Gurmat in light of the Quran

[amardeep]

Gurfateh... i thought of something and wanted to hear your opinion on it.

In the Quran there is a verse stating that if the muslims will turn their backs on Islam then Allah will produce a new people (Qaum) to replace them.

The verse goes:

005.054

O ye who believe! if any from among you turn back from his Faith, soon will Allah produce a people whom He will love as they will love Him,- lowly with the believers, mighty against the rejecters, fighting in the way of Allah, and never afraid of the reproaches of such as find fault. That is the grace of Allah, which He will bestow on whom He pleaseth. And Allah encompasseth all, and He knoweth all things.

As we all know, Bhai Gurdass and Gurbani state that the muslims failed after the death of the Prophet, and for this (as well as many other reason) Sikhi came into being.

the dohra in ardass goes Agya Bhai Akal Ki Tabe Chalyo Panth meaning:

As was ordained by the Timeless, thus was established the Panth.

so we have Gurbani and sikh sources saying the muslims failed and the Quran saying that a new people will be produced if the muslims fail, as well as the dohra saying that God created the panth(nation of sikhs)

Uggardanti is clear on why the panth was created:

Both religions (Hindu and Islam) are getting contaminated.

Come and elevate a third religion (panth).

(People) have forsaken the Veda, the scriptures and the eighteen puraans.

(People) no longer perform the muezzin call, the islamic prayer, the circumcision and (read) the Quran.

All the populace has forgotten to praise the Lord.

The duty to religion and humanity is no longer comprehended.

If you read Bhai Gurdass vaar or the Bhatta de sawaiye on Guru Nanak yu will see that Guru Nanak is put in a line of avatars of the indic tradition hereby placing him in a continious cycle of avatars of the indic tradition. One would assume that the Gurus belonged to the particular tradition that Krishna and Ram brought fourth but Guru Gobind Singh makes a new panth, a third path, even though Bhai Gurdass and Gurbani places Guru Nanak in the cycle of the first path (first path being the indian tradition, second path being abrahamic and third path being sikhism).

It made me think that there is some sort of continuity between the promise of Allah in the Quran and the establishment of the Khalsa by God himself later on in history.

i might be crazy sorry, i just wanted to share my thoughts with you as i find if quite puzzling

[Mithar]

Good topic Amardeep Jee. A Singh once told me that, Islam was a divinely inspired faith but was corrupted. Sikhi is the how Islam should have been from the start. Even though the two faiths are different, but you can clearly see many similarities between the two.

[tonyhp32]

Amardeep,

The translations that you have put up of the Uggardanti are from a Kuka site which unlike the Kukas of old who were not adverse to killing a few Muslim butchers for cow slaughter now seem to have become more PC than Sikhs today. The words in brackets ie people are an attempt to be ultra PC but in doing so they have totally subverted the meaning of the passages.

The Uggardanti places the Muslims in general and the Mughals in particular in a long line of demons and evildoers that were destroyed by Bhavani. It calls on Bhavani to also destroy these new demons. It also calls for the destruction of the call to prayer, the mosques, circumcision as well as the Vedas and Purans etc.

The same theme is also taken up in Vaar 41 of Bhai Gurdas.

[Morghe Sahar]

Our Imams have commented this verse already and it refers to te rivalry between Arabs and Persians.Arabs grew arrogant for having been the first ones to receive the Quran and later on treated Persians as second class citizens when they conquered them under Omar (la). The Imams always treated the Persians on equal footing and from 4th Imam on our Imams have royal Persian blood due to Imam Hussain's (as) with Lady Shahr Bano (as) the daughter of Yazdegard III. In fact many hadiths state that the Persians are the ones who really understoof Islam wheretheas Arabs remained ignorant due to their laziness and arrogance. Many of the first Shi'as were Persian knights who converted to Islam during the life time of the Prophet and Imam Ali (As). Don't forget that Yemen and the Western part of the Persian Gulf were part of the Sassanid empire. The Persian garrison in Yemen chose to convert to Islam. It is the Persian knights who offered the Arabs the military know how to beat the Romans and Sassanids. Just take a look at the best scholars and scientists of Islam: mostly Iranians.

So sorry to give you the bad news but no...the new people (not religion LOL) refers to the Persians.

[shaheediyan]

Convenient translation, nothing more than an tribal opinion.

[Morghe Sahar]

"Convenient translation, nothing more than an tribal opinion"

Iranians are not a tribe they're a nation made of different ethnic groups and tribes who intermary because they have the same religion. The opinion of the Imams doesn't make Iranians superior beings. It just states how Islam realized its universal nature by Iranians fighting for equal rights and making Arabs realize that Islam wasn't just theirs.

No tribalism in that shaheediyan...

[Morghe Sahar]

Also our Imams had various ethnic components in their very blood, Arab, Persian,Byzantine etc how on earth can their hadith be called "a tribal opinion"? Ridiculous

[amardeep]

Could you please provide the hadiths for that explanation you have given ji. I have talked to some shias friends on this and they told me that the "new people" just refers to another set of muslims that Alllah will create but that kind of goes against the notion of free will, because where is the justice in Allah making these men great and good muslims while others are being punished for being bad muslims. At once you have Allah directing and making them good muslims while others are left to themselves to become good muslims by their own efforts.

As far as i recall from the moezzi book on islam early shia litteratur was quite pro-persia and anti-arab and they are looked down upon in the hadits.

isn'nt panth the indian word for Qaum? The word qaum is used in the quran to describe the community of a prophet. Jesus, Abraham and Moses each had their qaum, and the ummah/qaum of Muhammad are all muslims who confess to the shahada, i've asked my learned shia friends on whether sunnis are included in Ummat Muhamad and they say yes, so how can the iranians be a seperate qaum from the arabs, when both of them are under the banner of Ummat Muhammad?

[Morghe Sahar]

Amardeep wrote:

"isn'nt panth the indian word for Qaum? The word qaum is used in the quran to describe the community of a prophet. Jesus, Abraham and Moses each had their qaum, and the ummah/qaum of Muhammad are all muslims who confess to the shahada, i've asked my learned shia friends on whether sunnis are included in Ummat Muhamad and they say yes, so how can the iranians be a seperate qaum from the arabs, when both of them are under the banner of Ummat Muhammad?"

No!

Panth means path (same Indoeuropean root) whereas qaum means nation but is different from ummah. Qaum is a nation in the political sense whereas the ummah is the community of all Muslims fromn different qaum.

The word qaum is used only once by your 10th master when he refers to the Brar Jatts. And to be honest....I doubt God would have transferred the understanding of Islam to a qaum that practices the same crimes as the pre-Islamic pagan Arabs such as female infanticide...

In clear NO no prophets after Mohammad (pbuh)!

[tonyhp32]

I read somewhere that one of the Ayatollahs of Iran had cast doubt on the marriage of Hassan and the Persian princess Shahr Bano. Looks like Imam or no Imam the Iranians still do want to accept that a royal princess of their ancestors was taken to Arabia as a slave and married off to one of Ali's sons.

[Morghe Sahar]

1. It's Imam Hussain (as) not Imam Hassan (as).

2. You are referring to ONE ayatollah, namely Sahid Motahari (ra) who cast doubts regarding the tradition. But the majority accepts the traditions.

Lady Shahr Bano's (as) grave is situated south of Tehran in the city of Rey.If you take the underground it's the station before Behesht Zahra. What I like about the place is that Shi'as and Zoroastrians go there to honour the Lady.

[amardeep]

Without being an expert in lingvistics i would say that the word panth could also mean a community of people sharing a common belief, political view etc. When Guru Gobind Singh gave gurgaddi to the panth it means the community and not the sikh path so i think the word panth has several meanings.

If the verse is reffering to the persians then how did Allah create this people? it clearly says that a new qaum will be created and as we know the persians were already in existence at the time of the prophet so nothing new was created as such.

[Morghe Sahar]

The word "new" is not in the verse.

The verb which you translate as "produce" here is "yatiyi" which is derived from the Arabic root: ATaYa . to come, bring, give, present NOT produce.

It does not have the idea of producing something new at all. Rather it means that He will bring a people that already exist and shower His blessing on it because of its obedience to Allah (swt).

Qaum doesn't mean community, it ,means a people in the tribal-national sense. Jatts are a Qaum. The Sikh panth is made of different Qaum: Jatts, Tarkhans, Khatris, Whites, etc...

It is not a nation as it doesn't share the same ethnic origin, language, culture etc

[Mithar]

Panth seems more like a faith based group. While Quam seems more like an ethnic group. But traditionally Indians were never divided based on ethnicity. Ethnic nationalism was unknown before the Brits arrived. Before that the Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs called their religion as their Quam like say Sikh Quam, Mussalmaan Quam, Hindu Quam even though they may have all belonged to the same ethnicity and castes. Punjab is a perfect example of this where Punjab is divided based on religion and not any sort of ethnic divisions.

[Morghe Sahar]

The Sikh use of the word Qaum is very recent and contrasts with the 10th master use of it.

[amardeep]

i see. well thanks for clearing that up then jio

[Morghe Sahar]

Khahesh mikonam, my pleasure.