LOVE حب

Love... Some people say that there are different kinds of love. I say there is only one. Just as there is only one God. If it is true that God is love, and it is also true that there is only one God, then we could conclude that there is only one love. This would make sense if we considered the concept of love as something that cannot have a limit on it. Imagine a love with limits. What kind of love would that be then? I would like to think that all love is without conditions, that this is a necessary trait of love. It cannot be separated from the concept of love. You either love or you don't. There is no in between. If you consider God love, then this is all the more true, as you should see love as you see God, as something that has no limitations and that love never fails. It might go through your head the question, well, what about the difference between brotherly love and romantic love?? Surely they are not the same love. However, they actually are one and the same. You can love a friend, a sister, a mother, a wife, a teacher, anyone, and it is all love. The difference is not the kind of love. The difference is that with a wife you love her AND you are also attracted to her among other things while a teacher you might love AND admire and respect him or her. So the love is the same, it is the other elements that contribute to the different feelings. When we truly love, we would give our lives for those we love. Like Jesus pbuh said; "No man hath a greater love than this; that a man lay down his life for his friends." Now here we have a love, with no limits, not even death. Love is stronger than death, it is stronger than anything, it is of God and only of God and it is God. The greatest commandments that Moses gave to mankind, pbuh, was "Love the Lord Your God with all your heart and all your mind and all your soul. And love your neighbor as you love yourself."

1 Corinthians chapter 13 (TEV)

1 I may be able to speak the languages of human beings and even of angels, but if I have no love, my speech is no more than a noisy gong or a clanging bell.

2 I may have the gift of inspired preaching; I may have all knowledge and understand all secrets; I may have all the faith needed to move mountains-but if I have no love, I am nothing.

3 I may give away everything I have, and even give up my body to be burned-but if I have no love, this does me no good.

Love is patient, love is kind.
It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.
It is not rude, it is not self-seeking.
It is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.
Love does not delight in evil, but rejoices with the truth.
It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
Love never fails.
I Corinthians 13:4-8

The Holy Quran:

5:54

O you who believe! Whoever from among you turns back from his religion (Islâm), Allâh will bring a people whom He will love and they will love Him; humble towards the believers, stern towards the disbelievers, fighting in the Way of Allâh, and never afraid of the blame of the blamers. That is the Grace of Allâh which He bestows on whom He wills. And Allâh is All­Sufficient for His creatures' needs, All­Knower.

3:31

Say (O Muhammad SAW to mankind): "If you (really) love Allâh then follow me (i.e. accept Islâmic Monotheism, follow the Qur'ân and the Sunnah), Allâh will love you and forgive you of your sins. And Allâh is Oft-Forgiving, Most Merciful."

The Webster Dictionary meaning of the word "Love" is:

"passionate, warm attachment, affectionate"

The Holy Qur'an lists these attributes describing God , along with much more ,
for example , in the Holy Qur'an , our Creator is addressed as:

"Compassionate , Merciful , the Helper , the Nourisher , the Generous , the Guide ,
the Loving (al-Wadud in Arabic often translated into English as "the Kind
One"), the Raiser of the Dead , the Patient"

Thus showing how the God of Islam which is the same God of Abraham , Moses and
Jesus , is in fact a God of Love .

Besides God being Defined as Love in the Holy Qur'an , we also see quotes of
how God Gives us Love in the Qur'an:

"... God loves the doers of justice." {Holy Qur'an 60:8}

"... God loves those who are fair (and just). " {Holy Qur'an 49.009}

" On those who believe and work deeds of righteousness, will (Allah) Most
Gracious bestow love. " {Holy Qur'an 19:96}

"...God loveth those who make themselves pure. " {Holy Qur'an 9:108}

"... For God loves those who put their trust (in Him). " {Holy Qur'an 3:159}

God in the Qur'an also gives Love unconditionally:

"It may be that God will ordain love between you and those of them with whom
ye are at enmity. Allah is Mighty, and Allah is Forgiving, Merciful. " {Holy
Qur'an 60:7}

" And among His Signs is this, that He created for you mates from among
yourselves, that ye may dwell in tranquillity with them, and He has put love
and mercy between your (hearts): verily in that are Signs for those who reflect. "
{Holy Qur'an 30:21}

"...for ye were enemies and He joined your hearts in love, so that by His
Grace, ye became brethren; and ye were on the brink of the pit of Fire, and
He saved you from it. Thus doth Allah make His Signs clear to you: That ye
may be guided. " {Holy Qur'an 3:103}

" And He is the Forgiving, the Loving, " {Holy Qur'an 85:14}

The Qur'an reveals this false assertion that God only loves the Jews or the
Christians:

"And the Jews and the Christians say: We are the sons of God and His beloved
ones. Say: Why does He then chastise you for your faults? Nay, you are
mortals from among those whom He has created, He forgives whom He pleases
and chastises whom He pleases; and God's is the kingdom of the heavens
and the earth and what is between them, and to Him is the eventual
coming." {Holy Qur'an 5:18}

This is not a attack on either Faith , it only rebukes
the claims by Jews who say 'only the children of Israel
are the chosen people' or the Christians who say 'all
non-Christians are demons'

This verse is only explaining that we are all from God
and God loves us all .

"Those who believe (in the Qur'an), those who follow the Jewish (scriptures), and the Sabians and the Christians,- any who believe in God and the Last Day, and work righteousness,- on them shall be no fear, nor shall they grieve. " {Holy Qur'an 5:69}

There are many more examples but this is to demonstrate that
True Love is both equally given as well as taken . Let us love each other ,
stand together as partners , praying to God and enjoying the Love and guidance
manifested in the Holy Qur'an.

The Woman Caught in Adultery

I wanted to tell you about something that I found very interesting and inspiring. My mother, when she was younger than me, maybe about 18 or 19, was asked by one of the preachers to give a message from the Injil to the people on the Christian Radio to the thousands of listeners in Guatemala. When they asked her what teaching she thinks she might talk about on the radio, she simply says to them, I don't know. I trust in God and when I come to the radio that day, God will guide me with what I am to speak about. When she came to the radio station, she sat behind the microphone and flipped through her bible after her prayer. She saw many stories with good message to talk about, but she chose to talk about a story in the Gospel of John 8:3-11, the story about the prostitute that is very well-known among the Christians today because it has many important messages to the believers. As you will read below, it has a very meaningful and spiritual message, that became even more meaningful to me after I had studied it and listened to another person give a sermon about it; Mr. Ahmed Deedat. So you can get a better idea of what I will be talking about, here is the passage from that chapter:

8.2 Early in the morning he came again to the temple; all the people came to him, and he sat down and taught them. 8.3 The scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery, and placing her in the midst 8.4 they said to him, "Teacher, this woman has been caught in the act of adultery. 8.5 Now in the law Moses commanded us to stone such. What do you say about her?" 8.6 This they said to test him, that they might have some charge to bring against him. Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground. 8.7 And as they continued to ask him, he stood up and said to them, "Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her." 8.8 And once more he bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground. 8.9 But when they heard it, they went away, one by one, beginning with the eldest, and Jesus was left alone with the woman standing before him. 8.10 Jesus looked up and said to her, "Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?" 8.11 She said, "No one, Lord." And Jesus said, "Neither do I condemn you; go, and do not sin again."

I found it interesting to go back and read in the Injil (Gospels) after I had taken this class at the university about the Injil and the studies of the scholars attempting to find what may be historically attributable to Jesus' saying and life or not. Some scholars do not believe that there is enough evidence in the Gospels to attribute this passage to Jesus because it is only found in one Gospel (John) and that many scholars believe came later than the other Gospels, although they do not rule out that it could be that John had an additional source that may have been even older than the sources the other Gospels used to gather information about Jesus.
But in any case, whether it was or not, we might never truly know.

But my point is not whether it came from Jesus or not, but instead, my point is to show that this story may show us something true about the prophethood of Jesus and something that may show that this story is plausible within his historical context as well. It is also a positive message even if that is not the case after all.

Now that I have learned a little bit about how scholars analyze these biblical stories, I feel like I have an improved, more open-minded perspective on scriptural study, whatever book I may be studying.

Here we have this unnamed woman, there are many "unnamed individuals" in the Gospel by the way, and most are usually the "good guys" in a sense, which may have a symbolic message within itself, but once again I digress. Anyway, this woman had been caught red-handed essentially in the act of adultery. The elders were ready to give her the punishment and tested Jesus by asking him what he thinks they should do with this women who had been witnessed as adultering. They knew if he answered "kill her," he would have a problem. If he answered, "let her go," then he would also be saying something controversial. While one answer would be in accordance with the Torah laws, the other might be against Roman law as Rome was the colonial power at the time, and he could get into trouble with them. This is one example of something we would not have understood or picked up on had we not understood the historical context. But instead of answering their questions, he bent down and drew in the ground. And the passage shows that he spent time writing, more time than it would take just to write one word or make a doodle.

That is interesting in itself, but that only leads in to the point I want to make. The other day, I heard a message given by Mr. Ahmed Deedat, a Muslim teacher and scholar. He analyzed this same story from the Gospel of John. He made an interpretation and educated guess as to what Jesus may have been drawing in the sand that clicked than any other I had ever heard even from any Christian scholar or pastor or preacher or from anyone for that matter. It had a big impact on me to hear this interpretation. I had often asked myself, as many people might as they read this passage from John, what might Jesus have been writing in the ground? I have heard many interesting symbolic answers to this but none like that of Mr. Deedat.

He supported this interpretation by putting this story within the framework of the historical context of when and where this event could have happened. He reminded the listeners that in this time in Jewish tradition, it was completely normal and orthodox to have discussions and healthy debates over interpretation of Torah law. It was a healthy way for Jews to study religion in that time and even into today. Jesus practiced this and we find it many places in the Gospels, although many pastors explain this possibly erroneously as Jesus making outlandish arguments with the Jews or being at odds with Judaism.

If it is so that Jews often interacted this way within their community, then it might be expected that these Pharisees and scribes present, watching Jesus drawing in the sand ignoring their questions, would feel inquisitive about Jesus' actions and be compelled to ask him what he was writing. They might also find it strange that he was not engaging in their debate about the woman. It is not like Jesus would shy away from a testing question, there are many similar instances in the gospels where Jesus addresses similar types of questions.

Naturally, the eldest elder would be the one to approach Jesus first, just as it is stated in this passage. What Deedat proposed is that Jesus, being a prophet and knowing privileged information, may have been revealed about the sins of these elders, and their names. So it is plausible that he may have been writing each of their names and the sin they most recently commited, and since we are all imperfect, all of them had something to seek forgiveness for. As the first elder approached, he may have seen his own name staring him in the face in the dirt, with his sin written next to it. He may have been astonished and immediately convicted in his heart, and would naturally have taken off, hopefully to repent himself or to reflect on what he had witnessed. As the other elders saw this, possibly one by one approached Jesus, saw his respective name written and dropped his stone and walked away from judging that woman. What a powerful image.

What is even more astonishing is that this theory came from not a Christian or even a Jewish, but in fact from a Muslim scholar! The first time I hear such a powerful analysis of this passage and it was someone that was not even Christian. Needless to say this story always left me thinking. Many of the gospel stories are written in a way to make you think and reflect. There is a reason the writer of this story had Jesus doing something that was unexpected whether the story actually happened this way or not. This was done possibly for the very purpose of making this passage memorable or to elicit an active mental response and wake us up to reflecting on the message.

At any rate, I always say whenever reading scripture, it is important to reflect for oneself. We must use the brain God gave us to think as we read, to read actively in a sense and not passively as though you are reading a novel where each and every detail and message is explained for you and the conclusion is given clearly. This is not necessarily the case in scriptures. We must read and reflect. We must ask ourselves the hard questions we must question what we read and give it thought, not just read it through carelessly or superficially, or take what others have said and just accept it as fact, but at the same time learning what scholars have deduced is also helpful in expanding our perspectives and understanding.

My First Semester (فصل) at the University (جامعة)

AlhamdulEllah, I finally finished my busy quarter at the University of Washington. I love my university so much. I am very happy there, but this quarter was difficult especially because I took 4 classes at the same time and one of the classes was 4 hours everyday with 6 hours of study time everyday after school. But alhamdulEllah, I did well with them. Today I had my final exams. I had a very good experience this summer. I met a lot of nice people and made new friends. I learned a lot about religion and my Arabic is improved.

One of my courses this summer was the study of "The Gospels and Jesus of Nazareth (Al Injil wa Issa min Nazaret)." I learned about many of the scholars that attempted to learn more about the historical Jesus, based on the historical context he lived in and based upon the many texts and gospels that they have at their reach. I learned also about how the gospels may have been written and how scholars show what may have been added, changed or may actually be attributable to Jesus.

The Gospels consist of Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John. We also looked at some gospels that were not included in the bible we know today, such as the Gospel of Peter and the Gospel of Thomas. We studied about the theories that scholars have about which may be the phrases that can be best traced back to the time of Jesus from these texts. It was very eye-opening to learn about what people were like in Jesus' time and how they thought. It is so much more different than we would like to think. For example, within the historical context of Jesus' life, ritual animal sacrifice was not only normal but common throughout various groups, even pagans. Thus for the Jews to have this ritual for atonement and purity, it may not have seemed out of place at all.

On the other hand, something that is as common today as the Sabbath day, which is Sunday for most Christian sects and Saturday, Shabbat, for the Jews for the historical context of Jesus' lifetime, this observance of the Sabbath would have set the Jews apart from others and been a very curious custom for many outsiders. So this helps to show that it is hard to depict Jesus without really understanding the context in which he lived because we are looking through a biased lens and the knowledge of what happened after his crucifixion also can get in the way of getting a purer idea of what Jesus may really have been like and what his message consisted of truly and why he would have been crucified. At any rate, in a nutshell, it was a very fascinating class and I learned a lot.