Fathwa, - {Conflictsamong family members}, - Trying to make peace between brothers

Question There are some family problems between my husband and his brother. This family is a very lovely and religious family, but things happened to be hard and made these two brothers get in a big fight. My concern is that always solved small problems between them but this last one two months ago was the biggest. My brother in-law cursed, threatened, and tried to attack our house with a hammer. Since then the family was splitting. My turn came and I was trying to make things better but in a way to keep my husband calm because he went through allot. My question is: do I get blamed in the religion if I do things behind by husband just to make them go back to each other with no problems? For example, if I spoke with him without telling my husband or if I lied to my husband telling him good things his brother did or any thing to make things better, please I really need an answer for this thing. Answer Praise be to Allah, the Lord of the Worlds; and may His blessings and peace be upon our Prophet Muhammad and upon all his Family and Companions. Making conciliation between two quarreling parties is among the great good deeds. Allah Says )interpretation of meaning( in this concern: }"There is no good in most of their secret talks save )in( him who orders Sadaqah )charity in Allah's Cause(, or Ma'raf )Islamic Monotheism and all the good and righteous deeds which Allah has ordained(, or conciliation between mankind; and he who does this, seeking the good Pleasure of Allah, We shall give him a great reward."{]4:114[. Your efforts and aspiration to settle the dispute between the two brothers is highly encouraged and you will be rewarded for that. Lying to make peace between two parties is permissible. Therefore, there is no harm to lie to your husband for that purpose provided this does not cause any harm or lead to greater harms. You may seek help of good people or other respected family members who can settle the matters. Allah knows best.

Discover Islam, - The evolutionist’s myth ofhomology

Structural similarities between different species are called “homology” in biology. Evolutionists try to present those similarities as evidence for evolution.
Darwin thought that creatures with similar )homologue( organs had an evolutionary relation with each other and that these organs must have been inherited from a common ancestor. According to his assumption, both pigeons and eagles had wings; therefore, pigeons, eagles and indeed all other birds with wings were supposed to have evolved from a common ancestor.
Homology is a deceptive argument advanced on the basis of no other evidence than an apparent physical resemblance. This argument has never once been verified by a single concrete discovery in all the years since Darwin’s day. In no layer of the earth has anyone come up with a fossil of the imaginary common ancestor of the creatures with homologue structures. Furthermore, the following issues make it clear that homology provides no evidence that evolution has occurred.
1. One finds homologue organs in creatures of completely different species among which evolutionists have not been able to establish any sort of an evolutionary relationship;
2. The genetic codes of some creatures that have homologue organs are utterly different from one another.
3. The embryological development of homologue organs in different creatures is completely different.
Let us now examine each of these points one by one.
Similar Organs in Entirely Different Living Species
There are a number of homologue organs shared by different species among which evolutionists cannot establish any kind of evolutionary relationship. Wings are an example. In addition to birds, we find wings on bats )which are mammals(, on insects and even on some dinosaurs, which are extinct reptiles. Not even evolutionists posit an evolutionary relationship or kinship among those four different classes of animal.
Another striking example is the amazing resemblance and structural similarity observed in the eyes of different creatures. For example, octopus and man are two extremely different species between which no evolutionary relationship is likely even to be proposed, yet the eyes of both are very much alike in terms of their structure and function. Not even evolutionists claim that man and octopus had a common ancestor to account for their similar eyes. These and numerous other examples confirm that the evolutionist claim that “homologue organs prove that living species have evolved from a common ancestor” has no scientific basis.
In fact, homologue organs should be a great embarrassment for evolutionists. The famous evolutionist Frank Salisbury’s confession revealed in his statements on how extremely different species came to have very similar eyes underscores the impasse of homology: “Even something as complex as the eye has appeared several times; for example in the squid, the vertebrates and the arthropods. It’s bad enough accounting for the origin of such things once, but the thought of producing them several times according to the modern synthetic theory makes my head swim.”
The Genetic and Embryological Impasse of Homology
In order for the evolutionist claim concerning “homology” to be taken seriously, similar )homologue( organs in different creatures should also be coded with similar )homologue( DNA codes. However, they are not. In most cases the genetic coding is quite different. Furthermore, similar genetic codes in the DNAs of different creatures are often associated with completely different organs.
Michael Denton, an Australian professor of biochemistry, describes in his book Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, The Genetic Impasse of the Evolutionist Interpretation of Homology: “Homologous structures are often specified by non-homologous genetic systems and the concept of homology can seldom be extended back into embryology.”
Another point is that in order for the homology claim to be considered valid, the embryological development )developmental stages in the egg or mother’s womb( of the species with homologous organs should parallel one another. In fact, the embryological development of such organs is completely different in every living species.
To conclude, we can say that genetic and embryological research has proven that the concept of homology, defined by Darwin as “evidence of the evolution of living things from a common ancestor”, can by no means be regarded as any evidence at all. In this respect, science can be said to have proven the Darwinist thesis false time and time again.

Discover 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.

Discover Islam, - The myth of 'self organization of matter'

Quite aware that the Second Law of Thermodynamics renders evolution impossible, some evolutionist scientists have made speculative attempts to close the gap between the two, so as to render evolution possible. As usual, even those endeavors show that the theory of evolution faces an inescapable impasse.
One person distinguished by his efforts to marry thermodynamics and evolution is the Belgian scientist Ilya Prigogine. Starting out from the 'Chaos Theory', Prigogine proposed a number of hypotheses in which ordered forms come into existence from chaos )disorder(. He argued that some open systems can portray a decrease in entropy due to an influx of outer energy and the resultant outcome “ordering”, is a proof that “matter can organize itself.” Since then, the concept of the “self-organization of matter” has been quite popular among evolutionists and materialists. They act like they have found a materialistic origin for the complexity of life and a materialistic solution for the problem of life’s origin.
But a closer look reveals that this argument is totally abstract and in fact just wishful thinking. Moreover, it includes a very naïve deception. The deception is the deliberate confusion of two distinct concepts, “self organization” and “self ordering.”
We can explain it by an example. Imagine a sea shore with different types of stones mixed with each other -- big stones, smaller stones and very tiny ones. When a strong wave hits the shore, there may appear an “ordering” among the stones. The water will raise the ones with equal weights in equal amounts. When the wave goes back, the stones may possibly be ordered from the smallest to the biggest towards the sea.
This is a “self ordering” process: the seashore is an open system and an influx of energy )the wave( may cause an “ordering”. But note that the same process can not make a castle of sand in the seashore. If we see a castle made of sand, we are sure that someone has made it. The difference between the castle and the “ordered” stones is that the former includes a very unique complexity, while the latter includes only repetitive order. It is like a typewriter typing “aaaaaaaaaaaaaaa” for hundreds of times – because an object )an influx of energy( fell onto the letter “a” on the keyboard. Of course, such a repetitive order of “a” s does not include any information and thus any complexity. You need a conscious mind to have a complex sequence of letters that includes information.
The same thing applies when wind enters a room full of dust. Before this influx, the dust may be scattered around. When the wind comes in, the dust may be collected in a corner of the room. This is “self ordering”. But the dust never “self organizes” itself and creates a picture of a man on the floor of the room.
These examples are quite similar to the ‘self organization' scenarios of evolutionists. They argue that matter has a tendency for self organization, then give examples of self ordering and then try to confuse both concepts. Prigogine himself gave examples of self ordering molecules during influx of energy. The American scientists Thaxton, Bradley and Olsen, in their book titledThe Mystery of Life’s Origin, explain this fact as follows:
“…In each case random movements of molecules in a fluid are spontaneously replaced by a highly ordered behavior." Prigogine, Eigen and others have suggested that a similar sort of self-organization may be intrinsic in organic chemistry and can potentially account for the highly complex macromolecules essential for living systems, but such analogies have scant relevance to the origin-of-life question. A major reason is that they fail to distinguish between order and complexity.
"… Regularity or order cannot serve to store the large amount of information required by living systems. A highly irregular, but specified structure is required rather than an ordered structure. This is a serious flaw in the analogy offered. There is no apparent connection between the kind of spontaneous ordering that occurs from energy flow through such systems and the work required to build a periodic information-intensive macromolecule like DNA protein.”
In fact, Prigogine himself had to accept that his arguments do no count for the origin of life. He said:
“The problem of biological order involves the transition from the molecular activity to the supermolecular order of the cell. This problem is far from being solved.”
Then, why do evolutionists still try to believe in unscientific scenarios like “self organization of matter”? Why do they insist on rejecting the manifest intelligence in living systems? The answer is that they have a dogmatic faith in materialism and they believe that matter has some mysterious power to create life. A professor of chemistry fromNew YorkUniversityand DNA expert, Robert Shapiro explains this belief of evolutionists and the materialist dogma lying at its base as follows:
“Another evolutionary principle is therefore needed to take us across the gap from mixtures of simple natural chemicals to the first effective replicator. This principle has not yet been described in detail or demonstrated, but it is anticipated, and given names such as chemical evolution and self-organization of matter. The existence of the principle is taken for granted in the philosophy of dialectical materialism, as applied to the origin of life by Alexander Oparin.”
This situation makes it clear that evolution is a dogma that is against empirical science and the origin of living beings can only be explained by the intervention of a supernatural power. That supernatural power is Allaah )God(, who created the entire universe from nothing. Science has proven that evolution is still impossible as far as thermodynamics is concerned and the existence of life has no explanation but Creation.