Discover Islam, - The Oneness of Divinity

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Is there any convincing explanation for the secret of existence? The theory currently in vogue says that all existence is accidental and haphazard. In my opinion, only two ideologies remain in the realm of the probable. We can attribute life and universe to chance, and therefore, existence is meaningless. Alternatively, there is meaning of such magnitude to life, that, largely, it escapes us.
When we observe the orderly movements of the stars and planets, the regularity of the seasons, the uniformity and control of the law of nature over matter, energy and life, we realize that everything in the universe is knit into a single harmonious system.
Any one who looks at this great phenomenon and comes to the conclusion that it evolved on its own or by accident, must question his reasoning. Even an old watch, which has a simple mechanism of pulleys implies that there must be a watchmaker.
Albert Einstein, the most famous scientist of modern times, tells us: "Everyone who is seriously involved in the pursuit of Science becomes convinced that a Spirit is manifest in the Law of the Universe, without concluding that there must be Divine intent behind it all. Speaking for myself, I can only say that the grandeur of the Cosmos serves to confirm my belief in the certainty of the Creator." In the most quotable quote, he said about the emergence of the universe by chance: "God does not play dice."
In fact, throughout history, humankind as a whole has never denied the existence of a Creator. However, cultures have misunderstood His Nature and associated a mass of mythology with Him.
There is a Force in action to keep everything in order. In nature, there is a Creator who has created the most charming scenery. Believers recognize this Creator and call Him Allaah or God. He is not a man, because no man can create another man. He is not an animal, or a plant. He is not an idol or a statue because these things cannot create themselves or anything else. Neither is He the Sun or the Moon or a machine or a star, but the Maker and Keeper of all. The Maker of anything is greater than the thing He has created. The more complex a thing is, the more complex it’s Creator.
The Holy Quran says )what means(:“Ask of them: 'Who is the Sustainer of the heavens and the earth?' If they hesitate, say: 'Allaah'. Then ask: 'Then why do you take for protectors, instead of Him, other deities who have no power to benefit or avert harm from themselves?' Say: 'Are the blind equal to those who see?' Or do they assign to Allaah partners who have created anything as He has created, so that the creation seemed to them similar? Say: 'Allaah is the Creator of all things. He is the One, the Almighty".]Quran 13: 16[
What is the true nature of the Creator? He certainly cannot be like the created things, for then He would be limited and corruptible like them. Only a Being possessing Absolute Knowledge, Power and Authority and the ability to keep Himself eternally alive, can give life and sustain life and be the Creator of the Universe and its creatures.
The question that now arises is: "Could there be more than one Absolute Creator?" If, for instance, there were two creators and they disagreed over the creation of something, then, either one would have to overcome the other, in which case the defeated one would not have been absolutely powerful. Or they would neutralize each other, in which case both would have been limited in power. Even if we assume they both agreed on everything, still they could not both be absolutely powerful, because the action of one would then depend on the condition that the other does not interfere.
Once again, the Quran tells us )what means(:"He to Whom the Dominion over the heavens and the earth belongs, has begotten no son and has no partner in his kingdom, for it is He who creates everything and determines its nature in accordance with His own design. And yet some choose to worship, instead of Him, imaginary deities that cannot create anything but are themselves created, which can neither avert harm nor help even themselves, and which have no power over life or death nor power to resurrect.”]Quran 25: 2-3[
The Oneness of Allaah is the foundation of belief. Islam rests upon Tawheed: "Laa ilaaha illallaah" -- there is None worthy of worship except Allaah, none worthy of praise, there is no god except Him, no one. Throughout the Quran, the refrain runs on and on: laa ilaaha illaa Allaah, laa ilaaha illaa huwa, Allaahu laa ilaaha illa huwa, Allaahu ahad…which means that Allaah is One, the only One.
Islam is the religion in which the first deadly sin is fabricating partners unto God. It is the only sin that will not be forgiven. The Quran reiterates, not once but twice in the same chapter )what means(:“Allaah forgives not that partners should be set up with Him; but He forgives anything else to whom he pleases; to set up partners with Allaah is to devise a sin most heinous indeed."]Quran 4: 48, 116[
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Discover Islam, - The fossil record refutes evolution

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Contrary to evolutionists' expectations, fossil records provide proof of Creation, not evolution of species
According to the theory of evolution, every living species has sprung from a predecessor. A previously-existing species turned into 'something else' with time and all species have come into being in this way. According the theory, this transformation proceeds gradually over millions of years. If this was the case, then numerous intermediary species should have existed and lived within this long transformation period.
For instance, some half-fish/half-reptiles should have lived in the past, which had acquired some reptilian traits in addition to the fish traits they already had. Or there should have existed some reptile-birds, which acquired some bird traits in addition to the reptilian traits they are believed to have had in the past, as “transitional forms.”
If such animals had really existed, there should be millions and even billions of them in number and variety. More importantly, the remains of these strange creatures should be present in fossil records. The number of these transitional forms should have been even greater than the present animal species and their remains should be found all over the world. InThe Origin of Species,Darwinexplained:
"If my theory be true, numberless intermediate varieties, linking most closely all of the species of the same group together must assuredly have existed.. Consequently evidence of their former existence could be found only amongst fossil remains."
Even Darwin himself was aware of the absence of such transitional forms. It was his hope that they would be found in the future. Despite his hopefulness, he realised that the biggest stumbling-block in his theory was the missing transitional forms. Therefore in his bookThe Origin of Specieshe wrote the following in the chapter “Difficulties of the Theory”:
" …Why, if species have descended from other species by fine gradations, do we everywhere see innumerable transitional forms? Why is not all nature in confusion, instead of the species being, as we see them, well defined?… But, as by this theory innumerable transitional form must have existed, why do we not find them embedded in countless numbers in the crust to the earth?… But in the intermediate region, having intermediate conditions of life, why do we not now find closely-linking intermediate varieties? This difficulty for a long time quite confounded me.”
The single explanationDarwincould come up with to counter this objection was the argument that the fossil record uncovered so far was inadequate. He asserted that when the fossil record had been studied in detail, the missing links would be found.
Believing inDarwin’s prophecy, evolutionists have been searching for fossils and digging for missing links since the middle of the 19thcentury CE, all over the world. Despite their best efforts, no transitional forms have yet been uncovered. All the fossils unearthed in excavations showed that contrary to the beliefs of evolutionists, life appeared on earth all of a sudden and fully-formed. In their enthusiastic efforts to prove their theory, evolutionists have instead unwittingly caused it to collapse.
A famous British paleontologist, Derek V. Ager, admits this fact even though he is an evolutionist:
"The point emerges that if we examine the fossil record in detail, whether at the level of orders or of species, we find – over and over again – not gradual evolution, but the sudden explosion of one group at the expense of another."
Another evolutionist paleontologist Mark Czarnecki comments as follows:
"A major problem in providing the theory has been the fossil record; the imprints of vanished species preserved in the Earth’s geological formations. This record has never revealed traces ofDarwin’s hypothetical intermediate variants – instead species appear and disappear abruptly, and this anomaly has fueled the creationist argument that each species was created by God."
They have also had to deal with the futility of waiting for “missing” transitional forms to appear in the future, as explained by a professor of paleontology fromGlasgowUniversity, T. Neville George:
"There is no need to apologise any longer for the poverty of the fossil record. In some ways, it has become almost unmanageably rich and discovery is outpacing integration…The fossil record nevertheless continues to be composed mainly of gaps. "
Life emerged on earth suddenly and in complex forms
When terrestrial strata and fossil records are examined, it is seen that all living organisms appeared simultaneously. The oldest stratum of the earth in which fossils of living creatures have been found is that of the Cambrian, which has an estimated age of 500-550 million years.
Living creatures found in the strata belonging to the Cambrian period emerged all of a sudden in the fossil record -- there are no pre-existing ancestors. The fossils found in the Cambrian rocks belonged to snails, trilobites, sponges, earthworms, jellyfish, sea hedgehogs and other complex invertebrates. This wide mosaic of living organisms made up of such a great number of complex creatures emerged so suddenly, that this miraculous event is referred to as the “Cambrian Explosion” in geological literature.
Most of the life forms found in these strata have complex systems like eyes, gills, circulatory system and advanced physiological structures no different from their modern counterparts. For instance, the double-lensed, combined eye structure of trilobites is a wonder of design. David Raup, a professor of geology at Harvard, Rochester andChicagoUniversities says: “The trilobites used an optimal design which would require a well trained and imaginative optical engineer to develop today”.
These complex invertebrates emerged suddenly and completely without having any link or any transitional form between them and the unicellular organisms, which were the only life forms on earth prior to them.
Richard Monastersky, the editor ofEarth Sciences, one of the popular publications of evolutionist literature, states the following about the “Cambrian Explosion” which came as a total surprise to evolutionists:
"A half-billion years ago, the remarkably complex forms of animals we see today suddenly appeared. This moment, right at the start of Earth’s Cambrian Period, some 550 million years ago, marks the evolutionary explosion that filled the seas with the world’s first complex creatures. The large animal phyla of today were present already in the early Cambrian and they were as distinct from each other as they are today."
How did the earth come to overflow with such a great number of animal species all of a sudden? How could these distinct types of species with no common ancestors emerge? These are questions that remain unanswered by evolutionists. TheOxfordzoologist Richard Dawkins, one of the foremost advocates of evolutionist thought in the world, comments on this reality that invalidates the very roots of all the arguments he has been defending:
"For example the Cambrian strata of rocks, vintage about 600 million years, are the oldest ones in which we find most of the major invertebrate groups. And we find many of them already in an advanced state of evolution, the very first time they appear. It is as though they were just planted there, without any evolutionary history. Needless to say, this appearance of sudden planting has delighted creationists."
As Dawkins is forced to acknowledge, the Cambrian Explosion is strong evidence for creation, because creation is the only way to explain the fully-formed emergence of life on earth. Douglas Futuyma, a prominent evolutionist biologist admits this fact and states: “Organisms either appeared on the earth fully developed or they did not. If they did not, they must have developed from pre-existing species by some process of modification. If they did appear in a fully developed state, they must indeed have been created by some omnipotent intelligence.”
Darwin himself recognized the possibility of this when he wrote: “If numerous species, belonging to the same genera of families, have really started into life all at once, the fact would be fatal to the theory of descent with slow modification.”
The Cambrian Period is nothing more or less thanDarwin’s “fatal stroke”. This is why the Swiss evolutionist and paleoanthropologist Stefan Bengston confesses to the lack of transitional links while he describes the Cambrian Period and says: “Baffling )and embarrassing( to Darwin, this event still dazzles us.''
As may be seen, the fossil record indicates that living things did not evolve from primitive to advanced forms, but instead emerged all of a sudden and in a perfect state. In short, living beings did not come into existence by evolution, they were created.
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Dought & clear, - (Knowledge ), - What is themeaning of “the text of ‘aqeedah”?

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What does “the text of the ‘aqeedah (matn al-‘aqeedah)” mean?.
Praise be to Allaah.
Al-matn (text) in Arabic means the back. In Islamic terminology it refers to the contents of a book, such as the text ofSaheeh al-Bukhaarior the text ofZaad al-Mustaqni’.
The scholars usually use this word to refer to brief books that are in circulation among the scholars and seekers of knowledge in a particular field of knowledge. For example, in the case of ‘aqeedah (tenets of faith), they may sayMatn al-Waasitiyyah, referring to the brief book on ‘aqeedah by Shaykh al-Islam Ibn Taymiyah, which is calledal-‘Aqeedah al-Waasitiyyah. Similarly,Matn al-Tahhaawiyyahrefers to a brief book on ‘aqeedah by Imam al-Tahhaawi.
Usually what is meant by the word matn (text) is to distinguish the book from its commentary. For example they may sayMatn al-Tahhaawiyyahto distinguish it fromSharh al-Tahhaawiyyah(the commentary onal-Tahhaawiyyah), which is another book in which Ibn Abi’l-‘Izz al-Hanafi commented on the original short book,al-‘Aqeedah al-Tahhaawiyyah.
Mutoon (pl. of matn) or texts are usually short but contain many meanings and important principles of knowledge which are written about in brief terms to make it easy to memorize them and focus on issues of knowledge. Imam al-Bukhaari (may Allaah have mercy on him) said: al-Khaleel ibn Ahmad said: Words may be made brief in order to memorize them and made long in order to understand.Khalq Af’aal al-‘Ibaad, no. 244.
And Allaah knows best.

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Dought & clear, - (Knowledge ), - Hadeeth on Encouragement to Read

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How sound is the following hadeeth: "A man reading is handsome in the sight of God; so learn to read and when you have learnt, teach".
Praise be to Allah.
Perhaps the hadeeth referred to in the question is that which was narrated by ‘Uthman ibn ‘Affan (may Allah be pleased with him), and says that the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) said: “The best of you is the one who learns the Quran and teaches it.” Narrated by al-Bukhari (5027).
There is a great deal of encouragement to learn to read the Quran, both in the Quran and the Sunnah. There is also encouragement to learn how to read. The Holy Quran is the only book that the Muslims read at the beginning of Islam, so learning to read and write started with learning the Holy Quran. Indeed the command to learn to read came with the first word of the Revelation that came to the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him), when Allah said (interpretation of the meaning):
“Read! In the Name of your Lord Who has created (all that exists).
He has created man from a clot (a piece of thick coagulated blood).
Read! And your Lord is the Most Generous.
Who has taught (the writing) by the pen.
He has taught man that which he knew not.”
[al-‘Alaq 96:1-5]
Knowledge spread and ignorance decreased as the result of learning to read and write the Quran and understand its meanings.
But if what is meant is another hadeeth in which it says that Allah loves those who learn to read in general, then we could not find this wording in any of the books of Sunnah.
And Allah knows best.

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