Night of mystic power, the Lailat-ul-Qadr, Islam and Spiritualism, NewAgeIslam.com

Islam and Spiritualism

Night of mystic power, the Lailat-ul-Qadr

By Syed Zafar Mahmood

17 September 2009

Divine announcement says that this night is better than one thousand months, a normal human life span. The prayers made during this night have greater value than an entire life of supplication. On this night angels descend to earth carrying God’s bounties and instructions. Talking about the glory of this night, the Holy Message in the Qur’an clarifies that it is He who revealed the message through Mohammad and other prophets.

Some commentators are of the opinion that the process of sending down the scriptural amalgam from the Preserved Tablet to the worldly sky began during mid Sha’baan, the month preceding Ramadan and the process concluded during the Night of Power. Well-researched scholarly opinion simultaneously converges around the belief that the revelation of predecessor scriptures by God to the earlier alshets also occurred during Ramadan nights. And, there is consensus that all these were different editions of the same message.

Multiple scriptures were revealed to the series of recipient prophets during various phases of human history and in different parts of the world. It is ordained in the Qur’an that a believer is expected to equally revere all the prophets and scriptures including those not mentioned by name in the Qur’an. This is indeed a strong directive for maintaining interfaith bonhomie. In the Indian context, many Muslims including the author are of the conviction that the great spiritual names occurring in Indian mythology like those of Rama, Krishna, Mahavira and Buddha, were among those messengers whose names are not mentioned in Qur’an. Yet the believers are duty bound to equally respect them. So is the case with the Vedas.

http://newageislam.com/night-of-mystic-power,-the-lailat-ul-qadr/islam-and-spiritualism/d/1759

Preface: The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam By Dr. Muhammad Iqbal, Books and Documents, NewAgeISlam.com

Books and Documents

Preface: The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam By Dr. Muhammad Iqbal

By Dr. Muhammad Iqbal

The Qur’an is a book which emphasizes ‘deed’ rather than ‘idea’. There are, however, men to whom it is not possible organically to assimilate an alien universe by re-living, as a vital process, that special type of inner experience on which religious faith ultimately rests. Moreover, the modern man, by developing habits of concrete thought - habits which Islam itself fostered at least in the earlier stages of its cultural career - has rendered himself less capable of that experience which he further suspects because of its liability to illusion. The more genuine schools of Sufism have, no doubt, done good work in shaping and directing the evolution of religious experience in Islam; but their latter-day representatives, owing to their ignorance of the modern mind, have become absolutely incapable of receiving any fresh inspiration from modern thought and experience. They are perpetuating methods which were created for generations possessing a cultural outlook differing, in important respects, from our own. ‘Your creation and resurrection,’ says the Qur’an, ‘are like the creation and resurrection of a single soul.’ A living experience of the kind of biological unity, embodied in this verse, requires today a method physiologically less violent and psychologically more suitable to a concrete type of mind. In the absence of such a method the demand for a scientific form of religious knowledge is only natural. In these Lectures, which were undertaken at the request of the Madras Muslim Association and delivered at Madras, Hyderabad, and Aligarh, I have tried to meet, even though partially, this urgent demand by attempting to reconstruct Muslim religious philosophy with due regard to the philosophical traditions of Islam and the more recent developments in the various domains of human knowledge. And the present moment is quite favourable for such an undertaking.

http://newageislam.com/preface--the-reconstruction-of-religious-thought-in-islam-by-dr.-muhammad-iqbal/books-and-documents/d/221