Understanding & Living Islam #8
I first read your book ‘The Truth of Life’. It pulled me in from the first sentence, before I knew it I had come to the end; I finished the book at one go.
You raise the following questions in your book, “Did you choose to come to life, did you choose your parents, did you choose you hair color, your eye color, etc. I had never questioned myself so.
I was so intrigued that I looked you up on the Internet and found your other books and videos. I realized you had dedicated 50 years of your life to this knowledge.
Your works helped me understand Islam. After I went on pilgrimage to Mecca in 2003, many of my fans started asking me questions. So I try to share my knowledge as much as I can, to the best of my ability. But I think what matters most is to understand things within a particular system. I didn’t see anything other than the ‘Quran’ and the ‘Rasul of Allah (saw)’ in your books. I didn’t read anything contrary to them.
I found all the references to the verses and Hadith you cited along with their Turkish explanations, so I was able to trace them. But I encountered many people who claimed, “We don’t understand what we read, we have faith but we don’t understand, so we can’t apply this knowledge in our day to day lives” or “I started reading but I couldn’t understand so I stopped, I’m not really interested anymore” etc.
And as you explain in your books, and as the Rasul of Allah (saw) was told, “You don’t ask for a financial return for teaching these” therefore I didn’t ‘purchase’ any of your books because you don’t sell your books, they are not for ‘sale’!
To be honest with you this reassured me even more... I said to myself, “I am sure of this source” so I
recommended it to others, because I benefited a lot myself.
But just as this is a method, a path, some have suffered 40 years in seclusion, some have eradicated everything from their lives, their only purpose is to reach Allah on this path. So how can we reach Allah now in 2013? Must we follow this path or can we shorten it?
03:12 What can you advise our generation, in the name of understanding and living Islam?
04:17 So this concept of ‘schools of spiritual training’ is no longer valid today. Today there are sermons. You can go and listen to a sermon once a week or once a fortnight or as much as you can, they’ll give you lessons in good virtue, which you can try and apply in your daily life. But this isn’t sufficient in finding Allah, it doesn’t enable the attainment of ‘certainty (yakeen) of Allah’.
05:40 Salat is to completely turn to Allah and to feel Him in your being. Salat is something that is especially experienced alone in the night.
06:14 Fasting is not about starving this body, this structure that functions with animalistic properties.
06:54 If you can duly experience dhikr, salat and fasting, if you can really read the Quran, your life will automatically change without you even realizing. I can tell you this with certainty.
08:31 I advise everyone to first read my book ‘Truth of Life’ and understand the system. In ‘The Power of Prayer’ I wrote about which dhikr is beneficial for which purpose. Nobody needs to call and find me.
09:58 Every point in the Quran is perfect and it is free from any error. When I talk about questioning I’m not talking about questioning its authenticity. There is no doubt about its authenticity. But how can I understand it?
11:21 Another one of your phrases in one of your books was, “There is no reform in religion; there is only reform in one’s understanding of religion.” This shouldn’t be taken as ‘degeneration of religion’ The truth is stable, it does not change. But our perception of it is constantly subject to change.
12:04 ...thus we must not make any judgments or interpretations, for if Islam is about submission, then we must submit to it wholeheartedly, yet continually strive to understand things more clearly in this time and age where perceptions change so rapidly.