Dr Yasir Qadhi writes:

Not every aspect of Islam is ‘rational’, meaning you cannot necessarily logically explain every ruling or intellectually prove every theological fact of Islam. There are aspects of our faith that are supra-rational, meaning they are beyond the realm of rationality, and therefore proving or understanding or rationalizing them are simply not within the scope of the human mind. However, nothing in Islam – absolutely nothing – is irrational, meaning that no belief or law contradicts known and indubitable reason.

To reject Islam because your rationality cannot comprehend those aspects of Islam that are supra-rational is utterly irrational.

Yet, this is routinely what murtads end up doing, and in the process become some of the most psychologically traumatized individuals you will ever meet. Every aspect of their lives revolves around attempting to disprove Islam, or wishing to achieve notoriety by constantly announcing to the world their rejection of the faith they once believe in. And if you examine their arguments, they all revolve around what is stated in the previous paragraph: rejecting a faith because their puny minds and infinitesimally diminutive rationales cannot understand some of the infinite wisdoms of God. Yet, by rejecting God, they end up, firstly, creating a myriad of far greater problems for which they genuinely have no real answer; and, secondly, they must struggle to find meaning in their otherwise empty and inconsequential lives (for life without God is the most depressing philosophical reality).

For the first, they must overcompensate by aggrandizing their own pseudo-intelligence, always trumpeting the imagined victory of their ‘rationality’ over what they themselves have deemed irrational beliefs. In reality, all they have done is to replace their previous supra-rational beliefs that they held as Muslims with an even longer list of irrational assumptions that they must now blindly believe as murtads.

And for the second, they must convince themselves of finding meaning and beauty in otherwise transient and semi-futile aspects and joyous endeavors of their lives, not realizing that even in their search for ‘meaning’, and in their appreciation of these transient moments of ‘joy’, proof for God is screaming at them from all direction and angles. Why even desire meaning, and how to even appreciate these transient joys, if we are but sub-atomic particles randomly combined to haphazardly breathe and live?

Deaf, dumb and blind, these murtads will not return, unless Allah wills so.

Ridda is not a rational problem, it is a spiritual one. To ‘submit’ to Allah (which is literally the meaning of Islam) requires a level of humility of the soul, and a recognizing of the limits of oneself, that murtads simply do not wish to have. That is why, as all of us know, the arrogance that exudes from them is palpable.

But not all hope is lost. Recently, an acquaintance of mine who had converted and then left Islam re-accepted the faith. When I asked him why, he remarked that a parent had passed away in front of his eyes, and the reality of life and death, and the truth of Islam, all just came back to him in an instance, and he knew there was no alternative but to submit to Allah. If someone you know has left the faith, be sure that if there is any ounce of sincerity in them, they shall come back insha Allah. And if there is no sincerity, their departure has not harmed the religion; they have only harmed themselves, for their worldly existence has become bereft of all meaning, and they have chosen to forfeit their right to the enjoy the blessings of the next life.

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