Anger of Allah & Iconoclasm (A Non-Muslim’s Effort toward Spread of Islam)
It has been a while since i have been thinking of sharing the below message, I just needed right set of mind to write the topic out so it benefits those Allah wills, may He make me and us amongst them. ameen.
As you know i am enrolled into college again and taking classes, so one of my class is: Art History, a class i had to take due to the change of my major to Education. It is not that bad of a class as i expected Alhamdulillah. The happiest moment of my life in that class was when my teacher was introducing Islam and Islamic Art to the class.She is a non-Muslim, but her speech was brilliant about Islam, which showed that she was knowledgeable about Islam and that knowledge was free of misconceptions spread over media (as far my understanding).
We ware finishing up the history of Byzantine Art, my teacher was saying, there was a belief in the Christian of Byzantine empire, that is when they saw someone upon a lot of good, comfort, and improvement, they believed the person was loved by Allah. On the other hand, if they saw the person going through hardships, they believed Allah was angry with the person. After mentioning this, my teacher was saying, there was a group that was gaining a lot of power, and they used NO images to spread their belief (unlike the Christians), this increase of power of this group that used NO IMAGES scared the Christians of Byzantine empire, according to their belief mentioned above, they believed Allah was angry with them and was pleased with the group that was gaining power that used no images to spread its belief.
After mentioning the group without using any names, my teacher asked, who were those group of people?someone raised hands and said, Islam. and my teacher said, YES.
She then continued saying, the Byzantine empire Christians were so scared seeing the constant spread of Islam and gaining of power without the use of image that they ORDERED for the DESTRUCTION OF ALL THE IMAGES THEY HAD CREATED (as they believed GOD was ANGRY with them), it was a command and they carried out this task without hesitant rather with diligence, they completely destroyed images and status in market places etc.
Then my teacher puts on the map of Islam’s spread on the board (through powerpoint projection), and says, Islam started as a small group of people and it spread to such and such distance in less than 100 years, this short amount of time for such large scale of spread of Islam around the world was UNPRECEDENTED in the HISTORY.
and the destruction of images by Byzantine empire was termed as ICONOCLASM. after 2 centuries or so later, Some christians found excuse for themselves to use images again, that is people are ignorant, they cannot read so they use images to relate stories of bible to teach them… [as for Muslims, people! Muslims are educated from the first to the last inshaaAllah, our Salaf were Memorizers people! they could not perhaps read or write, but they were brilliant memorizers, blessings of Allah, count them. Alhamdulillah, Allahu Akhbar.]
WALLAHI! MY TEACHER SAID ALL THESE IN BETTER WORDS, as she introduced Islam to the class, my whole body was shaking with joy, a joy of current went through my body, i was happier than ever. I sat silently and listened, and if she asked, i kept quiet to hear what other students may say in response. [her speech was a dawah to ISlam, she aided islam with her exceptional presentation of ISlam, that she did not do for any other time periods or people alhamdulillah, a class filled with mostly non-muslims]
NOW THE LESSON TO LEARN FROM THIS for US:
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-> Accept and Submit O Muslims! Images are prohibited In Islam, the NON-Muslims Know it better than you. Islam Spread around the globe by the manners of the traders after the blessings of Allah then efforts of the righteous salafNOT IMAGES, LOOK how non-Muslims took lesson from this and destroyed their own images. Ya Allah! is there any better lesson than this for us Muslims! When will we wake up from our heedlessness Ya Rabbi!
In my writing for Humanity class, we were shown a video where it shows how images developed in early civilization,the non-Muslim man said it clearly, loudly in front of the world, Islam prohibits all animated images strictly,(he said it in better words, i just conveyed the meaning), and this video where this man said this, is shown in classes where majority of the people including the teacher are non-Muslims. what the man said further was this that they brought a turkish old muslim man to see a horse image and told him it is the image of a horse, the old muslim man could not believe it, he never saw images before in his life, he was trying to go around to see the horse (that is in the image, which was not possible, as it was but an image).
O people! if this is the case, who are we Muslims inviting with images? WHO are we inviting with images when we use images of men, women, and animals in our Dawah seminars (rooms are decorated with pictures of WOMEN, young beautiful women!), centers, flyers, pamphlets? WHO Are we inviting? the non-Muslims KNOW already Images of all animated beings are prohibited in ISlam. are we muslims not only displaying our own weakness and ignorance of our own religion with our actions????? we are not but fooling our own ourselves…
Do i have to swear to get my point across, i was stunned but happy with these lessons i learned from my classes from non-Muslims, it only made me firm in my deen and its teachings, i ask Allah for firmness for myself and all of us. Ameen.
May Allah grant us tawfeeq to understand and implement. Ameen.
wassalamualikum.
