Sunday, October 02, 2005

positive is positive

Surely those who believe, and those who are Jews, and the Christians, and the Sabians, whoever believes in Allah and the Last day and does good, they shall have their reward from their Lord, and there is no fear for them, nor shall they grieve. [Quran 2.62]

4 comments:

Baraka said...

One of my favorite verses...takes out all the spiritual elitism & brings it right down to the core again of doing the best you can w/o judging other's unkowable fates.

Abdul-Halim V. said...

salams, yes exactly

Stuart Berman said...

Very nice. Seems to be a uniting principle.

Also fits well with Micah 6:8:
... O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love true loyalty and to walk humbly with thy God?

This came to mind after your piesce on Yosef and Wise.

Abdul-Halim V. said...

Actually Stuart, that's an interesting idea. There are a couple of ways that a really interesting inclusiveness is part of the Hebrew Bible.

Amos 9:7 "Are you not like the Ethiopians to me,
O people of Israel?" says the LORD.
"Did I not bring up Israel from the land of Egypt,
and the Philistines from Caphtor and the Syrians from Kir?

It's kind of really provocative to think that maybe these other nations had a sacred history of their own with their own "Exodus" accounts, their own stories about where they came from and how their present situation came about.