In the same chapter, Surah An-Nisa, Ayah 19 translates to 'O you who have believed, it is not lawful for you to inherit women by compulsion. And do not make difficulties for them in order to take part of what you gave them unless they commit a clear immorality. And live with them in kindness. For if you dislike them - perhaps you dislike a thing and Allah makes therein much good.'
With that understood, 'separating' from them makes more sense in context.
Salam.
To my knowledge (which isn't as thorough as many), I believe 'Innama' means 'only'. 'In' means 'if' like 'Insha'Allah', 'Inna' means 'Verily', and 'Innama' means 'Only'.
Hell is very possible when one understands that the world we live in is a mere illusion.
This world is nothing more than certain atoms being held in one frequency. The world simply exists in a probability function and the wavelength only collapses through conscious observation from either us or God or both. It is very easy to understand that this world what we see, hear, feel, taste, smell- isn't 'real'. It is possible that after death, the consciousness/soul of the wicked along with God will create hell and the consciousness/soul of the righteous with God will create paradise. Both hell and paradise as real as the world we live in today.
Look up the 'quantum universe'.
The Quran has 7 writings based on what?
People who do not follow hadith at all will testify to follow the 1 Quran that is in existence today followed by millions of muslims.
People who do follow hadith can easily point to hadiths and historical sayings which say all Quran's had the same message, albeit slightly different dialects, but the message is the important thing to follow. Also citing that there is 1 Quran which survived and is followed by millions today.
My view on this is that God knows what will happen/has happened/etc.
We do not.
It is on us to make our own decisions and follow our own paths which we choose. However, God already knows that, and whether we like it or not, we are following His absolute will.
To make things seem simpler, rather than doing 'evil' vs 'good' in a spectrum. Do 'good' vs 'non-good'.
In order for goodness to exist, non-goodness (or evil) should exist.
The 'non-goodness' is a spectrum since obviously certain non-good things that people do is a lot worse than other 'non-good' things people do.
"Time" in the hours/minutes/seconds sense is merely convenience created by man.
"Time" in the philosophical sense was created during the Big Bang (according to science). Furthermore, logic shows that time is not infinite since infinity cannot exist in our relative universe.
God cannot be time because God was not created. God is the creator of time and is eternal since He is not bound by time (like we are).
Science is about 'proving' as much as it's about 'disproving'. In fact, those are parallel ideals - establishing the basis of proof for one idea automatically disproves it's conflicting ideas. Religious people form ideals based on the concept of God, rather than the avenues of reality. A few thousand years ago, they believed that God makes it rain. Today, we know that to be false, and rain is attributed to the water cycle. I still hear people say that they thank their God for waking them up in the morning, even though the scientific explanation for this is the sleep/life cycle (failure to wake up means you're dead). Many Christians STILL claim that God "put" the rainbow in the sky in order to remind humanity that He'll never flood the Earth again! Yet, scientifically, we know that the rainbow is NOT up in the sky; it's a refraction of light manifested by deposited water in the sky, creating a prism... In other words, people use the idea of an all-encompassing, sole-controlling deity to explain things they don't understand, or things they're too lazy to research. 4-5,000 years ago, it was okay to based your ideals on mythology. Today, though, in 2010, it's ridiculous for us to still be attributing natural occurances or phenomena to an invisible man in the sky.
I would have to respectfully disagree. If you understand that God is absolute and God has a will (everything follows His will), then you will understand that even the most minute occurrences in life occur because of Allah. The laws of nature and properties of substances/materials are dictated by His will.
God does make it rain. Just because science explains how it rains, that doesn't throw God out of the equation.
With that said, in no way do I believe God truly has hands or does things normal human beings would do. I believe God is incomprehensible, but in His mercy, a way for mankind to not be lost, God uses things we can relate to (messengers, revelations, anthropomorphism) to help us understand the seemingly un-understandable.
The last line of Surah Al-Ikhlas says there is NOTHING equal in comparison to God.
Good response Paradox, and just to clarify
I believe the creation is relative. I believe the creator is absolute.
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.
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
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
As Salamu Alaikum,
I want to preface this by saying that I am a Muslim. I believe strongly in the Qu'ran based on natural phenomenon noted in the Qu'ran, the historical prophecies fulfilled, mathematical improbabilities in word frequencies, and the preservation and literary greatness of the Qu'ran. Most importantly, the Qu'ran verifies my logical definition of God.
I am, however, very reserved on certain material in the Qu'ran. I agree with God giving mankind laws to govern our behavior on Earth, and a majority of these laws are ones I can agree with, such as being honest, not wronging others, not murdering, stealing, being faithful to your spouse.
The problem for me is why does God have to make so many punishments so barbaric (I know the Qu'ran was revealed 1400 years ago, so should those same punishments be used today?). Decapitation for stealing, flogging and lashing for illegal sexual intercourse, etc.
I also do not understand why we must have specific inheritance laws and other laws on daily activities such as getting testimonies. Couldn't these be extremely subjective in terms of the situation.
Finally, I am very upset regarding the verse 434 which says to beat wives. I do not believe anyone should beat anyone, and at worst, they should just be divorced.
In essence, I believe the Qu'ran is from Allah, and all of it is, but I question these verses and laws which appear to be outdated and barbaric.
I am very torn in this matter. Do those verses still apply to us today? Can we modernize the punishments?
Furthermore, some of the stories of the Qu'ran on how people lived 1000 years and survived being in the belly of a Whale and the miracles performed by prophets- all seem very hard to fathom scientifically. Did these situations actually happen? Are these just stories of guidance and warning from God, not based on any tangible evidence in the past?
Is the Qu'ran still meant to be taken literally?