Signs of Allah in Our Tongues

Have you ever wondered about your tongue? It is one of the wonderful
creations of Allah. Allah Ta'ala gave each of us onetongue. But this
one tongue is able to taste thousands of different types of food and
drinks. If our taste buds on the tongue were to become inactive, we
would not know the difference between an orange or a stone.
Moreover, like finger print,everyone has a different tongue print.
Relative to its size, tongueis also the strongest muscle in the human
body. And it is the only muscle which is connected to only one side.
The tongue is so strong that it can create a pressure on the roof of
the mouth equivalent to the weight of two double decker busses!
The strongest muscle of our body, the tongue, has been created by
Allah for us to glorify Him. Trully, with the help of this tongue, we
are able to recite the Glorious Quran and talk about Allah's
Greatness. Let us not spoilthe tongue by backbiting, slandering and
lying.

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Signs of Allah in Solar System

The earth rotates on its axis at one thousand miles an hour; if it
turned at one hundred miles an hour, our days and nights would be ten
times as long as now, and the hot sun would then burn up our
vegetation during each long day, while in the long night any surviving
sprout would freeze.
Again, the sun, source of our life, has a surface temperature of
12,000 degrees Fahrenheit, and our earth is, just far enough away so
that this 'eternal fire" warms us just enough and not too much! If the
sun gave off only one-half its present radiation, we would freeze, and
if it gave half as much more, we would roast.
The slant of the earth, tilted at an angle of 23 degrees, gives us our
seasons; if it had not beenso tilted, vapours from the ocean would
move north and south, piling upfor us continents of ice. If our moon
was, say, only 50 thousand miles away instead of its actual distance,
our tides would be so enormous that twice a day all continents would
be submerged; even the mountains would soon be eroded away.
If the crust of the earth had been only ten feet thicker, there would
be nooxygen without which animal life must die. Had the ocean been a
few feetdeeper, carbon dioxide and oxygen would have been absorbed and
no vegetable life could exist. Or if our atmosphere had been thinner,
some of the meteors, now burned in space by the million everyday would
be striking all parts of the earth, startingfires everywhere.
Because of these, and hostof other examples, there is not one chance
in millions that life on our planet is an accident.

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Why does the Qur'an allow Muslim men to have four wives?

There are some situations in which it is advantageous to society to
have men marry multiple wives, and for this reason polygyny is
practiced by many religions and cultures. As we have already seen in
answer to question 2, polygyny is permitted in the Bible too. Here we
willsee that the Qur'an permits only a restricted and limited form of
that practice. Only 2% of Muslim marriages are of this nature.
Notice that the Qur'an permits but does not command a man to have four
wives. Furthermore, the Qur'an stipulates that a man is responsible
for the maintenance of his wife or wives. If a man has more than one
wife, he has to provide separate living accommodation for each of his
wives. Multiple marriages are a heavy responsibility on the male. It
is not a pleasure trip as some people may assume. Some even imagine
all kinds of sexual exploits involving a man and his wives altogether.
However, suchactivity is not permissible in Islam. A man must divide
his time equally among his wives. He may,for example, spend one night
with each wife on a rotating schedule. If a man cannot maintain
justice in the treatment ofhis wives, the Qur'an stipulates that he is
to have no more than one wife.
Polygyny provides a solution to some of life's problems. When there is
ashortage of men, for example after a devastating war, many women will
be unable to find husbands. Most women in that situation, given the
option, would rather be a co-wife than no wife. If one maintains a
strict monogamy in sucha situation, moral depravity is bound to
result.
It may be useful at this point to see what some non- Muslim writers
are now saying on this much misunderstood subject. John Esposito says:
Although it is found in many religious and cultural traditions,
polygamy (or more precisely, polygyny) is most often identified
withIslam in the minds of Westerners. In fact, the Qur'an and Islamic
Law sought to control and regulate the number of spouses rather than
give free license. (John Esposito, Islam: The Straight Path, Oxford
University, 1988, p.97).
Esposito then goes on to explain that in a society which allowed men
an unlimited number of wives, Islam limited the number of wives to
four. Then he continued to say:
The Qur'an permits a man to marry up to four wives,provided he can
support and treat them all equally.Muslims regard this Qur'anic
command as strengthening the status of women and the family for it
sought to ensure thewelfare of single women and widows in a society
whose male population was diminished by warfare, and to curb
unrestricted polygamy (John Esposito: Islam the Straight Path, p.97).
Karen Armstrong explains much the same in her book entitled Muhammad:
A Western Attempt to Understand Islam. She says:
We have to see the ruling about polygamy in context. In
seventh-century Arabia, when a man could have as many wives as he
chose, to prescribe only four was a limitation, not a license tonew
oppression (Karen Armstrong, Muhammad: AWestern Attempt to Understand
Islam, Victor Gollancz Ltd., 1991, p.191).
It is unfortunate that the Western media often gives the wrong
impression of what Islam is all about. Karen Armstrong writes:
Popular films like Harem give an absurd and inflated picture of the
sexual life of the Muslim sheikh which reveals more about Western
fantasy than it does aboutthe reality (p.190).
Some people incorrectly assume that because of this ruling most Muslim
men would have four wives. However, as Huston Smith points
out,"multiple wives are seldom found in Islam today" (The World's
Religions, p. 252). Ira Zep p, Jr. says that "less than 2% of Muslim
marriages are polygamous" (A Muslim Primer, p.180).
About this being a solution for the problem of surplus women, Ira
Zepp, Jr. comments on page 181 of his book:
The Roman Catholic Church is facing the same problem today in parts of
Africa. Social and economic reasons are forcing the Church to
reconsider polygamy as a Christian option. (See Polygamy
Recon,isidered by Eugene Hillman, New York: Orbis Press, 1973).

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Look at a man who will enter paradise

One day the Prophet peace be upon him looked at a man and said:
Whoever likes to look at aman who will enter Paradise, let him look at
this man. Abdullah Ibn Abbas, who was present and heard this comment,
followed the man who was favoured with this promise. He asked his
permission to be his guestwhich the man accepted. After observing him
for three consecutive nights, without seeing anything extraordinary
about him, Abdullah Ibn Abbas said: I don't see anything about you
which qualifies you toenter Paradise more than the rest of us. Can you
remember one special thing you do of which I may not be aware. After
thinking for sometime theman said: Nothing is outstanding in my life
except one thing, may be, that I go to bed with a pure and sound heart
towards my friends (meaning to forgive others of their bad qualities
and to think good of everybody). Then Ibn Abbas exclaimed: This is
exactly what qualifies you to enter paradise. Source: from the
book"Luminaries of Islam" by Arafat K.El-Ashi
It is not easy to forgive others of their faults but let us try hard
to bring this quality in ourselves.

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