Thursday, May 27, 2010

Islam is a way of Life. Ask any muslim in Malaysia, you'll find that mojority of them will subscribe to the notion that Islam encompasses every single aspect of life.

When people say that religion is the choice of individuals, or religion is a personal matter, I strongly believe that they have fallen into the fallacy of oversimplification. No, not simplification but worse, over simplification and over generalization, which are common flaws in the thinking process a.k.a fallacy.

I can also address those statements with statements like, human beings are social creatures. We are inherently social. Therefore, if you like individualism so much, go live like a hermit in the jungle. Even primates like apes and monkeys live in societies.

In Islam, and communism (not equating them here), the community is more important than individuals. Of course, in Islam, being a complete religion, there might be cases where individuals are given precedent over his or her community. But that all depends on circumstances. This is showing the beauty of flexibility in Islam, if the situation commands it.

I could also argue that in most religions there are rites or community services, masses, congregational prayers and so forth. This shows that religion is not total individualistic but also communal. Again, this also, in my opinion, shows the completeness of Islam. There are cases which can be treated as community issues and those that are single individual's.

There is also acts of sin in Islam which if broken down, falls into two general categories. One which would warrant you to be charged in court and one which would only add to your piles and piles of sin, whether against God or your fellow being.

There might be people who would be uncomfortable when I talk about my own faith, but there are people who might be interested to learn more. Well, those people might not necessarily be interested in Islam but they are curious, such as myself. Since I was little I have urges to know, to verify (in certain cases). When I got hold of Yahoo!TM in 1995, I couldn't stop. I was hooked (read addicted) since there were so much information which I had to know. Well, the more you know, the more you don't know.

I also notice that people tend to believe what they want to believe, regardless of what their principles may be. This shows the lack of professionalism from my point of view. People have the tendency to believe based on their inherent hate, their prejudices, their lack of willingness to seek the truth, since they think what they're hearing is already the truth.

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