peace arnold, peace all!

wow! i don't check this forus for a day, and look at this! thanks everyone for joining in the discussion!

Peace Jeff,

No i don't mind. Debating elevates understandings on both sides. The thing on the shahada is, why then did God leave that out? You say it is not compulsorary. Ok, let's say sunnism never excisted and all other sects never excisted, no hadith or sunna. You live on the North-pole and are thaught perfect classic-arabic. You get the Quran. Would you have ever made up to connect 'Muhammed Rasoolallah' with 'le illeh Allah'. Would you have ever thought of that? Would you ever think to say Muhammed in the shahada? You would read 'le illeh il Allah' more then 35 times, but never 'Muhammed rasoolAllah' connected with it, and you read verses as 3945 and other verses as 4012, 364, 4083-85, 4146, 320. Would you have ever by yourself thought of connecting these two as allowed to be connected?

this in an interesting point. but if i am correct, and the second half of the shahada come out of the need for muslims to testify their faith in the qur'an and the whole prophetic message, then our north-pole pals (santa's elves, perhaps? i hope so, because the idea of santa's elves being muslims makes me very happy for some reason!) might have come up with some phrase or something similar. again, just because its not in the qur'an doesn't make it wrong. it would only be wrong if it flies in the face of the qur'an. which, from what i can tell, it doesn't, given the passages i quoted in my initial post. the problem then, is not the shahada itself, but the idea that the second half is compalsory.

As for blessing Muhammed during the Salaat, you must read the Quran carefully as it clearly mentiones that the salaat is for God alone.

6162 Say "My contact-method, and my offerings, and my life, and my death, are all to God the Lord of the worlds."

4012 This is because when God Alone was mentioned, you rejected, but when partners were associated with Him, you believed. Therefore, the judgment is for God, the Most High, the Most Great.

3945 And when God Alone is mentioned, the hearts of those who do not believe in the Hereafter are filled with aversion; and when others are mentioned beside Him, they rejoice!

7218 And the temples are for God, so do not call on anyone with God.
7219 And when God's servant stood up to call on Him, they nearly banded to oppose him.
7220 Say "I only call on my Lord, and I do not associate anyone with Him."

This is why i don't connect the blessing of Muhammed together with salaat, plus, where does it say you have to do it everytime? It only says to bless him. Not to do it everytime with salaat. This idea is purely originated from the sunni-sufism. Again, if you would live on the North-pole, with only knowing arabic. Would you have blessed Muhammed everytime with salaat and even connect it with salaat reading the verses above? Or would you have just done it while reading those verses?

again, and interesting point. but, at least in the salat as i practice it, the mentioning of muhammad takes place in two instances one is in the recounting of the meeting between allah and muhammad, in which i join with allah in praising muhammad and affirming him as prophet, join with muhammad in praising allah, and join in the angels in saying the shahada. next is in praying to allah for muhammad and his family (and for ibrahim and his family). from what i understand, this is more or less the basic sunni prayer. no where in here am i "calling" on anyone but allah. i'm praying for muhammad, and joining with allah and the angels in praising him (just as the qur'an says i should). just as in my du'a afterwards i tend to pray for my partner, my friends and family, the whole world and everyone / everything in it, etc. in all of this, i'm calling on allah, and allah is entirely the focus.

so, again, to me the question is not whether or not the qur'an contains this, but whether or not the qur'an forbids it... which it does not seem to do. the qur'an says to praise muhammad, and then leaves it up to us to decide how to do that. alhudilallah, s/he has left room for our creativity, imagination and growth, which we were clearly endowed with by her/him.

From my understanding, the Shahada is wrong for two reasons

1. It makes a distinction amongst the messengers by giving greater weight to Mohammed (making his name part of the proclamation of faith).

2. It was a sign of the hypocrates who bore witness to the messengership of Mohammed while God had already said that He is sufficient as a witness (hence they were challenging God`s assertion by making this testimony).

peace layth!

i ask you to refer back to my initial post, and the passages from the qur'an i quoted... particularly 3321 for your point "1". that is it seems to me this passages points out that its proper for muhammad to be singled out by capital "M" Muslims as our guide. this doesn't make him, or even necessarily give him greater weight, in the grand scheme of things.

and i again refer you to 3356 in which we are asked to praise muhammad to answer part of your point "2". as for the rest of it, the word "sufficient" here can have various shades of meaning. it could also mean, like the way my father used to use it, that allah's witness is sufficient for us as proof that we should believe join with him in witnessing. the interpretation that says this "sufficient" means what you say it means is conjecture. as is what i just said. these are both interpretations. which means that neither are inherently wrong. to me the question then becomes which interpretation brings you closer to god? as allah is all-wise, i suspect that he left bigs chunks of the qur'an vague like this so that we could use our god-given creativity, intuition and reason to figure out the best way for us to come to him/her.

fun!

ba-ba-ba baa baa bababa baa baa jedi

peace!

jeff.

hello and peace arnoldyasin!

thanks for your comments. for now i'm going to focus on the issues surrounding muhammad, since we don't really seem to be disagreeing on any substantial level about the other two topics. i'm going to try to edit down a bit what we both said so as to take up less bandwidth, and really focus our discussion. i hope this is alright!

1. muhammad i've read several things (unless i'm totally mistaken) in qur'an-only lit equating praying for and praising muhammad as making him equal to god. however, 33.56

God and His angels shower there blessings on the Prophet.
O believers, you should also send your blessings on him,
and salute him with a worthy greeting.

(ahmed ali translation)

the progressive muslims translation

3356 God and His Angels connect with the prophet. O you who believe, you shall connect with him, and yield completely.

regardless, this would seem to allow for praying for and praising muhammad in salat and even leave room for salawat.

First of all, where is this verse connected with salat? Nowhere. You gave an invisible link with salat and this verse. Where is your authority to do so? You have none. It says to honor the Prophet, Where does it say we have to do that in the salat or with prayers? It just says, bless him and support him. Why do you connect that with prayers and salat?

As for the shahada. Again where is your authority to connect 'le illeh illAllah' together with 'Muhammed Rasoolallah'? Again you have none. There are more then 35 shahada's in the Quran, which all are'le illeh ilAllah' or 'Aslamtu li Rabbi alameen'. Did God forget? We both know it is not so. What did all the messengers preach? 'Le illeh il Allah'. You think it is about that we believe that people put Muhammed on the same level as God, but i agree with you this is not so. The thing that is wrong with the 'traditional' shahada is that, there is no authority from the Quran that could have given this idea of the 'traditional' shahada. So this idea is formed outside of the Quran on authority other then the Quran, which is shirk. So it is not that you see 'Muhammed Rasoollah' as an illeh, the shirk is that you follow an authority outside the Quran which makes it shirk. It is this following of outside authority on the Deen which is shirk. All information for the Deen is inside the Quran, see 6112-116 and there are more verses on this. And what did Muhammed say himself? Would he have said his own name? No....He would just have said 'le illeh il Allah'.......

okay so i couldn't clip it down as much as i thought... oh well.. heehee

but notice that i said "allow". by this i do not mean to suggest that allah commands us to put the prophet into our prayers (as some sunnis would seem to suggest). instead what i mean is that by telling us that we "should" praise muhammad, it could be understood that allah has allowed us to put him into our salat prayers and to perform salawat. it is not necessary that we do so, but since god has asked us to praise him, the most convinient time to do so would be during salat.

as for shahada, of course muhammad would not have said "muhammadin rasulallah" because it would have been silly for him to do so as he was muhammad. however, for us non-muhammads this phrase, to me and some others i know, basically amounts to affirming with / witnessing to allah that we believe in muhammad's prophethood and thus the validity of the qur'anic revelation thru him. again, the qur'an does not make this compulsory, because all that is really important is contained in "la ilaha illa'llah" -- that, like you said, is the message. but as a testiment to faith in the qur'anic revelation it falls short because many people i know who do not follow islam and the qur'an would certainly agree with "la ilaha illa'llah" while competely denying the validity of muhammad's prophethood and the qur'anic revelation.

so combining what i have said about being allowed to praise muhammad with the possible necessity of affirming his prophethood and the qur'anic revelation, "muhammadin rasulallah" ceases to be shirk and becomes something that can bring us closer to allah thru validating the qur'an and the prophet.

i hope i have made sense and stimmulated your thoughts as you have stimmulated mine!

peace!!

jeff.

hello and peace!

i'm completely new to this forum. so please forgive me if i stray into some well covered topics. but my curiosity must be satisfied! er...

well, yeah, anyway...

1. muhammad i've read several things (unless i'm totally mistaken) in qur'an-only lit equating praying for and praising muhammad as making him equal to god. however, 33.56

God and His angels shower there blessings on the Prophet.
O believers, you should also send your blessings on him,
and salute him with a worthy greeting.

(ahmed ali translation)

the progressive muslims translation

3356 God and His Angels connect with the prophet. O you who believe, you shall connect with him, and yield completely.

and, i don't find it horribly different in essence. i'b be interested in seeing a breakdown of the arabic.

regardless, this would seem to allow for praying for and praising muhammad in salat and even leave room for salawat. not as equal to god, but more allong the lines of while we're connected to god in and immediately after salat, we might as well (should?) talk about the prophet, and "connect" with him, who's revelation we employ, etc. ((this might also indicate that the traditional shahada is not invalid if including "muhammadin rasulallah" (or which ever pronounciation you prefer).))

which brings me to i've noted folks talking about not elevating muhammad above other prophets (which i agree with in essence... i have a very special place in my heart for the prophets lao-tzu, siddhartha, isa, krishna, etc.), but 33.21

You have indeed a noble paradigm
in the Apostle of God

the p.m translation is even more interesting in this regard

3321 Indeed, in the messenger of God a good example has been set for you

so a focus on muhammad is certainly understandable for muslims. this does not necessarily mean that muhammad is superior, only that he kicks arse.

2. hadith ... i am pretty sympathetic to the arguements put forth that the hadith / sunnah are generally corrupt. but i don't think the more traditional argument (based in part on what i've just quoted and similar passages) is wholly wrong, that hadtih rose out of a desire to understand the life and personality of the prophet so that later muslims could follow such passages as 33.21. so for me the question becomes less "are the hadith valid?" and more "what hadith are useful / helpful and do not contradict the qur'an?" for me its not a matter of literal historical accuracy, but a question of whether or not the hadith contains wisdom which helps me to better understand the qur'an and draw closer to allah.

thus, hadith about stoning people, out the window. while the hadith symbolically describing the prophet's "enlightenment" (for lack of a better word) experience (you know, the one with the horse and all) seems to me important for what it reveals.

3. sufism ... a bit of backstory what has drawn me to islam is, quite frankly, sufism. not that the mystical tracks within islam can really be contained in one term, but its a useful shorthand... so i'm using it. ... but, yeah sufism is more or less the door thru which i am entering islam, as such. so the few comments i've read on this forum were a little disturbing to me. in that i think a lot of folks misunderstand the intent (which, no need to tell me, is often different from the reality) of the teacher / student relationship within sufism. that is since sufism is basically about techniques for understanding one's nafs, cleansing the heart, drawing closer to god in love, etc. it makes sense that one might need a teacher, in the same sense that i have a teacher for aikido, or wish to aquire one for learning arabic, etc. but like any student / teacher relationship, it can be dangerous because you are giving up a little bit of autonomy by trusting someone to help you in a correct manner. i mean my aikido teacher could be totally teaching me bogus techniques, and an arabic teacher might be teaching me to say "i'm a cornhusking fishmonger" when i think s/he is teaching me to say "all praises to allah", or some such. naturally, in a spiritually charged situation, the stakes are a bit higher, but that does not negate the possible necessity of guidence.

of course one can get totally taken by some fraud, or give in to a cult of personality masquerading as devotion to allah. but, for example, the order in which i am seeking admitance is pretty forthright about the resonsibility of the dervish to check for themselves, and test the teachings, not accepting anything without question -- as per qur'an perscription. service, then, to one's shaykh does not mean the negation of any of these things, but instead is a technique for for learning viserally how to be a servant to allah, and by extention the world. indeed, in this order, one can tell elder dervishes by the fact that they are better at serving the new dervishes than the other way around. one of the sayings in the order (because kissing the ring of the shaykh is a custom) is when one kisses the ring of a shaykh, s/he kisses your feet. that is the shaykh is there to serve the dervish, not the other way around. the reversal of this is evidence that the shaykh in question is a false sufi, and should be abandonded -- they are not practicing humility and modesty.

so, ideally, a sufi order is a place in which everyone is learning how to serve everyone, as well as learning how to cleanse one's heart, etc. in this way it should be a model for any community of muslims.

i'll call it now... any thoughts, etc. would be wonderful!

thanks!!

peace!!!

jeff.

p.s. i've always wanted to be a jedi jedi via la obi-wan kenobi!