Who is Shabir Ally?Shabir Ally is a Canadian Muslim preacher who serves as the president of the Islamic Information & Dawah Centre International in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Ally is known for promoting a contextual interpretation of the Quranic verses, but seeks to find their justification in similar expressions within the Christian Bible. He has debated William Lane Craig, David Wood, Nabeel Qureshi, Michael Licona and John Dominic Crossan. He has also debated apologists James White and Jay Smith.
What are Religions?Religion is a range of social-cultural systems, including designated behaviors and practices, ethics, morals, beliefs, worldviews, texts, sanctified places, prophecies, or organizations, that generally relate humanity to supernatural, transcendental, and spiritual elements. There is no scholarly consensus over what precisely constitutes a religion. It is an essentially contested concept. Different religions may or may not contain various elements ranging from the divine, sacredness, faith, and a supernatural being or beings.
The origin of religious belief is an open question, with possible explanations including awareness of individual death, a sense of community, and dreams. Religions have sacred histories, narratives, and mythologies, preserved in oral traditions, sacred texts, symbols, and holy places, that may attempt to explain the origin of life, the universe, and other phenomena. Religious practice may include rituals, sermons, commemoration or veneration (of deities or saints), sacrifices, festivals, feasts, trances, initiations, matrimonial and funerary services, meditation, prayer, music, art, dance, or public service.
There are an estimated 10,000 distinct religions worldwide, though nearly all of them have regionally based, relatively small followings. Four religions: Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism account for over 77% of the world's population, and 92% of the world either follows one of those four religions or identifies as non-religious, meaning that the vast majority of remaining religions account for only 8% of the population combined.
Who is GOD?In monotheism and henotheism, God is conceived as the Supreme Being and principal object of faith. The concept of God as described by theologians commonly includes the attributes of omniscience (infinite knowledge), omnipotence (unlimited power), omnipresence (present everywhere), omnibenevolence (perfect goodness), divine simplicity, and eternal and necessary existence.
In theism, God is the creator and sustainer of the universe
In deism, God is the creator, but not the sustainer, of the universe
Monotheism is the belief in the existence of one God or in the oneness of God
In pantheism, God is the universe itself
In atheism, God is purported not to exist, while deemed unknown or unknowable within the context of agnosticism.