lā ʾilāha ʾillallāh (لا إله إلا الله محمد رسول الله)
A phrase I’ve heard oft-repeated by Muslims after tragic occurrances of one kind or another and the contradiction never fails to bemuse me.
Am I understanding this right: e.g., your adolescent child dies as wartime ‘collateral damage’ so you chant and give praise to some fictitious entity who is conspcious by ‘His’ absence just when you would have needed ‘His’ devine intervention most? :dubious:
Am I missing something here, or is herein essentially why Muslims – issuing from that, the Middle-East – are in such a mire of evolutionary stagnation after giving the world so much culturally for so long?
NB: I’m not fishing for an ‘interventionist Vs passive god’ debate; just a deeper understanding of humanoid delusion, the inculcation thereof and how ingrained it can become.
Why would you think this is somehow unique to Islam. I can’t think of a single religion that doesn’t call on you to rally your faith after a tragic occurrence.
When someone experiences a loss they tend to look for a reason and take comfort in it. As to how ingrained it is in humanity, it may be a intrinsic part of humanity. Some may believe that God created us to do this as a way of finding Him.
I hear a whole lot of non-Muslims saying things like “she’s in a better place” or “he’s with the angels now” or “they’re up in heaven, looking down on us” or “it is God’s will” or “the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away.”
Yes, these ideas rub me the wrong way, but they’re not endemic to just one religion.
In Shinto, I’m fairly certain, the religion just explains how nature works and why the Japanese people are special. There isn’t any relation to personal, spiritual well-being. That would be just the same with most mythologies and animist religions (which is something like 99% of all religions that have been practiced by man.)
Yet Shinto has very rigid rules covering death rituals and how to honor the dead daily from then on. I’d qualify that as rallying your faith to deal with tragedy. True the Shinto death ceremonies are often not observed by many Japanese today … but nevertheless.
Shinto rituals also are used to keep away evil spirits … I’d say that qualifies as “personal, spiritual well-being”, wouldn’t you?
As to the op - psychologically many believers are most likely to make expressions of faith when they have reason to experience the most doubt. That doubt is discomfitting and reasserting their faith that there is a bigger picture beyond there understanding in the face of evidence that such seems to be not true provides the comfort they seek.
Didn’t you read the OP? A Muslim would just wait for devine intervention, which of course would involve picking grapes and, you know, chanting and stomping on those grapes, possibly conjuring up Bacchus, and then madness would result… and then something, something, fictitious entity, I don’t know, I can’t follow the logic, here there be dragons.
But I would like to know what personal definition of “evolution” Sablicious operates with.
And it worked! We’re not in General Questions anymore. Obviously those Muslims are onto something.
But more seriously, the OP is silly. Invoking divine forces at times of tragedy is a pretty common feature of any religion I’ve ever been in contact with. It may be dumb, but its a pretty widespread form of dumbness, hardly unique to Muslims.
I don’t even think it is dumb. Death is a traumatic thing to process. The human mind is narrative in nature, and fitting a difficult event in to a narrative is how we get along with our lives. Picking from the standard set of narratives (he’s in a better place, etc.) isn’t that much dumber than whatever you are likely to come up with on your own.
I don’t speak Arabic and can’t comment on the specific phrase in question. That said, the question I’ve quoted here is silly and prejudicial. There are a lot of reasonable sociological theories regarding the “evolutionary stagnation” of the Middle East- many of them, indeed, relate to Islam- but, “they seek solace in faith when faced with tragedy”, is not one of them.
Getting caught up in the ‘Muhummah Vs [insert any derivative fictitious prophet/martyr/evangelist]’ argument, I see… :rolleyes:
The point I was trying to make was; how can a people give thanks – because what I quoted was in fact the phrase used, I double checked it – to an all-seeing, all-knowing, omni-present entity when ‘He’ clearly, a) doesn’t give a whit, and/or b) is ‘Himself’ as culpable through inaction as the first-person-shooter-trained, ‘Semper Fidelis’ brainwashed grunt who fired the 30mm rounds at those stretchering the injured!? :dubious:
Does this not seem a tad incongruous to you for a people who pride their particular delusion of choice on being superior to all other?