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Orientalism (DHD 502)

Notes for Module 22

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Orientalists’ Concept of Jesus and their Arguments for Their Claims

One of the reasons that people believe E’sa ‫( عليه السالم‬Jesus) to be spirit of God or the
Holy Spirit is that because he was given the word of God. Allah gave His word, this in
light of true Islamic teachings doesn’t suffice as a reasons to call him spirit of God,
because Allah gave His word, His message to all of His messengers.

If He gave to E’sa ‫ عليه السالم‬Injeel (Bible), then He also gave His word to Prophet
Muhammad ‫ ﷺ‬in form of the Qur’an, to Hazrat Moosa ‫ عليه السالم‬in form of Torah, to
Ibrahim ‫ عليه السالم‬as the Suhuf-e-Ibrahim. While He blew in Adam ‫ عليه السالم‬from His
own spirit. Allah says in the Qur’an:

“I blew in him from My spirit” [15:29]

The example of Adam ‫ عليه السالم‬is similar to E’sa ‫عليه السالم‬. As Allah mentions in the
Qur’an:

“Example of E’ssa is to Allah is that of Adam …” [3:59]

Adam ‫ عليه السالم‬was created a free spirit, he came from neither father nor mother, yet he
is a prophet of Allah and we believe in that. E’sa’s ‫ عليه السالم‬example is also quite a bit
similar in that he did not have a father, however unlike Adam ‫عليه السالم‬, he did have a
mother. So if we for this unique way of creation, we accept Adam ‫ عليه السالم‬to be prophet
of Allah then there is no reason that E’sa ‫ عليه السالم‬is treated in a different way, and not
as prophet of Allah but associate him with the concept of trinity.

This entire concept in itself is illogical and doesn’t make any sense. If there was any
little bit of sense in it, then it was Adam ‫ عليه السالم‬who should have been part of the
trinity, who Allah could have taken as a relative, because he was not born, he was
created, but for E’sa ‫عليه السالم‬, he was born, just like any human being, he was born from
a mother. Hence, we need to open our eyes and save ourselves from committing major
shirk and earning wrath of Allah and hellfire. Allah is apart and above from any
relations at all, he has no partner and no association.

Our duty, as assigned by Allah is to understand and follow His message and not make
our own unique interpretations of His message. We must seek the truth and side with it
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and preach it and believe in what Allah has revealed to us, without attempting to
manipulate His commands to suit our ease and desires, as such acts will only bring us
to destruction, as the nations before had been brought to such an awful end. It is
obligatory upon us to think and Allah has stressed it much in the Qur’an, where it is
mentioned in various places:

“Then why don’t you think?”

Then at other places He says:

“Why don’t you use intellect?”

This stress on thinking and pondering elucidates on how important and critical it is for
humans to think, to ponder over creations, on manifestations, on the wisdom of Allah
behind His affairs, the way He manages our affairs, over nature.

If man only thinks sincerely seeking truth, using he senses and capability that Allah has
blessed us with and we shall be contend for we shall be able to find truth, if we are
determined and we just ponder thoughtfully. He says in the concluding verse of Surah
Al Ankaboot:

“Those who strive for Us We will surely guide them to Our ways” [29:69]

Hence, we don’t need to associate anyone to Him or seek anyone’s help, in reaching out
to Him, the senses and potential and intellect He has given us, if we use them justifying,
shall be enough for us, for Allah to guide us to the truth. It is the right of Allah that we
should please Him and not to serve our interests.

Tricks of Christian Missionaries to Call Muslims to Christianity

Manipulative Interpretation of Qur’an

‘Shahdat-ul Qur’an and The True Furqan and few other similar titles, where attempt has
been made to interpret Qur’an in their own ways, according to their own beliefs and
doctrines.
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Redefining Christianity
Another approach used by them is Redefining Christianity. They redefine Christianity
by giving concessions in Christianity, to make it look closer to Islam, for example,
celebrating Fridays for their rituals just as Muslims celebrate for their sermons, instead
of Sundays. Another example is that they allow polygamy.

They even go to say ‘Bismillah’ and say ‘Allah Subhana-hu Ta’ala’ and ‘E’sa ‫عليه السالم‬. They
even believe that Islam is the religion of God, however that Christianity was never abrogated.
They also preach to their own community not to call Jesus a son of God but call him only a spirit
of God.

These practices are found among the Christians in the African region and all these
efforts are being done to make Muslims believe that Christianity is extremely close and
similar to Islam and not much different a religion, hence to attract the Muslims to their
Christian missionary and call them to Christianity.

Developing Christian Missionary in Educational Institutions by Wicked Means

Another development was that the Christians established missionaries within schools
and universities. In particular, American missionaries went to Egypt. They would
capture young Muslim girls to participate in immoral activities, photographed them
and then blackmailing them by way of their photographs and pressurizing them to
participate in Christian rituals, and attend Sunday school camps and so on.

Raising Christians by Kidnapping Infants from Muslim Families

Another example is that they used to kidnap infants from Muslim countries, mostly the
war-stuck countries, and send them back to their own countries and grow them up to
be Christians.

An example of it was a court case in England, where a Muslim grandfather field a case
to assume back custody of his grand-daughter from her adoptive (Christian) parents
after around two decades. The court however ruled the custody of child to remain with
the adoptive Christian parents only.

There was another similar case, in Albania where orphan Muslim children were taken
by disbelievers and raised as non-Muslims.
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The above cases evidently indicate how biased even the judicial systems are when it
comes to their religion.

These and all such cases in the past and present give us lessons to take heed from as
these happenings are taking place due to our negligence of assuming our responsibility
towards protection of our Deen as well as towards our Ummah that we are losing our
people to other religions and the practice is increasing from generation to generation
and we are letting this huge loss let happen.

And how massive adverse impact this can have is clear from the case of Malawi, where
once there was a population of 66% Muslims which receded down to only 17% within a
span of few generations and loss is still continuing of course we are to blame for it, for
not taking active part in preserving our religion and our people and let them loose to
other religion. This is an alarming situation for us to take stand and extend help and
support to our Muslims brethren and sisters.

Conclusive Remarks on Orientalism

Methods of Orientalism

The methods and approaches that Orientalists used to convert our Muslim population
to Christianity by any means and channels are really impressive and indeed if studied
deeply.

They are lessons taught by our religion to sustain our relationship with Allah and to
maintain, however, we failed in implementing those methods but the Orientalists
adopted the same and have become successful in their plans to ruin the roots of Islamic
base globally.

1. Perseverance and Dedication: They approached any matter with real dedication
and perseverance. The example of Malawi can be quoted here, where the Muslim
population receded from 66% to just about 17% in matters of few decades only,
and similarly in Africa, where in early 1900s, the Christian population was
around 80 million got reduced to just 200million by 1980s to the extent that the
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Pope announced that he won this continent by the year 2000. Certainly, it didn’t
happen overnight or without any struggle, but with dedicated struggle, hard
work, perseverance and well-crafted strategies against Muslims and to enhance
Christian population.

2. Curiosity: Christians are curious about Islam, about our civilization, our history
and due to this curiosity they indulged in research and education to become
masters of our nations.

This trait again as much as it must have been in us Muslims to know our religion
well, was not and is not present within us and that is why we have not half as
much knowledge of our religion to fight the disbelievers against their false
claims about Islam.

All because they learned our religion and lifestyles and traits due to their
curiosity and keenness to learn and learned about us more than us and started
using their learning in manipulative ways to wrongly project the image of Islam
and Muslims around the world and we Muslims who must be protecting our
Deen and image, fail to do so, because we have not learned enough of our Deen
to reject falsification of Christians, because it requires real knowledge to prove
them wrong and present the truth.

There are not as many Muslim scholars on Islam as we have the PhDs in Islamic
studies from the non-Muslims, the number of non-Muslim authors on Islam
outnumber and their volumes of work outclass the Muslim authors. In fact, tens
and hundreds of Islamic manuscripts are preserved in USA, UK, Spain and
Germany.

Those which were forgotten by us Muslims but brought to limelight again by

these Orientalists through their work upon them by way of translation,
interpretations, explanations, critiques, etc. such curiosity and learning was
present in us times ago, for example at and after the time of Prophet Muhamamd
‫ ﷺ‬and then the Ottomans, and we have great philosophers like Imam Ghazali,
Imam Razi; recognized scientists like Ibn Seena who is still taught in European
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and American elite universities but we lost curiosity and leadership and the
divine position that was given to us by our Creator, Allah.

Between the years 1800 to 1950, more than 60,000 books were written only on
Islamic sciences and Origin and mostly by the Orientalists.

And since we couldn’t do that, these manipulative nations have become masters
over us, even in terms of our own Religion, history, civilization and culture and
origin.

We now depend on them and their media to learn from them, the truth (from
their sight), as per their own views about our matters, this is pretty much insult
to us if only we reflect upon this. And certainly, taking advantage of our
weaknesses in education, they are misleading us. Allah mentions in the Qur’an
in Surah Al Hujuraat:

“O you who believe! If a hypocrite comes to you with a news, confirm the
news”

This is explicitly told to us that we must be very careful in taking any news from
any disbeliever and not base our action on such news without confirmation,
before you take any action upon it, in order to save yourself from any regret
later.

But we are unable to do so, since we don’t have the means to collect the true
news, or even confirm the news from their own resources and have to rely on
those other resources, which may and does cause mislead amongst us, through
us. Indeed, it is a sad situation but we are the ones to blame for this.

3. Generous Spending on Islamic Research: The budgets that we Muslims have

for education and research is so disappointing and discouraging and is like a
drop as compared to the funding the Orientalists and their institutions allocate
for conducting researches and particular on Islamic or religious issues.
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Sadly, the budget that our Muslim nations of today allocate to education and
research is way less than that of a small MNC (Multi-national Company).
Education and research is never on our priority list, regardless how much we
talk about it.

Not only that, there are a number of charitable organizations that are ready to
and do spend on educational and research projects and to invest in establishing a
proper research infrastructure.

That’s is why we lose our children to these western universities to study in non-
Islamic culture and they get affected by their culture, all because we are unable
to provide them similar and paralleled platforms and infrastructure in our
education system to satisfy their educational need.

So, imagine the impact just the low budget and absence of educational
infrastructure has on our society. It affects not only our level of education, but
also affects the upbringing of our children, our cultural values in long term, our
way of thinking, our mindsets and thought process are all unconsciously and
consciously are enslaved by the West.

4. Mutual Cooperation & Unity: Orientalist are well cooperative with each other,
much supportive of each other and project high level of unity among themselves
and don’t dire up minute and minor differences between so that external parties
couldn’t take advantage of them because of their weak relations among
themselves.

An example is the cooperation between Colonial Masters and the orientalist

governments and administrative staff, regardless of their classes.

Another example that can be given is that of Sir John Daniel who was a known
Orientalist of high repute and was taken in as an Advisor by the Bush
administration in USA, as the government needed his advice in dealing with the
Middle East and he being the Oriental scholar did extend his full cooperation to
the government on all matters his advice was needed.
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5. Flexibility & Tolerance: They also work harmoniously ignoring the differences
in their viewpoints, beliefs and ideologies. They exhibit extreme tolerance to
accommodate different points of views on a matter and still not fight each other,
rather extend cooperation to let each other their space to practice their practice
beliefs as per their schools of thoughts.

This concept is completely alien to our Muslim society as we are extremely

intolerant of each other’s beliefs and thoughts and different sects within our own
religion. This is what sabotages our progress as a nation.

Difference of opinions in our Muslim community lead to isolation because we

are intolerant of each other, we don’t accommodate the concept of co-existence in
our lives; hence jeopardizing the survival of our societies, sustenance of our
religion and maintaining of peace and solidarity.

We need to replace our sense of competition with cooperation and authoritative

approach with tolerant and co-existence approach. The best example of tolerance
and accommodation was the Treaty of Hudaibiah, signed by our Prophet
Muhammad ‫ﷺ‬. History doesn’t find any similar example of high level of
tolerance like this; we see that we are not following in his footsteps and that is
why we are facing such consequences.

We have examples of Prophet’s ‫ ﷺ‬companions like Hazrat Umar (who was the
second best human to walk on the earth after the Prophets and Hazrat Abu Bakr
) was so concerned to know from Prophet Muhammad ‫ ﷺ‬if his name was there
on the list of hypocrites and look at us that we are so contend with us that we
never even bother to think this way and live in illusion as if we own the Paradise
for ourselves (Astaghfirullah, may Allah guide us all and forgive us all).We
started taking everything for granted and started fighting and killing each other
in the name of Islam thus delving down into the depths of ignorance.

Conclusion
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Hence, the need of time for our Ummah is to wake up and save particularly the
younger generations who we are losing to the Western universities and culture
and they either not return from there or if they do, they come back learning and
adopting the culture of the West and pass on the same values to their younger
generation(s), which means we are losing our culture, values, traditions and
beliefs, generation after generation, making it an intense and much long term
problem. All this is happening because of our negligence.

We are not providing them as per their needs and desires; we fail to provide
them the right educational infrastructure, research support and setup, world
class scholars and professors to take knowledge from, and since we are not doing
our duty and the West is attracting them by providing them all what they want
and catering to their needs, doing for them what we must be doing for them, and
beyond that, provide them growth opportunities and other social benefits. These
all realities just incline our youth to them who end up studying there, living
there, working there and ultimately even serving their cause.

There cannot be enough emphasis on how much important it is for us to revise

our priorities, to include education and research on top of our list.