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Published on April 11th, 2020 |
by Admin | Views:
Published on April 11th, 2020 |
by Admin | Views:
Root, Branch, And Taboo Questions – How to Answer All Questions About Islam?
Root, Branch, And Taboo Questions – Nouman Ali Khan
The kinds of questions you faced about Islam are of every variety:
“Why do you guys believe this?”
“Why do you guys do that?”
“Is it true in Islam there is this? Or that? Or the other?”
And there’s no end to these things. The jihad question,
or Islam and it’s relationship with women,
or Islam and pluralism. and our acceptance of other world view, or the exclusivity of Islam and after life, and all kinds of things, right?.
And you get asked about these things, from a humanist point of view, from a moral point of view, “How can you believe these things in the modern world?” And, “How is this supposed to be a tolerant religion?””I mean you call it peace but then you say this, this, and this?” Right? So, you’re bombarded with that kind of stuff all the time.
WhatAllah (عز وجل) does with question, by the way theQuran does record condescending questions too. It does record people that asked questions for the wrong reasons also, and teaches us how to deal with that as well. Allah does do that as well.
root questions, branch questions
There are root questions, and there branch questions.That’s obviously the image of a tree, isn’t it?
Let’s say every time you address a branch question you’ve cut off that branch.The thing about a branch is when you cut it off, another one will grow in its place.And maybe two will grow in its place. You cut off and chop off another branch, another two or three will grow in its place. You’ll have a conversation with someone about,
“How Islam mistreat women.”
You can have that conversation for 4-5 hours, it’s gonna lead to a question about “Slavery”. Which is gonna lead to a question about “Jihad”.Which is gonna lead to a question about “Islam and Politics”. And it’s gonna keep going. And about six hours in, you’re gonna come back to “Islam and Women”. You’re like, “Didn’t we just do that one?” You’re gonna come back in circles, and circles, and circles, and circles, and they’re not gonna end.Somebody thinks. “Well here are the 100 questions that are being asked about Islam, if we can just answer these questions, we’re good.” “Then the problem is solved.” From my own understanding of theQuran,Allah knows best, a lot of these questions are actually branch questions. They address one bit of the problem, but they don’t address the root of the problems Yes these questions do have answers, but answering them before you deal with the root of the problem is pointless. Not that these questions don’t deserve answers. They do. But the thing is, there’s a deeper problem here. TheQuran concerns itself primarily with the root questions. And the root questions, most people don’t ask. It’s a long list of questions, some of them maybe the fundamental, core, or root questions, a lot of them are branch questions, and they’re all mixed in together.