forgiveness
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....surely people who disbelief are Gods creation too, why does He want us to be so harsh to them?...
First we have to know who the kafirs are. From my understanding the kafirs are not those who disbelieve in God. The kafirs are those who are evildoers, and do corruption. It is not about belief, it is about action. They are not kafirs because they disbelive in God or islam, but they are kafirs because they destroy the earth, and harm human beings. In my opinion, traditional understandings of the concept of kafir is wrong. Maybe some other brothers or sisters who are more knowledgeable than me on this topic can answer your question more comprehensively.
Peace rraza
wat about those verses which talk about repel evil with good, why not follow those?
If a group has harmed a group, and does not repent (want to continue harming the group), giving it's members gift or doing cute talk won't work. A perfect example is a dictator. No matter how much a person will repel the evil actions of the dictator with good, it won't work. This is reality.
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peace rraza,
I recommend reading the context of verses. You imply it is about disbelief, or about making them believe, but that is not found in the verse.
The word "kafir" did not mean "disbeliever" in Classical Arabic pre-Quran. It came to mean this by a repeated association. In order to understand the word, one must study it and its development, e.g. see here
http//free-minds.org/forum/index.php?topic=15870.0 -
thankyou brother, i will check it out. also i have been discussing forgiveness with a couple of my friends who are christian, and there was one point that they brought up which confused me a bit. i have read up on forgiveness in quran..3 things are necessary according to my understanding Belief in Him, honest repentance and then altering your actions.
thats fair enough. whats stumping me atm is when they say that if God is just willing to forgive the sins, then isnt it reducing the sin. for example if a girl was raped and the rapist repented and reformed..it doesnt change the fact that the girls life is probably ruined after the event. same goes for sins in which other people apart from just yourself are hurt.
christians have a way out of this situation by saying that God himself took the burden of these sins, so in effect the gravity of the sin wasnt lowered. if i reply that punishing someone else for another persons crime isnt fair, thats when they say that God is so loving He did that for us.my question is probably that how would God forgive sins that affect other people, and yet being fair to the person who was wronged. anything in the quran to suggest an answer?
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thankyou all for your replies..i agree killing people who are mentally sick or enjoy killing just for the sake of it is sadly the only way to go about it.
Razza, can you please elaborate a bit further by what you mean by killing people who are mentaly sick.
Thanks
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christians have a way out of this situation by saying that God himself took the burden of these sins, so in effect the gravity of the sin wasnt lowered. if i reply that punishing someone else for another persons crime isnt fair, thats when they say that God is so loving He did that for us.
I assume by "God taking the burden" they are referring to Jesus dying on the cross? If so, what about sin after that event? I assume they will say he died for all sin past present and future. In any case, I fail to see how this resolves "it doesnt change the fact that the girls life is probably ruined after the event. same goes for sins in which other people apart from just yourself are hurt.".
Also, one could easily argue the Quranic God is willing to forgive that sin, thus is more loving than the Christian God. Not that I agree with such comparisons. Further, is what Jesus went through really equivalent for all the sin past/present/future? Unlikely.my question is probably that how would God forgive sins that affect other people, and yet being fair to the person who was wronged. anything in the quran to suggest an answer?
Fairness can only be calculated when one has all the info and the story is over. See here. However, there is some suggestion in AQ that a person's circumstance can weight a sin differently, e.g. former slaves who have illicit sex, or prophet's wives if they do various wrongful acts, so there may be some element of this. Also, if God forgives, one would not know it in this life.
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Razza, mentalli ill person doesn't equal a sociopath or a psychopath. Mental illness is more like mising a leg or something on those lines. It doesn't mean that that person enjoys inflicting pain. That would be like saying that disabled people are psychopaths or sociopaths, because mental illness is a disability, not a trait.
And thank you for answering my question!
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Mental illness is more like mising a leg or something on those lines.
..i dont agree with you there brother..missing a leg or arm etc would fall into physical debilitation.mentalli ill person doesn't equal a sociopath or a psychopath
i apologise for generalising the term. i meant sociopaths and psychopaths..however the two cases do fall into a small subclass of mental debilitation.
some mental illnesses sadly do include a person enjoying killing and raping. there have been many cases of extreme psychopathy in which people target their victims, literally hunt them..torture them day in and day out and then kill them. there are people who enjoy killing animals and watching them bleed. some people get excited by the screaming and blood. thats why they kill, for the emotional rush they get from the action. most of them do not have the mechanism of guilt or feeling sorry. research also shows that some lack the ability to understand emotions and facial expressions. it is a disability i agree with you. -
I have just checked out the sociopathy on wikileaks and since I have known a few criminals in my life I will tell you that they all sufer it ir have sufered it.
And by the way its called mental disorder, not mentall illnes.
Also one of the ways that a lot of these criminals would operate is by hurting other criminals because they don't feel bad or as bad then. I have gone to prison for hurting a criminal in the past.
I think that the definitions provided overgeneralise certain behaviours.
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You are welcome and thank you to for a good discusion. It opened my eyes a bit more to the reality of it. And its wikipedia that I have gone to not wikileaks. And it is very true were it says that sociopaths give always excuses for their behaviour. They do that by comparing them selves to someone worse than themselves for instance or by saying that the victim deserved it, or its covered by insurance, I am creating jobs, etc,etc.
And I also have a great understanding for your self and everyone else in wanting to be as safe as you can. I want to be safe from harm same as you and anyone else and we should all work towards a society that would be as safe as possible.
Thanks
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i get a feeling from your posts that you are very kindhearted ) may God bless us all.. and forgive our numerous sins.
And I also have a great understanding for your self and everyone else in wanting to be as safe as you can. I want to be safe from harm same as you and anyone else and we should all work towards a society that would be as safe as possible.
yes, but in trying to get our surroundings safe, we keep on punishing people for what they might have done in the past. we label them for life. thats wrong. if the person honestly is trying to reform, who are we to not give him/her the opportunity to? which of us hasnt fallen into error and sinned..the sooner we realise that we are all human and prone to error, the better our relationships with each other would be..
but what do you propose should happen to those people who continue to kill/rape etc. without reform? and how can we predict that someone has changed or not? -
Those who continue to comit the most serious of offending an who have a full mental capacity to understand the harm they have been locked up for a long time, come out and stil cnotinue doing it such as raping of kids for instance or killing people I would say that life in prison would be apropriate.
So once you go in and do a long sentence of lets say 10 years, 4/5 years then you come out and still do the most serious crimes again then life in prison. Trust me it would be horible to be told that you have to do rest of your life in prison. If someone says he or she doesn't care my asumption is that they are lying.
If they have done something but had no capacity to understand what they did was wrong at the time of doing it then they go to hospital till the expert psychiatrists decide they are OK to be released. So if someone has done something because of illness then heo or she are not guilty. Thats how they do things here in Australia and I preaty much agree with it.
If you don't mind me asking were are you from and were do you live, just the country?
Thanks
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Thats cool, i live in Melbourne.
I also have to say that God has the final say, not me. So if in the Quran(the good translations) it says that in some instances the justice department should execute someone than I can't argue.
But I think that the Quran would proscribe that only in rare instances were murder/murders or treason has been commited. It is my understanding that those are the only times.
There are also people who think that the verses on equality in case of a murder is prescribed means that everyone should be treated the same (equal) before the courts.
Anyone think that the Quran doesn't say that or that the death penalty includes other crimes as well?
Thanks
