Once I found a web log by a person whom is a devout Religous believer, and had been a devout Muslim for a significant number of years. But they had discontinued from prayer at Mosque because their own innate sense of Christ in self and of Isa (Jesus) was being denied by those other Muslims around them, and also by the Muslim mainstream. So the person has named themselves an apostate of Islam, and returned to Christianity.
I myself converted to Islam because I believe that there are more real Christians who are in Islam than I could find among Christian churches around me.
The fact is that Islam is a religious which encourages scientific investigation of what is real and of what is righteous to believe in. Because of this no Muslim is expected to manifest any faith in ignorance.
To believe we must be simultaneously well informed and have an experience which validates and verifies that information. Once any person has witnessed evidence, they can not themself deny believing. That is why there has been no notion of any such person as an apostate among Muslims until very recently in history.
In fact what is recently manifesting is that the influence of the wrongdoers in Christian Churches, and their misinterpretations of Gospel, which Qur’an warns us all against, has become what defines an apostate, in Christian, and in Islamic, social contexts. That is to say, it is the actual apostates whom cry apostasy at others, and whom have attempted to define real believers as apostates.
Therefore real Islamic belief can not tolerate the concept of an apostate of Islam.
Believe in Isa, (who is always one and the same man as Jesus), only as you yourself bear witness, and then also as your witness is validated in Qur’an.
A man whose belief is based entirely in his own evidence of witness and whom will not deny his own witness, can not be an apostate. If he is failing to manifest full faith with Qur’an, then it must be that he is not yet well enough informed of the text and not yet within enough experience to verify it. Those whom want to deny their own witness, also deny their own life, thus we need not externally define their internal failings by any name such as apostate, since to do so might only engender in them a further want to try to define themselves as though believers.
Belief in reality requires us to be enabled to sustain certainty of our own experience, and also to be mindful of our experiences within a culture and schooling which enables us to confirm what we experience. Qur’an confirms the experience of every individual whom reads it, without any doubt, in one way or another, and that is the constant relevance, and worth of Qur’an. The book of time. Which is the book in which our capacity for faith is made one. While Gospel is the story enabling love in real permanence, and Torah with other of the old testament are a meaningful allegorical representation through which we can all engage with our hope in the real world. The three are already one book, and even in the Warsaw Ghetto were Jewish Rabbi and Islamic Romani working to fully reconcile the scripts into one meaning; and found one which nazism could not steal.
Christianity enables that a concept of apostate exists, as can Judaism. Because its meaning is to have been feigning religious worship in having been proven to be the liar about your own belief. That is, stating acceptance of the status of being with Christ, without intention to really accept. That is the most basic definition of how an apostate can exist. Be very careful here though in how I am defining the meaning of “Christ”, because most apostasy is of enabling others to believe that you are accepting the state of mind of bearing the burden, but without your own intention to really let Jesus help you with sustaining that state of mind. An apostate of the Judaic belief might only be any person whom is feigning to believe in one God. While in Islam we are more thoroughly instructed not to let ourself into any certainty around what any other person’s real belief is or is not; and are simultaneously enabled to feign being a non-believer ourself is the environmental conditions necessitate that for basic survival of other strongly human character traits. Faith in Islam is also faith in science, and in today’s world here in my country, in which Christian Churches which have apostates even among the clergy, and are the dominant mode of religious worship; sure it is that most believers in Islam are the scientists. They commit no apostacy, even if they name their belief as agnostic (or atheist if without clear reason to believe in the unity of existance). For in science the glory of Allah’s creation is observable in the miniscule. Observable in the evidence of the constant miracle of living recreation of being, which science is a real form of worship of.
The concept of apostasy has no relevance in this modern world.
salamu’alaykum waramathuallahi warabarakathuahu
October 8, 2007 at 4:35 am
“islam had no apostates” ?
are you surrrrrrre?
February 29, 2008 at 3:33 am
Yep, to be precise, I am positive in this score.
Although if another Muslim might have wanted to have defined this statement as the work of an apostate, perhaps they can if they really want to without considering well its contents, since by their definitions will they live true to only to what they assert of their own belief within the context of mine here expressed.