Was Sheikh Farid Ji a Muslim?

[BhForce]

There are discussions going on in some threads at the moment about whether Sheikh Farid ji was a Muslim. I would like to hold these discussions in one place, partially because they are extraneous to the thread titles in those other threads, and we should let those threads discuss the specific items that the thread creators wanted to originally discuss:

http://sikhsangat.com/index.php?/topic/80863-human-rights-in-islam/

http://sikhsangat.com/index.php?/topic/80838-why-muslims-should-never-be-trusted/

I propose that Sheikh Farid ji was not a Muslim at then end, whatever he may have been at some time.

I started off with:

2 hours ago, BhForce said:

Friend, I'd like to ask you to have another read of Sheikh Farid ji's bani. Sheikh ji explicitly talks of the Guru and Saadh Sangat. Now, in Islam, they have the concept of the Prophet Mohammed being the "Seal of the Prophets". Merely to suggest that there could be a prophet after the time of Mohammed is apostasy in Islam, meaning you're not a Muslim anymore.

 S4NGH then responded with 

2 hours ago, S4NGH said:

The prophet mohammad according to the Quran was the last of the prophets. Khatam an nabiyin. Guru sahib is not a prophet or a messenger or a partner of god or anything remotely like the prophets. Guru sahib is Akal roop. The prophets were men who were given tasks.

And I followed up with: 

36 minutes ago, BhForce said:

Depends on what you define a prophet as. I agree that Guru Sahib is Akal rup. But a hypothetical apostate of Muslim background would not be helping himself (in the eyes of Muslims) by stating "No, no, I'm not saying Guru is a prophet after Mohammed. I'm saying he's Akal roop (i.e,. even higher than Mohammed)". You'd be even more apostate than you were before.

 

[BhForce]

Now on to some other aspects of this question, namely definitions.

What do you define as a Muslim? A person with Muslim parentage? By that definition Barrack Obama is a Muslim because his father was a Muslim. (He's a Christian and has attended a church for decades.) But if that's your definition of Muslim, then Farid ji was a Muslim, end of discussion.

I don't think that's a useful definition, because that's the equivalent of saying a Hindu is a person with Hindu parentage, which means that Guru Nanak Dev ji was a Hindu, as are we, and we can just shut this message board down and go over to a Hindu forum.

Speaking of Hindus, the definition of "Hindu" according to some is anybody living past the River Indus. By that definition Sikhs are Hindus. And that's the definition that Jahangir used when he called Guru Arjan Dev ji a "Hindu". But that's still not a useful definition for us.

Regarding Muslims, I think that a useful definition is a person that accepts the Quran in its entirety and also the Hadith. Such a person would automatically accept the Muslim view on apostasy. It is my contention that Sheikh ji was not a Muslim by this definition.

[BhForce]

For anybody that thinks Farid ji was a Muslim, I would like to ask: Do you believe Bhagat Namdev ji was a Hindu?

[BhForce]

44 minutes ago, Sukhvirk76 said:

If you believe in truth what do you care what others think? You cannot bear false witness to the truth 

Right, you're just backing up what I said: Sheikh Farid ji was blessed by Satguru with the truth. At that point he didn't care anymore with what the Prophet Mohammed or any other Muslim thought. And he bore true witness to the Guru (in his bani).

[MisterrSingh]

He was as much a practicing Muslim as Jesus was a practicing Jew, or Guru Nanak Dev Ji was a stringent adherent to the Hindu religion. The bani Farid Ji authored makes this fact unequivocally clear. 

[Guest Jacfsing2]

7 hours ago, BhForce said:

 

What do you define as a Muslim? A person with Muslim parentage? By that definition Barrack Obama is a Muslim because his father was a Muslim. (He's a Christian and has attended a church for decades.) But if that's your definition of Muslim, then Farid ji was a Muslim, end of discussion

It's probably safe not to make those comparisions, since a big chunk of the population believes he was Muslim and is Muslim: 

 

[MisterrSingh]

11 minutes ago, Sukhvirk76 said:

 

Self-identified as a Muslim? That's a pretty loose definition. I think you've previously mentioned that to reduce Muslims to one homogeneous bloc is reductive, but you seem to be doing the same thing. What kind of Muslim was he?

If his compositions are any indication of his philosophical outlook on life, he wasn't much of a Muslim. If there's anything in the writings of Sheikh Farid Ji that instructs us how to remove semen and blood stains from clothing, i think it's pretty safe to say he wasn't much of a Muslim, according to the criteria established in the Quran and the Hadiths, regardless of whether he self-identified as a Muslim.

Rachel Dolzeal, the white American activist and academic, isn't a black woman because she self identifies as one, no matter how much she wishes it were true. 

 

[MisterrSingh]

46 minutes ago, Sukhvirk76 said:

Jesus did see himself as a practising jew. A rabbi in fact 

Again, you seem to be stretching the definitions of these terms to fit your arguments, which is strange.

At the time of Jesus, official ordination into rabbinic circles wasn't even a thing. The term rabbi was an unofficial title of honour and respect conferred on a person worthy of that label, and it was more a method of a disciple or student addressing his teacher with the necessary reverence instead of an official certification of a person's level of Jewishness. Equally, he wasn't a member of the Christian clergy, lol, but that's self explanatory.

The same principle applies to all founders of various faiths - and other notable personalities - who were born into one particular people but found a "calling" in a set of beliefs that differed from the ways prescribed by the religion of their families.

[MisterrSingh]

8 minutes ago, Sukhvirk76 said:

So now you have the right to define him since it undermines your own identity tropes? 

As i said, brother, please identify anything in his compositions that is congruous with the broad framework of teachings of the Islamic faith as it pertains to their ideology and vision for Muslims and non-Muslim humanity in general, in particular that example I've highlighted above. Just one example will suffice. 

[jkvlondon]

1 hour ago, Sukhvirk76 said:

Jesus did see himself as a practising jew. A rabbi in fact 

sorry he was referred by others as Rabbi, he never claimed it himself .... he was against the priest caste (yes the pharisees are a caste in judaism much like Brahmin). He was A nazarite much like Samson so was something totally different ...