Jarnhamar said:
Thanks Abdullah, I did know, I'm going somewhere with this
And you took an extremely interesting direction, one I did not anticipate.
But who are you to judge that your son didn't in fact receive a dream from Allah?
Interpretation of dreams and some of the more esoteric things involving dreams and 'divine' direction are well and truely outside my knowledge.
But Islam does not teach murdering innocents is acceptable, so a dream claiming 'Allah' told someone to do that is suspect
http://www.answering-christianity.com/no_murder.htm
And 'seeing' Allah is suspect too
http://islamqa.org/hanafi/daruliftaa/7952
But for the sake of your arguement and to put in a more widely accepted Islamic context, lets go with he saw Muhammad or Jesus or any other Muslim prophet and that vision encouraged this.
I've met a couple padres now who were NCOs or Officers who received a dream from God to become padres after years of service. If God sends nice messages to people isn't it safe to say God can send mean ones too? (old testament is full of fire and brimstone stuff).
Now you force me to defend my Christian brethren, which I will do so to my fullest. But if I fall short a brother who is more intimately aware of Christianity can help. God/Allah/Yahwey/Creator is not full of fire and brimstone, nor is he a vindictive child like entity. Everything he did and does or allows is for a reason, it becomes difficult for us to understand his motives because our time lines of planning are vastly different and our end goals are vastly different. Then you add the length of time since these acts happened and it becomes harder to qualify wether they were good or bad acts, because we lack information those generations had.
It is like looking at WW2 and what the allied forces did to Germany, but not knowing what the Germans did to deserve our aggression. A short article talking about this subject. I think I found a christian source.. albeit the name the use for God seems to be jehovah... any rate here it is.
https://www.google.ca/amp/s/gotquestions.org/amp/Old-Testament-violence.html?client=ms-android-bell-ca
Now back to your point, if we dismiss the idea that God or his Prophets are evil and vindictive, then it becomes clear that they will not encourage people to evil and vindictive actions. Now please remember before you bring up the Machiavellian idea of the ends justifying the means, the Islamic idea of God does not allow for interpretation of the idea of the ends Justifying the Means in Islam. If a person is to be executed, imprisoned etc, he has to have done something to deserve it, it can not just be done to him.
If your son said he received a message from Allah saying he should become a cleric I presume you would believe him and be supportive?
I actually, become very.. lets say suspicious when people tell me they received 'guidance' in any way from 'Divine' beings or prophets. I find a lot of times that 'Divine' message, can be chalked up to stimuli in a persons life leading to his mind being active in that manner at night and they interpert as a divine message. When in actuality it was the brain processing the days or weeks information.
As a side subject dreams are an extremely fascinating subject in psychology. Well worth reading up on.. so Ill post a link
non-religious.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-is-dreaming-and-what-does-it-tell-us-about-memory-excerpt/
But when the message is a violent one [Quran 2:191-193 ] then he requires psychiatric care? Essentially whether to believe Allah's will or not depends on your own personal feelings about whats being said. So not exactly "absolutely everything is up to God to decide".
Well, if my child starts quoting single lines out of the Qur'an to me and trying to give me Tafsir.. my child and i will have a very hard talk.
For you a link
2:190-195 is much better to read in isolation.
https://www.google.ca/amp/s/discover-the-truth.com/2014/08/12/quran-2191-and-kill-them-wherever-you-find-them-explained/amp/?client=ms-android-bell-ca
Now back to your point, if what is being said conforms to the established Sunnah of Allah and his prophet. Then that is one hurdle over came, but if it flies in the face of Allah and his Sunnah, then I know it is wrong out right. Nonetheless, if I ever have a conversation with my kids like this, I will be paying strict attention to everything I can.
For most things we are a product of our enviroments, but I do not discount divine encouragement per se. Because either a very long odds coincedence happened to me or it was divine encouraging, so I believe it exists. But I find a lot of cases of 'divine' encouraging can be logically explained.
Now as a little aside, I was thinking today about why so many people are critical of Islam and so many are not. I was thinking about what you said of converts not being "exposed" to certain versions and interpertations of Islam and I found that to be incorrect, look at all the material covered here in this thread and the other one, you can hardly say I am unaware of these things.. but I choose to follow evidence that discounts them.. whereas others choose to discount those evidences. It makes me wonder why some feel Islam or any particular issue is fine, but a person exposed to the same material can hold a countrary position. Kinda had me thinking about Initial exposure to Islam and confirmation bias and all those other neat things. I am driving around BC and Alberta these days, delivering cars for a wholesaler and I find I have far to much time to think and things like this pop up.
Any rate, I best get to bed. You take care, I honestly appreciate your conversation, I genuinely like learning your viewpoints. I feel they may help me in the future and although you are critical of Islam, I do not find you to be a bigot or rascist. I find you or at least this persona of you to be quite respectable.. amazing feat on the internet lol
Abdullah
