‘Protect your own glasshouse’

Other Voices

By Ahmad alsarraf

h Muslims, we believe in the existence of one God, One who has no partner, and believe in the Hereafter, and in other permanent life other than this transient life, and that a Muslim goes to heaven, and that an infidel and an atheist is cast into hell, and we believe in the presence of angels and jinn, and these are all invisible, but God told us that they exist in the Holy Qur’an, so we wish that you deny what we wrote to respond to us and confirm your belief in heaven, hell, angels and the Hereafter, then we will raise our oqal to you.”

I did not want to respond to the one who wrote the above paragraph not because of the silliness of the request in it, but also because of the impossibility of certainty of the questioner, or who is greater, more understandable and more honorable than him to know the truth of what is in the heart or the commitment of the person to whom he put the question.

Any statement made by this person which relates to belief is meaningless because ethics, good manner and the benefit or harm of a person to himself or others are important and not necessarily the shahada (uttering the two declarations of faith I bear witness that there is no god but Allah, and Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah).

Whoever wrote that request thought that he can either embarrass or disturb the person to whom he directed the message, but of course, I tell him he was in delusion.

What I write here is not a response as much as it is an explanation of an important and general matter that concerns everyone who is exposed to the same as what I was exposed to, as matters of

alsarraf

belief were and will always and forever be close to the person, and no one has anything to do with them as long as it is not promoted to contradict the beliefs of his society.

It is stupid for anyone who speaks publicly to contradict the belief of a society, if there are state laws criminalizing it. Hence asking anyone to express their belief in specific societies is impoliteness and irresponsible act.

This type of question includes a great deal of primitive roughness, which civilized societies reject, and therefore neither I nor others need any person to raise his oqal, especially since the owner of that oqal does not have the right to evaluate others, and it is better for him to take care of polishing his biography which is questionable instead of going after others and asking them about their faith.

The peculiarity of matters of belief makes it immune from ignorant and intrusive questions, and if someone must be exposed to such a question, the moral level of the questioner must be equal or better than the level of the questioned.

The questioner must also set an example in his personal life, in his trade, and in the way he conducts his professional activities. And that his work is not condemned one day, otherwise he is not worth asking others about the size of their shoes, let alone asking about their faith.

As for the taking pride in being a Muslim, believing in heaven, hell, angels, jinn and the Day of Judgment, it does not mean much if the biography of that believer is questionable and his wealth is in doubt, the way in which he ran joint-stock companies, and helped fall the price of shares to perplexity, and the government’s decision to stop his business is confusing.

Consequently, he must protect his glasshouse, before deciding to pelt stones at the houses of others.

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