Dought & clear, - Who Can See Angels in Their True Form?.

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Is it true that children can see the angels?
Praise be to Allah.
Allah created man from dust, He created the jinn from fire and He created the angels from light. It is proven by the definitive texts that it is not possible for humans to see the jinn unless they appear in a different form, such as in the form of humans and animals. The angels cannot be seen in their original form by most people unless they appear in human form.
In the answer to question no. 70364we have explained in detail that it is impossible for most people to see the angels in their original form, and that this was not granted to anyone of this ummah (Muslim nation) except the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him).
As for the angels appearing in human form, this is proven in the Quran and saheeh sunnah (authentic prophetic teachings). If an angel appears in human form, it is possible for everyone to see him and there is no difference between males and females, or old and young. But no one can be certain that a person he is seeing is an angel, because proof that they are angels is dependent on wahy (revelation) from Allah, and how can that happen after the death of the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him)?
The angels appeared in human form and came to Ibrahim and Loot (peace be upon them), but they did not know who they really were until the angels told them, so it is more likely that other people cannot have any knowledge of that.
Among the evidence that the angels can appear in human form and that they can be seen in this form is the following:
1-
Allah says (interpretation of the meaning):
“And mention in the Book, the Quran, O Muhammad (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) Maryam, when she withdrew in seclusion from her family to a place facing east.
She placed a screen (to screen herself) from them; then We sent to her Our Ruh [angel Jibreel], and he appeared before her in the form of a man in all respects.
She said: ‘Verily, I seek refuge with the Most Gracious (Allah) from you, if you do fear Allah.’
(The angel) said: ‘I am only a messenger from your Lord, (to announce) to you the gift of a righteous son.’” [19:16-19]
2-
Allah says (interpretation of the meaning):
“Has the story reached you, of the honoured guests [three angels; Jibreel along with another two] of Ibrahim?
When they came in to him and said: ‘Salam, (peace be upon you)!’ He answered: ‘Salam, (peace be upon you ),’ and said: ‘You are a people unknown to me.’
Then he turned to his household, and brought out a roasted calf [as the property of Ibrahim (Abraham) was mainly cows].
And placed it before them (saying): ‘Will you not eat?’
Then he conceived fear of them (when they ate not). They said: ‘Fear not.’ And they gave him glad tidings of a son having knowledge (about Allah and His religion of true Monotheism).” [51:24-28]
3-
Allah says (interpretation of the meaning):
“And when Our messengers came to Loot, he was grieved on account of them and felt himself straitened for them (lest the town people should approach them to commit sodomy with them). He said: ‘This is a distressful day.’” [11:77]
4-
It was narrated that ‘Umar ibn al-Khattab (may Allah be pleased with him) said: Whilst we were with the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) one day, a man came to us whose garment was exceedingly white and whose hair was exceedingly black, and there were no signs of travel on him, and none of us knew who he was. He came and sat before the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him), resting his knees against his and placing his hands on his thighs. He said: O Muhammad, tell me about Islam. … He [‘Umar] said: Then he went away. I stayed there for a while, then he (the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him)) said to me: “O ‘Umar, do you know who that questioner was?” I said: Allah and His Messenger know best. He said: “That was Jibreel, who came to you to teach you your religion.” [al-Bukhaari].
5-
The story of the trial of the leper, bald man and blind man among the Children of Israel, in which it says that Allah sent an angel in human form to test them. [al-Bukhaari and Muslim].
6.
It was narrated from Abu Hurayrah (may Allah be pleased with him) from the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) that “A man visited a brother of his in another town, and Allah sent an angel to wait for him on the road. When he came to him, he said: Where are you headed? He said: I am headed to a brother of mine in this town. He said: Have you done him any favour for which you hope to be recompensed? He said: No, but I love him for the sake of Allah. He said: I am a messenger from Allah to you, to tell you that Allah loves you as you love him for His sake.” [Muslim]
And there is other saheeh (authentic) evidence from which it is clear that the angels can be seen, but only in the form in which Allah commands them to appear; and then everyone that Allah decrees should see them will see them.
The one who claims that he sees the angels in their original form is a liar or is delusional. The Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) saw Jibreel in his true form, filling the horizon with six hundred wings. Who can claim that he saw him at that time? Thus it is clear that there is no one among this ummah who can see the angels in their true form except the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him). As for children, they are like other people – they cannot see them unless they appear in human form.
Shaykh al-Islam Ibn Taymiyah (may Allah have mercy on him) said:
Hence humans are unable to see an angel in his true form unless Allah helps them, as He helped our Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him). Allah says (interpretation of the meaning):
“And they say: ‘Why has not an angel been sent down to him?’ Had We sent down an angel, the matter would have been judged at once, and no respite would be granted to them.
And had We appointed him an angel, We indeed would have made him a man, and We would have certainly confused them in which they are already confused (i.e. the Message of Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him)).” [6:8-9]
More than one of the salaf (pious predecessors) said: They are not able to see an angel in his true form. If We sent an angel down to them, We would make him appear in human form, and in that case they would be confused as to whether he was an angel or a man. So what benefit would it be if We sent an angel to them? So We sent to them a man of their own kind, whom they could see and learn from, and this was perfect kindness and mercy to mankind. [Minhaaj al-Sunnah al-Nabawiyyah]
And Allah knows best.

- PUBLISHERNajimudeeN M

For children, - Islam and Neighbourhood

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Worship Allah and join none with Him (in worship); and do good to parents, kinsfolk, orphans, Al-Masakin (the poor), the neighbour who is near of kin, the neighbour who is a stranger, the companion by your side, the wayfarer (you meet), and those (slaves) whom your right hands possess. (Noble Qur'an, 4:36)
Sayyed Jawad Ameli, a great Mujtahid, was having his dinner when someone knocked at his door. A servant from his master, Ayatullah Sayyed Mehdi Bahrul Uloom, appeared and said: "Your master has sent for you to come immediately. He has just sat down for his dinner but refuses to eat until he sees you."
There was no time to lose. Sayyed Jawad Ameli left his dinner and rushed to Ayatullah Sayyed Mehdi Bahrul Uloom's residence. Just as he entered, the master looked disapprovingly at him and said: "Sayyed Jawad! You have no fear of Allah! Don't you feel ashamed in front of Allah?"
This came as a shock to him, as he could not remember doing anything to incur the wrath of his master. Sayyed Jawad Ameli said: "My master may guide me where I have failed."
Ayatullah Sayyed Mehdi Bahrul Uloom replied: "It is now a week that your neighbor and his family are without wheat and rice. He was trying to buy some dates from a shop on credit but the shopkeeper refused to grant him any more credit. He returned home empty-handed and the family is without a morsel of food."
Sayyed Jawad Ameli was taken by surprise. "By Allah", he said, "I have no knowledge about this."
That is why I am displeased all the more.
How can you be unaware of your own neighbor? Seven days of difficulties have passed and you tell me you do not know about it. Well, If you had known and ignored him despite your knowledge, then you would not even he a Muslim," Ayatullah Sayyed Mehdi Bahrul Uloom adjoined.
Then he instructed him to take all the dishes of food before him to his neighbor. "Sit with him to eat, so that he does not feel ashamed. And take this sum for his future ration. Place it under his pillow or carpet so that he is not humiliated, and inform me when this work is completed, for not until then shall I eat."
Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him) said, "There are Three categories of neighbours. First: one who has Three rights upon you. This is the one who is a Muslim neighbour and also a relative. Second: One who has two rights. A Muslim neighbour and third: The Kafir neighbour who has only the rights of a neighbour."

- PUBLISHERNajimudeeN M

Welcome to Islam, - A Jewish American Embraces Islam

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I saw her radiant face in a mosque that is located on a hill in a small American state, reciting a translation of the Noble Quran. I greeted her and she returned the greeting warmly and cheerfully; we got talking and became good friends in no time. One night, we were on the shore of a beautiful lake, where she related to me the story of her conversion to Islam. I want to share her experience with you, dear readers, so we can deduce some wisdom from it.
The sister, who was a new Muslim, related,
"I grew up in the Jewish American home of a dysfunctional and broken family; after my parents' divorce, my father married another woman. My stepmother tortured and mistreated me a lot; this drove me to run away from home when I was seventeen. I moved to another state where I met some young Arab men who were, as my homeless friends told me, 'generous'. All a girl needed to do was to give one of them a smile and she would find someone to buy her dinner and offer her a cozy place and a comfortable bed to spend the night.
“I followed in the footsteps of my homeless girlfriends, but at the end of each night I would run away; for I did not like such illicit relationships and I hated Arabs. Nonetheless, I was not happy with my life at all and I never felt safe or secure; I was haunted all the time by distress and a sense of loss.
“At this stage of my life I resorted to religion, to relish the sweetness and warmth of spirituality, hoping to find in it the motivation to keep me going in my harsh life; however, I found my religion, Judaism, unconvincing. I found it a religion that does not respect women or humanity. I realized that Judaism is a selfish religion that fosters backwardness; I did not find in it my objective, for I do not believe in superstition or myths, so I embraced Christianity.
"However, in Christianity I found even more contradictions and unbelievable things which Christians were expected to believe in without questioning. I frequently asked questions such as: how could the Lord kill His son? How could the Lord have a son in the first place? How can one believe in three gods and not even be able to see any of them?I was bewildered and perplexed at all these unanswerable questions, so I gave up Christianity, yet I always believed that this universe, definitely, has a Creator. I used to spend my nights thinking and pondering on this thought until morning.
"Onebleak and gloomy night when it was almost dawn, I was about to commit suicide due to my state of depression. I hit rock bottom and nothing in the world made sense to me anymore. It was raining heavily that night and thick clouds had gathered, enveloping my universe as if they were imprisoning me. Watching the trees around me, I felt as if the crowding trees were looking at me furiously and the drops on rain were playing a hideous and dull melody, as I peered out of the window of an abandoned house.
"For some reason I found myself praying to God, saying: ‘O my Lord, I know that You are out there… I know that You love me… I am a prisoner… I am one of your weak creatures; guide me to the right path. O my Lord, either guide me or let me die.’ I kept praying and crying bitterly that night until I fell asleep and in the morning, I woke up with a cheerful heart, but I did not know the reason behind this unfamiliar feeling. I went out on my daily pursuit of livelihood. Perhaps I would find a young man to pay for my breakfast, or wash his dishes and earn some money.
"Then, I met a young Arab man and we talked and talked for a very long time. After breakfast, he asked me to go with him to his home and live with him. I accepted his offer and went with him.
“While we were having lunch, drinking and laughing, a bearded young man named Sa’d – as I came to know later when my Arab friend called out his name in surprise – visited us. This bearded young man took my friend by the hand and drove him away. I stayed there shaking; there I was, face to face with a terrorist! However, he did not do anything scary but politely asked me to go home. I told him that I had no home; he looked at me sadly and I saw on his face how he pitied me, and said, ‘Alright, you can stay here for tonight’ – since it was bitterly cold outside – ‘but you should leave tomorrow. Take this money to live on until you find a job.’
"He headed towards the door, so I asked him to stop and said, ‘Thank you! Please stay; I will leave, but I want to ask you a favor: could you tell me why you did what you did with me and your friend?" He lowered his gaze while he spoke to me, saying, ‘It is Islam; it forbids what is unlawful and makes permissible what is lawful. It also forbids sitting in seclusion with a non-Mahram )marriageable( woman and drinking alcohol, and Muslims are enjoined to treat people kindly and adopt high morals.’
“I was perplexed and surprised at his answer; were these the Muslims who were being called terrorists? I thought they carried guns and killed everybody they met; for this was the image drawn by the American media of Muslims. I told him, ‘I would like to know more about Islam, can you tell me?’ He responded, ‘I will take you to a religious Muslim family and I know that they will teach you Islam in the best way.’
“The next dayat ten o'clock, he took me to this Muslim family who welcomed me warmly. I kept asking them about Islam and Dr. Sulaymaan, the head of the family, answered me until I was totally satisfied and convinced with everything he said about Islam. At that moment, I knew that I had found what I was looking for: a clear and straightforward religion that is compatible with common sense and I did not find any difficulty in believing what I heard about it; it was the truth.
“That day, I felt ecstatic and savored a sense of bliss when I announced I had embraced Islam, and wore the Hijaab immediately on the same day!
“Late that evening, Dr. Sulaymaan's wife took me to the best room in the house and told me, ‘This is your room and you are welcome to stay here as long as you wish.’ She saw me looking out of the window, smiling with tears running down my cheeks. She inquired about the reason behind my tears. I said, 'Yesterday, exactly at this time, I was standing next to a window, praying to Allaah The Almighty and imploring Him either to show me the right way or let me die. He guided me to the Right Path and now I am an honorable Muslim woman who knows her Lord, her Creator and knows the path that leads to Him; Islam is the path to Allaah.’ Dr. Sulaymaan's wife burst into tears and hugged me affectionately."

- PUBLISHERNajimudeeN M

Welcome to Islam, - The facts of life, confirmed by science

Materialist philosophy lies at the basis of the theory of evolution. Materialism rests on the supposition that everything that exists is matter. According to this philosophy, matter has existed since eternity, will continue to exist forever and there is nothing but matter. In order to provide support for their claim, materialists use logic called “reductionism”. This is the idea that things which are not observable, can also be explained by material causes.
To make matters clearer, let us take the example of the human mind. It is evident that the mind cannot be touched or seen. Moreover, it has no center in the human brain. This situation unavoidably leads us to the conclusion that the mind is a concept beyond matter. Therefore, the being which we refer to as “I,” who thinks, loves, gets nervous, worries, feels pleasure or pain, is not a material being in the same way as a sofa, a table or a stone.
Materialists, however, claim that mind is “reducible to matter.” According to the materialist claim, thinking, loving, worrying and all our mental activities are nothing but chemical reactions taking place between the atoms in the brain. Feelings of love and fear are merely chemical reactions in some cells in our brain. The famous materialist philosopher Karl Vogt stressed this logic with his famous words: “Just as the liver secretes gall, so do our brains, secrete thought.” )Encyclopedia Britannica(. However, gall is matter, whereas there is no evidence that thought is the same.
One of the most prominent features of this picture is “information” which is present in nature and can never be reduced to matter.
Matter cannot produce information
There is incredibly comprehensive information contained in the DNA of living things. Something as small as a hundred thousandth of a millimeter contains a sort of “data bank” that specifies all the physical details of the body of a living thing. Moreover, the body also contains a system that reads this information, interprets it and carries out “production” in line with it. In all living cells, the information in the DNA is “read” by various enzymes and proteins are produced according to this information. This system makes the production of millions of proteins possible every second, with the required type of protein for specific places needed in our bodies. In this way, dead eye cells are replaced by living ones and old blood cells by new ones.
At this point, let us consider the claim of Materialism: Is it possible that the information in DNA could be reduced to matter, as materialists suggest? Or, in other words, can it be accepted that DNA is merely a collection of matter, and the information it contains came about as a result of the random interactions of such pieces of matter?
All the scientific research, experiments and observations carried out in the 20thcentury CE show that the answer to this question is a definite “No.” The director of the German Federal Physics and Technology Institute, Professor Dr. Werner Gitt has this to say on the issue: “A coding system always entails a nonmaterial intellectual process. A physical matter cannot produce an information code. All experiences show that every piece of creative information represents some mental idea-giver who exercised his own free will, and who is endowed with an intelligent mind. There is no known law of nature, no known process and no known sequence of events which can cause information to originate by itself in matter.” )Werner Gitt. In the Beginning Was Information(.
Werner Gitt’s words summarize the conclusions of the “information theory” which has been developed in the last 50 years and is accepted as a part of thermodynamics. Information theory investigates the origin and nature of the information in the universe. The conclusion reached by information theoreticians as a result of long studies is that “Information is something different from matter. It can never be reduced to matter. The origin of information and physical matter must be investigated separately.”
For instance, let us think of the source of a book. A book consists of paper, ink and the information it contains. Paper and ink are material elements. Their source is matter: Paper is made of cellulose and ink of certain chemicals. However, the information in the book is non-material and cannot have a material source. The source of the information in each book is the mind of the person who wrote it.
Moreover, this mind determines how paper and ink will be used. A book initially forms in the mind of the writer. The writer builds a chain of logic in his mind and orders his sentences. As a second step, he puts them into a material form, which is to say that he translates the information in his mind into letters, using a pen, a typewriter or a computer. Later, these letters are printed in a publishing house and take the shape of a book made up of papers and ink.
We can therefore state this general conclusion: “If physical matter contains information, then that matter must have been designed by a mind that possessed the information in question. First, there is the mind. That mind translates the information it possesses into matter, which constitutes the act of design.”
The origin of information in Nature
When we apply this scientific definition of information to Nature, a very important result ensues. This is because Nature overflows with an immense body of information )for example in the case of DNA, and since this information cannot be reduced to matter, it therefore comes from a source beyond matter.( This fact is revealed as in the following verse in the Quran )which means(:“They said: ‘Exalted are You! We have no knowledge except what You have taught us. Indeed, it is You who is the Knowing, the Wise.’”]Quran 2: 32[
One of the foremost advocates of the theory of evolution, George C. Williams, admits this reality, which most materialists and evolutionists are reluctant to see. Williams has strongly defended Materialism for years, but in an article he wrote in 1995, he states the incorrectness of the materialist )reductionist( approach which holds everything is matter: “Evolutionary biologists have failed to realize that they work with two more or less incommensurable domains: that of information and that of matter. These two domains will never be brought together in any kind of the sense usually implied by the term “reductionism.” The gene is a package of information, not an object. In biology, when you are talking about things like genes and genotypes and gene pools, you are talking about information, not physical objective reality. This dearth of shared descriptors makes matter and information two separate domains of existence, which have to be discussed separately, in their own terms.” )George C. Williams. The Third Culture: Beyond the Scientific Revolution(.
Therefore, contrary to the supposition of materialists, the source of the information in nature cannot be matter itself. The source of information is not matter, but a superior Wisdom beyond matter. This Wisdom existed prior to matter. Matter was brought into existence, given form and organized by the Creator of the Heavens, the Earth and all that exists.