Actually I intentionally didn t start from my own views since I know you people already have some idea

of it. I prefer to start with secular arguments but Zubair gave some very valid observations from Quran and Quran cannot be compared with any secular argument. So I ll try to come up arguments from Quran as well. I totally agree that human beings are gifted with a divine spark which guides them through their life. Some people call it conscience. We call it Zameer . You do something good, you ll feel good about it. You do something bad, you ll feel bad about it. It s a very basic and simple principle. But from Hadith we also know that when one person sins, there comes a black spot on his heart. If the person repents and makes toba from the sin, the black spot is removed. Otherwise there comes a point when the heart is darkened and then comes the point which scares the hell out of me and which is described in Quran by saying that we sealed their hearts . Here, the heart doesn t mean the physical heart. It is the spiritual heart called Qalb and which is more or less same as conscience or Zameer . So we know from Quran that every person has been given a spiritual heart or Qalb or conscience or Zameer but there is also evidence that this Qalb also gets sealed at some point. In other words, we say that the conscience or Zameer is dead. I have a favorite word for a person this state i.e. psychopath. Main feature of a psychopath is its remorselessness (Babar is in so much trouble now ). This lack of remorse can be general or for a particular sin. It can be found in one person or in the whole society. You can recall stories from Quran as well where the societies even the whole nations have been destroyed by Allah SWT because of a particular sin which they committed continuously and did not repent from. Social science has volumes and volumes of literature describing reasons of such behavior developing in societies which I can refer to very easily (that would be so much fun) but even they got it all wrong. So why were those societies unable to trigger their collective conscience against that particular mistake? Why their moral values fail to bring them to the conclusion that a particular act is bad in its nature and they should refrain from it?? One can argue that religious societies had also fallen into sins and eventually Allah SWT descended his Qahr (Wrath) on such societies and eliminated them from face of the earth. But this always happened when a Messenger was sent to them pointing out a particular sin and warned them of wrath of Allah SWT but they failed to acknowledge the message. Lets take the example of Makkah as a society before Islam. We know that this part of the world hasn t been formally exposed to divinity since a very long time before the Prophet (Peace be upon him). You see that they used to commit certain sins openly. Burying their daughters, committing adultery, riba, drinking etc . was more than common. I can also refer to example of Madina before Islam which was so much in trouble that it was called Yathrab i.e. place of diseases. Just apply the concept of morality without religion on these societies. I ll ask the same question. Why was basic morality not enough to stop them from these grave sins?? Its now time to give my point of view. There can be no morality without religion. Why? Because if am to establish my beliefs on something, I don t want it to be relative. I would want to it to be absolute. As absolute as possible. And what would be more absolute than divinity itself. This is the point debated by

Shah WaliuLLah in his writings that when it comes to human beings, there is no secular morality. Now we can debate that whether God exists or not but as far as the secular humanism is concerned, that s the end of it man. I ll give you a quote from JONATHAN GLOVER from his book Humanity A Moral History of the Twentieth Century . This is the real fun and here it begins In Europe at the start of the twentieth century most people accepted the authority of morality. They thought there was a moral law, which was self evidently to be obeyed. (in my own opinion much of the things about common sense and morality are self evident and true but how do we know that our intuitions are not corrupted. I mean to a kleptomaniac stealing is a natural instinct, to others, it is not. So how do we arbitrate that) Immanuel Kant had written of the two things which fill the mind with admiration and awe, 'the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me'. In Cambridge in 1895, a century after Kant, Lord Acton still had no doubts: 'Opinions alter, manners change, creeds rise and fall, but the moral law is written on the tablets of eternity. At the start of the twentieth century, reflective Europeans were also able to believe in moral progress, and to see human viciousness and barbarism as in retreat. At the end of the century, it is hard to be confident either about the moral law or about moral progress. I can also refer to Dukes Law Journal from Arthur Lou volume 6, 1979. He is pointing out and this is his argument he is making here. He says this is why there can be no such thing as normative performative patterns. You see when you say murder is bad, why is it bad?? Because it hurts people?? But I enjoy hurting people. (You can laugh on it but this is not a fatuitous argument. At the end of the day what is there?? And this is what a poet said that when you will kill the God, you will taste the breath of empty space.) He also says when God says let there be light, there is light. When he sees that there is good, good is what it is. I pursued this discussion for so long because it makes much easier to understand why there is discontent verging on despair whenever someone tries to develop a system in which legal and ethical propositions are to be treated as bindings. We are never going to get anywhere in ethical or legal grounds unless we finally face the fact that there is no one onto like the LORD. If he does not exist then there is no metaphoric equivalent. No person, no combination of people, no document no matter however hallowed by time, no premise, nothing will be equivalent to the God as this central function as the un-examinable examiner of the good and the evil. The so called death of God turns out not have been just his funeral BUT also seems to have resulted in total elimination of any coherent ethical or legal system depending upon finally authoritative systemic premises. So here is my first response to this thread and now I have a serious headache. I hope you people will (and you should) get one when you ll finish it. Looking forward to your attacks.

Finally .... someone has a headache ..... I think Haroon is silent because he is trying to figure out the secular arguments in the second half of my e-mail. @ Zubair ... You will have to assess the arguments of people's heart being darkened by sinning .... actually we do need to define morality as well .... There were certain good characteristics in that society like Zubair rightly mentioned that they used to keep their promises. But Hitmen are also known to keep their promises does it make them moral beings???? the answer is "I don t know ... may be ... " that s what we are trying to figure out ..... As far as adultery is concerned in pre-Islamic Arabs ... it was so common that a women literally had to roll a dice in order to figure out whose baby she was carrying (I would ve said toss a coin but since they were sleeping with many men so dice is a better representation ) it was beyond the wildest orgy dreams ... so who knows who was fucking whom?? The argument of them not having sex with their sisters/mothers is incoherent. It s like justifying a smaller evil by comparing it to a bigger evil e.g. using same argument I can say that there was a sense of morality in Nazis so they used gas chambers. They could ve killed a couple million people by just burning them alive in the furnaces. (personally, I think that the method they adopted was the most efficient one and suggesting any change to it won t make an operational sense) By the way, if you look into the history of Egypt, the wife of Pharaoh used to be his blood sister. The practice was also followed even in the public. Morality was not stopping them from committing this despicable act as society had accepted it as a norm. I also disagree with the statement that religion doesn t invent the morality in humans. Fortunately, this is not something that can be proved outside the realm of spirituality (that saves me from another headache). These are hard facts and I can be branded as a Kafir very easily if this stuff becomes public and a petty maulvi will happily kill me a reserve a corner plot in Jannat. Hazrat Umar Ibn Khittab once said I was deep into drinking and women before accepting Islam . You also know that wine was flowing like stream in streets of Madina once it got prohibited. I wonder if any of the early sahaba hadn t experienced a flip change after accepting Islam. There is also Hadith where a Sahabi came to the prophet and asked permission to commit Zina. Prophet asked him if he would want someone else to commit the same act with his mother or sister or daughter? He said No . So the Prophet placed his hand on the Sahabi s chest and made dua for him. After that the sahabi says that he was so content that there was no difference between a woman and a wall to him. So where does that change come from??? Was it within the sahabi when he came to the Prophet openly admitting his flaw? So much so he asked the permission from Rasulullah to commit zina?? Don t you think he must ve tried to refrain from the idea?? He definitely did not find the capacity in him to refrain himself from the sin. And this is the beauty of our religion that not only it enhances ones capability to do good but it also transforms one in a way that one cannot think of. Again, it is not something that can be materialized in secular terms but right now I am desperate for some arguments In the last part of email Zubair is speaking very high of society as a moral check which makes sense. But what if society starts working the other way around?? Where else to refer to but to our own society?? I don t know where to start from and where to end at. There is a long list where societal pressures actually push an individual to immoral behavior. In fact it is the main problem when you put the religion out of the equation because then your moral code is that of society. If society is turned upside down, so is your moral code. So I revert back to example of Egypt in Pharaoh s era where a society as a whole had

figured it all wrong. The point again is that should the moral code be based on something as relative as society?? Or should it be something absolute both in time and space dimensions?? I am on the same page with Zubair when he says that basic morality is present in every human being .... I also said that every human is gifted with a divine spark .... the question is .... can it be retained??? even Islam says that every child is born on deen of Islam ..... the question is . If the basic morality is there then the basic evil is also there Alexander Solzhenitsyn in his book on the Soviet forced labor and concentration camp system The Gulag Archipelago writes: If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being . . . it is after all only because of the way things worked out that they were the executioners and we weren't. Its so ironic to write after another painfully complex e-mail BUT

Have a nice day fellas . Keep me posted . P.S @ Haroon . So much for free riding ..

Hey lets all give Shahood a break . It is his longest e-mail ever since he has started using a keyboard. He must be fatigued. PLUS, we were wrong about state of preparedness of Haroon because Shahood seems more prepared than Haroon. He came in late but he just gave it to us. I don t think his conclusion has anything to do with whatever we wrote. Instead he concluded it himself based on his thought process. Since you people have been busy (or trying to look busy) so I ve been roaming around for some answers. PLUS I ve been thinking to develop some framework in order to fit in the jumbled up ideas in my mind. So here it comes. First we have to assess the phenomenon of morality. I mean when do we say that a certain person is a moral person or an immoral person? In my opinion it all boils down to the behavior of a person. It is the behavior of the person which classifies him as a moral or immoral person. Now what is the behavior of a person?? Behavior is defined as Response of an individual or group to an action, environment, person, or stimulus. The next question is how does one respond to external stimulus?? This one was the trickiest part. After much thinking and research I finally concluded that it is emotions that drive ones behavior. For example, emotions such as anger or love can affect our behaviors. As much as I thought about it, it became very clear to me that emotions are foundation to our moral or immoral behavior. Our behavior is indirectly affected by our emotions. This has to be explained by an example. Let s assume someone insults us. We might think about hitting the person. Alternatively, we might engage in a conscious response that our brain allows, such as insulting the person back (most likely by saying jo kehta wohi hota ). Further, we might cognitively process the encounter and the emotional stimulation and decide that we do not like the person . Better among us will seek to avoid that person in the future and to stop going to a particular place where that person might be found. It becomes a domino effect from a single emotional response. In either case, we shall be demonstrating a behavior based on our emotion of Anger . There are our distinct emotions in humans by Islam e.g., greed, Shahwat, takabbur, hasad, sabar, love, shukar, tawakkal etc. Now some of these emotions seem positive emotions and some seem as negative emotions e.g. sabar, love, shukar and tawakkal seem like positive emotions while anger, greed, shahwat, takabbur and hasad seem like negative emotions. This, again, is a catch. There are no negative or positive emotions is Islam except very few, may be a couple. I can think of takabbur right now which is not permitted in any case so there can be no debate about it. I shall discuss some of the other emotions in order to make my point. Let s for example take greed (Hirs). Seems like a negative emotion to me. But when you have greed for good deeds, it becomes a good thing. In quran the same word has appeared for Rasulullah (SAW) where Allah (SWT) tells that he is greedy (Harees) for (benefit of) his ummat. Similar is the case with anger (Ghazab). It is considered negative emotion generally but you can recall situations from hadith where Rasulullah (SAW) got so angry to an extent that his face turned red and in that state he warned Sahaba to do or not to do certain deeds. So even having anger can be a good trait in certain scenarios.

On the other hand sabar seems like a very good emotion but being Sabir on a deteriorated spiritual state won t be regarded as a good gesture. Similarly, love is a good trait but excessive love for a child to the extent to spoil the child will be a different case. Actually the source of all this thought is my very limited exposure to the training of Tasawwuf. The teachers of tasawwuf identify some major emotions which need to be controlled in order to get spiritually elevated. Hassad, Shahwat, Anger (Ghadab), greed and bukhal. They say that all of the sins are result of one or more of these emotions gone out of control. Based on their experience, they identify these in their students and they provide guidance through lectures, suggest different Adhkaars and even set one to one sessions with individual students to have a progress report (yeah, there have been some embarrassing moments for me as well). So here goes my theory. Morality is the overall behavior that emerges from a pattern of emotional responses. You can trace emotions behind every sin and every good deed. They say that Hassad was behind the disobedience committed by Iblees which was the very first sin. This was followed by takabbur as after disobeying Iblees also argued with Allah (SWT) to support his stand point. On the other hand, greed was the emotion which cause Hazrat Adam to fall in ghaflat as he had greed to stay in Jannah for ever which itself was a good desire but Iblees was able to use this against him. Similarly, in the case of Habeel/Qabeel, it was the emotion of Hassad which led to anger and then translated into act of murder. It was only after that emotion of shame/remorse kicked in which led him to bury his brother. I don t know what he did after that?? Whether he made tauba or not and whether the tauba was accepted or not?? I have to dig into the whole story. So he first experienced Hassad, then anger and then remorse. I don t know which emotion was dominated but all these three were there. Worth mentioning fact is that emotions working in negative dimensions came first and then came the positive impact of remorse. PLUS as they were descendent of hazrat Adam, I seriously doubt that there was no religion at that time. The bottom line is: Emotions are the core which has been gifted to the human beings. One has to have a code which channels the emotions into a behavioral pattern which can be regarded as moral or immoral. My point of view is that this code should be religion (same as Shahood concluded in his own way). The real question is that if you reject religion (specifically Islam) then what are your options? Let me jolt down some. Other option can be a code provided by society which will be as flawed as the society will be. It can be a guideline developed by person for himself. It can be a samurai s way of warrior or even the witchcraft. Basically I am a person who doesn t want to get in much trouble (except when it comes to long debates ). The ease in religion of Islam is that we we can find a complete guideline in the quran and specifically in sunnah. May be because it is the last religion, every sunnah of Rasulullah (SAW) has been preserved and anyone, if he wants can get authentic information about all the emotional responses of Rasulullah

(SAW) even regarding his very private matters. So I can get guidance about even the minor things like how he used to walk or eat or laugh or even cut his nails. So the guidance in Islam is complete or comprehensive, it is accurate (transmitted to us through authentic sources) and it is based on habits of the person who has been elevated by Allah himself as the best creation in the universe. I would gladly embrace a code which would have better characteristics than that. Now I would respond to Haroon s email specifically as I really feel it is important. I agree that religion is not the sole source of morality. And here now from religion, I mean Islam. So religion is not the only source of morality but it IS the only PERFECT source of morality. Here again I totally agree with you that there are people who are generally religion-less beings but at the same time are good moral beings. On the flip side, there are people who seem religious but in fact are immoral beings. You know what is common among both these genres?? Both don t have Islam as core of their morality. I mean you ll find the apparent religious people praying, fasting, performing hajj and paying zakat but religion is not serving as a core of their emotional responses. Had religion been their core, you would ve seen a total different behavior from these people. Now comes the questions of atheists who are good beings. First I should say that I love atheists. Really .. I do love them . Because . They are very logical people. They are so logical that they defy the concept of God itself and they are absolutely right. Why???? Because one cannot prove God with logic. And that is why I pity the atheists. Now if someone doesn t believe in God, I simply fail to understand why one doesn t one lie, cheat, steal, murder, rape etc. etc. I mean what s stopping them?? You ask any atheist .. if you grill them enough they give the same answer i.e. it make them feel bad. Again, the flip side of this reasoning is that that they do whatever makes them feel happy. So here is the domain where they start being creative its so much fun. This reasoning takes them to places as there is no collective conscience now. If they feel like getting into same sex marriages, they ll do it. Because it makes them feel good. Same goes for murder, extortion, rape, cheating and the list goes on . I cannot say anything better than what Friedrich Nietzsche has said and what I have already quoted that when you ll kill the God, you ll taste the breath of empty space . And in this empty space you ll find huge atrocities like world wars, nuking of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, genocides (Jews, Bosnians, Afghans, people in east Timor, Vietnamese). One can always argue that similar atrocities have ten place within the paradigm of religion but I would respond to it by saying that whenever religion has been a core of our morality, such tragedies have been limited to a minimum level if not eliminated. So please make a rational conclusion since over here, the eternity is at stake. I would quote Hazrat Ali when someone asked him what if there is no God . Hazrat Ali didn t argue with him and simply said even then I would go with the idea (that there is a God) since it is eternity at stake. It won t hurt me if there is no God. But what if there is?? Since everything that has a beginning has an end (Shahood would know from where I got this line) so this e-mail also has an end (LOL ). I would end on translation of a poem by Friedrich Nietzsche (German: "Gott ist tot") i.e. "God is dead"

God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the

world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?