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It was He who created the sun, the moon and the
stars and made them subservient to His will. His is
the creation, His the command. Blessed be God, the
Lord of all creatures.” (7:54) The divisibility of
the divine attributes is totally alien to Islam.
Just as God is alone in His being, so is He alone in
His attributes. In recognition of His uniqueness,
the Qur’an opens with the following invocation:
“Praise be to God, Lord of the universe, the
Compassionate, the Merciful, Sovereign of the Day of
Judgement. You alone we worship, and to You alone we
turn for help. Guide us to the straight path, the
path of those whom You have favoured, not of those
who have incurred Your wrath, nor of those who have
gone astray.” (1:1-7) |
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Answer:
The emergence of modern science has meant the
uprooting of shirk in all its aspects. In modern
times, scientific discoveries have forever destroyed
the myth that there is any inherent diversity in the
manifestations of nature or that they have any
greatness of their own. Modern science, through
observation and experimentation, has proved in the
last analysis that all the phenomena of nature,
despite their seeming diversity, were composed of
atoms. And the atom is a component of electric
waves. This discovery has dealt a death blow to the
myth of diversity in nature.
Oneness has been proved to be a reality in all
things, notwithstanding apparent differences. That
is, a more advanced stage of knowledge having
rejected idolatrous concepts has provided an
established basis for the concept of monotheism.
Furthermore an important point established by modern
science is that all the things on the earth or in
the vastness of space are equally helpless entities.
All are bound together in an eternal, immutable law
of nature. In no degree do they possess any power or
will of their own. Another scientific factor has
been established which favours monotheism over
idolatry. That is, the entire universe, with all its
varied components, is functioning under one and the
same law of nature, called by scientists the single
string theory. In other words, according to the
discoveries of human knowledge itself there is only
one God of the universe. There is no other deity or
any other being worth worshipping save God.
The root of shirk lies in superstitious thinking. In
present times, scientific research and
investigations have held the superstition of former
times to be baseless. In this way, the roots of
shirk in modern times have been deprived of any
purely academic foundation. No scientific mind is
ready to believe in shirk as a reality. However
shirk is still prevalent in certain parts of the
world.
In ancient times, man held that so and so gods and
goddesses were responsible for air, rains, crops and
different human affairs. They thought of different
gods and goddesses as being at work behind the
diverse events in the world of nature and of human
beings. But scientific investigation has proved that
all these events, taking place in accordance with
the laws of nature, are not the miracles of an array
of gods and goddesses. In the face of these
findings, the old type of shirk has, to a large
extent, lost ground. Once there was an illiterate
person who, for the first time in his life, saw a
car travelling along a road. In his ignorance, he
thought it was a magician who was causing a room to
move by the sheer power of his magic. But any
educated person would consider such a supposition
ludicrous, because it does not take a scientist or
an engineer to know for sure that such magic does
not in reality exist.
In this way idolatrous beliefs and concepts or the
system of supposed deities have become utterly
ridiculous to the educated mind.
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