What is the Purpose of our Life?

[raiazlan]

What is the Purpose of our Life?
The information which is to be shared,
may seem to be bit extensive but when you consider
the capacity of the human brain and the amount of information
that it can store and that it can decipher,
then a few pages of information tonight,
I’m sure won’t overburden you.
All of you have an equal responsibility and that
responsibility is to listen with an open heart and an open mind.
In a world full of prejudice and cultural conditioning,
it is very hard to find people that are able to take
a moment to think about life objectively.
And try to arrive at the truth about this world
and the real purpose of our life.
Unfortunately, when you ask most people the question
what is the purpose of our life, such a fundamental
and important question, they will not tell you what they have
concluded through observation or analytical reasoning.
Rather, in most cases, they will simply tell you
what someone else said.
Or they will tell you what is commonly presumed by others;
what my father says the purpose of life is,
what the minister of my Church says the purpose of life is,
what my teachers says, what my friends says etc.
If I ask anyone about the purpose of eating,
why do we eat?
Everyone will say in one word or another,
its for nutrition because it sustains life.
If I ask anyone why they work,
they will say because it’s a necessity in order to
support themselves and to provide the needs of the family.
If I ask anyone why they sleep, why they wash etc.
They will answer this is a common necessity for all human beings.
We can follow this line of questioning with 100 questions
and get same or similar answer from anyone in any
language in any place in the world.
Simple!
Then I ask you the question, why is it,
that when we ask the question,
what is the goal and the purpose of life,
that we get so many different answers?
That’s because people are confused,
they don’t really know.
They are stumbling in the dark.
And rather than to say I don’t know,
they just fall for any answer that they
have been programmed to answer.
Well think about it tonight!
Is our purpose in this world simply to eat,
sleep, dress, work, acquire some materials things
and enjoy ourselves? Is this our purpose?
Why are we born? What is the object of our existence?
And what is the wisdom behind the creation of men
and this tremendous universe?
Think about that question.
Some persons argue that there is no prove of any divine origin,
there is no prove that there is a God,
there is no proves that this universe has come about
for any divine purpose; there are people who argue this way.
And they say that perhaps this world came about by chance.
A big bang and this whole great world,
with all its orchestration just came together.
And they argue that life does not have any definite purpose
and that there is nothing that can be proven through
by the logic or science that there is a God
or purpose or any divine reason behind this world.
In the Qur’an it’s mentioned:
To Allah belongs the dominion of the
heavens and the earth and Allah has
power over everything. Behold!
In the creation of the heavens and the earth
and the alternation of the night and the day,
there are indeed signs for men of understanding,
men who celebrates the praises of Allah standing,
sitting and lying down on their side and they
contemplate the wonders of the creation
in the heavens and the earth with the thought,
“Our Lord, not for any foolish purpose has thou
created all of these. Glory be to thee,
give us salvation from the penalty of the hellfire.
Now here in these verses, Allah has mentioned very clearly
to us by first drawing our attention to the creation of ourselves,
the different postures of the human body,
the different attitude of the human psychology.
He draws our attention to the heaven,
the alternation of the night and the day,
the firmament, the stars, the constellation and
then He says to us,
“He has not created all of these for any foolish purpose”.
Because when you see the design of it,
you know it that the design of it is very powerful and very precise.
And something very powerful and very precise
that is beyond your own calculation and imagination,
it cannot foolish. It cannot be just thrown together.
If you took 10 marbles and number them 1 to 10 and
all of them with different colours and you put them inside
of a bag and shook the bag and then closing your eyes
reached inside that bag, and I told you,
pull out marble number 1 and then marble number 2
and then pull out marble number 3 in order.
What’s the chance of your pulling out of these
10 marbles in order? Do you know the chances are?
Its 26 millions to 1.
So what’s the chance of the heavens and the earth
being thrown in a big bang and orchestrated like they are.
What’s the chance of that?
My dear respected fellow humans we have to ask ourselves
a further question. When you see a bridge,
a building or an automobile, you automatically consider
the person or the company that constructed it.
When you see a plane or a rocket,
a satellite or a large ship,
you also think about how incredible of a vehicle that it is.
When you see a nuclear plant in orbiting space stations
or a super international airport,
you have to thoroughly impressed with the engineering
dynamics that are involved.
Yet, these are just things that are manufactured
by human beings.
Then what about the human body;
with its massive and intricate control system?
Think about it.
Think about the brains; how it thinks,
how it functions, how it analysis, sort information,
retrieves information, distinguishes and
categorizes information in a millionth of a second!
And does it constantly.
Think about the brain for a moment.
This is the brain that made the automobile, the rocket.
Think about the brain and who made that.
Think about the heart how it pumps continuously
for 60 or 70 years, in taking and discharging blood
throughout the body and maintaining that steady precision
throughout the life of that person.
Think about it.
Think about the kidney and what kind of functions that they
carry – the purifying instrument of the body,
which performs hundreds of chemicals analysis simultaneously
and also controls the levels of toxicity in the content of the body.
And it does this automatically.
Think about your eye – The human camera that adjust,
focus, interpret, evaluate, and applies colour automatically;
the natural inspective and adjustment to light and distance.
All automatic, think about it!
Who created that? Who has mastered that?
Who plans that? And who regulates that?
Human beings themselves? No of course not.
What about this universe? Think about this.
This earth is ONE planet in our solar system.
And our solar system is one of the systems in the Milky Way.
And the Milky Way is one of the constellations in this galaxy.
And there are millions of galaxies like the Milky Way.
Think about that and they are all in order.
They are all precise. They are not colliding with each other.
They are not conflicting with each other and they are
swimming along in an orbit that has been SET for them.
Have human beings set that into motions?
And are those human beings maintaining that precision?
No of course NOT!
Think about the ocean, the fish, the insects, the birds,
the plants, bacteria, and the chemical elements that
have not been discovered and cannot be defected
even with the most sophisticated instruments.
Yet each one of them has a law that they follow.
Did all of these sequence, balance, harmony,
variation, design, maintenance,
operation and infinite numeration,
did this happen by chance?
And also do these things functions perpetually
and perfectly by chance?
And do they reproducing themselves and
maintaining themselves also by chance?
No of course not.
That would be totally illogical and foolish to think
and in the least, it will indicate that however it came to be,
it is totally outside of the realm of human capability.
We will all agree to that.
The being, the all mighty power, God, the creator
who has the knowledge to design, to proportion,
who has created all of these and is responsible for
maintaining all of these, is the only one that is deserving
our praise and gratitude.
If I gave each one of you a $100 for no reasons,
you would at least say thank you.
What about your eyes, your kidney,
your brain, your life, your birth,
your children – what about that?
Who gave you that?
Is He not worthy of praise and thanks?
Is He not worthy of your worship and recognition?
That in a nutshell is the purpose and the goal of this life.
Allah the all mighty said to us in the Qur’an:
“I have not created the Jinn (the spirit)
nor the human beings for any other purpose
except to worship me”. This what the almighty says.
So our purpose of this life is to recognize the creator,
to be grateful to the creator, to worship the creator,
to surrender ourselves to the creator and to obey
the laws that He decided for us.
In a nutshell it means worship.
This is our purpose on this life.
And whatever we do in the course of that worship,
that system, the eating, the drinking, the dressing,
the working; all of these are just consequential but
we have been created to worship.
That’s the purpose of our life.
I don’t think that anyone who is scientific or analytical,
they won’t have much argument with that purpose.
They may have some other purpose within themselves.
But that’s something they have to deal with
between themselves and all mighty God.

Introduction to Islam
What do you know about Islam?
Not what you HEARD about Islam,
not what you seen in the action of some Muslims.
Because there is a difference between Islam and Muslim.
There is a difference between a man and a father.
A man who has children is a father.
But father is a responsibility.
If a man who does not fulfil those responsibility,
he is not necessarily a good father.
Islam is a rule and an order.
If a Muslims does not fulfil those rules and orders,
he is not a good Muslim.
So you can not compare Islam by Muslims.
We hear the term “Islam” and “Muslim” quite often.
And we read about Islam and Muslims in the periodical
textbooks of colleges and universities.
We hear and we see a lot of inaccurate,
misleading and purposeful misinformation through the media.
And I have to admit that some of these
misinformation and misrepresentation has been
perpetuated by Muslims themselves.
Yet one out of every 5 persons in this world of some
5 billion people is a Muslim.
This is the statistics that you can verify in the encyclopaedia.
How is it that 1 out of every 5 people in this world is a Muslim
and that we don’t know something about Islam?
The facts about Islam?
If I told you 1 out of every 5 people in this world
were Chinese, which is a fact cause there are 1 billion Chinese
in the world. We know the geographical,
social, economical, political, philosophical and historical facts
about China and the Chinese.
Then how come we don’t know Islam?
What is it that joins all these nations
(around 35 Muslim nations)
and this universal configuration into a common entity?
What makes a brother in Saudi Arabia a brother to an American?
What makes a brother from China a brother to an Egyptian?
What makes a brother from Australia a brother to a Pakistani?
An African is my brother,
another one from Thailand is my brother,
a Bosnian is my brother,
the other one from Canada is my brother.
From Spain, Russia, India, Germany and so forth.
What makes them my brother?
We have that different cultural, psychological background.
What is it about Islam that automatically embraces us
and joins us together as a brotherhood?
What are the accurate characteristics of this misunderstood
way of life that are followed by a great part of humanity?
I will try to provide you with some facts,
but in addition to this as I mentioned to you before,
it is necessary for you to be open minded and open hearted.
Because if a turned a glass upside down and poured water on it,
I will never get a glass of water.
It has to be right side up.
Facts alone do not lead to understanding,
but rather a combination of tolerant,
ambition and the ability to appreciate and accept the truth
when you hear it.
The word Islam means surrender,
submission and obedience to the law of almighty God.
You can say “Allah”, you can say the creator,
you can say the supreme God, the supreme force,
the all wise – all of those are his names.
We say “Allah”, because in Arabic,
there are no other expressions.
This expression “Allah” cannot be applied to any created things.
Other words we use for almighty – can be applied
for created things like “the almighty Dollar”
or he is the “greatest” etc.
But the word “Allah” can only be applied to the one
who has created all of these that we have previously described.
The word “Islam”
The word “Islam” is derived from the root “salama”,
it means to be at peace or to have security.
Therefore, a Muslim is a person that surrenders,
submits and obeys the laws of almighty God
and through this submission; attains peace
and security for themselves.
We can immediately see that by such definition,
the Arabia word “Islam” describe the same manner
and the behaviour of all the well known and respected
prophets and messengers of almighty God.
Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, David, Solomon,
Isaac, Ishmael, Jacob, John the Baptist,
Sulaiman, Jesus the son of Mary and Mohammad
(peace be on all of them).
All of these prophets and messengers came from the same
almighty God with the same message with the same chain
of transmission and they said
ONE thing – obey God. Worship the almighty God
and fulfil the purpose of life and do good actions
and you will be rewarded with another life.
That’s all they said. Don’t make it more than that.
That’s all they said regardless of what language and
what time and whom they came to.
If you read the scriptures carefully without your own
interpretations and somebody else’s addition or fabrication,
you will find that this was the simple message
of all those prophets whom confirmed one another.
Not one of those prophets ever said “I am God, worship me”.
You don’t have to think cause you won’t find it in any books
that you have. Not the Bible, not the Torah,
not the Old and the New Testaments,
not the Psalms of David.
You won’t find it in any book or in any speeches by the prophets.
So where did it come from?
That something else that you have to investigate yourself.
We can immediately see that by such a definition,
the Arabic word “Islam” describes what all the prophets did.
They call came and submitted themselves to God,
surrendered themselves to God, called the people to God,
and asked the people, and insisted upon the people to do deeds of righteousness. The Ten Commandments of Moses, what was that? The speech of Abraham, what was that?
The Psalms of David, what was that?
The proverbs of Solomon, what did he say?
The Gospel of Jesus Christ, what did he say?
What did John the Baptist say?
What did Isaac and Ishmael say?
What did Muhammad say?
Worship one God, nothing more than that.
Allah says in the Qur’an:
< And they were ordered nothing except,
to worship Allah, being sincere towards him and
this was the straight way. >
This was the original message.
By the same token, it will also be appropriate here
to consider those prophets and messengers as Muslims.
Don’t think about the Arabic terminology,
don’t think about how we are dressed,
don’t think about Mecca or Saudi Arabia or Egypt etc.

[raiazlan]

What is the Purpose of our Life?

Fundamental duties of a Muslim
The fundamental duties incumbent upon every Muslims is simple – the five things.
Islam is like a big house. And every house has to be built with pillars and a foundation. And you have to build a house with some rules. The pillars are the rules. And when you build a house, you must follow all the rules. The five rules of Islam are:
1) To uphold the code of strict monotheism – not to accept any partners with God, not to worship anything along with God, not to say anything about God that you have no right to say, not to say he has a father or son or daughter or mother or uncle. And to bear witness that Muhammad is a messenger of the almighty God.
2) To observe the prescribed prayers.
3) To pay the prescribed charity.
4) To fast during the month of Ramadan.
5) To perform the pilgrimage.
One may ask the question – isn’t that difficult?
No my friend, it is not. Not to those who opens their mind and open their heart and accept the truth.
I put the matter before you – and you sentence yourself. You take the sentence that you want. You sentence yourself to peace and paradise or you sentence yourself to confusion, frustration and hellfire and punishment.
Enjoy the bounties that Allah has bestowed upon you.
May Allah guide us, may Allah help us. Amen
More on the 5 pillars of Islam
Islam has 5 pillars.
1) Bearing witness that there is none to be worshipped except Allah and Muhammad is the messenger of Allah.
2) The performance of the prayer – praying 5 times a day – based on the order of the almighty Allah. Somebody might say, why do we have to 5 times a day? Well, if I said to you, listen – I got a job for you and we pay 5 times a day. You wash yourself, line up and get paid. Would you have any problems with it? No you wouldn’t. When the bell rings, you will be the 1st one to wash yourself, line up and get paid. Because you know the benefits of it. The prophet Muhammad told us: if any of you had a house with a stream in front of you – if you went into that stream and washed 5 times a day, would there be any dirt on you?
The purpose of the prayer is to keep you pure, clean and to remind you about Allah. And how long does a prayer take? It only takes less than 10 minutes. It takes you longer than that to smoke a cigarette, it takes you longer than that to call your wife, it takes you longer than that to drink some juice, it takes you longer than that to talk some foolishness on the street.
You mean the one whom you worship, the one who created the heavens and earth, the one who gives you paradise, the one whom you believe in, you are not willing to stop what you are doing 5 times a day and just ask him? Praise him for forgiveness? Worship him? Be grateful towards him for 10 minutes? Of course you are. This is what the prayer for. So the idea is to keep you pure, clean, honest, keep you reminded, keep you knowing that you are a Muslim, keep you reminded all the time that Allah is your Allah.
That’s why you tell your sons and daughters when they are young, be in this house at 8:00 o’clock. You don’t think at 8:15 they are going to become a pumpkin. But you want them to get accustomed to respect that house and coming at 8:00. So it is the same thing with the prayer. Allah wants you to get accustomed to remember him. Allah does not need your prayer. You need it. But he ordered for us prayer as a blessing. That’s why a Muslim have such a great blessing because these 5 prayers a day acts upon his minds, his psychology, his physiology and his social posture. Every thing in his life revolves around this prayer.
3) Zakat (charity) – the word “zakat” mean to grow, to prosper, to benefit. When you give something from your saved up wealth (i.e. money that you are not using, piling up in the bank) to the poor – Allah purifies your wealth.
Don’t those people who are less fortunate – don’t they deserve a portion of your wealth? And if Allah did not order us to give it, would we give it? No we wouldn’t. So Zakat is for the poor and it purifies your wealth.
4) Fasting – Fasting in the month of Ramadan, is for discipline. It’s to learn self-control. If you can’t fast from sunrise to sunset – if you can’t control your tongue – if you can’t stay away from the desire of your wife – if you can’t stop thinking lustful thoughts – if you can’t control your anger – if you can’t keep away from food – if you can’t keep away from those for 12-14 hours, then what kind of a person are you? How powerful are you?
And after that fasting period, you can eat, go unto your wife etc. And from that fasting hours, you kind of get an idea how those people are feeling in Somalia, Ethiopia, India – other parts of the world, who are fasting involuntarily – everyday!
Through fasting, you get an idea how they feel. You become more humble, you do more righteous deeds, you become aware of your responsibility as a Muslim, you think more about the almighty God – and as a result of that, you elevate yourself spiritually.
5) Hajj- (The Pilgrimage) – It’s the journey to the Ka’aba (house located in Mecca and was built by Abraham and his son Ishmael to commemorate the worship of one God). As a Muslim, you can go to Mecca and visit Ka’aba and make the lesser pilgrimage called “Umrah”. And then when the Hajj times come, you make that pilgrimage and that is when you are going to see the power of this Islamic brotherhood.
You will never see, never witness it, never sense it and never know it, unless you make this pilgrimage.
Malcolm X said in one of his letter: “"Never have I witnessed such sincere hospitality and overwhelming spirit of true brotherhood as is practiced by people of all colours and races here in this ancient Holy Land, the home of Abraham, Muhammad and all the other Prophets of the Holy Scriptures. For the past week, I have been utterly speechless and spellbound by the graciousness I see displayed all around me by people of all colours.