Predestination in Islam
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Abdu Murray:
That’s the holy books. That of course is that limited predestination. Now, much like the debate within Christianity, there’s a debate within Islam. There are those who believe that God predetermines literally everything. The thoughts you have in your head, whether you’re going to believe in Him or not, whether you’re going to be sitting in these chairs right now or not. He predetermines it all, sets it into motion because He is utterly sovereign and nothing happens without His directive will. And there are others who say that God has a permissive will. He allows bad things to happen or good things to happen, but doesn’t always direct those things. But many, many Muslims, the majority of whom are called Sunnis, there’s the Sunni and Shiites, and I can get into that maybe at the open forum today, or even during some questions if we have some time.
I was raised as a Shiite, by the way, a minority sect of Islam. But the Sunnis typically rely heavily on this idea of predestination, that God wills your belief. So He could make you an apostate. You could leave Islam, and God made it happen. And therefore you should be killed and sent to hell and all these things, because God decides you’re the one, you get to go to hell. He would cause your apostasy. Other Muslims believe, no, you get to choose. God has a lot of directive will in the world, but you get to choose whether or not you’re a Muslim or not, and whether or not you obey God. That’s hotly debated in Muslim circles. Very hotly debated. But all of them believe in a day of judgment, an important part of the entire thing. This is what keeps Muslims in line, so to speak, is that your good deeds and your bad deeds are recorded.
There’s two angels. Everyone’s assigned two angels. One who records your good and one who records your bad deeds. And those are kept as a strict account. And on the day of judgment, you go before God and you are weighed on a heavenly scale. And your sins and your good deeds are weighed on a heavenly scale. And if your good outweighs your bad, you go to heaven. You get your paper handed to you in your right hand. If your bad outweighs your good, you get your papers handed to you in your left hand, and you go to hell. And hell is horrible in Islam. It’s extraordinarily graphic in Islam. Your skin is burned off, just to grow back so it could be burned off again. Animals eat at you all the time. You drink boiling water all the time. And that’s your only means of relief. It’s just really horrible. It’s quite horrible.
And heaven is considered quite sensual actually. There’s fruit dripping from trees, and there’s rivers of wine, which is interesting because Muslims can’t drink wine in this life, but there’s rivers of wine in the hereafter. And men get the 70 virgins. Women, I don’t know what you get. It doesn’t say, but there you go. So it’s very sensual. And you think about it. Think about what you’re saying. Lush gardens of couches with plush pillows and rivers of wine and fruit everywhere. And you’re telling this to Arabians. It sounds attractive, like something you’d want to sign up for. So you can see it. But your sins are … it’s a works-based system when it comes down to it. Now, many Muslims will tell you we have to earn God’s mercy. God’s mercy is important. He is the merciful one. We’re all sinners in need of some kind of mercy. Not a savior. They don’t believe in a savior figure. They can save themselves, but they can get to a point where they do enough good works to earn God’s mercy.
Which of course is just oxymoronic. You can’t earn mercy. I mean, mercy is that what you don’t deserve, but earning is that which you do deserve. So you can’t actually earn mercy. So it’s a problem. And I saw this as a Muslim. I began to see this problem that, “How am I going to earn God’s mercy? How is this?” Because the Qur’an says, “God is oft forgiving, most merciful.” I think His most common name, actually, is merciful in the Qur’an. But almost every time the Qur’an mentions His mercy, He’s merciful toward those who do good things, who take care of widows and orphans and give to charity and obey Him and pray enough times and all these things. So it’s very, very skewed. Those are the six fundamental beliefs. But they’re expressed in what are called the five pillars. The five pillars of Islam are that which makes a Muslim a good Muslim. Those are the five pillars. These are the practices of Islam.
Now, every Muslim believes that what I just said before if they’re an actual, real Muslim, but not every Muslim practices these five pillars. In fact, most don’t. Most don’t practice all five. Some practice some and not others. So what are they? The first one is called the Shahada, or the Islamic Creed. The Shahada is simply a statement, “I testify that there is no God but the one God, and Muhammad is His prophet.” If you say that out loud to more than one person, you are now a Muslim. That’s it. You are a Muslim. That’s all you need. That’s the Shahada. So you have to say that. In fact many people, when their babies are born, will whisper the Shahada into their ear, because they think that that makes them a Muslim too, if it’s whispered in their ear and the baby sort of just hears the vibrations of the sound, that makes them a Muslim as well. Because they’re terrified if the baby dies before he’s a Muslim, or she’s a Muslim, who knows what’s going to happen?
The second one is Salat, or the prayers. Muslims are committed to pray five times per day very ritualistically. In other words, you have to get a rug out, and it sanctifies a space for you and God. It’s a prayer rug. And they have to stand, bow, sit, prostrate, put their hands by their heads, do all these things at certain times during the prayer. And it’s the same over and over again, with slight differences in the number of repetitions at certain times. They pray five times a day, in the morning, in the noon, in the afternoon, late evening, and of course at night. They pray these five times a day. They have to face Mecca when they do it. It’s called the Qibla, Q-I-B-L-A. It’s the direction a Muslim faces. So during these five times during the day Muslims all over the world are facing Mecca in their prayers because Mecca is considered sort of the spiritual hub of all of humanity.
Before you pray, you’ve got to wash yourself. You have to wash yourself ritualistically. It’s called Wudhu. You have to go to a washroom and wash from your elbows to the tips of your fingers, from your knees down to the bottoms of your feet, and your face. And if you don’t have water you can use sand to do that, to wipe off any dirt or grime. And then you’re clean enough to come before God, which I think is interesting all by itself. Thinking about the fact that you have to clean up before you can come to the God who makes you clean. This seems like a terrible thing to have to live, with this idea that I’m not even clean enough to confess my sins before God and to get cleaned by Him. I’ve got to prove myself to Him even when I’m supplicating in prayer. Those prayers are very ritualistic. They say the same thing over and over again, largely, and face Mecca. And five times per day.
The communal prayers are on Fridays. A lot of Muslims will just stop what they’re doing. They go to the noon prayer. They’ll stop what they’re doing all over the Muslim world and just leave their businesses or school or whatever. They go to the mosque. They hear a little sermonette, and they go back to work. On Fridays. Because that’s sort of like their … not a Sabbath because they don’t rest. But it’s like their important day for prayers.
The next one’s called Zakat, or almsgiving. Every Muslim is commanded to give at least 2.5% of his gross income, or her gross income, to charities, usually Islamic charities. Like they don’t give to the United Way or whatever. They give to Islamic charities, if they can do that. Giving to a poor person that you see on the side of the road is considered Zakat. You do that. You calculate about 2.5% of your income. Shiites actually give more. They’re more generous. I don’t know why. But they give a little more than the Sunnis do. Or are commanded to, I should say. Give a little more than the Sunnis. That’s another important part of Islam.
And then there’s the fasting. It’s called Sawm, or fasting. Now this is important, this just happened. Muslims all over the world are commanded to fast for 30 straight days during the month of Ramadan. Ramadan is the name of a month. Now that just ended. How many of you have heard about Ramadan? You know what Ramadan is? Oh, look at you guys. All right. My guess is a lot of this is review. But anyway, Ramadan just happened. Ramadan is a 30 day period. It’s the month in which Muslims claim the Qur’an was revealed to Muhammad. So it’s the most important month of the Muslim calendar. During that month, from sunrise to sunset, a Muslim can’t eat or drink anything at all. Not water, nothing. If you smoke, you got to stop smoking for that month. You have to refrain from sexual behavior during that month from sunrise to sunset. So as long as there’s light outside, you can’t eat or drink or do anything [inaudible 00:08:47] gratifying.
It’s a way to get yourself spiritually right with God. It’s a way to identify with the poor, and all these things. So think about that. Now it’s interesting, Ramadan is a lunar month. The calendar in Islam is a lunar calendar, which means that it’s different than our solar calendar, so it moves 11 days back every year, which means that sometimes it’s in December. So the sun rises at 08:30 and it sets at 16:30. So you don’t have to eat or drink anything for a pretty short period of time. But sometimes, like recently, it’s in July. So think about that. You’re a Saudi Arabian. You can’t drink anything, nothing, from 05:30 in the morning until about 21:00 at night. Nothing. It’s pretty tough, actually. I used to do that. I remember doing that. It was tough. So that’s how they fast. But every night, every night it’s called the iftar. Iftar is when they break the fast. Iftar is fantastic. Oh my goodness, it’s awesome. Holy cow.
Honestly, if there’s one reason for you to do Muslim evangelism, it’s the food. It’s just a super perk. Muslims are very hospitable. You go to a Muslim home, well Arabs in general, people from the East are just this way. You go to their home and they just start to open up the store houses and shower you with fruit and food and gifts. Hospitality is the cardinal virtue. So like I said, if you need an incentive to start talking to your Muslim friends, being well-fed is a good one. What’s interesting is, in the month of Ramadan, more food is consumed during that month than any other month of the year. They eat more food, not less. More.
And at the end is this big holiday called Eid al-Fitr. It’s the breaking of the fast, the ending of the whole thing. After the last day of fasting, they go crazy with the food. And sometimes they’ll slaughter an animal and they’ll sacrifice an animal, and then they’ll give the meat to the poor and all this stuff. It’s fantastic. There’s tons of calories. It’s just wonderful. But it is an important spiritual discipline. Muslims are very attuned at this point to spiritual things. They’re very open to discussions at this point during Ramadan. It’s very important. If you want to talk to a Muslim about spiritual things, they are very attuned to it. They ask for forgiveness constantly during Ramadan, because they’re trying to spiritually cleanse themselves.
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