Praise be to God! There is no other god except God. A lot of people at different times in their life decide to become submitters, or maybe to do additional striving in the cause of God, and that’s good, but unfortunately very often religious people have the wrong ideas about the relative value of that compared to doing the same thing at other times. When we offer ourselves to God, put ourselves at the service of God, it depends when, how, why, where, and actually the differences can be huge. For example, in verse 4:18, God says, not acceptable is the repentance of those who commit sins until death starts to approach them, and then they say, “Now I repent.” This means that repentance when you don’t have much power to commit sins anymore is not really repentance. It’s just an admittance that you don’t have the power anymore to continue with your sins. So, time does matter. But why does the time matter? It matters because when we offer ourselves to God, it is similar to offering something material to God. Our bodies are also material. So, similarly when we give to charity, according to verse 2:267, God tells us not to pick out the bad things and give them to charity. So, now imagine yourself when you were at your worst, and when you were at your best, imagine them like two separate people. You at your worst, let’s say your weak you, maybe your old you, and the other person is you at your best, let’s say your young you, or your strong you. Now, imagine offering this best version of you to the devil, and offering this worst version of you to God. Don’t you think that’s insulting to God? Why should God accept your old weak version, when you offered your young strong version to the devil? And in the past when people were expected to be religious by the society, but in their heart they did not really want to, they would find a way to offer their weakest version of themselves to God. For example, they would work and deal with worldly matters for as long as they were healthy and strong, and would say that they are not doing the Contact Prayers because their very busy schedule won’t let them, and then when they became about let’s say 60, they would start doing the Contact Prayers. Really? Is it because you are not healthy anymore? And they themselves would admit that if you offer an unhealthy animal sacrifice (Qurban), then it will not be accepted from you. So, then why did you not offer your healthy body to God, but now you are offering your unhealthy body to God?
This is what we can call out-of-time religiosity, which happens in both directions – too young, or too old. So, now let’s talk about cases who are too young. For example, a lot of excessively controlling parents will for example push their five-year-old children to learn and to do the Contact Prayer completely, but at such a young age they are not teaching their children how to be believers, they are only teaching them how to pretend to be believers, because until 12, those children do not have a fundamentally based understanding of religion. They believe whatever you or others tell them. So, until 12, you should just let them do what you do during the contact prayer, and they will join out of curiosity, and they will see it as play, but you don’t need to expect them to do it on their own. But, some people will push their children to do that, thinking that there is so much value in it, when in fact, the efforts to keep the child in line like that are bigger than the benefits which would happen with the same efforts in something else good. The difference between play and work is that play has bigger costs than results, while work has bigger results than costs, and everything before the age of 12 is actually just play, even if they pretend to work. Basically, the net production of anything which children under 12 do is always negative. They always need more help, then they can provide help. Occasionally, they do something helpful, but if you analyze carefully, you will see that you invested more time during their years to teach them how to do that, then what they actually did. So, basically, there is no return on investment until children become 12. These days, it’s more like until 25, because of the governments, but naturally, if we ignore the government influence, then it’s about 12. And this is why Abraham offered his son to God only after he became strong enough to work with him.
In Sura 37, verses 102-107 say: “When Ismail grew enough TO WORK WITH Abraham, Abraham said, “My son, I see in a dream that I am sacrificing you. (See. Only then did Abraham offer his son to God. After he grew enough to work. That’s when Ismail reached full value. Abraham was afraid to do it earlier, because he was afraid of insulting God by offering an incomplete sacrifice) Ismail said, “O my father, do what you are commanded to do. You will find me, God willing, patient.” They both submitted, and he put his forehead down (to sacrifice him). We called him: “O Abraham. You have believed the dream.” We thus reward the righteous. That was an exacting test indeed. We ransomed (Ismail) by substituting an ANIMAL SACRIFICE.
So, we can see the parallel here. If we are not going to offer an unhealthy animal to God, and according to the Bible, it’s not accepted to offer an animal with any kind of blemish, then we should strive to offer ourselves to God, not when we are at our worst position in our life, but when we are in our best shape, physically, age-wise, financially, and so on. When we have the most value.
And we can see the same idea when God ordered the Children of Israel to sacrifice a cow. In verses 2:68 through 72, God orders the Children of Israel to sacrifice a cow that is NEITHER TOO OLD, NOR TOO YOUNG, OF AN INTERMEDIATE AGE, A BRIGHT YELLOW COLORED COW WHICH IS PLEASING TO THOSE WHO WATCH IT, THAT WAS NEVER HUMILIATED IN PLOWING THE LAND OR WATERING THE CROPS, AND WITHOUT ANY BLEMISH. So, a cow in its best shape.
So, again we are reminded that if we offer ourselves to God when we are too old, chances are that it will not be accepted. For example, in verse 10:90, we see that just before Pharaoh died he repented and believed, but God tells him “Too late! For you have rebelled already…” So, it is important for us to stop sinning before it is too late to repent, and that line of repentance is crossed generally when you lose your health, or your wealth, or your influence and things like that. So, let’s offer ourselves to God while it is still acceptable and pleasing to him.
Praise be to God! There is no other god except God. So many times when people use the Quran and try to argue about a certain point, they lean so much, especially the traditional Muslims, they lean so much towards a historically specific understanding of the Quran, which means that when they read a verse or try to tell you about a verse, they will insist that the verse refers to a specific historical event, and according to them, all the other understandings are wrong. Well, we do not deny that a lot of those verses refer to specific historical events, events which really happened. They are not only metaphors, they really happened. However, if the Quran did not specify that event specifically in the Quran, it was on purpose, because that verse does not refer only to that specific historical event, but it also refers to a universal description of a certain issue. Unfortunately, for many people, knowing the specific historical event, pushes them to deny the universal application of that verse. And “universal” means that the verse refers to any time, regardless of history, or to many different times in history (in our times, in the past, and in the future). This is what we can call “universalist” understanding of the Quran. Again, this does not deny the specific historical events, but it helps us to understand more than that, which also includes in itself that specific historical event. However, that specific historical event can not be the most important part of that verse. A specific event in history can not be more important than a universal principle which applies to all times. So, in this sermon let’s read some verses from the Quran, for which the specific event in history is already known, and the attempt here is not to deny it, but to show that it is far less important than the universal understanding to which that verse applies.
Let’s start with Sura 111. It says,
“Condemned are the works of Abu Lahab, and he is condemned.
His wealth and whatever he has accomplished will never help him.
He has incurred the blazing Fire.
Also his companion, the carrier of fuel.
With a natural-rope necklace.”
Now, the story of Abu Lahab, the uncle of Muhammad who opposed Muhammad, is well known. However, do you think that in the book which God intended to reveal for the whole world, God chose to simply trash-talk one of Muhammad’s uncles, because if we understand it as a specific historical event, this Sura does not teach us much else. It just trash-talks Abu Lahab. It does not tell us what Abu Lahab did to deserve the condemnation or what his wife did exactly. However, if we decide to understand it as a universal message, then we learn much more, in addition to the specific historical event. So, to understand this Sura universally, let me also translate the word “Abu Lahab”. The word “Abu Lahab” in Arabic literally means “the Father of Fire”, and the Father of Fire is Satan. So, let’s read the Sura again with the new understanding and see that it makes more universal sense now.
“Condemned are the works of the Father of Fire (Satan), and he is condemned.
His wealth and whatever he has accomplished will never help him. (Verse 17:64 informs us that Satan owns wealth).
He has incurred the blazing Fire. (Of course)
Also his companion, the carrier of fuel. (which is a mechanism in Hell to keep Hell going)
With a natural rope necklace. (which means that that mechanism is tied to something to keep it stable, and useful for Heaven).”
Now, as you can see, this universal understanding is relevant for all humans. It’s not just about a local tribal dispute anymore.
Let’s read another example: Sura 94.
“Did we not open your chest? And removed from you your burden. Took weight off your shoulders. We exalted you to an honorable position. With pain there is gain. Indeed, with pain there is gain. So, when you are done, then strive. Seeking only your Lord.”
Now again, most ignorant people will insist that this refers to a specific historical event only, and nothing else. They tell the story of how Muhammad’s chest was opened and washed with snow and things like that, and we are not trying to deny it. However, it is much more important to understand this as a universal story. For example, let’s understand it as the story of all believers who go through a surgery anywhere in the torso, because it really applies to all of them. So, let’s read the same Sura again, but without thinking about a specific historical event:
“Did we not open your chest (o you who went through surgery)? And removed from you your burden (the health problem). Took weight off your shoulders. We exalted you to an honorable position. With pain there is gain (so surgery has health benefits). Indeed, with pain there is gain. So, when you are done (with healing), then strive (go back to striving as usual). Seeking only your Lord.”
Now, if we understand it like this, then we learn something deeper, and universal. First, it teaches us that it is ok to have surgery, if you have some serious health problem, something which burdens you. And this is important, because had this Sura not existed, then from other verses in the Quran we would have to conclude that surgery is prohibited, because there are verses in the Quarn which tell us not to shed blood, and also not to distort the creation of God, and that is true, but those are for voluntary cases, voluntary plastic surgery and things like that. Here in this Sura, it tells us that there is an exception to allow surgery which is done for health problems which burden you, because with pain there is gain, and the pain is the surgery, and the gain is the resolved health issue, hopefully.
Now, let’s read other verses, to show you that we can learn much more from a universal understanding of them, and not just rely on the historically specific event. In Sura 49, for example, verses 4, and 5, we read:
“As for those who call on you from outside the walls, most of them do not understand. Had they been patient until you came out to them, it would have been better for them. God is Forgiver, Most Merciful.”
Now, the historically specific event is well known for this verse. A group of people mocked Muhammad by yelling from outside his house, while Muhammad was inside, and these verses were revealed as a response to that. However, that was only a minor reason for that revelation, but it was not the whole reason for the revelation. And it is very clear here in this verse, that Muhammad is not mentioned, that specific historical event is not mentioned. The verses talk about a general universal case which applies to all messengers, and actually very often to most believers, and actually even more today, because in the past people would rarely call people from outside of the wall, but today, we can be called always from outside the walls with telephones and internet. That’s what telephones are – a call from outside of walls. So, this is actually sort of a prediction about the discovery of telephones and internet – a call from outside of the walls. So, let me read the verse again, and see what they say universally:
“As for those who call on you from outside the walls (through internet, with messages, phone calls and so on), most of them do not understand. Had they been patient until you came out to them, it would have been better for them. God is Forgiver, Most Merciful.”
And this is true. Most people who contact Alban Fejza don’t understand. Alban Fejza gets about twice as many messages from non-submitters or haters than from the believers or submitters whom he likes and respects. Usually, those ignorant messages come from people with anonymous names, but those messages do come. And by the way, whenever we receive messages which might show lack of understanding from someone within us, then we immediately should realize that we haven’t strived enough against those outside of us, because the rule is that most of the messages a believer receives should be from people who don’t understand. So, if you don’t receive messages at work, or from clients, or from religious opponents, from people who don’t understand, then you are pretty much left with messages from within us, and most of them then will be misunderstood messages. So, the moral of the story is that the only way for us to stop misunderstanding each other in our communication through internet is to strive against outsiders. So, an internally focused community causes disputes and misunderstandings. We should focus our energy against the outsiders, so we don’t end up having bad feelings against each other.
Now, let’s take another example of a verse which is unnecessarily narrowed down to a specific historical event, when the meaning of the verse is clearly more universal. For example, verse 2:108 says,
“Do you wish to demand of your messenger what was demanded of Moses in the past? Anyone who chooses disbelief, instead of belief, has truly strayed off the right path.”
Now, the Muhamedans will insist that here it is talking about Muhammad, based on a certain specific historical event which they might have heard, and the half-submitters will insist that it is talking about Rashad Khalifa, but the reality is that this verse universally talks about any messenger who is sent from the time this verse was revealed until the End of the World. Why do people see the need to narrow it down to a specific messenger? It’s not mentioning the names or the characteristics of any specific messenger. It applies universally to any of them. Now, we have to be careful, of course, because some of the historical stories of the Quran can not be read as universal stories, because they simply are not, or they might be only partially universal. So, let’s take an example where the story seems like it might be universal, but then once you read the whole Sura, you realize that it is only partially universal. For example, Sura 105 says,
“Have you noted how your Lord dealt with the cohabiters of the elephant? Did He not cause their plans to fail?”
Now, this part of the Sura is actually quite universal, despite the fact that the story of the people of the elephant is a well-known story which happened during the year when Muhammad was born. The king of Ethiopia wanted to occupy Mecca with an elephant, but his plan backfired. However, these two verses do not claim to refer specifically to that event. The verses only say that the cohabiters of the elephant ended up with failed plans. Now, if we understand this universally, this would mean that the people of the past who cohabited with elephants across any time, they ended up with failed plans, they did not have their plans realized. And when your plans are not realized, you generally remain poor. This means that regions where elephants live are generally poor across history. So, let’s check this. Here is a world map which shows where the elephants live:
And now here is a map which shows world poverty:
Can you see the very high correlation? And this high correlation is true across history. For example, in the past one type of elephant was the mammoth.
It does not exist today, but that type of elephant lived in the northern regions of the world where Canada, Russia and Europe are today:
and in the past those used to be the poorest regions of the world. As the mammoth went extinct in those regions, those regions got richer. Now, the question is, what does poverty have to do with elephants? Well, the elephants and people because of their large brain size are competitors in this world, and whenever people dominate the environment, they get wealthy, and indirectly the elephants are outcompeted. This means that there is no way to eradicate poverty in this world, unless we destroy the environment, which destroys the elephant, and there is no way to prevent climate change, unless we decide to keep poverty going. Climate change is real by the way, a little bit, but there is no solution to it, unless the choices people make are choices which keep poverty going around the world. So, the world has a choice. Would we like to prevent climate change, or would we like to help poor people get richer? It’s either one or the other, or both a little bit. But, it’s not possible to solve both problems completely at the same time. Either we make decisions which eradicate poverty, which also will effectively drive the elephants near extinction, or we try to save the elephants, and keep the poverty with it. However, as you can see the maps do not completely match. That is because this correlation is only partly universal, but not completely universal. So, it’s mostly true that elephants and poverty are correlated, but not completely true. And we can see that the match between poverty and the elephants is not completely universal once we read the following verses in the Sura of the Elephant. The following verses say: “
He sent upon them swarms of flying creatures (drones). That launched on them burned stones (bombs and bullets). He made them like chewed up hay.”
Obviously, this is a specific event, because we don’t see people of those regions being hit with burned stones. However, because this is partly universal, and partly referring to a specific event, these types of verses are verses where specific prophecies about this world can be extracted, because this Sura applies universally during some times, and not during other times. So, one way to understand this Sura is like this:
During the End Times, around the time of the Mahdi, some people from Sub-Saharan Africa, or maybe even South East Asia, in the remaining pockets of the religious fanatics, they will try to occupy Mecca, but they will be defeated with drones which will launch burned stones (bombs and bullets) to them, and will make them like chewed up hay. Someone might say that this Sura is referring to the past. That’s true, but this Sura will be read even just before the End of the World, and when those people read it, it will be referring to their past, and part of their past is our future. Now, had God wanted to tell us that this Sura only applies to that specific event which happened in the sixth century, God would have said so, and would have mentioned the name of the tribe, or the time, or the name of the king, or more details which would exclude the possibility that it would happen again. However, God intentionally left it like this open, saying “cohabiters of the elephant”, and that’s it, because it is talking about more than just the sixth century. It is talking also about the 23rd century, and partially about all centuries, any cohabiters of the elephant, any people who live with the elephant and how that is connected with failed plans. By the way, the elephants were never meant to be domesticated anyway. They are wild animals because the Quran mentions other animals which are meant for riding and for other useful things, but that’s another issue.
So, this is one example of understanding the Quran as more than just a story about a specific historical event. Obviously this method of universalist understanding of the Quran is abused from time to time by many people, because in most of the Quran, the verses are actually only historically specific, which means that they refer to one and only one event in history. For example, when God mentions the stories of Moses and Jesus, and Abraham, and Joseph, and David, and Solomon and so on, no one can come today and claim that those verses also apply to them, because there was only one Moses, and only one Jesus, and so on. The details which are given about those stories, about Pharaoh, and miracles and all that, they make those events historically specific only. There are deeper metaphors in them, which are universal, but the event is a one-time event. So, there is also a tendency, especially today, by more liberal Muslims to abuse the universalist understanding of the Quran, by completely ignoring the historically specific event. However, for most of history, the religious elites have abused the Quran in the other direction by insisting to understand some universal stories as only historically specific stories. So, the Quran is abused both ways by people. Sometimes, they will narrow down the meaning of a verse, when there is no need to do it, or they will try to make a verse universal, when it is clearly talking only about a specific historical event. And this issue is actually too complicated to discuss in detail, which is why whenever we read the Quran, we seek refuge in God from Satan the rejected, and God protects the believers from the ideas of Satan, and lets the disbelievers get those Satanic ideas. Verse 56:79 in the Quran says that no one can understand the Quran except the sincere. And when people are sincere, God guides them to understand the historically specific events as historically specific events, and the universal stories as universal stories.
Praise be to God! There is no other god except God. Have you noticed how when you look at the wheels of other cars in a highway, sometimes they spin so fast that they look like they are spinning backwards. Or for example, Steve Jobs, he was so rich, that he started to look poor, always wearing the same clothes in public presentations:
A similar thing happens sometimes when someone is extremely righteous. He is so righteous, it looks bad. The society becomes suspicious about his motives. “What does he really want? This is not what we would expect a good person to do!” According to the expectations of the general society, it looks like an extremely righteous person just did a bad thing.
For example, when Abraham destroyed the idols, broke them into pieces. It’s so good, it looks bad. Breaking things looks like a bad thing. Well, it wasn’t a bad thing, because it was not property damage. Those people who built those idols did not claim that those idols belong to them, that the idols are their property. They claimed that they belong to the idols. So, they did not consider them property. So, when Abraham broke them into pieces, he was not doing property damage. Property damage is prohibited in the Quran, definitely, but the idols were not property. You can not own the statues by whom you claim to be owned. So, any physical idols built by humans can not be considered property. They can not claim to own what they claim owns them. So, at the moment when they worshiped the statues, they did not consider them property anymore, and so Abraham had the legal right to destroy what belongs to no one. Had those statues been simple property, like some statues today which are not worshiped, Abraham would not have the right to destroy them, but the people of Abraham did not just build the statues, they worshiped them, and by that very act, they declared them not to be their property anymore, at which point the statues either had the power to protect themselves, or Abraham destroyed them, and because he did, that proved that they did not have the power to protect themselves. But, you can see how easy it is to misunderstand Abraham as a property destroyer. This deed was so off-the-charts good, it made no sense to them, so it looked bad to them.
Or in the case of Mary. When she gave birth to Jesus, the Quran says that when she came to her family, carrying him, they said, “O Mary, you have committed something that is totally unexpected.” And the key word here is “totally unexpected” – beyond the expectations of the society. Similar to when an athlete is so good, he or she breaks a record by so much, that they start to suspect that he was taking performance enhancing drugs. In a lot of cases they do, but once in a while, the athlete is simply exceptional. Or when a villager goes to a big city for the first time, and the villagers are used to long greetings and being nice to anyone whom they meet, because they don’t meet people often, so when they travel to the city, and they are nice to the first people they meet, the city people become suspicious. What does he want? Why is he so nice to me? What are his true intentions? Once in a while, maybe someone is just being nice; exceptional in a large city, but not impossible. Something similar happens with messengers. To most people, because they don’t recognize the message, they will have to rely on judging the messenger’s intentions or character. “Why is he doing this? What does he want out of this, and things like that?”
Or when Joseph told his dream to his brothers: They probably were used to their father being a prophet, which was acceptable to them, because he was old, and they got used to it over a long time, “but Joseph, this little guy? This is beyond expectations.”
So, once in a while when someone does a very righteous deed, people will question his intentions. Of course, these days, this situation happens much more rarely then in the past, because the differences between extremely righteous people and extremely evil people are much smaller today.
But, it is part of God’s system to make extremely righteous people misunderstood by their society, because that is part of how those righteous people earn credits. However, we have to be careful how we understand this, because it is not necessarily true in the opposite direction. See, when you are extremely extremely right, the society victimizes you, but just because someone feels victimized, it does not make them right. A lot of people feel misunderstood or like victims, but that doesn’t make them right. People in the fringes of the society, in the edges of the society are misunderstood, and very often not because they are extremely righteous, but because of their other extreme characteristics, many kinds of extremes. They might be among the smartest, or among the least smart, or among the tallest, or among the shortest, or among the richest or among the poorest, and there are hundreds of extremes like that, and all of them are misunderstood, but those types of misunderstandings do not necessarily earn them credits, but misunderstanding people because they are too righteous, in that case, they get paid for it in the next world.
Praise be to God! There is no other god except God. Radicalism is the beliefs or actions of people who advocate thorough or complete political or social reform about a certain issue. One example of radicalism could be the “Just Stop Oil” movement. They want to completely stop the usage of oil, or petrol, or gas, because they think that it is destroying the climate, to the point where they sit and lie in traffic as a protest to stop traffic and grab the attention of the world. So, basically, they want to completely stop the usage of oil. Anyway, we are not against protecting the climate, but the “Just Stop Oil” movement is one example a radical approach.
Other radicals might be for example:
People against vaccines.
People who think that vaccines should be mandatory.
Black lives matter.
White lives matter.
People against circumcision.
People for circumcision.
In Iran for example, right now – women against hijab.
The Iranian state for mandatory hijab.
People who believe that the United States is the source of evil in the world.
People who think that United States is the bringer of freedom in the world.
And there are so many other examples of radicals. Now, unfortunately, a lot of half-submitters have become radicals about some of these issues, and subconsciously, that’s partly because they are aware that Rashad Khalifa had all the signs of a radical. He would interrupt people. He was one against many, and he had many other signs which give you the impression that he was a radical. However, what many people fail to understand is that Rashad Khalifa was a radical about one and one thing only – worshiping God alone. No one can show evidence that he was a radical against vaccines, or pro vaccines, or against white people, or for white people, or against circumcision, or for circumcision. He did not even talk about them. Even about things which he talked about, he was not a radical, unless it was about worshiping God alone. He was not a radical about any other issue except for worshiping God alone, and maybe he was half a radical about following Quran alone, and even about this he was only half radical, because he actually did use the Bible in a few circumstances, and he used Hadith for some historical purposes, but not for religious purposes. So, he was not even a full radical about the “Quran alone” idea. He was only a full radical about worshiping God alone. See, it really matters what he was a radical about. You can not use his radicalism about worshiping God alone, as an excuse to be a radical about other things.
And understanding this is very important. Let’s explain this from another perspective. We should not be against radicalism just because it is radicalism. The governments of today are against any kind of radicalism just because it radicalism, because it threatens their power. Radicalism in itself is not bad. The problem is that any person can truly be a radical about only one thing, maybe two things at the most. Because if you are a true radical about anything, it will not leave you energy, and time, and efforts, to be a true radical about something else. It’s not possible to be a radical about many things at once, because radicalism automatically implies that you are devoting most of your energy towards that cause, and if you spend most of your energy for that cause, you are left with less than half of the energy for any other cause. So, radicalism is possible only for one thing, two things at the most. Now, if you are a true strong believer, then you will be a radical about worshiping God alone, in which case it is not possible for you to be a radical about something else. And if you are a radical about anything else, that automatically implies that you are not a radical about worshiping God alone. And the Quran has something to say about those who are not radical about worshiping God alone.
In verse 72:15, it says, “As for the compromisers, they will be fuel for Gehenna.” Now, the question is, what kind of compromisers is it talking about here? Is it talking about those who reach a compromise, a middle way, about vaccines for example, or is it talking about reaching a compromise about worshiping God alone. And the answer is very clear in the following verses. This Sura does not mention vaccines at all, but just a few verses below, it talks about worshiping God alone. In verse 72:19, it says, “When GOD’s servant advocated Him alone, almost all of them banded together to oppose him.” So, this verse tells us, that it is talking about being a radical about worshiping God alone, and we never compromise about that, but compromising about other modern issues is not necessarily a bad thing.
Now, let’s take radicals against circumcision, as an example, to show why their radicalism about this issue does not make sense. So, they might tell you that about 100 babies die each year from medical complications after circumcision, which is true. (For example, the baby might suffer cardiac arrest from the sudden pain, or maybe the baby has a disease which does not allow the blood to coagulate, or something similar). The baby might have died in another case anyway, but let’s stick with this. Ok, fine, good argument. Now, let’s see how many people during your life will die from poverty? Not 100 people, not 1000, not 10,000, not 100,000, not 1,000,000, not 10,000,000, but 100,000,000 people will die from poverty during your life. So, surely, if you choose to be a radical, so you can save people, you have 1,000,000 more reasons to be a radical against poverty, then to be a radical against circumcision for example. So, now, what does it mean to be a radical against poverty? It means being a communist. Communists think that poverty should be eliminated completely. So, radicals against poverty are communists. So, you have more reasons to be a communist, than to be a radical about any other issue in life, except for worshiping God alone. So, the most excusable radicalism, after worshiping God alone, is communism, which is radicalism against poverty. But, let’s see whether the Quran allows radicalism against poverty, whether it allows communism – and, of course, being against poverty is a good thing, but let’s see whether the Quran allows us to be radical about it.
Verse 17:29 says, “You shall not keep your hand stingily tied to your neck, nor shall you foolishly open it up, lest you end up blamed and sorry.”. So, here God is teaching us not to go all the way with distributing your wealth, your money to the poor, because it’s not worth being radical about it. So, if it is not worth to be a radical against poverty, then being a radical against anything else is even less worth it. It actually just shows that you are not willing to be a full radical towards worshiping God alone.
So, yes we are radicals about worshiping God alone, and we don’t believe that it is worth being a radical about any other issue. You may be pro or against some other issues, but it’s not worth being radical about them. And of course, many of these issues have a right answer and a wrong answer, and God willing, and the Quran tells you those answers, and some of those issues actually do not have a “yes” and “no” answer. However, even if those issues have the right “yes” answer, or the right “no” answer, it’s still not worth being radical about them.
Let’s take another example – alcohol. About 10 million people will die from alcohol related causes during your lifetime. Should we go on holding protests against it? No. Should we go and hold rallies against it? No. Should we turn it into a lifelong cause? No. And even though we as submitters never drink alcohol. It’s prohibited, but are we radicals against it? No. Because, God is not a radical against it. In the Quran, we see that He says that alcohol has bad things in it and good things in it, but the bad outweighs the good. See, the Quran is not even radically against alcohol. It’s clearly prohibited, but it’s not worth being a radical against it. And alcohol is much worse than getting vaccines, much worse than not getting vaccines, much worse than using too much oil, much worse than any of those ridiculous causes for which people become radicals. And they become radicals about those issues, either because they are naive, and will pick up any cause which comes their way, or they are simply not radical about worshiping God alone, so they have to fill that void in their heart. We can choose to call them “fools” to avoid calling them “idol worshipers”, because we are not sure whether half-submitters are idol worshipers. They hate it when they are called “fools”, but it’s better that they are called fools, as God calls them in the Quran, because this at least implies that they have a chance to repent, but if we called them idol worshipers for choosing to be a radical about causes which have nothing to do with worshipping God alone, then that would mean that they are really in irreversible trouble.
So, to conclude, radicalism is bad, not because it is radicalism, but because it automatically does not leave enough space to be a true radical about worshiping God alone.
Praise be to God! There is no other god except God. In Sura 12, which deals with the story of Joseph, in the beginning of the Sura, God tells us that the story in this Sura is the best story ever in this world. Now, this is not to say that this story is more important than some of the other stories. For example, the stories of Noah, Abraham, Moses, Jesus are definitely more important and more fundamental, which is why they are mentioned more across the Quran, but the story of Joseph is more beautiful, which is why it is the only long story in the Quran which is told to us in the same Sura from beginning to the end. The others stories are told to us in the Quran in bits and pieces in different parts in the Quran, but the story of Joseph is told to us all in Sura 12 from the beginning to the end, because it is such a beautiful story that God did not want to ruin the flow of this story, which He calls the best story. So, why is this the best story from the compositional point of view. It’s because, it includes almost all genres. It has drama in it, it has action, it has soap opera, especially with the case of the woman who was tempted by the presence of Joseph, it’s a true story, it’s an epic story, it’s an adventure, from the perspective of Joseph and also his brothers, they go through quite an adventures journey. It’s a tragedy from the perspective of the mother of Joseph. She spent most of her life believing that her most beautiful son is dead, and there is a twist of the story at the end, and all good movies have a twist towards the end. It has fantasy, I consider the dream parts, fantasy. It has flashbacks like all good movies, when Joseph remembers his past with his brothers. It has forward hints through the dreams like all good movies. it’s also thriller, for example from the perspective Jacob, you can tell it as a thriller. He did not know what happened with Joseph, so we could make a thriller movie out of it from the perspective of Jacob, and how he tried to figure out whether Joseph was dead or not, and it’s a western in some ways, it happens in the desert, and there is some sort of final duel between the brothers in the end, like they do in westerns.
Now, the only genre which the story of Joseph does not include is comedy, and this is because had this story included comedy in it, it would be against verse 53:60 which says, “Are you laughing, instead of crying?” A believer never finds the Quran funny. It’s not a comedy. It’s not funny. So, except for the comedy genre, the story of Joseph includes all movie genres. And you can take the best movie story writers in the world, and they will never be able to write for you a very good story which includes all genres, because once you jump from one genre to another, it breaks the flow, but the story of Joseph jumps from genre to another genre while keeping the flow perfectly. Recently, with the latest movies, they have been able to combine two or three genres together in some movies, to make them more complete, but they can never include all genres and still keep it a good story. If they did, they would end up with this story actually, the story of Joseph. This story has a beginning, a middle, and an end, as all good stories should, unlike some of the modern movies where they leave the story unresolved. Of course, we enjoy these modern weird movies, only because we have watched too many movies before them, similar to how people enjoy cigarettes, only after they have smoked them many times before. In reality, it does not really taste good. Only after many times, you start enjoying it, after it has deformed your taste earlier. So, the modern movies start to feel good, because our taste has been deformed by the previous movies we have watched. But if someone watches a movie for the first time, the story of Joseph is the best movie he could possible watch. It’s the type of story which humans naturally enjoy. It’s not an acquired taste. We are naturally born with the taste for that type of story.
So, the story of Joseph is the best story which can be told, which is why we enjoy this Sura during the early years when we started reading the Quran. However, later on, once we know the story, we might have a tendency to just skip this story when we read the Quran. We might be like, “I know this story. Why should I read it again?” So, even the best story in the world eventually gets boring.
However, the reality is that the Quran never gets boring because it consists of two parts. The parts which eventually kind off get boring, but we forget those parts mostly, and when we read them again, they seem like new, and we are not bored much. The other parts of the Quran truly never get boring, even if you remember them from before. Even if you already memorized what you are about to read, you would still enjoy it again. After some thinking, we can realize, that these parts of the Quran which never get boring have to do with praising God, glorying God, asking God for forgiveness, asking God for guidance. And we see in a few verses that the angles glorify and praise God, and this is forever. They did it before Adam was created, they do it now, and they will do it after God issues the final judgment. There are angles near God, whose only job is to glorify and sing His praises, forever. That’s their only job, and they never get bored. They always do it with pleasure. So, taking this into consideration, we can see that some parts of the Quran which glorify and praise God, should never feel boring, of course, if we are perfect believers. And if we think more carefully about this, we will realize that the parts of the Quran which never get boring are exactly the parts which we say in our Contact Prayers. We glorify God in our Contact Prayers, we sing his praises, we recite Sura 1, we ask him for guidance, and these things should never bore us, if we are perfect believers. So, we can think of the Contact Prayer as the part of the Quran which never gets boring, even if we lived in this world forever. Nevertheless, because we only live about 100 years in this world, the whole Quran never gets boring. All parts of the Quran are sufficiently interesting for 100 years of life, but if we lived forever, eventually some parts of the Quran, like the story of Joseph would get boring, while the parts which have to do directly with God would never get boring, never.
After all, who wants to hear for example the story of Joseph, when we will be surrounded with beautiful mates, and pure drinks, and all kinds of tasty fruits in Heaven. So, if someone comes to us in Heaven, and tells us. Would you like to hear the story of Joseph? We would probably be like, “Let us have a good time. No offense, Joseph.” However, even in heavenly circumstances, it feels right to praise God, especially because he gave us those things. So, if someone came to us in Heaven, and told us, “Would you like to praise God together”. We would be like. “Of course, it feels like exactly the right time, especially because He gave us all those things”
So, some parts of the Quran are interesting until we go to Heaven, and other parts are interesting even after we go to Heaven, and those parts have to do with thanking God, and praising God, and glorying God. Glory be to God, here and forever!
Praise be to God! There is no other god except God. There is so much misunderstanding between Christians and Muslims regarding the methods of salvation. On one side, we have the Christians who disdain the Contact Prayers so much to the point where the Quran says that when they hear the call for the Contact Prayer, they mock and ridicule it. On the other hand, we have the Muslims who are generally totally unaware of the good news in the Gospel, to the point that they think that if someone is not among the Muslims they will definitely go to Hell. And to resolve this mismatch in the understanding, it would help if we just understood the methods of salvation which are all given in the Quran, but in the Bible, Jesus gives them as a summary, all in one list. And this list is known in Christianity as the Beatitudes. Basically, in this list, Jesus identifies the groups of people who will go to Heaven, and he gives them the good news, which is where the whole book got its name from – the Gospel. The word Gospel means “good news”, and it specifically gets its name from this part which Jesus preaches, where Jesus gives the good news to specific groups of people that they will go to Heaven. Until then, the Jews thought, that only the Jews will go to Heaven, but this sermon gave a comprehensive view of all the groups that will go to heaven. So, now let’s read this part of the Gospel, which is from Mathew, chapter 5, from the begging until verse 12:
“And seeing the multitudes, he (Jesus) went up into the mountain: and when he had sat down, his disciples came unto him: and he opened his mouth and taught them, saying,
Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. (so, the first category to be saved is the poor).
Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted. (this includes the extremely lonely people, people who lost someone very close or something like that)
Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.
Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled. (when we fast, we voluntarily become part of this group)
Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy.
Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God. (the word pure here in the original language was “Zakat”, not in Greek).
Blessed are the submitters: for they shall be called sons of God. (Now, in the original language this was “Muslims”, but the Greeks translated it as “peacemakers” because they did not know what “Muslim” means before Muhammad),
Blessed are they that have been persecuted for righteousness’ sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when men shall reproach you, and persecute you, and say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake. Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven: for so they persecuted the prophets who existed before you.
Now, the categories of people who will be saved are the poor, the mourners, the meek, the hungry, the thirsty, the merciful, the pure in heart, the submitters, and the persecuted, or the ridiculed. There is no way for anyone to go to Heaven unless he or she is in one of these categories. And this supersedes religion. This supersedes everything other people might tell you about how to go to Heaven. If you are not in one of these categories, you will not go to Heaven. As you can see, all those categories involve struggle in life, which are mostly involuntary struggles, except for submission which is a voluntary struggle. So, would you rather be poor, a mourner, meek, hungry, thirsty, or a submitter? You have to be in one of these groups to go to Heaven, or a little bit of all of these, or a combination of these, but you can not go to Heaven if you are not in one of these. And this is what the Christians misunderstand. They say that they are believers, and they have accepted Jesus, but then most of them, you don’t find them in any of these groups. So, it’s not possible for them to go to Heaven, unless they belong in one of those groups. If you truly accept the word of God, God will definitely put you in one of these groups. If he chose you to go to Heaven, he will offer you submission first which includes the Contact Prayer, and if you refuse it, then he will send you to Heaven, either through poverty, or mourning, or hunger, or thirst, or struggles like that.
And the arrogant Christians like to say “I don’t do the Contact Prayers, and I’m still rich, and in good health, and not hungry, and not thirsty.” Well that’s because they will go to Hell. Had they truly accepted the word of God, God would put them in one of those groups, and the easiest group to be in is to be a submitter, then and only then, being rich and going to Heaven do not exclude on another. All the other groups are harder, and more miserable to make it to heaven.
So, yes, the Christians are right that God saves us through his word, and not through the Contact Prayers, but if we accept his word, if we believe in his word, if we believe in what he says, he 100% will put us in one of these groups. He will let us either be poor, or hungry, or thirsty, or a submitter. So, one would rather be a submitter, than hungry, which is why we should do the Contact Prayers. It is the result of accepting God’s word, and not the method of salvation itself, but it’s not possible to go to Heaven, and also do well in this world, unless you observe the Contact Prayer. It’s just not possible. This is why in the video titled “Demographics of Heaven and Hell” you can find the statement that rich Christians can never make it to Heaven. They don’t do the contact prayers, and therefore, if they are rich, they will go to Hell, and if they are terribly poor, that means that they have truly accepted God’s word, and are destined for Heaven. And this is why, it’s called “the Gospel”, because it gives good news to the poor, the struggling, and the submitters. Submitters are those who do the Contact Prayers as we do, and give the Obligatory Charity as we do. This is the definition of a submitter. Outside of that, there are other roads to salivation, but they all involve terrible suffering, which is why the Quran calls submission the best path, the best religion, because it is the path to Heaven with the least suffering.
Now, Jesus gave the good news to all people who will make it to Heaven, those who take the path of suffering, and those who take the path of submission, but who would choose the difficult path of suffering, when the easy path of submission is offered to them? So, this is why we invite people to submission, to help them go to Heaven through the easier path, with less suffering. This is the gospel, the good news. But, let’s give herein even better news to some of us – double good news: Voluntarily, if anyone of us wants, we can choose both paths. The path of suffering and the path submission, two in one. This is what Jesus chose, this is what Mohammad chose, this is what Moses chose, this is what Abraham chose, and this is what some of us will choose. Submitters and strivers, both at the same time. You don’t have to choose both. One is enough, but those who choose both paths are blessed twice, and they are among those whom the Quran calls “the elite of the elite”. For this group, there are extra rewards in Heaven.
Now, what does it mean to choose both paths? It means doing the Contact Prayer and the Obligatory Charity, of course, which is the easy path of submission, and then the difficult path of struggling involves additional striving in the cause of God, preaching, standing for justice, extra charity, helping one another, promoting the message – it’s a big part of it – being courageous at the critical points, and these critical points pass by us quite rarely and if you miss them because you lack courage at that moment, then you just miss it. You missed a great reward. The opportunity might come only once, and if you are not ready, it’s gone. And a lot of us might be eager to strive in the cause of God. You might even be disappointed that so few opportunities come across us to strive in the cause of God. But, if it is an opportunity which matters, it will always come at a moment when bravery is required, a moment which feels dangerous. That’s when it matters.
And, if you choose to go to Heaven through striving without submission, you are free to go and do it with other groups – go and do it with the Christians or the Jews, because we don’t want problems in our group. Striving without submission brings problems. The Quranists, for example, will forever have group problems. They want to strive without submission. If you choose, on the other hand, submission without striving, then you are welcome in our group, but you won’t receive any special invitations for great opportunities. If you choose to do both, submission and striving, then you are welcome in our group and you will also receive special invitations whenever opportunities to strive present themselves.
Praise be to God! There is no other god except God.
Are there aliens out there? Is there life in other planets? According to the scientists, they still don’t know. Eventually, they will be able to correctly guess scientifically before the end of the world, but what’s the point then, when the world will end anyway. Now, we as believers, if we are careful, and not bias, we can actually attain this knowledge beforehand, and once they eventually find the answer just before the end of the world, this will show to them that Alban Fejza knew what he was talking about. We can know this before scientists because we have the Quran. But the condition is that we have to use the whole Quran open-mindedly, and not only a few verses of the Quran. There are two ways we can get to this answer.
1)We can assume that there are no aliens out there, and then gradually adjust that assumption wherever new information from the Quran goes against that assumption. Or
2) We can initially assume that there are aliens out there, and gradually adjust that assumption wherever it contradicts the Quran.
Let use this second approach and reach the answer together. So, let’s initially assume that there are aliens out there. Then in verse 24:45 God tells us that he created every moving creature from water. So, this excludes the possibility that there are moving creatures out there who are not made of water. So, so far we can conclude that if there are aliens out there, they must be water-based organisms, not made of iron for example like transformer, but creatures which are more similar to us. Now, let’s estimate, how many planets in the universe would potentially be suitable for water-based organisms. It is estimated, that in total this universe contains about 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 planets. But, how many of them are potentially suitable for water-based organisms? Well, for a planet to be suitable for the creation of water-based organisms, first it has to be not too far from its star, so that water does not freeze, and not too close to its star so that water does not evaporate, just at the right distance from the star, and this is called the Goldilocks Zone. It is estimated that 1 in every 2000 planets in the universe are within the Goldilocks Zone.
The second criterion is that it should be at a usual temperature between 0 and 100 degrees celsius, and just being on the Goldilocks Zone does not guarantee this, because the planet can have excessive or insufficient internal heat from its core, or the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. And the chances that a Goldilocks Zone planet also has the appropriate surface temperature are about 1 in 100.
It also has to be at a size which is not too different from that of the earth, because a bigger size could destroy life with large weather events, and so on, and then a small planet would barely be able to hold the atmosphere. 1 in about every 100 planets is close to the size of Earth.
Of course, such planet would need to have an Ozone layer, to protect from radiation whatever life is created in there. Radiation destroys the DNA molecules, and every 1 in about 1000 planets has some kind of protective atmospheric layer.
Of course, it also needs a magnetosphere for such protection, and 1 in about every 10 planets has a relatively good magnetosphere. And the planet has to have the appropriate amount of carbon on the surface. Carbon is the building block of organisms. The difference between organic and inorganic chemistry is whether it has carbon or not. Because carbon can connect in so many ways with itself and most of the atoms in the universe, then it’s like the Lego brick of atoms, which is the only atom with sufficient different connections to enable replicable organisms. The Quran calls it, black mud, because it is the only chemical element which is black, which can be seen in the periodic table with element colors below:
Now, 1 in about 100 planets has sufficient carbon which is spread on the surface.
Another thing which would be needed in a planet to support water-based organisms is lightning, to catalyze the initial organic molecules. This is proven by the Miller-Urey experiment, which is taught in high-school. You need lightning to create the initial organic molecules from the non-organic molecules. A lot of religious people imagine God creating life in some kind of weird way like a magician. How about, he just says it in Heaven, and lightning strikes the carbonated water on earth? Understanding it scientifically does not exclude God’s involvement. Anyway, about 1 in every 100 planets has the appropriate lightning in it.
And finally, to support the creation of water-based organisms the planet must have, of course, water. About 1 in every 100 planets has water, but that’s mostly underground water, or just small pieces of ice in the poles of the planet or something, which did not evaporate and leave the planet, but the planet has to have proper bodies of water, on the surface of the planet, where light hits it for the needed photosynthesis, so, actually proper seas or lakes, or oceans are needed, and from all the planets with water, planets with proper seas are much rarer, maybe about 1 in every 1000 such planets.
So, now, we know the conditions which a planet has to fulfill to be suitable for the creation of water-based organisms, and we also know the approximate probabilities for each of those conditions. And the probability that you will find a planet which fulfills all those conditions at once, if you just multiply those numbers, you get the probability, which is 1 in 200 Quintillion, which is a number with 20 zeros. Luckily, the number of planets in the universe is 5,000 times larger than that. This means that in our whole universe, there are only 5,000 planets which fulfill all the conditions for the creation of water-based organisms, and the Quran tells us that only water based organisms exist in this world. So, from all the billion, billion, billion planets in our universe, there are only about 5,000 planets suitable for water-based organisms, but that does not automatically mean that those planets will lead to such organisms. Those conditions have to be arranged in a very specific order, with billion and billions of trials across many billions of years, to statistically get a chance to have the simplest form of an organism which has about 200,000 letters in it’s DNA. You could not have a DNA which is way more simple than that, because then it would not be able to replicate, and you can not have it more complicated, because it just wouldn’t happen in those planets. The probabilities are enormously low that such an organism would pop up by chance, because each of those letters has to be in that specific order. However, there are 5,000 planets with billions and billions of carbon and water molecules with billions and billions of seconds available in them. They have time. Planets have time, and this is the part which scientists don’t know yet. They don’t know exactly how much time is needed for such an event to occur, so let’s just guess. Let’s say that in 1 over 1000 of those habitable planets who existed for about a billion years, such a spark would happen and give rise to a water-based organism. This means that from about 1 Septillion planets in our universe, which is an enormously huge number, only 5000 of them have the conditions for organisms, and only about 5 to 10 of those planets statistically actually should have organisms in them. So, this is the statistical conclusion. Statistically, anywhere from 5 to 10 planets should have organisms in them.
Now, using the Quran we can know even more details. How many planets exactly, and what kind of organisms exist over there? And we can find all this from the Quran. Here is the evidence:
According to the Quran, only animals and humans are considered life on earth, but not plants. Plants don’t have souls, but animals and humans have souls. In the Bible, it says that blood is the seat of life, and plants don’t have blood. Animals and humans have blood, and a soul. So, Quranically, animals are alive, but trees are not life. So, according to the Quran, a tree has more in common with a stone, than with a dog. On the other hand, the modern scientific definition classifies the tree as a living thing, but not according to the Quran. According to the Quran, a dog is a living creature, while the tree and the stone are not living creatures. So, according to the Quran, a dog lives on earth, but a tree is part of the earth, which is why verse 22:63 says that God turns the earth green, which means that grass, as a plant, is considered part of the earth, not a living creature on earth, but it is considered as earth changing shape and color, becoming grass, and there are many other verses in the Quran which support the idea that plants are not living creatures.
Now, to merge the scientific and Quranic definition of life, we should use the word “sentient organisms”. Sentient means something which feels. Animals have feelings, but trees don’t have feelings, and this has to do with the soul, but now you know the distinction, only what scientists call sentient beings are what the Quran calls living beings. All living beings, or so called sentient beings according to scientists, have positive reinforcing senses or feelings, and negative repelling senses or feelings. God tells us in the Quran that he is not unjust to any soul. This means that no soul would ever experience a negative feeling, unless it deserves it, and no soul would deserve it, unless he became part of Satan’s trial, and in the Quran God tells us that only earth was given to Satan as a trial, in verse 2:30, not the other planets. This means that since negative feelings can be experienced by God’s creatures only on Earth, and all animals and humans have negative feelings, that means that there must be animals and human beings only on earth. But, this does not exclude the possibility that there are plants on other planets, and we already calculated it statistically that there most likely are organisms, therefore only plants, in about 5 to 10 planets in our universe. In fact, the Quran tells us exactly that there are 7 planets in the whole universe which have plants in them. Verse 65:12 says that God created seven universes and the same number of earths – the same number of earths like it. Now, had those 6 other planets not been with plants, they would not be like earth, but in the Arabic Quran it says like the earth, and because the Arabic Quran considers plants to be part of the earth, it means that those 6 other planets must contain plants to be considered like the earth. And they also have all the other things like the earth, rivers, and seas, and an atmosphere, and mountains, but not animals and humans. So, technically, if we use the Quranic definition of life, there is no life in other planets in the universe, but if we use the scientific definition of life, then yes there is life in 6 other planets, but only plants, without animals or humans or things which resemble them. The question is, “Why so?” Well, the purpose is to show that God started the creation at least three times from scratch. On earth he created animals from scratch, separately from the plants, and then they evolved, and then finally he created the human separately, from scratch, from earth. So, because, in other planets plants never evolved into animals, but only into other plants, this will prove on the day of judgment that God was involved to separately create the animals on earth. So, Darwinian evolution can be considered as partly true. The dog and the tiger are distant cousins from a common very distant ancestor, but the trees and the dogs are not cousins. They have separate ancestors. So, there are at least three evolutionary trees on earth, and not just one as Darwin thought. Also, humans and animals are not cousins. So, plants were created separately, and then they evolved into many different plants, and land animals were created separately and they evolved into many different animals, and in the end humans were created separately, but they did not evolve, because the humans were created in a perfect shape. They only devolved a tiny bit by getting mixed with Neanderthals and their cousins, but anyway, the issue of evolution and creation is a topic for another article.
So, the conclusion is that there are no aliens in other planets in this universe, except plants, and those plants exist in exactly 6 other planets.
Someone might say, but what about those media reports of people seeing UFOs? Well, most of those claims are made by people who were on drugs at that time. A few of those claims are made by narcissists who want attention, and this can be noticed because whenever a popular movie with UFOs comes out, the number of people who claim to have seen UFOs increases, because they get motivated by the movie to become famous and things like that. And there also rare cases of people who truly see something in the sky, but those are either some kind of weather phenomena, or more likely secret weapons tested by governments. For example, Russia might want to develop a new secret military airplane which is not detected by US radar, but they don’t know how good is the US military radar detection. So, they will send a spy to the US to test it. He will fly a drone with similar stealth capabilities to the potential airplane prototype, and he will mask it in some kind of unrecognizable shape so that people don’t know for sure what they saw. The purpose would be to fly it, and see if the US military will detect it. If they don’t, then Russia knows that they should go ahead to build the airplane with similar stealth capabilities and things like that. So, most of these cases are just militaries testing one another’s capabilities, and things like that. And then someone while hiking might see it, and tell the media, and the media will label it as a UFO, which simply means Unidentified Flying Object. It doesn’t mean that aliens visited us. It just means that the media were not able to identify what it was that the person claimed to see, but it wasn’t aliens, because aliens don’t exist, except for plants, and of course the angels and demons, jinn, they exist in other dimensions outside of this universe, but no one who has lived after Muhammad has ever seen an angel or a demon, while still being alive, but that’s another issue which can be proven with other verses of the Quran.
Praise be to God! There is no other god except God. Verses 23 and 24 of Chapter 18 of the Arabic Quran tell us that we should not say that we will do anything TOMORROW without saying “God willing.” Now, the question is, does this commandment apply only for tomorrow, or also for any other day after tomorrow? It turns out, that this word, which we translate as tomorrow, in the Arabic Quran, it is mentioned, and therefore defined in other verses, from which we can deduce that it refers to any day in the future. For example, verse 54:26 says that the disbelievers will find out tomorrow (same word) who the flagrant liar is. Obviously, in this verse, the word “tomorrow” refers to the distant future, when the Day of Judgment happens.
Again in verse 59:18, God says “O you who believe, you shall reverence GOD, and let every soul examine what it has sent ahead for TOMORROW…” Again, here we see that this same word in Arabic is used with a very wide definition, referring to the future, any day in the future.
So, this means that we should say “God willing”, whenever we say that we will do something in the future, whether it is tomorrow, or the day after it, or any other day after it.
Now, the question is, “What about today?” Does this commandment apply to things we will do today, let’s say, two hours from now? Well, logically, it definitely makes sense that we should say, “God willing”. However, it’s interesting that we find examples in the Quran about believers from the past who did not say “God willing” when they were about to do something in the future, if it was within the day, within today, with the same day when they said it.
For example, verse 27:20 says, “He, Solomon, inspected the birds, and noted: “Why do I not see the hoopoe? Why is he missing? I WILL punish him severely or sacrifice him, unless he gives me a good excuse?” See, Solomon said, “I will”, but did not even say, “God willing” and we can know that he was talking about the future in that same day because then the next verse says, “He did not wait for long, (and the hoopoe said…”. So, he was talking about the same day.
Here is another example: In verse 12:97, the sons of Jacob say, “Our father, pray for our forgiveness, we were wrong indeed, and Jacob says, “I WILL implore my Lord to forgive you.” He did not say, “God willing.” He intended to do it very soon on that same day.
Another example: In verse 18:60 Moses says to his servant, “I WILL not rest until I reach the point where the two waters meet, or until I am extremely tired.” No “God willing”. He was doing it on the same day.
Another example: In verse 18:78, God’s servant, whom God had sent to teach Moses says to Moses, “Now we have to part company. But I WILL explain to you everything you could not stand.” and he did not say, “God willing”.
The question is “Why?” Well, in the past, they did not have busy lives like today, despite what people think. Business has changed from the time of Adam when he did not need to work to survive gradually to the last generation where they will have to be almost constantly working to survive. Now, given that the people of the past did not have many interruptions in their daily routine, it was almost completely unlikely that what they said they would do during the day, it would not get done, provided that when they said it they knew that they have all the means and capabilities, and the will to do it, provided that they really meant it, and knew that they can do it. Now, why would God leave these examples where righteous people don’t say God willing, when actually these days given the level of interruptions in our daily life, we are not 100% sure about what we will be able to do anyway, and therefore theoretically, the commandment to say “God willing” within the same day should apply to us anyway. Well, all these interruptions from a busy life, also imply that the person is a professional at whatever he is doing. A busy believer is a professional. If a believer is not that professional, he shouldn’t be that busy, and if a believer is busy, he should be a professional. Now, that same business which increases the need to say “God willing”, because of uncertainty, automatically implies professionalism, and when you are a professional, you actually go back to not using the word “I will” at all. And when you don’t say “I will” there is no need to say, “God willing”. For example, a professional, instead of saying, “It will rain tomorrow”, he says “The weather forecast for tomorrow is”. So, now it’s an estimate, not a promise about the future. Or instead of saying, “I will send you that document by noon.” He says, “It usually takes me about two hours to finish this type of document.” Or instead of saying, I will be there in one hour. He says, “The estimated travel time in Google maps is 1 hour”, and then, if he is early, he just sends a message, “I am already here”, or if he is late, “He says, I might be late about 10 or 20 minutes”. “I might”, not “I will” and there are so many other sophisticated ways of doing this. See, none of these cases involve saying, “I will”, and therefore none of them demand you to say “God willing”. Instead, they inform the listener about much more than just telling them your intentions, they tell the listener more sophisticated information, which is neither a full promise, and neither a vague statement of intentions which does not help at all in a business setting. See, the way, a lot of people use the word “inshallah” in the middle east, it kills professionalism, because it can mean anything, in the way they use it, it can mean anything from being 1% sure that he will do it, to 99% sure that he will do it. So, that statement does not help me at all, except creating distrust in a long term relationship with that business partner. Instead, a professional person helps you have a clear understanding about what is most likely to happen, but it also leaves a reasonable small possibility that it might not happen.
So, yes we should always say, “God willing” whenever we say that we will do something in the future, whether it is the near future today, or the distant future, but when it comes to the near future within the same day, there is at least one better way nowadays of informing the listener with more sophisticated details than simply saying, “I will do it, God willing”. See, we don’t say “God willing” to appear religious. We say it to be accurate in our statements, and if we manage to make accurate statements, without the need for the phrase, “God willing”, then that is what we do. The Quran tells us not to use God’s name in vain. We just don’t drop his name where it’s not needed. When you say, “I will” then the saying “God willing” is needed, but for things within a day, you have sufficient information to professionally arrange the sentence in such a way to where it is accurate even without saying “I will”. And I am not trying to say that we should always be vague in our statements. We should let the other person know about the most likely option, without using the words “I will”. You can use the words like “in my estimate”, or “the general expectation is”, or “I am leaning towards this” and phrases like that which inform him or her enough to understand that it’s not a direct promise that something will happen in the future, but it also informs him or her enough so they can lean more towards one way rather than another. Or when we do the Contact Prayer, we don’t say, “I will do the Noon Contact Prayer”, we say, “I intend to do the Noon Contact Prayer”. See, it’s a more sophisticated statement, which circumvents the need to use the words “I will”, and when we don’t use the words “I will” there is also no need to say “God willing” to make it more accurate.
Also, there are cases where statements which use the word “will” about the future, do not need the phrase “God willing” at all, and these are statements which are guaranteed directly in the Quran. For example, we don’t say, “Believers will go to heaven, God willing.” The statement “Believers will go to heaven” is already accurate enough, without the need to add the phrase “God willing.” God has already willed that believers will go to heaven. It’s a sure thing about the future. Whether a particular person is truly a believer or not, that’s another issue, but all believer will go to heaven, no matter what, and there is no need to add “God willing” to it. This is why predictions by prophets about the future, and my predictions which I extract directly from the Quran, they don’t have the phrase “God willing” in them. God has already willed them, but I use the phrase “God willing” a lot in other daily life circumstances, usually outside of specific professional settings. The most important thing is that what we say should be true. If we have to use the phrase, “if God wills” to make a statement true, then that is what we do, and if the statement is already true, without saying “if God wills”, then that is what we say.
Praise be to God! There is no other god except God. As you know, we as submitters consider four religious rituals to be obligatory:
1) The Contact Prayer (which in itself includes the Shahada, of course)
2) Obligatory Charity,
3) Fasting, and
4) Hajj Pilgrimage.
Now, what about the children of submitters? What are the requirements for them? What should submitters expect from their children. What should the general reasonable expectations be for the children of submitters? And before we go further, let’s first explain what we mean by general reasonable expectations. For example, the general reasonable expectation is that you should not make a phone call during late night, because the person might be sleeping. However, this is not a Quranic rule, and there are cases where it’s ok to call someone during the night, but the general reasonable expectation is not to do it. Or if you go out at 1 am, the general reasonable expectation in most of the towns in the world is that almost all the shops will be closed. Now, there might not be even a rule which stops that, but it just happens due to other reasons that most of the shops, if not all of them, are closed during the night. So, in a similar way, when we talk about general reasonable expectations about the religious duties for children of submitters, we are not talking about direct Quranic rules, but a large combination of other Quranic rules, which generally lead to these expectations about the children of submitters. And God willing, we will go over those Quranic rules in other videos, so we can understand the root rules of these expectations, but that will take a lot of videos. So, in this video let’s sort of just give a packaged version of these general reasonable expectations, so you can use it as an approximate map. Now, here are the general reasonable expectations for children of submitters. Let’s go over the summary first, before we go into the details:
1) Until the age of 12, until the start of puberty, children are only exposed to religious duties without any requirements.
2) From the age of 12 until the age of 18, children are expected to always join you in religious duties, to keep the peace within the family, but they are not expected to do anything on their own when you are not there, and also they are not expected to engage in organized religion.
3) From the age of 18, they are expected to fulfill all their religious duties on their own, and also to become part of organized religion.
Now, let’s explain what we mean more specifically with this. So, until the age of 12 the children are exposed to the Contact Prayers, and they might initially join you as play, and then maybe they can understand it as some sort of family activity which the adults just do and during that time it is better just join them. However, ablution is not needed for them, for the children. They are not really that impure, even when they don’t have ablution. And also, if they join the contact prayer, they are not really doing the contact prayer. They are just imitating the parent. They are participating in a family ritual, not necessarily in a religious ritual. But it might make sense to encourage them to do it, for managerial reasons, so they are distracted from doing something dangerous, especially because they know that you are not watching them at that time. So, until 12, they are only exposed to religion, but no religious duties are required of them, and if they join you in the contact prayer, they can do so without ablution. But also, it is important not to stop them from religious duties, by belittling them, keeping them in their shell away from religion, by telling them, “you still don’t understand”, and things like that. There is a verse in the Bible where Jesus tells the people, “Let the little children come to me”, meaning let them hear the word of God. Don’t intentionally keep them away from the word of God. So, you just expose them to religion without expectations of what they should do, and what they should and should not understand.
Now, when they reach the age of 12, you as a parent teach them how to perform ablution. And then, you tell them that whenever they hear your call to prayer, they should get up, perform ablution, and join you in whatever movement you are doing. They don’t even need to learn the words. They just know that they should do what you do. You bow, they bow. You prostrate, they prostrate. You stand up, they stand up. But, you expect this only as a common prayer, not as an expectation of an individual prayer which they can or should do themselves. For example, let’s say you come from work, and you find your child at home, and the afternoon prayer time has already started an hour ago. You should not ask them, if they did the prayer. The Quran tells us not to spy on the people. So, you assume that since the prayer time started earlier, you must assume that they did the prayer already. You don’t ask them, if they did it. You must assume that they did. So, in this case when you start doing the afternoon prayer, you don’t make the call for prayer, and they don’t join you, because you have taught them that they should join you only when they hear the call for prayer from you. Otherwise, you don’t manage, or double check whether they are doing it alone at other times. So, now let’s say that the evening prayer starts, and they are still there, you definitely see that they did not do the evening prayer, because they were with you from the beginning of the evening time, so now you make the call for prayer, and as soon as they hear it, they should go and do ablution, and join you in prayer. So, your child who is above 12 should know that when you make the call for the prayer, he or she should definitely join you with ablution, but if you don’t make the call for the prayer, he should not join you.
You wait for them to do ablution and join you, after you make the call and before you start the prayer. If they don’t, you demand, talk, insist. Try the nice approaches without begging, and the harsh approaches without violence. If they resist, there should be non-violent repercussions, definitely. In the past, even violent repercussions were allowed, and we are not stopping them because they are wrong, but because they don’t work. See, parenting is not only an issue of issuing judgments to your child, deciding what is wrong and what is not wrong, but also it’s a management issue, deciding what works and what doesn’t work. And violent repercussions just don’t work today, because violence has been outsourced to the police. And violence really doesn’t work in the long run, anyway. Anyway, this means that you have to take more time and make more efforts to use other repercussions, if your child above 12 resists joining you in the Contact Prayer after you make the call for the Contact Prayer. Repercussions can be financial, maybe not give them the ipad, or things like that. And it’s really a management issue. And by the way, if both parents are submitters, and the child has no mental handicap, we should not accept the excuse that the child simply does not listen. If you can train a dog to catch a toy when you throw it, you can also train a child to bow down when you bow down, and prostrate when you prostrate. If you can train a dog to respond when you call their name, you can also train a child to respond when they hear your call to prayer. Also, if you can find a way to make a child do his or her homework, they you can also find a way to make your child bow down when you bow down and prostrate when you prostrate. This doesn’t have to be a religious issue. It’s an issue of training your child. You don’t discuss what your child believes. They should just be trained what the response should be when they hear your call to prayer.
Now, what if the other parent is not submitter? Well, in this case, when you are with your child during the whole Contact Prayer time, you should try to make your child bow down when you bow down and prostrate when you prostrate, but in this case there can be cases when that might not work, depending on how much the other parent is influencing the child against it. This is a very big reason why the Quran says that marrying a submitter is much better than marrying a non-submitter even if you like the non-submitter more. So, it’s especially because it prevents any possibility of sending all your efforts with your children to waste. So, if the other parent is not a submitter, it might happen that your efforts – and you should make full efforts anyway – but it might happen that they go to waste, and they don’t work, because the other parent might have more influence. Now, in this case there is financial atonement for this, which means that you should atone for your insufficient management. You will be rewarded for your efforts in the next world, but you should pay for your insufficient management here, and that is explained elsewhere. And it’s not necessarily an issue of right and wrong, because ultimately you are only responsible for your own soul, but it’s an issue of management vs. insufficient management.
So, these should be our general reasonable expectations for our children from the age of 12 until 18, in relation to the Contact Prayers. And the same with fasting. Children should generally be expected to start fasting at the age of 12. So, when Ramadan, or the fasting time comes, and your children are 12, you just don’t cook for them during the day, even if they are not fasting, and then when the time for breaking the fast comes, you make sure that they have a nice healthy meal to eat, and they will adjust their behavior to that. You should try to use any non-violent means to make them fast when the month of fasting comes, if they are over 12. And actually, children at this age see fasting as an interesting way to challenge themselves, to see how much they have grown up.
Now, regarding Hajj: We should not expect that you take children under 12 to Hajj. It’s just an unnecessary complication, and they will not value it, and it’s not that easy to guarantee their safety, and they will not know what they are doing. If they are between 12 and 18, and you have definitely decided to go to Hajj during that time, then you may take them or you may go alone. Either way has its benefits.
Now, regarding Obligatory Charity: The laws in today’s democratic countries limit ownership of anything of value only to people who are above 18, and this means that Obligatory Charity, as a result, is limited only to people above 18, because people below 18 can not be the legal owners of anything anyway, in today’s circumstances. This is why we allow only people over 18 to join us in Organized Religious Rituals. Public Obligatory Charity is an Organized Religious Ritual.
The other Organized Religious Ritual is the Friday Prayer, and this again only becomes obligatory after the age of 18. The Quran says to leave work, and join the Friday Prayer, so the requirement for the Friday Prayer is only for people of working age, and only people over 18 are allowed to work in today’s environment. Children below 18 may listen to the sermons, but only in the presence of their parent, and if their parent wishes to expose them to it, but if they don’t, it’s fine. It’s not obligatory for children anyway. If the parent decides to just paraphrases what he or she learned, and tells it to his or her child in a shortened version, that is also fine.
So, to summarize, no religious rituals should be expected from our children before 12, but they are simply exposed to that religious environment. From 12 until 18, we should expect them to do the Contact Prayer and Fasting, but we should expect that only when they are with us. Hajj Pilgrimage is optional during that age. And Obligatory Charity and Friday Sermon (the organized part of Submission) becomes obligatory at the age of 18. And until the age of 18, you carry the responsibility for what your child does. If he does what he should do. It’s your credit. If he doesn’t do what he is supposed to do, then it’s your fault. God will count it as a good deed or a bad deed for you, not for your child until he or she reaches the age of 18. And in case the other parent of the child is not a submitter, and their bigger influence makes it impossible for you to realize your expectations about your child, then you should atone for your life mismanagement, which is explained elsewhere.
And finally, here is something even more important. Never let your child bully or pressure you into changing your religion. Verse 30:28 says “God cites for you herein an example from among yourselves: Do you ever elevate your servants (your dependent children in this case) or subordinates to the level where they rival you, and to the point that you pay them as much allegiance as is being paid to you? We thus explain the revelations for people who understand.”
