بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم
How a Religion Deteriorates
During our noble Prophet Muhammad (S)'s time, Muslims living then, the Sahabah, were truly the best of Muslims. They were witnessing Truth, hence, they were fully aware and capable of acknowledging certain truths which we struggle with today, over 14 centuries later. What does this mean? It's quite simple really. People have changed, the religion has changed.
Try to think about it in the terms of physics .
Say you have a car, with no engine, that is sitting atop a very large hill. There is an initial force on the car that sends it barreling down the hill.
This force can be understood as God sending down his last and final Messenger (S). The car is our religion, Islam. The hill is time, as it continues to dwindle down to the last day. What does this illustrate exactly? Well, what happens to the car as it continues to move along it's horizontal trajectory? The force of gravity, which is always acting downwards on the car, and the opposing force of friction begin to slow the car down. Hence, the car begins to run out of energy. This phenomena is analogous to what happens to a religion once it enters temporal space, our dunya or world for instance. It begins to slow down. If you understand that a perfectly moving vehicle is religion perfected, then you are right, and taking this analogy to its logical conclusion, we can infer that as the car slows, this slowing down represents the degradation of a religion, this applies to all faiths, not just Islam. Make sense?
Try to think about it in the terms of physics .
Say you have a car, with no engine, that is sitting atop a very large hill. There is an initial force on the car that sends it barreling down the hill.
This force can be understood as God sending down his last and final Messenger (S). The car is our religion, Islam. The hill is time, as it continues to dwindle down to the last day. What does this illustrate exactly? Well, what happens to the car as it continues to move along it's horizontal trajectory? The force of gravity, which is always acting downwards on the car, and the opposing force of friction begin to slow the car down. Hence, the car begins to run out of energy. This phenomena is analogous to what happens to a religion once it enters temporal space, our dunya or world for instance. It begins to slow down. If you understand that a perfectly moving vehicle is religion perfected, then you are right, and taking this analogy to its logical conclusion, we can infer that as the car slows, this slowing down represents the degradation of a religion, this applies to all faiths, not just Islam. Make sense?
Our noble Prophet (S) said that we would follow those that came before us, even if it were down a lizard's hole. The noble companions asked whom he was referring to, was it the Christians and the Jews? He simply responded with "Who else?" Now, if you look at Christianity, for instance, you can see that this religion is only 610 years older than our own faith, and see where it has arrived at. It started as a religion that moved past the covenant God made with the Jews of the Old Testament and re-established a new covenant with the Church. This mutual relationship between adherents and the Church endured for a millennium until the Great Schism occurred in 1054 A.D.
The Great Schism led to two Papal authorities for the first time in Church history. The reasons for this are debatable, but my understanding is that there was an opportunity for power to be had by an ambitious member of the clergy and seeing his opportunity rise did not waste it. This effectively created two types of Christianity, an Eastern and Western Christianity. The Eastern Church headed by the Byzantines and the Western Church headed by the Romans, who of course became the Holy Roman Catholic Church (currently the world's largest religion).
So, a millennium after God's prophet and messenger Isa (A), Jesus Christ, there were now two rival churches.
Phase 1 of deterioration complete
As time elapsed, more and more people began getting ideas about Christianity and ways to interpret scripture and doctrinal truths. This of course was impossible before the Holy Bible was allowed to be translated into local languages and dialects. The Bible was always in the hands of the clergy and was considered a "Pulpit Bible," only to be understood, interpreted, and explained to the masses through the Church. It's funny to think that the first ever English translation of the Holy Bible, translated from the Latin Vulgate to English by John Wycliffe, was considered a heresy, and its author a heretic. Wycliffe was burned at the stake for this.
Soon, the Protestant Reformation reared its ugly head. The year was 1517, the year Martin Luther published his treacherous Ninety-Five Theses. This led to yet another split in the Church. The Eastern Orthodox Church lay somewhat outside this since the Catholic Church was taking the brunt of the fire exhumed by discontented Christians. They had many grievances, 95 I think, one main grievance that you will hear till this day chirped by Protestant Christians and anyone who doesn't like the Catholic Church is that the priests of the church were corrupt and were interpreting the Bible to meet their own selfish and worldly ends. This is a very silly argument because it assumes all of Christianity was corrupt, including all of its practitioners, hence how can corrupted people make something that is seen as corrupted uncorrupted? Do you follow my logic here? It's like a sick person wanting to cure another sick person, without first curing themselves. It just doesn't make any sense. Denial is not just a river in Egypt.
Anyway, this led to the establishment of MANY different churches, among the more prominent were the Anglican, Lutheran, Reformed, Puritan, and Presbyterian Churches. Most of these churches still exist today. This is only five hundred years after the Great Schism that established the Catholic Church.
Phase 2 of deterioration complete
But how many more exist beyond these? If you look closely, you will come to understand that the more time that elapses, the faster the religion deteriorates.
Now how many denominations of Protestantism exist? I can't even count them all, but I will introduce a smattering of denominations to give you an idea:
...and the list goes on and on.
Phase 3 of deterioration complete
Now we are nearing the final stages of complete time-lapse deterioration. You can find people making a mockery of religion by establishing religions like Jediism.
Phase 4 of deterioration in progress
Clearly I am simply touching on each of these major events, a lot more went on and a lot more happened that led to each of these significant events, do your research to be better learned in this subject if it interests you. It ought to, we need to know what happened to our Christian brothers in order to brace for what is going to happen to us, or is already happening to us, and perhaps protect ourselves and our faith.
Just from understanding the above, you can see that a similar fate awaits Islam. It's unavoidable and will happen. However, we are told to remain steadfast in our religion and this is a noble pursuit and should be performed to the best of our abilities. One must understand that once anything enters this temporal space, everything starts to deteriorate, we start dying the second we are born. The Qur'an is destined to be removed from this Earth as the hadith detailing the conversation between the Messenger of God (S) and the Angel Gabriel mentioned.
Now, with that information under our belt, we can trace back to a point of understanding what traditional Islam looked like. When I say "traditional" I do not mean something that remains stagnant and the same. Our ancestors, the wise Islamic scholars and pious people of old knew what was to become of Islam, hence they were always evolving with the times to allow Islam to be interpreted correctly for a specific time period and a specific group of people. Hence the notion of going back to an Islam that was supposedly present 14 centuries ago is absolutely ludicrous. It's nonsensical and simply was not done. Anyone who claims reverting back tradition 1400 years is a "good thing" is an utter fool.
Imam Shafi, one of the great Imams that established his own madhab or school of thought, used to live in Baghdad, he had established certain rulings and guidelines for the Muslims there, a madhab. He was soon invited to Cairo where he spent the rest of his days. However, soon after arriving he came to realize that these people are much different from the people of Baghdad and therefore require different rulings. He established a new way to interpret Islamic rulings, a new madhab, for the people of Cairo. He did this during his lifetime, obviously, this is more than significant proof that Islam is meant to evolve and accept new people and times, not to remain stagnant like a swamp until it begins to fester with malaria.
Also, be sure you know when Imam Shafi lived, he lived a little over 100 years after our Prophet (S) returned to the Truth. His opinion wasn't to return to how things were done 100 years ago, although I am sure he had all the information he would require to pull this off. No, instead he did the above, made two distinctions in rulings according to time, place, and people. Do you want to argue with Imam Shafi? He once said, "Put me in a room full of scholars and I will win in every debate against them, put me in a room with one ignorant person and I will lose every debate."
Do we understand what happened to the Christian faith? Good. To be even more clear, please acknowledge that this is in no way an affront to the Christian faith, this is a demonstration of how a religion, divined by God, responds to time. This is already happening to Islam. Don't believe me? Let's take a walk through the different phases that have already come to pass.
I will relate events in Christianity to events in Islam to draw the parallels more clearly. I will also assume that those reading this understand or have a vague knowledge of Islamic history, I won't be delving into specifics.
Phase 1 of deterioration
The Great Schism (11th Century) = Formation of Shia' Islam (7th Century)
Shiism came about almost immediately after the death of our beloved Prophet Muhammad (S). In my understanding, it was more political than religious, but it can be argued both ways. Either way, this is similar to the Historical Church being broken in two, establishing Eastern Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism. From this event in Islam, the Sunni camp and the Shia camps were formed.
Phase 2 of deterioration
The Protestant Reformation (16th Century) = Establishment of the Wahabi Movement (18th century)
These two are similar in how they occurred and in what they accomplished. Martin Luther for me is the same as Abd al Wahab, the founder of the Wahabi movement. They both made an abysmal mess of the established religion and order. The Protestants cried for Sola Scriptura! While the Wahabis cried for Ahl al Hadith! Clearly these are huge diversions from traditional Christianity and Islam, respectively. Diversions... this word can be interpreted as "innovation" from a religious standpoint, hence, the Wahabi movement is a very big bida'at!
Sola Scriptura demanded that adherents of the faith required no intermediary, no Priests or clergy, no Holy Mother Church, they only needed the Holy Bible and were capable enough to interpret it themselves, thereby making their own judgements and ideas about their faith. This, obviously, was utterly asinine. Look at the state of Protestants today. Splintered into a multitude of sects, everyone is essentially allowed to come up with their own interpretation, thus their own church, thus their own understanding of the Christian creed and doctrine. You can't tell them they are wrong in their doctrinal interpretation either, if you yourself are a Protestant of course.
The Wahabis have done something similar, claiming to be the people of the Hadith, thus the people of the Sunnah. Essentially, if our Prophet (S) didn't do it, the Wahabis will not do it, if he did in fact do it, they will do it. However, the way they interpret Hadith and Qur'an is very rudimentary in understanding and insight. They often misquote or take only part of the hadith to heart. Not to mention that they interpret the Qur'an literally, no where in Islamic history is the Qur'an interpreted literally, at least not until the Wahabis came around. Literalists... they are literally stupid.
For instance, the Hadith that talks about not having your clothes trail below your ankle. The Wahabis enjoy rolling their pants above their ankles (Prophet Muhammad (S) never wore pants... or thobs for that matter) during the prayer and some extend this and maintain bare ankles throughout the day. However, the second part of the hadith demonstrates that God does not like those who allow their clothes to drag out of arrogance. Upon hearing this said by the Prophet (S) Abu Bakr (R) asked him if he would be punished for allowing his clothes to drag since he was without a belt and was very poor. The Prophet told him that he would not be punished because he was not letting his clothes drag out of arrogance. For in that time, the extremely wealthy could afford to buy cloth enough to cover themselves and then some so that it would drag on the earth as they walked, allowing their clothes to become dirty since they were more than capable of affording new clothes whenever they desired. Clearly, I don't roll my pant legs up.
Also, they don't seem to understand that Islam defined a way for us to live not just to worship. Which is why they say it's okay to drive cars even though our Prophet (S) never drove a car (God forbid a woman ever drive, since you know, Saudi Arabia will run out of virgins in 10 years), or to use electricity, or modern currency, or watch television, or sit in a cafe, the list is infinitely long with things that our Prophet (S) never did but Wahabis do simply because they interpret it one way as opposed to another. If they truly want to follow the Sunnah, they would wear scraps of cloth to cover their nether regions, be extremely humble and compassionate, not be greedy and try to accumulate as much wealth as possible, and essentially live very simple lives, not to mention that they would eat little, not gorge themselves and become incredibly rotund... a Wahabi trademark.
Honestly, I don't have a problem with Wahabis, if they want to interpret Islam in a specific way, fine, but I do have a problem when they start forcing their views on others, or when they start destroying holy relics and sites. After all, "there is no compulsion in religion." This affects everyone, clearly they are being very selfish, arrogant, and ignorant. I suppose it brings some peace knowing that they are not yet the majority, but they sure do have a LOT of money. Funny that our faith should become so heavily influenced by the material realm when the goal of our faith is to forsake it.
So, going back to what was shared about Imam Shafi, it is a tremendously good thing for Islam to evolve and adapt to the current time and people, you don't change the principals of faith, that's not what's being said, you make room for people to accept faith. That's the goal after all isn't it? What's the point if you interpret religion in such a manner that it makes it nearly impossible for practitioners of that faith to achieve Heaven, much less non-practitioners who are taking an interest or someone who is just starting out? God didn't make religion difficult, human beings (specifically Wahabis) make religion difficult. God made religion so that life would be easy for us to endure and so that hope and love would grow in our hearts. If you make religion difficult, you will have people start leaving the faith. Which leads me back to Phase 4 for Christianity and Phase 3 for Islam.
Phase 4 deterioration for Christianity is already in progress and Phase 3 for Islam is as well, they are the same. This is the phase that leads one to unbelief. It's ironic how openly people can claim the nonexistence of God but can't make politically incorrect remarks. Our values and morals have shifted and changed. The good has become bad and the bad, good. This was foretold in a hadith by our Prophet (S).
What can you do other than try to be a good human being? Be a good Muslim, a good Christian, a good Jew, Hindu, Bhuddist, Taoist, be good in whatever faith you adhere to, be sincere, and love God.
The Great Schism led to two Papal authorities for the first time in Church history. The reasons for this are debatable, but my understanding is that there was an opportunity for power to be had by an ambitious member of the clergy and seeing his opportunity rise did not waste it. This effectively created two types of Christianity, an Eastern and Western Christianity. The Eastern Church headed by the Byzantines and the Western Church headed by the Romans, who of course became the Holy Roman Catholic Church (currently the world's largest religion).
So, a millennium after God's prophet and messenger Isa (A), Jesus Christ, there were now two rival churches.
Phase 1 of deterioration complete
As time elapsed, more and more people began getting ideas about Christianity and ways to interpret scripture and doctrinal truths. This of course was impossible before the Holy Bible was allowed to be translated into local languages and dialects. The Bible was always in the hands of the clergy and was considered a "Pulpit Bible," only to be understood, interpreted, and explained to the masses through the Church. It's funny to think that the first ever English translation of the Holy Bible, translated from the Latin Vulgate to English by John Wycliffe, was considered a heresy, and its author a heretic. Wycliffe was burned at the stake for this.
Soon, the Protestant Reformation reared its ugly head. The year was 1517, the year Martin Luther published his treacherous Ninety-Five Theses. This led to yet another split in the Church. The Eastern Orthodox Church lay somewhat outside this since the Catholic Church was taking the brunt of the fire exhumed by discontented Christians. They had many grievances, 95 I think, one main grievance that you will hear till this day chirped by Protestant Christians and anyone who doesn't like the Catholic Church is that the priests of the church were corrupt and were interpreting the Bible to meet their own selfish and worldly ends. This is a very silly argument because it assumes all of Christianity was corrupt, including all of its practitioners, hence how can corrupted people make something that is seen as corrupted uncorrupted? Do you follow my logic here? It's like a sick person wanting to cure another sick person, without first curing themselves. It just doesn't make any sense. Denial is not just a river in Egypt.
Anyway, this led to the establishment of MANY different churches, among the more prominent were the Anglican, Lutheran, Reformed, Puritan, and Presbyterian Churches. Most of these churches still exist today. This is only five hundred years after the Great Schism that established the Catholic Church.
Phase 2 of deterioration complete
But how many more exist beyond these? If you look closely, you will come to understand that the more time that elapses, the faster the religion deteriorates.
Now how many denominations of Protestantism exist? I can't even count them all, but I will introduce a smattering of denominations to give you an idea:
- Seventh Day Adventists
- Latter Day Saints (AKA Mormonism)
- Nondenominational
- Pentecostal
- Anabaptists
- Methodists
- Calvinists
- Southern Baptists
- Evangelical
- Mennonite
...and the list goes on and on.
Phase 3 of deterioration complete
Now we are nearing the final stages of complete time-lapse deterioration. You can find people making a mockery of religion by establishing religions like Jediism.
Phase 4 of deterioration in progress
Clearly I am simply touching on each of these major events, a lot more went on and a lot more happened that led to each of these significant events, do your research to be better learned in this subject if it interests you. It ought to, we need to know what happened to our Christian brothers in order to brace for what is going to happen to us, or is already happening to us, and perhaps protect ourselves and our faith.
Just from understanding the above, you can see that a similar fate awaits Islam. It's unavoidable and will happen. However, we are told to remain steadfast in our religion and this is a noble pursuit and should be performed to the best of our abilities. One must understand that once anything enters this temporal space, everything starts to deteriorate, we start dying the second we are born. The Qur'an is destined to be removed from this Earth as the hadith detailing the conversation between the Messenger of God (S) and the Angel Gabriel mentioned.
Now, with that information under our belt, we can trace back to a point of understanding what traditional Islam looked like. When I say "traditional" I do not mean something that remains stagnant and the same. Our ancestors, the wise Islamic scholars and pious people of old knew what was to become of Islam, hence they were always evolving with the times to allow Islam to be interpreted correctly for a specific time period and a specific group of people. Hence the notion of going back to an Islam that was supposedly present 14 centuries ago is absolutely ludicrous. It's nonsensical and simply was not done. Anyone who claims reverting back tradition 1400 years is a "good thing" is an utter fool.
Imam Shafi, one of the great Imams that established his own madhab or school of thought, used to live in Baghdad, he had established certain rulings and guidelines for the Muslims there, a madhab. He was soon invited to Cairo where he spent the rest of his days. However, soon after arriving he came to realize that these people are much different from the people of Baghdad and therefore require different rulings. He established a new way to interpret Islamic rulings, a new madhab, for the people of Cairo. He did this during his lifetime, obviously, this is more than significant proof that Islam is meant to evolve and accept new people and times, not to remain stagnant like a swamp until it begins to fester with malaria.
Also, be sure you know when Imam Shafi lived, he lived a little over 100 years after our Prophet (S) returned to the Truth. His opinion wasn't to return to how things were done 100 years ago, although I am sure he had all the information he would require to pull this off. No, instead he did the above, made two distinctions in rulings according to time, place, and people. Do you want to argue with Imam Shafi? He once said, "Put me in a room full of scholars and I will win in every debate against them, put me in a room with one ignorant person and I will lose every debate."
Do we understand what happened to the Christian faith? Good. To be even more clear, please acknowledge that this is in no way an affront to the Christian faith, this is a demonstration of how a religion, divined by God, responds to time. This is already happening to Islam. Don't believe me? Let's take a walk through the different phases that have already come to pass.
I will relate events in Christianity to events in Islam to draw the parallels more clearly. I will also assume that those reading this understand or have a vague knowledge of Islamic history, I won't be delving into specifics.
Phase 1 of deterioration
The Great Schism (11th Century) = Formation of Shia' Islam (7th Century)
Shiism came about almost immediately after the death of our beloved Prophet Muhammad (S). In my understanding, it was more political than religious, but it can be argued both ways. Either way, this is similar to the Historical Church being broken in two, establishing Eastern Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism. From this event in Islam, the Sunni camp and the Shia camps were formed.
Phase 2 of deterioration
The Protestant Reformation (16th Century) = Establishment of the Wahabi Movement (18th century)
These two are similar in how they occurred and in what they accomplished. Martin Luther for me is the same as Abd al Wahab, the founder of the Wahabi movement. They both made an abysmal mess of the established religion and order. The Protestants cried for Sola Scriptura! While the Wahabis cried for Ahl al Hadith! Clearly these are huge diversions from traditional Christianity and Islam, respectively. Diversions... this word can be interpreted as "innovation" from a religious standpoint, hence, the Wahabi movement is a very big bida'at!
Sola Scriptura demanded that adherents of the faith required no intermediary, no Priests or clergy, no Holy Mother Church, they only needed the Holy Bible and were capable enough to interpret it themselves, thereby making their own judgements and ideas about their faith. This, obviously, was utterly asinine. Look at the state of Protestants today. Splintered into a multitude of sects, everyone is essentially allowed to come up with their own interpretation, thus their own church, thus their own understanding of the Christian creed and doctrine. You can't tell them they are wrong in their doctrinal interpretation either, if you yourself are a Protestant of course.
The Wahabis have done something similar, claiming to be the people of the Hadith, thus the people of the Sunnah. Essentially, if our Prophet (S) didn't do it, the Wahabis will not do it, if he did in fact do it, they will do it. However, the way they interpret Hadith and Qur'an is very rudimentary in understanding and insight. They often misquote or take only part of the hadith to heart. Not to mention that they interpret the Qur'an literally, no where in Islamic history is the Qur'an interpreted literally, at least not until the Wahabis came around. Literalists... they are literally stupid.
For instance, the Hadith that talks about not having your clothes trail below your ankle. The Wahabis enjoy rolling their pants above their ankles (Prophet Muhammad (S) never wore pants... or thobs for that matter) during the prayer and some extend this and maintain bare ankles throughout the day. However, the second part of the hadith demonstrates that God does not like those who allow their clothes to drag out of arrogance. Upon hearing this said by the Prophet (S) Abu Bakr (R) asked him if he would be punished for allowing his clothes to drag since he was without a belt and was very poor. The Prophet told him that he would not be punished because he was not letting his clothes drag out of arrogance. For in that time, the extremely wealthy could afford to buy cloth enough to cover themselves and then some so that it would drag on the earth as they walked, allowing their clothes to become dirty since they were more than capable of affording new clothes whenever they desired. Clearly, I don't roll my pant legs up.
Also, they don't seem to understand that Islam defined a way for us to live not just to worship. Which is why they say it's okay to drive cars even though our Prophet (S) never drove a car (God forbid a woman ever drive, since you know, Saudi Arabia will run out of virgins in 10 years), or to use electricity, or modern currency, or watch television, or sit in a cafe, the list is infinitely long with things that our Prophet (S) never did but Wahabis do simply because they interpret it one way as opposed to another. If they truly want to follow the Sunnah, they would wear scraps of cloth to cover their nether regions, be extremely humble and compassionate, not be greedy and try to accumulate as much wealth as possible, and essentially live very simple lives, not to mention that they would eat little, not gorge themselves and become incredibly rotund... a Wahabi trademark.
Honestly, I don't have a problem with Wahabis, if they want to interpret Islam in a specific way, fine, but I do have a problem when they start forcing their views on others, or when they start destroying holy relics and sites. After all, "there is no compulsion in religion." This affects everyone, clearly they are being very selfish, arrogant, and ignorant. I suppose it brings some peace knowing that they are not yet the majority, but they sure do have a LOT of money. Funny that our faith should become so heavily influenced by the material realm when the goal of our faith is to forsake it.
So, going back to what was shared about Imam Shafi, it is a tremendously good thing for Islam to evolve and adapt to the current time and people, you don't change the principals of faith, that's not what's being said, you make room for people to accept faith. That's the goal after all isn't it? What's the point if you interpret religion in such a manner that it makes it nearly impossible for practitioners of that faith to achieve Heaven, much less non-practitioners who are taking an interest or someone who is just starting out? God didn't make religion difficult, human beings (specifically Wahabis) make religion difficult. God made religion so that life would be easy for us to endure and so that hope and love would grow in our hearts. If you make religion difficult, you will have people start leaving the faith. Which leads me back to Phase 4 for Christianity and Phase 3 for Islam.
Phase 4 deterioration for Christianity is already in progress and Phase 3 for Islam is as well, they are the same. This is the phase that leads one to unbelief. It's ironic how openly people can claim the nonexistence of God but can't make politically incorrect remarks. Our values and morals have shifted and changed. The good has become bad and the bad, good. This was foretold in a hadith by our Prophet (S).
What can you do other than try to be a good human being? Be a good Muslim, a good Christian, a good Jew, Hindu, Bhuddist, Taoist, be good in whatever faith you adhere to, be sincere, and love God.
Written by Abu Fulan - January 25, 2012
