Mr Sultan Shahin made every fabulous effort to resolve the ongoing violent issues in the world to a great extent he could. I endorse that he interpreted Islam in its true form. There are some worth mentioning points in the article we need to remember as follows:

“Any number of modern Quran exegetes have studied the holy scripture and found that there is nothing in it that stops Muslims from co-existing peacefully with other non-Muslim communities either as a minority themselves or in a Muslim-majority country. But much of the present-day problem emanates from the Wahhabi doctrine of exclusivism that is promoted in Islamic societies around the world by a massive injection of Saudi petrodolla”

“The hard reality is that – the concerning Aayats on close interaction and intimacy (Mawalat) in Qur’an neither addresses the entire Muslim community nor the entire non-Muslim community. In reality, the Muslims and the non-Muslims who are addressed here are particular groups who have some discord among themselves or are at war which is being fought with purely Islamic norms for safeguarding Kalma-e-Tauheed and not for the benefits and advantages of the community.”

“Indeed Muslims everywhere must oppose the exclusivist-literalist interpretation of the Holy Quran that claims that all its verses are of universal application regardless of context”.

The writer concludes his statement by a Hadith “All of mankind is from Adam and Eve (Hawwa), an Arab has no superiority over a non-Arab, nor a non-Arab has any superiority over an Arab; a white has no superiority over a black nor does a black have any superiority over a white, EXCEPT BY PIETY AND GOOD DEEDS.  Do not therefore do injustice to yourselves.  Remember one day you will meet Allah and answer for your deeds. So beware: do not stray from the path of righteousness after I am gone.”

Rational says, "I am not run of material. .....I don't to go down than you.

You certainly have run out of grammar! And your arguments are becoming childish.

@Ghulam Mohiyuddin, Please see the homicide rate of oic countries and you can compare the same with that of India [3.4% ], where the so called moral policing is high and not like in the state of kafirs  ; Intentional homicide, count and rate per 100,000 population (1995 - 2011) :

Dharma Raj, nobody has criticized Saudi Arabia and Pakistan more than I have, but by  bringing them up to support the evil Savarkarian notions of "alien religions and Indic religions", you just proved that Sanghis basically want to make India exactly like Pakistan or Saudi Arabia. You want to take India backwards!

Sure Muslim invaders did horrible things, but you guys trying to hide your own evil deeds by blaming everything on Muslim conquerors are just trying to perpetrate a cheap deception. 

The Noble persona of Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) as mirrored in the Qur’an

http://newageislam.com/islamic-personalities/muhammad-yunus,-new-age-islam/the-noble-persona-of-prophet-muhammad-(pbuh)-as-mirrored-in-the-qur’an/d/8657

Dharma Raj says, "Contrary to belief, Buddha commonly refered Gauthma buddha is not founder of Buddhisam."

We should accept Buddhist history as told by Buddhists. When people of one faith go correcting the narrations of another faith it just creates unnecessary controversy.

Mr Satwa Gunam: Thanks for information. You are right in your assessment, Lord Krishna was not behind the downfall of Duryodhana. He was suffering of human weaknessess such as avarice and false pride and he had devilish intentions so he wished to capture the whole Hastinapur and not to consider even five palms of land for Pandavas which was proposed to him. Ultimately, the good prevailed over the evil and an example was set upon for the world.

MY2: You are not authorised to deliver (Fatwa) verdict like a Mullah, " Perhaps very few lucky people like Md yunus(1) sahib and Naseer Ahmed sahib etc can understand divine speech." Allah Kareem says, "Qur'an is easier to understand for the whole Ummat including You if you try to.

Your another objectionable statement, "For being a Muslim no understanding of the Quran is required. Recite the Kalima willingly or unwillingly and be a Muslim. Then follow some Mullah. Practice some rituals and the end comes". I am surprised at your wit and tiresome bothering mind that nevers tires. Have some wisdom to talk sensible.

Naseer Sb. quotes from the Quran: " if proof was provided then, doing good will lose all moral value."

Do such arguments strengthen or weaken the case for theism? Theism is a matter of faith and is not enhanced by logic. Doing good is inherently right and should require no further support.

If God created the world, why is it that not a single scripture that claims to be from him tells us when exactly [date, time] this 'happened'?

if god created the world, then why is it that no scripture that claims to be from him tells us why suddenly, after being quite content with no world existing, god developed a desire [he is said to be above desire] to create the world and have people bowing before him like slaves?

all these beliefs are just very childish.....this is why the Buddha's teachings are most sensible...there's no concept of a creator god in these teachings.....and there is no silly dogma that you have to believe in otherwise you will go to hell!

1.       Dear Ratatatata,

Your rational doubts on the existence of God based on the examples you cited are absolutely correct.

Without trading superfluous remarks that could be misunderstood let me pick at the thread of the debate, why believe in God at all and what kind of God is He – if at all He exists who will condemn all non-believers, polytheists, animists and other category of non-believers in God into hell.

 For a long time in my life, the same question haunted me. I looked at it in a broader historical timeframe. Here is a piece of my reflection preserved in my file on the sufferings of the jungle man:

“The early jungle man had his own trail of agonies. Lightening struck him; floods, cyclone and volcanoes (depending upon where he lived) uprooted and destroyed him. Wild beasts chased him, attacked him, tore him apart - at times in the very presence of his kins; or carried him off. His only weapons were stone and stick. He used these to protect his fragile body from the wild beasts, as well as to hunt his prey. He wore no shoes, was barely clothed (in leaves or hides), and had to endure agony of all kinds of injury, illness, and deadly diseases, leaving their healing to time. As well as Nature, the early man had another greater and more treacherous foe: his fellow-man. He was chased and hunted by rival tribes, or captured by them as slaves. His women were defiled and children tortured and killed before his very eyes. He was pushed over the cliff, or tied up in the forest for the wild beast to eat, and was even eaten up by his cannibalistic counterparts. His agony was thus compounded and he must have lived in a state of perpetual terror and uncertainty.”

Question that once haunted me and remains unanswered: Why did God leave them to suffer for millenniums?

You can raises rather thousands of questions to rationally demonstrate that there is no God. If you just reflect on man’s tyranny upon man – be it in a run of the mill robbery, murder or rape or communal riots, pogroms, genocides, holocaust,  plundering and invasions of history, high tech missile attacks, use of chemical weapons and carpet bombing of modern times and so forth, you do wonder why people – helpless men, women and children are torn apart, buried alive under debris of bombed buildings or burnt alive by phosphorous flames - killed and maimed in the most agonizing circumstances, with God as a silent witness. If you think of the calamities of Nature – earthquakes, Tsunami, cyclones and the misery of their victims – with God, the creator of these catastrophes doing nothing. You feel something is amiss – inexplicable about the very notion of God. 

If you reflect of the plight and misery of the poor people in your neighbourhood – no money to take a dying child to a doctor or to marry off a growing daughter (if you only understood what i mean) and of the vanquished communities of the world – all killed or enslaved in historical perspective, of the ‘les miserables in the medieval ages, of the gladiators killing each other before the gaze of godless spectators (Greek rational elite) you wonder what the hell God was doing.

Imagine the plight of the slaves and the kidnapped girls dumped on the Kothas to be visited by sons, fathers and grandfathers; of women folk in all major civilizations through to the Middle Ages. God simply watched.

Based on the above and similar examples, I have no basis to believe in God and I had been Godless for a long time.

All said, I believe in God, because I know with certainty that there is a divine hand behind the movement of my fingers on the key board of my laptop and behind the intricate working of the laptop and behind all that is most puzzling, most mysterious and most beautiful within and around us, and because of my personal journey into my scripture. You may have right not to believe in God, and you can also ridicule me for believing in God but my core scripture (not theological discourses) tell me not to ridicule you if you do not believe in God and not to take any offence of what you think of me. Moreover, contrary to your view and that of the Mullas, my scripture tells me that God alone will judge among all humanity – including all categories of non-believers on the Day of judgement and the Muslims (followers of the Prophet Muhammad) will be treated at a par with humanity. These are not my views. I have established these on the basis of the Qur’an and posted Ijtihad works (fresh insights).

You cannot judge the true message of Islam by what 100% Mullas say in the 21st century as much as you could not judge the true message of Christianity or Hinduism by what 100% of their priests advocated in the 17th or 18th century of our calendar.

I hope I have not offended your feelings in any way and if so I apologize beforehand. They say ‘doodh ka jala maththa phuk phuk kar pita hai.’ I am writing to you purely academically, to make you my friend and not my enemy but if it boomerangs, my effort is wasted.

May I request to read and comment on my following articles:

The Hindus are not ‘the mushrikin’ mentioned in the Qur’an

http://www.newageislam.com/NewAgeIslamDialogue_1.aspx?ArticleID=5655

Dear Ratatatata, "the Qur’an describes Islam’, as the universal faith that was enjoined on earlier prophets, who were all true Muslims (2:131-133), and conveyed the same essential message."

"The Qur’an sets good deeds as the common criteria for divine approval for all humanity (2:62, 4:124, 5:69, 64:9, and 65:11)."

"The Qur’an, however, complements the notion of good deeds with moral uprightness (taqwa)."

"In the Qur’anic worldview, a good Muslim is a believer in God - regardless of religion, race, cast, creed or affiliation with a spiritual fraternity, who is active in good deeds, is conscious of his social, moral and ethical responsibilities and preserves against all that is gross, immoral and unjust. Since God alone can judge human’s faith (Iman), deeds (‘aml) and moral uprightness (taqwa), a non-Muslim in the divisive human language can be a better Muslim in divine record than a Muslim (follower of Prophet Muhammad). Hence the Muslims have absolutely no basis to call the non-Muslims as kafirs (denier of truth), individually or collectively."

In a word, the Qur'an uses the word Islam in a generic sense that is inclusive of all monotheistic faiths. The above quotations are from my following researched article, you may read if you like.

The broader notion of din al-Islam is inclusive of all monotheistic faiths.

http://newageislam.com/islamic-ideology/by-muhammad-yunus,-new-age-islam/the-broader-notion-of-din-al-islam-is-inclusive-of-all-monotheistic-faiths/d/8054'

Sadaf. You say: “I do not think that the Islam phobia is the real thing.”

This is what one of the top Islamic scholar and jurist and Prof.of Law, Shaykh Khaled El Fadl writes about it:

“This, however, is one of the reasons that Islamophobia and Islam-hating is emblematic of the foundational failures of the modern age—policies that target or profile Muslims as a group, or that speak of the dangers of a Muslim cultural invasion of Europe, or that legitimate the denouncement and deprecation of the Islamic faith, very much like the institution and logic of Apartheid, undermine the fundamental structure of legitimacy in the modern age.  In this regard, there are many reasons to be very concerned. 

Policies that are founded on the presumed inherent dangers of Islamic theology or law; or policy makers who effectively legitimate religious bigotry by seeking the “expert” counsel of professional Islam-haters do nothing less than undermine the very logic that provides structure and authoritativeness to order of this age.  I emphasize that the problem is not the existence of discrete and surreptitious religious bigotry—the problem is the fact that this religious bigotry is rationalized, and legitimated; it is cleansed of all sense of shame or fault and then stated as a normative value: the truth that needs to be uncovered.  Here, the evidence on the ground, so-to-speak, is shocking, deeply troubling and overwhelming. For example, since 2002, thousands of books published in the United States and Europe spewed sheer hateful venom against Islamic theology, law, and history.  More troubling is the fact that many of these pseudo-intellectualized displays of bigotry became massive bestsellers in Western countries.  The writers of these hate-filled tracts were endowed with star status in the West as they consistently appeared as authoritative voices on everything Muslim in the media and were integrated into positions of authority by being given various institutional roles either as advisors to governments, members of government, or references for specialized agencies within government. Part of the very widespread phenomenon of religious bigotry was the opportunistic and parasitical celebration and promotion of so-called native informants—people who fit the Muslim ethnic and cultural profile, claimed either that they are Muslim or used to be Muslim, and above all were willing to perform the dramatic role of the archetypal Muslim who gazes in the mirror only to discover his/her hideous ugliness (contrasted of course to the beauty of the non-Muslim other), and then overcome by tragic destiny, he/she plunges in cathartic self-flagellation (or more precisely, Islam flagellation), which comes to the entirely predictable realization that all the ugliness in the mirror after all is Islam’s fault.  Of course, for the bigoted, but paying, reader’s ecstatic enjoyment, the native-informant climactically confesses Islam’s sins and bombastically declares, lest it be damned, Islam and of course Muslims too, must repent!  The classic and also the most indulgently obnoxious examples of this pornographically-oriented exploitation of non-religiosity, or perhaps anti-religiosity, are the money-raking books of Hirshi Ali and Irshad Manji.          

What fuels the Islam-hating industry in the West is that many sincerely believe that they are reacting rationally to a cultural, political, and militaristic threat.  But it is important to remember that every social movement that has demonized a feared and hated other has constructed its hate-narrative as an unpleasant but necessary defensive response to a perceived threat—whether real or imagined. The very nature of bigotry and prejudice is that they are paranoid reconstructions of reality—they grossly exaggerate a kernel of truth into an enormous lie.  So, for instance, bigots do not imagine that Muslim terrorists exist but they imagine that terrorism is the prevailing reality of Islam. 

What is especially troubling about Islam-hating is that it is a powerful indication that the West, which led the world into modernity, has been unable to overcome its own historically rooted religious prejudices and bigotry.  Islam-hating and Islamophobia are among the few remaining sanitized and legitimate social pathologies in the West not because bigotry against Islam and Muslims is practiced or tolerated, but because it is affirmatively honored and even glorified as part of the analytical discipline of national security and interest.” [Extracted from Dr.Fadl’s introduction to ‘The Essential Message of Islam, Amana Publications 2009].

Do you know how many hundreds of billions of dollar and how many agencies and hundreds of thousands of direct and indirect staff are engaged in the States to ward off another 9/11.

Have you realised how unlawfully (from both secular and religious perspective) have the Muslims reacted to a film demonizing the Prophet.

You seem to be acting like the legendary ostrich that buries its head into the sand in the face of Islam.

There is an SOS for you – an article on the petrifaction of Islam. Please read closely and comment.       

"I think this whole debate about 'genuine Islam' and 'distorted Islam' that liberals like you and radical Islamists both are engaged in is utterly meaningless and has no solution whatsoever. The only way out is to try to live life according to one's conscience, rather than being dictated to by this or that interpretation or misinterpretation of what are believed to be holy texts."

To a great extent, this is the right solution. As for the response, "Solutions come out of debate and brainstorming....a solution, for moving forward towards peace and prosperity for all.", I really wonder that is it possible that these debates help in achieving the said objectives. I am being skeptical because I see that the conflicts are deliberate, and some people benefit from it, while majority of them enjoy the feeling of burning hatred because of their perversion.

The point could be: then why I am here, when I know, no solution will emerge? Then I think, I am here for keeping an eye on the thinking process of people across the spectrum and be wise enough to not run into the violent ones, unarmed. That is the personal objective, while as a Muslim, the objective is to do research on the people's participation in such debates and the responses they have. This is not the only forum where I take a dip to test the water. My observations support the statement mentioned above, that is "that the conflicts are deliberate, and some people benefit from it, while majority of them enjoy the feeling of burning hatred because of their perversion".

The whole thing has got nothing to do with Islam or Hinduism or Christianity or Atheism or any religion or any sectarian differences within the religion. Islam is the subject matter because of two reasons.  First one is that Muslims have a considerable presence and influence on the globe and second is that this website focuses on Muslims and Islam related issues.

People arriving here have special interest in Islam and Muslims; some arrive here for gaining knowledge, some for imparting knowledge and again some for pure fun; Fun of mocking at other's point of view. While there must be some others beside me who are here to read minds and find trends.

One more observation I would like to share which might be a dampener for pure fun lovers and a ray of hope for those who see bleak future the way the events around the world unfolds, is that common men and women have lot more things to do in their life than debate and these common men and women make the bulk of population while all the debaters and commentators are those rare germ cells who are fixated with thoughts on Muslims and Islam. As long as they are not coming out in real world and leading rallies, they pose no threat nor can they benefit others much. They are basically of no consequence. At best, they give people like me, some clue of their type and their percentage in population. Those who indulge with them are basically interacting with a specific kind which is not to be representative of the masses of Muslims or about what the masses think or as the case is, do not think. Their presence and occurrence is not more than the numbers and frequency of suicide bombers we come across or get to hear occasionally. They basically help balancing by their numbers the number of bombers who are also rarest of rare individuals. Rest of the masses are asses, belonging to every religion, where they live, in some way, together, in the world and then they die their natural death after sometime playing religion-religion and during which at times they quarrel and then they mix again. They do not find these debates interesting. They do not understand it; they in fact, in their wisdom find it futile and wastage of time.  It is only those who find such debates interesting live in a make belief world where there is a problem and then where that problem has got some solution.

I do not think that the Islam phobia is the real thing. If people start reading fashion magazine or cricket news or watch business channel, there is no Islam there and then there is no Islam phobia even.  Muslims would be beaten just as others who were previously beaten and in future some another brand would be beaten after Muslims are gone. But then one mustn’t cry when I die. Can your cry bring back life to the dead? But if Muslims are not gone even when I am gone, why should one cry? Am I that important? Or do you think yourself more important than you really are? And is it pessimism for pro-Muslim? I do not think so. It is pessimism of pro-Muslims. In real, Muslims will survive if they deserve and would it be justice in Islamic sense that they survive, if they do not deserve? They will survive because of the balance of the world with its features. They will survive because of the presence of common men and women, the asses masses, and not because of their intellectuals or suicide bombers, known to others as Muslims and claiming to be the same.

Dear Mainhihun Saheb,

You say: “You also do very well know that they ardently believe that Islamic reformists and liberals like yourself are DELIBERATELY misinterpreting Islam to bring it in line with liberal values.”

Whatever “they” may believe, Mainhihun Saheb, what is it that you believe that is more important. Solutions come out of debate and brainstorming. Rather than meaningless debate and point scoring, I prefer brainstorming among people who really are looking for a solution, for moving forward towards peace and prosperity for all. To a certain extent, exactly what extent is difficult to know but the fact is undeniable, that to some extent, West’s liberal values are based on or inspired by their interaction with the Muslim world and Islamic values. Human Rights, for instance, is an Islamic value, so are plant rights, prisoner rights and so on. Earth rights, etc. have come to us from Jainism. But I think it was Muslims who introduced even Hindu philosophical and scientific and other thoughts to the West. However, as Islam was decades after the demise of the Prophet captured by its inveterate enemies who had accepted Islam under duress of circumstances, distortions started setting in early on.

We have to use our rationality and imagination to see where Islam would have been had its growth not been impeded by these circumstances.

In any case I would be more interested in your views rather than what you imagine “we” or “they” think about one another.

And, yes, thanks for admiring my "courage". I really don't feel so very courageous, but many thanks. 

Your speech is a remedy and with the t ime. I fully agree with you.