At least one child aged five or under is expelled from school every week and dozens more are suspended as bad behaviour among pupils soars. Official Government figures released under the Freedom of Information Act show that increasing numbers of children are being barred from primary school for offences as serious as sexual assault, theft, racism and even drug dealing.
In an alarming disclosure, it is revealed that 230 pupils are suspended and six are permanently excluded from primary schools in England every day during term time.
In the reception year alone, 60 pupils aged four or five were expelled in just 12 months - a three-fold increase compared to year earlier. A further 960 - or five a day - were suspended.
The findings will fuel concerns that bad behaviour among teenagers is increasingly trickling down to the very youngest children. Teachers claim that many pupils arrive at school without any sense of respect for adults as parents fail to impose any discipline in the home. advertisement
Last week, the National Union of Teachers, Britain's biggest teaching union, voted to walk out of the classroom if pupils who attack staff are allowed to remain in school. One teacher from Halifax warned that in the last 12 months colleagues had been 'bitten, thumped, kicked and spat on' by children in primary schools.
According to the Department for Education and Skills, 43,720 pupils were temporarily excluded from primary schools in 2004/5 - the latest available figures - an increase of 2,420 in a year. A further 1,090 pupils were permanently excluded, down on 1,270 a year earlier.
Worryingly, a significant number of pupils suspended from school had been punished for serious offences, such as sexual attacks on fellow pupils and teachers.
In total, 330 pupils were suspended for racism, which includes taunting, swearing, bullying or graffiti with a racist element.
A further 310 pupils were sent home from school for sexual misconduct, which includes sexual abuse or assault of fellow pupils, lewd behaviour or sexual bullying or graffiti.
There were another 150 drug and alcohol-related incidents which relate to drug dealing, the possession of illegal drugs, smoking and alcohol abuse. But most concerns surrounded the behaviour of pupils in the reception year, which accept children as young as four.
According to the figures, 960 were suspended in 2004/5, or five for every day of term.
A survey of local authorities shows that four reception class pupils were suspended in Medway, Kent, for attacking adults, one was suspended for assaulting a fellow pupil and another for vandalism.
In the London borough of Bexley, one four-year-old was expelled for threatening and verbally abusing an adult.
In Wiltshire, four young boys were all suspended for physical attacks on classmates and in Solihull a boy and a girl were both suspended for fighting with fellow schoolchildren.
In Lancashire, one boy was suspended for bullying, nine for attacking adults, six for assaulting fellow pupils and one for persistent disruptive behaviour.
One five-year-old hit the headlines last year after becoming what was believed to be the youngest girl ever to be expelled from school. She constantly disrupted classes as well as physically and verbally attacking teachers and classmates. On one occasion, she attacked six members of staff during a severe temper tantrum at the school in Withington, Manchester.
The Association of Teachers and Lecturers warned in a report at its annual conference in Bournemouth earlier this month of "rampant" bad behaviour in classrooms. Teachers blamed a "lack of parental guidance" for a widespread lack of respect for school staff.
Steve Sinnott, general secretary of the NUT, said the increase was down to a "growing selfishness and lack of respect" in society since the 1980s.
"A small minority of parents do not teach their children respect for others and how to control their anger," he said.
"As a result some children end up being suspended as the school and parents work at trying to teach those pupils the need to respect others.
"It is very discouraging that any child ends up suspended. But it is better to disrupt the education of those 40,000 pupils to protect the education of the vast majority of the 3.5 million primary school pupils. Just one child misbehaving in a class makes it difficult for the other 29 pupils to concentrate or the teacher to carry on with the lesson."
The figures also reveal a stark difference in behaviour between the sexes, with 10 boys being suspended for every one girl at primary school.
In Telford and Wrekin, a boy in Year 1 - aged five or six - was suspended for sexual misconduct while a Year 2 pupil was suspended for a drugs and alcohol offence, the figures show.
In the London Borough of Havering, one 10-year-old boy was expelled for continual bad behaviour and bringing a knife to school.
However, Ofsted, the education watchdog, says that behaviour in primary schools has improved.
Last year, the proportion of primaries judged to have failed to deal with bad behaviour was less than half of one percent compared with 2 per cent in 1997.
Ministers say it reflects the "tough approach" that many primary schools are taking to tackle out-of-control children.
Earlier this month, teachers were given extra powers to restrain violent pupils under new laws. They explicitly state that teachers have the right to physically restrain and remove unruly pupils. They can also impose detentions and frisk children for weapons without parental permission.
A spokesman for the Department for Education and Skills said: "These new figures reflect the tough approach that many primary schools are taking to tackle bad behaviour. Parents must play a key role in cases of serious misbehaviour too, especially at this young age - we need parents working with schools, not against them."
The crisis
43,720 suspensions
1,090 exclusions
960 reception year pupils suspended
60 reception year pupils excluded
330 pupils suspended for racism
310 suspended for sexual misconduct
150 suspended for drugs and alcohol related incidents
Saturday 28 April 2007
Friday 27 April 2007
Relevance of Islam
Islam
By studying the history of humanity, it is evident that any nation builds its material achievements upon a specific intellectual foundation. This foundation sustains and advances the nation's material achievements, even in the face of severe problems or crises. On the other hand, if a nation lacked an intellectual foundation, its achievements would wither away and it would be unable to recover from any setbacks that confront it. It would lose its momentum altogether and cease to exist as a civilization. This intellectual foundation is of the utmost significance, as it serves as the basis for any civilization and provides a nation with its point of view about life, goals, methodology, and a reference for problems and issues that emerge in the course of a society. When the intellectual foundation is adopted and implemented, it engenders creativity and an effective way of thinking. The Muslim Ummah has a lengthy and rich history with the Islamic 'Aqeedah as its intellectual foundation. Today, the Muslim Ummah is living in decline, whether in the area of economics, politics, social order, government, morals, etc. It becomes important to scrutinize this set of conditions carefully so as not to mistakenly attribute these aspects as the reason for the decline. Since, this may cause us to direct our efforts away from the correct solution by addressing the symptoms rather than the root problem.This apparent state of decline did not occur in a sudden manner or due to minor problems. The Ummah abandoned Islam as its reference and intellectual basis. We began viewing Islam as a set of rituals and a historical heritage, with no relevance to life. This was a result of many factors that accumulated over many centuries. Some of which are:
1. Neglect in the Arabic language.
2. Muslims being infuenced by alien philosophies such as Greek, Hindu, and Persian. (Some Muslims in the past were influenced by such philosophies and established groups such as Al Mu'tazilah).
3. The intellectual invasion headed by missionaries in the 17th century.
4. The political invasions during the 19th century.
5. The current educational curricula in the Muslim world.
In the 4th century, the doors of Ijtihad were closed, resulting in a devastating impact upon the Muslim Ummah, especially in the long term. Closing the doors of Ijtihad stripped the Ummah from its ability to extract rules to solve newly emerging problems. The accumulation of unsolved problems resulted in the weakness in implementing Islam and caused Muslims to start doubting Islam's ability to solve contemporary problems, especially after the industrial revolution that occurred in the West. By the beginning of this century, many attempts were made or proposed to change the situation of the Muslim Ummah. These efforts focused on addressing the symptoms or resorting to other ideologies and ideas. One such effort was to make Islam relevant by viewing the Islamic Fiqh as changeable and adaptable to the changing society. This distorted understanding has led some to view dynamism of Fiqh from this perspective. So, what needs to be addressed are the mechanisms in Islam which enable it to be relevant and applicable until the Day of Judgment.
Islam And Its Relevance
Islam is relevant in the coming of the 21st century in the same manner it was in the 7th century. Human beings can form a system for life. However, such endeavors will never be free of errors, inconsistencies, and will lack relevancy for all peoples at all times. The manmade system would be able to address specific problems in time, place, and for specific people under certain conditions. However, it will never be able to solve all the problems for all humanity at all times under every condition. All of this is due to the nature of human beings who are limited in their abilities, being influenced by their own needs and surroundings. A system revealed from the Creator surpasses all of these limitations. Allah (swt) states:
“Know you not that it is Allah to whom belongs the dominion of the heavens and the earth? And besides Allah you have neither any Wali nor any helper.” (TMQ 21:107)
“And We have not sent you (Mohammed) except as a giver of glad tidings and a warner to all mankind, but most men know not.” (TMQ 34:28)
“And (remember) the Day when we shall raise up from every nation a witness against them from amongst themselves. And we shall bring you (o Mohammed) as a witness against these. And We have sent down to you the Book as an exposition of everything, a guidance, a mercy, and glad tidings for those who have submitted themselves.” (TMQ 16:89)
How is Islam Relevant.
1.Islam is relevant, since it addresses Man as a human being with his inherent needs and wants. It addresses Man's problem as they relate to him as a being with a specific nature. Islam viewed Man from a holistic perspective and addressed the needs of Man as the basis for its solution. While capitalism did not view Man from a holistic perspective. It concentrated on certain aspects of Man's needs while neglecting his other needs. For instance, in capitalism any commodity or service is considered beneficial and has to be produced as long as it satisfies a need for an individual in the society, e.g. wine, drugs, prostitution. Capitalism views the producer or provider of such services as the one who contributes towards solving the economic problem. The problem is addressed by increasing production and subsequently closing the gap between supply and demand. Increasing production to meet demand overlooks the impact of producing the material or providing certain services for society. While, in Islam certain commodities and services have no value because of their negative effect on the society.Additionally, the tool through which Capitalism guarantees the acquisition of products or services is through money. So, whoever does not possess the price of something would be deprived of it. In Islam, the well being of the individual and society at large is considered and thus one would acquire things needed either through the mechanism of price or through other mechanisms, such as Zakah or through the State's treasury.
2. Islam prescribed or specified a system for all aspects of life while leaving the technical and scientific aspects to Man. Islam left Man to pursue the most efficient technique available. One such example of this is the incident when the Prophet (saaw) in the battle of Badr chose a location for the Muslim army to encamp. One of the Sahabah asked the Prophet (saaw), "Is this the location that Allah has ordered you to choose or is it a tactical decision?" When the Prophet (saaw) said that it is a tactical decision, the Sahabi directed the Prophet (saaw)'s attention towards a more strategic location. In another example, the people inquired from the Prophet (saaw) on the method of pollinating date trees. So he (saaw) told the people to leave it up to the wind. When this method did not work and people complained to the Prophet (saaw) about it, the Prophet (saaw) replied that you know better in your daily affairs (referring to the know hows of life). On the same token, Islam encouraged us to cultivate agricultural land but left it up to Man to use the most efficient techniques available in cultivating and enhancing the quality of vegetation and fruits.
3. The nature of the text of both Qur'an and Sunnah possess the following characteristics that give them relevancy:
a) The text is viewed as a legal text, enabling the Mujtahid to derive rules for other issues not mentioned in the text based upon a valid methodology. If the text was viewed in the way the church viewed the bible (as a holy text), the scope of the text would be literal. As an example in (65:6), Allah says:"...then if they give suck to the children for you, give them their due payment..." [ 65: 6]The ayah mentions that monetary compensation should be paid for breastfeeding. However, from the text the following rules or principles can be derived:Compensation is extended to any hired employee. Also, the wage has to be defined in the contract and employees should receive their wage without any delay upon fulfilling contractual obligations.
b) The text sometimes comes in the form of general guidelines while at other times provides details. As an example in (4:29), Allah (swt) says:“O you who believe! Eat not up your property among yourselves unjustly except it be as trade amongst you, by mutual consent...”The ayah specifies that any form of trade should be conducted upon mutual agreement. So the ayah left the type of trade unrestricted. There are certain transactions excluded from the unrestricted description of trade even if it is done with mutual agreements such as transactions involving Riba.Even the ayahs addressing some issues in detail such as inheritance leave room ijtihad.
c) The text in many cases provides an Illah (legal reason) enabling the Mujtahid to extract rules for others cases sharing the same Illah. As an example in (62:9), Allah says:“O you who believe, when the call is proclaimed for the prayer on Friday, come to the remembrance of Allah and leave trade. That is better for you if you did but know.”The ayah prohibits trading when the adhan is proclaimed. Since the illah is the distraction from prayers, then any activity preventing one from the jumu'ah prayer is forbidden. It is important to note that there are specific guidelines for recognizing the illah mentioned in the text explicitly or implicitly.
d) The text in some cases could be general while in others particular. Allah says in (5:38):“Cut off the hand of the thief, male or female, as a recompense for that which they committed. A punishment by way of example, from Allah. And Allah is All Powerful, All Wise.”This ayah was revealed in response to a specific incident. But is general to be applicable upon all incidents of theft.
e) The text in some cases would include specific phrases, making the text relevant for all times. Allah say in (16:8):“And (He has created) horses, mules, and donkeys, for you to ride as an adornment. And He creates things of which you have no knowledge.”Although the ayah listed some animal as being halal to use as a means for transportation and as objects for adornment, the meaning of the ayah includes any means of transportation that could be developed which is taken from the last part of the ayah.
The Role of Ijtihad
The above mentioned points gave Islam the potential and capacity to address and solve any problem at all times. Through Ijtihad, the Mujtahid is able relate the text to the issue at hand. Ijtihad is defined as exerting one's utmost effort to extract rules from its legislative sources. From this definition, it is clear that the scholars would be able to extract rules for new problems. The process of Ijtihad is defined by specific rules, some of which are:The Mujtahid has to restrict his references to the legislative sources (Qur'an, Sunnah, Ijma' as Sahabah, Qiyas) and cannot practice ijtihad without defining legislative sources.The process itself must adhere to a specific methodology.The Mujtahid has to acquire specific knowledge that enables him to understand the text. For example, a good command of the Arabic language, Hadeeth, Tafseer, etc.The Mujtahid has to understand the issue for which the applicable rule is being sought.These requirements are needed for Ijtihad because the purpose of Ijtihad is to understand the issue and apply the Hukm Shar'ii. If this process is misunderstood, the Mujtahid may mix his personal opinion with the Hukm Shar'ii. This effort would not be the product of Hukm Shar'ii, but rather manmade law.Therefore, Ijtihad is defined as the mechanism by which the Hukm Shar'ii is reached at and is not a source. From this understanding, the meaning of ijtihad and its crucial role becomes clear. The closing of the door of ijtihad contributed significantly to the decline that happened in the Muslim Ummah. Thus, the door of ijtihad has to be reopened as part of the effort to revive the Ummah.
Misconceptions About the Relevance of Islam
Some Muslims would agree that Islam is relevant and it is not expected from any Muslim to doubt this fact. However, the relevance of Islam is distorted due to the following:
1. Viewing the Shariah and Fiqh as separate. The difference is that the Shariah is founded upon revelation whereas the Fiqh is a product of juristic interpretation and is considered as an "independent opinion." They establish the difference between Shariah and Fiqh based upon their definition of Fiqh which according to them is the knowledge of the practical rules of Shariah. While Shariah to them is a collection of revealed rules and principles. Therefore, Fiqh evolves and enables the Shariah to be relevant in the light of the changing conditions of society through Ijtihad.
2. Some view Fiqh as encompassing two aspects:a) Aspects related to the 'Ibadah (rites and rituals of worship) whereby a person received reward or punishment. All of this is based upon the text.b) Aspects related to the Mu'amalat (transactions) and other aspects based upon independent opinion.Therefore, Fiqh can be changed as long as it is not related to the Ibadah. Since the objective of Fiqh is to adapt the Shariah to fit the social change.
3. Dr. Abdul Majid Al Najjar in his book Fiqh ul Taqayun claimed that the Ahkam Shariah is abstract and a set of ideal rules and that the role of the Mujtahid is to make these rules relevant to reality. In this process, the Mujtahid would bridge the idealism of the text and the reality of the problem, thus reconciling the two. Since, the issue changes from place to place, every society or environment should have its own Fiqh applicable to the issue.
4. Some claim that the Shariah is relevant by its adaptability for gradual implementation. As an example, Islam can be implemented in a piecemeal fashion. Mohammed Ghazali in his book, Kayfa Na Ta'amalu ma'al Quran, went as far as to say that the punishment for drinking alcohol is irrelevant and should not be the concern, especially in the case of introducing Islam to the French, who are compulsive drinkers.All of these claims are supported based on following arguments:
1. Some rules of the Qur'an and Sunnah were suspended or replaced by the Sahabah because they no longer secured the benefit and the objective for which they were initially revealed.
2. The Sahabah were not bound by an elaborate methodology in Usul ul Fiqh. They took their lead directly from Qur'an and Sunnah. They exhibited liberalism and latitude in their interpretation of the Shariah.
3. The Shariah specifies details for the 'ibadah. As for the mu'amalat (temporal matters), it is mainly concerned with the exposition of basic objectives and general principles which are open to rational inquiry and often provide a starting point for further development. This understanding is used as an evidence for the adaptation and changing of Fiqh to the environment.
4. The historical emergence of Ahl ul Hadith and Ahl ul Ra'ee are used as evidences. It is claimed that Ahl ul Ra'ee were inclined to be more liberal in the use of rational and personal opinion in their development of Fiqh.
5. 'Usul ul Fiqh was developed after the Sahabah and each school introduced a new legislative source or doctrine. All of this was designed to relate the Shariah to social reality and to serve as an instrument for its adaptation to the society. They point out the following historical development of Fiqh:The Tabi'een carried on the existing legacy of the Sahabah and took it to another level, which led to Ijma'.Ahl ul Ra'ee developed Qiyas when they failed to find a text addressing an issue.The Hanafiah developed Istihsan to overcome the rigidities and irregularities of Qiyas.
6. The claim that the legislation in the Qur'an comes in two varieties: definitive and speculative. Although the Qur'an is definitive in its report and authenticity. Most of the Hadith reached us through Khabr Ahad which is speculative in authenticity and transmission. Furthermore, most of the Quran is speculative in its meaning. Therefore the Shariah remains open to interpretation and reconstruction.
7. The Maslaha is used as a Shar'ii source to prove the relevance of Islam through its adaptation to reality and reconstruction. Maslaha is determined by the 'Aql and anything which has more benefit than harm based on the 'Aql is considered Islamically legitimate. Imam Shatibi is misquoted as this being his opinion.Refuting the above mentioned claims:
1. The human being in his rational capacity is limited and is incapable of providing a system that will solve the problems of humanity. Rather, man's endeavor will always be subject to failure, prejudice, inconsistency, and contradictions. Our Creator, Allah (swt) is the sovereign. This must be kept in mind when we discuss issues related to legislation and way of life.
2. Islam is built upon an intellectual basis and gave the mind a great role. However, this role is well defined and is not absolute. When it comes to the discussion of the creation of the universe and the need for Prophethood, it should be based upon rational proof and not on blind faith. However, once the individual believes in the Qur'an and Sunnah, the wahiy then becomes the reference and consequently it redefines the role of the 'Aql. The 'Aql then, has a role in two areas:
A. The domain of Wahiy in which the 'Aql is a tool to understand the text and to undertand the reality. The Aql has no role whatsoever to pass judgment upon the text.
B. The second domain for the 'Aql is the area of science and technology. It must be understood though that this role is given to the 'Aql by Wahiy. Human beings do not acquire this role independent of revelation. The Qur'an and Sunnah are replete with evidences that prove this point:“It is not for a believer, man or woman, when Allah and His Messenger have decreed a matter, that they should have any opinion in their decision. And whoever disobeys Allah and His Messenger, he has indeed strayed in a plain error.” (TMQ 33:36)“You do not worship besides Him but only names which you have named (forged), you and your fathers, for which Allah has sent down no authority. The command is for none but Allah. He has commanded that you worship none but Him. That is the straight religion, but most men know not.” (TMQ 12:40)“Verily, those who believe and do righteous good deeds, and humble themselves before their Lord, they will be the dwellers of Paradise to dwell therein forever.” (TMQ 11:123)
3. The Prophet delivered the Message of Islam. The Qur'an was revealed in Arabic and people understood the Message because they had full command of the Arabic language which is a prerequisite for understanding the Qur'anic text. The Sahabah were pioneers whom Allah (swt) described as:The first to embrace Islam of the Muhajirun and the Ansar and also those who followed them exactly. Allah is well pleased with them as they are well pleased with Him. He has prepared for them Gardens under which rivers flow to dwell therein forever. This is the supreme success. (9:100)“...(and there is also a share in this booty) for the poor emigrants who were expelled from their homes and their property, seeking the bounty from Allah and to please Him.” (TMQ 59:8-9)“Indeed, Allah was pleased with the believers when they gave their Bay'ah to you under the tree, He knew what was in their hearts, and He sent down calmness and tranquillity upon them, and He rewarded them with a near victory.” (TMQ 48:18)The Sahabah are the people who lived with the Prophet (saaw) day and night. They are the generation that compiled the Qur'an, memorized it, preserved it, and carried it to us.“Verily It is We Who have sent down the Dhikr and surely, We will guard it.” (TMQ 15:9)This ayah testifies that what they carried to us is exactly what Allah preserved and testifies that their consensus is the truth.The legacy of the Sahabah was not created by the Tabi'een as some groups claim. The Sahabah had full command of the Arabic language and they understood the text in a natural way without the need to put down their methodology for us in writing. Therefore, labeling them as liberals is totally absurd. It is completely false to claim that the Sahabah departed from the text or even suspended the text when it no longer secured their interests or benefits. In fact, this claim is a grave accusation against the Sahabah and the texts. 'Umar did not suspend the text, neither in the examples which are quite often repeated by some scholars from the Sunnah or Sh'iah. In all examples, it is mentioned that there is a text or the whole incident is false. As an example, the claim that 'Umar suspended the share for the Muahalftu kulbuhum (person of importance whose cooperation was important) and the cutting of the hand of the thief, Shaykh Mohammed Abu Zaharah studying the text showed that 'Umar's action was in line with the text.In the case of Muahalftu kulbuhum, the ayah mentions the illah and 'Umar understood the illah not existing anymore, and thus the rule would not apply. In the second example, 'Umar did not cut the hand of the thief based on the Hadith of the Rasul (saaw) of not applying the hudud when in doubt (Tirmidhi). 'Umar, in this case found a reasonable doubt not to cut the hand in that situation. Furthermore, who is Umar to prohibit something which Allah allowed ? Would the Sahabah accept this from him knowing that a woman objected to his placing of a limit on dowry control? The fallacy of these arguements is as abvious as the fallacy of the accusation made by the Shi'a that Umar prohibited Muta' (marriage limited in time) marriage. Rather, Muta'h was prohibited by the Prophet (saaw)
4. As mentioned before, the Sahabah did not have any need to lay down Usul ul fiqh. This is the same reason why they did not have the need to lay down the rules of Arabic grammar. Both were known by them in a natural way. When we refer to the great scholars of Arabic language, such as Al Asma'ii, we never refer to them as the ones who established the rules of Arabic grammar. Rather, they are the ones who compiled the rules, just as others compiled Usul ul Fiqh. Usul ul Fiqh was practiced in a natural way. Later, the scholars began compiling its already existing rules. Furthermore, any elementary student of Usul ul Fiqh knows that Ali (ra) used to discuss issues belonging to Usul, such as Naskh (abrogation) and thus Usul was not an invention of late scholarship. It was not to be used to adapt and reconstruct the Shariah. Rather, it was laid down to direct the thinking in the process of ijtihad without which there would be chaso. It is obvious that Arabic grammar governs the syntax and speech on the same token that Usul ul Fiqh controls how a person understands the text and that this outcome is Hukm Shari, and not a manmade verdict. It is reported that 'Abd ul Rahman ibn Mahdi wrote to Imam Shaf'ee requesting from him " to write a book that includes the "methods" of understanding the Qur'an and covering how the narration should be accepted, the authority of Ijma', elaborating on issues of abrogation..." In response to this request, Imam Shaf'ee wrote his great book Ar Risala. Therefore, undermining Usul ul Fiqh means that it will be carried by the incompetent or it will be performed by those who want to mix their opinions or desires with the outcome of Hukm Shar'ii. This will be done by abandoning Usul ul Fiqh or trying to play with Usul by establishing rules to reach a predetermined conclusion.5. The classification of two schools of fiqh at the time of the Tabi'een cannot be thought of as a school of classical traditionalists versus liberal revivalist. This claim is false and implies that the Tabi'een who took from the Sahabah did not adhere to the text. Furthermore, if we go through the names of individuals belonging to the school of Madinah (Ahl ul Hadith), we find names like Malik ibn Anas who used to practice ijtihad according to Maslaha al Mursalah more than Abu Hanifa who belonged to Kufah (Ahl ul Rai). On the other hand, one find scholars such as Al Shabee and Hammad ar Rawiyah from the school of Kufah who were considered as Muhaditheen. Both schools realized what Rasul Allah (saaw) meant when he (saaw) said:“My Ummah will be divided into 70 sects. They would be those who started taking the Deen from their 'Aql.” (Al Darami)“He who adopts an opinion related to the Qur'an based on his 'Aql he will reserve for himself a place in the hellfire.” (Bukhari and Muslim)
The schools of Hadith and Ra'ee were alike in this respect. Both adhered to the text while some practiced Qiyas more than the others.6. Claiming that each school of fiqh invented a new source to serve their purpose and then presenting this claim in a chronological order, leading the reader to think that there was a process of evolution and development which should continue is false. Each Mujtahid or imam of the time believed in Allah and the Message He (swt) sent. All realized that their role is to understand the Hukm Shar'ii based upon the evidence and none of them would adopt a source based upon a preconceived judgment. Thinking otherwise would mean that those imams are not worth consideration, that none of them were objective and the whole issue of Ijtihad and Fiqh was an intellectual sport.
Therefore:
A. Ijma' as Sahabah was not invented by the Tabi'een but rather was based upon the Daleel.
B. Qiyas was not invented by Ahl ul Ra'ee, but rather based upon the Daleel.
C. Istihsan was not introduced by the Hanafiah to handle irregularities and rigidity of Qiyas as claimed by some. It was based upon an evidence viewed by some as sound while others did not view it as such.
The technical definition of Fiqh is not the knowledge of the practical rules of Shariah, since such a definition means that Shariah has two parts: practical rules and set of theories or principles. This distorted understanding leads one to the conclusion that Fiqh is the knowledge of the practical rules and as such the practical rules is a human effort based upon the theories or principles of Shariah.The definition of Fiqh in Arabic is having the knowledge of divine laws derived from the legislative sources. So, the law which is not derived from a source is not Fiqh and in this definition Shariah and Fiqh are synonyms. The linguistic meaning of Shariah means a non-exhaustive source of water. The term Shariah is used twice in Quran:“...to each among you, We have prescribed a law and a clear way” (TMQ 5:48)In this ayah the word Shariah is used to mean legislation.“Then We have put you on a plain way of (Our) commandment. So you should follow that, and not the desires of those who don't know.” (TMQ 45:18)In this ayah, the word Shariah is used to mean Islam.However, Islam consists of two parts the Aqeedah and the rules derived from it. Those rules are not independent opinion rather they are part of Islam. The understanding of the Mujtahid of the text as long as it is within the text will be considered part of Islam. It is true that this understanding could be changed or be different from one Mujtahid to another, but all of these difference have to be justified based upon the text.Assuming that there is a distinction between Fiqh and Shariah, both still cannot be viewed as a manmade endeavor. In the end, the defintion of Hukm Sharii is the address of the Legislator related to our actions.
The Mujtahid understands the text based upon a specific methodology. His understanding is considered a Hukm Sharii and is binding upon him and anyone who follows that Mujtahid without the need for Ijma. The Hukm Sharii cannot be man made and consequently the entire collection of Hukm Sharii which is Fiqh cannot be man made. The Hukm Sharii whether related to Ibadah or Mumalat or whether derived directly or understood is binding. There is a reward or punishment on both the Mumalat or Ibadah. There is no difference between Hukm Sharii related to the prayers which is Ibadah and the prerequisites of the contract which is Mumamlat. Both aspect of Fiqh related to Mumalat and Ibadah are addressed in Islam. So to claim that Islam adressed Ibadah while addressed the general principles in Mumalat means ignorance in Quran and Sunnah. Anyone who reads Quran and Sunnah will discover abundance of details related to transactions, legal system, economic system, etc. Therefore, there is no sacred area related to Ibadah while an open area related to Mumalat.8. Based on the definition of Fiqh and Hukm Shar'ii, the Usul ul Fiqh is defined as the collection of principles pertaining to the methodology for the extraction of Fiqh. The Mujtahid is the one who exhausts his efforts in thoroughly studying a problem and seeking a solution for it from the sources of the Shariah. Therefore, the Mujtahid is not the one who exercises his intellectual abilities to issue a independent verdict, and as such he is not a legislator. As mentioned earlier, the Mujtahid has to adhere to a specific methodology, which is Usul ul Fiqh and has to meet the requirements of Ijtihad (understanding the Arabic Language, the knowledge of Shar'ii disciplines, and understanding the issue).
The Mujtahid should view the Usul as the control mechanism that regulates and directs his thinking to extract the Hukm Shar'ii in a creative way. He should not view them as constraints or as a tool to adapt the Shariah, using it to justify a predetermined result.9. Claiming that most of the Qur'an and the Sunnah are speculative texts, and therefore the doors for adaptation and reconstruction are open is wrong. The Qur'an has Ayat which are Qata'ee (definite) in their meaning while others are Thanni. The word Thanni in this context means that a word would have more than one meaning and the scholar of Tafseer or Mujtahid would be required to study the text, the context, the language, the lifestyle of the Arabs at the time of revelation, and the methodology of Tafseer and Usul ul Fiqh before reaching an answer.
The translation of the word Thanni to speculative or conjectural is very misleading and implies that those texts are open for speculation or that they are nothing but conjecture. This would lead to an erroneous understanding that each person has the authority to speculate without any room for discussion or that no controls exist to insure that the understanding is based on a sound methodology.10. One of the most abused or misused term is Maslaha which is (benefit or interest). This term refers to one of the disputed sources of Hukm Shar'ii by the early 'Ulema, few of which did consider it as a valid source for Hukm Shar'ii. Those 'Ulema who considered it as a valid source, used it with many controls and restrictions:a. It should not contradict the Qur'an.b. It should not contradict the Sunnah.c. It should not contradict Ijma'.d. It should not contradict Qiyas.e. It should not undermine any other Maslaha (benefit or interest) that is more important than the one under consideration.Those who allow many things under the pretext of Maslaha did not pay any attention to this, and say that when the text no longer secures any Maslaha, it should be departed. Most of those who promote Maslaha today refer to their independent opinion in determining the Maslaha as long as it complies with the "spirit of Islam".
Such a term is very vague and misses a very important point: the text carries a specific linguistic connotation which the Shariah binds us to, otherwise there will be no use for the language at all.
The Ijtihad based on this view would be nothing more than imagination based on Maslaha.As an example of this practice of Maslaha is clearly noted when some Islamic movements accept to hold some political positions in the cabinets of some regimes in the Muslim world or in the West under the pretext of Maslaha. This contradicts the numerous texts in the Qur'an and Sunnah, such as: surah 5: 44,45, 47 and the fact that the Prophet (saaw) rejected the Quraysh offer to become a king and ruler of their system.
Claiming that Imam Shatibi adopted the Maslaha in this way is a false accusation of the Imam because Imam Shatibi himself said: "The 'Aql has no room in determining the Maslaha based on the rule of sovereignty " [Volume 2, p.219 (Al-Muwafaqat)]He further says:"If we agree that the Shariah is sent for the welfare of Humanity, then this should be according to what the Shariah prescribed and not based on their whims and desires " [volume 2 p117]He also says:"Violating the Shariah under the pretext of following the basic objectives or values of Shariah (Maqasid al Shariah) is like the one who cares about the spirit with the body and since the body without spirit is useless therefore the spirit without body is useless too."So how could an Imam like Shatibi who mentions very clearly that " the objective behind the Shariah is to liberate the individuals form his desires in order to be a true 'abd (slave) of Allah and that the legitimate Maslaha which the Shariah establishes would be considered as long as it maintains this life as a passage to the hereafter not based on the desires of the human being" P (2-25)
How could any one accuse Imam Shatibi of promoting Maslaha based on Aql?
HISTORICAL FACTORS THAT LED TO THESE MISCONCEPTIONS:
Allah (swt) has sent Islam as a comprehensive social order based on the 'Aqeedah in order to replace the status of not only Arabia but the world at large.Thus, the establishment in Makkah opposed it and this opposition was even carried out by the People of the Book. Although the opposition of the polytheists was expected, the People of the Book, were expected to either embrace it or at least adapt to it. Therefore, a struggle took place from the very beginning. In the initial stage in Makkah, the struggle was purely intellectual and ideological from the side of the Muslims while the Quraysh used all the means at their disposal, such as torture, boycott, blackmail, defamation, killing etc. He (saaw) was able to achieve the objective of the Da'wah by migrating with his (saaw) Sahabah to Madinah and establishing the Islamic State there, which symbolized the turning point in the Struggle. From that point on, the struggle was on three fronts; political, material, and intellectual. It did not take the Muslims long to be the leading nation in the world. Many new means were employed against the Muslims to weaken their status such as:- Fabricating the ahadeeth- Instigating fitnah amongst the Muslims- Political assassinations of the earlier Khulafah- Establishment of sects (e.g., Hassasineen)All of those means that were employed in the struggle were not successful in stopping the Ummah from continuing as the leading nation in the world, even though it caused a drag in the momentum of the Ummah.The Crusader war and Mongol invasions both failed to defeat the Ummah in the long run, although they were victorious in some battles and occupied portions of the Islamic state for a while. It is apparent that their material efforts failed. After the defeat of the Crusades, they started employing a new means of attack which manifested in itself in missionary and ideological warfare. The first Spanish missionary, led by Ramon Lowell started his activities on an individual basis and then by the end of the 17th century this effort had evolved into an organized activity through secret societies and missions that were staked in the heart of Muslim land. The emphasis of their campaign revolved around several points or issues:· Severing the bond between the Muslims by calling for nationalism.· Elimination of Islam as the reference point for Muslims by replacing it with another yard stick· Shaking the trust of Muslims in the Islamic system by attacking some clear Islamic solutions such as Jihad, Penal Code, Marriage, divorce, role of women etc.Throughout this continuos campaign the West was able to recruit many agents from amongst the Muslim Ummah in their efforts. Those agents were not restricted to the political arena but also to the cultural and intellectual arenas. By the 19th century, many ideas were introduced to the mindset of the Ummah such as reconstructing religious thought in Islam, the negation of the doctrine of miracles, the abrogation of jihad, the permissibility of Riba', all of those ideas were propagated under the pretext of bridging the gap between Islam and the contemporary life. Those ideas were carried out by many people such as Sir Syed Ahmad Khan, Muhammad Iqbal, Jamal Al Deen Al Afghani, Muhammad 'Abduh, and Rafa'a al Tahtawi, Rashid Rida, Taha Husayn, and 'Ali 'Abdul Raziq, most of which have maintained a close relationship with the British or French governments, either overtly or covertly. Additionally institutions were established to reorient the thinking of the people such as Aliger in India and in Egypt efforts were done to reorient Al Azhar and at times institutions were established such as Dar ul Uloom to counter Al Azhar. Zwaymer, one of the leading missionaries summarized the objective of those activities by addressing a conference for missionaries in Jerusalem, saying "If you succeed in your efforts, you will be the leading pioneers for the coming colonization". The statement of Guro, the French General who entered Damascus and Allenby the British general who entered Jerusalem is engraved in the minds of the Muslims.Guro kicked the tomb of Salah al Deen and said "Wake up Salah al Deen we are here !" Allenby said upon entering Jerusalem "Now the crusades have ended."Therefore, all of these ides which are now surfacing should not be considered independent of this historical context. All of these ideas and deviations directed the Ummah to the same result: turning away from the Wahiy as a reference, and giving the mind a role that overrides the Wahiy under the pretext of Reconstruction, Reform, Ijtihad, and a new Fiqh. Muslims will start accepting the status quo and changing Islam and the "Fatawa" will be tailored to justify this deviation. An example of this is the claim that the division in the Muslim Ummah is justified by the existence of different conditions in each country which prevent the reunification or the effort to bridge the gap between Islam and science. Today, the propagation of the misconceptions about the reform of the Shariah and the "ongoing efforts to reconstruct the Shariah" are nothing but the perpetuation of the legacy of the above mentioned persons and efforts.Such claims as society undergoing continuous social change and that the Shariah has to adapt to this social reality means that whenever a change occurs Islam has to be molded. Rather, we should view Islam as that which came to change reality so as to render it compliant with the Islamic viewpoint of life.The following are examples which will assist the reader to realize the extent of this deviant effort and the gravity of its impact:1. In Tunisia, Rashid al Ghannoushi states in his book, Huriyat al Amma in regards to a woman being a ruler: that Ahkam al Shariah in general and specifically related to the political system should not be built upon any Thanniy daleel no matter how little the Thann is in the Daleel. He says that the Shariah is not a rigid text nor has it been laid down as a final formula. Also it is not codified like any other body of law. Therefore, the room is wide open for interpretation, updating, and reform through the individual and collective Aql (ijtihad). Based upon his methodology, a woman is allowed to be a ruler.2. In Sudan, Hasan Al Turabi in his book Tajdeed Usul ul Fiqh, claims that the setup of the traditional Usul ul Fiqh does not fit our contemporary needs. He claims that we are in need for a new outlook or understanding for rules of divorce and marriage in which we will benefit from the current social sciences and will build upon our inherited Fiqh, look into Quran and Sunnah equipped with all contemporary needs, sciences, and all Islamic and comparative Fiqh experiences. After this we will find a new way to what Allah's Shariah mandates within the context of our situation.3. The Fiqh Council in North America permitted adoption of the method of astronomical calculations in determining the beginning and end of the lunar month since "it is the best way to unite the community and present it to them in a suitable manner and defending the accusation of Muslims ignoring science". Although it has been claimed that the adaptation of the Shariah to change is limited to the Mu'amalat (as they claim), it seems that they also extended it to the Ibadah.With the new definitions of marriage and family in the West and with the consistent efforts in conferences like the population and women's conferences in Cairo and in Beijing, the Muslims in the future would be subjected to "new Fatawa' to adapt with this new social reality. Some people might think that this is an exaggeration, however with `Fatawa' that say that women do not have to wear the Khimar (headcover) and permitting the women to marry non-Muslim men, it seems, that things could go beyond this.THE SOLUTIONSince Islam is from Allah and addresses the human being with his instincts and organic needs, it cannot be changed because of the following:1. The Human being does not change in either his instincts nor in his organic needs. What changes are the tools, ways, and the means that humans use in their efforts to satisfy their needs. As an example; human beings before and at the time of the Prophet (saaw) used to marry, eat, own, love, hate, travel, satisfy, worship, etc. and will continue to do so. No new instincts or organic biological need can be added. However, the means of satisfying these needs change. It is well known that Islam views any object as Halal unless there is particular Daleel that excludes a particular object (unlike the actions, all of which require a daleel for the performance or abstention). Therefore, what do we need to change Islam for ?Since Allah (swt) is the One Who created man, He is the only One who knows how man's instincts and organic needs can be satisfied. It must be kept in mind that Allah knows the changes which humanity has, is, and will go through, and thus the system He (swt) chose for us must be the perfect system without any human alteration unless we start doubting Allah (swt)'s infinite capability. We have to remember that Islam has its own mechanism, which if followed and implemented effectively will enable the Mujtahid to derive rules from the text and not to change the Shariah or alter the text or rules. That is why every generation should have at least one Mujtahid.Therefore, we need to return to the text the way it is equipped with whatever is needed for this objective. This requires for us to look to Islam as our reference and leadership. We should stop viewing Islam as a set of rituals. This requires from us to pay attention to the Arabic language to make sure it is not separated from Islam. Additionally, by establishing Islam in life and opening the door for Ijtihad with its prerequisites, Islam will be relevant.CONCLUSION:It is very obvious that any law student can propose a law that adapts to new realities in society just by adding one proposition to this law that permits changes in the system. These changes in the system would be an attempt to keep up with the so called changes in life. Humanity witnessed Marx, Hobbes, Adam Smith, James Madison, and the American Founding Fathers who introduced systems that kept undergoing many changes.If we view Islam in the same manner, then where is the uniqueness and miraculous nature of Islam. In fact, why do we need Allah (swt) if the system He (swt) provided us with ends up being changed? Why do we need Allah (swt)'s system if it is similar to Marx's or Jefferson's?These efforts to deviate the Ummah from Islam should be viewed very seriously because they amount to nothing other than the current degree of submission of the Muslim Ummah to other than Islam by replacing its label with a false Islamic one.It must be a matter of Belief that Islam is relevant in all places and all times for all people as their way of life. The emerging need is for Ijtihad to ensure that the rules are correctly extracted from the Shari'ah for new problems. This means that the doors of Ijtihad should be open but not broken.
Slavery
Slavery: Evolution
The 25th March 2007, we’ve been led to believe recently, was two hundredth anniversary of the end of the slave trade. The anniversary was celebrated with reminders of how Britain led the way in abolishing the practice through the ‘Abolition of the Slave Trade Act’ passed on 25th March 1807. But slavery was an institution that Britain fostered and grew for over three hundred years and on the back of which it expanded and maintained its empire. It was a practice it found very difficult to leave, for it was not for another century after the Slave Trade Act that slavery, in real terms, was banned. Legislation and parliamentary acts aside, many of the practices that made slavery what is was continued, often by its original perpetrators, and are still with us today.
To believe that Britain’s legal prohibition of slavery somehow ended the practice is naïve if not dangerous. The act of 1807 outlawed the slave trade but not slavery. Slavery was made illegal in 1834. But it continued in all but name: former slaves were hired by their former owners in slave-like ‘apprenticeships’. The vacuum created by emancipated slaves eventually led to the need to identify a new labour force. The replacement came in the shape of two and half million Indians who were ‘indentured’ – contracted to work on plantations – but who were treated no better than slaves were.
Indentured emigration went on until 1917, demonstrating that slavery certainly wasn’t over when we are led to believe it was. Today, the NGO ‘Free the Slaves’ believes that we have the largest number of people that has ever been in slavery at any point in world history and are being paid the lowest price that there has ever been for a slave in raw labour terms.But slavery was marked by a number of practices that have continued and still plague the world, often practiced by the same nations that claim to have brought slavery to an end.
The slave trade was built on the belief in the inferiority of those it enslaved, through which it justified appalling treatment, abandonment of rights, strict control of behaviours and practices and the consideration of people as property. These practices still exist as do the underlying beliefs and language upon which slavery was built.
For example, the belief amongst many western politicians and commentators is that the west is a civilising force; that its engagement in the world can only be for the betterment of those under the west’s tutelage. The resurgence of cultural imperialism and liberal interventionism - that the west has the right and indeed moral obligation to interfere and dictate matters for other nations - hark back to the day of the empire and are premised on the inferiority or lesser civilisational status of those it seeks to ‘correct’. It is upon this premise that the west has and continues to engage with the rest of the world.
Economically, the world remains under the grip of aggressive capitalism and western policies that dictate domestic economic policy for a large chunk of the world which often better serve the west than they do the countries themselves. The pernicious use of interest bearing loans, IMF and World Bank structural adjustment programmes, and western manipulation of markets through the use of subsidies have turned natural resource-rich countries poor. With the burden of debt, compliance to the terms of repayment, aid packages and imposed domestic programmes and polices, poverty and unemployment are driving poor countries to measures that are even more desperate. This economic situation still drives forced labour and western multinationals continue to employ workers in third world countries for a pittance and in despicable working conditions; human trafficking and sex slavery, an increasing problem in the west, also highlights the human tragedy of pressures born out of economic slavery. The irony is that the docks in east London which sent ships to colonise huge swathes of South Asia and Africa, enlisting hundreds of thousands of slaves, have now been replaced by the shining towers of global financial institutions which unleash a similar economic stranglehold.
Political slavery is the intricate and careful control of proxies through the perpetual threat of sanctions, war or abandonment, maintains a litany of western supported tyrants in the Muslim world who are unable to act independently or break away from the foreign agendas that sacrifice the progress of their own people.
These despots in turn ensure their citizenry do not challenge their master-slave relationship with the west through brutal security measures and archaic laws and political systems. Take Hosni Mubarak’s new legislation that bans parties based on religion in a country that is a huge Muslim majority. The political slavery of the Middle East continues to deny the region the ability to independently move forward, prosper and appoint representative leaderships to govern for not despite them. The victims of slavery have called for apologies and reparations.
The British, Spanish, Dutch and Portuguese have blocked an EU apology for the slave trade. The litigation that would follow would certainly be colossal, if the pay-outs from Holocaust cases are anything to go by, and may explain the west’s reluctance. Even if it were to apologise for the past, the present is still plagued by a culture born out of colonialism and slavery. While some argue that modern slavery is perpetrated through private, not governmental, bodies, it is for governments to act not remain silent over these crimes.
The challenge is not merely to seek apologies, but to redress a global political and economic situation which is likely only to entrench the debilitating situation in the non-west. Governments have underplayed this crime in a shameful way. It is easy to see how the memories of the Second World War, the holocaust, terrorist bombings are remembered year after year, ‘lest we forget’. Time has not made this crime, of genocidal proportions, any less disgraceful.
An ideological divide – Islam works against slavery.Slavery is a human problem that has existed for millennia. People were enslaved in war, by piracy and as a punitive sanction for crime. Slaves had no rights; societies did not institutionalise the rights of these people to be treated justly. When Islam came to the world, slavery was widespread yet Islam created a profound change by laying down laws defining a way of treating slaves justly as human beings as well as affording them rights that were previously unheard of. There were major encouragements to free people from slavery as well as numerous obligations in this regard. The various means through which people came to be enslaved were ended – including during the course of war. Hence, at a systemic level a series of rules came to weaken the institution of slavery, as well as rules to regulate the treatment of slaves.
For example, regarding the treatment of slaves, the Prophet Mohammed (SAW) said: “Fear Allah in regards of those whom your right hands possess. They are your brothers whom Allah placed under your hands (authority). Feed them with what you eat, clothe them with what you wear and do not impose duties upon them which will overcome them. If you so impose duties, then assist them” and moved to change the language that have previously subjugated slaves saying, “One of you should not say: My slave (abd) and my slave-girl (amati). All of you are the slaves of Allah and all of your women are the slave-girls of Allah. Rather let him say: My (ghulam) boy and my (jariyah) girl and my (fata) young boy and my (fatati) young girl.” Islam gave the slave the right to marry, divorce, study and to be a witness upon others, in a society where they had no rights.
Regarding the encouragement to free slaves, the Prophet (SAW) said: “Whichever man frees a Muslim man, Allah ta’ala will liberate for each of his organ an organ from the Fire”. Islam further obliged the freeing of slaves under certain circumstances and made the freeing of slaves an expiation for a great number of sins, such as breaking oaths, if one had killed accidentally, incorrectly breaking a fast during Ramadhan as well as many others. Furthermore, the state treasury of the Islamic state, the Bait al-Mal, dedicates a section of its funds to the freeing of slaves, from the words of Allah (SWT) in the Qur’an:
“Verily the sadaqat is only for the poor, the indigent, those who work upon it, those whose hearts are to be reconciled, for (riqab), debtors, for the way of Allah and the wayfarer, an obligation from Allah and Allah is knower wise”, the statement “and for (riqab)” referring to freeing slaves.
Islam further prohibited the enslaving of free people in a decisive way including captives of war. The Prophet Mohammed (SAW) said:
“Allah ‘azza wa jalla said: Three (persons) I will dispute with them on the Day of Judgement: A man who gave in My name then he betrayed, a man who sold a free man and ate his price, and a man who employed an employee who fulfilled for him but he did not give him his wage”.
By contrast, Capitalism embraced slavery and grew the institution. The value of profit was given a higher status than the value of human life and dignity. The slave trade bred a racism that permeates till today. Never before, whether in Asia, China, Africa, the Middle East or indeed Europe, had slavery been solely associated with one race. The slave traders selected black people viewing them as inferior.
Furthermore, the brutal treatment and the industrial levels of enslaving people were characteristic of the Capitalist system, which invented battery farming. Those who called for the end of the slave trade were individuals out of step with that system which had embraced it. By a similar vein those in the Muslim world who participated in the enslaving of people, and were complicit with the slave traders were individuals out of step with the Islamic system – a system which had legally closed routes to enslavement, and effectively worked against it.
Wednesday 18 April 2007
British Version of Islam
What does the fascist dictator Kelly mean by a 'British Version of Islam'?
On the 9 April 2007, the New Statesman magazine carried an article by Communities’ Secretary Ruth Kelly titled 'Time for a British version of Islam'. In it, she reiterated her latest plans for the Muslim community in Britain. These plans come after the decision to sideline the short-lived mosques initiative, the Mosques & Imams National Advisory Body (MINAB), as well discarding the findings of the government working groups established (then ignored) in 2005. MINAB, it seems, has not proved compliant enough. The Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) have been similarly sidelined for the time being because they dared to suggest that there should be an enquiry regarding the 7th July bombings and also because they failed to tow the government line on other issues. Kelly's 'plan c' lists a new attempt to gain control of mosques and madrassas, using a carrot and stick approach. The carrot is money, either in the form of government grants or in the form of tax relief through obtaining charity status. The stick is in the form of new powers for the Charity Commission which can intervene in mosque affairs in a manner that bypasses normal legal processes, but also by making madrassas adhere to the Department for Education’s regulations on supplementary schools. The move to centrally control mosques and madrassas is not a surprising move for the British government. Repressive regimes (that are supported by Kelly’s government) such as Saudi Arabia, Libya, Uzbekistan and more recently the military junta of General Musharraf have all taken measures to control Muslim institutions. In most of these oppressive states, Friday (jummah) sermons are pre-written and government controlled bodies oversee the appointment of Imams to mosques. Kelly has not yet announced anything about controlling Friday sermons, but has floated the idea of establishing ‘certified’ Imams sometime in the future. In the Muslim world, the masses often call these 'government-scholars' but here the label 'Home Office Imams' may be more appropriate. These measures reflect the policies of a government that – abroad and at home - employs a coercive policy against independent Muslims that are critical of Western interference in the Muslim world. Abroad, there is an attempt to prevent the return of Islamic governance which will liberate the Muslim world from decades of living under colonialism. In Britain, there is a need to heap all the blame for the increased terrorist threat to Britain on Islam and the Muslim community. This need stems from a strategy by government to cover the on-going monumental disaster in Iraq - cited this week in a report by the Oxford Research Group as the leading cause of a more dangerous world. But perhaps, to Muslims, more bizarre than desiring control of institutions is the term: 'a British version of Islam'. One can guess what Kelly means by this. A compliant Muslim community that does not cheer when the government pursues its global war on terror is seen as a ‘hotbed of extremism’ or ‘apologists’ for terror. Similar attempts to fashion compliant forms of Islam were tried by Britain during the days of Empire. These attempts failed to win support from any substantial Muslim quarter, with the British government resorting to establishing the Ahmadiyyah Movement to try to pacify Muslim opposition. A vain attempt which gained no currency with the Muslim masses, instead hardening opposition to British colonialism. The challenge for Muslim communities in the west is to adhere to Islamic values despite government machinations. Our community must not be held to ransom by a colonialist government that tries to buy favour. The government must realise, the Muslim community is an inseparable part of the global Muslim Ummah and we will not have our voice subdued by policies that not only harm further the tattered view of the British government across the Muslim world but also establish divisive community relations at home.
On the 9 April 2007, the New Statesman magazine carried an article by Communities’ Secretary Ruth Kelly titled 'Time for a British version of Islam'. In it, she reiterated her latest plans for the Muslim community in Britain. These plans come after the decision to sideline the short-lived mosques initiative, the Mosques & Imams National Advisory Body (MINAB), as well discarding the findings of the government working groups established (then ignored) in 2005. MINAB, it seems, has not proved compliant enough. The Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) have been similarly sidelined for the time being because they dared to suggest that there should be an enquiry regarding the 7th July bombings and also because they failed to tow the government line on other issues. Kelly's 'plan c' lists a new attempt to gain control of mosques and madrassas, using a carrot and stick approach. The carrot is money, either in the form of government grants or in the form of tax relief through obtaining charity status. The stick is in the form of new powers for the Charity Commission which can intervene in mosque affairs in a manner that bypasses normal legal processes, but also by making madrassas adhere to the Department for Education’s regulations on supplementary schools. The move to centrally control mosques and madrassas is not a surprising move for the British government. Repressive regimes (that are supported by Kelly’s government) such as Saudi Arabia, Libya, Uzbekistan and more recently the military junta of General Musharraf have all taken measures to control Muslim institutions. In most of these oppressive states, Friday (jummah) sermons are pre-written and government controlled bodies oversee the appointment of Imams to mosques. Kelly has not yet announced anything about controlling Friday sermons, but has floated the idea of establishing ‘certified’ Imams sometime in the future. In the Muslim world, the masses often call these 'government-scholars' but here the label 'Home Office Imams' may be more appropriate. These measures reflect the policies of a government that – abroad and at home - employs a coercive policy against independent Muslims that are critical of Western interference in the Muslim world. Abroad, there is an attempt to prevent the return of Islamic governance which will liberate the Muslim world from decades of living under colonialism. In Britain, there is a need to heap all the blame for the increased terrorist threat to Britain on Islam and the Muslim community. This need stems from a strategy by government to cover the on-going monumental disaster in Iraq - cited this week in a report by the Oxford Research Group as the leading cause of a more dangerous world. But perhaps, to Muslims, more bizarre than desiring control of institutions is the term: 'a British version of Islam'. One can guess what Kelly means by this. A compliant Muslim community that does not cheer when the government pursues its global war on terror is seen as a ‘hotbed of extremism’ or ‘apologists’ for terror. Similar attempts to fashion compliant forms of Islam were tried by Britain during the days of Empire. These attempts failed to win support from any substantial Muslim quarter, with the British government resorting to establishing the Ahmadiyyah Movement to try to pacify Muslim opposition. A vain attempt which gained no currency with the Muslim masses, instead hardening opposition to British colonialism. The challenge for Muslim communities in the west is to adhere to Islamic values despite government machinations. Our community must not be held to ransom by a colonialist government that tries to buy favour. The government must realise, the Muslim community is an inseparable part of the global Muslim Ummah and we will not have our voice subdued by policies that not only harm further the tattered view of the British government across the Muslim world but also establish divisive community relations at home.
American
This is a very interesting article done David Selbourne!Hope you all injoy it.
With both houses of the US Congress set to maintain their challenge to President Bush's conduct of the conflict in Iraq — and being accused in turn of 'meddling in military strategy' and of wanting to 'set a date for surrender' — America's problems in its so-called 'war on terror' are deepening. In the gathering disorder, the recent visit to Damascus of Nancy Pelosi, the new Speaker of the House of Representatives, a visit carried out against the President's wishes but with the approval of the region's jihadists, served only to undercut the US administration's hostile position on Syria. Last week's humiliation of Britain at Iran's hands, with service personnel apologising to their captors after being taken hostage and bishops this week thanking Tehran for its mercies, also compounded the difficulties faced by the US in seeking to check the growing ambitions of its foes.But America's problems are of a familiar kind in the history of great empires and nations. Misjudgment of the enemy, incompetent leadership, and divisions over policy caused similar turmoil in Britain in the late-18th century. At that time its war with the Americans was being lost, as the Americans are now losing the larger-scale struggle against the world-force of Islam.On 22 March 1775, four weeks before the first shot had been fired in anger in what was to be an eight-year war between the rebellious colonists and the redcoats, the great Whig parliamentarian Edmund Burke stood up in the House of Commons and accused the Tory government of Lord North of being 'grossly ignorant of America'. Declaring that 'a great empire and little minds' — the minds, say, of a Bush, a Rice, a Cheney — 'go ill together', he condemned the 'woeful variety of schemes', the 'doing and undoing', and the 'shiftings and changings and jumblings of all kinds' which characterised British policy towards the emerging United States.He might have been talking of today's White House, Pentagon and State Department, of the blunders of judgment and strategy in Iraq, and — more perilous — of America's larger failures in the teeth of Islam's advance. Like America now, Britain was a great economic and military power. It wanted to keep things as they were under its imperium, protect its markets, and hold on to its sources of wealth in the New World and elsewhere, just as corporate America must hold on at all costs to its resources in the Middle East and beyond. Yet, on the eve of the war with America, the British monarch George III and his ministry are regarded by historians as having been 'insufficiently astute' for their task, 'ill-advised' and 'misinformed'.Just as the British were accused by Burke of having no understanding of the 'true temper of the minds' of the Americans, so the inner strengths and growing momentum of Islam are being misjudged today. There are differences, of course. Among them, the Americans were fighting the Brits out of a 'fierce spirit of liberty', while Islamists seek to subject the entire infidel world to their faith. But Islam's spirit is an equally formidable weapon in the present struggle. 'You ought not to trifle with so large a mass of the interests and feelings of the human race,' Burke warned the Commons, referring to a mere two million Americans whose numbers were increasing at what he called an 'alarming' rate. And 1.2 billion Muslims? It was also wrongly believed by the British that the 'trouble' in the American colonies was the work of 'infatuated wretches', the predecessors of today's 'minority of Muslim fanatics'. In May 1774, the governor of New York called the rebels against British rule 'reptiles'; others described them as 'scoundrels', 'peasants', 'bandits', 'murderers' and 'sons of darkness', language close to that used by American rednecks about today's 'insurgents' and 'terrorists' in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere.'Believe me, my lords, the very sound of cannon would carry them off,' thought one British parliamentarian. 'The Americans are in general the dirtiest, the most contemptible, cowardly dogs you can conceive. They fall dead in their own dirt,' said another. And not long before the British surrendered to the Americans at Yorktown in 1781, assurances were still being given in parliament that 'so vast is our superiority everywhere that no resistance on their part is to be apprehended'. Today, with not even Baghdad secured after over four years of war — and the expenditure of hundreds of billions of dollars — the White House still talks in terms of a 'victory' over 'extremists' and 'killers', even if the delusion that a Jeffersonian democracy can be created in Mesopotamia appears to have been abandoned.Burke was wiser. He shrewdly saw the American colonists' cause as containing a 'principle of energy'. Likewise, resurgent Islam, despite its internal divisions, has a powerful common morality and religious culture. Indeed, at its ascetic best, Islam is as puritan as a now-obese and self-indulgent US was at its founding. It is also threateningly hard-headed at a time when Americans, and others, have come to believe that their increasingly trivial and hedonistic ideas of 'liberty' represent the high point in the evolution of political thought. One thing is plain: the 'free market' has not got the beating of the Koran, while a Washington or a Lincoln would not have been in the hands of Big Oil.The nation which in Burke's days lost the plot against America, as America is losing the plot now, was deeply divided: Whig and Tory, landed interest and urban, conservative and radical. Today, America is equally divided about what is to be done in Iraq and in the wider war. The outcome is exactly what Burke described in March 1775: policies which contain an 'incongruous mixture of coercion and restraint'. It is an incoherence which has simultaneously aided Islam's advance and America's self-defeat. Moreover, the hostility of the Whigs for the Tory administration of Lord North and the Hanoverian king is being echoed in the open contempt shown for President Bush by some Democratic Congressional leaders. 'Calm down with the threats,' the strident Nancy Pelosi told him at the end of last month — after he had warned Congress that he would veto its attempts to tie his hands in the conduct of the Iraq war — 'there is a new Congress in town.' 'He has dug a hole so deep he can't see the light,' she has also said. What Burke called 'prudent management' and 'care and calmness' at a time of 'distraction' are lacking from such feverish statements.However, Burke would have found some of the causes of this dissension familiar. Thus, in the England of George III, radicals felt more sympathy for the American rebels than for their own government. And just as they objected then to the arbitrary power of the king, so the Republican Senator Chuck Hagel felt driven a fortnight ago to remind the President ('I am the decision-maker') that 'this is not a monarchy'. In Britain's 18th-century war with America, critics saw the war as 'impractical' and 'ruinous', as today's critics of America's war in Iraq see it as 'unnecessary', 'disastrous' and a 'grotesque mistake'. At worst, yesterday's British radicals wished defeat upon their own country; there are many 'liberals' in America today who would not be sorry to see their country forced to retreat from Afghanistan and Iraq.Moreover, the US military is as divided as the British army was in the War of Independence. In the highest ranks of the British officer corps there were similar differences over strategy and tactics, poor morale, replacements of commanders and uncertainty over the justice of their cause. Then, as now in Iraq, soldiers sent to fight saw that they were not fighting a minority of the population, contrary to what they had been told. There were thousands of British troops stationed in America. But they were not enough, while military reinforcements — like the American 'surge' in Iraq — were of no avail.Why? Because, among other things, the British army found in America what General Thomas Gage, the commander-in-chief, called a 'ferment throughout the continent', a 'phrenzy'. Or as Burke asked in the House of Commons in an unnerving parallel with the situation in Iraq, 'What advances have we made towards our object by the sending of a force? Has the disorder abated? I cannot avoid a suspicion that the plan itself is not right.' The use of British force against the Americans, added Burke — who was in favour of 'conciliation' with the colonists — could have only a 'temporary effect'; as it can have only a temporary effect today in battling with an armed world-faith.Despite relatively few American losses in the Iraq war, the sense in the US that it is at the limits of what can be endured is a sign of deep unease. There is nothing for the non-Muslim world to gloat over in all this. The US needs help, not merely because it could not in any circumstances take on Islamism alone, but because its power in the world is on the wane. Yet since its power is waning, it is decreasingly able to get such help except on the terms that others set. It has also been actively obstructed in its purposes by its friends as well as by its foes. Indeed, the obstacles being put in America's path easily dwarf those which the British faced when the French came to the aid of the Americans in 1777, and helped them gain their independence.Furthermore, increasingly complex alliances are being formed by America's rivals and challengers in order to thwart its geopolitical aims. For instance, relationships between Russia and North Korea, Russia and Iran, China and Pakistan, China and nations in Africa such as Sudan and Angola, and even between Iran and Venezuela, make President Bush's claims to be 'fighting to advance the cause of freedom around the world' increasingly vainglorious. As Burke observed, 18th-century Britain faced problems with an 'extensive empire' too large to be kept under control. By the last quarter of the 19th century, however, when the British had learnt the arts and crafts of imperial command — and numbered only some 35 million — it ruled a fourth of the world's population. But it is too late for the US to follow suit. Islam and America's competitors have seen to that. Moreover, as historical processes quicken, the longevity of empires is diminishing: the American imperium, like the Soviet, has entered on its decline after only some six decades. There will be no future Pax Americana.Now it is the turn of Islam to assert itself, for the third time in history, across large swaths of the globe. It is a bitter truth that the worst of Islamists, many of whose purposes are ugly and craven, should be crowing loudest over America's travails. In the 18th century, the American colonists had outgrown the Brits; today, it is clear that Mohammed is unlikely ever to go on his knees to the American mountain. And in these travails, George the Second of America has proved no wiser than George the Third of Britain.David Selbourne is the author of The Losing Battle with Islam.
Wednesday 11 April 2007
CHILDREN WELL-BEING
Failing the children of our furthur
This is chart done by Unicef,regarding children wellfare in the western countries.
CHILD WELL-BEING TABLE
1. Netherlands
2. Sweden
3. Denmark
4. Finland
5. Spain
6. Switzerland
7. Norway
8. Italy
9. Republic of Ireland
10. Belgium
11. Germany
12. Canada
13. Greece
14. Poland
15. Czech Republic
16. France
17. Portugal
18. Austria
19. Hungary
20. United States
21. United Kingdom
UK REPORT FINDINGS
UK child poverty has doubled since 1979
Children living in homes earning less than half national average wage - 16%
Children rating their peers as "kind and helpful" - 43%
Families eating a meal together "several times" a week - 66%
Children who admit being drunk on two or more occasions - 31%
Since UK is one of the rich nations in the western countries,you will think the
Goverment will look after its own people than going to wars and spending
Billions of Tax-payers money!!!
This is chart done by Unicef,regarding children wellfare in the western countries.
CHILD WELL-BEING TABLE
1. Netherlands
2. Sweden
3. Denmark
4. Finland
5. Spain
6. Switzerland
7. Norway
8. Italy
9. Republic of Ireland
10. Belgium
11. Germany
12. Canada
13. Greece
14. Poland
15. Czech Republic
16. France
17. Portugal
18. Austria
19. Hungary
20. United States
21. United Kingdom
UK REPORT FINDINGS
UK child poverty has doubled since 1979
Children living in homes earning less than half national average wage - 16%
Children rating their peers as "kind and helpful" - 43%
Families eating a meal together "several times" a week - 66%
Children who admit being drunk on two or more occasions - 31%
Since UK is one of the rich nations in the western countries,you will think the
Goverment will look after its own people than going to wars and spending
Billions of Tax-payers money!!!
The Arab Summit in Riyadh.
America’s plan
America’s finger prints were firmly imprinted on the agenda to be discussed at the summit and on the rulers who attended well in advance of the summit actually taking place. In the days preceeding it, US Secretary of State, Condoleeza Rice, met with many of the rulers in Egypt, Jordan and Palestine to brief them on the US plan and specifically to demand that they show greater warmth and conciliation to the State of Israel.
• The focus of America’s wishes were for the Arab rulers to revive the so called ‘Arab Peace Initiative’ of 2002 which had been put together by the then Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia.
• The Arab Peace Initiative proposes that the Arab and Muslim world withdraw its rightful claim to the land of Palestine and to accept only those territories that were earmarked to it in 1967 as a basis for all negotiations. Terrorities occupied by Israel from 1948 are not to be considered and the enactment of the Arab Peace Initiative by the Arab rulers would forfeit any claim or rights upon territories usurped and occupied between 1948 to1967.
• The reemergence of the Arab Peace Initiative after five years is due to the change in the Palestinian leadership. In 2002, the Palestinian Authority was run by secular factions alone. However, further to the Makkah Accord signed earlier this year a government of national unity now comprises both secularists and Islamists. Hence, the US wanted a government that represented all sides of opinion to endorse the Arab Peace Initiative on the way to abiding by international and regional agreements ultimately leading to the recognition of the State of Israel. In this way not only the Arab rulers but the Palestinians themselves would be relinquishing all claims upon 1948 occupied lands.
• The 2002 Arab Summit wished to erase 1948 occupied Palestine from the minds of the Arab rulers which they would then attempt to convey to the Muslim people. The declaration of the 2007 summit to agree to the Arab Peace Initiative moves one step further as it endorses the Palestinian authority to also remove from its memory the occupaton of the whole of Palestine and to be simply content with the territories that existed in 1967.
• The acceptance by the Arab rulers to the State of Palestine as defined by the 1967 borders is tantamount to betrayal of the Muslim people and cowardice in front of the aggressors. It is an admission of weakness that they cannot fight the occupiers or liberate the land of Palestine. Rather, if they were to mobilise the sincere sons of the Ummah in a genuine struggle the occupation and tyranny presiding of Palestine would vanish in a day.
• Even if one was to disregard the above and settle for a Palestinian state built upon the 1967 borders this will never happen for the Israelis have always reneged on their promises and wherever concessions are made they simply exercise further demands. Israel realises that if their enemies can compromise once they can compromise a dozen times; if their enemies give up one piece of Palestinian land they can give up the entire land. Therefore, the Israeli state will continue to repell any attempt to pressurise it or return any land whether by shifting its borders; building settlements or denying the right of return of refugees.
• The betrayal of the Muslim rulers knows no limits or shame. They disguise the acts of humilation, treachery and capitulation as if they are a victory. They supported the transitional government in Somalia which was created by the US and which prepared the groundwork for Ethiopean invading forces; The rulers uttered not a word when France ignited the Darfur conflict through its agents in Chad paving the way for foreign forces to enter the area; When the US occupied Iraq these rulers rejoiced at the demise of one of their miserable counterparts [Saddam]; in fact as the occupation intensified and the crusaders barbarity increased these rulers have got ever closer to America; the rulers were only too content to leave Lebanon to the Israeli onslaught last year and since then allow France and America to shape its future.
• The discussion ends by declaring that the rulers are a curse upon the Ummah ends with the noble ayah;
“O you who believe! Betray not Allâh and His Messenger, nor betray knowingly your Amânât (things entrusted to you, and all the duties which Allâh has ordained for you)” [TMQ Al-Anfal: 27]
America’s finger prints were firmly imprinted on the agenda to be discussed at the summit and on the rulers who attended well in advance of the summit actually taking place. In the days preceeding it, US Secretary of State, Condoleeza Rice, met with many of the rulers in Egypt, Jordan and Palestine to brief them on the US plan and specifically to demand that they show greater warmth and conciliation to the State of Israel.
• The focus of America’s wishes were for the Arab rulers to revive the so called ‘Arab Peace Initiative’ of 2002 which had been put together by the then Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia.
• The Arab Peace Initiative proposes that the Arab and Muslim world withdraw its rightful claim to the land of Palestine and to accept only those territories that were earmarked to it in 1967 as a basis for all negotiations. Terrorities occupied by Israel from 1948 are not to be considered and the enactment of the Arab Peace Initiative by the Arab rulers would forfeit any claim or rights upon territories usurped and occupied between 1948 to1967.
• The reemergence of the Arab Peace Initiative after five years is due to the change in the Palestinian leadership. In 2002, the Palestinian Authority was run by secular factions alone. However, further to the Makkah Accord signed earlier this year a government of national unity now comprises both secularists and Islamists. Hence, the US wanted a government that represented all sides of opinion to endorse the Arab Peace Initiative on the way to abiding by international and regional agreements ultimately leading to the recognition of the State of Israel. In this way not only the Arab rulers but the Palestinians themselves would be relinquishing all claims upon 1948 occupied lands.
• The 2002 Arab Summit wished to erase 1948 occupied Palestine from the minds of the Arab rulers which they would then attempt to convey to the Muslim people. The declaration of the 2007 summit to agree to the Arab Peace Initiative moves one step further as it endorses the Palestinian authority to also remove from its memory the occupaton of the whole of Palestine and to be simply content with the territories that existed in 1967.
• The acceptance by the Arab rulers to the State of Palestine as defined by the 1967 borders is tantamount to betrayal of the Muslim people and cowardice in front of the aggressors. It is an admission of weakness that they cannot fight the occupiers or liberate the land of Palestine. Rather, if they were to mobilise the sincere sons of the Ummah in a genuine struggle the occupation and tyranny presiding of Palestine would vanish in a day.
• Even if one was to disregard the above and settle for a Palestinian state built upon the 1967 borders this will never happen for the Israelis have always reneged on their promises and wherever concessions are made they simply exercise further demands. Israel realises that if their enemies can compromise once they can compromise a dozen times; if their enemies give up one piece of Palestinian land they can give up the entire land. Therefore, the Israeli state will continue to repell any attempt to pressurise it or return any land whether by shifting its borders; building settlements or denying the right of return of refugees.
• The betrayal of the Muslim rulers knows no limits or shame. They disguise the acts of humilation, treachery and capitulation as if they are a victory. They supported the transitional government in Somalia which was created by the US and which prepared the groundwork for Ethiopean invading forces; The rulers uttered not a word when France ignited the Darfur conflict through its agents in Chad paving the way for foreign forces to enter the area; When the US occupied Iraq these rulers rejoiced at the demise of one of their miserable counterparts [Saddam]; in fact as the occupation intensified and the crusaders barbarity increased these rulers have got ever closer to America; the rulers were only too content to leave Lebanon to the Israeli onslaught last year and since then allow France and America to shape its future.
• The discussion ends by declaring that the rulers are a curse upon the Ummah ends with the noble ayah;
“O you who believe! Betray not Allâh and His Messenger, nor betray knowingly your Amânât (things entrusted to you, and all the duties which Allâh has ordained for you)” [TMQ Al-Anfal: 27]
Monday 9 April 2007
Atheism:History in making
There are significant turning points in the history of mankind. We are now living in one of them. Some call it globalization and some say that this is the genesis of the “information age.” These are true, but there is yet a more important concept than these. Although some are unaware of it, great advances have been made in science and philosophy in the last 20-25 years. Atheism, which has held sway over the world of science and philosophy since the 19th century is now collapsing in an inevitable way.
Of course, atheism, the idea of rejecting God’s existence, has always existed from ancient times. But the rise of this idea actually began in the 18th century in Europe with the spread and political effect of the philosophy of some anti-religious thinkers. Materialists such as Diderot and Baron d'Holbach proposed that the universe was a conglomeration of matter that had existed forever and that nothing else existed besides matter. In the 19th century, atheism spread even farther. Thinkers such as Marx, Engels, Nietsche, Durkheim or Freud applied atheist thinking to different fields of science and philosophy.
The greatest support for atheism came from Charles Darwin who rejected the idea of creation and proposed the theory of evolution to counter it. Darwinism gave a supposedly scientific answer to the question that had baffled atheists for centuries: "How did human beings and living things come to be?" This theory convinced a great many people of its claim that there was a mechanism in nature that animated lifeless matter and produced millions of different living species from it.
Towards the end of the 19th century, atheists formulated a world view that they thought explained everything; they denied that the universe was created saying that it had no beginning but had existed forever. They claimed that the universe had no purpose but that its order and balance were the result of chance; they believed that the question of how human beings and other living things came into being was answered by Darwinism. They believed that Marx or Durkheim had explained history and sociology, and that Freud had explained psychology on the basis of atheist assumptions.
However, these views were later invalidated in the 20th century by scientific, political and social developments. Many and various discoveries in the fields of astronomy, biology, psychology and social sciences have nullified the bases of all atheist suppositions.
In his book, God: The Evidence, The Reconciliation of Faith and Reason in a Postsecular World, the American scholar Patrick Glynn from the George Washington University writes:
The past two decades of research have overturned nearly all the important assumptions and predictions of an earlier generation of modern secular and atheist thinkers relating to the issue of God. Modern thinkers assumed that science would reveal the universe to be ever more random and mechanical; instead it has discovered unexpected new layers of intricate order that bespeak an almost unimaginably vast master design. Modern psychologists predicted that religion would be exposed as a neurosis and outgrown; instead, religious commitment has been shown empirically to be a vital component of basic mental health…
Few people seem to realize this, but by now it should be clear: Over the course of a century in the great debate between science and faith, the tables have completely turned. In the wake of Darwin, atheists and agnostics like Huxley and Russell could point to what appeared to be a solid body of testable theory purportedly showing life to be accidental and the universe radically contingent. Many scientists and intellectuals continue to cleave to this worldview. But they are increasingly pressed to almost absurd lengths to defend it. Today the concrete data point strongly in the direction of the God hypothesis.1
Science, which has been presented as the pillar of atheist/materialist philosophy, turns out to be the opposite. As another writer puts it, "The strict materialism that excludes all purpose, choice and spirituality from the world simply cannot account for the data pour in from labs and observatories."2
In this article, we will briefly analyze the conclusions arrived at by different branches of science on this issue and examine what the forthcoming “post-atheist” period will bring to humanity.
Cosmology: The Collapse of the Concept of An Eternal Universe
And the Discovery of Creation
The first blow to atheism from science in the 20th century was in the field of cosmology. The idea that the universe had existed forever was discounted and it was discovered that it had a beginning; in other words, it was scientifically proved that it was created from nothing.
This idea of an eternal universe came to the Western world along with materialist philosophy. This philosophy, developed in ancient Greece, stated that nothing else exists besides matter and that the universe comes from eternity and goes to eternity. In the Middle Ages when the Church dominated Western thought, materialism was forgotten. However in the modern period, Western scientists and philosophers became consumed by a curiosity about these ancient Greek origins and revived an interest in materialism.
Immanuel Kant: Proposed the idea of a universe without a beginning or an end. He was terribly wrong.
The first person in the modern age to propose a materialist understanding of the universe was the renowned German philosopher Immanuel Kant—even though he has not a materialist in the philosophical sense of the word. Kant proposed that the universe was eternal and that every possibility could be realized only within this eternity. With the coming of the 19th century, it became widely accepted that the universe had no beginning, and that there was no moment of creation. Then, this idea, adopted passionately by dialectical materialists such as Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, came into the 20th century.
This idea has always been compatible with atheism. This is because to accept that the universe had a beginning would mean that God created it and the only way to counter this idea was to claim that the universe was eternal, even though this claim had no basis on science. A dogged proponent of this claim was Georges Politzer who became widely known as a supporter of materialism and Marxism in the first half of the 20th century through his book Principes Fondamentaux de Philosophie (The Fundamental Principles of Philosophy). Assuming the validity of the model of an eternal universe, Politzer opposed the idea of a creation:
The universe was not a created object, if it were, then it would have to be created instantaneously by God and brought into existence from nothing. To admit creation, one has to admit, in the first place, the existence of a moment when the universe did not exist, and that something came out of nothingness. This is something to which science can not accede.3
By supporting the idea of an eternal universe against that of creation, Politzer thought that science was on his side. However, very soon, the fact that Politzer alluded to by his words, “if it is so, we must accept the existence of a creator”, that is, that the universe had a beginning, was proven.
This proof came as a result of the “Big Bang” theory, perhaps the most important concept of 20th century astronomy.
The Big Bang theory was formulated after a series of discoveries. In 1929, the American astronomer, Edwin Hubble, noticed that the galaxies of the universe were continually moving away from one another and that the universe was expanding. If the flow of time in an expanding universe were reversed, then it emerged that the whole universe must have come from a single point. Astronomers assessing the validity of Hubble’s discovery were faced with the fact that this single point was a “metaphysical” state of reality in which there was an infinite gravitational attraction with no mass. Matter and time came into being by the explosion of this mass-less point. In other words, the universe was created from nothing.
John Maddox: His prophecy about the Big Bang utterly failed.
On the one hand, those astronomers who are determined to cling to materialist philosophy with its basic idea of an eternal universe, have attempted to hold out against the Big Bang theory and maintain the idea of an eternal universe. The reason for this effort can be seen in the words of Arthur Eddington, a renowned materialist physicist, who said, "Philosophically, the notion of an abrupt beginning to the present order of Nature is repugnant to me".4 But despite the fact that the Big Bang theory is repugnant to materialists, this theory has continued to be corroborated by concrete scientific discoveries. In their observations made in the 1960’s, two scientists, Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson, detected the radioactive remains of the explosion (cosmic background radiation). These observations were verified in the 1990’s by the COBE (Cosmic Background Explorer) satellite.
In the face of all these facts, atheists have been squeezed into a corner. Anthony Flew, an atheist professor of philosophy at the University of Reading and the author of Atheistic Humanism, makes this interesting confession:
Notoriously, confession is good for the soul. I will therefore begin by confessing that the Stratonician atheist has to be embarrassed by the contemporary cosmological consensus. For it seems that the cosmologists are providing a scientific proof of what St. Thomas contended could not be proved philosophically; namely, that the universe had a beginning. So long as the universe can be comfortably thought of as being not only without end but also without beginning, it remains easy to urge that its brute existence, and whatever are found to be its most fundamental features, should be accepted as the explanatory ultimates. Although I believe that it remains still correct, it certainly is neither easy nor comfortable to maintain this position in the face of the Big Bang story 5
An example of the atheist reaction to the Big Bang theory can be seen in an article written in 1989 by John Maddox, editor of Nature, one of the best-known materialist-scientific journals.
In that article, called “Down With the Big Bang,” Maddox wrote that the Big Bang is “philosophically unacceptable,” because “creationists and those of similar persuasions… have ample justification in the doctrine of the Big Bang.” He also predicted that the Big Bang “is unlikely to survive the decade ahead.” 6 However, despite Maddox’ hopes, Big Bang has gained credence and many discoveries have been made that prove the creation of the universe.
Some materialists have a relatively logical view of this matter. For example, the English materialist physicist, H.P. Lipson, unwillingly accepts the scientific fact of creation. He writes:
I think …that we must…admit that the only acceptable explanation is creation. I know that this is anathema to physicists, as indeed it is to me, but we must not reject that we do not like if the experimental evidence supports it. 7
Thus, the fact arrived at finally by modern astronomy is this: time and matter were brought into being by an eternally powerful Creator independent of both of them. The eternal power that created the universe in which we live is God who is the possessor of infinite might, knowledge and wisdom.
Physics and Astronomy: The Collapse of the Idea of a Random Universe and
The Discovery of the Anthropic Principle
A second atheist dogma rendered invalid in the 20th century by discoveries in astronomy is the idea of a random universe. The view that the matter in the universe, the heavenly bodies and the laws that determine the relationships among them has no purpose but is the result of chance, has been dramatically discounted.
For the first time since the 1970’s, scientists have begun to recognize the fact that the whole physical balance of the universe is adjusted delicately in favor of human life. With the advance of research, it has been discovered that the physical, chemical and biological laws of the universe, basic forces such as gravity and electro-magnetism, the structure of atoms and elements are all ordered exactly as they have to be for human life. Western scientists have called this extraordinary design the “anthropic principle”. That is, every aspect of the universe is designed with a view to human life.
We may summarize the basics of the anthropic principle as follows:
The speed of the first expansion of the universe (the force of the Big Bang explosion) was exactly the velocity that it had to be. According to scientists’ calculations, if the expansion rate had differed from its actual value by more than one part in a billion billion, then the universe would either have recollapsed before it ever reached its present size or else have splattered in every direction in a way never to unite again. To put it another way, even at the first moment of the universe’s existence there was a fine calculation of the accuracy of a billion billionth.
The four physical forces in the universe (gravitational force, weak nuclear force, strong nuclear force, and electromagnetic force) are all at the necessary levels for an ordered universe to emerge and for life to exist. Even the tiniest variations in these forces (for example, one in 1039, or one in 1028; that is—crudely calculated—one in a billion billion billion billion), the universe would either be composed only of radiation or of no other element besides hydrogen.
There are many other delicate adjustments that make the earth ideal for human life: the size of the sun, its distance from the earth, the unique physical and chemical properties of water, the wavelength of the sun’s rays, the way that the earth’s atmosphere contains the gases necessary to allow respiration, or the Earth’s magnetic field being ideally suited to human life. (For more information on this topic, see Harun Yahya, The Creation of the Universe, Al-Attique Publishers, 2001)
This delicate balance is one of the most striking discoveries of modern astrophysics. The wellknown astronomer, Paul Davies, writes in the last paragraph of his book The Cosmic Blueprint, "The impression of Design is overwhelming."8
In an article in the journal Nature, the astrophysicist W. Press writes, "there is a grand design in the Universe that favors the development of intelligent life."9
The interesting thing about this is that the majority of the scientists that have made these discoveries were of the materialist point of view and came to this conclusion unwillingly. They did not undertake their scientific investigations hoping to find a proof for God’s existence. But most of them, if not all of them, despite their unwillingness, arrived at this conclusion as the only explanation for the extraordinary design of the universe.
In his book, The Symbiotic Universe the American astronomer, George Greenstein, acknowledges this fact:
How could this possibly have come to pass [that the laws of physics conform themselves to life]? …As we survey all the evidence, the thought insistently arises that some supernatural agency—or, rather Agency—must be involved. Is it possible that suddenly, without intending to, we have stumbled upon scientific proof of the existence of a Supreme Being? Was it God who stepped in and so providentially crafted the cosmos for our benefit?10
By beginning his question with “Is it possible”, Greenstein, an atheist, tries to ignore that plain fact that has confronted him. But many scientists who have approached the question without prejudice acknowledge that the universe has been created especially for human life. Materialism is now being viewed as an erroneous belief outside the realm of science. The American geneticist, Robert Griffiths, acknowledges this fact when he says, “If we need an atheist for a debate, I go to the philosophy department. The physics department isn't much use.”11
In his book Nature’s Destiny: How the Laws of Biology Reveal Purpose in the Universe, which examines how physical, chemical and biological laws are amazingly calculated in an “ideal” way with a view to the requirements of human life, the well-known molecular biologist, Michael Denton writes:
The new picture that has emerged in twentieth-century astronomy presents a dramatic challenge to the presumption which has been prevalent within scientific circles during most of the past four centuries: that life is a peripheral and purely contingent phenomenon in the cosmic scheme.12
In short, the idea of a random universe, perhaps atheism’s most basic pillar, has been proved invalid. Scientists now openly speak of the collapse of materialism.13 The supposition whose falsity God reveals in the Qur’an,
“We did not create heaven and earth and everything between them to no purpose. That is the opinion of those who disbelieve…”
(Qur’an, 38: 27)
was shown to be invalid by science in the 1970’s.
Quantum Physics and the Discovery of the Divine Wisdom
When scientists have gone deeper into the atom, they found it shockingly "empty".
One of the areas of science that shatters the materialist myth and gives positive evidence for theism is quantum physics.
Quantum physics deals with the tiniest particles of matter, what is called the sub-atomic realm. In school everyone learns that matter is composed of atoms. Atoms are made up of a nucleus and several electrons spinning around it. One strange fact is that all these particles take up only some 0.0001 percent of the atoms. In other words, an atom is something that is 99.9999 percent "empty."
An even more interesting fact is that when the nuclei and electrons are further examined, it has been realized that these are made up of much smaller particles called "quarks," and that these quarks are not particles in the physical sense, but simply energy. This discovery has broken the classical distinction between matter and energy. It now appears that in the material universe, only energy exists. What we call matter is just "frozen energy."
There is a still more intriguing fact: The quarks, those energy packets, act in such a way that they maybe described as "conscious." Physicist Freeman Dyson, on his acceptance of the Templeton Prize, stated that:
Atoms are weird stuff, behaving like active agents rather than inert substances. They make unpredictable choices between alternative possibilities according to the laws of quantum mechanics. It appears that mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent inherent in every atom.14
What this means is that there is information behind matter. Information that precedes the material realm. Gerald Schroeder, an MIT-trained scientist who has worked in both physics and biology and author of the famous book The Science of God, makes a number of important comments on this subject. In his more recent book, The Hidden Face of God: Science Reveals the Ultimate Truth (2001), Schroeder explains that quantum physics—along with other branches of science—is the tool for discovering a universal wisdom that lies behind the material world. As he puts it:
It took humanity millennia before an Einstein discovered that, as bizarre as it may seem, the basis of matter is energy, that matter is actually condensed energy. It may take a while longer for us to discover that there is some non-thing even more fundamental than energy that forms the basis of energy, which in turn forms the basis of matter.15
John Archibald, professor of physics at Princeton University and recipient of the Einstein Award, explained the same fact when he said that the "bit" (the binary digit) of information gives rise to the "it," the substance of matter.16 According to Schroeder this has a "profound meaning":
The matter/energy relationships, the quantum wave functions, have profound meaning. Science may be approaching the realization that the entire universe is an expression of information, wisdom, an idea, just as atoms are tangible expressions of something as ethereal as energy.17
This wisdom is such an omniscient thing that covers the whole universe:
A single consciousness, a universal wisdom, pervades the universe. The discoveries of science, those that search the quantum nature of subatomic matter, have moved us to the brink of a startling realization: all existence is the expression of this wisdom. In the laboratories we experience it as information that first physically articulated as energy and then condensed into the form of matter. Every particle, every being, from atom to human, appears to represent a level of information, of wisdom.18
This means that the material universe is not a purposeless and chaotic heap of atoms, as the atheist/materialist dogma assumes, but is instead a manifestation of a wisdom which existed before the universe and which has absolute sovereignty over everything that exists. In Schroeder's words, it is "as if a metaphysical substrate was impressed upon the physical". 19
This discovery shatters the whole materialist myth and reveals that the material universe we see is just a shadow of a transcendent Absolute Being. Thus, as Schroeder explains, quantum physics has become the point where science and theology meet:
The age-old theological view of the universe is that all existence is the manifestation of a transcendent wisdom, with a universal consciousness being its manifestation. If I substitute the word information for wisdom, theology begins to sound like quantum physics. We may be witnessing the scientific confluence of the physical with the spiritual. 20
Quantum is really the point where science and theology meet. The fact that the whole universe is pervaded by a wisdom is a secret that was revealed in the Qur'an 14 centuries ago. One verse reads:
Your god is God alone, there is no god but Him. He encompasses all things in His knowledge. (Qur'an, 20:98)
The Natural Sciences: The Collapse of Darwinism and
The Triumph of Intelligent Design
Darwin:
His theory is now refuted by a great deal of scientific evidence.
As we stated at the beginning, one of the main supports for the rise of atheism to its zenith in the 19th century was Darwin’s theory of evolution. With its assertion that the origin of human beings and all other living things lay in unconscious natural mechanisms, Darwinism gave atheists the opportunity they had been seeking for centuries. Therefore, Darwin’s theory had been adopted by the most passionate atheists of the time, and atheist thinkers such as Marx and Engels elucidated this theory as the basis of their philosophy. Since that time, the relationship between Darwinism and atheism has continued.
But, at the same time, this greatest support for atheism is the dogma that has received the greatest blow from scientific discoveries in the 20th century. The discoveries by various branches of science such as paleontology, biochemistry, anatomy and genetics have shattered the theory of evolution from various aspects. (See Harun Yahya, Evolution Deceit, 2000). We have dealt with this fact in much more detail in various other books and publications, but we may summarize it here as follows:
Paleontology: Darwin’s theory rests on the assumption that all species come from one single common ancestor and that they diverged from one another over a long period of time by small gradual changes. It is supposed that the proofs for this will be discovered in the fossil record, the petrified remains of living things. But fossil research conducted in the course of the 20th century has presented a totally different picture. The fossil of even a single undoubted intermediate species that would substantiate the belief in the gradual evolution of species has not been found. Moreover, every taxon appears suddenly in the fossil record and no trace has been found of any previous ancestors. The phenomenon known as the Cambrian Explosion is especially interesting. In this early geological period, nearly all of the phyla (major groups with significantly different body plans) of the animal kingdom suddenly appeared. This sudden emergence of many different categories of living things with totally different body structures and extremely complex organs and systems, including mollusks, arthropods, echinoderms and (as recently discovered) even vertebrates, is a major blow to Darwinism. For, as evolutionists also agree, the sudden appearance of a taxon implies supernatural design and this means creation.
Biological Observations: In elaborating his theory, Darwin relied on examples of how animal breeders produced a different variety of dogs or horses. He extrapolated the limited changes he observed in these cases to the whole of the natural world and proposed that every living thing could have come to be in this way from a common ancestor. But Darwin made this claim in the 19th century when the level of scientific sophistication was low. In the 20th century things have changed greatly. Decades of observation and experimentation on various species of animals have shown that variation in living things has never gone beyond certain genetic boundary. Darwin’s assertions, like “I can see no difficulty in a race of bears being rendered, by natural selection, more and more aquatic in their habits, with larger and larger mouths, till a creature was produced as monstrous as a whale.”21 actually demonstrates his great ignorance. On the other hand, observations and experiments have shown that mutations defined by Neo- Darwinism as an evolutionary mechanism add no new genetic information to living creatures.
The Origin of Life: Darwin spoke about a common ancestor but he never mentioned how this first common ancestor came to be. His only conjecture was that the first cell could have formed as a result of random chemical reactions “in some small warm little pond”.22 But evolutionary biochemists who undertook to close this hole in Darwinism met with frustration. All observations and experiments showed that it was, in a word, impossible for a living cell to arise within inanimate matter by random chemical reactions. Even the English atheist Nobel Prize-winner Fred Hoyle expressed that such a scenario "is comparable with the chance that a tornado sweeping through a junk-yard might assemble a Boeing 747 from the materials therein.”23
Intelligent Design: Scientists studying cells, the molecules that compose the cells, their remarkable organization within the body and the delicate order and plan in the organs are faced with proof of the fact that evolutionists strongly wish to reject: The world of living things is permeated by designs too complex to be found in any technological equipment. Intricate examples of design, including our eyes that are too superior to be compared to any camera, the wings of birds that have inspired flight technology, the complexly integrated system of the cells of living things and the remarkable information stored in DNA, have vitiated the theory of evolution which regards living things as the product of blind chance.
All these facts have squeezed Darwinism into a corner by the end of the 20th century. Today, in the United States and other Western countries, the theory of intelligent design is gaining everincreasing acceptance among scientists. Those who defend the idea of intelligent design say that Darwinism has been a great error in the history of science and that it came to be as the result of materialist philosophy’s being imposed on the scientific paradigm. Scientific discoveries show that there is a design in living things which proves creation. In short, science proves once more that God created all living things.
Psychology: The Collapse of Freudianism and the Acceptance of Faith
The representative of the 19th century atheist dogma in the field of psychology was the Austrian psychiatrist Sigmund Freud. Freud proposed a psychological theory which rejected the existence of the soul and tried to explain the whole spiritual world of human beings in terms of sexual and similar hedonistic motivations. But Freud’s greatest assault was against religion.
Later studies showed that Freud's ideas, especially the ones about religion were totally flawed.
In his book The Future of an Illusion published in 1927, he proposed that religious faith was a kind of mental illness (neurosis) and that, as human beings progressed, religious faith would completely disappear. Due to the primitive scientific conditions of the time, the theory was proposed without the requisite research and investigation, and with no scholarly literature or possibility of comparison, and therefore, its claims were extremely deficient. Indeed, if Freud had the possibility of evaluating his propositions today, he would himself be surprised by the logical deficiency of his claims and he would be the first to criticize such senseless presuppositions.
After Freud, psychology developed on an atheist foundation. Not only Freud, but the founders of other schools of psychology in the 20th century were passionate atheists. Two of these were B.F. Skinner, the founder of the behaviorist school and Albert Ellis, founder of rational emotive therapy. The world of psychology ended up by becoming the forum for atheism. A 1972 poll among the members of the American Psychology Association revealed that only 1.1 percent of psychologists in the country had any religious beliefs.24
But most psychologists who fell into this great deception were undone by their own psychological investigations. It became known that the basic suppositions of Freudianism had almost no scientific support and, moreover, that religion was not a mental illness as Freud and some other psychological theorists declared, but a basic element of mental health. Patrick Glynn summarizes these important developments:
Yet the last quarter of the twentieth century has not been kind to the psychoanalytic vision. Most significant has been the exposure of Freud’s views of religion as entirely fallacious. Ironically enough, scientific research in psychology over the past twenty-five years has demonstrated that, far from being a neurosis or source of neuroses as Freud and his disciples claimed, religious belief is one of the most consistent correlates of overall mental health and happiness. Study after study has shown a powerful relationship between religious belief and practice, on the one hand, and healthy behaviors with regard to such problems as suicide, alcohol and drug abuse, divorce, depression, even, perhaps surprisingly, levels of sexual satisfaction in marriage, on the other. In short, the empirical data run exactly contrary to the supposedly “scientific” consensus of the psychotherapeutic profession.25
Finally, as Glynn says, “modern psychology at the close of the twentieth century seems to be reacquainting itself with religion”26 and “a purely secular view of human mental life has been shown to fail not just at the theoretical, but also at the practical, level.27
In other words, atheism has been routed also on the field of psychology.
Medicine: The Discovery of "How Hearts Find Peace"
Another branch of science that was affected by the collapse of atheist suppositions was medicine.
According to results compiled by David B. Larson and his team at the National Institute for Healthcare Research, a comparison among Americans in relation to church attendance yielded very interesting results. Risk of arteriosclerotic heart disease for men who attended church frequently was just 60 percent of that for men who were infrequent church attenders. Among women, suicide was twice as high among infrequent as among frequent church attenders; smokers who ranked religion as very important in their lives were over seven times less likely to have normal diastolic pressure readings than were those who did not.28
Secular psychologists generally explain such phenomena as having a psychological cause. In this sense, faith raises a person’s morale and contributes to his well-being. There may be some truth in this explanation, but if we look more closely we see something much more dramatic. Belief in God is much stronger than any other influence on the morale. In comprehensive research on the relationship between religious belief and physical health, Dr. Herbert Benson of the Harvard Medical School came up with some interesting results. Although he did not have any religious faith, Benson arrived at the result that faith in God and worship had a much more positive effect on human health than could be observed in anything else. Benson concludes that he has “found that faith quiets the mind like no other form of belief.”29
Why is there such a special relation between faith and human spirit and body? The result arrived at by Benson, who is a secular researcher, was, as he put it, that the human mind and body are “wired for God.”30
This fact, that the medical world is slowly beginning to notice, is a secret revealed in the Qur’an with the verse, “Only in the remembrance of God can the heart find peace.” (Qur’an, 13:28) The reason why those who believe in God, pray to Him and trust in Him are physically and mentally more healthy than others is that they behave in harmony with their nature. Philosophical systems opposed to human nature always bring pain, sorrow, anxiety and depression upon people.
The basic source of the peace experienced by a religious person is that he acts in order to gain God’s approval. In other words, this peace is the natural result of a person’s listening to the voice of his conscience. A person does not live the morality of religion simply “to be more at peace” or “to be healthier”; a person who acts with this intention cannot find peace in its true sense. God well knows that what a person stores in his heart or what he reveals. A person experiences peace of mind only by being sincere and attempting to gain God’s approval. God commands:
So set your face firmly towards the [true] religion, as a pure natural believer, God’s natural pattern on which He made mankind. There is no changing God’s creation. That is the true religion—but most people do not know it. (Qur’an, 30:30)
In the light of the discoveries that we have briefly indicated above, modern medicine is starting to become cognizant of this truth. As Patrick Glynn says, “contemporary medicine is clearly moving in the direction of acknowledging dimensions of healing beyond the purely material”.31
Society: The Fall of Communism, Fascism and the Hippie Dream
The collapse of atheism in the 20th century did not occur only in the fields of astrophysics, biology, psychology and medicine; it happened also in politics and social morality.
Communism may be considered the most important political result of 19th century atheism. The founders of this ideology, Marx, Engels, Lenin, Trotsky or Mao, all adopted atheism as a basic principle. A primary goal of all communist regimes was to get society to adopt atheism and to destroy religious belief. Stalin’s Russia, Red China, Cambodia, Albania and some Eastern block countries applied immense pressure on religious people to the point of committing mass murder.
Yet, amazingly, at the end of the 1980s this bloody atheist system collapsed. When we examine the reasons for this dramatic fall, we see that what collapsed was actually atheism. Patrick Glynn writes:
To be sure, secular historians would say that the greatest mistake of Communism was to attempt to defy the laws of economics. But other laws, too, came into play… Moreover, as historians penetrate the circumstances of the Communist collapse, it is becoming clearer that the Soviet elite was itself in the throes of an atheistic “crisis of faith”. Having lived under an atheistic ideology—one that consisted of lies and that was based on a “Big Lie”— the Soviet system suffered a radical demoralization, in every sense of that term. People, including the ruling elite, lost all sense of morality and all sense of hope.32
An interesting indication of the Soviet system’s great “crisis of faith” was President Mihail Gorbachev’s attempts of reform. Since the time that he assumed the presidency, Gorbachev was interested in moral problems as well as economic reforms. For example, one of the first things he did was to initiate a campaign against alcoholism. In order to raise the morale of society, for a long time he used Marxist-Leninist terminology but he saw that this was of no use.
Gorbachev:
His futile attempts could not heal the "crisis of faith" in the Soviet society.
Then, in the later years of the regime, he even began to mention God in some of his speeches, even though he himself was an atheist. Naturally, these insincere words of faith were of no use and the crisis of faith in Soviet society continued to worsen. The result was the collapse of the gigantic Soviet empire. The 20th century documented not only the fall of communism, but also that of another fruit of 19th century antireligious philosophy—fascism. Fascism is the outcome of a philosophy which may be called a mixture of atheism and paganism and which is intensely hostile to theistic religions. Friedrich Nietzsche, who may be called the father of fascism, extolled the morality of barbarous idolatrous societies, attacked Christianity and other monotheistic religions and even called himself the “Antichrist.” Nietzsche’s disciple, Martin Heidegger, was an avid Nazi supporter and the ideas of these two atheist thinkers gave impetus to the terrifying savagery of Nazi Germany. (The Holocaust, one of the greatest act of evil in human history, was the result of Nazi anti-Semitism, an ideology that hated Jews and the monotheistic faith that has been the cornerstone of Judaism—and also Islam.) The Second World War, that caused the death of 55 million people, is another example of the calamity that atheist ideologies like fascism and communism have brought upon humanity.
At this point, we must recall another atheist ideology—Social Darwinism—which was among the causes for the outbreak of both the First and the Second World Wars. In his book entitled Europe Since 1870, Harvard history professor James Joll states that behind each of the two world wars lay the philosophical views of Social Darwinist European leaders who believed in the myth that war was a biological necessity and that nations developed through conflict.33
In contrast with the theist and peaceful American Revolution, the French Revolution was atheist, neo-pagan and extremely violent.
Another social consequence of atheism in the 20th century appeared in Western democracies. In the present day there is a tendency to regard the West as the “Christian world.” However, since the 19th, century, a quickly growing atheist culture has held sway with Christian culture, and today there is a conflict between these two cultures in what we call Western civilization. And this atheist element has been the true cause of western imperialism, moral degeneration, despotism and other negative manifestations.
In his book God: The Evidence, the American writer Patrick Glynn draws attention to this matter and, in order to compare the God-fearing and atheist elements in the West, he takes the examples of the American and French Revolutions. The American Revolution was carried out by believers; American Declaration of Independence states that all men “are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights”. Since the French Revolution was the work of atheists, the French Declaration of Human Rights was very different, with no reference to God and full of atheist and neo-pagan notions.
The actual results of the two revolutions were quite different: in the American model, a peaceful, tolerant environment was created that respected religion and religious belief; in France the fierce hostility to religion drowned the country in blood and unleashed a savagery such as had never been seen before. As Glynn says, “there is an interesting historical correlation between atheism, on the one hand, and moral and political catastrophe, on the other hand.”34
Glynn notes that attempts to turn America into an atheist country have also caused harm to society. The fact that the sexual revolution (for example) that spread in the 60’s and 70’s caused immense social damage is accepted even by secular historians.35
John Lennon: The world he imagined —one without religion— did not bring a happy end, neither to him nor to his followers.
The hippie movement was a demonstration of this social damage. The hippies believed that they could find spiritual emancipation through secular humanist philosophy and by such things as unlimited drugs and sex. These young people who poured onto the streets with romantic songs—like John Lennon’s Imagine in which he spoke of a world “with no countries, and no religion too”—were actually undergoing a mass deception.
In fact, a world without religion actually brought them to an unhappy end. The hippy leaders of the 1960s either killed themselves or died from drug-induced comas in the early 1970s. Many other young hippies shared a similar fate.
Those young people of the same generation who turned to violence found themselves on the receiving end of violence. The 1968 generation, who turned their backs on God and religion and imagined they could find salvation in such concepts as revolution or selfish Epicureanism, ruined both themselves and their own societies.
The Dawn of the Post-Atheist World
The facts that we have briefly summarized to this point shows clearly that atheism is undergoing an inevitable collapse. In other words, humanity is — and will be — turning towards God. The truth of this assertion is not limited only to the scientific and political areas that we have written about here. From prominent statesmen to movie stars and pop artists, those who influence opinion in the West are much more religious than they used to be. There are many people who have seen the truth and come to believe in God after having lived for years as atheists. (Patrick Glynn from whose book we have quoted is one of these ex-atheists).
The fact that the developments which have contributed to this result began in the same period, that is from the second half of the 1970s, is quite interesting. The anthropic principle first appeared in the 1970s. Scientific criticism of Darwinism started to be loudly voiced at that same time. The turning point against the atheist dogma of Freud was a book entitled The Road Less Traveled published in 1978 by Scott Peck. For this reason, Glynn, in the 1997 edition of his book writes that “over the past twenty years, a significant body of evidence has emerged, shattering the foundations of the long-dominant modern secular worldview.”36
Surely, the fact that the atheist world-view has been shaken means that another world-view prevails, which is belief in God. Since the end of the 1970’s, (or, from the beginning of the 14th century according to the Muslim calendar) the world has seen a rise in religious values. Like other social processes, this does not happen in a day and the majority of people may not notice it because it has been developing over a long period of time. However, those who evaluate the development a little more carefully see that the world is at a major turning point in the realm of ideas.
Secular historians try to explain this process according to their own principles but just as they are in deep error with regard to the existence of God, so they are greatly mistaken about the course of history. In fact, as the following verse reveals, history moves as God as determined: “...You will not find any changing in the pattern of God. You will not find any alteration in the pattern of God.” (Qur’an, 35: 43) It follows, then, that history has a purpose and unfolds as God has commanded. And God’s command is the perfection of His light:
They desire to extinguish God’s Light with their mouths. But God refuses to do other than perfect His Light, even though the disbelievers detest it. (Qur’an, 9: 32)
This verse means that God has sent down His light upon humanity through the religion that He has revealed. Those who do not believe want to extinguish this light by their "mouths"— intimations, propaganda and philosophies, but God will finally perfect His light and give dominion to religious values on earth.
This may be the “turning point in history” mentioned at the beginning of this article as also indicated by the evidence we have provided here, as well as the implications of various hadiths and statements by scholars. Surely, God knows best.
Conclusion
We are living at an important time. Atheism, which people have tried for hundreds of years to portray as “the way of reason and science,” is proving to be mere irrationality and ignorance. Materialist philosophy that sought to use science for its own ends has been in turn defeated by science. A world rescuing itself from atheism will turn to God and religion. And this process has begun long ago.
It is clear that believers have important duties in this period. They must be aware of this major change in the world’s way of thinking, interpret it, make good use of the opportunities that globalization offers and effectively represent the truth along this road. They must know that the basic conflict of ideas in the world is between atheism and faith. It is not a struggle between East and West; in both East and West there are those who believe in God and those who do not. For this reason, faithful Christians, as well as faithful Jews are allies of Muslims. The main divergence is not between Muslims and the "People of the Book" (Jews and Christians), but between Muslims and the People of the Book on the one hand, and atheists and pagans on the other. Of course, we must not show hostility to such people but view them as people who need to be rescued from their error.
The time is fast approaching when many people who are living in ignorance with no knowledge of their Creator will be graced by faith in the impending post-atheist world.
Of course, atheism, the idea of rejecting God’s existence, has always existed from ancient times. But the rise of this idea actually began in the 18th century in Europe with the spread and political effect of the philosophy of some anti-religious thinkers. Materialists such as Diderot and Baron d'Holbach proposed that the universe was a conglomeration of matter that had existed forever and that nothing else existed besides matter. In the 19th century, atheism spread even farther. Thinkers such as Marx, Engels, Nietsche, Durkheim or Freud applied atheist thinking to different fields of science and philosophy.
The greatest support for atheism came from Charles Darwin who rejected the idea of creation and proposed the theory of evolution to counter it. Darwinism gave a supposedly scientific answer to the question that had baffled atheists for centuries: "How did human beings and living things come to be?" This theory convinced a great many people of its claim that there was a mechanism in nature that animated lifeless matter and produced millions of different living species from it.
Towards the end of the 19th century, atheists formulated a world view that they thought explained everything; they denied that the universe was created saying that it had no beginning but had existed forever. They claimed that the universe had no purpose but that its order and balance were the result of chance; they believed that the question of how human beings and other living things came into being was answered by Darwinism. They believed that Marx or Durkheim had explained history and sociology, and that Freud had explained psychology on the basis of atheist assumptions.
However, these views were later invalidated in the 20th century by scientific, political and social developments. Many and various discoveries in the fields of astronomy, biology, psychology and social sciences have nullified the bases of all atheist suppositions.
In his book, God: The Evidence, The Reconciliation of Faith and Reason in a Postsecular World, the American scholar Patrick Glynn from the George Washington University writes:
The past two decades of research have overturned nearly all the important assumptions and predictions of an earlier generation of modern secular and atheist thinkers relating to the issue of God. Modern thinkers assumed that science would reveal the universe to be ever more random and mechanical; instead it has discovered unexpected new layers of intricate order that bespeak an almost unimaginably vast master design. Modern psychologists predicted that religion would be exposed as a neurosis and outgrown; instead, religious commitment has been shown empirically to be a vital component of basic mental health…
Few people seem to realize this, but by now it should be clear: Over the course of a century in the great debate between science and faith, the tables have completely turned. In the wake of Darwin, atheists and agnostics like Huxley and Russell could point to what appeared to be a solid body of testable theory purportedly showing life to be accidental and the universe radically contingent. Many scientists and intellectuals continue to cleave to this worldview. But they are increasingly pressed to almost absurd lengths to defend it. Today the concrete data point strongly in the direction of the God hypothesis.1
Science, which has been presented as the pillar of atheist/materialist philosophy, turns out to be the opposite. As another writer puts it, "The strict materialism that excludes all purpose, choice and spirituality from the world simply cannot account for the data pour in from labs and observatories."2
In this article, we will briefly analyze the conclusions arrived at by different branches of science on this issue and examine what the forthcoming “post-atheist” period will bring to humanity.
Cosmology: The Collapse of the Concept of An Eternal Universe
And the Discovery of Creation
The first blow to atheism from science in the 20th century was in the field of cosmology. The idea that the universe had existed forever was discounted and it was discovered that it had a beginning; in other words, it was scientifically proved that it was created from nothing.
This idea of an eternal universe came to the Western world along with materialist philosophy. This philosophy, developed in ancient Greece, stated that nothing else exists besides matter and that the universe comes from eternity and goes to eternity. In the Middle Ages when the Church dominated Western thought, materialism was forgotten. However in the modern period, Western scientists and philosophers became consumed by a curiosity about these ancient Greek origins and revived an interest in materialism.
Immanuel Kant: Proposed the idea of a universe without a beginning or an end. He was terribly wrong.
The first person in the modern age to propose a materialist understanding of the universe was the renowned German philosopher Immanuel Kant—even though he has not a materialist in the philosophical sense of the word. Kant proposed that the universe was eternal and that every possibility could be realized only within this eternity. With the coming of the 19th century, it became widely accepted that the universe had no beginning, and that there was no moment of creation. Then, this idea, adopted passionately by dialectical materialists such as Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, came into the 20th century.
This idea has always been compatible with atheism. This is because to accept that the universe had a beginning would mean that God created it and the only way to counter this idea was to claim that the universe was eternal, even though this claim had no basis on science. A dogged proponent of this claim was Georges Politzer who became widely known as a supporter of materialism and Marxism in the first half of the 20th century through his book Principes Fondamentaux de Philosophie (The Fundamental Principles of Philosophy). Assuming the validity of the model of an eternal universe, Politzer opposed the idea of a creation:
The universe was not a created object, if it were, then it would have to be created instantaneously by God and brought into existence from nothing. To admit creation, one has to admit, in the first place, the existence of a moment when the universe did not exist, and that something came out of nothingness. This is something to which science can not accede.3
By supporting the idea of an eternal universe against that of creation, Politzer thought that science was on his side. However, very soon, the fact that Politzer alluded to by his words, “if it is so, we must accept the existence of a creator”, that is, that the universe had a beginning, was proven.
This proof came as a result of the “Big Bang” theory, perhaps the most important concept of 20th century astronomy.
The Big Bang theory was formulated after a series of discoveries. In 1929, the American astronomer, Edwin Hubble, noticed that the galaxies of the universe were continually moving away from one another and that the universe was expanding. If the flow of time in an expanding universe were reversed, then it emerged that the whole universe must have come from a single point. Astronomers assessing the validity of Hubble’s discovery were faced with the fact that this single point was a “metaphysical” state of reality in which there was an infinite gravitational attraction with no mass. Matter and time came into being by the explosion of this mass-less point. In other words, the universe was created from nothing.
John Maddox: His prophecy about the Big Bang utterly failed.
On the one hand, those astronomers who are determined to cling to materialist philosophy with its basic idea of an eternal universe, have attempted to hold out against the Big Bang theory and maintain the idea of an eternal universe. The reason for this effort can be seen in the words of Arthur Eddington, a renowned materialist physicist, who said, "Philosophically, the notion of an abrupt beginning to the present order of Nature is repugnant to me".4 But despite the fact that the Big Bang theory is repugnant to materialists, this theory has continued to be corroborated by concrete scientific discoveries. In their observations made in the 1960’s, two scientists, Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson, detected the radioactive remains of the explosion (cosmic background radiation). These observations were verified in the 1990’s by the COBE (Cosmic Background Explorer) satellite.
In the face of all these facts, atheists have been squeezed into a corner. Anthony Flew, an atheist professor of philosophy at the University of Reading and the author of Atheistic Humanism, makes this interesting confession:
Notoriously, confession is good for the soul. I will therefore begin by confessing that the Stratonician atheist has to be embarrassed by the contemporary cosmological consensus. For it seems that the cosmologists are providing a scientific proof of what St. Thomas contended could not be proved philosophically; namely, that the universe had a beginning. So long as the universe can be comfortably thought of as being not only without end but also without beginning, it remains easy to urge that its brute existence, and whatever are found to be its most fundamental features, should be accepted as the explanatory ultimates. Although I believe that it remains still correct, it certainly is neither easy nor comfortable to maintain this position in the face of the Big Bang story 5
An example of the atheist reaction to the Big Bang theory can be seen in an article written in 1989 by John Maddox, editor of Nature, one of the best-known materialist-scientific journals.
In that article, called “Down With the Big Bang,” Maddox wrote that the Big Bang is “philosophically unacceptable,” because “creationists and those of similar persuasions… have ample justification in the doctrine of the Big Bang.” He also predicted that the Big Bang “is unlikely to survive the decade ahead.” 6 However, despite Maddox’ hopes, Big Bang has gained credence and many discoveries have been made that prove the creation of the universe.
Some materialists have a relatively logical view of this matter. For example, the English materialist physicist, H.P. Lipson, unwillingly accepts the scientific fact of creation. He writes:
I think …that we must…admit that the only acceptable explanation is creation. I know that this is anathema to physicists, as indeed it is to me, but we must not reject that we do not like if the experimental evidence supports it. 7
Thus, the fact arrived at finally by modern astronomy is this: time and matter were brought into being by an eternally powerful Creator independent of both of them. The eternal power that created the universe in which we live is God who is the possessor of infinite might, knowledge and wisdom.
Physics and Astronomy: The Collapse of the Idea of a Random Universe and
The Discovery of the Anthropic Principle
A second atheist dogma rendered invalid in the 20th century by discoveries in astronomy is the idea of a random universe. The view that the matter in the universe, the heavenly bodies and the laws that determine the relationships among them has no purpose but is the result of chance, has been dramatically discounted.
For the first time since the 1970’s, scientists have begun to recognize the fact that the whole physical balance of the universe is adjusted delicately in favor of human life. With the advance of research, it has been discovered that the physical, chemical and biological laws of the universe, basic forces such as gravity and electro-magnetism, the structure of atoms and elements are all ordered exactly as they have to be for human life. Western scientists have called this extraordinary design the “anthropic principle”. That is, every aspect of the universe is designed with a view to human life.
We may summarize the basics of the anthropic principle as follows:
The speed of the first expansion of the universe (the force of the Big Bang explosion) was exactly the velocity that it had to be. According to scientists’ calculations, if the expansion rate had differed from its actual value by more than one part in a billion billion, then the universe would either have recollapsed before it ever reached its present size or else have splattered in every direction in a way never to unite again. To put it another way, even at the first moment of the universe’s existence there was a fine calculation of the accuracy of a billion billionth.
The four physical forces in the universe (gravitational force, weak nuclear force, strong nuclear force, and electromagnetic force) are all at the necessary levels for an ordered universe to emerge and for life to exist. Even the tiniest variations in these forces (for example, one in 1039, or one in 1028; that is—crudely calculated—one in a billion billion billion billion), the universe would either be composed only of radiation or of no other element besides hydrogen.
There are many other delicate adjustments that make the earth ideal for human life: the size of the sun, its distance from the earth, the unique physical and chemical properties of water, the wavelength of the sun’s rays, the way that the earth’s atmosphere contains the gases necessary to allow respiration, or the Earth’s magnetic field being ideally suited to human life. (For more information on this topic, see Harun Yahya, The Creation of the Universe, Al-Attique Publishers, 2001)
This delicate balance is one of the most striking discoveries of modern astrophysics. The wellknown astronomer, Paul Davies, writes in the last paragraph of his book The Cosmic Blueprint, "The impression of Design is overwhelming."8
In an article in the journal Nature, the astrophysicist W. Press writes, "there is a grand design in the Universe that favors the development of intelligent life."9
The interesting thing about this is that the majority of the scientists that have made these discoveries were of the materialist point of view and came to this conclusion unwillingly. They did not undertake their scientific investigations hoping to find a proof for God’s existence. But most of them, if not all of them, despite their unwillingness, arrived at this conclusion as the only explanation for the extraordinary design of the universe.
In his book, The Symbiotic Universe the American astronomer, George Greenstein, acknowledges this fact:
How could this possibly have come to pass [that the laws of physics conform themselves to life]? …As we survey all the evidence, the thought insistently arises that some supernatural agency—or, rather Agency—must be involved. Is it possible that suddenly, without intending to, we have stumbled upon scientific proof of the existence of a Supreme Being? Was it God who stepped in and so providentially crafted the cosmos for our benefit?10
By beginning his question with “Is it possible”, Greenstein, an atheist, tries to ignore that plain fact that has confronted him. But many scientists who have approached the question without prejudice acknowledge that the universe has been created especially for human life. Materialism is now being viewed as an erroneous belief outside the realm of science. The American geneticist, Robert Griffiths, acknowledges this fact when he says, “If we need an atheist for a debate, I go to the philosophy department. The physics department isn't much use.”11
In his book Nature’s Destiny: How the Laws of Biology Reveal Purpose in the Universe, which examines how physical, chemical and biological laws are amazingly calculated in an “ideal” way with a view to the requirements of human life, the well-known molecular biologist, Michael Denton writes:
The new picture that has emerged in twentieth-century astronomy presents a dramatic challenge to the presumption which has been prevalent within scientific circles during most of the past four centuries: that life is a peripheral and purely contingent phenomenon in the cosmic scheme.12
In short, the idea of a random universe, perhaps atheism’s most basic pillar, has been proved invalid. Scientists now openly speak of the collapse of materialism.13 The supposition whose falsity God reveals in the Qur’an,
“We did not create heaven and earth and everything between them to no purpose. That is the opinion of those who disbelieve…”
(Qur’an, 38: 27)
was shown to be invalid by science in the 1970’s.
Quantum Physics and the Discovery of the Divine Wisdom
When scientists have gone deeper into the atom, they found it shockingly "empty".
One of the areas of science that shatters the materialist myth and gives positive evidence for theism is quantum physics.
Quantum physics deals with the tiniest particles of matter, what is called the sub-atomic realm. In school everyone learns that matter is composed of atoms. Atoms are made up of a nucleus and several electrons spinning around it. One strange fact is that all these particles take up only some 0.0001 percent of the atoms. In other words, an atom is something that is 99.9999 percent "empty."
An even more interesting fact is that when the nuclei and electrons are further examined, it has been realized that these are made up of much smaller particles called "quarks," and that these quarks are not particles in the physical sense, but simply energy. This discovery has broken the classical distinction between matter and energy. It now appears that in the material universe, only energy exists. What we call matter is just "frozen energy."
There is a still more intriguing fact: The quarks, those energy packets, act in such a way that they maybe described as "conscious." Physicist Freeman Dyson, on his acceptance of the Templeton Prize, stated that:
Atoms are weird stuff, behaving like active agents rather than inert substances. They make unpredictable choices between alternative possibilities according to the laws of quantum mechanics. It appears that mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent inherent in every atom.14
What this means is that there is information behind matter. Information that precedes the material realm. Gerald Schroeder, an MIT-trained scientist who has worked in both physics and biology and author of the famous book The Science of God, makes a number of important comments on this subject. In his more recent book, The Hidden Face of God: Science Reveals the Ultimate Truth (2001), Schroeder explains that quantum physics—along with other branches of science—is the tool for discovering a universal wisdom that lies behind the material world. As he puts it:
It took humanity millennia before an Einstein discovered that, as bizarre as it may seem, the basis of matter is energy, that matter is actually condensed energy. It may take a while longer for us to discover that there is some non-thing even more fundamental than energy that forms the basis of energy, which in turn forms the basis of matter.15
John Archibald, professor of physics at Princeton University and recipient of the Einstein Award, explained the same fact when he said that the "bit" (the binary digit) of information gives rise to the "it," the substance of matter.16 According to Schroeder this has a "profound meaning":
The matter/energy relationships, the quantum wave functions, have profound meaning. Science may be approaching the realization that the entire universe is an expression of information, wisdom, an idea, just as atoms are tangible expressions of something as ethereal as energy.17
This wisdom is such an omniscient thing that covers the whole universe:
A single consciousness, a universal wisdom, pervades the universe. The discoveries of science, those that search the quantum nature of subatomic matter, have moved us to the brink of a startling realization: all existence is the expression of this wisdom. In the laboratories we experience it as information that first physically articulated as energy and then condensed into the form of matter. Every particle, every being, from atom to human, appears to represent a level of information, of wisdom.18
This means that the material universe is not a purposeless and chaotic heap of atoms, as the atheist/materialist dogma assumes, but is instead a manifestation of a wisdom which existed before the universe and which has absolute sovereignty over everything that exists. In Schroeder's words, it is "as if a metaphysical substrate was impressed upon the physical". 19
This discovery shatters the whole materialist myth and reveals that the material universe we see is just a shadow of a transcendent Absolute Being. Thus, as Schroeder explains, quantum physics has become the point where science and theology meet:
The age-old theological view of the universe is that all existence is the manifestation of a transcendent wisdom, with a universal consciousness being its manifestation. If I substitute the word information for wisdom, theology begins to sound like quantum physics. We may be witnessing the scientific confluence of the physical with the spiritual. 20
Quantum is really the point where science and theology meet. The fact that the whole universe is pervaded by a wisdom is a secret that was revealed in the Qur'an 14 centuries ago. One verse reads:
Your god is God alone, there is no god but Him. He encompasses all things in His knowledge. (Qur'an, 20:98)
The Natural Sciences: The Collapse of Darwinism and
The Triumph of Intelligent Design
Darwin:
His theory is now refuted by a great deal of scientific evidence.
As we stated at the beginning, one of the main supports for the rise of atheism to its zenith in the 19th century was Darwin’s theory of evolution. With its assertion that the origin of human beings and all other living things lay in unconscious natural mechanisms, Darwinism gave atheists the opportunity they had been seeking for centuries. Therefore, Darwin’s theory had been adopted by the most passionate atheists of the time, and atheist thinkers such as Marx and Engels elucidated this theory as the basis of their philosophy. Since that time, the relationship between Darwinism and atheism has continued.
But, at the same time, this greatest support for atheism is the dogma that has received the greatest blow from scientific discoveries in the 20th century. The discoveries by various branches of science such as paleontology, biochemistry, anatomy and genetics have shattered the theory of evolution from various aspects. (See Harun Yahya, Evolution Deceit, 2000). We have dealt with this fact in much more detail in various other books and publications, but we may summarize it here as follows:
Paleontology: Darwin’s theory rests on the assumption that all species come from one single common ancestor and that they diverged from one another over a long period of time by small gradual changes. It is supposed that the proofs for this will be discovered in the fossil record, the petrified remains of living things. But fossil research conducted in the course of the 20th century has presented a totally different picture. The fossil of even a single undoubted intermediate species that would substantiate the belief in the gradual evolution of species has not been found. Moreover, every taxon appears suddenly in the fossil record and no trace has been found of any previous ancestors. The phenomenon known as the Cambrian Explosion is especially interesting. In this early geological period, nearly all of the phyla (major groups with significantly different body plans) of the animal kingdom suddenly appeared. This sudden emergence of many different categories of living things with totally different body structures and extremely complex organs and systems, including mollusks, arthropods, echinoderms and (as recently discovered) even vertebrates, is a major blow to Darwinism. For, as evolutionists also agree, the sudden appearance of a taxon implies supernatural design and this means creation.
Biological Observations: In elaborating his theory, Darwin relied on examples of how animal breeders produced a different variety of dogs or horses. He extrapolated the limited changes he observed in these cases to the whole of the natural world and proposed that every living thing could have come to be in this way from a common ancestor. But Darwin made this claim in the 19th century when the level of scientific sophistication was low. In the 20th century things have changed greatly. Decades of observation and experimentation on various species of animals have shown that variation in living things has never gone beyond certain genetic boundary. Darwin’s assertions, like “I can see no difficulty in a race of bears being rendered, by natural selection, more and more aquatic in their habits, with larger and larger mouths, till a creature was produced as monstrous as a whale.”21 actually demonstrates his great ignorance. On the other hand, observations and experiments have shown that mutations defined by Neo- Darwinism as an evolutionary mechanism add no new genetic information to living creatures.
The Origin of Life: Darwin spoke about a common ancestor but he never mentioned how this first common ancestor came to be. His only conjecture was that the first cell could have formed as a result of random chemical reactions “in some small warm little pond”.22 But evolutionary biochemists who undertook to close this hole in Darwinism met with frustration. All observations and experiments showed that it was, in a word, impossible for a living cell to arise within inanimate matter by random chemical reactions. Even the English atheist Nobel Prize-winner Fred Hoyle expressed that such a scenario "is comparable with the chance that a tornado sweeping through a junk-yard might assemble a Boeing 747 from the materials therein.”23
Intelligent Design: Scientists studying cells, the molecules that compose the cells, their remarkable organization within the body and the delicate order and plan in the organs are faced with proof of the fact that evolutionists strongly wish to reject: The world of living things is permeated by designs too complex to be found in any technological equipment. Intricate examples of design, including our eyes that are too superior to be compared to any camera, the wings of birds that have inspired flight technology, the complexly integrated system of the cells of living things and the remarkable information stored in DNA, have vitiated the theory of evolution which regards living things as the product of blind chance.
All these facts have squeezed Darwinism into a corner by the end of the 20th century. Today, in the United States and other Western countries, the theory of intelligent design is gaining everincreasing acceptance among scientists. Those who defend the idea of intelligent design say that Darwinism has been a great error in the history of science and that it came to be as the result of materialist philosophy’s being imposed on the scientific paradigm. Scientific discoveries show that there is a design in living things which proves creation. In short, science proves once more that God created all living things.
Psychology: The Collapse of Freudianism and the Acceptance of Faith
The representative of the 19th century atheist dogma in the field of psychology was the Austrian psychiatrist Sigmund Freud. Freud proposed a psychological theory which rejected the existence of the soul and tried to explain the whole spiritual world of human beings in terms of sexual and similar hedonistic motivations. But Freud’s greatest assault was against religion.
Later studies showed that Freud's ideas, especially the ones about religion were totally flawed.
In his book The Future of an Illusion published in 1927, he proposed that religious faith was a kind of mental illness (neurosis) and that, as human beings progressed, religious faith would completely disappear. Due to the primitive scientific conditions of the time, the theory was proposed without the requisite research and investigation, and with no scholarly literature or possibility of comparison, and therefore, its claims were extremely deficient. Indeed, if Freud had the possibility of evaluating his propositions today, he would himself be surprised by the logical deficiency of his claims and he would be the first to criticize such senseless presuppositions.
After Freud, psychology developed on an atheist foundation. Not only Freud, but the founders of other schools of psychology in the 20th century were passionate atheists. Two of these were B.F. Skinner, the founder of the behaviorist school and Albert Ellis, founder of rational emotive therapy. The world of psychology ended up by becoming the forum for atheism. A 1972 poll among the members of the American Psychology Association revealed that only 1.1 percent of psychologists in the country had any religious beliefs.24
But most psychologists who fell into this great deception were undone by their own psychological investigations. It became known that the basic suppositions of Freudianism had almost no scientific support and, moreover, that religion was not a mental illness as Freud and some other psychological theorists declared, but a basic element of mental health. Patrick Glynn summarizes these important developments:
Yet the last quarter of the twentieth century has not been kind to the psychoanalytic vision. Most significant has been the exposure of Freud’s views of religion as entirely fallacious. Ironically enough, scientific research in psychology over the past twenty-five years has demonstrated that, far from being a neurosis or source of neuroses as Freud and his disciples claimed, religious belief is one of the most consistent correlates of overall mental health and happiness. Study after study has shown a powerful relationship between religious belief and practice, on the one hand, and healthy behaviors with regard to such problems as suicide, alcohol and drug abuse, divorce, depression, even, perhaps surprisingly, levels of sexual satisfaction in marriage, on the other. In short, the empirical data run exactly contrary to the supposedly “scientific” consensus of the psychotherapeutic profession.25
Finally, as Glynn says, “modern psychology at the close of the twentieth century seems to be reacquainting itself with religion”26 and “a purely secular view of human mental life has been shown to fail not just at the theoretical, but also at the practical, level.27
In other words, atheism has been routed also on the field of psychology.
Medicine: The Discovery of "How Hearts Find Peace"
Another branch of science that was affected by the collapse of atheist suppositions was medicine.
According to results compiled by David B. Larson and his team at the National Institute for Healthcare Research, a comparison among Americans in relation to church attendance yielded very interesting results. Risk of arteriosclerotic heart disease for men who attended church frequently was just 60 percent of that for men who were infrequent church attenders. Among women, suicide was twice as high among infrequent as among frequent church attenders; smokers who ranked religion as very important in their lives were over seven times less likely to have normal diastolic pressure readings than were those who did not.28
Secular psychologists generally explain such phenomena as having a psychological cause. In this sense, faith raises a person’s morale and contributes to his well-being. There may be some truth in this explanation, but if we look more closely we see something much more dramatic. Belief in God is much stronger than any other influence on the morale. In comprehensive research on the relationship between religious belief and physical health, Dr. Herbert Benson of the Harvard Medical School came up with some interesting results. Although he did not have any religious faith, Benson arrived at the result that faith in God and worship had a much more positive effect on human health than could be observed in anything else. Benson concludes that he has “found that faith quiets the mind like no other form of belief.”29
Why is there such a special relation between faith and human spirit and body? The result arrived at by Benson, who is a secular researcher, was, as he put it, that the human mind and body are “wired for God.”30
This fact, that the medical world is slowly beginning to notice, is a secret revealed in the Qur’an with the verse, “Only in the remembrance of God can the heart find peace.” (Qur’an, 13:28) The reason why those who believe in God, pray to Him and trust in Him are physically and mentally more healthy than others is that they behave in harmony with their nature. Philosophical systems opposed to human nature always bring pain, sorrow, anxiety and depression upon people.
The basic source of the peace experienced by a religious person is that he acts in order to gain God’s approval. In other words, this peace is the natural result of a person’s listening to the voice of his conscience. A person does not live the morality of religion simply “to be more at peace” or “to be healthier”; a person who acts with this intention cannot find peace in its true sense. God well knows that what a person stores in his heart or what he reveals. A person experiences peace of mind only by being sincere and attempting to gain God’s approval. God commands:
So set your face firmly towards the [true] religion, as a pure natural believer, God’s natural pattern on which He made mankind. There is no changing God’s creation. That is the true religion—but most people do not know it. (Qur’an, 30:30)
In the light of the discoveries that we have briefly indicated above, modern medicine is starting to become cognizant of this truth. As Patrick Glynn says, “contemporary medicine is clearly moving in the direction of acknowledging dimensions of healing beyond the purely material”.31
Society: The Fall of Communism, Fascism and the Hippie Dream
The collapse of atheism in the 20th century did not occur only in the fields of astrophysics, biology, psychology and medicine; it happened also in politics and social morality.
Communism may be considered the most important political result of 19th century atheism. The founders of this ideology, Marx, Engels, Lenin, Trotsky or Mao, all adopted atheism as a basic principle. A primary goal of all communist regimes was to get society to adopt atheism and to destroy religious belief. Stalin’s Russia, Red China, Cambodia, Albania and some Eastern block countries applied immense pressure on religious people to the point of committing mass murder.
Yet, amazingly, at the end of the 1980s this bloody atheist system collapsed. When we examine the reasons for this dramatic fall, we see that what collapsed was actually atheism. Patrick Glynn writes:
To be sure, secular historians would say that the greatest mistake of Communism was to attempt to defy the laws of economics. But other laws, too, came into play… Moreover, as historians penetrate the circumstances of the Communist collapse, it is becoming clearer that the Soviet elite was itself in the throes of an atheistic “crisis of faith”. Having lived under an atheistic ideology—one that consisted of lies and that was based on a “Big Lie”— the Soviet system suffered a radical demoralization, in every sense of that term. People, including the ruling elite, lost all sense of morality and all sense of hope.32
An interesting indication of the Soviet system’s great “crisis of faith” was President Mihail Gorbachev’s attempts of reform. Since the time that he assumed the presidency, Gorbachev was interested in moral problems as well as economic reforms. For example, one of the first things he did was to initiate a campaign against alcoholism. In order to raise the morale of society, for a long time he used Marxist-Leninist terminology but he saw that this was of no use.
Gorbachev:
His futile attempts could not heal the "crisis of faith" in the Soviet society.
Then, in the later years of the regime, he even began to mention God in some of his speeches, even though he himself was an atheist. Naturally, these insincere words of faith were of no use and the crisis of faith in Soviet society continued to worsen. The result was the collapse of the gigantic Soviet empire. The 20th century documented not only the fall of communism, but also that of another fruit of 19th century antireligious philosophy—fascism. Fascism is the outcome of a philosophy which may be called a mixture of atheism and paganism and which is intensely hostile to theistic religions. Friedrich Nietzsche, who may be called the father of fascism, extolled the morality of barbarous idolatrous societies, attacked Christianity and other monotheistic religions and even called himself the “Antichrist.” Nietzsche’s disciple, Martin Heidegger, was an avid Nazi supporter and the ideas of these two atheist thinkers gave impetus to the terrifying savagery of Nazi Germany. (The Holocaust, one of the greatest act of evil in human history, was the result of Nazi anti-Semitism, an ideology that hated Jews and the monotheistic faith that has been the cornerstone of Judaism—and also Islam.) The Second World War, that caused the death of 55 million people, is another example of the calamity that atheist ideologies like fascism and communism have brought upon humanity.
At this point, we must recall another atheist ideology—Social Darwinism—which was among the causes for the outbreak of both the First and the Second World Wars. In his book entitled Europe Since 1870, Harvard history professor James Joll states that behind each of the two world wars lay the philosophical views of Social Darwinist European leaders who believed in the myth that war was a biological necessity and that nations developed through conflict.33
In contrast with the theist and peaceful American Revolution, the French Revolution was atheist, neo-pagan and extremely violent.
Another social consequence of atheism in the 20th century appeared in Western democracies. In the present day there is a tendency to regard the West as the “Christian world.” However, since the 19th, century, a quickly growing atheist culture has held sway with Christian culture, and today there is a conflict between these two cultures in what we call Western civilization. And this atheist element has been the true cause of western imperialism, moral degeneration, despotism and other negative manifestations.
In his book God: The Evidence, the American writer Patrick Glynn draws attention to this matter and, in order to compare the God-fearing and atheist elements in the West, he takes the examples of the American and French Revolutions. The American Revolution was carried out by believers; American Declaration of Independence states that all men “are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights”. Since the French Revolution was the work of atheists, the French Declaration of Human Rights was very different, with no reference to God and full of atheist and neo-pagan notions.
The actual results of the two revolutions were quite different: in the American model, a peaceful, tolerant environment was created that respected religion and religious belief; in France the fierce hostility to religion drowned the country in blood and unleashed a savagery such as had never been seen before. As Glynn says, “there is an interesting historical correlation between atheism, on the one hand, and moral and political catastrophe, on the other hand.”34
Glynn notes that attempts to turn America into an atheist country have also caused harm to society. The fact that the sexual revolution (for example) that spread in the 60’s and 70’s caused immense social damage is accepted even by secular historians.35
John Lennon: The world he imagined —one without religion— did not bring a happy end, neither to him nor to his followers.
The hippie movement was a demonstration of this social damage. The hippies believed that they could find spiritual emancipation through secular humanist philosophy and by such things as unlimited drugs and sex. These young people who poured onto the streets with romantic songs—like John Lennon’s Imagine in which he spoke of a world “with no countries, and no religion too”—were actually undergoing a mass deception.
In fact, a world without religion actually brought them to an unhappy end. The hippy leaders of the 1960s either killed themselves or died from drug-induced comas in the early 1970s. Many other young hippies shared a similar fate.
Those young people of the same generation who turned to violence found themselves on the receiving end of violence. The 1968 generation, who turned their backs on God and religion and imagined they could find salvation in such concepts as revolution or selfish Epicureanism, ruined both themselves and their own societies.
The Dawn of the Post-Atheist World
The facts that we have briefly summarized to this point shows clearly that atheism is undergoing an inevitable collapse. In other words, humanity is — and will be — turning towards God. The truth of this assertion is not limited only to the scientific and political areas that we have written about here. From prominent statesmen to movie stars and pop artists, those who influence opinion in the West are much more religious than they used to be. There are many people who have seen the truth and come to believe in God after having lived for years as atheists. (Patrick Glynn from whose book we have quoted is one of these ex-atheists).
The fact that the developments which have contributed to this result began in the same period, that is from the second half of the 1970s, is quite interesting. The anthropic principle first appeared in the 1970s. Scientific criticism of Darwinism started to be loudly voiced at that same time. The turning point against the atheist dogma of Freud was a book entitled The Road Less Traveled published in 1978 by Scott Peck. For this reason, Glynn, in the 1997 edition of his book writes that “over the past twenty years, a significant body of evidence has emerged, shattering the foundations of the long-dominant modern secular worldview.”36
Surely, the fact that the atheist world-view has been shaken means that another world-view prevails, which is belief in God. Since the end of the 1970’s, (or, from the beginning of the 14th century according to the Muslim calendar) the world has seen a rise in religious values. Like other social processes, this does not happen in a day and the majority of people may not notice it because it has been developing over a long period of time. However, those who evaluate the development a little more carefully see that the world is at a major turning point in the realm of ideas.
Secular historians try to explain this process according to their own principles but just as they are in deep error with regard to the existence of God, so they are greatly mistaken about the course of history. In fact, as the following verse reveals, history moves as God as determined: “...You will not find any changing in the pattern of God. You will not find any alteration in the pattern of God.” (Qur’an, 35: 43) It follows, then, that history has a purpose and unfolds as God has commanded. And God’s command is the perfection of His light:
They desire to extinguish God’s Light with their mouths. But God refuses to do other than perfect His Light, even though the disbelievers detest it. (Qur’an, 9: 32)
This verse means that God has sent down His light upon humanity through the religion that He has revealed. Those who do not believe want to extinguish this light by their "mouths"— intimations, propaganda and philosophies, but God will finally perfect His light and give dominion to religious values on earth.
This may be the “turning point in history” mentioned at the beginning of this article as also indicated by the evidence we have provided here, as well as the implications of various hadiths and statements by scholars. Surely, God knows best.
Conclusion
We are living at an important time. Atheism, which people have tried for hundreds of years to portray as “the way of reason and science,” is proving to be mere irrationality and ignorance. Materialist philosophy that sought to use science for its own ends has been in turn defeated by science. A world rescuing itself from atheism will turn to God and religion. And this process has begun long ago.
It is clear that believers have important duties in this period. They must be aware of this major change in the world’s way of thinking, interpret it, make good use of the opportunities that globalization offers and effectively represent the truth along this road. They must know that the basic conflict of ideas in the world is between atheism and faith. It is not a struggle between East and West; in both East and West there are those who believe in God and those who do not. For this reason, faithful Christians, as well as faithful Jews are allies of Muslims. The main divergence is not between Muslims and the "People of the Book" (Jews and Christians), but between Muslims and the People of the Book on the one hand, and atheists and pagans on the other. Of course, we must not show hostility to such people but view them as people who need to be rescued from their error.
The time is fast approaching when many people who are living in ignorance with no knowledge of their Creator will be graced by faith in the impending post-atheist world.
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