Surah Al Qadr

Sprinting In The Last Ten Days of Ramadan

The Last 10 Days: Mercy, Forgiveness, Paradise

RAMADHAN VERSES Sura Baqarah 2 :183 - 187 Mishary Alafasy

Towards An Outstanding Ramadan - Muhammad Alshareef

Open Hearts

Al-Baqara (The Cow) Chapter 2: Verse 183

"O Believers, Fasting (sawm) has been prescribed for you as it was prescribed for those before you, so that you may attain Taqwa (God-consciousness)"

This important announcement begins by addressing believers directly to remind them of who they are and of their status with God. God is aware that for believers to fulfil any religious obligation, regardless of its immediate benefits, they need encouragement and motivation. Hence they are addressed by their essential quality of having faith.

The verse establishes that fasting had been made obligatory for all believers, past, present and future, and that the aim behind it is to open their hearts to God and make them more conscious and fearful of Him. Therefore, the principal objective of fasting is to attain and refine this quality of Taqwa. Fasting, when observed in obedience to God, and in pursuit of His pleasure, instils and revives Taqwa in the human heart and acts as a safeguard against evil and wrongdoing.

For the Ummah (world-community) of Islam, whose duty is to undertake a campaign of struggle (Jihad), as a means of establishing God's universal order of mercy, peace, and justice, and who is to stand witness to the rest of mankind, it is only natural that fasting should be made obligatory. Fasting is a means of testing a person's determination and will-power, and an important aspect of his or her relationship with God. It is a discipline that teaches one how to rise above his or her physical needs and overcome the pressure of temptation in order to earn God's blessings and reward.

Source:"In the Shade of the Quran" - Sayyid Qutb, Vol. 1, pp. 182-184

WHY DON’T MUSLIMS BELIEVE AND FOLLOW THE BIBLE?

The Christians raise the questions that if Muslims believe in all the previous revealed messages than why don’t they follow ‘The Bible’? Which according to Christians consists of Tawraat, Zaboor, and the Injeel?


POSITION OF PREVIOUS MESSAGES
Before analyzing whether the above Christian claim is true, we Muslims believe that each law abrogated the law that came before it, in whole or in part. As the previous messages were connected to a particular time, they were not eternal and would not abide. So Allah did not guarantee to preserve them. The task of preserving them was entrusted to the scholars of the nation to which they were sent.

“…the rabbis and the doctors of law: for to them was entrusted the protection of God's book, and they were witnesses thereto:” (5:44)
But the rabbis and priests were unable to preserve their Books. Some of them betrayed the trust by changing, altering and distorting them. So according to Qur’an the previous messages are not preserved moreover, the Religious leaders have failed to preserve the scriptures so the present day scriptures are not the 100% message which Almighty Allah revealed, this is distorted by human hands, the messages have been twisted, altered, added and deleted.

WHAT IS BIBLE?
The word ‘Bible’ comes from the greek word ‘Biblos’ which means book of books or Library of Books. The Holy Bible is encyclopedia of books. The word Bible is not to be found in the Bible itself. And there is no claim in the entire Bible that the Bible is the word of God as Qur’an claims it to be from Allah in various places in the glorious Qur’an. For e.g 55:2, 6:19, 7:203 etc., In other words the Bible is not inspired word of God but of man.

TYPES OF BIBLE
Many common Christians think that there is only one Bible, i.e. all the present Bibles are common, equal but in reality we have different versions of the Bible. The Roman Catholics Bible consists of 73 books (46 books of OT + 27 books of NT) and the Protestants Bible consists of 66 books (39 books of OT + 27 books of NT) and some modern versions like Good News Bible consists of 81 books, some upto 87 books. All Bibles in our possession today (Such as the KJV, the NRSV, the NASV, NIV,...etc.) are the result of extensive cutting and pasting from these various manuscripts with no single one being the definitive reference.

COMPILATION OF THE BIBLE
It is clear from the history that the collection books both Old and New Testament was not compiled during the time of Jesus’s ministry, moreover none of his teachings were recorded during the life time of Jesus. If we were to go to a Western library and look up the history of the Bible as recorded by their own eminent Christian scholars throughout the ages, we would find that they tell us that the books of the “New Testament” in our possession today were not officially approved into the New Testament “canon” of “inspired” books until many centuries after the departure of Jesus. Tens of generations of Christians literally lived and died after the departure of Jesus (pbuh) never having known nor seen such a “New Testament” or “Bible” as the one in our possession today.

After the departure of Jesus (peace be upon him) some apostles and many other people started writing their own Gospels and claiming their work as the true Gospel, there was confusion and dismay amongst the masses. Many innovative teachings were spread, each group was attacking the other. In this time of period the original teachings of Jesus (peace be upon him) was lost and mixed along with the false teachings innovated by the various groups.

“Christianity in the second and third centuries was in a remarkable state of flux. To be sure, at no point in its history has the religion constituted a monolith. But the diverse manifestations of its first three hundred years - whether in terms of social structures, religious practices, or ideologies - have never been replicated. Nowhere is this seen more clearly than in the realm of theology. -The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture, Bart Ehrman, pp. 3-4

The Roman empire was ‘superpower’ at that time, the Roman emperor Constantine was greatly troubled by the swelling ranks of his Christian subjects and the great division among their ranks which did not bode well for the continued stability of his empire.

Most of these fringe sects now began to fade into insignificance and the matter was now left between those who believed in the Unity of God and those who believed in a “Trinity.” The Roman empire’s support fluctuated between these two groups for a long time until the Trinitarian’s finally gained the upper hand and all but wiped the Unitarians off the face of the earth. Over the next centuries they slowly selected and collected the “truly inspired” gospels into one volume which later became the “New Testament.” They burned all other gospels. Many sweeping campaigns if “Inquisition” were launched. Everyone found possessing any of these “false” Gospels was put to death and his Gospel burned. (Apology for Muhammad and the Qur’an, John Davenport).

In the city of Nicea (modern: Iznik, Turkey), in the year 325 AD, a great conference of Christian theologians and religious scholars was convened under the order of the Emperor Constantine to examine and define the status of these countless Christian Gospels. After a thorough investigation it was decided that the Epistle of Jude was genuine and believable. The rest of our current books of the Bible were declared doubtful.

In the year 364 AD, another council was held in Laodicea for the same purpose. This conference of Christian scholars and theologians not only confirmed the decision of the council of Nicea regarding the authenticity of the Epistle of Jude but also declared that the following six books must also be added to the list of genuine and believable books: The Book of Esther, The Epistle Of James, The Second Epistle of Peter, The Second and Third Epistles of John, The Epistle of Paul to the Hebrews. This conference pronounced their decision to the public. The book of Revelations, however, remained out of the list of the acknowledged books in both the councils.

In 397 another great conference was held called the Council of Carthage. Augustine, the celebrated Christian scholar, was among the one hundred and twenty six learned participants. The members of this council confirmed the decisions of the two previous Councils and also added the following books to the list of the divine books: The Book of the Songs of Solomon, The Book of Tobit, The Book of Baruch, Ecclesiasticus, and The First and Second Books of Maccabees.
Three more conferences were held after this in Trullo, Florence and Trent (1545-63). The members of these meetings confirmed the decision of the Council of Carthage. The last two councils, however, wrote the name of the book of Baruch separately.

After these councils nearly all the books which had previously been doubtful among Christians were now included in the list of acknowledged books.

PROTESTANTS
The status of these books remained unchanged until the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century. The Protestants repudiated the decisions of the councils and declared that there are only 66 truly “inspired” books of God, and not 73 as claimed by the Catholics. The following books were to be rejected: The Book of Baruch, The Book of Tobit, The
Letter of Jude, The Songs of Solomon, Ecclesiasticus, and The First and Second Books of Maccabees. They excluded these books from the list of acknowledged books.

The rejected the Church authority and they proclaimed that Church teachings are not mandatory for following Jesus Christ and the Bible is word for word is from God and that is enough for understanding and acting according to the teachings of God.

THE ORIGINAL MANUSCRIPTS
The Biblical world has in its possession a large collection of ancient manuscripts of the Bible. These ancient copies of the Bible were written in different locations around the world and in different ages. We are told that in our current age there are up to 24,000 such ancient copies of the Bible. These are the manuscripts that the scholars go to in order to produce our modern Bibles (such as the KJV, the RSV, the NIV, etc.). In most cases the most ancient copies of the Bible are the ones held in the highest regard and considered to be the most accurate.

All biblical versions of the Bible prior to the revised version of 1881 were dependent upon the “Ancient copies” (those dated at about five to six hundred years after Jesus). The revisers of the Revised Standard Version (RSV) 1952 were the first biblical scholars to have access to the “Most ancient copies” which date roughly four hundred years after Christ. It is only logical for us to concur that the closer a document is to the source the more authentic it is.

The Reformation gave rise to the recognition of the problems these translations could cause, especially since all Protestant doctrine was to be strictly Bible based (Church tradition was rejected). Thus by the 16th Century, Bible scholars began trying to recover the original text. These efforts gave rise to what eventually became the discipline of textual criticism.

Initial efforts began by providing translations directly from the available Hebrew and Greek texts. However, it was recognized early that existing texts in these languages were deficient, and efforts expanded to try and locate ancient texts. Over the years (and especially in the 20th Century) thousands of fragments from the first millennium of the CE have been recovered. A brief review of some of the texts presently available follows below. However, as is often the case with new knowledge, these discoveries have served to complicate the picture and to point out how much we don't know. Some scholars believe that the content of the original autographs will never be known with any degree of certainty