Islamic prayer

[Booklover]

LilyM:

They learn what it means? you mean they learn Arabic? does that mean that those who don’t learn Arabic or who learn it imperfectly are somehow worse Muslims because they lack the full understanding of God’s word? Rather I would say EVERY human language and EVERY human writing is an imperfect transmission of God’s knowledge.

I would rather think God works as he did in the Christian New Testament where the disciples of Jesus preach to a crowd of people of many nations and by God’s power all of the listeners hear them in their OWN languages equally well. After all, God put me in the country I’m in and gave me the language that I speak, and I don’t believe he prefers one language or nation to another.

Vickie

 

[Muslim]

inJESUS:

Muslim:

is arabic your native language muslim?

no its not, but i hope to learn it.

 

[Muslim]

LilyM:

They learn what it means? you mean they learn Arabic? does that mean that those who don’t learn Arabic or who learn it imperfectly are somehow worse Muslims because they lack the full understanding of God’s word? Rather I would say EVERY human language and EVERY human writing is an imperfect transmission of God’s knowledge.

I would rather think God works as he did in the Christian New Testament where the disciples of Jesus preach to a crowd of people of many nations and by God’s power all of the listeners hear them in their OWN languages equally well. After all, God put me in the country I’m in and gave me the language that I speak, and I don’t believe he prefers one language or nation to another.

from this you get that God prefers Arabs over someone else???
from the Holy Quran
“[49:13] O mankind! We created you from a single (pair) of a male and a female, and made you into nations and tribes, that you may know each other (not that you may despise each other). Verily the most honored of you in the sight of Allah is (he who is) the most righteous of you. And Allah has full knowledge and is well acquainted (with all things).”"
i read the Qu’ran in English because it helps me understand it in my language. However, the original message was in Arabic, and why would I mind learning another language?

 

[LilyM]

Muslim:

from this you get that God prefers Arabs over someone else???
from the Holy Quran
“[49:13] O mankind! We created you from a single (pair) of a male and a female, and made you into nations and tribes, that you may know each other (not that you may despise each other). Verily the most honored of you in the sight of Allah is (he who is) the most righteous of you. And Allah has full knowledge and is well acquainted (with all things).”"
i read the Qu’ran in English because it helps me understand it in my language. However, the original message was in Arabic, and why would I mind learning another language?

Hold your horses Muslim. I said ‘nation’ without thinking, because language often goes hand in hand with nationality - I know that a lot of Arabic speakers aren’t Arabs, and that Arabic doesn’t really follow this rule. Perhaps I was thinking of something along the lines of ‘region’ - since the officially Arabic-speaking countries are pretty much clustered together in the Middle East and North Africa.

But that’s more or less beside my point anyway. I was just struck by the point that was made earlier that because the Quran was ‘revealed’ in Arabic Muslims are reluctant to translate it into other languages or say its prayers in other languages, lest they lose something of the meaning which Allah intended, which strikes me as being a bit silly.

As I said in an earlier post, we Catholics have occasional problems with people who prefer the old Latin Mass, and I’ve seen one person arguing on these very forums that Latin might be a holier language somehow. This I find equally silly - God is above language. I believe he would be able to make himself understood equally well in any translation of Bible or Quran, and that our prayers are equally acceptable to him in whatever language we are most comfortable with. After all, God himself gave people their different languages at the Tower of Babel in the OT.

Now, the Muslim prayers that are said five times a day, do all Muslims have to say them in Arabic whether or not they understand Arabic? My understanding is that they do.

 

[cestusdei]

Faith101:

Mohamed is God’s messenger. Chosen and directly guided by God. God Himself tells us, in the Quran, to follow the messenger. This is what we do.

As for the differences in prayer, they are so small, that you would probably have a hard time picking them out. Do you ever see the Muslims pray in Haj? Thats over 2 million people, from all over the world…can you pick out the differences?

You can pray, essentially, whenever you want. But a Muslim will be specifically asked about the 5 mandatory prayers.

What you mentioned above is exactly why we have and need a messenger who lived his life as a Muslim…and who God himself told us to follow…so that we dont have all these disagreements you just mentioned (when to pray, where to face, what way to pray, etc).

I understand your point. The Quran and the sunnah of the Prophet, peace be upon him, go hand in hand. The message and the messenger. Again, the Quran is not silent on these matters, it addresses them over and over and over again…but as to the details, well it leaves that to the messenger that GOD Himself told us to follow.

This may be confusing for you, and probably becaus i’m not the best at explaining things…but for me, its the greatest mercy that God would send us a message…and a human example that follows the message.

How did you come to the conclusion that Muslims regard Mohamed as divine after reading the Quran?

My point was there are differences even if small. You guys can tell. Also that there is no quranic aya that says how you should pray or even do wudu. Why do we need Muhammed? Isn’t the quran good enough? Isn’t that making him an intermediary with God? Gosh like a pope! It is exactly this logic that leads me to the conclusion that Muhammed has divine status according to Muslims. Btw, Muhammed SAID God said to follow him. I don’t think God said that at all.

 

[Cyber_Knight]

ronald:

Sorry brother…i mean monkey not donkey. Ok, got to go coz already late in Bali now. Jesus loves us. Om Swastiastu.

aha… must be in my posting. if you notice him since his coming… you would surely understood it very well what I’m talking about. Anyway, Bali sounds nice. How is it going after several blasts?..

 

[freedomm]

inJESUS:

the difference is that we believe in a God who keeps His Word.you believe in a not omnipotent deity coz he couldnt preserve his word as he said, or a liar cuz he did not fulfill his promise.

Dear inJESUS:

Alhamdulillaah (All Praise is due to Allaah alone), Allaah did preserve His Words of His Holy Quran. as promised through Muslims. But this does not mean that Allaah is going to come down to our Earth and do our job.

Your logic is flawed because you did not understand the RATIONALE of Allaah’s promise, in the first place. You simply assume things from your own and then attribute to them to others as if they were their claims.

This world is a test for us. We have to do our job as Allaah commanded through His choosen Prophets (PBUT). Otherwise it defeats the purpose of our test that is given by Allaah to us. He created us and we are sinly His creation. He does whatever He Wills. You don’t know His Whole Wisdom. Allaah does His part, on His own conditions and not on our conditions nor the way you mistook/misunderstand His words.

Let me give you a rough example. It is like, if you ask your respected loving teacher to write your Exam papers too. Well, your teacher is not going to write your exam on your behalf, even if he happened to be your very religious daddy or mom. You have to do your own part. You have to write your own Exam in your own words and preserve/retain what your teacher taught you the whole year. Your teacher, did his part by making sure you learned and understood all that was necessary for you to know and be prepared for Exam. Through his teaching, your teacher did preserve the knowledge and transmitted it to you and to other fellow students. You cannot say that “Oh my beloved respected teacher, what kind of a loving and respected teacher you are? Can’t you write my Exam paper as well, afterall you took the trouble to teach me the whole year? Do me a last favour and write my Exam as well, otherwise I assume you actaully don’t like your students or don’t want to preserve/transmit the knowledge that you have?”

I hope you grasp what I am trying to say.

So, with Allaah’s Grace and Mercy, Muslims throughout the centuries, were able to preserve the Word of Allaah, as it was revealed without any kind of alteration. They took every precaution and go through hardship in writing and memorizing with full devotion without any break. Now as per BBC’s Fact File on Islam:

“The Qur’an is the most widely read book in the world”

and at the present:

**“There are two billion Muslims world-wide.” **

[bbc.co.uk/insideout/northeast/series4/yvonne_ridley_iraq.shtml]](http://www.bbc.co.uk/insideout/northeast/series4/yvonne_ridley_iraq.shtml])

As to the variation issue in reciting some Arabic words, this does not change at all the over all meaning of the whole Quran. Because the Original text is preserved and it does not take a rocket scientist to figure out the meaning of few variant readings of words if you keep the context in your mind.

Your objection would makes sense only if the Orinigal text of Arabic was lost, like how no Gospel in Jesus’ native language is found to this day. All you have is in Greek. And no two of even Greek manuscripts are alike. Nor you have a tradition of preserving Gospel through vword by word memorization.

On the other hand, all the Schools of Thought in mainstream Muslim community are ONE UNIFIED UNIT from the day one. Islam has no ONE-MAN SHOW of Papacy type office. Islamic Community of Scholars is like Mainstream Scientific Community, in which everything is judged, scrutinized, criticised and ratonalized all the time COLLECTIVELY. Thus no falsehood can enter nor accepted by the majority at any given time and at any stage. Thus soul of the Holy Quran is same since the day one of it’s Revelation. You can go to any mosque or Islamic school anywhere in the world and you will find the same text is being recited and taught. Preservation of Original text has unified them in one necklace.

IF Muslims were careless as to preserving the Quranic Original Text. they would have easily turned a blind eye whenever someone tried to change it or interject his own stuff into it. But as you see, throughout 14 centuries, Muslim scholars were very very cautious and whenever they hear any kind of distortion is taking place either by enemies of Islam or due to ignorance, they right away **strongly and forcefully agitated ** and **stopped it ** and record the incidents and expalin it’s all details and made sure the text is retained / transmitted properly through the written record.​

—cont-------

 

[freedomm]

—cont-------

Dear inJESUS:

And remember that there is no possiblity of changing the words of the Holy Quran because it is countinuously recited without any break, word by word, in non-stop five times a day prayers, Friday parayers, Night prayer (Tahajjud), Annual Eid prayers, Annual Ramadhaan’s special Nightly prayers and not to mention the Nawafil prayers. In alll these prayers it is must for Muslims to read the Orinigal Arabic Text whether in congregational/group prayers or individual prayers. And these prayers are common continuous tradition from the days of our Last Prophet (PBUH) to our day and it inshaa’Allaah (God-Willing) will continue to the last Day of this Earth. So there is no question of any kind of alteration in the Original Text at all.

Besides, there are TWO main SOLID channels of preserving the Holy Quran, through written record and side by side through word-by-word memorization of the entire text from First Surah to Last 114th Surah and verification of the memorization by the authentic teachers. All countless magnificent manuscripts of the Arabic Holy Qurans that are still present throughout the Muslim world, are a living proof/testimony on top of that which are IDENTICAL.

---

Such is not the case with the Books of your various versions of the Bible. First of all you don’t even have any written record of Jesus’ sayings in his own native langauge in order to see what precisely he uttered. Thus nothing can be said that whether Allah had promised to Prophet Jesus (PBUH) to save his Message revealed to him. Translators, no matter how expert they were or are cannot be trusted for various reasons, if the original text is lost. For example, the below is a verse from your Arabic Bible:

** في ذلك اليوم يحلق السيد بموسى مستأجرة في عبر النهر بملك اشور الراس وشعر الرجلين وتنزع اللحية ايضا**

Now please translate it in your own simple English without looking into your Catholic New American Bible of English since you know Arabic. After translating it let’s see how accurate or closely you translated the essence of Hebrew.

---

 

[inJESUS]

Dear inJESUS:

Alhamdulillaah (All Praise is due to Allaah alone), Allaah did

preserve His Words of His Holy Quran. as promised through Muslims. But this does not mean that Allaah is going to come down to our Earth and do our job.

Your logic is flawed because you did not understand the RATIONALE of Allaah’s promise, in the first place. You simply assume things from your own and then attribute to them to others as if they were their claims.

This world is a test for us. We have to do our job as Allaah commanded through His choosen Prophets (PBUT). Otherwise it defeats the purpose of our test that is given by Allaah to us. He created us and we are sinly His creation. He does whatever He Wills. You don’t know His Whole Wisdom. Allaah does His part, on His own conditions and not on our conditions nor the way you mistook/misunderstand His words.

Let me give you a rough example. It is like, if you ask your respected loving teacher to write your Exam papers too. Well, your teacher is not going to write your exam on your behalf, even if he happened to be your very religious daddy or mom. You have to do your own part. You have to write your own Exam in your own words and preserve/retain what your teacher taught you the whole year. Your teacher, did his part by making sure you learned and understood all that was necessary for you to know and be prepared for Exam. Through his teaching, your teacher did preserve the knowledge and transmitted it to you and to other fellow students. You cannot say that “Oh my beloved respected teacher, what kind of a loving and respected teacher you are? Can’t you write my Exam paper as well, afterall you took the trouble to teach me the whole year? Do me a last favour and write my Exam as well, otherwise I assume you actaully don’t like your students or don’t want to preserve/transmit the knowledge that you have?”

I hope you grasp what I am trying to say.

So, with Allaah’s Grace and Mercy, Muslims throughout the centuries, were able to preserve the Word of Allaah, as it was revealed without any kind of alteration. They took every precaution and go through hardship in writing and memorizing with full devotion without any break. what i understand is that you have FAITH that the people who wrote it did not err, BECAUSE allah said He preserves His word right?

As to the variation issue in reciting some Arabic words, this does not change at all the over all meaning of the whole Quran. Because the Original text is preserved and it does not take a rocket scientist to figure out the meaning of few variant readings of words if you keep the context in your mind.

so you admit that no matter what vowel or mark you add, the meaning is understood which i find very reasonalble…am i correct that this is what you are saying?

Your objection would makes sense only if

the Orinigal text of Arabic was lost, like how no Gospel in Jesus’ native language is found to this day. but the originals were lost at the hands of Uthman…all you have is faith that Uthman and Zaid’s copy do not have any change…right?

Nor you have a tradition of preserving Gospel through vword by word memorization.

why do you assume something if you haven’t read about it? scriptures have always been transmitted oraly from the OT till the NT.

On the other hand, all the Schools of Thought in mainstream Muslim community are ONE UNIFIED UNIT from the day one.

is that why you have shiit, sunni, wahhabi, sufi, ahmadiyya, ecc? whatever one sect says, the other replies : this is not true islam.

IF Muslims were careless as to preserving the Quranic Original Text. they would have easily turned a blind eye whenever someone tried to change it or interject his own stuff into it. But as you see, throughout 14 centuries, Muslim scholars were very very cautious and whenever they hear any kind of distortion is taking place either by enemies of Islam or due to ignorance, they right away **strongly and forcefully agitated **

and **stopped it ** and record the incidents and expalin it’s all details and made sure the text is retained / transmitted properly through the written record. thank you… i understand that muslims have great faith to their leaders regarding corruption.

Once you answer my questions, i’ll elaborate more.

 

[inJESUS]

—cont-------

Dear inJESUS:

And remember that there is no

possiblity of changing the words of the Holy Quran because it is countinuously recited without any break, word by word, in non-stop five times a day prayers, Friday parayers, Night prayer (Tahajjud), Annual Eid prayers, Annual Ramadhaan’s special Nightly prayers and not to mention the Nawafil prayers. In alll these prayers it is must for Muslims to read the Orinigal Arabic Text whether in congregational/group prayers or individual prayers. And these prayers are common continuous tradition from the days of our Last Prophet (PBUH) to our day and it inshaa’Allaah (God-Willing) will continue to the last Day of this Earth. So there is no question of any kind of alteration in the Original Text at all.

Besides, there are TWO main SOLID channels of preserving the Holy Quran, through written record and side by side through word-by-word memorization of the entire text from First Surah to Last 114th Surah and verification of the memorization by the authentic teachers. All countless magnificent manuscripts of the Arabic Holy Qurans that are still present throughout the Muslim world, are a living proof/testimony on top of that which are IDENTICAL.

• • • • • • as i said earlier we will have a discussion about comilation.

Such is not the case with the Books of your various versions of the Bible. First of all you don’t even have any written record of Jesus’ sayings in his own native langauge in order to see what precisely he uttered.

is your native language english? if not, then i should not trust your posts in english cuz what you are saying in english is not your language hence the meaning is wrong…that is your logic.

Thus nothing can be said that whether Allah had promised to Prophet Jesus (PBUH) to save his Message revealed to him. Translators, no matter how expert they were or are cannot be trusted for various reasons, if the original text is lost.

translation affects the style, not the meaning…as if you are saying : 1.5 billion non-arab muslims do not understand the quran’s teachings cuz they dont know arabic…does it make sense? do you know arabic??

For example, the below is a verse from your Arabic Bible:

** في ذلك اليوم يحلق السيد بموسى مستأجرة في عبر النهر بملك اشور الراس وشعر الرجلين وتنزع اللحية ايضا**

Now please translate it in your own simple English without looking into your Catholic New American Bible of English since you know Arabic. After translating it let’s see how accurate or closely you translated the essence of Hebrew. i would but am not translation scholar…do you think anyone had the right to translate the Bible???they were scholars! and i’m sure that if i translate this for you, i might give a weak grammatical english sentence coz am not scholar in english, but the meaning is the same…agree?

 

[inJESUS]

** في ذلك اليوم يحلق السيد بموسى مستأجرة في عبر النهر بملك اشور الراس وشعر الرجلين وتنزع اللحية ايضا**

Now please translate it in your own simple English without looking into your Catholic New American Bible of English since you know Arabic. After translating it let’s see how accurate or closely you translated the essence of Hebrew. [/INDENT]

my own translation of this verse is :

on that day the Lord shall shave with a razor hired from across the river with the king of Assirya, the head, and the hair of the legs and shall shave also the beard.

Now will you quote to me this verse in english cuz i don’t know where iit is?

 

[Booklover]

Faith101:

The Quran was revealed in Arabic…and we believe that it is the direct word of God, therfore any translation by any human being renders it not divine.

Over 85% of Muslims are not Arabs. You dont have to understand Arabic to be a pious Muslim, as Mohammed said in his last sermon “no arab is superior over a non-arab…except in piety”. Many non-arabs do learn Arabic though, its really not that hard…i learned it.

If any translation renders the word of God not divine, it sounds like Allah blundered when he sent his “final message” that way. Even I with my limited human mentality can see ways in which Allah could have done this better!

1. Allah could have made all translations perfect, since nothing is impossible to God.
2. He could have made Arabic the only language so everyone could understand it.

or

1. The Quran was never the word of God in the first place, but simply the product of a 7th century mentality!!

How can we believe that the God who created the universe and everything in it, be so incompetent? God does not make mistakes or do anything in a hit and miss way. Think about it!

When Jesus’ apostles started evangelizing after the real Paraclete, the Holy Spirit, descended on them at Pentecost, when they spoke, their listeners heard them in their own language! Now that’s efficiency!

See the difference?

Vickie

 

[Booklover]

Faith101:

The Quran tells us how important prayer is, how important modesty is, how important haj is…etc…but doesnt tell us exactly how to do most of these things. This is why Allah tells us that Muhammad is a beautiful model, and that we should follow him. In fact, Allah says that if you love Allah, then follow his messenger. Why? Because Mohamed is the Quran in action. When someone asked Aisha (Mohamed’s wife) about the character of theprophet, she replied that it was the Quran.

Agreed! Mohammed was the real author of the Quran, not God!

Jesus Christ is the Word of God in action!

We obey his example because this is what Allah tells us to do.

Wrong! That was Mohammed putting words in God’s mouth. Mohammed said that, not God!

Vickie

 

[inJESUS]

Faith101:

Thanks, I missed this one. Another reason why the Kaaba is only a direction of prayer, and not an idol itself is because Muslims were ordered to face another direction first. If the Kaaba was something worthy of worship, then it wouldnt have been ignored like that.

thx but i missed the response…if allah knew kaaba is sacred why did he ask you to face Jerusalem first? or maybe he changed his mind so quickly? Hey muslims, face Jerusalem…oh but wait, thats not the correct place, i changed my mind, face the Kaaba!

 

[flameburns623]

Cyber Knight:

I noted Bukhari is a sahih hadith. Then may I ask if you believe this hadith ? Just answer YES or NO :

Bukhari 1.660:
Narrated Abu Huraira:
The Prophet said, “Isn’t he who raises his head before the Imam afraid that Allah may transform his head into that of a donkey or his figure into that of a donkey?”

You’re committing a logical fallacy here. I think it’s called the fallacy of the false dichotomy. Anyhow you’re demanding an absolute ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer to a question which can rightly be qualified as less than an abslute yes or absolute no. In this case, because Hadith carry less authority than the Qu’ran, and because various Hadith are graded differently based upon the degree of authenticity that certain Islamic authorities have assigned them-- a good Muslim could and should rightly respond with a qualified answer. They must, first, say that a Hadith is only true so long as and to the degree that it is understood in the light of the Qu’ran. Secondly, a Muslim can and should point out that if this Hadith is not rated highly as refers to it’s authenticity, there is considerable room for being at least highly judicious as to the degree they accept it.

The same is true for Catholics and other traditinalist Christians with respect to the pseudepegrafa and early Patristic writings. Everything written by the Early Church Fathers and other early Christians should be read and understood through the prism of Inspired Holy Scripture, which has absolute authority. Some things in the early writings of Christians are treated very authoritatively. Some are considered to be helpful to piety though perhaps not literally historical or fully valid. Some things are purely speculative. Some things are purely wrong.

 

[cestusdei]

The fact is we don’t know what Muhammed actually said. We have only Uthmans testimony. He tried to burn all the variants. Which of course means there WERE variants. There are some variants that have survived. Not all the old qurans are exactly the same. This means it is not “perfect” the way muslims claim. Even the ‘satanic’ verses were omitted. The quran has been changed and as time goes on scholars will uncover more of this truth. The fact remains that we have absolutely no idea what Muhammed said God told him.

 

[Muslim]

cestusdei:

The fact is we don’t know what Muhammed actually said. We have only Uthmans testimony. He tried to burn all the variants. Which of course means there WERE variants. There are some variants that have survived. Not all the old qurans are exactly the same. This means it is not “perfect” the way muslims claim. Even the ‘satanic’ verses were omitted. The quran has been changed and as time goes on scholars will uncover more of this truth. The fact remains that we have absolutely no idea what Muhammed said God told him.

no uthman burned the Qurans that were translated into other dialects (Arab have 7 i think)…so they changed a lot of the words in the Quran to soudn the same even tho they had diff meaning… so he only kept the original one…

 

[freedomm]

flameburns623:

You’re committing a logical fallacy here. I think it’s called the fallacy of the false dichotomy. Anyhow you’re demanding an absolute ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer to a question which can rightly be qualified as less than an abslute yes or absolute no. In this case, because Hadith carry less authority than the Qu’ran, and because various Hadith are graded differently based upon the degree of authenticity that certain Islamic authorities have assigned them-- a good Muslim could and should rightly respond with a qualified answer. They must, first, say that a Hadith is only true so long as and to the degree that it is understood in the light of the Qu’ran. Secondly, a Muslim can and should point out that if this Hadith is not rated highly as refers to it’s authenticity, there is considerable room for being at least highly judicious as to the degree they accept it.

The same is true for Catholics and other traditinalist Christians with respect to the pseudepegrafa and early Patristic writings. Everything written by the Early Church Fathers and other early Christians should be read and understood through the prism of Inspired Holy Scripture, which has absolute authority. Some things in the early writings of Christians are treated very authoritatively. Some are considered to be helpful to piety though perhaps not literally historical or fully valid. Some things are purely speculative. Some things are purely wrong.

This post is food for thought (to all Christians).

 

[Eden]

What is the name, location and date of the earliest Quran believed by Muslims to be in existence? In light of this fact that Muslim scholars state that the earliest copy of the Quran was written no earlier than 150 years after Muhammad died, how could the Quran possibly be better than the Bible?

And how do you explain the variations in the miracle of a perfect text? The text of the Koran in 37:103 reads “they had both submitted their wills (became Muslims)” while the Arabic text of the Tashkent MSS gives the exact opposite meaning, “they did not submitted their wills” (they did NOT become Muslims.)

Another textual variations is that the Tashkent MSS differs from the modern Egyptian Qur’an in 5 passages: 2:284, 2:283, 3:37, 3:109 and 5:119. The Tashkent MSS uses the word ‘Allah’ while the modern Egyptian Qur’an, uses the word ‘huwa’ (the pronoun ‘he’). So, which word would be in the “preserved master tablet” and “mother of all books” in heaven?
Further, the books of the Bible were written by 40 different men over a period of 1600 years with multiple threads of unified themes that span cover to cover while the Quran is a jumble of disjointed material, without order, continuity or unity of any kind.

And why do Muslim authorities refuse to release documentary photographs of the Topkapi manuscript in Istanbul? What they are afraid for the world to see?

 

[onesimplemind]

Eden:

And why do Muslim authorities refuse to release documentary photographs of the Topkapi manuscript in Istanbul? What they are afraid for the world to see?

So thats why muslims go into conniptions when people draw pictures of Mohammed.