[Urang Sunda] OOT deui euy: Fwd: Islam and tolerance - Pickthall

Mon, 04 Jul 2005 00:34:46 -0700

PYI ... Por your Inpormation, Kanggo dipikaterang... insya Allah manfaat..
 
Punten kanggo nu tos nampi sareng ka nu teu percanten ka Islam... mangga didelete wae
 
Baktos
y
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Dear bros & sis'...
 
Tolerance and women are two major this that has been attched to Islam in a negative sense. Sadly, nowadays this view has also been shared even among moslems themselves. We cannot deny the fact that problems between communities are increasing. But it is unfair to point your finger to our faith as the major, if not only, culprit. It also does not automatically (or even necessarily) suggest us to doubt our faith and impetuously accept the truth-possibility of other religions. This thought is a nasty shortcut way of thinking that undermines logic and hence poses an unbearble risk to our faith as well as our destiny. Naudzubillah...
 
A more logical way to do is to learn more and more about how Islam guides us to face this problem: live in diversity. I mean, how many among us know the ruling of appointing non-muslim as our leader? What is the philosophy of jizyaa (or even what is jizyaa anyway)? What is the true ruling of poligamy? How abundant it is today that people concluded that Islam oppresses women JUST because they know that there is one ayat in Quran that "allows" men to marry up to 4 women. Without even bother of  searching the true and complete ruling in Islam, they darely conclude that their own faith is against women's right and hence incompatible to this modern world. I won't judge it from my faith but rather logically: Is this a well-drawn coclusion?
 
Brothers/sisters, we have chosen to be a moslem for a reason, which I believe is happiness here and hereafter. Do you think it will come without price? Do you think it is logical to hope such an honour yet we can live as we like? I am sorry, my logic anwers "no". So, before you doubt your own faith, please ask yourselves: can I answer the challenge from the book you've said you believe: 
 
"And thus We have made you a community of the middle way, so that you may be witness [to the truth] before all mankind, and the Messenger may be witness [to it] before you." (al Baqarah 2:143)
 
In light of this spirit, please accept a writing by Marmaduke Pickthall, a British-convert Muslim about tolerance. Hope this will shed a dim of light to our understanding about our majestic religion. The second part and more about women insha Allah will be posted later..
 
Allah hafiz .... abd' al-Laah af fakiir ..

TOLERANCE IN ISLAM (Marmaduke Pickthall)- part 1

 

One of the most important themes of Islam is tolerance. There is no forced compulsion on people to change their religion. Throughout Islamic History tolerance was not only shown to Muslims who had different points of view, but also to non­muslims. Today, unfortunately, many Muslims have forgotten the true spirit of Islam. They are at times intolerant to non-Muslims under their rule as well showing intolerance to Muslims who disagree with their view. In a timely reminder we have edited a speech by the great Muslim scholar Marmaduke Pickthall on Tolerance in Islam. The lecture was given in 1927 in Madras, India. His message is just as relevant today.

 

One of the greatest misrepresentations of Islam historically by Western writers is that it is intolerant. This is turning the tables with vengeance when one remembers various facts: One remembers that not a single Muslim was left alive in Spain or Sicily or Apulia. One remembers that not a Muslim was left alive and not a mosque left standing in Greece after the great rebellion in 1821. One remembers how the Muslims of the Balkan Peninsula, once the majority, have been systematically reduced with the approval of the whole of Europe.

 

In Spain under -the Umayyads and in Baghdad under the Abbasid Khalifahs, Christians and Jews, equally with Muslims, were admitted to the schools and universities - not only that but were boarded and lodged in hostels at the cost of the Muslim state. When the Muslims were driven out of Spain, the Christian conquerors held a terrific persecution of the Jews. Those who were fortunate enough to escape fled, some of them to Morocco and many hundreds to the Turkish empire. The Muslim empire was a refuge for all those who fled from persecution by the Inquisition.

 

The Western Christians, until the eighteenth century,did not know and did not care to know, what Muslims believed, nor did the Western Christian seek to know the views of Eastern Christians with regards to them. The Christian Church was already split in two, and in the end, it came to such a point that the Eastern Christians, as the historian Gibbon shows, preferred Muslim rule, which allowed them to practice their own form of religion and adhere to their peculiar dogmas, to the rule of fellow Christians who would have made them Roman Catholics or wiped them out.

 

If Europe had known as much of Islam as Muslims knew of Christianity, the fanatical outbreak known as the Crusades could not have taken place, for they were based on a complete misapprehension. That was the kind oh "history" on which the populace in Western Europe used to be fed. Those were the ideas which inspired the rank and file of the crusader in their attacks on the most civilised peoples of the day. Christendom regarded the outside world as damned eternally.

It was not until the western nations broke away from their religious law that they became more tolerant; and it was only when the Muslims fell away from their religious law that they declined in tolerance and other evidences of the highest culture. Before the coming of Islam tolerance had never been preached as an essential part of Religion.

 

For the Muslims, Judaism, Christianity and Islam are but three forms of one Religion, which, in its original purity, was the religion of Abraham - Islam, that perfect Self Surrender to the Will of God. The Jews, in their religion, after Moses, limited Gods mercy to their chosen nation and thought of His kingdom as their dominion of their race.

 

Even Christ himself, as the Bible shows, declared that he was sent only to the lost sheep of the House of Israel and seemed to regard his mission as to them only. The Christians limited God's mercy to those who believed certain dogmas. Everyone who failed to hold the dogmas was an outcast, to be persecuted for his or her soul's good. It is only in Islam that the real nature of the Kingdom of God is manifest.

 

Allah! There is no God but save Him, the Alive, the Eternal. Neither slumber nor sleep overtakes Him. Unto Him belongs whatsoever is in the Heavens and whatsoever is in the Earth. Who is he that intercedes with Him save by His leave? He knows that which is in front of them and that which is behind them, while they encompass nothing of His knowledge save what He will. His throne includes the Heavens and the Earth, and He is never weary of preserving them. He is the Sublime, the Tremendous. There is no compulsion in religion. The right direction is henceforth distinct from error. And he who rejects false dieties and believes in Allah has grasped a firm handhold which will never break. Allah is Hearer, Knower. (Holy Qur'an, 2:255­256)

 

The two verses are supplementary. Where there is that realisation of the majesty and the dominion of Allah (S.W.T), there is no compulsion in Religion. Men choose their path - allegiance or opposition - and it is sufficient punishment for those who oppose that they draw further and further away from the light of truth.

 

What Muslims do not generally consider is that this law applies to our own community just as much as to the people outside, the laws of Allah being universal; and that intolerance of Muslims for other men's opinions and beliefs is evidence that they themselves have, at the moment, forgotten the vision of the majesty and mercy of Allah which the Qur'an presents to them.

In the Qur'an I find two meanings of a Kafir, which becomes one the moment that we try to realise the divine standpoint. The Kafir in the first place, is not the follower of any religion. He is the opponent of Allah's benevolent will and purpose of mankind - therefore the disbeliever in the truth of all religions, the disbeliever in all Scriptures as of divine revelation, the disbeliever to the point of active opposition in all the prophets (pbut) whom the Muslims regard, without distinction, as messengers of Allah.

 

The Qur'an repeatedly claims to be the confirmation of the truth of all religions. The former scriptures had become obscure, the former Prophets appeared mythical, so extravagant were the legends which were told concerning them, so that people doubted whether there was any truth in the old scriptures, whether such people as the prophets had ever really existed. Here - says the Qur'an - is a Scripture of which there is no doubt: here is a Prophet actually living among you and preaching to you. If it were not for this book and this Prophet, men might be excused for saying that Allah's guidance to mankind was all a fable. This book and this Prophet, therefore, confirm the truth of all that was revealed before them, and those who disbelieve in them to the point of opposing the existence of a Prophet and a revelation are really opposed to the idea of Allah's guidance - which is the truth of all revealed religions. Our Holy Prophet (pbuh) himself said that the term Kafir was not to be applied to anyone who said "Salam" (peace) to the muslims. The Kafirs, in the terms of the Qur'an, are the conscious evil-doers of any race or creed or community.

 

I have made a long digression but it seemed to me necessary, for I find much confusion of ideas even among Muslims on this subject, owing to defective study of the Qur'an and the Prophet's life. Many Muslims seem to forget that the Prophet had many allies among the idolaters even after Islam had triumphed in Arabia, and that he "fulfilled his treaty with them perfectly until the term thereof." The righteous conduct of the Muslims, not the sword, must be held responsible for the conversion of those idolaters, since they embraced Islam before the expiration of their treaty.

 

It was otherwise with the people who had a respectable religion of their own - the People of the book - as the Qur'an tells them - i.e, the people who had received the revelation of some former Prophet: the Jews, the Christians and the Zoroastrians were those with whom the Muslims came at once in contact. To these our Prophet's attitude was all of kindness. The charter which he granted to the Christian monks of Sinai is extant. If you read it you will see that it breathes not only goodwill but actual love. He gave to the Jews of Madinah, so long as they were faithful to him, precisely the same treatment as to the Muslims. He was never aggressive against any man or class of men; he never penalised any man, nor made war on any people, on the ground of belief but only on the ground of conduct.



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>> yudi irmawan <<

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