Page 176 - Bigotry: The Dark Danger

Bigotry:
The Dark Danger

If someone has stopped praying although he has no mental
or physical disability, there may be various reasons for this. The
person may not be sufficiently devout, God may not have placed a
sufficiently powerful faith in his heart or he may not fear God suffi-

ciently. Guidance is in the hands of God, and it is not human beings
who can ever bring guidance about. Not praying does not mean that
this person has abjured the faith. He may stop praying but then start
praying again the next day; that will be of great benefit to him. Or he
may not start, but will still be a good and useful person; or none of

these things may happen. Even if he does completely abjure the faith
that person must still be treated with affection by Muslims. That is
how it should be in the eyes of the Qur'an.

To kill someone for such a reason is no less than murder, and
that never has any place in the Qur'an.

The four schools that were gradually produced on the basis of
various hadiths and interpretations, and then made part of Islam
over the course of time are like four separate faiths, each completely
incompatible with one another. (The profound differences between

the four schools have already been summarized in previous pages.)
The four schools ordain various punishments for those who stop
praying out of sloth, but these disagree with one another. For exam-

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