The verse 2...

The verse 2:253 says: "These Messengers, We have made some of them to excel the others; among them are some to whom Allah spoke, and some of them He exalted by degrees of rank..." And the verse 2:285 says: "The Messenger believes in that has been revealed to him from his Lord, and (so do) the believers; they all believe in Allah and His angels and His books and His messengers; (they say,) we make no difference between any of His messengers..." A: If you had taken a few minutes to ponder on the two verses before writing this question, you could have solved the problem yourself.

The former verse described the messengers' varying degrees of rank before Allah, while the latter describes the responsibilities of the believers towards all of them. (It had been hinted in the reply to the Question 12 of Your Questions Answered, Vol.3 from which you have copied only half of the reply), the lines you have omitted say: "Its meaning is that we have to^believe in all the Messengers of Allah.

We should not be like Jews who do not believe in Hadhrat 'Isa (a.s.) and Hadhrat Muhammad Mustafa (s.a.w.), nor like Christians who do not believe in Hadhrat Muhammad Mustafa (s.aw.)." Let us say, there are 50 teachers in a secondary school. Naturally their status differs from one to the other - one is the Principal; another, Vice-principal, a few are heads of their departments, and so on. Their scales of pay also differ according to their qualification, experience and rank.

But all these matters are between the Board of Governors and the teachers. As far as the students are concerned, they have to pay respect to all the teachers, be he senior or junior, obey their orders and listen attentively to what they teach. Even with this obligation of respecting all of them without any difference, the students, like every body else, know and understand that the Principal's rank is the highest, followed by that of the Vice-principal, and so on Q.

13: QUR'AN: PROTECTED FROM TAHRIF: I am sending to you photocopy of 2 pages of a booklet distributed by the Wahhabis in Mombasa. It quotes some ahadith from Shi'a books purporting to show that the Shi'a do not believe in the present Qur'an, because they think there is alteration and omission in it. Now is it a fact that the present Qur'an is not complete according to our belief? Is it because the majority sect belives in its authenticity and we just follow in TAQIYA?