The Beginning Of Islam

Proof Of God’s Existence.
Isaac Newton (1642 – 1727) attempted to explain the physical universe, with God as an essential part of the system. In Newton’s physics, nature was entirely passive, God the sole source of activity.
Newton wanted to describe the relations between the various celestial and terrestrial bodies in mathematical terms in such a way as to create a coherent and comprehensive system.
The notion of gravitational force, which Newton introduced, drew the component parts of his system together.
When Newton contemplated the universe he was convinced that he had proof of God’s existence.
Why had the internal gravity of the celestial bodies not pulled them all together into one spherical mass?
Because they had been carefully disposed throughout infinite space with sufficient distance between them to prevent this.
This would have been impossible without an intelligent divine Overseer.
“I do not think it explicable by mere natural causes but am forced to ascribe it to ye counsel and contrivance of a voluntary agent. Gravity may put ye planets into motion but without ye divine power it could never put them into such a circulating motion as they have about ye sun, and therefore, for this as well as other reasons, I am compelled to ascribe ye frame of this system to an intelligent Agent. If, for example, the Earth revolved on its axis at only one hundred miles per hour instead of one thousand miles per hour, night would be ten times longer and the world would be too cold to sustain life. During the long days, the heat would shrivel all the vegetation. The Being which had contrived all this so perfectly had to be a supremely intelligent Mechanic. Besides being intelligent, this Agent had to be powerful enough to manage these great masses.”
Newton concluded that the primal force which had set the infinite and intricate system in motion was dominion which alone accounted for the universe and made God divine.

The God Of Isaac Newton.
When people deny the existence of God today they are often rejecting the God of Isaac Newton (1642 – 1727), the origin and sustainer of the universe whom scientists can no longer accommodate.
Newton himself had to resort to some startling solutions to find room for God in his system, which had of its very nature to be comprehensive.
If space was unchangeable and infinite – two cardinal features of the system – where did God fit in?
Was not space itself somehow divine, possessing as it did the attributes of eternity and infinity?
Was it a second divine entity, which had existed beside God from before the beginning of time?
Newton had always been concerned about this problem.
Since God is infinite, he must exist everywhere.
Space is an effect of God’s existence, emanating eternally from the divine omnipresence.
It was not created by him in an act of will but existed as a necessary consequence or extension of his ubiquitous being.
In the same way, because God himself is eternal, he emanates time.
We can, therefore, say that God constitutes that space and time in which we live and move and have our being.
Matter, on the other hand, was created by God on the day of creation by a voluntary act.
One could perhaps say that he had decided to endow some parts of space with shape, density, perceptibility and mobility.
It was possible to stand by the Christian Doctrine of Creation out of nothing because God had brought forth material substance from empty space.
He had produced matter out of the void.
Newton had no time for mystery, which he equated with ignorance and superstition.
“Tis the temper of the hot and superstitious part of mankind in matters of religion ever to be fond of mysteries, and for that reason to like best what they understand least”.
Newton believed Noah had founded the primordial religion – a gentile theology – which had been free of superstition and had advocated a rational worship of one God.
The only commandments were love of God and love of neighbour.
Later generations had corrupted this pure religion, with tales of miracles and marvels.
Yet God had sent a succession of prophets to put them back on course.

This Most Beautiful System.
This most beautiful system of the sun, planets and comets could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being.
He is eternal and infinite, omnipotent and omniscient.
That is, his duration reaches from eternity to eternity.
His presence from infinity to infinity.
He governs all things, and knows all things that are or can be done.
We know him only by his most wise and excellent contrivances of things, and final causes.
We admire him for his perfection, but we reverence and adore him on account of his dominion.
For we adore him as his servants.
And a god without dominion, providence, and final causes, is nothing else but Fate and Nature.
Blind metaphysical necessity, which is certainly the same always and everywhere, could produce no variety of things.
All that diversity of natural things which we find suited to different times and places could arise from nothing but the ideas and will of a Being necessarily existing.
( Isaac Newton. 1642 – 1727 )

Isaac Newton’s Theory.
Isaac Newton’s theory certainly opposes Stephen Hawking in which gravity, or the so-called dark energy, could exist at the absence of matter prior to the formation of this universe in this energy or gravity could create something out of nothing.
Stephen Hawking might comment that Einstein’s and Isaac Newton’s principles are wrong.
However, Stephen Hawking was not born at the time prior to the formation of this universe to visualize how the universe could be formed initially.
To jump into the conclusion that the gravity could be created from something out of nothing is simply out of his own imagination.
Not only that, his theory contradicts both Einstein’s and Isaac Newton’s principles pertaining to gravity.
( Jason Tannery )

The Beginning Of Islam.
In about the year 610 an Arab merchant of the thriving city of Mecca in the Hijaz, who had never read the Bible and probably never heard of Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel, had an experience that was uncannily similar to theirs.
Every year Muhammad Ibn Abdallah, a member of the Meccan tribe of Quraysh, used to take his family to Mount Hira just outside the city to make a spiritual retreat during the month of Ramadan.
This was quite a common practice among the Arabs of the Peninsular.
Like many of the Arabs, Muhammad had come to believe al-Lah, the High God of the ancient Arabian Pantheon whose name simply meant ‘The God’, was identical to the God worshipped by the Jews and the Christians.
Yet al-Lah had never sent them a messenger like Abraham, Moses or Jesus and the Arabs had no scripture in their own language.
He also believed that only a prophet of God could solve the problems of his people, but he never believed for one moment that he was going to be that prophet.
On Mount Hira in 610 on the seventeenth night of Ramadan, Muhammad was torn from sleep and felt himself enveloped by a devastating divine presence.
He said that an angel had appeared to him and given him a curt command: ‘Recite!’ (Iqra!).
Muhammad refused, protesting ‘I am not a reciter!’
But, Muhammad said, the angel simply enveloped him in an overpowering embrace, so that he felt as if all the breath was being squeezed from his body.
Just as he felt that he could bear it no longer, the angel released him and again commanded him to ‘Recite!’
Again Muhammad refused and again the angel embraced him until he felt that he had reached the limits of his endurance.
Finally, at the end of a third terrifying embrace, Muhammad found the first words of a new scripture pouring from his mouth.
The word of God had been spoken for the first time in Arabic language and the scripture would ultimately be called the Qur’an: The Recitation.
Muhammad’s wife Khadija consulted her cousin Waraqa Ibn Nawfal, a Christian and learned in the scriptures.
Waraqa had no doubts at all.
Muhammad had received a revelation from the God of Moses and the prophets and had become the divine envoy to the Arabs.
Eventually, after a period of several years, Muhammad was convinced that this was indeed the case and began to preach to the Quraysh, bringing them a scripture in their own language.
Muhammad did not have to prove the existence of God to the Quraysh.
They all believed implicitly in al-Lah, who was the creator of Heaven and Earth, and most believed him to be the God worshipped by the Jews and the Christians.
Unlike the Torah, however, which according to the biblical account was revealed to Moses in one session on Mount Sinai, the Koran was revealed to Muhammad bit by bit, line by line and verse by verse over a period of twenty-three years.
The revelations did not come to Muhammad in the order we read today but in a more random manner.
As each new segment was revealed, Muhammad, who could neither read nor write, recited it aloud, and those few who were literate wrote it down.
Some twenty years after Muhammad’s death, the first official compilation of the revelations was made.
The editors put the longest suras at the beginning and the shortest at the end.
The Koran is neither a narrative nor an argument that needs a sequential order.
The Koran was not meant for private perusal but for liturgical recitation.
It is meant to be recited aloud and the sound of the language is an essential part of its effect.
It is not a book to be read simply to acquire information.
It is meant to yield a sense of the divine, and must not be read in haste.
Muhammad encouraged women to play an active role in the affairs of the Ummah and they expressed their views forthrightly, confident that they would be heard.
One of their most important questions was why the Koran addressed men only when women had also made their surrender to God.
The result was a revelation that addressed women as well as men and emphasised the absolute moral and spiritual equality of the sexes.
Thereafter the Koran quite frequently addressed women explicitly.
Eventually Muhammad’s religion would be known as Islam.
He had managed to bring nearly all the tribes of Arabia into a new united community or Ummah.
In practical terms, Islam meant that Muslims had a duty to create a just, equitable society where the poor and vulnerable are treated decently.
Muhammad never asked Jews or Christians to convert to his religion, because they had received authentic revelations of their own.
The Koran did not see revelations as cancelling out the messages and insights of previous prophets but instead it stressed the continuity of the religious experience of mankind.
The Koran does not condemn other religious traditions as false or incomplete but shows each new prophet as confirming and continuing the insights of his predecessors.
The Koran repeatedly points out that it is not bringing a message that is essentially new and that Muslims must emphasise their kinship with the older religions.
The Koran naturally singles out apostles who were familiar to the Arabs – like Abraham, Noah, Moses and Jesus who were prophets of the Jews and Christians.
Today Muslims insist that if Muhammad had known about Hindus and Buddhists, he would have included their religious sages.
After his death they were allowed full religious liberty in the Islamic Empire, like the Jews and Christians.
The Koran emphasises the absolute moral and spiritual equality of the sexes.
Muhammad’s Islam religion meant that Muslims had a duty to create a just, equitable society where the poor and vulnerable are treated decently.

The Koran Does Not Prescribe The Veil For All Women.
The Koran emphasises the absolute moral and spiritual equality of the sexes.
The Koran does not prescribe the veil for all women but only for Muhammad’s wives, as a mark of their status.
Unfortunately, the religion was later hijacked by the men, who interpreted texts in a way that was negative for Muslim women.
Once Islam had taken its place in the civilised world, Muslims adopted those customs of the Oikumene which relegated women to second class status.
Today many Muslim feminists urge their menfolk to return to the original spirit of the Koran.