The Beauty of Islam | hebrewsufi

The beauty of Islam is the Absolute Oneness of God (Infinite, beyond time and space, has no physical manifestation/incarnation, no mother or son, He is absolutely ONE). He is not made up of different parts, he does not have human emotions like jealousy and does not need to eat or rest. He is not born at a certain moment in time, nor does he die. He is totally unlike humans; He is not male or female. He is the all-knowing sovereign Lord of all the worlds. Because God is infinite, there can be no graven images, icons, or idols directed at for worship. God is beyond the material physical realm. All of reality (God) is ONE.

The other beauty is the firm belief in the oneness of humanity (the Children of Adam). There is no preferred nation or tribe. All nations are absolutely equal, all having the propensity for the acquiring of faith in the Oneness of God and the belief in all of his Prophets (Abraham, Moses, Jesus, Muhammad, etc.) As the Holy Qur’an 49:13 says, “O mankind, indeed We have created you from male and female and made you peoples and tribes that you may know one another. Indeed, the most noble of you in the sight of Allah is the most righteous of you. Indeed, Allah is All-Knowing and All-Aware.”

There is also no priesthood or blood sacrifice for the remissions of sin. All humans are born equal in the sight of God. All that is needed is purity of heart and repentance. There is also no scapegoating of our sins onto another. We alone are responsible for our sins, not our descendants such as what is mentioned in the Bible for the descendants of Ham (which was used to justify institutional racism and slavery). And we cannot transfer our sin to a goat, sheep, or cow and use its blood as a remission for sin as was done in the Old Testament. As it says in Hosea 6:6, “For I desire mercy, and not sacrifice, And the knowledge of God rather than burnt-offerings.” And we cannot transfer our sin to another human being, even if he be the Messiah (translation: the Anointed One). We must purify our heart and repent to our Lord for forgiveness, no blood sacrifice is needed. As it says in Isaiah 43:11, “I, even I, am the LORD; and beside Me there is no savior.” Thusly, a human being in the flesh cannot be the savior. Only God can save us from our sins through true repentance. And also in Numbers 23:19, “God is not a man, that He should lie; Neither the son of man, that He should repent: When He hath said, will He not do it? Or when He hath spoken, will He not make it good?”

The beauty of Sufism (also called Tasawwuf or Tazkiyah al-Nafs in Arabic), referred to as the inner mystical dimension of Islam, is the focus on the inward realities instead of only focusing on the outward form. For example, when praying (outwardly with your body), what is your mind and heart directed at? Is it entirely focused on the ONENESS of God or the mundane activities of daily life? Have you purified your heart of judgment, harshness, arrogance, etc.? Do you love your fellow man? Do you judge your brother and consider yourself better than him? Do you serve your brother? Do you emulate God’s attributes by being compassionate and merciful and loving? Do you love all people regardless of their religion, race, ethnicity, etc.?

For further information, I would suggest reading books by Mawlana Shaykh Nazim Al-Haqqani or his representative, Shaykh Hisham Kabbani of the Naqshbandi Sufi Order. The Naqshbandi Sufi Order has been very active since 1999 in combatting extremist terrorist ideologies such as Wahhabism and Salafi Jihadism which directly conflict with the teachings of the blessed Prophet Muhammad (pbuh). Unfortunately, because Saudi Arabia spends millions of [oil] dollars in the publishing of Wahhabi texts and the training of Imam’s and the building of Mosques throughout the world, their Wahhabi teachings have in the last 30 years or so become accepted as representing true Islam. Thankfully, the Sunni scholars of the world have finally come out and established that Wahhabi/Salafi teachings are not part of Sunni (Traditional) Islam. Recently, at a conference in Chechnya, the Sunni Scholars have established and defined what traditional Islam is. Traditional (Sunni) Islam is defined as believing in either the Ash’ari or Maturidi Theological tradition (Aqeedah) of which Wahhabi/Salafis reject. It is also defined in following one of the four Sunni Schools of Islamic law of which Wahhabi/Salafis reject. To be clear, all of the modern terrorist organizations (ISIS, Al Qaida, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Boko Haram, Al-Shabaab, etc. are all of the Wahhabi/Salafi ideology which has been rejected by Sunni Scholars (and by the Shia for that matter). While the Wahhabi/Salafi ideology was started in the 1700’s in Saudi Arabia, it was not until 1964 when the Salafi Jihadist ideology was formed in the writings of the Egyptian, Sayyid Qutb. All of the above mentioned terrorist groups have only been around since 1987 or later, both as a result of this new Salafi Jihadist ideology that is foreign to traditional Islam and as a result of political conflicts as a result of European colonization following the downfall of the Ottoman Empire in World War I (where the French and British divvied up the Muslim world via the Sykes-Picot Agreement starting in 1915.) The point is that Islam has been around for over 1400 years (since 610 CE) and it has only been in the last 50 years that the so-called misnomer “Islamic Terrorism” has been around. The issue nowadays is the real lack of knowing any history or anything about Islam and trying to get all your information from mass media such as Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, etc. People tend to watch a lot of TV instead of reading books to educate themselves. Nothing is created in a vacuum and there are always historical reasons for why certain ideologies develop, it is in our best interest to learn about it, so as to better understand the world we live in. Donald Trump and his supporters are a symptom, a result of this mass ignorance. They are not the cause. The best remediation is knowledge. As the Holy Prophet Muhammad said, “Seek knowledge even unto China!”