Letter 002 – Open Letter to Dr Adnan Ibrahim
This is the
Well-Being for All (wb4all) Religious Science Association’s
the Well-Being for All (wb4all) Church’s
official website
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There are so many non-muslims who believe the non-muslim world can’t every enjoy peace with the muslim world.
It’s not true. The world can work together.
Many factors are involved, but two of them are confidence in the leaders of the two sides and confidence in how they think. Enter the brilliant Dr. Adnan Ibrahim and the Islamic concept of Ijtihaad. (Usually spelled — transliterated from the Arabic sound and script — Ijtihad with an “a” with a line over it to make it’s length longer. I like my transliteration better, so I used it just this once here. I’ve mastered the Arabic script and can spell out anything using its phonetic features. It’s beautiful and fun.).
I tried to send this letter to the brilliant Dr. Adnan Ibrahim’s email address he listed on Facebook, but it didn’t work. So, since he has a “public figure” page on Facebook, I decided to post it here as an open letter with introductory comments.
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The reason I’m posting it is to highlight several issues in my thinking, in God’s will, and concerning the agenda of the well-being for all (wb4all) church. I’m also reaching out to Dr. Ibrahim and promoting him to the western world audience.
Ijtihad (pronounced “izh-tee-HAAD”)
In order to facilitate muslim/non-muslim relations, every non-muslim should make sure they understand the concept and thinking process called, Ijtihad. Like the Theory of Constraints (T.O.C.), and like the Talmud Thinking Process, the Islamic concept and process of Ijtihad promote high-quality thinking that apply principles to current circumstances.
The word, ijtihad, in Arabic means “effort” which indicates making the effort to think about things vs. accept something that doesn’t match current circumstances.
It’s a large concept with two major application areas.
Ijtihad in Law
One area is Islamic law by experts. This is like the Talmud process applying earlier Torah revelation to later circumstances and Mishnah law for those later circumstances.
From Encyclopedia Britannica: “ijtihād, ( Arabic: “effort”) in Islāmic law, the independent or original interpretation of problems not precisely covered by the Qurʾān, Ḥadīth (traditions concerning the Prophet’s life and utterances), and ijmāʿ (scholarly consensus). In the early Muslim community every adequately qualified jurist had the right to exercise such original thinking, mainly raʾy (personal judgment) and qiyās (analogical reasoning), and those who did so were termed mujtahids.”
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/282550/ijtihad
Better Thinking In Everyday Life
Ijtihad also has a wider, more general, and everyday application area — everyday life by everyday people. Dr. Adnan Ibrahim’s lecture, “Do We Think,” promotes better thinking about everything in life among Arabic-speaking and Islamic peoples — as does the Theory of Constraints (T.O.C.) thinking process for all peoples in all languages all over the world.
Dr. Adnan Ibrahim, 1 hour, “Do We Think”, in Arabic with English sub-titles
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TC-ZlX9etRs
Many of Us are Muslims and Don’t Know It
Elsewhere on this site, I develop the concept that where the world is headed can be called, Paradise Regained. Part of that is all of us being in direct communication with God like Adam and Eve were before the fall. Part of that is using modern technologies and management methods to manage global population (overall global demand) and global resources (overall global supply) so that the managed population size includes only people with necessary needs fulfilled. But it also involves not having major dangerous polarizations between groups of people on earth. Balancing overall global supply and overall global demand helps a lot in this by removing the perceived need for a group to dominate to be secure and removes the perceived need to rebel to meet basic needs.
However, even if overall global supply and demand were in place, centuries and recent years of events would still be inflaming hatreds between and among groups. This needs to be worked on beginning now.
Hence this letter.
My letter is an attempt to establish a relationship, friendship, and dialogue with a muslim preacher who came to my attention described as someone teaching that God wants people to become and stay devout in their religion because of their smart thinking about the issues of reality and life, not solely because social forces call for being devout and not just as a process of believing and accepting without thinking about things. Probably most muslim preachers think and teach that, but he’s the one who came to my attention coupled with a “signs from God” sequence that day.
Many of Us are Muslims and Don’t Know It
Since around 1998, I’ve been telling anyone who would listen that the well-being for all (wb4all) portions of the Judeo Christian world has no inherent philosophical difficulty in coming to peace with the well-being for all portion of the Islamic community for one simple reason. Namely, the concept of “muslim” in Arabic means “submitted” (to God’s will). I said at the time we should assume God’s will is a Theory of Constraints (T.O.C.)-like individual, organizational, and global goal of well-being for all (wb4all). From there, use a Theory of Constraints (T.O.C) scale-of-importance (priority) of that shared aspect of all being muslims (submitted to God’s will) being far more important than any of the specific non-shared things like day of the Sabbath, what books get read, what stories get told, and what rituals get used by each group’s own people and the other groups.
This the late 1990s, before my May 2011 further spiritualization, so I wasn’t yet in frequent easy 2-way communication with God, but obviously God is one source ideas can come from especially if one desires that this be the source. So this “we’re all muslims” idea if we’re submitted to God’s will idea was “my idea,” but God has told me lately he always liked the idea.
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Below is the email I tried to send to Dr. Ibrahim:
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This is an automatically generated Delivery Status Notification.
Delivery to the following recipients failed.
adnanibrahim@gmx.at
–Forwarded Message Attachment–
From: tommcmullenjr@hotmail.com
To: adnanibrahim@gmx.at
Subject: FW: Signs
Date: Sat, 20 Apr 2013 01:02:55 -0400
Trying again. Message got blocked twice.
From: tommcmullenjr@hotmail.com
To: adnanibrahim@gmx.at
Subject: Signs
Date: Fri, 19 Apr 2013 19:18:09 -0400
Dr. Adnan Ibrahim
Dear Dr. Ibrahim,
Adnan,
……., , often listens to your YouTube lectures, enjoys them very much, and tells me about them. ……., wonderful deeply loving woman whom I love very much, says your messages give her strength and comfort her. Your theory that people should come to and stay with their faith through high-quality thinking vs. simply accepting impresses me. That’s one of my three main points the other two being (1) direct communication by as many people as possible with God and other spirits and (2) that God’s will for individuals, organizations, nations, and the world is being well-being for all (wb4all) and not just a few of the world’s people.
I told ……. today about a sign that God gave me earlier today. An hour or so later, she came to me and told me it was good that I told her because she just remembered she had listened to your discussion on the subject of signs from God recently. God told me that was a sign, so I asked her if she could get your email address for me. She led me to your Facebook page and I found this your Austria email address there. Things happen that way sometimes.
…
I’m doing a “like” on your public figure page now on Facebook. I’ll share with you that it’s a carefully-considered decision and step. You’re a very intelligent man, so you already know why. It’s because of how “Likes” show up on one’s own Facebook page to one’s friends. I’m wondering how my friends — some real friends in life and some just Facebook online acquaintances — will react to seeing your page, with its Arabic script and name showing up at the top of my Likes. And, when they click over to your page (you probably know that emotions around all of this make some of them afraid to click even “anonymously” over to your page), to find all the other Arabic script and names. In today’s online world, of course, nothing’s “anonymous.” Finally, today is, of course, also the day we hear, if I’m not mistaken, that it’s Chechnya folks associated with our unfortunate Boston event in the USA. So, again, if I’m not mistaken — I haven’t turned on the news today and I’m 3/4 blind as I read online news and type this — the unfortunate and misguided negatives about Islam get a little bit stronger. Hands-across-the-ocean leadership will have to unravel all of this someday, hopefully starting a little bit right now.
God has had a lot to say to me on that topic of specifically how that gets done. More on that later. A big part of it is that we could manage population and resources in ways today that would take a lot of the ferocity out of the struggle for military, political, diplomatic, commercial, ethnic, religious, and even individual dominance today. God says a first step is for everyone to understand that this is his will. Then people can use modern technologies and management methods to do it.
So, though I set out immediately to write you when ……… gave me yet another interesting report about you — with this one being about “signs” and with God’s comment — contacting you and pressing the Like button are carefully-considered steps.
I interrupted two other letters and a website I’m writing on to write this because …….. walked in and started talking to me about “signs.” I had told her of a stunning thing that happened to me on my computer today that I could never had made happen with my own actions and she came back an hour or so later to tell me I was right to tell her about signs and that she has listened to you on the subject of signs the other day. I may have repeated myself there. If so, Adnan, I apologize. With my eyes so bad — and they got worse over the past few days — it’s easier for me to type/write than to go back and revise and check for things like repeats. I could just read over the whole thing again one more time, but I’ve lovingly done that a few times already and I’m eager to send this to you to see if the address works and you’re there etc and get to my other letters and web page I’m working on. I’m sure you get the idea. Thank you in advance.
……… described you as wanting people to be devout in their religion via their thinking it through vs. just feeling obligated to accept and believe, including beautiful perspective pieces like your “earth in the universe” lecture. So I stopped what I was doing, asked her to get your email address so I could get into communication with you in whatever ways make sense and are interesting and useful for you, sir.
The other day, while driving to our food shopping store in the next town, ……….. was telling me about your discussion of how the entire earth is like a grain of sand in God’s universe. (God is telling me right now that this is a smart connection to make, this new relationship with you. He talks, literally talks, to me since May 2011 and a lot since December. 29, 2013.)
Ok, I’m going to assume the positive and hope we’re going to become friends at least to the point where I can send you imperfect not-yet-polished, but clear and smart work.
There’s more God wants me to share with you, but I already over-reached my ability to write and proofread. So I’m sending to you now.
Thank you for reading.
Warm wishes that we all begin to see God’s will of sufficiency and justice for all — well-being for all — made more manifest in the world,
Tom
Tom McMullen
Palmer, Massachusetts, USA.
As a way of sharing something you might be interested in, here’s a link to something I’ve written about my work with 20 world languages, including Arabic:
https://wb4all.wordpress.com/about/founder/work-with-world-languages/
Highlight: Once I’d mastered the Arabic script, I was able to have fun and use its phonetic aspect to “sell” it (and, implicitly, convey positives to all things Arabic) as cool, beautiful, smart, and fun by teaching kids of all ages to write things like their own names and like “Hannah Montana,” “Gwen Stefani”, and their other favorite stars from popular culture. jayyid jiddan, nam? (I can’t … oh yes I can … google will give me the script … hold on … there it is complete with accusative form alif for the an in jiddan, and unvowelled including my shaddas on the d and y … jayyid, nam? 😉 I did a lot of good for things Arabic and therefore the world when I was able to be more active.
جيد جدا
As a way to share who I am, not to sell books or kindles, here’s data on my book online:
http://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Theory-Constraints-Management-System/dp/1574440667
My book on amazon with free online “look inside”:
“Published author,
Introduction to the Theory of Constraints (T.O.C.) Management System, 1998, on amazon in new and used hardcover, free online “look inside,” and kindle edition.”
Facebook:
wb4all 
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