To Be Hanif

To be Hanif ........Post inspired by Sume's blog entry Biology of the Spirit 5th October.

If you believe in evolution, it might have started when man in his primitive form left the trees. If you believe in creation, it might have began with Adam and Eve eating from the tree of knowledge.Point is both may be used to further mankind if we can just get over differences and mistrust. One school of thought need not be a threat to the other. Though I believe in Allah, I don't see the shame in celebrating mankind as a biological organism and all his accomplishments. On the contrary, I see it as celebrating the creation of Allah. (Sume)

Our human condition is the result of the stage of developement of our consciousness. Perhaps only now it is beginning to dawn upon many people that we can acomodate all beliefs and points of views because what they are is they are points of views based on what each person is able to perceive and seen in that light, nobody is wrong. That the perception may be flawed and the reasoning maybe in error is less important than that each individual does their best to work something out to the best of their ablity at each point in time. And , it is people who work hard to have a point of view who also work hard to defend it while those who don 't usually do not care enough to defend anything.

I wrote the above statement to bring us to the point of the Hanif attitude enjoined in for us in the Quran. While having a faith and belief in the Islamic view as we understand it ( and there are many approaches and ways of understanding ), we also believe in all that is sent to all Prophets and we also believe in all the holy books . Not only that, we do not differentiate between the Prophets and the books, we accept them all and we differ only in how we see what is revealed to us and how we understand the revelation. Having said that , it requires a lot of wisdom to not want to defend our views while at the same time expound them . This means we have a dialogue rather than an argument and open ourselves to be able to change our views if and when our perception changes with the information exchange that takes place in a dialogue..I can already hear the voices objecting to what I have written here.
"But the other books and Prophet's teachings were abrogated with the revelation of the Quran "
My answer to this is, yes, that is my position also but that does not stop me from respecting and accepting that the other person is still following the teachings of the Prophets prior to Prophet Muhammad. In fact I realise that my position is more acomodating than any followers of the older Prophets because Muhammad being the last World Prophet and Islam being the youngest major world religion , I acoomodate all other Prophets while followers of other religions will have a problem with those that came after who they follow no matter how hard they try to reason it out. I see it this way:
I have an open source software system called Open Office. Open Office can read micrsoft office and a whole lot of other suites as well.It can open HTML, spreadsheets. presentations , word documents,..almost anything.
But the reverse is not true. Microsoft Office cannot open the Open office documents at all. Islam then is the Open Office of religions and if a Muslim has not been able to be like the Open Office application , then they want to think about why not.

references from the Quran:

O mankind! Lo! We have created you male and female, and have made you nations and tribes that ye may know one another. Lo! the noblest of you, in the sight of Allah, is the best in conduct. Lo! Allah is Knower, Aware. (QS. 49:13)

The messenger believeth in that which hath been revealed unto him from his Lord and (so do) believers. Each one believeth in Allah and His angels and His scriptures and His messengers - We make no distinction between any of His messengers - and they say: We hear, and we obey. (Grant us) Thy forgiveness, our Lord. Unto Thee is the journeying. (QS. 2:285)

Abraham was not a Jew, nor yet a Christian; but he was an upright (Hanif) man who had surrendered (to Allah), and he was not of the idolaters. (QS. 3:67)