Tuesday, February 23, 2016

Ch 17.4: Duty of Islamic Government

Mirano: Never. All the three are false and if anyone is correct it cannot be specified.Umar Lahmi: You have seen contradictions in two different Bibles and contradictions in the same Bible.Now see the wonder of contradiction in one and the same verse. In Luke, chapter 21, verse 16, Jesus says to his disciples that men will kill them and drive them out of their homes butthey will not be able to injure them in the least. It means that enemies will kill the disciples but would not cause any injury, as if killing is not contradictory of not causing any injury. One may wonder whether the compilers of Bibles had any sense. Inone and the same verse there is such a ridiculous contradiction.Isabella: After all, how do the unluckyChristians explain this?Umar Lahmi: What explanation can they give ? They evade the question by irrelevant talk and attribute the error to the copyist. This does not lessen the importance of the matter. Even if this answer is taken for granted the question remains as to what the real passage was and which are the errors of the copyist? For instance, the age of a person is said to be twenty-two years and forty-two years at one and the same time; which of them is the copyist’s error and what is the correct figure ? No Christian can say now that the real passage was this but the copyist made it thus. And when the copyist’s error cannot be located, then the explanation and the reply are nonsense. So it proves that even according to Christians these books are suspicious. When at one place the copyist’s error has been admitted, there could be no belief or faith in the whole book.Isabella: Is it not possible to correct these errors of the copyist’s by a comparison with the original?Umar Lahmi: Had the original books been available, why should have there been all this trouble? Original books do not exist; only the translations from translations and copies from copies are relied upon. And what is more strange is that it has not yet been ascertained about these Bibles as to when they were written or who were their authors. Some say that the original Bibles were written in the Greek language which was current in Palestine at that time. Some say they were writtenboth in the Greek and the Hebrew languages. But in whatever languages they were written they should have been available, but they are not found anywhere ; the translations from translations cannot be trusted. Then there is also the difference of opinion about the period during which they were written, nor is anything known about their authors. Some say that the Disciple Jonah wrote his own Bible and some say it was written by another person whose name was also Jonah. What is worse is that there is no internal evidence in the books about their authors; in the Bible of Matthew his name is mentioned in absentia.Mirano: Christians say that whichever books have been certified by the Church they alone are Books ofGod and revealed ones.Umar Lahmi: So for the book to be taken as revealed we have to depend on the Church and the books themselves are deaf and dumb.Isabella: Christians assert that the decision of the Church is free from errors and so their decision is also revealed.Umar Lahmi: If the decisions of the Church are free from error, why then are there differences in the decisions of different Churches. In the Council of Nice held in Constantinople some of the Books were treated as revealed; these were excluded from the revealed books by the Councils of Trent and Philadelphia, while some books which were excluded from the list of revealed books were again included in the revealed books by the Council of Trent. As if the revealed books are noses of wax which may be turned to any side.After this meeting the participants dispersed. Arrangements were made for the training of Isabella and her friends and they all devoted themselves in acquiring religious knowledge. Four years later all the girls began to speak Arabic fluently and gained direct knowledge about Islam. Isabella after some time became the refuge of women of Cordova after acquiring religious knowledge. She became a model of Islamic injunctions and she was taken as a Muhaddithah (Traditionist) in Cordova as she became an expert in the knowledge of Traditions and the related matters and she continued to advance in piety, prayerfulness and attachment to Allah, and many women were benefited by her vast learning.

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