Three Shaitans

[anajmi]

Here is an ayah which a bit clearer. A similar ayah to 2:34 but with a solution to the paradox.

018.050
YUSUFALI: Behold! We said to the angels, "Bow down to Adam": They bowed down except Iblis. He was one of the Jinns, and he broke the Command of his Lord. Will ye then take him and his progeny as protectors rather than Me? And they are enemies to you! Evil would be the exchange for the wrong-doers!
PICKTHAL: And (remember) when We said unto the angels: Fall prostrate before Adam, and they fell prostrate, all save Iblis. He was of the jinn, so he rebelled against his Lord's command. Will ye choose him and his seed for your protecting friends instead of Me, when they are an enemy unto you? Calamitous is the exchange for evil-doers.
SHAKIR: And when We said to the angels: Make obeisance to Adam; they made obeisance but Iblis (did it not). He was of the jinn, so he transgressed the commandment of his Lord. What! would you then take him and his offspring for friends rather than Me, and they are your enemies? Evil is (this) change for the unjust.

Bottom line, whether satan was an angel or a jinn, our bottoms are on the line.

[porus]

Sounds like God is ad-libbing there. He should have made his mind up before sending the message. Is Shaitan an angel or a jinn? You think God made a slip?

[porus]

And the paradox remains, unresolved. Greater minds than ours have flummoxed trying to resolve it. How can an infinitely Good God create Evil out of Himself?

Religious answer: Everything is possible for God and this is his hikmat to which we, humans are not privy.

Nice one, a religious cop-out!

[anajmi]

I guess those minds weren't too great after all. God didn't make a slip. The great minds did.

2:34 doesn't tell you that Shaitan is an angel. It requires you to conclude that he is an angel.

18:50 tells you he is a jinn.

As I said, those minds weren't too great after all.

[anajmi]

You know, when Allah says in the quran that only he can make someone believe, that is sooo true. I mean this angel/jinn thing is right in front of you and still you won't believe.

May Allah help you believe.

I hope I didn't get too emotional this time around.

[mature]

my view of the three shaitans would be engineer insaaf and tahir

[anajmi]

porus,

The quran has the tendency of flummoxing even the greatest minds so let me give you a simpler example.

Let us imagine the following hypothetical scenario.

There is a gathering of 500 men which is also attended by one woman who is the greatest amongst her species. This gathering is covered by one journalist.

The next couple of paragraphs are what the journalist reported.

The leader of the gathering asked the following question - "All the men with balls rasie your hands". All the men except Jemima, rasied their hands.

The leader of the gathering then asked the question - "All the men who have no breasts, rasie your hands". All the men except Jemima raised their hands. Jemima was a woman.

After reading the above would you blame the journalist for having falsely reported that Jemima was a man? I doubt any court will award you any money. It is also the perfect use of the word "except".

[Hussain]

Hi All
I think I know where Humsafar gets all his theories of pagan rituals , he has read
The DaVinci Code.

[Hussain]

Hey Porus
Are you atheist?
If no, I would really like to know what you think Allah is ?

[Humsafar]

HJ786,

I haven't read the Da Vinci Code. But I believe it is hugely popular, but if this book has impressed you then waite till I write "The Dawat Code" - until then here's vintage Ghalib for you and your ilk:

ha.n woh nahi khudaparast, jaao woh bewafaa sahi
jisko ho din-o-dil aziz, uski gali mein jaaye kyu.n

and this classic one - dripping with blasphemy - is for those who are in thrall of shaitans and jinns:

hum ko maloom hai jannat ki haqiqat lekin
dil ke khush rakhne ko Ghalib ye khayal achha hai

[kalim]

Satan is neither Jinn nor fallen angel: he is just a figment of our imagination, like Santa Clause, Melkor and Sauron. God is testing his creation to see what absurd things they will believe. From the looks of it He has succeeding in fooling a few billion people. Actually, most religious myths are no more or less real than Da Vinci Code or Lord the Rings.

Humans obsessed with such foolishness are sometimes reduced to clowns: I read a hilarious "paper" which claimed that Jinn were made of methane and hence all energy problems of Islamic Republic of Pakistan could be solved if only we could trap these pesky creatures. This, by no less than a chair of physics department of a "prestigious" Pakistani university.

At a recent waaz the Sayedna gave a nice interpretation of the "true meaning" of Adam and his corruption by Satan. He said that Adam was actually a fellow by the name of Taikhoon who live a few thousand years ago. Satan was another fellow who wanted to find out the name of Adam's successor (which God had asked Adam to conceal) for his own nefarious purposes. Adam, being this simpleton, got fooled by this person and told him this secret. So God got pissed off and took away his nubuwat for a while, i.e. threw him out of the garden of paradise. Of course, said the Sayedna, this Adam was not the First-Adam, but one of thousands who cyclically appeared on earth since dawn of creation. If anyone wants to read what "really" happened to this First-Adam they should read "An Ismaili Interpretation of the Fall of Adam" By Bernard Lewis in BSOS volume IX, 1937-39.

I repeat below what I quoted before from the Ikhwan about hell and heaven. I hope that clearly shows what the Ismaili's (or the Ikhwan) thought of the "literalists":

"On a tangential note, I want to point out that for the Ikhwan hell meant the "world of generation and corruption" (i.e. the Earth) while paradise, the "abode of spirits and vast expanse of the heavens". They say that those, like the literalistic Muslims, who believe that on judgment day sinners and infidels will be thrown in a ditch of fire in which they will roast forever and that the pious will indulge in gross pleasures like having sex with virgins will themselves face perdition. They further say that in the Quran the literal description of hell and heaven are meant as inducements for those followers of the Prophet who had not yet been touched by the refinements of culture or revelations. Sayedna Moayyad Shirazi also states something similar in one of his majalis. It seems that even after the passage of fourteen centuries some followers of the Prophet have not been touched by culture or revelation."

[anajmi]

Kalim,

This seems like a trend. You only seem to be reading or hearing from people that are complete idiots.

[porus]

To corroborate Kalim, I have the following on my computer. I do not recall who the author is or where I got it from. I suspect that it is Bernard Lewis's translation of a document written by a Bohra Dai:

"The story of Adam is the story of all of us. Adam fell because of torpor induced by extreme jealousy of the first two intellects. In the torpor, he was overtaken by junior seven intellects and Adam became the tenth intellect. He became completely ignorant but began to understand by God's Grace, the nature of the intellects. He then accepted the role of the Imam and Dai and began to summon other fallen to Allah.

This is the story of Ruhani Adam. It is allegorically represented in the Quraan by an earthly counterpart calleed Juz'ee Adam. Adam was created and taught all the knowledge to recognize Allah. He wanted more and tried to learn it from the tree, which represents the Truth. On his way Adam was waylaid by Iblis who pretnded to be a Mustajib. Adam recognised the error when Iblis revealed himself. Adam's knowledge was there for Iblis to see and he tried to patch things up with the help of some knowledge from the tree.

The damage was done Iblis knew the way Adam's mind worked and Allah made them both fall to earth. Adam prayed to Allah for forgiveness and wasa eventually forgiven and given prophethood to bring Allah's message to mankind. With the fall Adam also forgot all the knowledge he had been given. He prays and is forgiven."

[porus]

My previous post appears to be from an interpretation of fall of Adam by the 2nd Dai, Ibrahim al-Hamidi. This is described in similar words in Dasftary's "The Ismailies" in the chapter on Mustalian Ismailies, page 292.

[accountability]

Kalim has very correctly described the hell and heaven. In my opinion they are levels of existence. The matrix that we are in represents the initial level of existence. Law of conservation of mass and energy is the best definition of existence of multiple levels. energy can neither be created and nor be destroyed. Right now the scientists are unanimous on string theory for creation. within string theory the multiple layer of universes are possible. string theory also explains the creation of wormholes and its existence. It is a very bizzare theory, but it solves nearly the secret of creation and expansion. The entities into a matrix and vice versa.

[porus]

accountability,

your post is bizzare to say the least. Maybe you need to account for it a bit more.

Hell, heaven, string theory, matrix, conservation of energy, wormholes... I give up.

Shall I contact Morpheus or Neo?

[accountability]

Porous I was connecting dots. Heaven and hell are just imaginations, a bizzare imagination, like you said, an infinitley powerful good god creates an infinite or finite devil. Heaven and hell also has an explanation in eid ul adha qurbani. imagine on jan 13 2006, a person woke up, wakes up his son and wife, tells his son that I had a dream, I have to slaughter you. That is the divine command. I dont know what the won would say. dont say its morpheous or neo.

[anajmi]

Man, and I thought I was the one reading crap.

[porus]

Originally posted by hj786:
Hey Porus
Are you atheist?
If no, I would really like to know what you think Allah is ?

Theist says that there is God.
Atheist says that there is no God.

Neither proposition is tenable or falsifiable. It makes as much sense to say there is God as to say there is no God.

Same is true about angels, jinns and shaitans. It makes as much sense to say they exist as to say they do not exist.

<u>History of God according to porus</u>:

God started out as the weakest member of a primitive tribe. This was usually an old man who could no longer hunt to provide for the tribe. In order to justify his existence and pay for the food he was consuming, he took on a role of entertaining and tutoring kids. Soon, he discovered that this was really quite a powerful position to be in. He could brain-wash future members of the tribe.

He started embellishing his exploits when he was young with extraordinary imagination, instilling fear and respect at the same time. When storms approached and lightnings flashed and clouds roared, frightened tribals would seek his advice. He would say that he had access to unseen power. The power wished the tribe to make sacrifices and he showed them rituals to perform to propitiate the power. He became powerful as proxy power and has ruled the minds of tribals everywhere since that time.

Occassionally, as must happen, the elder has to give way to others younger ones who all instituted reward and punishment to keep their power intact. Others learned and since transportation was not good, every tribe emulated the proto-elder, a shaman, a charlatan and a law giver.

Thus we had a God in every tribe. With years rolling by, brainwashing becanme too deeply rooted. Then, even the best began receiving messages from "the power"

Psychologists call this phenomena projection. What you believe to be true becomes true for you.

Thus, the weakest entity became the most powerful. Irony of ironies!!

Now, culture and technology kept advancing but the power myth was too deeply rooted and even the most technologically advanced and cultured could not shake off the influence of thousands of generations of brain-washing. They created elaborate rituals and power structures, they made war and convinced every one it was worth dying for their "myth" because of reward in after-life.

That is where we are now.

[tahir]

Originally posted by porus:

Psychologists call this phenomena projection. What you believe to be true becomes true for you.

In psychoanalytic lexicon, projection does NOT mean self fulfilling prophecy.

Projection is a defense mechanism defined as:
Attributing one's thoughts or impulses to another person. In common use, this is limited to unacceptable or undesirable impulses. Examples: (1) a man, unable to accept that he has competitive or hostile feelings about an acquaintance, says, “He doesn’t like me.â€

[anajmi]

porus,

Neither proposition is tenable or falsifiable. It makes as much sense to say there is God as to say there is no God.

Same is true about angels, jinns and shaitans. It makes as much sense to say they exist as to say they do not exist.

This argument of yours has been thrashed before, more than once, on this board, and you still keep peddling it.

Besides, immediately after making the above assertion you go on to assert that God does not exist. I guess once in a while we all need our brains to be washed.

[anajmi]

See here's the thing, there is a lot of evidence that God exists. There is no evidence that he does not.

There a lot more people on earth with common sense than without. A lot more people on earth also believe in God.

So I conclude that a lot more people with common sense believe in God than without. What that means is that a lot more people with common sense have agreed that the evidence suggests the existence of God.

Of course your answer to that would be "brain washing" so I would say, what would you prefer a clean brain or a dirty brain?

And then I know what you would say - "a classic religious copout".

[porus]

anajmi,

I was not asserting that God exists or does not exist.

I was explaining how God became such a permanent feature in human history. I should have titled it "History of human concept of God".

That is just like how 'flat earth' "existed" for a long time in human history. If I were to tell you of the existence of the concept of 'flat earth', I would not then be asserting that earth is flat.

[kalim]

Common sense is not to be trusted when it comes to important matters. Every since Copernicus when the Earth lost its privileged position in the universe revolutionary discoveries in science have been contrary to common sense. For example, quantum mechanics is downright counter intuitive. So are most modern developments in physics and biology. Anyway, the issue of existence of supernatural entities in not one of "common sense" at all. If it was so simple there would no need for the long debates which have now raged for thousands of years on these matters.

Anyway, I think I can restate porus' argument about God's existence in the following way. The sentence "God exists" or its negation is meaningless. It is an example of bad syntax: existence is neither an attribute nor a predicate. It is a qualifier and can not be applied to objects. Such sentences have been studied extensively starting with Frege, Russel, Carnap and continuing today with the "analytical philosophers". So the question about it being true/false does not arise. Of course, we can restate the sentence in the correct way, but that itself opens a can of worms. One problem being that we need to have a predicate which takes a object and returns True if that object is God and False otherwise. Now what kind of things qualify as proper object for God? Vegetable, animal or mineral? Shirk, Shirk Shirk! If we can't decide the type of object than constructing such a predicate is not possible.

Most people, of course, do not bother with such issues. They just invent God in their own image: someone who gets angry, feels pleased, bothers about minutiae of our sex life and other such shirk-ish things. Of course, He also wants a few goat sacrificed now and then to protect the health of His supposed representative on Earth. It is no wonder that the Ismailis, and even great sunni exponents like Ghazali, have hesitated to reveal their real philosophical musings to the masses. Let the uncouth believe in physical pleasures of deflowering a few dozen virgins in heaven or burning forever in hell! For the "initiated" such believers are already in hell. Thus, the Ismaili dawaat is called a potential-heaven: the very act of being in it actualizes it. All outside it are already in hell.

[anajmi]

Kalim,

Your reading all these "great minds" according to me is a big waste of time and that too in just trying to figure out the meaning of a sentence. Besides, I think those "great minds" had nothing better to do.

As far as the sacrifice is concerned, again you miss the point as always. And everything else that you say ends up sounding stupid.

porus,

Would you then agree with me when I say that there is a 50% chance that you will be burning in hell? Unless of course you give a classic atheist cop out of "there are so many Gods, which one to believe in?".

[anajmi]

022.037
YUSUFALI: It is not their meat nor their blood, that reaches Allah: it is your piety that reaches Him: He has thus made them subject to you, that ye may glorify Allah for His Guidance to you and proclaim the good news to all who do right.
PICKTHAL: Their flesh and their food reach not Allah, but the devotion from you reacheth Him. Thus have We made them subject unto you that ye may magnify Allah that He hath guided you. And give good tidings (O Muhammad) to the good.
SHAKIR: There does not reach Allah their flesh nor their blood, but to Him is acceptable the guarding (against evil) on your part; thus has He made them subservient to you, that you may magnify Allah because He has guided you aright; and give good news to those who do good (to others).

You should stop reading morons and start reading that which makes sense.

[jamanpasand]

It is no wonder that the Ismailis, and even great sunni exponents like Ghazali, have hesitated to reveal their real philosophical musings to the masses.

Prudent approach. Food for thought for our learned scholars of this board.

[anajmi]

Food for thought even for the ignorant morons on this board.

[Average Bohra]

There is at least a 50% chance that some of us on this board will burn in hell. The odds are identical that some of the religious zealots dishing out fresh servings of food for thought will also burn in hell.

Rely on your conscience, educate yourself, live your life and take your 50% , or remain ignorant, follow hadiths and ancient doctrines and take your 50%.

Your choice....

[anajmi]

Average Bohra,

I am not sure what you mean by live your life and take your 50%? You are assuming I am not. I am having a hell of a time, besides, I have a 50% chance of enjoying paradise. That makes the remaining 50% even better.

Also I am not sure what you mean when you say remain ignorant. From here, it looks like you are amongst those who are ignorant. I am not the one stuck in the middle east because of ignorance!!