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| Islam and other Religions
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Prophecy is the means whereby God offers guidance to human beings through human
intermediaries. Just as God's mercy takes precedence over his wrath and thereby
determines the nature of wrath, so also God's guidance takes precedence over his
misguidance. Guidance itself demands the existence of misguidance. Without the
misguidance that is embodied by Satan, the prophetic messages would be
meaningless. Without distance, there can be no nearness; without wrong, no
right; without darkness, no perception of light. All the distinctions that allow
for a cosmos to exist depend upon the diversification and differentiation of the
divine qualities. On the moral and spiritual level, this diversification becomes
manifest through the paths of guidance and misguidance, represented by the
prophets and the satans.
Wherever there have been prophets, there have
been satans. The Koran uses the word satans to refer both to some of the jinn
and to some human beings. To be a satan is to be an enemy of the prophets and an
embodiment of misguidance:
We have appointed to every prophet an
enemy-satans from among mankind and jinn, revealing fancy words to each other as
delusion. Yet, had thy Lord willed, they would never have done it. So leave them
with what they are fabricating. (Quran 6:112)
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A Christmas Greeting From a Muslim Daughter
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When I became a Muslim thirteen years ago this month, I left behind the
Christmas traditions my family celebrated every year of my childhood. My mother
was able to transform our Southern California home into a Winter Wonderland as
soon as we walked in the door; it may have been 75 degrees and sunny outside,
but inside we felt we were in a Currier and Ives world of red velvet beribboned
pine boughs, twinkling lights and beautiful music. I loved it. The Christmas
season and our small traditions remained the same no matter how many years
passed. My mother worked extremely hard to build warm, and loving holiday
memories, and I sincerely cherish them.
Like many American homes, there wasn't much Christ in my family's Christmas.
There would always be some discussion surrounding the reason for our
celebration, but we didn't attend church services or talk too much about what my
parents believed. The beautiful nativity on the mantle, hand-painted by my
grandmother, was flanked by tasteful, secular decorations. This led to a kind of
vague confusion between the miraculous birth of Jesus, and the magical feat of
Santa Claus zipping around the world in one night.
Nostalgia not withstanding, thinking about Christmas is now far more meaningful
to me on a spiritual level than it was when I was young.
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There are four [qualities] which are not found in one person without causing wonder: silence, which is the
beginning of worship; humility before God; an ascetic attitude toward the world; and
poverty. 
