I will start from the beginning. In my hotel room at the Four Seasons in Paris, I found a collection of books, from which I selected the English version of The Age of Reason by Jean-Paul Sartre; when I could not finish reading the book in the two nights I spent there, I offered to buy it, only to be told that it is complementary, since I am an old customer at the hotel. Then at the Four Seasons in Cairo, I found a copy of the Holy Quran along with a its translation to English, prepared by Dr. Muhammad Taqi-ud-Din Al-Hilali and Dr. Muhammad Muhsin Khan, both former professors at the Islamic University in Medina. The English translation of the Quran was published by Dar us-Salam in Riyadh. It included in its preface a letter written by the Department of Scientific Research, Islamic Da'wa and Guidance in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, signed by its President Abdul Aziz bin Abdullah bin Baz. The letter proclaimed that the professors translated the meaning of the Quran, Sahih Al-Bukhari and the book entitles Al-Lu'lu Wal-Marjan (Pearls and Corals) into English accurately, so there is no objection to allowing the books and distributing them in the Kingdom, since they are not in violation of Islam. I have a copy of the English translation of the Quran at home, which my son used during his studies in university. However, the translation of the two professors mentioned above included definitions and interpretations of the meanings of some of the words and the titles of the chapters. Again, when I offered to pay for the copy at the hotel's reception, the front desk receptionist said that it was complementary. Thus, I found myself between the planes and the hotels, and over two weeks, reading the Word of God, and at the same time, reading a novel by an existentialist French philosopher who repeated Nietzsche's maxim that ‘God is dead”. Of course, these words would offend any believer; however, they have a deeper meaning: the German and French philosophers were not believers to begin with, and thus, we cannot say that they are blasphemers, because they did not start by believing. What the maxim mentioned above means is that God was the judge among the people, who used to follow his commandments and abandon his proscriptions; but after the age of the renaissance, or enlightenment, in the West, the relations among people became governed by democracy and by the rules and laws that this democracy has engendered. In other words, it is democracy that has become the reference point in the horizontal relationships among people, while God remains the reference point in the vertical relationship between each believer and his or her deity. Of course, the majority of Muslims believe that Islam is a religion for both this life and the afterlife; however, the Western renaissance in the eighteenth century took place after centuries of the Church's control and wars; hence, the renaissance sought to separate the church from the state. In fact, the American constitution drafted by the founding fathers stressed this latter concept so vehemently, that the atheists later on succeeded – through litigation – in preventing Christian prayers in U.S public schools. Jean-Paul Sartre wrote a trilogy entitled The Roads to Freedom. The first novel, The Age of Reason, was published in 1945, i.e. the year France was liberated. It is perhaps the best novel in this trilogy. In this book, Sartre tackles the issues of freedom, being and nothingness, through two days in the life of its protagonist a philosophy professor named Mathieu Delarue and the surrounding cafes and pubs of Montparnasse. The professor needed four thousand francs for an abortion for his mistress Marcelle, and the year was 1938, with the spectre of war casting its shadow over Europe. I was reading Sartre on the plane and reading the translation of the Quran at the hotel, or vice versa. Since I am a constant student of language, I was pleased to find between brackets a translation or explanation of words that needed elaboration such as: {The Inevitable, What is the Inevitable?} in the Surat Al-Haqqah [The inevitable]. Or: Verily, man was created very impatient; Irritable (discontented) when evil touches him. So the meaning of both words was ‘impatience and discontent', and not ‘fear' as in their popular use. The explanations provided were thus sufficient and adequate for verses like: {by the winds sent forth one after another; And by the winds that blow violently; And by the winds that scatter clouds and rain. And by the Verses that separate the right from the wrong. And by the angels that bring the revelations to the Messengers; to cut off all excuses or to warn} from Surat Al-Mursalaat [Those sent forth]. And similarly: {By those (angels) who pull out (the souls of the disbelievers and the wicked) with great violence, By those (angels) who gently take out (the souls of the believers); And by those that swim along (i.e. angels or planets in their orbits)}...until {On the Day (when the first blowing of the Trumpet is blown), the earth and the mountains will shake violently} from Surat An-Nazi'aat [Those Who pull out]. The intransitive verb (Ar. Qasata) means to be just; however (Ar. Qousout) means injustice. The Quran mentions that God loves (Ar. Al-Muqsiteen) those who are fair, i.e. just. But also, the Quran mentions that (Ar. Al-Qasitoun) The unjust are firewood for Hell. It is only mentioned in this meaning and spelling twice in the Quran in Surat Al-Jinn [the Demons], and the translation explains all of this very well. Will we one day be able to reconcile science and religion? I was reading and asking myself this question when I stumbled upon an article written by the physician Dr. Robert Lanza. The article's bottom line is that science can prove the existence of God, because modern science is only a few hundred years old, and modern physics started less than a hundred years ago, so perhaps we will be able to understand metaphysical truths in a thousand years from now, more than we are capable of understanding them today. Maybe...At any rate, I think that I have confused the reader's mind and mine enough for one day. [email protected]
