baqar

Although you're tone was not offensive , it did come out as a bit sharp and indirectly provocative.
 
He wasn't referring to the OP. He meant to use this Ayah as a hujjah for Ilm Rijal( for example, examining the reports of narrators to determine if they are truthful or not as the Ayah states)

One should realize that one's mood, mentality, outlook on reality are directly under the influence of the individual as that is something a Muslim should know to better his/herself 

1. Prophet Muhammad peace and blessings be upon him and his family, said " A powerful person is not he who outwrestles others. A powerful person is he who controls himself when angry. " 

Being calm, having a calm demeanor, will get you farther in life than one who is anxious, shows anxiety. It's unreasonable to let small material activities of daily life to affect what is immaterial ( human soul ) When dealing with people trying to attack you, or subtly promoting evil agendas they can be met in an appropriate manner of anger 

2. " A moment of patience in a moment of anger saves a thousand moments of regret." - Imam Ali Ibn Abi Talib A.S.

Patience is one of the biggest virtues in Islam and patience is about how you act, not how long you wait

Of course. 
 
SDA Christians...
 
Believe God's Law - the Ten Commandments - are valid and therefore keep the weekly 7th-day Sabbath 
Believe in the health laws and therefore believe in refraining from unclean foods, such as pork and restricted foods (refrain from alcohol etc)
Believe in the sanctuary message (which includes the investigative judgment) 
Believe in soul sleep (that the dead remain in the grave until the second coming of Christ or the resurrection of the unrighteous to destruction)
 
Seventh-Day Adventism officially began after the Great Disappointment out of those who decided to reexamine the understanding of the "cleansing of the sanctuary."
 
We are considered Protestant but definitely non-mainstream.

The short answer is, Sunnis deny the status of Imam Ali and the Ahlul Bayt, and praise those who have oppressed them and wronged them.
In their view however, those we view as oppressors are viewed as great heroes and role models to them.

I was shopping once with my youngest son in the stroller.
He is a very cute gorgeous boy, hazel green eyes and sandy blonde hair.
 
an old man stopped and looked at my son and said what a beautiful boy and tried to pat his head.
I pushed the stroller kept going and just said 'thanks' on my way.
 
this day and age can't trust anyone lol.

No, I do not support homosexuality. It is sin according to the Bible. 
 
Whether or not individuals choose to believe that is of course up to them.

Our Alberta Premier just resigned and skipped town after being forced to pay back the $45,000. she spent going to Nelson Mandela's funeral.

I'm sorry to break it to you, but it may be too late; you could very well have turned your luggage gay.

Well, I intend to continue that approach...just here to learn and gain more exposure to Islam.

Seventh-Day Adventist (Sabbath-keeping Christian movement)

I choose to believe the Bible because it has been the major avenue through which God has reached me.
 
My exposure to the Quran and Islam in general has been far less.

I think he was talking about religious leaders, not political.     
 

Of course not. Christians will never share that view.
 
The most important reason is that Islam rejects the Trinity.   There are others of course. 
 
 
He may be wrong according to your beliefs but not according to his.  
 
 
Unless he decides to become a Muslim, a Christian who accepts the prophethood of Muhammad is as far as he would go. The fact that Placid accepts our Prophet as one is a far cry from the common Christian belief that Muhammad was a false prophet.
 
And as long as the universe lasts, Christians or rather most Christians, will continue to believe that Muhammad was a false prophet for the very simple reason - as I have said - that he categorically and vehemently rejected the divinity of Jesus. 
 
In retaliation, the Italian poet Dante, in his famous work " Inferno",   placed our Prophet and Imam Ali in hell.
 
Thomas Carlyle was the first Christian to believe that Muhammad was not a false prophet. He had great respect for the Prophet and he was simply smitten by Imam Ali.
 
In other words, if a Christian were to accept Muhammad as a true prophet, he would no longer be a true Christian. The only reason why Placid accepts him as a Prophet is because he does not believe in Jesus as God, rather as the one next to God.  In other words, as the highest being after God but not quite God. That is to say that Placid's Christianity is a little different from the mainstream - both Protestant as well as Catholic.
 
But unless he decides to become a Muslim, for which the chances are very slim, please don't expect him to come any closer.
 
We should be grateful that he has come that close.
 
But no amount of research will get him any closer unless the research is smart enough to finally lead to a profession of the faith.
 
Hi Placid
 
As I have told you before, almost every one of your sources, Pickthall included, will give you at best the Sunni version, or shall I say, one of the Sunni versions.
 
I believe you have had very little access to Shia sources all this while.
 
I am not saying that the Shia version is the right one. That is for everyone to decide for himself  but it is definitely not the same as the Sunni version.
 
Actually and to make matters worse, there are multiple versions of both.
 
Just thought I'd remind you again since you often make the mistake of accepting your sources as representative of Islamic history, which in my view, they are not.
 
Cheers 
 
There was no need to mention Muhammad more often for the simple reason that when you talk to someone, you don;t need to mention his name. Generally though not always, you only need to mention the name of a third party, not the person you are speaking to.  

For me, Shiachat is nice community for mumineen to come together that can at times turn into a battlefield.

Hi David
 
In Urdu, we say "Pahlay Ghar chiragh phir masjid chiragh".  
 
A rough translation would be "first the home, then the mosque". 
 
Donor nations should first reduce the number of homeless within their own boundaries to zero before giving even a cent to anyone else.
 
It is nonsensical to think that donors should give to distant nations when their own people are suffering.
 
Unless....
 
Clearly, the reasons for the charity are to maintain the balance of power in the world.
 
If I am paying you half your salary every month, what would you do if you ever thought it necessary to speak against me?
 
Would you really speak up against me?
 
Do you think this is how charity is to be defined? 

Pakistan needs the money to fill the bank accounts of its military offiials so they don't go against the donor nation.
 
If such regular aid had not been available, Pakistan (and other nations in that situation) would  have learnt to live within their means.
 
As of now, they have just got too used to charity and therefore cannot do without it.

Hi David
 
In Urdu, we say "Pahlay Ghar chiragh phir masjid chiragh".  
 
A rough translation would be "first the home, then the mosque". 
 
Donor nations should first reduce the number of homeless within their own boundaries to zero before giving even a cent to anyone else.
 
It is nonsensical to think that donors should give to distant nations when their own people are suffering.
 
Unless....
 
Clearly, the reasons for the charity are to maintain the balance of power in the world.
 
If I am paying you half your salary every month, what would you do if you ever thought it necessary to speak against me?
 
Would you really speak up against me?
 
Do you think this is how charity is to be defined? 

Pakistan needs the money to fill the bank accounts of its military offiials so they don't go against the donor nation.
 
If such regular aid had not been available, Pakistan (and other nations in that situation) would  have learnt to live within their means.
 
As of now, they have just got too used to charity and therefore cannot do without it.

It doesn't connect with everything else that Sunni hadeth writers have about Imam Ali and Lady Fatima.
 
Let me explain what I mean by "connect"
 
If you get an award from the government for bravery, and then someone comes along and says that he saw you crouching in the corner when the police banged on the door, the two stories simply do not connect.  
 
They may be in the same book but they just don't connect. They two stories don't seem to belong to the same person.
 
Either the award was wrongly given to me or the story about me crouching in the corner is clearly false.  

If she observed the iddah plus the other conditions, then she is not a prostitute, from the Islamic perspective although maybe some societies would view her that way. 
 
The women who work in those places in Amsterdam are prostitutes because they sleep with men for money, and their priority is getting as much money as possible and not following the laws of Allah(s.w.a). So in that situation, you can say for sure they are not observing, at least the iddah, so marriage is null and void. I am 100% sure there is not one single one of these who waits two months between clients. I would bet my life on that. (the iddah for mutah is two monthly cycles). Marriage in Islam is a sacred institution meant to preserve, expand, and strengthen the spiritual bonds that hold our society together. It is not, I repeat, it is not a business transaction. Prostitution is not marriage, it is a business transaction only that lessens the humanity of both parties involved and cuts the bonds that hold society together. Two different things. 
 
These places are run by organized crime syndicates (the Italian and Russian mafia, and maybe some local groups also). These women are forced to sleep with as many men as possible in order to make money for these criminal organizations. So a 'customer' of these places, in addition to doing zina, they are 
1) Helping these criminal organizations stay in existence by funding them thru the 'mahr' cough cough, that almost none of it is kept by the women but goes to the crime bosses to help fund more crime. These women are most likely victims of human trafficking and are not employees but are actually slaves who are force to do this work.  
2) They are setting themselves up to be potential targets of blackmail in the future. It happens all the time that these criminals (whose only objective is squeezing as much money out of 'clients' as possible) will video record the 'transaction' and use this video in the future in order to extort more money from the 'client'. 
 
This is the reality and this is how it works. Only an extremely naive person would believe otherwise. In Islam, we are asked to use our aql. 
 
If my only two choice were to become a 'customer' of one of those places or be celibate, then I would be celibate, although this would be very difficult for me since I am a 'normal' guy. At the same time, in the real world, there is usually always more than two choices, but sometimes you have to put forward some effort and think outside the box to find the third and fourth, etc, choice. 

They could not reject what they didn't know. The people of hell are those who knew what is right and denied it from stubbornness or arrogance or greed or other selfish motivations.

Translation of a Turkish nasheed. Youtube does not work for me, so I suggest you search for the terms "Elveda Ey İmam" in order to listen to the nasheed.
 
 
Your smiling face spreads light,
Hizbullahi Ummah is your close ones,
Your holy state opens new horizons,
The garden of Irfan is the reflection of (your) perfection.
 
You are the hand of Abraham, Oh Imam, farewell.
You are the idolbreaker Khomeini, Oh Imam, farewell.
 
Your revolution is, to us, the divine call,
To you the souls of the martyrs say, "Labbaik",
Your holy line is to us the path of God,
May our souls and lives be sacrificed to this path.
 
You are the grandeur of Moses, oh Imam, farewell,
You are the compassion of Jesus, oh Imam, farewell.
 
You were always on the true path,
You dived into the depths of the ocean of Irfan,
With revolution you granted glory and honour to the era,
You were a dream resurrecting the path of the Prophet.
 
You are Ghol-e Mohammadî (Mohammedan Rose), Oh Imam, farewell.
You are Bulbul-e Ahmadî (Nightingale of Prophet Muhammad), Oh Imam, farewell.

The whole world burns in the fire of separation,Your body does not fit in this world, Surayya is in love with it.You are the sun to the eras. You are the heir of Prophets,The commander of the Mujahids, the majestic king you are. This revolutionary voice enchants the souls,How sacred is this divine voice!How sacred is this divine cause! Thanks to you, we turned our lives to the religion,Oh the leader of Hizbullah, the Holy Rahbar of the age.This dark world is (now) luminous with your revolution,With martyrdom every place became the rosy Heaven. This revolutionary voice enchants the souls,How sacred is this divine voice!How sacred is this divine cause! Millons of devotees take you as their Rahbar/Guide,They recite your Marsiya/Elegy day and night.Your noorish life saw many changes,Hizbullahi caravans walk on your path. This revolutionary voice enchants the souls,How sacred is this divine voice!How sacred is this divine cause! This divine call made the hearts joyful,Oh God! Do not seperate us from the revolution.Oh Enghelab-e Islam (Islamic Revolution), the sun of the worlds,On your face shines the miracle of the Holy Quran. This revolutionary voice enchants the souls,How sacred is this divine voice!How sacred is this divine cause!

The Qur’an is for all people, even the disbelievers e.g. the atheists.

I believe that in post #240, I have tried to explain that
the linguistic style of the Quran is such that there are acknowledged difficulties in understanding the intended sense of a fairly large number of verses, including the ones on inheritance, from a large cache of such verses, two examples have been given to demonstrate the point beyond any sliver of doubt, and  with people dying all the time and the consequent need for distribution of the properties of the deceased according to the instructions in these verses, it is obvious that a numerical problem would cause the implementation to stall. It is hard to believe that the ensuing havoc among the relatives of the deceased would remain unnoticed for any length of time. It simply does not make sense that anyone  would be happy to see the distribution suspended due to a problem with the verses.  One would expect that there would be chaos all around and with everyone anxious to get his (or her) share as quickly as possible, they would all be running to the Prophet for a solution to the problem.  
As for the differences among the sects on the import of the verses, it should not surprise anyone. It is a common feature of the sectarian differences of Islam.  There are literally hundreds of things where the understanding varies across the board. 
 
I hope I have been able to explain myself.

Fastidious fascination for the body
 
 
 
In my Islam, it is