjalic civilization that is based on the idea and force of deception and deceiving people from seeing things the way they actually are. Biggest enemies of Islam are living within us, and they just like us, but it's logical fallacies they're really a victim of; a lack of clear understanding of world, matter and soul.
wa ma taufiqi illa billah
