A Fictitious Islam
The fictitious Islam manufactured by the Umayyad despotic rulers through the fabrication of Hadith (gossip) and Quranic tafaseer (expositions) has bequeathed a legacy of superstition, fallacy, shame and horror for Muslims.
Our respected Western historians and Orientalists, and other writers and researchers, with the exception of a few very prominent ones, are mostly unable to get access to the truth while preparing their theses on Islam, its teachings or history. They often have to refer to the Hadith collectors like Imam Bokhari, etc. and the Interpreters like Tabari, both of whom, along with many others, have no solid credentials to stand upon as authorities on Islamic literature. Their works largely depend upon the hearsay of Hadith which in itself is based on Oral tradition narrated by characters having highly dubious antecedents, as concluded by a chain of Scholars of Assessment & Investigation in the 2nd, 3rd and 4th centuries Al-Hejirah. Therefore, all that most of our worthy Orientalists write on different aspects of Islam is actually based on what they write about the fake and fictitious Islam of the Umayyad and Abbaside periods, which has persisted in varying degrees to this day. No doubt 90% of their work is thus negatively critical, biased and slanderous.
To quote a recent example, Dan Gibson writes on page 216 of his book, The Quranic Geography :
“After the Hijra, Medina became the center of Islam. It was here that much of the Qur’an was revealed, and it was here that Muhammad and his followers not only subjugated the Jews, but also began to build their fortunes….. by banditry and plunder. At first they were careful to only attack passing caravans, but eventually they ranged wider and wider until much of central Arabia was under their influence.”
The same writer had the audacity to re-write the Quran and history of Islam. He “ordains” that the CHANGE OF QIBLAH had not taken place in Mohammad’s lifetime as the Quran stipulates. BUT it took place somewhere after Ibn-e-Zubair’s famous Rebellion around 70 A.H. ??? He writes a new history of Islam where the holy city of Islam is shown as PETRA in present day Jordan,,,,,rather than Makkah in Western Arabia!
His acrobatics show that Mohammad migrated all the way down to Madina from Petra to found his “tyrannical kingdom” there. He altogether rejects Makkah as the birthplace of Mohammad where he had proclaimed his Prophet-hood first to his clan of the Quraishite tribes, and then to the general public. Thus he attempted to attack the very roots of Islam where countless undeniable archaeological sites, remains and memories of Mohammad and his clan exist and are scattered here and there. Then he assumes a supposed Qibla as the site which was to be the direction of prayers, and maintained through conjecture that it was changed in such and such period.
The irony is that Qibla in the Quran only means “the destination or the ultimate ideological goal that one always keeps in front of him (قبل)”, not a physical station or site. And again, he is bereft of the startling reality that no worship prayers or rituals are prescribed in any part of the Quranic text. And finally, he exposes his worst bias by declaring the great spiritual leader of more than one and a half billion devotees on the globe as “a fortune hunter and bandit!"
Another example of misconceptions bordering on libel and slander is that of the insinuating book entitled “Hagarism – The Making of the Islamic World”, by Michael Cook and Patricia Crone wherein they criminally ignored the entire documented history of Islam by various historians of Arab and Persian origin within the Islamic fold. They invented a new and novel analysis of early Islamic history from “non-Arabic sources” which obviously were inimical or hostile to Islam and its astonishingly successful uprising. The very start of their writing consisted of awarding the insinuating title of “Hagarism” to Islam, implying that the second largest faith on the globe had its earliest origins from a concubine of Prophet Abraham.
According to their account in Wikipedia,
“by studying the “only surviving” contemporary accounts of the rise of Islam, which were written in Armenian, Greek, Aramaic and Syriac by witnesses, they reconstructed a significantly different story of Islam's beginnings, compared with the story known from the Islamic traditions. Crone and Cook claimed to be able to explain exactly how Islam came into being by the fusion of various near eastern civilizations under Arabic leadership.”
Wikipedia says that: “Later, Patricia Crone refrained from this attempt of a detailed reconstruction of Islam's beginnings.” The same fact is revealed about Michael Cook too in Wikipedia, that he too refrained from making further attempts on this theme. We hope they were sorry and remorseful for crossing many borderlines of literary ethics including impartiality and bias-free thinking and were fully aware of the condemnation their haughty and humiliating writing had generated.
The word ISLAM is also misconceived by Orientalists and Muslims alike. Our problem in real terms lies with the definition of “Islam”, that Islam which is claimed to be the solution of humanity’s problems at large. What exactly is Islam? Is it the “Islam” found in the history of its empire? Or the one we see in different schools of thought we presently find scattered around? Or is it the presently non-existent first and genuine Islam - the Islam once introduced by God through His Book and Messenger? Is it the Islam of the powerful elite who mixed it with their politics, sects, history, desires and personal interests? If so, then that isn’t the Islam prescribed by God in His Book. Those religious groups and sects that preach Islam, if you were to look closely at their sources, their history, and their prominent figures and authorities, you can clearly see that the “Islam” they are speaking about and which they think is the solution of humanity’s problems is that which is not found in the Quran. For example, the Islam of the Umayyad Dynasty or the Abbasid Dynasty or even the Islam of the four Rightly-guided Caliphs, who themselves were not exactly identical to each other in conduct, so all of them don’t represent the ideal Islam. The ideal Islam is that of the Quran. It is the Islam of Equality, Justice and Fair Play for all segments of society; the Islam of Truth, the Islam of Peace and Human Rights, the Islam of Honesty and Truthfulness.
Most of our people think that Islam is what they are acting upon generation after generation; what they have with them right now, i.e. what Muslims are practicing for ages is Islam by definition. It is they who define it. But that just is not the true Islam. Because what we find in the Quran is not the same Islam that we find in our concepts and narrations. Whether these narrations be Hadith or tradition of the Prophet’s companions or their students, be it the prevalent exegeses of the Quran. It is true, no doubt, that in a scant few of these Hadith and Sunnah and even in Tafseer you can find some glimpses of the “original” Islam of the Quran, but the problem is that almost no one looks into Islam as portrayed and defined by the Quran. The Islam of the Quran is kept, and stays, only within the pages of the Quran and what is used and brought out to the world is the “distorted” Islam.
“Islam”, in any case, is a large and much encompassing word. It doesn’t represent a faith group or a religion. Islam means ‘submission’ to God or to the values and ideals He prescribes in His Book of Guidance. And that submission on its part ensures overall safety, freedom and security for mankind, since these are the other meanings of this word. Islam is not a monopoly for the faith group called Muslims. Anyone from any faith group can be a true Muslim even by remaining affiliated with his own faith group."
Here is the full scope of meanings of this word from authentic lexicons:
س ل م = Siin-Lam-Miim = safety/security/freedom/immunity, to escape, salutation/greeting/peace, deliver/acknowledge, pay in advance, submit, sincerity, humility, submission/ conformance/ obedience, resign/quit/relinquish, to be in sound condition, well without blemish, gentle/ tender/soft/elegant.
We poor, deluded Muslims! We think we come up to the divine criterion as defined and ordained for a Muslim just because we happen to live in a society outwardly known and called a Muslim society!
We presume that our beliefs, convictions, dogmas, rituals, and our names and attire make us Muslims. Regrettably, these considerations have no value in the making of a Muslim in the light of Quranic injunctions. It is our acts and deeds, our overall interaction in society, our mode of conduct with our fellow men that makes us a Muslim or rejects our claim to be a Muslim.
The divine criterion stipulates that every soul on earth that lives and performs in keeping with the commandments of his Creator is in fact a Muslim, notwithstanding the so-called faith group he was born within and remains aligned with during his entire lifetime. At the same time, in spite of being part of the so-called faith group of Islam which we happen to relate with, we can’t be qualified as Muslims unless we act in full accord with the divine injunctions.
Even the Umayyad kings couldn’t deliver Islam to the East and the West through their much acclaimed conquests because they were not fit to do so. What they spread to the East and the West was a distortion of Islam because all of the actual goals and aims of these conquerors were to loot, pillage, plunder and occupy other nations, or to overcome opposition forces, or vast territories of fertile lands. These were all political objectives, greatly satanic in nature. So it is not right that we claim these conquerors to be the representatives of Islam. Only the initial conquests of the Levant and Iraq during the reigns of Pious Caliphs Omar and Othman can be attributed to the true Islam. This phase of military advancement was justified because the majority of Arab populations in these countries, along with others, were being massively killed, mutilated and uprooted by the battling Romans and Persians, in their two decades long war of dominance. The Quran very manifestly refers to that continued massive bloodshed in some of its Verses. The Rest of all the succeeding conquests were mere acts of barbarism under the tyranny of an empire
Islam is defined by the Quran in three stages as beautifully detailed by a contemporary Quranist scholar from Saudi Arabia, Sh. Hassan Farhan al-Maliki:
1. Firstly, to fully and with complete sincerity “turn towards” any idea or information using all of your faculties of sight, hearing, heart and intellect, and in such a manner examine it and test it.
2. Secondly, to actually “submit” to what is correct from any idea(s) thus encountered.
3. Lastly, “correct (or good, virtuous) actions” which should follow from the previous two.
The entire chain of Quranic Interpretations/Exegeses that is linked back to the despotic period, is based on BLIND IMITATIONS OF THE WORK FROM THAT PERIOD, and is a fabrication in the style of the Jewish Talmud. All the contemporary ones imitate them blindly to a lesser or greater extent. All Hadith collections are nothing but the Oral Tradition in the style of the Jewish Mishnat. Both were introduced into Islam by native Arab Jewish scholars under the well-conceived agenda of the Umayyad enemies of Islam and were meant to back up each other for the purpose of justifying the organized distortion of the true essence of Quranic Guidance.
At the Root of Misconceptions are Quranic terms which, under the Umayyad agenda, were given alternate meanings using the most commonplace, street jargon as compared to their original literary and highly meaningful definitions. Some of such basic terminology is listed below to give you a quick idea of how the crime of distortion was committed:
Al-Baqarah
The Title of the longest Chapter of the Quran. Instead of its literary meaning of “a wide schism, split, divide, rift and class discrimination in the human society”, it was given the ridiculous meaning of COW or HEIFER.
Aal-e-Imran
Another major Theme and a long Chapter of the Quran. It was fraudulently translated as the clan of Imran, rather than its most literary meaning of “A populous, thriving, civilized Society”.
An-Nisaa
Another major Theme of the Quran and one of the longest Chapters. Instead of its literary meaning of “weak, forgotten, neglected classes of society”, it was misconstrued in a commonplace definition of “Women”.
Al-Ma’idah
Another major Chapter of the Quran. It was translated as FOOD, rather than the KNOWLEDGE, which in literary metaphor, is the Spiritual Food, viz. Food for the Intellect.
Al-An’aam
The Chapter al-An’aam denotes God’s mercy, blessings and bounties granted to human kind. Most of our exegeses translate this word as “cattle”.
It’s a long list of meaningful Chapter Titles which is distorted beyond one’s imagination. Let us quote some of the textual words badly distorted to alter the spirit of Quran radically.
“Hajj”, which means to “Seek agreement thru debate/arguments; reach a target, aim, purpose ideologically, to intend to a certain target”, was misconstrued as “PILGRIMAGE”. “Azwaaj-un-Nabi” always meant “Nabi’s close colleagues and companions” or “different segments of public under the command of Nabi”. To give authenticity to Polygamy, this compound was always mistranslated as “NABI’S WIVES”. “Buyoot-un-Nabi” signified “Nabi’s private deliberations with council of elders”; it was translated most literally as “Nabi’s multiple houses” to give credence to the theory that he needed to keep his multiple wives separately in many homes. The word “Tallaaq” in Quranic perspective meant separation of regional units from the central government, but it was diverted to the separation between husband and wife (Divorce). Similarly, “Nikah” was not meant to be a marriage agreement until some particular expression led to that conclusion; but it was invariably mis-translated as marriage between man and woman.
The above are very few examples of deliberate misconceptions inserted into the Quranic translations and exegeses in order to alter its original spirit and benevolent doctrine drastically. The Quran’s exegeses and translations are full of such distortions. In spite of an ocean of misconceptions employed to distort the Quranic doctrine, the quest for truth must continue. An untiring meticulous effort is made through the present research to purify the Quran from these anomalies. You’re going to find an enlightening array of Thematic Translations and objective articles under the button ‘LIBRARY” on this website, all written with the sole purpose of removing misconceptions and discrepancies from the Quranic Guidance. It is believed that when one searches the Scriptures with an earnest desire to learn the truth, God breathes His Spirit into his heart, and impresses his mind with the light of His Word. The Quran in fact is its own interpreter, one passage explaining another. By comparing Verses referring to the same subject, you will see harmony and beauty of which you have never dreamed. There is no other book whose perusal strengthens and enlarges, elevates and ennobles the mind as does the perusal of this Book of books. It is not enough to skim over the surface. While some passages are too plain to be misunderstood, others demand careful and patient study. Like the precious metal concealed in the hills and mountains, its gems of truth are to be searched out, and stored in the mind for future use.