| THE AYAT AND THE HADITH OF THE DAY |
THE MUSLIMS OF THE WORLD GREET THE MONTH OF RAMADAN
HARUN YAHYA
I offer my best wishes to Muslims all over the world on the occasion of the month of Ramadan, and sincerely hope that this holy month will bring plenty, well being and particularly peace to all believers. So many Muslims, in Palestine, Chechnya, Kashmir, East Turkestan, Indonesia and other countries are entering this month to the accompaniment of violence, conflict and war. The sole desire of these innocent people caught in the ravages of poverty, hunger and disease is to be able to live by their religion, in an atmosphere of peace and stability, and to live their lives unmolested.
In order for all these problems to come to an end, therefore, all Muslims need to come together as one, make a serious effort to make the values of the Qur'an prevail, and cooperate to offer all assistance possible to their needy Muslim brethren. The month of Ramadan is particularly important as a time when cooperation and helping others come to the fore. The important thing here is for nobody to think "what good can any help from me do?" but to work with a sincere heart. What must not be forgotten is that it is Allah, the Lord of all the Worlds, who will permit these efforts to succeed and accept the prayers of the faithful.
The month of Ramadan is one of abundance, described in the Qur'an, itself sent down as a guide to all of mankind, as "better than a thousand months" (Surat al-Qadr: 3) and which contains the Night of Power. Throughout this month all the Muslims of the world carry out their fasting obligation as one and thank their Lord for the blessings He has given them. In Surat al-Baqara, Allah proclaims the following about the month of Ramadan:
The month of Ramadan is the one in which the Qur'an was sent down as guidance for mankind, with Clear Signs containing guidance and discrimination. Any of you who are resident for the month should fast it. But any of you who are ill or on a journey should fast a number of other days. Allah desires ease for you; He does not desire difficulty for you. You should complete the number of days and proclaim Allah's greatness for the guidance He has given you so that hopefully you will be thankful. (Surat al-Baqara: 185)
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Fulfilling one's obligation of fasting in a manner pleasing to Allah is a sign of strong faith, purity, sincerity and fear of Allah. Fasting is an act of worship between Allah and His servant, since only Allah knows a person's intentions, sincerity, purity, and the care he takes over the lawful and unlawful as he fulfills this obligation. Nobody can know whether someone else fasts to impress those around him or else out of sincere intent. A person who fasts is recompensed for this act of worship only in the sight of Allah. Our Prophet gave believers great glad tidings in a hadith: "How happy are those who spend this month fasting, worshipping and in doing good deeds!"
Allah reveals the obligatory nature of fasting in Surat al-Baqara:
You who believe! Fasting is prescribed for you, as it was prescribed for those before you, so that you may guard (against evil). (Surat al-Baqara: 183)
As is revealed in that verse, one of the reasons why fasting is obligatory is for people to avoid evil and restrain their desires. The only way to do that is to believe in Allah with a sincere heart, abide by His commands and recommendations and avoid the temptations of one's desires. Such a person's morality will grow ever more pleasing with time, his faith will mature and his fear of Allah grow stronger.
However, the important thing is that the pure faith, sincere prayer, care taken over the remembrance of Allah and attention to restraining one's desires acquired during the month of Ramadan should not weaken once it is over. A person with strong faith spreads the superior morality of Ramadan over every moment of his life. Allah has made fasting on certain days an obligation, and has commanded people to avoid wrongdoing. Yet one must avoid wrongdoing throughout one's life, listen to the voice of one's conscience, make efforts to win Allah's good pleasure with godly intent and turn only to Him. That is the morality that Allah will find pleasing. Doing the opposite, in other words only worshipping, praying and remembering Allah during the month of Ramadan, and then turning away from the truths revealed in the Qur'an once that month is over is behaviour condemned by Allah. That is because on the Day of Judgement a person will be asked to account for all his deeds, great and small, and will be appropriately rewarded for them. Those who avoided evil and listened to the voice of their conscience will be saved, and those who denied Him will suffer the endless torments of hell.
| WONDERS OF CREATION FOR THE DAY 1 |
THE UNIQUE ARTISTRY OF FRUITS AND VEGETABLES
HARUN YAHYA
Fruits and vegetables spring from the same soil and are watered with the same water, yet they come in a dazzling variety. When we consider the multitude of different tastes and smells of fruits and vegetables, the question of how such a variety ever came about in the first place comes to mind. What causes this miscellany of the tastes and fragrances of grapes, melons, kiwis, pineapples and the like, using the same water and minerals for centuries on end, yet without ever mixing them up with each other and without ever getting them confused? Allah gives them their matchless tastes and appearances.
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Both animals and humans obtain the energy they need to survive through nutrition which is produced by plants. In other words, plants have been created as a blessing to benefit all living things. Most of these blessings have been designed especially for humans. Let's take a look at our surroundings, at what we eat, and then think. First let's look at the bone-dry stalk and very thin roots of a grape vine. This bone-dry structure, one that seems so fragile that it could be broken with the slightest pull, can produce dozens of kilos of juicy grapes whose color, smell and taste have been designed especially to give pleasure to man. Now let's think about watermelons. This juicy fruit, which again comes out of dry soil, develops precisely in the season when people begin to feel the need for it, that is, in summer. Let's think about the marvelous smell of the melon that has been provided since it first came into existence, without any deterioration in its quality, and about its famous taste. When fragrances are produced in factories, people use complex quality controls and take great pains to produce a uniform odor that mimics nature; but there is no need for quality checks to preserve the natural odor of fruits.
In addition to their enticing smells, each fruit also contains ingredients that are suitable to the season. In winter, for example, we have tangerines and oranges, which are full of vitamin C and energy. Vegetables also possess any and all kinds of vitamins and minerals that living things may need.
By thinking in this manner, we could examine in turn all the plants present in nature. And at the end of this examination, we would have learned that the plants around us have been especially designed for human beings and all other creatures, in other words they have been created. Allah, Who is the Lord of the worlds, has brought into existence all nutrition for living things and has created them in such a way that the taste, smell and use of each one of them is wonderfully varied. This reveals His might and matchless artistry in creation. He informs us of this in the Qur'an:
And also the things of varying colors He has created for you in the earth. There is certainly a Sign in that for people who pay heed. (Surat an-Nahl: 13)
| COLLAPSE OF THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION DAY BY DAY |
EVOLUTION DECEIT - I
HARUN YAHYA
A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION
The roots of evolutionist thought go back as far as antiquity as a dogmatic belief attempting to deny the fact of creation.
The theory of evolution is the outcome of the materialist philosophy that surfaced with the reawakening of ancient materialistic philosophies. Materialism seeks to explain nature through purely material factors. Since it denies creation right from the start, it asserts that every thing, whether animate or inanimate, has appeared without an act of creation but rather as a result of a coincidence that then acquired a condition of order. The human mind however is so structured as to comprehend the existence of an organising will wherever it sees order. Materialistic philosophy, which is contrary to this very basic characteristic of the human mind, produced "the theory of evolution" in the middle of the 19th century.
The person who put forward the theory of evolution the way it is defended today, was an amateur English naturalist, Charles Robert Darwin.
Darwin had never undergone a formal education in biology. He took only an amateur interest in the subject of nature and living things. His interest spurred him to voluntarily join an expedition on board a ship named H.M.S. Beagle that set out from England in 1832 and travelled around different regions of the world for five years. Young Darwin was greatly impressed by various living species, especially by certain finches that he saw in the Galapagos Islands. He thought that the variations in their beaks were caused by their adaptation to their habitat. With this idea in mind, he supposed that the origin of life and species lay in the concept of "adaptation to the environment". According to Darwin, different living species were not created separately by God but rather came from a common ancestor and became differentiated from each other as a result of natural conditions.
Darwin called this process "evolution by natural selection". He thought he had found the "origin of species": the origin of one species was another species.
Darwin was well aware that his theory faced lots of problems. He confessed these in his book "The Origin of Species". These difficulties primarily consisted of the fossil record, complex organs of living things that could not possibly be explained by coincidence (e.g. the eye), and the instincts of living beings. Darwin hoped that these difficulties would be overcome by new discoveries. The American physicist Lipson made the following comment on the "difficulties" of Darwin:
On reading The Origin of Species, I found that Darwin was much less sure himself than he is often represented to be; the chapter entitled "Difficulties of the Theory" for example, shows considerable self-doubt. As a physicist, I was particularly intrigued by his comments on how the eye would have arisen.(1)
While developing his theory, Darwin was impressed by many evolutionist biologists preceding him, and primarily by the French biologist, Lamarck.(2) According to Lamarck, living creatures passed the traits they acquired during their lifetime from one generation to the next and thus evolved. For instance, giraffes evolved from antelope-like animals by extending their necks further and further from generation to generation as they tried to reach higher and higher branches for food. Darwin thus employed the thesis of "passing the acquired traits" proposed by Lamarck as the factor that made living beings evolve.
But both Darwin and Lamarck were mistaken because in their day, life could only be studied with very primitive technology and at a very inadequate level. Scientific fields such as genetics and biochemistry did not exist even in name. Their theories therefore had to depend entirely on their powers of imagination.
While the echoes of Darwin's book reverberated, an Austrian botanist by the name of Gregor Mendel discovered the laws of inheritance in 1865. Not much heard of until the end of the century, Mendel's discovery gained great importance in the early 1900s. This was the birth of the science of genetics. Somewhat later, the structure of the genes and the chromosomes was discovered. The discovery, in the 1950s, of the structure of the DNA molecule that incorporates genetic information threw the theory of evolution into a great crisis. The reason was the incredible complexity of life and the invalidity of the evolutionary mechanisms proposed by Darwin.
These developments ought to have resulted in Darwin's theory being banished to the dustbin of history. However, it was not, because certain circles insisted on revising, renewing, and elevating the theory to a scientific platform. These efforts gain meaning only if we realise that behind the theory lay ideological intentions rather than scientific concerns. (For further reading, see "The Evolution Deceit" by Harun Yahya)
(1) H. S. Lipson, "A Physicist's View of Darwin's Theory", Evolution Trends in Plants, Vol 2, No. 1, 1988, p. 6.
(2) Although Darwin came up with the claim that his theory was totally independent from that of Lamarck's, he gradually started to rely on Lamarck's assertions. Especially the 6th and the last edition of The Origin of Species is full of examples of Lamarck's "inheritance of acquired traits". See Benjamin Farrington, What Darwin Really Said, New York: Schocken Books, 1966, p. 64.
The Qur'an is the word of God and it has many miraculous attributes proving this fact. One of these attributes is the fact that a number of scientific truths that we have only been able to uncover by the technology of the 20th century were stated in the Qur'an 1,400 years ago. Of course the Qur'an is not a book of science. However, many scientific facts that are expressed in an extremely concise and profound manner in its verses have only been discovered with the technology of the 20th century. These facts could not have been known at the time of the Qur'an's revelation, and this is still more proof that the Qur'an is the word of God.
