Rebuttal to Answering-Islam's article

Qur'an Contradiction

Everything and Everyone is Obedient to God?
Are they all prostrating to Allah?

 By

 

 
An unnamed Answering-Islam author has recently come up with a supposed contradiction; the article can be located here:

http://./Quran/Contra/all_obedient.html

The unnamed author writes:

The Quran claims that all living creatures are prostrating to and obey Allah:

 

And unto Allah maketh prostration whatsoever is in the heavens and whatsoever is in the earth of living creatures (dabbatin), and the angels (also) and they are not proud. They fear their Lord above them, and do what they are bidden. S. 16:49-50 Pickthall

 

To Him belongs whatever is in the heavens and the earth. All are obedient to Him. S. 30:26 Hilali-Khan

Prostration is an _expression of submission to the power and authority of the one prostrated to. It implies the obedience of the one who is prostrating towards the will of the one prostrated to. The above two verses merely use different words to make the same statement.1

However, it does not take much looking around to make the simple observation that most human beings are not obedient to the laws of Islam, and are not prostrating before Allah.

These statements are objectively wrong.

 

RESPONSE

So basically the unnamed author’s argument is that the Quran claims that all living creatures are obedient to him, yet when we look around we see people who are sinning and are not being obedient to God, therefore the verse is wrong.

It would not hurt the author to have used logic, since had the unnamed author used logic; he would see that there is no contradiction. It would also have not hurt the other if he had read the tafsir to clarify things up for him if he was confused. So therefore I will help him.

To begin with, before consulting the tafsir, let us use our brain, since it seems the unnamed author did not want to use his. Now the verses say that everything is obedient to Allah, now is that false? Off course not! Remember I said to use your brain, well by using your brain you are being obedient to God! Why? Well God gave you a brain to use did he not? Yes, he did, so therefore by you using your brain you are being obedient to God since you are using something he gave you to use. The fact you eat is also being obedient to God, he gave you the food to eat so you can survive, so by just eating the food you are being obedient to God.

Secondly, being obedient to God does not have to be willfully happening, you will be obedient to God whether you like it or not, you will die whether you want to or not, and that in itself is being obedient to God since God made death and life and you are going through it whether you like it or not.

Had the unnamed author tried to be sincere he would have seen that, but sincerity is something rare in the Answering-Islam site, they will write any garbage they can just to make it seem like they have something worthwhile to say.

So therefore the verse is correct, all are obedient to God. It does not mean that people cannot perform disobedient acts, certainly not, and the verses do not even imply this. By doing a good thing is being obedient to God, so therefore the verse is factually correct, the verse does not say that all are ALWAYS obedient to God now does it? Hence it seems the unnamed author mis-understood the verse or got too excited about writing a Quran contradiction that his God given brain could not think rationally.

As Ibn Kathir's tafsir writes:

(All are obedient to Him.) they are humble before Him and submit to Him, whether willingly or unwillingly.

As you see, you are obedient to God willfully or unwillfully, you will still be obedient to God and there is no escaping it.

So therefore there is no contradiction. The author simply distorted the text, since the texts did not say that people are ALWAYS obedient to God, it simply said that ALL people are obedient to God, which is true. Just because a parent says my kids listen to me, does it mean that the kids always listen to their parents?