Quranic programming for the Muslim mind

Publication Year: 1429 AH - 2008 AD Edition: 1 Number of pages: 310 pages Cover: Hardcover Publisher: Dar Al-Huda for Publishing and Distribution Our God is one, our religion is one, our Prophet is one, our Qibla is one, and we all pronounce the same testimony. So why do we find ourselves divided sects and parties, disputing, estranged, separated, each party rejoicing in what they have? Is this our destiny or is this what our hands have earned? A question that has always pressed on my soul and I asked it in my childhood to my late father, and it remained unanswered. Then I asked one of the scholars of that time, and he told me that there is no room for making any change in this negative reality. I was amazed by his answer. My father, may Allah have mercy on him, raised me on love for Allah and His Messenger, and love for Islam and Muslims. That’s why I grew up happy with their positives and deeply pained by their negatives, especially their division. I used to hear about colonialism and its role in dispersing our word, dividing our nation, and keeping us backward. I have lived among Muslims, their ideas, their reality, their conflicts, their disputes, and their struggles, and I was ground down by their dilemmas and cycles until I became a party in them. Sometimes reality is stronger than hopes and convictions, sweeping you away. Sometimes the severity and depth of error are stronger than all your attempts at reform, causing you to be lost. And sometimes the noise of deviation, its shouting, and its antics drown out your voice, deafening the ears to you. When I returned to my Lord’s Book, contemplating its verses, living happily under its shade, pleased with its speech, thinking, reflecting, aspiring, humbling, crying, asking, supplicating, hoping, turning, and glorifying. Because the Qur'an has educated me and taught me how to think, how to solve any problem, how to accept, how to reject, how to dialogue, how to call, it has programmed my mind in its way. Allah, the Exalted, distinguished humans from other creatures with reason and made it the basis of obligation because it is the tool to understand the Book of Allah and the Sunnah of His Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, and to properly apply them in all aspects of life. Not to rely on it instead of Allah, but to acknowledge its weakness, ignorance, and need for Him, to increase faith, to attain Paradise, and then to build this universe and bring happiness to humanity through His Shariah. We are not against using reason, but we are against presenting it before Allah and His Messenger so that we do not deviate or become arrogant. The Companions, may Allah be pleased with them, were bearers of a message, working to spread it through words and actions. They trusted Allah’s promise and had a clear, firm reference: the Book of Allah and the Sunnah of His Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him. Allah honored them by fulfilling their goals. We must study reality away from deception and personal bias, through pure Qur'anic and Prophetic culture that programs the mind, then apply this understanding to our reality to elevate it to the Qur'anic level and prophetic guidance, so that we can achieve human dignity under His servitude and submission to Allah alone. One of the goals of Jihad in the way of Allah is to spread justice, eliminate oppression, and restore land. It is one of the firm constants that cannot be distorted or changed, no matter how much Allah’s and His Messenger’s enemies try to distort it and call it violence.