Reducing Religion to Reality is a means of Solving all the Problems of Secularism, Ethnicity and Nationalism

THE CONFLICT
   After Trump won the 2016 Election, the conflict between the secular and the religious escalated in the USA. A lady refused to register the marriage of a same sex couple and a doctor refused to conduct an abortion. Likewise, Jeff Session passed a Law to teach Creationism side by side with Evolution in public schools. And to strengthen the Traditionalists against the Liberals, Mr Trump filled the vacancy left by two progressive minded liberal Judges in the Supreme Court of the USA with two traditionally minded conservative Judges giving the Conservatives a 6-3 majority.
   In England, a doctor refused to treat a man with a long beard as a transgender patient and the government of Iceland banned “circumcision’. And likewise, the EU Law pressurized the Jews and Muslims to “stun” their animals pre-slaughter. And a public school in Birmingham, England, taught Diversity to include the LGBT+ community. In Hungary, their soccer federation refused to light their stadium in a world qualifier soccer match with the rainbow lights to include the LGBT+ community. And in Poland, the Supreme Court banned all abortion except for incest and some medical reasons.
   The conflict between the secular and religious was getting worse day by day. For example, in Canada, a biological male posed as a transgender female and was put into a female prison for some crime he committed. He ended up raping some women prisoners. And in France, a public school found it problematic to register the adopted child of a same sex couple. They overcame the problem by replacing the words “father” and “mother” with words “first parent” and “second parent” respectively. And in another case a lesbian taught it wise to have her own child by getting a male to donate his sperm. After the child was born, the man came to claim his child. And in the USA, Christian churches which employed gay priests and bishops called for the unity of all churches. One church which did not support the LGBT+ community refused.
   In addition to this, there was another major problem in the Western world. Muslims were going there in large numbers to settle as asylum seekers. In doing so, they were destroying the national identity and so-called “values” of the Western world with their long beards, kurtha, hijab, niqab and burqa, etc., and their skyline with the domes and minarets of their mosque. In France, the government banned the headscarf in public schools and recently passed the “anti-separatism bill” to police Muslim places of “worship”; ban the niqab and burqa in public space and home-schooling, etc. Likewise, in Athens, Greece, Muslims have been permitted to build a mosque after 100 years but without domes and minarets. And recently, a mosque was built in Birmingham, England, without minarets, but with a dome, which could not be seen from the main road. And in Sri Lanka, the government closed down 1000 madressah and completely banned the niqab and burqa after the Easter bombing of a Christian Church killing many innocent Christians.

ABRAHAM’S PERSPECTIVE OF GOD, RELIGION AND SECULARISM
   Abraham was an ordinary person like you and I. He was the son of an idol maker. His perspective of God, outside the influence of Religion and Secularism, began after he rejected the “idol worship” of his father, which did not have Godlike attributes of God (Qur’an 19:42). And when he asked his father why he “worshipped” idol which could not hear or benefit him in any way, his father said he saw his ancestors do so (Qur’an 21:53). And when he contemplated the worship of the “celestial bodies” as an alternative, he found that they too did not have Godlike attributes of God because they functioned according to the Laws of the ONE who had created them (Qur’an 6:74-79). Hence, Abraham began to believe in God as the Creator, Sustainer, Protector, etc., of the Universe, free of all dogmas and doctrines of Religion, and followed the secular and scientific path of the creation without being Godless. He was able to make this assessment about God, Religion and Secularism because he did not follow the “blind faith” methodology of Religion and Tradition or the “science-based, evidence-based” methodology of Modern Science to establish his Belief System. He used the methodology of ilm-ul-yaqin (certainty of knowledge by inference and reasoning), ayn-ul-yaqin (certainty of knowledge by seeing and observing) and haqq-ul-yaqin (absolute knowledge, like this is a computer, etc.), to establish all knowledge of his Belief System, both secular and religious, like plants and animals do.

THE MERITS OF HIS PERCEPTIONS
   There were many different reasons why Abraham related his way of life to the Laws of Nature and the wider universe. Some of the reasons are as follows:

·        He belonged to the Animal Kingdom (Qur’an 6:38). It is the “pattern” according to which the Creator had created him (Qur’an 30:30).

·        He found that the Laws of Nature and the wider universe did not change with space and time. For example, the sun, moon, stars, mountains, trees, etc., did not “worship” God. They “served” Him for the purpose He created them. Therefore, humans as “vicegerents” of God (Qur’an 2:30) were expected to “serve” God, not “worship” Him. 

·        He used the Laws of Nature and the wider universe as a neutral and universal source of Truth and Reality for him to establish his belief system over all time and place. With the Guidance of God, he was able to establish a higher level of human civilization. For example, animals commit incest. In the Qur’an (4:23-24), God gives us a long list of people whom we can marry and whom we cannot.

·        The secular and scientific nature of the creation reflected the Creator’s way of life (“Deen of Allah”), (Qur’an 3:83-85, 3:19). Therefore, humans as “vicegerents” of God (Qur’an 2:30) were expected to conduct themselves accordingly and not according to the mantras of Religion.

·        The intersection of the secular and religion did not separate any knowledge or opinion of the Creator in any aspects of our lives. It superimposed the true knowledge of science, religion, culture politics, etc., one on top of the other without creating any boundaries within and between them which made them separate and exclusive. For example, Qur’an (51:47) states “universe is expanding” and in 21:30 states “heavens and earth were one entity and God clove them asunder” alluding to the Big Bang and that God “created from water every living thing”. Likewise, He created only two sexes, male and female, damning all knowledge of science, religion, culture, politics, etc., which did not intersect the knowledge of the secular and religious.

·        And so on.

ETHNICITY AND NATIONALISM
   In Qur’an (49:13), God states “He created the different nations and tribes of (different sights and sounds) from a single male and female” and that we must not “despise” them for being different in sight and sound because their sights and sounds and even their “rites and ceremonies” (Qur’an 22:34, 22:67) in their pure form, within their national borders, are their God-given Diversities, just like those of ours. Therefore, in the Abrahamic way of life, there is no universal sight or sound (sign, symbol, color, architecture, dressing, language or any kind of socio-economical and political affiliation). Therefore, in the context of the Diversity found in God’s Word and Work in Nature, Muslims make a mockery of Islam by believing in an Islamic sign, symbol, color, art, architecture, dressing, language, education, science, politics, finance, etc. Hence, the Muslims who quote verses of Qur’an like 33:59, 24:31, 33:53 to make the headscarf, hijab, niqab, burqa, etc., an Islamic dress-code for Muslim women do so out of context with the universal Message of the Qur’an.  

HOW JEWS, CHRISTIANS AND MUSLIMS CORRUPTED THE DIVINE MESSAGE
   In order to establish one Standard way of life (AdDeeni Haneefan) for all nations of the world (Qur’an 30:30, 29:46, 42:13), both secular and religious, God gave all His Messengers of all nations of the world (10:47, 16:36) strict instructions to use His Guidance (His Word) in the context of His Work in Nature and the wider universe, and not to say and do anything which was not revealed to them (Qur’an 53:3, 10:15, 69:43-46). Actually, He went to the extent of telling Prophet Muhammad (s) that “nothing was said to him which was not told all the Apostles that came before him” (Qur’an 41:43). But unfortunately, the latter day followers of all the Messengers of God failed to follow the instructions that God gave them and their Prophets. Instead of using the Word of God in the context of His Work in Nature and the wider universe to explain their deen, they corrupted their deen (way of life) by using religious books like Talmud and Hadith, written by humans who had absolutely no knowledge of what was written in the Torah, Gospel and the Qur’an. For example, the Qur’an (infallible Word of God) does not advocate “male and female circumcision” in the context of God’s Work in Nature and the wider Universe. Likewise, in Bible (Romans 2:28-29, 2Erza 1:31 Torah, Jeremiah 9:25-26), God said, “I have Forsaken your Circumcision” for the Circumcision of the Heart, not the Flesh. The Qur’an (45:7) calls those who have written and used Hadith to explain Islam “sinful imposters”. Hence, they failed to establish Absolute Unity: between the Word of God and the Work of God in Nature and the wider Universe; between all the Books and Prophets of God; between the Word of God and sayings and doings of their Prophet; between the world of God and the world of Caesar; and so on.

CONCLUSION
   God did not ordain any Religion. He just supported the human perspective of God, Religion and Secularism, which was established by Abraham to develop a higher level of human civilization with His Guidance. Early Muslims used it to make great strides in science, religion, culture, politics, etc., which intersected the knowledge of secular and religion. Unfortunately, latter day Muslims corrupted the universal knowledge of the Qur’an by writing and using Hadith, which was totally forbidden by the Qur’an. Had they established the true Knowledge of Islam and Qur’an without Hadith according to the injunctions of the Qur’an, they would have readily agreed that it was wrong for them to occupy the streets and suburbs of a Western country with their long beards, kurtha, etc., and their hijab, niqab, burqa, etc., and invade the skyline of those countries with their minarets and domes of their mosques. And likewise, they would have acknowledged it was wrong for them to oppose the ban on “circumcision” in Iceland. But while this was true, it was not wrong for them to oppose the teaching of Diversity in public schools like in Birmingham, which included the LBGT+ community; or the stunning of their animals pre-slaughter, which was in keeping with the Laws of Nature, which the Qur’an did not forbid; and likewise to oppose “sinful” abortions, etc.
   But, the sad part of this conflict between the secular and religion is that the Secular Society, as a Free Thinking and Rational organization, has fallen in the trap of Atheism and Secularism. Instead of using all their resources and energy to find common ground between the secular and religion, they used the extremists and fundamentalists teachings of Religion and Tradition to side with the extremists and fundamentalist teachings of Atheism and Secularism. They would have done the more intelligent thing if they had listened to many of the Truth Seekers and critics of world history in the Western world, like Dr Michael H Hart (a Zionist Jew) who concluded in his book, “The 100: Most Influential People in History”, that Prophet Muhammad was the only one in human history who was “most extremely successful in both the secular and religious levels”, or that of Rev Bosworth Smith who claimed that Prophet Muhammad was “Pope and Caesar in one”. And likewise the critique of Alphonso De Lamartine, a French historian, who claimed that Prophet Muhammad was “Philosopher, Apostle, Legislator, Conqueror of Ideas, Restorer of Rational beliefs…. The founder of twenty terrestrial empires (now 56) and one spiritual empire that is Muhammad As regards all standards by which human greatness may be measured, we may well ask, is there any man greater than he?” And there were many other Truth Seekers like Sir Bernard Shaw, Thomas Carlyle, Arnold Toynbee, etc., who were of the opinion that Prophet Muhammad demonstrated an “unparalleled combination of the secular and religion in human history”. Unfortunately, the Secular Society did not have the intelligence to do so. Hence, it is now left to all the intelligent people of this world, both secular and religious to come together and solve this conflict of Religion, Secularism, Ethnicity and Nationalism we are facing today.        

AK SAYED