Why Christians DONT pray 5 times a day ? pay the Zakaat, OR go for the Hajj to Makkah ?
Why do Europe and America NOT have laws to enforce Burqa ? OR to stop business during friday prayers ? Or Hudood Laws ?
Sounds ridiculous doesn’t it? and thats exactly what these questions are! BUT so are the following:
Why does islam require women to cover themselves ? Why are men considered superior in certain matters in the Quran ? Why must muslims pray regularly ? Why do muslim men ONLY can lead their prayers ? etc etc
And all the decent and honest academic circles know that these questions are actually ridiculous! Read a small story below to find out why!
A true story:
A surgeon during an open-heart surgery once came across a difficult situation, He had a horrifying surprise! the patient won’t stop BLEEDING after he had performed the main surgical operation.
The doctor had to bring in all his life’s experience to try different things and rescue the patient and luckily, he finally did!
The doctor was still curious about WHY the bleeding didn’t stop and wanted to investigate more, so he later went to this patient and checked the history again. The doctor went through each piece of information in patient’s historic data and confirmed it with the patient, asked the patient if he had missed out mentioning any other medicine. After insisting a lot…the patient reminded the doctor mentioning about his “HomeoPathic” treatment and medicines and pointed out that the record does not seem to be updated in his files.
The doctor acknowledged that since “Allopathic” doctors usually don’t consider “HomeoPathic” methods to be scientific, therefore, he opted to just ignore all information about “HomeoPathic” treatment and medicines; one of them turned out to be a “blood thinner”.
The patient was simultaneously being treated by two different methods, Homeopathy and Allopathy (Which one conforms to scientific method is NOT the point here!) and that’s exactly why the surgeon faced the problem!
So the lesson here obviously is this:
When two different systems are mixed up together without proper understanding of EACH, the result is only a set of confusions! Both these systems have their own definition of human physiology, nature of diseases, and even method of treatments, one focuses on symptoms only and the other wants to know more behind the symptoms.
So, when the patient is being treated by both systems, the body only faces confusion.
Technically its wrong to evaluates religions on Western Criteria
Isn’t that the case with dialogue and debate between east and the west ? The Academic circles recognise this difference, but the common man is not able to differentiate among objective scholarship and “media cartoons” that just like to put up a good show.
Dr Zakir Naik’s and Harun Yahya’s “scientific” islam:
Dr. Zakir Naik and Harun Yahya trying to prove islam using science! which does not even recognise anything beyond the 5 senses. When a religion claims to have come from beyond scope of the 5 senses, how ridiculous and wrong would it be to evaluate it on a criteria based on observation and experimentation only witnessed by the 5 senses.
Freedom in Religions ?
Similarly, Anti-Islam and (Anti-religion groups in general) criticizing religions based on “freedom” and “human rights” framework. (There is some confusion in terminology here, that may give benefit of the doubt, people usually believe that the term “freedom” and the term “human right” DO actually MEAN some…natural born right, a confusion for which all they have to do is properly study the literature to understand these two terms)
So how SHOULD one debate?
In Islam, role of inspiring others by practicing ourselves and becoming an example in terms of character, is considered a FAR more effective approach of spreading the deen than debating, so there is not much need to write a lot on “how to debate in Islam”, in fact, one might argue that leaving practice and adapting a debating style has actually done more harm than good to the aspect of “Tabligh”.
However, for the exceptions, the correct way of debate and discussion would be among the fundamental pillars of each ideology, something that comes from authentic scriptures in most religions, or for the west, something that comes from the literature of the Philosophers and thinkers followed by the mainstream academia. For example in Islam, this discussion would be based on the (Ijmah supported) interpretation of Quran and Sunnah, for the western ideology it would be something from the works of Rene Decarts, Kant and Adam Smith etc etc.
In Islamic History, one can take inspiration from the famous Imam Ghazali (RA) and follow his approaches.
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