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From: diwan@cs.umass.edu (Amer &)
Newsgroups: soc.religion.islam
Subject: Re: Islam and abortion - no Qur'anic guidance, relevant ahadith...
Message-ID: <13146@wpi.wpi.edu>
Date: 29 May 90 13:39:52 GMT
Article-I.D.: wpi.13146
References: <13129@wpi.wpi.edu>
Sender: shari@wpi.wpi.edu
Reply-To: diwan@cs.umass.edu
Organization: Dept of Comp and Info Sci, Univ of Mass (Amherst)
Lines: 35
Approved: sadeghi@oxy.edu
In-Reply-To: paul@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu's message of 28 May 90 01:46:25 GMT


Paul,
I read your note in te soc.religion.islam newsgroup and it raised some
questions in my mind.

Quote from Abdullah (bin Mus'ud) :
vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv
Then Allah sends an angel who is ordered to write four things.
He is ordered to write down his (i.e. the new creature's) deeds, his
livelihood, his (date of) death, and whether he will be blessed or
wretched (in religion)
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

This appears to bring up the basic question of fate -- do human beings have
any 'control' or are they predestined.
Especially in 2:30 onwards (Al Baqarah, discussion on Adam) it appears that
one of the main distinguishing features of humans is that they do have a will
and they can make their own decisions (this is one of the features that
distinguish them from Angels -- for this reason, Abdullah Yusuf Ali suggests
that Iblis was not really an angel but a jinn -- I don't know what the other
scholars say).

I would appreciate any clarification.

Salaam
    Amer
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			Amer Diwan
			Department of Computer and Information Science
			University of Massachusettes
			Amherst, MA 01003
			(413) 545-0256
			diwan@cs.umass.edu   diwan@umass.bitnet
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