ald
M all praise is due to
Allah the soul
Creator sustainer and cherisher of the
universe and may his peace and blessings
be upon his last prophet and Messengers
Muhammad and upon all prophets and
Messengers who preceded
him I greet you all my dear brothers and
sisters with the Greet greting of all of
the
prophets from Adam to Muhammad peace be
upon them all the greeting of
Peace which means May the peace blessing
and mercy of God Allah be with you
all and I wish in the very
outset to express two things before we
get to heavy stuff
first my great thanks and
appreciation for the otwa Muslim
Association and for all
excellencies who graced us with their
presence this evening and to you
all for your kind invitation to share a
few humble Thoughts with
you secondly I cannot help also by
express my
feeling in this kind of
gathering with people from various
National and religious
backgrounds coming together as brothers
and
sisters and when I was looking around
one particular verse from the Quran
immediately came to
mind the verse appears in chapter 49
it's verse
13 and I just beginning with that
by way of introducing the
topic interesting enough that verse does
not begin by addressing
Muslims it does not say oh Muslims or oh
Believers it
says oh
mankind that's a very inclusive address
from God to humanity through that last
scripture the
Quran and in fact it's interesting to
notice that in the
Quran while sometimes it addresses
Muslims especially when it comes to
their particular religious duties like
prayer and
fasting there are more than 200 verses
in the Quran that begins with the
address all mankind all of you God is
addressing
everyone and that's
significant then it goes on it says we
means god that's we we created you from
a single male and a female or male and
female depending how you
translated which actually means that you
are all one family and if you have the
same set of parents then there is a
human family diverse as it may be but
one
family then it goes on and we made you
in Nations and tribes why that you may
get to know one another and recognize
one
another this is in full consistency with
another verse in the Quran in Chapter 30
verse
22 which explains why people on earth
have different languages and
complexion and it says in the
translation of meaning of the signs of
God the signs of his mercy and
wisdom is the creation of heavens and
earth
and the
diversity of your languages and your
complexion that is a sign of the
creation of Allah my favorite analogy is
like a bouquet of
flower where the white flower is
beautiful in its own right so is the
yellow the blue the pink and More
Beautiful are all of them
together and then it establishes finally
at the end of that verse the sole
Criterion on the basis of which a human
being can be a better human
being it
says the most honored of you in the
sight of God is the one who is most
righteous forget about color language
even Faith claims because Faith claims
are to be settled by Allah in the day of
judgment but this is the translation of
true faith
I'd like to First make a remark
concerning the
topic in order to achieve world peace
and mutual
understanding it is not only enough to
talk about what is
agreeably positive points I am sure all
of you here in some degree or the other
are already passed Islam 101
and initially even when I thought of the
topic dealing with world
peace I had to make some kind of
modification even in the last minute as
I was thinking in flying in the plane
next to me uh a brother who lives here
in otwa Salem brother
Salem jam and we kept discussing the
topic because I was hesitant myself as
to whether I should deal also with these
broad issues
of what does the term Islam come from
how does the concept of Peace
fused in theological and eschatological
terminology in Islam how the concept of
peace is inherent in the objective the
five broad objectives of Islamic law to
safeguard Faith Life mind honor and
wealth to explain the meaning of jihad
and so on and so forth but but then I
mentioned to him
also that in the last few weeks I have
been
following the
trend led by some people in the media or
other
circles who seem to have uh being
promoting antagonism at the time when
what we need more is to promote
love we have seen lots of Art articles I
don't know what is your share here in
Ottawa quoting things from the Quran out
of context and trying somehow to
convince the public that hatred and
harassment of Muslims is Justified
because violence dominance and
imperialism is inherent in the very
scriptures of Islam I know that might be
a delicate topic and like I said earlier
it might be heavier stuff than dealing
with the more one1 thing that we have
heard but since youve heard that already
I thought it might be beneficial to go a
little bit beyond that because world
peace and understanding can also be
achieved not only positively by
presenting the positive things but by
also dispelling misunderstanding and Mis
quotations to do that I propose to deal
with the following issues
first a brief introduction to the
methodology with which we should
understand uh the topic and then move on
to classify the most common types of
error in understanding and interpreting
the Quran including by the way some
interpretation by some Muslims and then
move on to um deal and that's the heart
of the topic was some of the commonly
misquoted
misprescribing
verses in the
Quran to start
with in the introduction as some of you
might have might be able to see with on
the PowerPoint it's um the need for
objectivity and honesty when we deal
with a topic like that to me that
translates into number
one trying to have some sort of control
on the issue of emotions and I address
that not only to non Muslims but to
Muslims as well let's not emotional
feeling without evidence blind a person
from trying to see the truth as truth