I am curious about others who reverted from Christanity, how hard it was to give up the Blood Atonement Theology.

For me it was the HARDEST thing I ever did.

Peace be with you.

Dow

salam Jahswolf,

I've been to different masjids in my area. Not everyone agrees, this is a fact. I don't believe people will always 100% agree. Out of the masjids I've been to, I've found some which are more tolerant than others. I believe this is in accordance to our daily lives and people in general. I've had very similar experience as you on a Sunni message board. I was banned because of my views on music, hadith, and interpretation of the Quran. I was told that I was not to use my own mind to understand the Quran, but I should listen to the scholars.

All in all, I can't judge the whole body of Sunni because of this experience. Allah is the only Judge. I believe there is nothing wrong with walking alone. )

There is a saying, "walk alone like a tusker in the woods and know no conflict."

May peace be on you.

I tend to agree with you, that I cannot take my experience there and hold it against all people who claim the Sunni sect, as I know there are many there who are very kind, and understanding of where I am today, and are not into attempting to tell me how and what to believe.

Sunni's do not have the corner on those who use religion for power, I have witnessed it in many of the Christian Churches I attended during my lifetime. The best quote I can think of to illustrate this point is that of Stephen Jones the brother of Jim Jones the cult leader who lead his congregation to drink poison. Stephen said "My brother was not into religion, he was into power".

What I think those who are interested in unifying Islam's believers with all other believers in God should do, is to encourage what we have in common, and to play down our differences.

I suppose what I need to learn is to do more of this, and lose my 'attitude' toward those who wish to bully me into thinking their way, and when faced with those drunk on power, I should use the questioning tactic more. For example, "So you think that the hadith supersedes the Quran?"

Thank you for your response and helping me to reason away my feelings of rejection by Why Islam.

May Peace be with you

Dow

in the Name of God The Most Merciful

In light of the oriiginal post, and being someone that is very interested in unity among all believers, Christian, Jew, and Muslim, let me give you a little of what I feel about Sunni's after just having been condemed by the high council of Why Islam for no other reason than standing firm on using only the Quran as my method of determining what is right from wrong. I no longer have the privledge of entering into any of the debates there because I am what they call a "Quranite".

There are many there who support me, but the powers that be are clearly determined to keep my posts from ever being seen by "new muslims", because in their opinion "it will confuse them", if we discuss the sect differences, or what got me restricted was my insistance to see proof that a woman "MUST" wear a hajab. No one could produce Quranic proof, therefore it cut them to the heart that the only real proof was found in thier haddith, and since I refuse to include that in my worship, I am seen as someone that questions the very "core beliefs" of Islam.

I further insisted that the Quran is the "Umpire" of ALL other scripture, the Torah, the Injel AND the HADDITH AND SUNNAH. You can imagine the response I get there.

Now, that being said I am still allowed to go to the "revert" area, that is set aside for ONLY muslims to see, so they do have some decent people there who still like me, but only in "quarenteen".

So now how can we get along with Sunni's who treat us like this? I never have seen the inside of a mosque, and I wonder what the response would be if I put up the same kind of conditions on the teachers there? Not good I suspect.

So just like when I was a loner as a Christian, I am finding I must now walk the same lonley road as a Muslim.

May the Peace of God be with each of you....

Dow Buzzell

suffering in this life is the biggest issue that had me not believing in a Soverign God because of all the pain and misery.

We read in the Quran all of the reasons for suffering, and I find them very helpful in dealing with this issue.

Yet we see things like two muslim babies born with heads joined together, and I have to ask who's fault is this? God formed them in the womb and knew that this was goling to happen and let it happen.

So I come to the conclution it is one of two possiblities and I lean toward the second. One, we were alive before and we pay for our sins of a previous life, or the Torah is correct that God punishes sin to the fourth generation, and rewards rightousness to 1000 generations.

The Quran tells us that anything bad that happens to us is our fault, and no one suffers for the sins of another, with this logic we must be paying for a previous life, yet I cannot recall one, so I lean to the torah where it is written God punishes to 4 generations.

Arnold

Sure here is the link

http//www.freedomcrowsnest.org/forum/viewforum.php?f=1

Arnold

I hope you don't mind but I linked your article on a site called 'Crow's Nest', I don't participate much there except to post items in an attempt to invite this crowd to Islam.

Your article is right up their alley with the kind's of things they think about and read.

I got one response already from there that really liked your article and links.

Peace

Dow

Just ordered a copy of "The Field", looking forward to reading it.

Thanks again,

Dow

A very interesting article Arnold, thank you for taking the time to translate the physics-speak into a language that I could understand. I like to read that stuff, but it gets too confusing too fast but like Mr. Hawkings you seem to have a way to make it understandable to us layman.

Peace

Dow

Arnold

Thank you for your reply, that is the confirmation I was looking for.

I wonder about those who seem to have the ability to help law enforcment solve crimes thru what they feel at crime sences, or those that claim the ability, many with accuracy, to talk to passed on ones, who they are really talking to. Angels perhaps..

Peace be within your heart always..

Dow

The war and George W. Bush being re-elected.

If music is harram then David was lying in the last psalm of the book of psalms that is confirmed by the Quran as being sent from God.

Read it.

If Music is harram tell that to Cat Stevens who is now a muslim and is going to do a new tour to bridge the gap between the west and Islam.

May God grant your heart His Peace

Dow

The purpose of prophesies has always been the proof of the one speaking the future as being a messenger from God.

In my life that is exactly what the Angel who visited me did, was to predict the future events in my life and in the nations life and those messages came true, it was to prove to me that I had a gurdian angel, and that God was real.

May God lead your heart to peace.

Dow

May peace be upon each of your hearts

Thank you all for your very interesting responses. I need to evaluate each of them further, before I make a detailed response.

As far as the database engine it will be MySQL. It has a wonderful text search capability that was just being developed five years ago when I hung up my keyboard from professional programming and database administration.

The code for the front end I am still thinking about, but I am set on the first cut to be a web based front end. I want this for the main reason of compatabiltiy for the maxium amount of users including a phone browser. I toyed with the idea of a client based program and even layed quite a lot of code into it before I just had to stop, and make the decision to go to a web front end. I am leaning toward PHP but it will be a learning curve for me, but I like the speed of what I have seen elsewhere.

As in all design phase programs I am making every attempt to decide the number of features at first release and what the order of additional features I wish to add later. All of the input here has given me quite the laundry list of features from which to choose from for the first release. Since I am designing the Database now, this is imperitive to decide now what features I will include later.

As far as the effort, it is a personal effort and I am not colaborating with anyone of this except God of course.

I have spend a number of years making up my mind to do this or not, and dealing with the moral considerations of developing artifical intelligence at all, and to what extent. But the goal is to develop it here in a way to provide the maximum benfit for returning users.

Again, thank each of you for taking the time to respond to my querry, and I promise to keep you informed about what features I decide to include in my first release.

May the Peace of God be found in each of your hearts...

Dow

Arnold

Thank you for sharing you life story. Pretty amazing how merciful God has been to you. God has more mercy than most give Him credit for.

I wish you well with your new woman, sounds like you have quite the hurdle to cross with her family, but with God nothing is impossible.

God speed Arnold

Dow

Peace be upon your hearts

I asked the question at the beggining of the thread mainly because I am confused about the issue.

I once was a bible believing Christian, that bought into the ideas of Jesus Return from the traditions of the Christian Church.

It is a very important issue to Christians, almost as important as the idea of the Human sacrifice for the atonement of sins.

The evolutionary process that I went thru that finally culminated in becoming a revert, was long and very painful.

After Arnold introduced me to Akbarally Meherally, i was in for more pain in discovering the truth that Jesus in NOT coming back, and very probably died in France, after having a daughter.

The sword of the truth cuts both ways, it free's us from the evil associated with believing lies, but cuts deeply into my heart where I thought I knew the truth about issues like Jesus' return.

So I hope that answers your question, why it is such an important issue. I have a lot more to say about this but I like short posts.

Peace

Dow

See also
http//www.islamicperspectives.com/ReturnOfJesus.htm
http//www.ourbeacon.com/Messiah.pdf

Thank you for these links, I glanced at the first one, and indeed it appears to be worth reading before we get into any serious discussion of this subject, unfortunatly I need some time off from my studies for a bit, and will make every attempt to read these before I post any of my thoughts about this subject.

Did you read the links yet that brother Arnold has posted? If you have not yet, you are missing out on two of the best articles I have ever read.

Peace be upon your heart

Dow

Arnold

Thank you for the link to Dr. Shabbir Ahmed's paper. My wife and I read it with a lot of laughter as his sense of humor is a wonderful addition to the subject matter of such a depth of concern for me facing the results of an administration that has been exposed as being driven by the very heart of messanic beliefs.

While I think he needs to edit this article a bit more as I saw it was recently edited, he is well on the way to a publication that could indeed rock the masses toward our Quran Alone movement. If I could suggest that he would provide a bit more commentary during the lists of contridictory hadith.

Arnold, I am so glad that God has moved me from the Why Islam forum, back to Free-Minds, where I have met you, and that He has moved you to direct me to the links you have. They have made my single day off in 14 a wonderful souce of information that I will be able to think about during my next 14 days on.

I will check in from time to time in my next round of slavery to see what is going on, but I will have to eagerly wait until my next wonderful day off to give some of the subject matter you have presented to me the attention it certainly deserves.

Thank you again for your time here on this site, Peace be upon your heart, and may God reward you for your continued efforts to enlighten us all from your search for the truth.

First let me say thank you a million times for your link to this article and introducing me to Akbarally Meherally.

I have so far gotten thru about two thirds of the article, and was so impressed with it, I went and found this guy's site and sent him my greetings and appreciation for his work, as just about everything I have read so far I have seen in framented pieces during my journey, and to find them all in one article, and much more, is just nothing less than a reward from Allah.

Secondly, I wanted to comment on this notion of the death of Jesus. We do know from the Quran that Jesus's life was "terminated" it is the same word used for the termination of each of our lives.

Akbarally Meherally's quotes Ruqaiyyah Waris Maqsood who writes in The Mysteries of Jesus "One could argue, alternatively, that what is meant is that even though
Jesus did die in the earthly sense, he was not overcome by death, and
through the action of God he became the sign pointing the way to the
everlasting life for all believers. For example, Ahmadiyya sectarians
usually not regarded as Muslim at all - took the view that Jesus was
crucified, but that he did not die as a result. They suggested that he
survived the ordeal and was resuscitated in the coolness of the tomb. He
then recovered, and lived on long enough to travel as far afield as
Kashmir, where he married and had children, and in due course died. The
tomb of this person can be seen to this day at a shrine called the Rozabel
in Srinagar. Certainly the shrine, grave and legend exist, but the
documentary evidence for the Jesus who came there in tenuous in the
extreme."

I think this article our dear brother has posted the link to should be required reading for this thread.

Peace be upon each of your hearts...

Dow

004159

And there is no one, among Ahl al-Kitab but shall realize the truth of his - Isa's - mission at his descent to earth before his death - .....

Translation by Al-Muntakhab Cairo University.

The street is ugly, and without a building and a meeting place as a support system, we can be out on the street in two paychecks. The internet can be taken away far sooner than our homes, cutting us off from fellow believers.

We lost contact with you guys for over a year, and living alone without another human being that profess's the Quran Alone to talk to was just plain bad.

God was there, we had food, we had a home, but no contact with other's who call themselves Muslim's and believe in the Quran Alone? I was so glad to get the newsletter from the Tucson Majid every two months, it was my only source that we still existed. I almost hitch hiked up to Seattle last year, but that was just stupid, now I see the next meeting in August, and would so like to be there, but still it is impossible.

I like the idea of tables and food too!!! Not to mention a roof and couches. ;D