Guideline for The Quran Beyond Fragmentation

These are some suggestions for your comments to change it for better.

 We hold that while God guides us through scriptures, God is ineffable and we can’t identify God with anything in the world: persons (Jesus and Prophets) and scriptures (Torah, Bibles, and the Quran).

 We believe that we should go back to the Quran BEFORE sectarianism and factions.

“Hold fast to God’s rope all together; do not split into factions. Remember God’s favor to you: you were enemies and then God brought your hearts together and you became brothers by God’s grace; you were about to fall into a pit of Fire and God saved you from it– in this way God makes God’s revelations clear to you so that you may be rightly guided. Be a community that calls for what is good, urges what is right, and forbids what is wrong: those who do this are the successful ones. Do not be like those who, after they have been given clear revelation, split into factions and fall into disputes: a terrible punishment awaits such people.” (3:103-5)

 We go back to the Quran without prioritizing the Sharia law, the Sunnah (narrations of what the Prophet did), and the Hadith (the sayings of the Prophet).

 With respect and deference, we critically evaluate all religions (including the Quran) and learn from all religions, cultures, philosophies, and sciences, based on these fundamental propositions of the Quran:

“Do not follow blindly what you do not know to be true: ears, eyes, and heart, you will be questioned about all these.” (17:36)

 We seek justice and love, and not hatred. So fundamentally we refrain from and reject any hateful language about anyone, even disbelievers and unjust people.

 Based on these fundamental verses of the Quran:
“We have assigned a law and a path to each of you. If God had so willed, He would have made you one community, but He wanted to test you through that which He has given you, so race to do good: you will all return to God and He will make clear to you the matters you differed about. 49 So [Prophet] judge between them according to what God has sent down.” (5:48)

We believe:

The dilemma of religious institutions and rituals such as church, synagogue, mosque, and temples is that the very medium through which God is recollected and praised becomes a veil to a refreshing experience of God. We are inclined to a reflex reaction to throw the baby out with the bathwater. But this will end up to the desert of nihilism and forgetfulness of God again. We can’t invent God or change religious institutions by destruction based on self-righteousness or our secular rational reasoning. Jesus and Muhammad transformed Judaism by “completion”, not “rejection” and by religious rational reasoning, rituals, and divinely inspired soul connection.

The multiplicity of religious institutions will not and cannot be reduced to one mega unitary institution. What is the most feasible and desirable (in the spirit of completion, not rejection) is that each religion will be unified within its domain by opening up to each other. Rituals of prayer and temples are respected and revered. Nonetheless, all religions see and seek the unity, the overlapping, and mutual learning, against parochialism and being closed off, by rejecting the politics of identity and a congealed self.

We are stuck in a mental-spiritual cramp: to level off all the differences to one. This is exactly, one may say, what will deprive us from the completion of the experience of God in the richness of differences that are connected to the same source, or as the old story goes, perceive the same elephant in the room. This opens us up to listen to the other, rather than righteous indignation to destroy the other. And this is the foundation of love, isn’t it?