A pagan state in the Holy Land - JERUSALEM IN THE QUR’AN

A pagan state in the Holy Land

The Jewish State of Israel is, in fact, a pagan state that displays all the mores and morals of paganism. Any Jew who is convinced that the events of the return of the Jews to the Holy Land and the ‘restoration’ of the State of Israel represent progress towards the return of the golden age and the validation of Judaism as Truth must shudder at the following recent news articles in the Jerusalem Post which confirm the pagan way of life which now thrives in the Holy Land:

“According to police statistics, there are more than 200 brothels, 200 sex clubs, and an unknown number of offices providing call girls throughout the country. Yael Dayan, chair of the Knesset Committee on the Status of Women, estimates that there are about one million visits each month to prostitutes, both of the storefront or streetwalker variety and those who work in the higher-class escort services. Some 50 to 60 ‘health clubs’ operate in the few blocks around Tel Aviv’s old Central Bus Station alone, with other concentrations in Haifa, Jerusalem, Netanya, Beersheba, Ashkelon, Ashdod, and Eilat. The back pages of local papers in many cities are filled with ads for sex services, as well as discreet ‘help wanted’ ads trying to recruit women to the trade.”

 (Jerusalem Post, August 28, 2000)

“In recent months, the media have been filled with revelations about the extent of white slavery in Israel. Women are being sold as chattels from one pimp to another. Approximately 25,000 sexual transactions for money take place every day in Israel. Coupled with the conviction of (Defence Minister) Yitzhak Mordechai for aggravated sexual assault and his subsequent judicial pardon, those revelations have provoked a great deal of discussion about the value of a woman's body in Israeli society. Though Israeli society may have lagged at the start of the revolution, today the sexual practices of Israelis are, with the exception of the religious, virtually indistinguishable from citizens of other Western countries. The absence of consent makes the actions of Mordechai and those who buy and sell women on auction blocks, both morally and legally far more reprehensible than the everyday casual sexual encounter. But their actions reflect commonplace ways of viewing others.”

(Jerusalem Post, May 10, 2001)

Another report from an Israeli who occupies a very high position in that society is even more revealing of the nature and extent of oppression in the Jewish State:

“ …. in public remarks that shocked Israelis, a former head of the Israeli domestic security service blamed government policies for triggering the Palestinian revolt.

  “Ami Ayalon, retired head of the Shin Bet security service, said Israel is guilty of ‘apartheid’ policies that go against the spirit of Judaism. He suggested that the Palestinians were following a logic in choosing violence, and spoke of the profound ‘humiliation’ that Israel inflicts on Palestinian workers and others who seek to enter Israel. Such comments are commonly heard from Palestinians and outsiders but rarely from an Israeli who has held senior-level positions in the security establishment.”

 (Jerusalem Post, Tuesday December 4, 2000)

Indeed the President of Israel himself has unwittingly confirmed the oppression visited upon a hapless Palestinian people who resist the Jewish State with the Intifada:

“If they have any sense of logic, the Palestinians will open their eyes and realize where this evil path has taken them: hundreds of dead and thousands of injured even though we have exercised restraint, poverty and deprivation, heavy unemployment, irreversible damage to the economy, a collapsing administrative network and in addition to all that they have not advanced politically.”

(Israeli President Katsav, Jerusalem Post Feb 16, 2001)

The President betrayed his contempt for Arabs in the typical way that modern godless modernity has cultivated:

“They're our neighbors here, but it seems as if at a distance of a few hundred meters away, there are people who don't belong to our continent, to our world, but actually belong to a different galaxy.”

(President Moshe Katsav, Jerusalem Post, May 11, 2001)

Dan Jacobson, a professor at Tel Aviv University, had this to say about Israeli justice: 

“For 52 years the Arab minority has been shamefully discriminated against. Consistent land expropriation is but one of the harsher expressions of this discrimination. Denial of jobs in the civil service, major government companies, and publicly owned companies; the meager resources allocated to education and health services in the Arab sector; the embarrassingly disproportionate share of state budgets going to Arab municipalities, are additional expressions of the Israeli Arab citizens’ second-class status. These facts have been repeatedly recognized by successive governments, including those of the right wing, but very little have been done in the course of five decades to resolve the problem.” 

(Jerusalem Post, April 3, 2001)

The above confirms that we are now witnessing the fulfillment of the Qur’anic warning that hell will come before their very eyes:

“And We shall present Hell that day for Kuffar to see, all spread out. (They will be such Kuffar) whose eyes had been under a veil from (recognizing accepting and embracing) My Guidance, and who had been unable even to hear.”

(Qur’an, al-Kahf, 18:100-101)

Let us hasten to recognize that the New World Order that has emerged in consequence of the dominance of modern secular western civilization is one in which godlessness, racial, economic and religious oppression, immorality and sexual slavery have embraced mankind around the world today, including the Muslim world. But the Holy Land is a special land. And the Qur’an is emphatic in its declaration that only those who possess faith (in the God of Abraham), and are righteous in conduct, will be allowed to inherit that Holy Land (see Qur’an, al-Anbiyah, 21:105). Neither modern day Israel, nor the secular, nationalist Palestine Liberation Organization, appears even remotely capable of fulfilling these conditions. The Qur’anic conception of the destiny of Jerusalem in so far as control over the Holy Land is concerned is therefore one in which neither Yassir Arafat’s secular Palestine Liberation Organization, nor the secular State of Israel, will survive. Birds of a feather will perish together!

The above arguments clearly demonstrate the invalidity of Israel’s political claim to legitimacy in so far as inheritance of the Holy Land is concerned. This should not be something too difficult for a believing Jew or Christian to recognize and to accept.

 

Source: Jerusalem in the Qur'an by Imran N. Hosein

to be continued....

How To Master Your Nafs

The Nafs And The Mind

The human being has 4 enemies, according to the Islamic tradition: your ‘nafs’ (lower self), your desires (hawa), shaytan (satan), and the ‘dunya’ (this temporary material world). In this article, I’m going to define the ‘nafs’ as it has traditionally been defined, in the Quran and Sunnah. Then I’m going to share with you how this relates to your mind and emotions. Then, I’ll give you some techniques you can use to literally ‘master’ your nafs, or at the very least, prove to you that you can.

Much has been written about the nafs by Muslim scholars throughout the ages, and much has been discovered more recently in Western psychology, and by leaders of the ‘human potential’ movement. This series of articles intends to bridge that gap, and set you up with a new understanding that will literally empower you to ‘master your nafs’. Indeed, it’s no coincidence that the Arabic term for ‘psychology’ is ‘ilm an-Nafs’ – knowledge of the ‘self’.

The first thing to clarify is that there are several definitions that can be given to the nafs, and the several ways in which the term is used throughout the Quran and in Islamic literature.

1. The Nafs as the ‘Lower Self’

Start by thinking of the human being as having a ‘heart’ – a psycho-spiritual heart – the essence of what makes us human. According to the Islamic tradition, this ‘Qalb’ or ‘heart’ contains 2 parts of us. The ‘nafs’ – the lower self and the ‘ruh’ – the higher self. There is a precedent in the Islamic tradition to avoid over-questioning what the ‘ruh’ is, because by essence its true nature cannot be understood by the human mind. It suffices to say that it makes up the best part of us.

For those of you into psychology, this definition of the nafs is comparable to Freud’s understanding of the  id (lower self, nafs), super-ego (higher-self, ruh), and ego (self – the balance between the two). However, what Freud writes about the id and super ego does not necessarily equate to what the Quran and Sunnah teach about the nafs and ruh. (The Islamic understanding of the ‘ruh’ in particular is very different to Freud’s theories about the super-ego)

2. The Nafs as the ‘Level’ of your soul. 

Throughout the Quran, references are made to the nafs and from these scholars have deduced that there are 7 distinct ‘levels’ of the nafs. The first and lowest is “nafs al-ammarah”  the inciting soul which is completely unconscious and unaware and so inclines towards evil. The highest is “nafs al-kamila”, the perfect soul, believed by some to be a station attained only by the Prophets.

The 2 definitions above will give you much more clarity when you read Islamic writings on the soul, where the term nafs is either being used to describe the ‘lower self’ or the current ‘level’ of your soul.

With these definitions in mind, I would like to let you in on a theory that allows us all to understand the connection between our mind, thoughts, emotions and soul, in accordance with the Quran and Sunnah.

3. A Psychological Definition Of The Nafs.

My contention is that the ‘nafs’ is a word used to describe our thinking mind. This includes every thought you have or are having right now of the past and the future, and the emotional patterns triggered by your thoughts. If you want to master your ‘nafs’, the most effective way to do this (as is done automatically by all the pious people who have mastered their nafs) is to let go of your thoughts. If this makes absolutely no sense to you right now and you’re thinking…

“But aren’t thoughts… good?!
Aren’t we meant to think?
Isn’t it ‘I think, therefore I am’?”

…then hang in there, because you’re about to have a spiritual insight that, insha’Allah, will bring you much closer to Allah (swt), improve the power of your Salah, and put a smile on your face for the rest of the day by allowing you to master your nafs, right now.

The reason your mind, (or your nafs) has a strong reaction to this understanding is that your whole sense of your “self” is based around your thinking mind. You think you are your thoughts. You are not. You are much more than your thoughts. You are the consciousness, the space, within which the thoughts exist.

Often your thoughts rush through your mind so thick and fast that you can go for an entire day without ever having peace of mind – a peace which can only come by quieting your thoughts. And sometimes, perhaps during Salah, or the few moments after a Salah, you will have been in a state where there was silence, not just around you, but inside you. Silence inside your mind. You were free from thought. Free from your nafs.

When your thoughts are completely quiet, you are fully conscious. When a thought enters your mind, just notice that the thought entered. Observe the thought. By doing this, you do not identify with it. You realize that you are the consciousness that observes the thought, not the thought itself.

Play this game as you read this article. And rest assured that once you ‘get’ the point of this article, you can be in a state of ‘no-mind’, or ‘no-thought’, if only for a few seconds to start with. Then, you can move on to the following articles and train your mind (your nafs) so that you control them, rather than allowing them to control you.

First you must simply notice your thoughts, and realize that you are not your thoughts. The moment a thought comes up, observe it, and you are outside of it. You realize that you are more than it.

Mind And Emotions

It’s well established in different areas of psychology that your mind and your emotions are linked. In cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), the aim is to realize which thoughts came up when you felt a negative emotion, then write out the distortions in that ‘automatic’ thought, and think about the situation in a different, more realistic way. This frees you from the negative emotion, and allows you to improve your well-being.

In Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP), a central tennet is that you control your mind, therefore your emotions and your results. NLP teaches you to direct your focus or ‘internal representations’ (ie. the pictures and words that make up your thoughts) and to direct the way you use your physical body in order to get into any emotional state you want. This is very cool, and very powerful, and I’ll show you how in a future article, insha’Allah.

Both these methods are good for helping you direct your mind and control your emotions. In other words, they help you master your nafs. However, the deeper spiritual state I want you to enter is to be completely free from your thought-emotion reactional patterns. You can do this instantly, by simply noticing your thoughts as they enter, and noticing the feelings inside your body when they come up.

Some great questions to ask yourself consistently to help you enter this state are:

“What’s happening in my body right now?”

“Is my body at ease right now?”

“Am I at ease right now?”

…and notice what is happening inside your body. By asking yourself these questions, you will interrupt the thought/emotion pattern and for a moment you become present and fully conscious (free from your nafsy-thoughts).

Here’s another great question I want you to ask yourself right now. Ask yourself…

“I wonder what my next thought will be…”

Read that question again, close your eyes and pause before continuing.

What happened? Did you have millions of thoughts rushing through your mind right away, or did you experience a few moments where no thoughts came up? Most people, myself included experience the latter.

Now that you’ve experienced the state of no-mind for a few moments, commit yourself to doing it for a few seconds before the ‘Allahu Akbar’ at the start of every Salah you pray today. 

Sh Hamza Yusuf wrote a popular book, translating and explaining a classical Islamic spiritual text, called ‘Purification Of The Heart’. It’s an excellent book and there are very few like it available in English. It breaks down each of the psycho-spiritual diseases of the human heart and then goes into practical cures for each of them. The diseases range from anger, envy, and fantasizing to procrastination and heedlessness.

Naturally when I first looked at the book in an Islamic bookshop somewhere, I skipped straight to the “juicy bits” – the overall root diseases of the heart, and their cures. Do you want to know what the cure is for pretty much all of the dis-eases of the human heart, from an Islamic spiritual perspective…?

Dhikr.

Dhikr is often translated as ‘rememberance of Allah’. And herein lies the problem. How can you ‘remember’ Allah, when Allah is incomparable? It is impossible, isn’t it? To remember is to bring something to mind, but whatever you bring to mind when you ‘think of Allah’ is not Allah, so you are not remembering Allah. Unless…

You first accept this reality: freeing your mind from thought, (which I also refer to as the ‘thinking-mind’, ‘nafs-thoughts’, ‘the ego’, or ‘the nafs’) is the closest you will ever be to Allah. If you want to ‘remember Allah’, and be in a state of true, deep dhikr, you must clear your mind of all thought. When your mind is free from thought, you will notice you are closer to Allah than you’ve ever been before. You are now in a state conducive to real ‘dhikr’. In fact, you are in a state of ‘ihsan’ and dhikr is what your body & tongue do when you are in this state. If you’re a Muslim you’ve almost certainly been in this state before, probably during some form of worship – you just didn’t realise how you did it.

In future posts, I will break down all the different ways you can get into this state of ‘spiritual presence’, which in Quranic terminology is called ‘ihsan’ and is an internal requisite if you want to benefit from your ‘dhikr’ and worship. I’ll also show you which everyday activities automatically put you in this state – such activities are considered by many to be ‘excellent’ things to do. However, for now, it is important that you recognize that to be in a state of true dhikr is to free your mind from all thoughts. That will bring you closer to Allah than anything else you can do. In this state of no-mind, you have pure awareness of Allah, and when you choose to say ‘SubhanAllah’ in this state, it will be about 1 billion times more powerful. Don’t take my word for it – try it for yourself.

The Quran – The Greatest Form Of Dhikr

Of course we know that the Quran is the highest form of dhikr. However, only when your mind is quiet do you open up the space inside yourself for the Quran to be absorbed. If your mind is thinking millions of irrelevant thoughts as you are reading the Quran, you will miss the point of what you’re reading (that’s if you understand the Quran in the first place). If you are reading the Quran without understanding it, because you haven’t yet invested a few hours into learning basic Arabic, then the only way you can really benefit from such reading is by being intensely present whilst reciting the words.

Let all your acts of worship enhance your awareness of the present moment. Why? Because when you are fully aware of the present moment, your nafs-thoughts disintegrate – at least in that moment you are the master of your nafs; you are in a state of ‘ihsan’ (spiritual presence).

You do not need to be a scholar or a saint to do real, pure dhikr. It is your birthright, and you can do it right now, as you sit in your chair, reading this article. When you get into this state of being free from thoughts of the future and the past, you will automatically be fully aware of the present moment. You’ll be fully in tune with ‘Reality’ (al-Haqq). In other words, you’ll be aware of Allah (SWT).

Of course, your nafs will do everything it can to stop you from becoming aware of its never ending stream of thoughts, that you identify with. But your nafs can’t do much, once you become aware of the fact that ‘dhikr’ is worship, and being in a state of dhikr is tantamount to being ‘present’ – free from thought.

Get into the state of no-mind (the previous article gave you a couple of ways how), notice your thoughts, and let them go and when your mind is free from thought, consciously praise Allah. Again, if you want a deep, powerful, comprehensive training to help you let go of thoughts and Master Your Nafs, click here. 

Source

Pride Belongs to Allah Alone - Mankind and Satan

Pride Belongs to Allah Alone

When Allah, all praise and glory is to Him, said “Descend” He gave us its reason in His Saying, “It is not for you to be arrogant therein”. It means that Satan was puffed up with pride and arrogance and Allah, be ever gloried His Majesty and Might, loves not the arrogant. Whoever was taken by pride and wrongly believe that he himself, by his own power, can achieve anything independent of the Power of Allah, all praise and glory is to Him, will incur upon himself the Wrath of Almighty Allah…. why?

Because action in this universe belongs solely to Allah, The Exalted and Ever Majestic, no one has the power of doing except Allah. For every action there is an adverb of time and place to happen and you neither possess the time nor the place. No one has the power to keep himself alive for a moment and no one has the power to move from one place to another except by the Leave and Will of Allah. Man may even die before he stirs or he may fall sick and lose his ability to move, so how can man or any creature of Allah be proud, when he neither has might nor power except by the Will of Allah.

Allah, all praise and glory is to Him, expelled Satan from the place or status he once occupied because he acted arrogantly and insolently and imagined that he possesses self-given power. Therefore, the Truth, Blessed and Exalted is He, said, “Get out; indeed, you are of the debased.” It means that had you any power of your own then stay where you are, but you will get out humiliated and disgraced. You will get out against your will and you cannot stubbornly contend nor claim that you have a power that will defend you or make you act contrarily to the Command of Allah, you will get out abjectly in disgrace. 

When Satan realized that pride that swelled within his soul was fake and that in reality he, on his own, is worth nothing his heart was filled with malice against Adam. He believed that he is the cause of all what has happened to him: his expulsion, his sinking to the lowest of the low and the Divine Wrath he incurred upon himself. The spite and malice that filled the heart of Satan pushed him to the attempt of taking revenge on Adam and his offspring. Just as his rejection to submit to Allah’s Command of prostrating to Adam cast him into Hellfire, he wants to drive Adam and his offspring to Hellfire, a revenge for what befell him. And just as Satan was expelled from Allah’s Mercy, he wants to expel Adam and his offspring from Allah’s Mercy. He wants to avenge himself on Adam for being the cause of all what befell him, from damnation and expulsion, him and whoever follows him. He does not want to enter Hellfire alone! But he wants to cram therein whomever he can lead astray from mankind. 

Therefore, when Satan got out abjectly disgraced from the place he once dwelt, he addressed Allah, all praise and glory is to Him, saying as narrates the Noble Qur’an, what means: 

“[Satan] said, ‘Reprieve me until the Day they are resurrected.’” (Al-A’râf, 7: 14)

Thus, Satan returned to servility, asking Allah, all praise and glory is to Him, to keep him alive till Resurrection Day, after being blown-up with pride. Had this pride been real and not fake and had he really possessed a power of his own he would not have asked Allah to keep him alive till Resurrection Day and he would have kept himself alive, but he neither has power nor might except by the Will of Allah, thus he turned to Allah, all praise and glory is to Him, to grant him his request.

But why did Allah, Blessed and Exalted is He, respond to the call of Satan when He could have destroyed him instantly? Why did Allah, Whose Majesty reigns Supreme, says what means:

“[Allah] said, ‘Indeed, you are of those reprieved.’” (Al-A’râf, 7: 15)

Also in Surah Al-Hijr: 

“[Allah] said, ‘So indeed, you are of those reprieved, until the Day of the time well-known.’” (Al-Hijr, 15: 37-38)

Allah answered his demand – though he is the one outcast from His Mercy – because only with it the wisdom behind creating worldly life is complete. Allah, all praise and glory is to Him, created worldly life as an abode of trial and the Hereafter as an abode of recompense. Allah, be ever gloried His Majesty and Might, wants to test His servant in the life of this world, to put them to trial before being requited. Recite the Saying of the Truth, Blessed and Exalted is He, which means:

“Or do you think that you will enter Paradise while Allah has not yet made evident those of you who fight in His cause and made evident those who are steadfast?” (Âl-‘Imrân, 3: 142)

And His Saying, all glory is to Him, which means:

“So that Allah might test what is in your breasts and purify what is in your hearts. And Allah is Knowing of that within the breasts.” (Âl-‘Imrân, 3: 154)

 

Had Allah, all praise and glory is to Him, willed to create all His creatures compelled to obey as the angels, He would have easily done it. And had Allah willed that all the people of the earth obey His Law and that all of them be glorifiers and worshippers again He would have easily done it. But Allah, be ever gloried His Majesty and Might, has chosen creatures that come to Him compelled, as angels and others from His creatures, and has chosen mankind and jinn exclusively to come to Him willingly out of love. They are both capable of sinning, but they forbear because they love Allah. And they are both capable of disobedience, but they obey to draw near Allah. Allah, all praise and glory is to Him, wants creatures who comes to Him willingly and lovingly in a period of trial limited by the lifetime of every person.

After death we will be compelled to submit to the Will of Allah, all praise and glory is to Him, because while dying man’s power of free will completely ends, and he loses even his willpower over his own body. Volition is in worldly life only; at the hour of death and during the life of Barzakh [the grave as the barrier or the intermediate realm that separates between this world and the other world from the time of death till the time of Resurrection ], and on Resurrection Day, none will have a will of his own. The disbeliever shall be driven to the Hellfire and he will try to stop his legs from walking but they will not. He will try to push away the fire by his hands but they will not push. He will try to escape from standing before Allah, and to flee from torment but he will not be able to. All the might and power he once had in worldly life will end. The Noble Qur’an depicts this picture saying what means:

“If those who disbelieved but knew the time when they will not avert the Fire from their faces or from their backs and they will not be aided....” (Al-Anbiyâ’, 21: 39)

Source: (Book) Mankind and Satan