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and (3) leads a righteous life, will receive their recompense from their Lord. They have nothing to fear, nor will they grieve.
If the focus of worship of any two people is the worship of God alone then they should be united as submitters irrespective of the name of their religion.
As Submitters we strive for certainty in God and His revelations, promises, attributes, etc. For example, Submitters have no doubt that God is One (3:18) and that our sole purpose in life is to worship Him alone (51:56).
But, we have to understand this does not mean that God has given us the knowledge of everything there is to know about Submission. The longer we live, the more we learn (God willing), and even then we don’t know everything (12:76, 16:70, 20:114).
[17:85-86] They ask you about the revelation. Say, “The revelation comes from my Lord. The knowledge given to you is minute.” If we will, we can take back what we revealed to you, then you will find no protector against us.
When we look at the examples of the righteous in the Quran we see that they do not over extrapolate the knowledge that they have. When God asked the angels something they did not know, they did not attempt to fill in the blanks based on assumption; they knew that their knowledge was limited.
[2:31] He taught Adam all the names then presented them to the angels, saying, “Give Me the names of these, if you are right.” [2:32] They said, “Be You glorified, we have no knowledge, except that which You have taught us. You are the Omniscient, Most Wise.”
It is tempting to try to over extrapolate our knowledge, but this is an unwise path that Submitters would avoid, God willing. [20:114] Most Exalted is GOD, the only true King.
Do not rush into uttering the Quran before it is revealed to you, and say, “My Lord, increase my knowledge.”>
As humans we do not like dealing with ambiguity and find comfort in absolutes. So, when we see someone who is excessively confident in their belief on a topic we ourselves haven’t studied, we may equate that confidence with competence. The drawback is that confidence and competence can be inversely correlated. This is known as the Dunning-Kruger effect.
When people are confident in a stance it may be because they have not explored all the edge cases of their understanding, and this lack of understanding is what provides them the naivety to have such confidence and can lead to negative consequences.
[7:33] Say, “My Lord prohibits only evil deeds, be they obvious or hidden, and sins, and unjustifiable aggression, and to set up beside GOD powerless idols, and to say about GOD what you do not know.”
As we grow our souls it is easy to get enchanted with our own righteousness, but we have to remember we are near the bottom of the barrel. Out of all the countless creatures that never questioned God’s absolute authority or the ones that accepted God’s offer to repent after the Great Feud, we were the infinitesimally few that wanted to see the demonstration ourselves. When we compare our actions against the actions of others in this experiment we are comparing ourselves against the worst of the worst and forgetting just how bad we really are. The fact is, if it wasn’t for God’s mercy and grace, we would currently be in Hell (2:30, 16:61, 35:45).
The Original Sin
[16:61] If GOD punished the people for their transgressions, He would have annihilated every creature on earth. But He respites them for a specific, predetermined time. Once their interim ends, they cannot delay it by one hour, nor advance it.
[49:14] The Arabs said, “We are Mu’mens (believers).”
Say, “You have not believed; what you should say is, ‘We are Muslims (submitters),’ until belief is established in your hearts.” If you obey GOD and His messenger, He will not put any of your works to waste. GOD is Forgiver, Most Merciful.
To think we are “Mu’men” is kind of a catch-22, because someone who is truly Mu’men would unlikely be in a position of proclaiming any sort of guaranteed or special status with God. As stated by Abraham: [26:82] “The One who hopefully will forgive my sins on the Day of Judgment.”
But as Satan knows, it is easier to fool someone than to convince them that they have been fooled. When we are overly confident in our righteousness Satan will play on our ego and have this get to our heads, nullifying our good deeds.
Mark 10:18 – The Rich Young Man
As Jesus started on His way, a man ran up and knelt before Him. “Good Teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” “Why do you call Me good?” Jesus replied, “No one is good except God alone.”
Because of this we need to humble ourselves before our Creator and kill our egos.
As stated before, this message is as much for me as it is for anyone who may be reading this. If I stated anything inaccurately may God guide the sincere to the correct understanding.
“How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ while there is still a beam in your own eye? … First take the beam out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.”
– Matthew 7:4-5
[2:44] Do you exhort the people to be righteous, while forgetting yourselves, though you read the scripture? Do you not understand?