Denial of God
The atheists of our time fail to study serious literature, but pick up few sentences from popular writers. They do that in order to impress ordinary people, and to let them imagine that they have studied those writers. But rather, they may devote a few years studying such masters, not to find what they have said about Islam, but to learn the facts that are laid out in several volumes, writes SYED IQBAL ZAHEER.
We have been sent a former Muslim atheist’s summary of why he has abandoned God, His Prophet Muhammad (saws), His Revelation, the Qur’an, and His Religion, Islam.
We shall deal with the issue point by point, in installments.
At the beginning of an answer, one must point out that the matter will have to be dealt with frankness. If a doctor says to someone that he is suffering from tooth-decay, which accounts for the horrific smell of his mouth, then, the doctor is not insulting the patient. He just made a factual statement. So it will be with us. If the person(s) feel hurt with the answers, it merely means, they do not like to be shown the mirror and told the truth.
To take up atheism first: to adopt it for oneself is a sign of intellectual failure. This is because, firstly, he hasn’t educated himself well-enough to be able to discuss finer points, and, secondly, best human minds have admitted that God’s existence can neither be proven true, nor false. The question appears to be beyond the pale of reason and logic to be dealt with. Being hidden, God cannot be discussed. Can you explain forms of the shadows in the clouds?
It is like space, which has four dimensions. It is hard to understand something which has four dimensions. In fact, we don’t see space in four dimensions. We see right through space at something in three dimensions. Now, a hadith says God has ninety-nine attributes; it will be hard to comprehend Him. And, He has in His Self, all the attributes all the time. So that if He is, for example, all-Merciful at all times. He is not all-Merciful at anytime, and all-Merciful at some other time. But rather He is not without that Attribute at any time. Or, if He is all-Powerful, He is all-Powerful all the time. Similarly, He is all the ninety-nine attributes all the time. Now, if we humans find it hard to imagine something which has four dimensions (say, attributes), how should they understand something with 99 attributes? In fact, some scholars, although they believed that although they would see their Lord in the Heaven, they will not comprehend Him fully, in all completeness.
Most atheists, especially the poorly educated ones, as this Charlie appears to be (as of limited mental capacity, a kind of plebeian), do not know this. The better-educated ones, that is, those who have decided to disbelieve, take the safer position of declaring themselves agnostics: undecided about this or that. One of them cannot take the position of being a denier of God’s existence because he has no proof of that. So, to claim to be an atheist, betrays one’s poor education and poor mental abilities. One of them when asked since how long he has been an atheist, answered that he has been an atheist since the age of four!
Secondly, to claim to be a denier of God’s existence, especially if he is a Muslim, is a sign of deep-down dishonesty. Like Darwin (as against many second-level evolutionary biologists) when his wife expressed her doubt about the theory of evolution, citing the appearance of complex organs, e.g., the eye – (a problem unresolved down to our times), he frankly and honesty admitted that he had no answer. As against such honesty, our atheist will assert his belief in non-existence of God, without batting an eyelid. That is because he took the idea from someone, and so he is now destined to defend it. Once upon a time, he decided to disbelieve, proof or no proof, intellectual honesty or dishonesty.
That makes it difficult for us to deal with the fella: he has already decided to disbelieve, and to add to difficulty, he is dishonest, and, moreover, poorly educated.
The belief however remains persistent: God does not exist. Alright, the atheists are asked, where did the mass of this universe come from? The quickly blurted answer is: from nothing. But, can nothing create something? No answer. But the most famous atheist of our contemporary world, Richard Dawkins, had an answer, or at least, he thought so. However, when he began to explain how nothing can create something, the better educated public in the hall, began to laugh. Dawkins was spooked. “Why are they laughing?” he asked. “Because,” he was told by someone who occupied a chair, next to him on the stage, “You are trying to explain how something can be created out of nothing.”
The next question that the atheists face is: “Alright. The created material is in our hands. It appears to be highly organized. Now, where did the Laws come from? The atheist cannot answer, “From nowhere, all by themselves.” By now the atheist realizes that his well-hidden fanaticism is about to be exposed. He abandons any further discussion, and, like Bertrand Russel in his debate with Father Copleston, takes the sovereign position by asserting, “(I am) an antagonist.”
One of the reasons the atheist is forced to hold on is, “If God exists, with all those Attributes, then why is it that the believers in Him, the Muslims, are way behind the unbelievers in science, technology, material developments, etc.?” One of them says, “Why did they not discover “Quantum Mechanics.” So his denial of God’s existence is tied to Muslim role in science! He contends: “No reason is offered as to why antibiotics, aspirin, steam engines, electricity, aircraft, or computers were not first invented by Muslims.”
But being far from honesty, he does not ask: “Why have not the Thais, Vietnamese, Malaysians, Indonesians, Mongols, Sri Lankans, Indians, Pakistanis, Maldivians, Sudanese, South Africans, Rhodesians, Zanzibaris, Guinnians, Congolese, Kenyans, Ghanaians, Ugandans, Tanzanians, Congolese, Cameroonians, Somalis, Canadians, Mexicans, Brazilians, Argentinians, Chileans, Azeris, Mongolians, Uzbekistanis, Tajikistanis, Spanish, Portuguese, and a few dozen others, (but ignoring Muslim countries) – why did they not produce scientists, inventors, innovators, and others of that class? Perhaps he did not ask such a question to himself, because it is beyond his intellectual capacity to find an answer.
So too, it is beyond the “intellectual” capacity of a mind yet to come out of primary students’ calibre to ask: why did the peoples of the above countries, and especially, people of the heartland of Europe (Britain, Ireland, Scotland, France, Germany, Poland, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Finland, and two dozen others) –not produce, men like those of Greece of the 4th and 5th centuries, … the likes of Aristotle, Plato, Aristophanes, Hippocrates, Herodotus and a dozen others. They seemed to be paralyzed for no less than 1000 years. Why do their philosophers still refer to them rather than produce their own?
Why does he not ask, what were the Europeans doing for a 1000 years when the Muslim world was producing renowned men like Al-Masudi, the ‘Herodotus of the Arabs,’ and pioneer of historical geography, Al-Kindi, pioneer of environmental science, al-Hamdani, Ibn Al-Jazzar, Al-Tamimi, Ali ibn Ridwan, Muhammad al-Idrisi, al-Khwarizmi, and a dozen others. Why did Roger Bacon and others have to seek light from the books of Muslim scientists brought by the Crusaders from the Muslim world?
He does not ask himself, why did the Western World not produce their own medical experts instead of using Ibn Sina’s book for 500 years in their Universities?
He does not ask himself: Why did not the chain of dynasties of invincible Chinese empires lasting 4000 years, not produce eminent men?
He cannot answer these questions, and will not, because it is easy to ask, “Twinkle, twinkle, little star, how I wonder what you are,” but not easy to understand, given the answer.
But he does conclude, on the basis of borrowed propagandist’s ideas, that prove that no God exists, and, therefore, to him, Islam is a false religion!
Our advice to the atheists – of all class – is that they fail to study serious literature, but pick up few sentences from popular writers. They do that in order to impress ordinary people, and to let them imagine that they have studied those writers. But rather, they may devote a few years studying such masters, not to find what they have said about Islam, but to learn the facts that are laid out in several volumes.
