All this is based on almost nil knowledge of the Quran and Sunnah, as well as the compilation of the Sunnah, rather each person presents his own philosophies on the Quran and the Prophet (pbuh). In the end, they just switch the topic as if they had been discussing a football match.

It would not come as a surprise that none of them offers Salah, albeit on rare occassions like Eid, and hardly any appraoch the Quran, that too with the view that their own intellect is enough to understand the Deen from the Quran, without approaching any scholar or source of Sunnah.

These are the scenes I witnessed and still sometimes do. Initially, as a neice, I tried to stay around and show them how silly their arguments were in the light of the Quran and Sunnah. Of course, I didn’t tell them they were being silly but I did try to make a few points but I was outnumbered, very often, four or five to one. What is the result? They “win” on the face of it and walk away all gleeful that they’ve successfully refuted some arguments from the “religious right”. It’s all terribly saddening.

The bottom line is: DON’T get involved in arguments where you can sense the person is just inciting you for passtime and to make fun of Deen, without any real intention to learn anything. I learned this after years and I still find it hard to resist joining in something. However, recently, one elder said to me, “I have something to ask of you.” Knowing it would be something to do with the Deen, I said I’d try to answer. He asked me, “You know Isa (as) could breathe life into figures of animals. Tell me, what about the p*gs that came to be in this way, where are they now? And are they Halal for us?” Very seriously, thinking it was some great topic he’d stumbled upon, he said, “We must ponder in this, you know…”

Can you imagine that line of thought? I approached my Quran teacher at Al Huda and she reaffirmed that one must walk away from all such discussions for the very intention that they are begun, is not a good one.

‘Hope this comment added to your knowledge InshAllah!

We all need to know that debating does not “create guidance.” Allah is the One Who creates guidance. And debating can put a shadow over one’s heart, because it leads very often to a lot of negative emotions (which is why i think the author said not to debate–and he was probably talking about certain people not debating certain issues). Nonetheless, there is deep need for Muslims to intellectually equip themselves, so they can DEFEND THE DEEN. This is all part of ordering the good and forbidding the evil. There has been a trend in the past couple years that is encouraging Muslims to leave out refuting deviant ideologies–when the proponents of those ideas claim to be Muslims. This is a great disservice and evil being perpetrated by, for instance, some of the popular quasi-traditionalists.

The Muslim communities are RIFE with kufri misconceptions–whether they be from the pseduo-sufis, the anthropomorphists, the apologists, the modernists, ad nauseum. I just returned from ISNA a few days ago. A trip to the most of the book sellers in the bazaar would have demonstrated the level of misguidance, confusion, and kufr that is circulating thru the Muslim communities. It is simply not fair to discourage Muslims from understanding who’s who and what’s what–and then standing up and discrediting these various deviant factions. If the Muslims are not trained to identify and discredit deviation, it will only encourage the deviation to spread, and it will make it even harder for people to see the Truth.

With Allah is the success.

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