Q. Could you please explain why God has granted the gifts of knowledge and material wealth to Christians while he bestowed only ignorance on Muslims?
C. Shafer, Montana
A. God has made no such gifts. It is people’s endeavors that have put them in such positions. God has established certain rules for human life. Whichever community conforms to such rules, pursuing knowledge and seeking to gain wealth and power, will achieve that. Communities which neglect such rules will live in ignorance and poverty. Human history proves this. All civilizations, past and new, testify to this universal law. So, people cannot complain. It is all fair for every nation and all generations.
Arabs before Islam were an ignorant community, split into warring and raiding tribes. When they became Muslims and realized what Islam wanted them to do, they became united, and gained strength and knowledge, establishing a civilization that remains the best in human history. When Muslims allowed un-Islamic values to creep into their lives, abandoned Islamic principles of faith and justice, slackened in the pursuit of knowledge and abandoned serious endeavor and the pursuit of knowledge, they reaped the results of such negligence in the form of weakness and ignorance. This is the way that led to the decline of all civilizations in the past, and will continue to do so in the future.
Having said this, I may add that it is not true that Muslims are doomed to ignorance and poverty. There is much wealth in the Muslim world, but, in many cases, it is not administered in the proper Islamic way which ensures that all people in society share in its benefits. Moreover, Muslims who pursued knowledge were able to achieve high positions both in the Muslim world and in the West. You only need to look at the number of Muslim scientists who occupy very high positions in their respective fields in America and Europe. Nor is it true that Christians are favored with these gifts. There are Christian communities in Africa, Latin America and Asia which are deprived of these blessings. They also need to follow the rules God has made for human life in order to prosper both in knowledge and wealth.
Islamic prayers
Q. I have been asked by a friend why we pray 5 times a day, and not 6, 7 or less or more? I could not give him a satisfactory answer. Could you please help?
Z. Amin
A. Prayer is offered to God in the way and the number He wants, not as we establish. As you know, prayer was made a duty in the form and numbers we have in the tenth year of the Prophet’s mission, during his night journey to Jerusalem and subsequent ascension to Heaven. Therefore, we pray five times a day because this is part of the Islamic faith, as taught by Prophet Muhammad, the man God chose to be His messenger to mankind. To obey the Prophet in everything he told us is to give practical confirmation of our declaration that we believe that “there is no deity other than God and that Muhammad is God’s messenger.”
Having said that, we can also cite the benefit of having our prayers spread over the whole day, so as to make a Muslim always mindful of his prayers, watching his or her actions in order to guard against committing grave sins. But this is not the reason for making our prayers five times; it is one of its benefits. The reason, as I say, is that God has instructed us to do so through His messenger.