Do People Need Religion in our Society

Do People Need Religion in our Society?

By Abdurraheem Green

Opening Praise and Testimony

I begin by praising Allah, God, the Creator. We praise Him, we seek His help, and we ask for His forgiveness. And we take refuge with God from the evil of ourselves and from the evil consequence of our evil actions.

Whomsoever God guides, no one can misguide, but whomsoever God leaves to go astray, no one can guide. And I indeed testify that there is nothing worthy of being worshipped except the one God, and that indeed Muhammad, may God's peace and blessings be upon him, is the messenger of God. Hamza finished his talk by knocking on the door, and that's where I'm going to begin my talk.

The Door Analogy: The Limits of Human Intellect

I'm going to go back to that knocking on the door, and I'm going to ask you a question. Without opening that door over there, can anyone tell me what's behind that door, the one over there? Unless you know, do you work here in the university? Exit and ventilation, are you sure though? It's a guess, right? But you don't really know. There could be a big green hairy monster there perhaps.

Maybe not, you know. But actually all I'm really trying to do is, although our intellect is hugely important, and both me and Hamza would argue vigorously, that in order to understand God, in order to understand religion, we have to use our intellect. And there may be other ways, but we would probably, both of us, argue that the intellect is one of the most important tools that we have.

But your intellect has a limit, and I was demonstrating there the limit of your intellect. When it comes to something that is unseen, when it comes to the unseen, all you can do in reality is guess. You could take an educated guess.

The Urgency of Knowing the Truth

But I want to up the ante a bit here, and I want to propose to you something that I'd like you to think about. Imagine that you really need to know what is behind that door. In fact, let me suggest to you as a thought experiment for this evening that knowing what is behind that door is absolutely essential to your survival.

Knowing what is behind that door is essential to your survival, and you have a limited amount of time in order to decide what is behind that door. You can't open the door. You're not allowed to open the door, but you have to come to a decision.

If your decision is not right, it is going to affect your life in a most horrific way that you possibly can't even truly comprehend. That's my thought experiment. And imagine there are five or six people, or maybe more,

competing for your attention, trying to persuade you that they can actually tell you what is behind that door.

One of them may even be trying to persuade you that there is nothing behind the door. There is no door. The door is an illusion.

Competing Claims: The World's Religions

There may be someone trying to convince you of that. There may be different people who are trying to convince you what is behind the door for various different reasons, but amongst those people, there is one who is going to be able to tell you the truth. I'm actually really trying to give you an example, as probably you might be aware, of different religions in the world.

Often people present this argument, okay, it makes sense that there's a God. It's logical. It's rational.

The most rational proposition, and I would just really sum up my opinion about Hamza's quite detailed and philosophical discussion, is that the most rational conclusion of the rational mind is that this universe has an intelligent, powerful creator. And that there rationally could only be one intelligent, powerful creator who is transcendent, who is different from this universe. So the creator of the universe is different from the universe.

The Quranic Concept of God

But that's pretty much the limit of what we can understand through reason. And I would say that actually, by the way, it is one of the, or perhaps even the most powerful arguments for the truthfulness of the Quranic narrative. That the concept of God that is taught by the Quran is exactly this concept, that this universe has been created by a powerful and intelligent being who is transcendent.

By that, I mean that God is not like anything in the universe. And the Quranic concept of God does not compromise that in any way by, for example, claiming that some creature such as a human being shares the power, the knowledge, or the attributes of God. And that would be a self-contradictory statement.

If you think about it, if you're claiming that a created being has any of the power of the knowledge of the ability of God, then the whole basis upon which you build an argument for the existence of God in the first place, it falls down. It demolishes itself. So that's what I would propose, first of all, is one of the most powerful arguments, one of the most persuasive arguments that a person should believe what the Muslims are saying.

Understanding the Afterlife and Purpose of Life

Because the similitude of the example I'm giving of the door is really the example of the afterlife. It's the example of the afterlife. It's also the example of knowing God.

How can we know God? Through what means can we know God? Is there a means to know God? All of these questions and more, the ones that Hamza also introduced, the purpose of life, why are we here? What is it all for? What is the reason for our existence? These are, of course, all the questions that religions in various

different ways try to answer. And there is another issue, the problem of evil. Of course, this has been raised a lot recently with the earthquake in Haiti and before that with the tsunami.

And constantly there are these disasters and priests and bishops and imams and theologians and philosophers are presented. And how does God, a good God, let these things happen? And of course, there are certain atheists, well-known atheists who imagine that this is a very powerful argument, a very persuasive argument that God does not exist. But I'm sure if you manage to follow Hamza and his arguments, you will first of all and very importantly realize that the existence or what they call the problem of evil has nothing to do with the existence of a powerful, intelligent being who has brought this universe into existence.

The Problem of Evil: An Emotional Not Rational Argument

It's got nothing to do with it. The existence of earthquakes and disasters and AIDS and human beings killing each other has got nothing to do with the question as to whether there is a creator or not. And trying to connect those two is an emotional argument.

It's an emotional argument. It's not a rational argument. It's emotional, extraordinary from people who claim to be atheists, who claim to be rational.

There is no logical connection between the two things. How do you explain an organized, systemized universe? The most rational conclusion is an organizer, a systemizer. That's the very condensed gist of one part of Hamza's argument.

So the real question here is why does this creator allow suffering? Why does this creator let these things take place? Why does this God create a world in which there are earthquakes and tsunamis, in which children die, in which there is rape and murder and genocide? Why? Of course, I just painted the negative things. There's a lot of beautiful positive things as well we could talk about. Love, happiness, joy, peace, tranquility, friendship, literature, society in many different ways, different physical and mental pleasures that we experience consistently throughout our lives.

So we shouldn't imagine that the world is just this grim, terrible place. But the question of these evil things as they're called evil things is not a question about God's existence. It's a question of why.

The Need for Divine Revelation

Why does the creator let these things happen? Now again, how can we know the answer? How can we know the answer? From where can we know the answer? Philosophy here really lets us down. And all ultimately we have is conjecture. And in Arabic it's called (ظن - dhun), conjecture.

Well, maybe this. Maybe it's an exit. Well, it looks like an exit.

It's got exit written. And obvious there are some good guesses we can take. But how do we achieve certainty? This is the question.

How do we achieve certainty? From where can we get certainty? How can we be sure? The only way you can be certain as to what is the purpose of your life, what is the reason for your existence is when the one who gave you life and the one who gave you existence tells you. It's the only way you can be sure. The only way you can be certain is when God tells you, I created you for this reason.

Everything else is guesswork. Everything else is speculation. Why is there evil? And I use this word in inverted commas, evil.

Why is there suffering? Why do these things exist? Well, again, the only way you can be certain is when the one who created this universe and created this world and allowed these things to happen explains to us this is why. This is the reason why. It's because of A, B, C. But I'm sure in the minds of everybody here, it begs the question.

The Reality of the Afterlife: What's at Stake

All of this begs another question. Which guy am I going to trust? I need to know. You need to know what's behind that door.

You need to know. It's very important. I mean, let's take the options.

Option one, right? It's pretty much shared by the three monotheistic religions. Option one is there is going to be, you are going to die. And when you die, at some stage, there will be a day of judgment.

We will be recreated or in some traditions, your soul will be brought before God and you will be judged. You will be asked about every single thing that you have done as the Quran describes it. Every atom's weight of good and every atom's weight of evil, you will be asked about it.

The tradition is pretty common. The Quran is very descriptive about what is going to happen on that day of judgment. How will we be questioned? What will the state of the human beings, their panic, their fear, their terror, the Quran describes it, the day of judgment as one day like 50,000 years.

One day like 50,000 years. Just a day of judgment makes your entire earthly existence seem like a moment of a day. That's just the day of judgment.

What is to follow is even more terrifying. There is the alternative of eternal bliss in paradise or eternal torment in hellfire. Now I told you what is behind the door is pretty important and you've got a limited time to find out.

The other alternative of course is suggested that you will be reincarnated. It may seem less compelling but it's still pretty serious. I mean I don't think I would like to be reincarnated as a cockroach or a rat or a donkey.

I don't know, it depends where I was a cockroach or a rat or a donkey I suppose. I mean if I was a dog in my mom's house I might be quite happy. Okay, but still I don't think so.

But seriously even if you believe in reincarnation, how do you know? How do we know? But it's a possibility that's being suggested or is there nothing? Do you just dissipate as energy into the universe? How do you know? You've got different people making competing claims. How are you going to sort one from the other? What do you do? What criterion? You know this is the thing I would like to know. What criterion are you going to use?

The Quran tells us that throughout history God the creator has sent messengers.

God's Messengers Throughout History

This is what Muslims believe. That throughout history, throughout the human history God has sent, God has chosen individuals from amongst the human beings to remind the human beings of the things that we have been discussing here tonight. Not only about the existence of God of course, but also about our relationship with God.

About the purpose of our life. About the reasons why God lets things happen to us and how we are supposed to deal with all of that. And also about the reality of the life to come.

So this is what we believe. Muslims believe that God has chosen human beings to convey that message. And to some of those human beings, he gave books.

So for example, the Quran talks about Prophet Noah, about Prophet Abraham, about Prophet Moses who was given the Torah. About Prophet Dawood or David who was given the Zaboor or the Psalms. About Prophet Jesus who was given the Injil.

And of course who we believe as Muslims is the final Prophet Muhammad. May God's peace and blessings be upon all of the prophets. Who was also he was given the Quran.

So we believe this is the way that God has revealed knowledge about himself. He has explained to us the purpose of our life. How we should fulfill that created purpose.

And the reason why things happen the way they do, that's why God has sent throughout the ages messengers. To remind human beings, to tell them and inform them about this information. And we believe that those messengers have been given signs.

Signs of Truthfulness: How to Identify True Messengers

So let's go back to the knocking on the door. Let's go back. Right.

Someone's knocking on the door. We give our example. We've got a select group of people. Right. And I asked the lady over there who mashallah perked up and she said, you know, this, you know, that's the way out. What did I say to her? Can everyone remember what I asked her? No, I asked her before.

Yes. What did I say? Do you work in the university? Why did I say that? Why did I say just the university? Right. So let me now give you an example.

The Three Possibilities: Liar, Deluded, or Truthful

He has given them signs. They were given things that when a person sees them and they study them and they look at them, they know that these are indications that that person must be speaking the truth and they must be truly what they claim to be. It's interesting that C.S. Lewis, he gave a criteria.

He said something which as a principle of analysis, we Muslims happily accept. But we don't accept his premise. And I'll tell you why.

But he said concerning Jesus, he said that either Jesus. And he said this in respect to his belief that Jesus is the son of God and presumably that Jesus is God, that either Jesus was a liar or he was deluded, he was mad, he was a madman or he was speaking the truth. And he says, well, if you look at the life of Jesus and what Jesus said and how he behaved, you can eliminate those.

You can say, well, he wasn't a liar and he wasn't mad. So he must have been speaking the truth. There is, of course, another possibility.

The other possibility is that what has been taught to you about Jesus is not true. And the things that you claim he said, he never actually said. I just say that because although I actually accept the basic argument, I don't accept his conclusions for that extra reason.

But let's just say it's actually a totally valid analysis to make of any claim of any individual. Anything anyone claims, anyone makes a claim they could be lying. Lying means they are purposefully trying to deceive you.

They know very well that what they're saying is untrue, but they are lying. They are purposely trying to deceive you. That's one possibility.

And this, of course, applies to anyone claiming prophethood. I know what God says. I know God's telling me why you're here, what the purpose of life is, where you're going to go after you die.

I know. How do you know? God told me. So you can analyze.

Is he truthful? Is he a liar? Is he deluded? And each different person will display different characteristics. The liar, and as I'm sure you probably most of us learn, I don't know, I learned that in my life. I learned that usually a lie leads to another lie, which leads to another lie, and then you have to lie to cover up the lie that came before.

And you know, you could be a good liar. Maybe you could go for quite a long time. But sooner or later, the pack of cards of lies just collapses around you.

Because you just have to keep on making up lies to cover up. I think most of us hopefully learned that when we were kids, right? Okay. Maybe politicians didn't.

I don't know. No offense to politicians. There are some very, very good politicians and who are sincere public servants.

Testing Claims: The Practical Application

We have maybe an unjust view of politicians. Okay, it's just a cheap joke, really. But the point being, you know, seriously, the serious point is the point about lying.

You know, it has a characteristic. Similarly, a deluded person. Now, what's the difference? A deluded person is saying something untrue, but they really genuinely believe it.

That's different. You see, the person who is deluded is sincere. They actually really believe it.

So they could display some of the characteristics of a truthful person, right? But actually, they are either, you know, you know, maybe a devil or a spirit is telling them or they have some psychological problem or whatever. They truly believe that they are receiving revelation from God. But indeed, in one way or another, they are just suffering from a delusion.

And I'm sure you can understand, therefore, that the characteristic of that person is very different from the liar. Very different. But there are still ways that you can identify that.

The third option, as long as we agree that what we are hearing and observing about this person is accurate, then the third and only third option is that that person is speaking the truth.

Now, it's very interesting because if we can apply this criterion to any man who comes along and claims that he is receiving revelation from God, that he is a prophet, maybe we can begin to make a type of decision because I hopefully we would agree that let's go back to our people.

You have to know what's behind the door, right? What process are you going to use? And I often ask people this.

If someone comes knocking on your door, right? And says, I've come to read the gas meter. I don't know here about a Newcastle, right? But I mean, in London, we live in an almost, you know, I feel we live in an almost permanent state of fear. I really do.

You know, I haven't been outside to my garden for, I don't know, quite a few days because it's been pretty cold and I was away and, you know, I was on a trip abroad and I came back and sure enough, what did I find?

Someone had, you know, actually crowbarred open the door of my garage and been rummaging around in the garage. It's terrible. My kids are terrified.

My kids, but I didn't even tell them because they live in fear, which is what we could come to about? Does society need religion? I think Hamza introduced that subject very nicely with the problem of, you know, how do we know what's right and wrong and good and evil? What's our morality based upon? If we don't have religion, do we even have morality? Isn't it morality?

The Problem with Relative Morality

Therefore, just a social construct. It just changes from hour to hour, minute to minute.

And if it changes from hour to hour, minute to minute, do we even have really morality? No, that's his argument and I agree with it. We don't. It's illusionary.

You need, and this is why I'm going, you need this certainty, but the certainty is important. We need to know that this is really from God and this is our problem in the rational age. We need a rational explanation.

We need a religion that not only teaches us morality, but we can have rational reasons to believe that that religion truly is from God. And I would invite you to make that examination not based by the way on morality.

Interestingly, I'm going to say you need to put aside morality.

Why? Because it could be that our society has adopted a whole fallacious approach to morality anyway. Where have we got to? What have we concluded with? Maybe we have reached the stage where our moral compass has lost its bearings. You may say, well, Islam is immoral because of what? Because of, and then you make some pointers.

You come up with all, maybe the misconceptions and maybe those things are even true. You say, well, Islam this and Islam says that and Islam allows this and Islam allows that. But your judgment is based upon what? Your judgment is based upon what? Your culture.

Your present state of morality. Interestingly enough, by the way, back in the days when, well, you could, I don't know, maybe there are some of us here who would say back in the days when Britain was great and we had an empire and the other people were saying, What are you talking about? Great British empire. Funny enough, I had this discussion yesterday with a barrister who's originally her family's from Bangladesh, not very impressed with British empire.

British Values and Historical Context

So, but the point is, is that actually a lot of the things that people may criticize Islam for, they were things that were practiced here in Britain. It's interesting when this whole thing comes along. Muslims don't agree with British values.

What British values? I think we probably find that Muslims have more in common with, say, Victorian values than maybe modern values. But was Victorian times less British? Was that part of Britishness? I don't know. I mean, you tell me what's that mean? Interestingly enough, I remember a particular right wing Dutch MP.

I had a vigorous email exchange with him and he was, this was about the issue of, interestingly enough, coming up again in France of Muslim women covering themselves and wearing the hijab. And I'd written a letter to the European Parliament, you know, inviting them to oppose France's decision and so on and so forth. And one

Dutch MP wrote to me and a very, very aggressive racist letter saying basic, basically what he said is there are countries that people go from and come to.

Morocco, Somalia, they are countries that people go from. They run away from those countries and they come to places like Britain and the Netherlands. So basically what he's saying is, if you want to come to our country, you behave the way that we tell you to behave, more or less.

So anyway, I wrote a pithy reply to him and he said, oh, we have to de-Islamicise Europe. De-Islamicise Europe. That's a very interesting concept, de-Islamicise Europe.

Islamic Contributions to European Civilization

I said, do you know, by the way, that the numbers you use every single day, does anyone know where those numbers come from? Do you know where they come from? They're Arabic numbers. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, those actual numbers, the actual shapes that you use, the numbers you use, including by the way, the zero, are Arabic numbers. So if you want to start de-Islamicising Europe, get rid of the numbers.

I mean, just make sure you do a thorough de-Islamicisation. And especially the use of zero, which was unknown except in India, but it was developed into practical application by Muslim mathematicians who developed the use of the zero. Of course, algebra, you can't even imagine basic things in our society existing without algebraic equations.

I mean, some of us may quite be happy, quite happy to get rid of algebra, but I think on a practical scientific point of view, we couldn't do much without it. But algebra, of course, is something that the word itself is Arabic. Algebra, from Kitab Algebra, which was written by a famous Muslim mathematician who developed the whole system of algebra, by the way, in order to calculate the Zakat.

So I won't go into the whole thing. I mean, what do you mean de-Islamicise? So, I mean, my point is morality. If you're going to use the position of morality, that's not a good position to take.

Examining the Prophet Muhammad: Applying the Test

No, we have to go back. We have to look at the basics. And I'm asking you now to make an analysis, to look at the Prophet Muhammad.

May God's peace and blessings be upon him. In the light of these three things, just these three things, was he truthful? Was he deluded? Or was he a liar? You could do that by reading his life.

But it's very interesting.

And since I don't have time, obviously, to discuss many aspects of this, I would just like to propose to you two things, just two things I want. First of all, it's very interesting that, of course, there is a long history of polemic

Historical Accusations: The Claim of Lying

And, of course, his claim is that Muhammad was a liar. Why did he say this? And why, by the way, almost entirely, and I wouldn't say everyone, the Reverend Boswell, for example, is an exception, and there are others who take a different view today. But, I mean, historically, probably up until 100 and 150 years ago, almost without exception, most Christian writers accused the Prophet Muhammad of being a liar.

The reason they did that is very simple. Any Christian or Jew who opens the Qur'an and reads the life of the Prophet Muhammad will be struck by how much consistency and similarity there is between what the Qur'an says, what the Prophet taught, and what they know from their own religion and scriptures. In fact, some of these things are very detailed matters of theology and philosophy, religious philosophy, and law.

In fact, some early Christians thought that Muhammad, Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, the Prophet Muhammad, was actually a bishop, a former bishop. That is the level of information they recognized because they have to explain, where did Muhammad get all this information?

Where did he learn about heaven and paradise and the hellfire and Moses and Jesus and Abraham and Noah and the detailed dietary laws and so on? Where did he get this information from? Well, he must have learnt it from a priest, from a rabbi, from this and that, and then he must have what? Made it up and invented it and made this religion together. That's the only way they could explain and still obviously not agree that Islam was the truth by saying, well, he must be a liar, he must have invented it.

Modern Analysis: The Claim of Delusion

And it's very interesting that there is another group of writers, and these writers are much more modern, and people who have now accessed themselves to the sources and have begun to read for themselves about the life of God, in other words, not relying upon these Christian polemicists, and they said, well, we don't really find evidence from the life and character of the Prophet Muhammad that he was a liar. In fact, he's extraordinary. His people used to refer to him even before he was a prophet or he claimed to be a prophet, as they would say, they used to refer to him as Al-Amin, the truthful and the trustworthy one.

And they give many examples of his behavior, of his character, totally out of character of a person who is a liar. In other words, they testify to his truthfulness, his honesty, his absolute sincerity, and that they say it's not possible that he was a liar. They say, but he must have just thought that he was a prophet.

He must have really believed it. He believed it, but he was, you know, epileptic and people have epileptic fits. They have these visions and so on and so forth.

And so they tried to explain this by saying, well, he was deluded. He thought he was a prophet that explains his sincerity, that explains his behavior. But of course, he wasn't speaking the truth any more than the liar was, but they can't reconcile his character with being a liar.

Why You Cannot Be Both a Liar and Deluded

But that, you know, the interesting thing is you can't be a liar and be deluded at the same time. That's why there's only three possibilities. And I'll give you an example.

If you are a liar, if someone comes and asks you a question, as it happens a lot in the Quran, a lot of the time they ask, it says, the Quran says, they ask you, oh Muhammad, they ask you about this, they ask you about that. And then the Quran gives an answer. So imagine this, someone comes and asks the person, we're going back to our people.

Imagine here, remember, you need to know what's behind that door. So they come and ask a question. Let me test.

Let me see if this person really knows this. Now, if you're a liar, if you're a liar, what are you going to do? You want to give the right answer. So if a rabbi or a Christian or he's coming to you, what would you do? If you've got your source of information, you want to give the right answer, you're going to either construct a very ambiguous reply or you're going to go back to your source of information and you're going to find the answer and then deliver the answer.

It's a lie, it's a deception. If you are deluded, you think that God is going to reveal it to you. You don't need to go and look for a reply.

You don't need to go and search out the answer because you're really sure that God's going to tell you because I really believe I'm a prophet of God. Do you understand how you can't be a liar and be deluded at the same time? Yet, actually, if you try to look, where is the source of information? There were no priests, there were no rabbis, there was no one we can identify from where the prophet could have got this information. His character as we know and we can examine it was the character of a truthful person.

A Powerful Example: The Death of Ibrahim

I just want to give one example. One example and it's from a vigorously authenticated source. This is an amazing example and I just leave it for you to ponder on it.

He was going to exile into Ethiopia. The Muslims suffered terrible things. Eventually, a group of people in a city called Medina invited the prophet Muhammad and his companions to come and live there and it didn't stop.

Even then, they were gathering armies to try and wipe out the Muslims. So, you can imagine, this is going on for now. Let me see.

By that time, it must have been nearly 18-19 years and in Arabian society, it's very, very important. It was important in those days to have a son. In fact, they used to mock the prophet Muhammad because he didn't have a son.

He had daughters but all his baby boys died and it was a source of mockery of the prophet from the pagan Arabs. Actually, what happened was after these 17 years, he had a son. There was a son from one of his wives, Miriam.

She gave birth to a son. His name was Ibrahim and when Ibrahim was 6 months old, little baby, he died.

Actually, he died in the arms.

The prophet was holding him as he died. So, this child died in his arms and even the prophet was crying and they used to think that you shouldn't cry when someone dies and they said, oh, messenger of God, you told us not to do this. No, this crying is from compassion.

It's not from disbelief in God or questioning God. It's just from compassion for that child. That's allowed.

Anyway, it's not the point. The point is that on the same day that his son died, there was an eclipse of the sun. So, his son dies.

On the same day that his son dies, there is an eclipse of the sun. Now, even today, I've told some people that and I didn't even finish my story and they said, that's amazing. He must have been a prophet, right? And sure enough, by the way, at that time, people came running out.

They said, look, even the sun darkens for the death of the child of the messenger of God. This is what the people were saying. Now, imagine this.

Please think about it. If you're a liar, you've been inventing all these years, trying to persuade people you're a prophet and this and that, here's your chance. I mean, okay, your son's died, but still, after all of this, you'd say, you see, I told you everyone.

Didn't I tell you? Didn't I tell you? Look at that. What more do you want? True or not? Wouldn't a con man, a liar, wouldn't he take an opportunity like that? No doubts. And imagine if you were deluded, just a madman, you're just thinking and imagining the same thing.

You'd say, yes, it's a sign from God. You see, I told you, I'm a prophet. God's sign.

But actually, the prophet Muhammad did not do that at all. In fact, when he heard the people, he called them, he called them the big announcement. You know what he said? He said, this is the sun and this is the moon.

And they are just two of the creations of God. And they don't eclipse for the birth or the death of any man. So when you see this, pray to your Lord. (Sahih Bukhari 1043, Sahih Muslim 911)

And then he taught them a special prayer to make when there is an eclipse. Is this how a liar would behave? Is this how a deluded person would behave? Or is this the words of a truthful man? And being able to claim to tell you what is behind the door. I am absolutely convinced as Hamza has introduced.

Society's Need for Religion

And as I'm sure that I truly believe many of you here today would agree. That the loss of religion, the loss of an absolute anchor of morality in our society has set us astray as a society and is a large contributing factor to the increasing chaos that we find in the world around us. I have no doubt in my mind that society, Western society, the world as a whole actually needs religion more now than it ever did.

But where is the religion that can offer us certainty? Where is the religion that can offer us a rational certainty that is not merely based upon what our ancestors did or just some belief or maybe it just makes me feel good or that person smiled nicely. Certainly, I believe that all of us have a duty as Hamza has mentioned the verses of the Quran to think deeply about these issues, to think very deeply about these issues. Of course, all we both of us have been able to do is a little introduction to all of you on a vast topic.

Closing Remarks

It is our happiness and joy to be able just to stand here in front of you and share some of our thoughts, our understanding, our feeling. It of course is totally up to you and your own conscience how you deal with it, what sense you make of it or not. As the Quran says (لَا إِكْرَاهَ فِي الدِّينِ - la ikraha fiddin) there is no compulsion in religion. (Quran 2:256)

No one should be forcing anyone what to believe or what not to believe. But I do believe that having a discussion is important that at least if you could understand, even if you could understand that Muslims do have a rational basis for believing what they believe, for behaving the way that they do. It is not based upon some mere irrational emotion.

There are some and I believe of course compelling reasons to believe that not only does society need religion that Islam is something that can contribute hugely to the well-being of society and I do look forward to that and may God bless all of you for coming here tonight. May God guide you and God may guide me also closer to the truth. May his peace and blessings be upon all of you.