Why I am a Muslim

NY_Mumin

Bismillah ir-Rahman ir-Rahim

I have had a very long life journey to come to where I am right now. I do not wish to disclose every minute detail of my life, nor will I even give a thorough background of my upbringing and education. I will only try to explain to others my reasoning for being a muslim and maybe I will get to someone who finds a flaw in my logic and corrects me because ultimately I am looking for the truth.

Does God exist?

If I want to express whether or not something exists, I must define what exactly I am talking about. I would say a good definition for God is found Surah Al-Ikhlas God is the one and only, He is the eternal, self sufficient, absolute, He does not beget nor was he begotten, and there is nothing comparable to Him.

That is the definition from the Quran.

Now for my logic and reasoning

This universe is not infinitely old. Logic dictates that infinity does not exist in this universe. Two things cannot hold a different quality and be identical. However if you add 1 to infinity (or subtract 1 from it), it yields infinity. That is fundamentally wrong. Infinity is just an abstract concept in our minds and does not exist in our relative universe.
(I say our universe is relative because everything in our universe is indeed relative. If I say something is big or small or yellow or blue or heavy or light or 2 inches or 2 feet, these are all relative quantities that depend on other things (Theory of Relativity with time and distance). For example, we are big. Big compared to ants? sure. Big compared to elephants? nope. That shirt is blue. But it is blue relative to the other wavelengths of the light spectrum. If those other wavelengths didn't exist, 'BLUE' would not exist. Nothing in this created universe is absolute.

Furthermore, this is a finite universe which has a beginning and has an end. Science dictates that time, space, matter were all created at one point (The Big Bang).

So by understanding that the universe is not infinitely old, and everything was created at one point, you would have to beg to ask 'what was this original cause'. You cannot trace back the origin of this universe infinitely because as logic and science shows, infinity does not exist in our relative universe. So you trace the origin of our world back and back and back to the one originator. You can call this originator anything 'super powerful non-existing energy thingy', 'flying spaghetti monster', but I prefer to call it God.

What is God?

Now since God was the cause of this creation, God cannot be apart of this creation. If God is not apart of this creation, then God does not depend on the creation and is not restrained by the created entities such as time, space, matter. If God does not depend on time, then you can easily say God is eternal. He is ever living. And obviously, since God is not bound by time, space, matter, you can say God is unlike anything in his creation. This virtually fulfills everything Surah Al Ikhlas says.

Specifics of God..

I choose not to believe that there has to be a multitude of gods who created the world because based on Pascal's wager (Most of the time, the simplest answer is the correct one), it is not relevant. In addition, there cannot be a multitude of gods in an absolute world because that is illogical. Having 2 or 3 or 4 of something is relevant only in the relative world in which we can count things that are separated by time, space, matter. For that same reason, God cannot be a part of His creation and God cannot produce His creation out of himself.
Furthermore, even if you are able to decipher different gods (which you can't), what one god has, the other god lacks, and this in itself shows neither to be god since one lacks a godly quality that another has. You cannot be a god if you lack a godly quality.

For that same reason, it should be easy to deduce that god did not send his begotten son AKA himself to this earth and expose himself to the time, space, matter continuum of his creation. This would be ungodly and impossible.

In summary

Insha'Allah, I made the following statements clear so that you are able to understand that there is only one God, and He it is who is not dependent on his creation, and He it is who did not beget and He was the originator, and there is nothing in our world that is comparable unto him. -> all of these attributes are dictated by logic and science and these are the features found in the 112th chapter of the Quran.

Which path of God?

Based on the information above, I am someone who believes logically and scientifically those features of God. Other religions have some appeal but are not 100% perfect to me. I do not believe in polytheism, I find it hard to understand the trinity, and I do not believe that only a small tribal group of people are the ones who matter most to God and the rest are virtually cattle. To me, every human being is significant group.

Islam is the only religion in my view that has the fundamental belief of God to be the most accurate based on logic and science. Furthermore, the Quran is a truly glorious book for 4 reasons

The literature- The Quran is undoubtedly the highest form of Arabic literature. It is the oldest Arabic literature known to man and has all Arabic dialects stem from it. One word in Arabic would require about 5 words in english to describe the excellence. In addition, there is amazing poetic language which has only been observed recently through thorough studying of the book. For example, certain lines such as 'rabbika fakabir' have greatness in meaning and are also strong in design (it is an Arabic palindrome). There is also a palindrome in the verse that discusses the movement of orbits which is extremely appropriate on so many levels. In addition to all that, the Quran is consistent no matter where you go and is memorized by millions of people, preserving its message.
History- The Quran contains verses regarding events that had not yet happened or been known in the subject of history. A few of these include the
mention of the city of Iram which was uncovered in the 1970s. The preservation of the body of the pharaoh to serve as a sign (which is in a museum in Cairo), and the infamous prediction that the Romans would succeed in the Battle of Byzantines.
Science- There are a lot of verses, some may be ambiguous, but certainly speak to me, which were revealed 1400 years ago that science has discovered to be true only within the last 100 years. Just a few examples include the relativity of time (704, 325), the uniqueness of fingerprints (753-4), and of course, how the universe and life was created (2130). There are also many more, and if you understand science, you will be very impressed. http//www.quranmiracles.com/
Mathematical- Another one that is very quantifiable that I examined a few years back was the word frequencies in the Quran. I started off by searching for the phrase 'seven heavens' in any standard Quran and to my astonishment, there were 7 results that returned. I also heard about other word agreements, so I used http//corpus.quran.com/wordbyword.jsp to search for words like angel (malaika) and devil (shaitan) or this life (dunya) and the afterlife (akhira), and these pairs of words occur the exact same number of times in the entire Quran. This is even more astonishing since no one even recognized this until the last few centuries when computers were used to easily and accurately count frequencies of certain Arabic words. This made me feel that the Quran was a perfect and complete book.

Hadiths?

My view on hadiths is that I understand hadiths and they can be helpful if they do not go against the Quran, and they help build unity. But I whole heartedly reject the hadiths that go against the Quran (stoning, killing homosexuals, adulterers, murder for apostasy, etc.). There were also clear hadiths that went against common sense and logic. If a hadith agrees with the Quran, I agree with the hadith. If the hadith has nothing related to the Quran, I view it like I would view any traditional saying from anyone giving me advice- but I would not say it makes me any more or less of a muslim.

In Conclusion

God is absolute, and impossible for us to comprehend since we live in a relative world. One of His mercy's is to bestow upon us guidance and warning in a relative sense by using relative means of messengers and revelations to help us understand the seemingly incomprehensible. It is all a part of God's will. Along with personal reasons (that are useless to mention here since only I have experienced these personal reasons), this is why I consider myself a muslim and want to submit myself and my existence to God Almighty. I am not saying this is going to convince any human being, but it was enough to convince me, and that is all I am responsible for. Everything that was a mistake in what I wrote was from me, and anything truthful is from God.

"Surely you cannot guide whom you love, but Allah guides whom He pleases, and He knows best the followers of the right way."
(28.56)

I know it was long, and many of you guys may never read it, but it feels good to get it out of me onto a document.
Salam peace

Paradox_Uncreated

I agree with you that the universe is not eternal, and thus needs a cause. God fits perfectly as the cause, logic wise.

You seem to be a bit mixed up, regarding absolute or relative. First you state you believe in a relative world, then an absolute, then again relative.

"there cannot be a multitude of gods in an absolute world"

I don`t think I believe in relativity at all. God is absolute, and have placed each and every atom and star consciously there, and decided their size. Even if that should be a transcendental act, it is not relative. God is allmighty, allknowing. There is no relativity in this. In fact, if relativity exists, it is a creation of God, and such accurately described, or willed, in certain way. - Can something held by an absolute will, be described to be relative? Is anything relative to God?

The belief in God fits perfectly with observable phenomena. Subject must be the cause of object. We see no other observable cause. And this is what God/ruh is.

One can ofcourse philosophize if there exists gods that do not reveal themselves. Of the existence of other dimensions, whose nature cannot be understood. It seems hard to fathom "gods". If anything, the historical gods, are always humanlike, or animals. So they are just like you and me. And we are the same. Created body, uncreated mind.

God, seems to be the simplest concept indeed. And who knows, what God may give insights to the truthseeker, to strenghten his belief in monotheism. Even the polytheist should get some surety in monotheism, as his calling on idols, results in no other than satanic presence, regardless of idol. And so these laws we live under, and can be seen to witness about one god. Whatever reigns, it seems to very much be coherent with Islamic teachings.

And can several gods exist? I think you expressed something similar. There cannot be several almighty gods, they had to share this power. But these attributes comes from one nature. And that is the first cause. Sustaining an infinite universe, requires infinite power.

Some of my thoughts aswell.

NY_Mumin

Good response Paradox, and just to clarify

I believe the creation is relative. I believe the creator is absolute.

Jafar

I have this from a jewish rabbi, regarding the impossibility of many gods..
God is infinite, how many infinity could possibly there to exist?
Well the answer is only one, if there are more than one there has to be a 'border' between them as thus it's no longer an infinity.
As thus 'one' in this case is not a 'finite' one, yet an 'infinite' one..

Nevertheless the 'believe in one god' doesn't automatically makes you a good person...
We should not over-emphasize the monotheism concept.. as if it's the ultimate thing to be good.

welcome NY Mumin

Salam / Peace

Student_of_Allah

Salam,

Liked your views

May Allah guide you

--------------------- Student of Allah

Paradox_Uncreated

And if one understands that God is absolute, one also understands that there is only one will.