an explanatory note on verse 42:38 of Quran

There are many verses of Quran,the interpretation/explanation of which have'nt met a consensus by the Muslim clerics so far.
one such verse is 42:38,the translation of which goes something like this:

And those who have responded to their lord and established prayer and whose affair is [determined by] consultation among themselves, and from what We have provided them, they spend.

the disagreement reagrding this verse is that the consultation mentioned here is for religious affairs and authorities,private affairs or something else?

Many clerics have gone in favour of the view that this is regarding religious authorities and affairs as well as affairs of govt.
But the question rises here that if it was in favour of religious authority and affairs,what was the need of sending a Prophet to people of Arab?

In fact ,the philosophy behind sending a Prophet is that He is the only religious authority which is to be followed by the people.
there are some examples in the history where Prophet Salla'l la ho alaye hi wa aalihi wasallam sought advice from his companions but those were'nt regarding the fundamentals of religion.
For example ,at the event of Battle of Uhad,he sought advice that whether to defend Madina by going out of Madina or staying in?Similarly,at the Battle of Ahzab/trench he sought pieces of advice from his companions about the effective defence of Madina.

Another question arises here:
there were at least three hundred companions of Prophet S.A.W.A.w even at the time of Badr.according to the popular Sunni belief,all of them were pious,observed prayers and spent from their sustenance.Did Prophet S.A.W.A.W consult all of them at all occasions?No,surely not.

So keeping in view the above discussion,it seems to me that the correct view on the consultation mentioned in 42:38 is that it is meant for private affairs chiefly.Because those who are alike i.e pious ones,can better understand the sentiments,needs and worries of each other and can give a better advice.

1000 pious people can't change the religious commandments revealed 1400 years ago in the name of modernization of Islam.

لیلتہ القدر اور ایک نکتہ

یہ آج سے 2 سل قبل کا واقعہ ہے کہ ماہ رمضان میں دنیا ٹی وی پر لیلتہ القدر کی ٹرانسمیشن چل رہی تھی ،انیق احمد میزبان تھے اور خانم طیبہ بخاری مہمان کی حثیت سے مدعو تھیں .انیق احمد صاحب نے سوال کیا کہ سورہٴ قدر میں جو ہزار راتوں کا ذکر ہے ،کیا اس سے مرد ٹھیک ہزار راتیں ہے ہیں یا ہزارہا راتیں ہیں ؟تو خانم نے جواب دیا کہ ہزارہا راتیں مراد ہیں ،کیونکہ عربی اسلوب کے مطابق کسی زھیز کی اہمیت کو اجاگر کرنے کے لئے اسی طرح کا اسلوب استعمال کیا جاتا ہے .کچ اسی طرح کی چیز میں نے طفیل ہاشمی نامی ایک صاحب سے بھی سن رکھی تھی ،جو پی ٹی وی پر نمودار ہونے کا شرف بھی رکھتے تھے اور جن کے مطابق حضرت داؤد علی نبینا و علیہ سلام لوہا بھٹی میں گرم کرتے تھے،ان کے ہاتھ میں آ کر معجزے کے طور پر لوہا نرم نہیں ہوتا تھا .خیر اس وقت تو میں نے بھی یہی سوچا کہ پروردگار کی لا محدود رحمت کو ایک عدد تک محدود کرنا مناسب نہیں .

لیکن کل رات جب میں سونے کے لئے لیٹا تو خیالات کا رخ اس جانب نکل گیا .سوچتے سوچتے اچانک ایک خیال آیا کہ اگر خانم طیبہ کی بات کو پرکھا جائے تو وہ غلط نظر آتی ہے کیونکہ جس اسلوب کی وہ بات کر رہی تھیں وہ تقریبا ویسے ہی اردو میں بھی رایج ہے ،مثلا اگر میں کسی کو 4 ،3 بار کہوں کہ فلاں کام کر دو میرا ،اور وہ نہ کرے تو میں اسے جتانے کے لئے کہوں گا کہ میں پچاس بار کہہ چکا ہوں یہ کام کرنے کے لئے.لیکن غور طلب بات یہ ہے کہ اس اسلوب کے مطابق اصل نمبر یا تعداد کم ہوتی ہے اور مبالغہ کر کے اسے زیادہ بیان کیا جاتا ہے .یہ اسلوب سورہٴ قدر پر لاگو کرنے کا مطلب یہ ہو گا کہ  اصل میں شب قدر کی فضیلت نعوزباللہ ہزار راتوں سے بھی کم ہے ،اور محض اس کی اہمیت اجاگر کرنے کے لئے 1000 کا عدد استعمال کیا گیا ہے .  

رہی بات ایک عدد تک محدود کرنے کی ،تو یہ بات تو بہرحال مسلّم ہے کہ اعداد کی اپنی اہمیت ہے ورنہ قرآن میں اصحاب کہف کے 309 سال کی نیند کا ذکر نہ ہوتا ،موسیٰ علی نبینا و علیہ سلام  کی قوم کے 12 سرداروں کا ذکر نہ ہوتا وغیرہ وغیرہ .

لہذا اب میرا یہ ماننا ہے کہ ہزار راتوں سے مراد  سورہٴ قدر میں ٹھیک  ہزار راتیں ہی ہیں 

Higgs boson confirms Islamic view about the end of the universe

BOSTON — If the "Higgs-like particle" discovered last year is really the long-sought Higgs boson, the bad news is that its mass suggests the universe will end in a fast-spreading bubble of doom. The good news? It'll probably be tens of billions of years before that particular doomsday arrives.

That's one of the weirder twists coming out of the continuing analysis of results from Europe's Large Hadron Collider, which produced the first solid evidence for the existence of the Higgs boson last year. Current theory holds that the Higgs boson plays a role in imparting mass to other fundamental particles. Confirming the discovery of the Higgs would fill in the last blank spot in that theory, known as the Standard Model.
Physicists discussed the state of the Higgs quest in Boston on Monday during the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

So far, the particle that was found at the LHC fits all the requirements for the Higgs boson, but scientists aren't quite ready to confirm that the particle is really, truly the Higgs boson. It could be, say, just the first of multiple particles involved in the process. "The door is still very much open that there's [another] particle that has a role to play, or even more than that," said Christopher Hill, a physicist at Ohio State University who is also deputy physics coordinator for the LHC's Compact Muon Solenoid experiment.

The LHC has just started a two-year shutdown for equipment upgrades — and Howard Gordon, deputy chair of the physics program at Brookhaven National Laboratory, said "it's going to take another few years" after the collider is restarted to confirm definitively that the newfound particle is the Higgs boson.

In the meantime, physicists have tightened their estimates of the particle's mass: Hill said the current estimate from the Compact Muon Solenoid is 125.8 billion electron volts, or 125.8 GeV, plus or minus 0.6 GeV. The figure from the LHC's other Higgs-boson detector, known as ATLAS, is 125.2 GeV, plus or minus 0.7 GeV.

Those figures can be factored into equations that point to the long-term fate of the universe, said Joseph Lykken, a theoretical physicist at Fermilab.

So what's the outlook?

"If you use all the physics that we know now, and we do what we think is a straightforward calculation, it's bad news," Lykken said. "It may be that the universe we live in is inherently unstable. At some point, billions of years from now, it's all going to be wiped out."

He said the parameters for our universe, including the Higgs mass value as well as the mass of another subatomic particle known as the top quark, suggest that we're just at the edge of stability, in a "metastable" state. Physicists have been contemplating such a possibility for more than 30 years. Back in 1982, physicists Michael Turner and Frank Wilczek wrote in Nature that "without warning, a bubble of true vacuum could nucleate somewhere in the universe and move outwards at the speed of light, and before we realized what swept by us our protons would decay away."

Lykken put it slightly differently: "The universe wants to be in a different state, so eventually to realize that, a little bubble of what you might think of as an alternate universe will appear somewhere, and it will spread out and destroy us."

That alternate universe would be "much more boring," Lykken said. Which led him to ask a philosophical question: "Why do we live in a universe that's just on the edge of stability?" He wondered whether a universe has to be near the danger zone to produce galaxies, stars, planets ... and life.

Even Hill found it interesting that the parameters of particle physics put our universe right along the critical line. "That's something new, which we didn't know before, and which leads some of us to that there's something else coming," Hill said.

When Hill referred to "something else," he was talking about new discoveries in physics — not the end of the world. Lykken emphasized that it would be at least tens of billions of years before vacuum instability took hold.

"To get the exact number, we need more funding," he joked.

above content was originally published here :

http://cosmiclog.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/02/18/17006552-will-our-universe-end-in-a-big-slurp-higgs-like-particle-suggests-it-might?lite

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Commentary :

Quran mentions that the earth will be like flakes of cotton on the doomsday and that there will be great noise on the doomsday and the above article affirms these two aspects of the doomsday mentioned in Quran.when the expanding bubble of universe will burst,it will most probably create shock waves which will push earth towards the sun which is again in accord with the Islamic view.Uptill now ,very little of Islamic views have been confirmed by science,yet what has been discovered is enough to strengthen one's belief.

Rejection of Parvezis/chakralwis

For quite some years there has appeared a group which calls itself ahl e Quran to distinct itself from others.This group has several names with more or less the same ideology.Their main beleif is thatQuran is the prime source of guidance.it contains each and everything for guidance.Hadith only confirms Quran.Therefore they dont give much weightage to hadith.

I appreciate their love for Quran yet i reject their ideology in a straight forward manner because as far as basic issues are concerned,Quran does give us an outline but we can determine the minor details only by following ahadeeth.For example,Quran tells some basics about financial dealings,e.g whenever you make a deal,write it down and have witnesses on it and that do'nt eat up each other's property unlawfully etc etc.But in our age,the  trading has become far more complex.several new forms of trading hve been introduced over past some decades.

To check the lawfulness of those forms of trade we'll have to consult hadeeth,and if we fail to find the answer in hadeeth,we can go towards ijma' and qayas.This is just about financial dealings,whereas our whole lifestyle has modernized and several new issues have become prominent for discussions.

So,in my personal opinion,we need hadeeth as well as Quran and perfect logic to solve our problems.May Allah guide all of us towards straight path.

The origin of the universe and Quran

Criticism is usually taken as a negative trait specially in religious matters.But i believe that critical thinking can help you o look at things from a different point of view and hence open a whole new world of arguments for you.I myself has witnessed this many a times tha twhen i question some religious problem or doubt in my mind,Alhamdulillah ,more than often i find an answer.Same did i witness today.

As early as iw oke up today and even i ahd'nt washed my face,a question came to my mind that Quran says that Allah created everything from water,whereas the science says that the lightest element is Hydrogen and all elements and compounds were fromed  from it,the question rose in my mind that how do metals include water as a constituent.?same for other elements?

 and then i just thought for 5 minutes or so and i found the answer that if we try to cretae a correspondenc between tafaseer and science,we'll know that Allah created water first.the earth was all water at first.then A huge source of energy decomposed water into its ions i.e ionic Hydrogen and Oxygen,which then converted into molecular form.And those molecules then joined together to undergo fusion and create Heavier elements.These heavier elements constitute human body,yet water is the main constituent of our body.Since oxygen was necessary for the sustenance of species,its creation by fusion seems more illogical than decomposition of water.

This is the brief story of origin of the universe.