Dr. Pasha on Islam,
Muslims and the World
www.IslamicSolutions.Com
(401-500)
401
They Will Come – Inshallah! God Willing – As They Must!
I have not the slightest doubt in my mind that God Almighty will bring people to our work – Insha-Allah.
God Willing!
That is, if that happens to be his wish and his will. And if that is what he wants to do.
Should God Almighty, then, want to do that, people – Muslim and non-Muslim, men as well as women and children – will flock to our work in droves.
By that I mean our products on www.IslamicSolutions.com and elsewhere. Both in print format and in the form of audio recordings such as, for example, Pasha Hour International –Live from America!
And all the books and publications and tapes our people have put out.
My most fervent prayer to him, then, on bended knees, is that, first and foremost, he should grant acceptance to what he has guided me to write and speak. Once that prayer is granted, there is nothing more to wish or ask for.
But then God Almighty himself tells us never to stop asking him and never to stop begging him for more.
He is Wahhaab, he says in the Qur’an, which means: The One Who Just Loves to Give.
What an indomitable soul that poor battered orphan, Oliver Twist, must have owned, in that Charles Dickens novel by that same name, that made him demand – or beg – of his abusers and tormentors: "Please Sir, May I Have Some More?"
So, my second prayer, equally fervent, and equally true, will be that God Almighty accept whatever we write, print, publish, tape, record – and post – from all those on our team of helpers and support network who toil so mightily and so selflessly, and so tirelessly, to make these things happen.
And then my third prayer will be for God Almighty to open the hearts and minds of People – Muslim and non-Muslim, men as well as women and children – and bring them to our work in staggering numbers, waves upon waves upon waves of them.
As he says in the Qur'an:
Wa Ra-Aitan-Naasa Yadkhuloona Fee Deenillahi Afwaaja!
And make our work a pathway and a conduit for People to find God, and to connect with his Guidance and Blessings, in the Qur’an, and in the life and teachings of his Most Blessed and Beloved Prophet, Muhammad, Sallallahu Alaihi wa Sallam.
And I have not the slightest doubt that he will do so – should that be his wish; and his will; and his plan to do so. And may he make it so!
And who would want anything else?
402
Learning to Use English the Proper Way
Being Muslim is no license to abuse the English language.
I am not an English teacher. Nor am I an expert on the English language. But I suppose I have enough sense of the English language to be able to tell – in most cases at least – what sounds and what does not sound right to the ear.
Nor do I believe in handing over the English language to Her Majesty the Queen and waiting around to do her bidding whenever I have to speak it. You know, speaking “Queen’s English”?
The fact is English is my language. I have been speaking it from the time I was little. I am hesitating to call it my Mother Tongue because my mother did not speak it, even though my father did -- may Allah bless them both.
It is also the language my children and my students speak. And I am always on their case, trying to correct them, not that anyone listens to me, if not the way they speak, at the least the way they write.
So, you want to call me, in some ways, a Minder of the English Tongue, be my guest and go right ahead and do it.
So, given all that background, and all those disclaimers and caveats, there are things about the way the English language gets used by some Muslims that I object to. Take, for example, the expression some Muslims use about non-Muslims “Reverting” to Islam.
“Accepting Islam,” sure!
“Embracing Islam,” why not?
“Converting?” Sounds just about right.
“But 'Reverting’ to Islam”? That is where I see a problem.
“Revert” in the English language, I suspect, is returning to a “prior” state of some kind. So, what exactly are you saying when you say that a non-Muslim “reverted” to Islam?
Are you saying that this individual was somehow a “Muslim” before, in some kind of a “previous life,” then fate took him or her and dumped them in the lap of non-Islam, and now, due to God’s infinite mercy, of course, that person has gone back – “reverted” – to his or her original state of being, which, these people seem to say, was Islam.
In other words, that person “returned or 'Reverted’” to the original state of Islam after a bit of a detour. Am I reading that right?
The fact is, this stuff about one’s “previous life” sounds more Hindu to me than Muslim or Islamic. You know, reincarnation and all that.
Islam or not, what this thing is not is English. This is not English, period.
This is a linguistic monstrosity born of who knows what kind of ego-trips on whose part – and for what mysterious reasons. Are people supposed to somehow feel better that they were “Muslim” in some previous state of their existence? And now they have gone back to the way they were once upon an existence?
Applies to Abu Lahab, Abu Jahal, everybody, right?
As for its being Islam, it is more Mumbo-Jumbo of the kind Islam tends to shun and steer people away from than it is Islam.
Bringing in all that stuff about “Every child is born on Fitrah” and God asking the souls “Am I not Your Rabb?” and they all saying, “Of course, you are!” raises more questions than it answers.
