March 2009: Page 1, 2, 3, 4

Rabi I 1430

Volume 25 No 3


In the name of God, Most Gracious, Most Merciful

Submitters Perspective

Monthly Bulletin of the International Community of Submitters Published by Masjid Tucson

MORAL RELATIVITY VS GOD’S LAWS

Let there be a community of you who invite to what is good, advocate righteousness, and forbid evil. These are the winners. [Quran 3:104]

I am an American with Iranian heritage who has been living in the United States since the age of four. One of the most significant aspects of becoming a submitter for me was the struggle to come to terms with the huge difference between the Western philosophies and culture I had been raised with and that which I had learned through the Quran. Like it or not, the education system, the media, and of course, the people you encounter have a tremendous influence on a person’s thinking, at least on a sub-conscious level.

When I began attending university, I took advantage of the resources around me to help me understand and resolve the internal conflicts which had been occupying my mind. I read the classics, the works of great social scientists, books on women’s studies, anything I could get my hands on.

I started to develop a sense of isolation and frustration as I noticed that most of the intellectuals whose books were major influences on our present culture and ways of thinking seemed to completely ignore the soul in their research, analyses, and philosophies.

Twentieth century science and the reason and rationality behind it found the soul a meddlesome and annoying thorn in its side. And so, they just ignored its existence.

In the 1880’s, a philosopher by the name of Nietzsche changed the course of modern thought when he proclaimed to the world that "God is dead." With the burden of dealing with God and His mysterious ways off their shoulders, the wheels of intellectual thought began turning towards a more pragmatic and rational approach to explaining human nature and man’s social structure.

Sigmund Freud, whose theories are the basis of modern pop-psychology, was a great fan of Nietzsche. Psychology became a science where all aspects of human behavior would be understood and explained by man himself.

The physical and mental regions of our mind would supposedly provide all the answers to the mysteries of human behavior. The soul and God did not fit into the equation very well, and so, they were simply disregarded. Nietzsche’s "discovery" that God no longer existed brought about a revolution in how we dealt with morality, ethics, and values.

Without a God, there was no longer any absolute truth. Without truth, there was no good or evil. Without evil, there was no Satan. Everything became relative. We entered a period where nothing was black or white, but rather, various shades of gray. The way we were educated, the way social issues were dealt with, and the way standards were set in society were all becoming very vague and unstable. Without a social base of truth to rest upon, our society began to collapse.
The primary building block of any social structure is the family. The family begins with two: a man and a woman.  

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