Alhamdulillah.
All praise is due to Allah,
the sole creator,
sustainer and cherisher of the universe.
And may his peace and blessings be upon
his last prophet and messengers Muhammad
and upon all prophets and messengers who
preceded him.
I greet you all my dear brothers and
sisters
with the greeting of all of the prophets
from Adam to Muhammad peace be upon them
all. The greeting of peace
which means may the peace, blessing and
mercy of God Allah be with you all.
And I wish in the very outset
to express two things before we get to
heavy stuff. First,
my great thanks and appreciation
for the Ottawa Muslim Association
and for all excellencies
who graced us with their presence this
evening and to you all
for your kind invitation to share a few
humble thoughts with you.
Secondly, I cannot help also by express
My feeling in this kind of gathering
with people from various
national
and religious backgrounds
coming together as brothers and sisters
and when I was looking around one
particular verse from the Quran
immediately came to mind.
The verse appears in chapter 49. It's
verse 13. And I just beginning with that
by way of introducing the topic.
Interesting enough that verse does not
begin by addressing Muslims.
It does not say oh Muslims or all
believers.
It says
all mankind.
That's a very inclusive address from God
to humanity through that last scripture,
the Quran.
And in fact, it's interesting to notice
that in the Quran,
while sometimes it addresses Muslims,
especially when it comes to their
particular religious duties like prayer
and fasting,
there are more than 200 verses in the
Quran that begins with the address, "Oh
mankind, all of you, God is addressing
everyone."
And that's significant.
Then it goes on. It says we means God
that's royal. We we created you from a
single male and a female or male and
female depending how we translate it
which actually means that you are all
one family and if you have the same set
of parents then there is a human family
diverse as it may be but one family.
Then it goes on and we made you into
nations and tribes. Why? that you may
get to know one another and recognize
one another. This is in full consistency
with another verse in the Quran in
chapter 30 verse 22
which explains why people on earth have
different languages and complexion
and it says in the translation of
meaning of the signs of God. The signs
of his mercy and wisdom
is the creation of heavens and earth and
the diversity
of your languages and your complexion.
That is a sign of the creation of Allah.
My favorite analogy is like a bouquet of
flower
where the white flower is beautiful in
its own right.
So is the yellow, the blue, the pink and
more beautiful are all of them together.
And then it establishes finally at the
end of that verse the sole criterion
on the basis of which a human being can
be a better human being.
It says,
"The most honored of you in the sight of
God is the one who is most righteous."
Forget about color, language, even faith
claims because faith claims are to be
settled by Allah in the day of judgment.
But this is the translation of true
faith.
I'd like to first make a remark
concerning the topic.
In order to achieve world peace and
mutual understanding,
it is not only enough to talk about what
is agreeably
positive points. I am sure all of you
here in some degree or the other are
already past Islam 101.
And initially even when I thought of the
topic dealing with world peace
I had to make some kind of modification
even in the last minute as I was
thinking in flying in the plane next to
me uh a brother who lives here in Ottawa
Salem brother Salee
Jam and we kept discussing the topic
because I was hesitant myself as to
whether I should deal also with this
broad issues of What does the term Islam
come from? How does the concept of peace
fused in uh theological and
esquecological terminology in Islam? How
the concept of peace is inherent in the
objective the five broad objectives of
Islamic law to safeguard faith, life,
mind, honor and wealth to explain the
meaning of jihad and so on and so forth.
But then I mentioned to him also that in
the last few weeks I have been following
the trend
led by some people in the media or other
circles
who seem to have uh being promoting
antagonism at the time when what we need
more is to promote love.
We have seen lots of articles, I don't
know what is your share here in Ottawa,
quoting things from the Quran out of
context and trying somehow to convince
the public that hatred and harassment of
Muslims is justified because violence,
dominance and imperialism is inherent in
the very scripture of Islam. I know that
might be a delicate topic and like I
said earlier it might be a heavier stuff
than dealing with the more 101 thing
that we have heard but since you've
heard that already I thought it might be
beneficial to go a little bit beyond
that because world peace and
understanding
can also be achieved not only positively
by presenting the positive things but by
also dispelling misunderstanding and
miscotations. s
to do that I propose to deal with the
following issues. First a brief
introduction to the methodology with
which we should understand
uh the topic and then move on to
classify the most common types of error
in understanding and interpreting the
Quran including by the way some
interpretation by some Muslims and then
move on to um deal and that's the heart
of the topic with some of the commonly
misqued mispresented or misunderstood
verses in the Quran.
To start with
in the introduction, as some of you
might have might be able to see within
the PowerPoint, it's um the need for
objectivity and honesty when we deal
with a topic like that. To me, that
translates into number one
trying to have some sort of control on
the issue of emotions. And I address
that not only to non-Muslims but to
Muslims as well.
Let's not emotional feeling without
evidence blind a person from trying to
see the truth as truth.