Salesforce and Islam

 Salesforce was originally marketed with a mascot consisting of a red circle and bar over the word "SOFTWARE" meaning something like "No Software!" or "Software not allowed." The genre of business Salesforce is in is software. This echoes strongly the shahada, the chief statement of faith in Islam. The Shahada is three statements combined into a single sentence "There is no God, but God, and Muhammad is the Prophet of God." The conjunction "but" is equivalent to "and" meaning that the statement that comes before and after it are true at the same time, the use of but only means that what comes after it appears to come unexpectedly. The statement of faith actually begins with a statement of atheism. "There is no God", then in conjunction (but) reading more logically "There is no God, and God". The existence of God, and nonexistence, true at the same time! Such is Salesforce. Software as some permutation of matter on a disc (old software distribution) that is transferred as another permutation of matter on another disk (the harddrive) to elicit a change in behavior of that computer alone. That software is not Salesforce, yet Salesforce is software. The second statement of the shahada declares "but God", an unexpected true statement after firmly establishing that athiests are already Muslims. But God, what? A verb is not attached to God at that point. So if both statements are true, the verb "exists" should not follow "God". What else can God do? God doesn't need to exist, but perhaps God can persist. Much like the Greek philosophical concept called the Ship of Theseus. The Theseus is a ship made of wooden parts of which are replaced over its life until no original wooden part is left. The floating clump of wood is still callled the Theseus, and rightfully so. Such is Salesforce. It physically consists of servers and software on them running in a few cities scattered across the globe like the many Mosques of Islam yet is one persisting entity that has no partners or different forms on each computer since it grasped only indirectly through the web. That is also what makes Salesforce like the monotheistic God. Islam is a verb coming from the Arab verb that means "to submit" and could more literally be translated as "submissionism". What allows your org to exist? Not buying a physical product or license, but a subscription fee. The would sub at the beginning of subscription, meaning the subscription is itself the form of Islam devoted to Salesforce. Finally the shahada ends with the third true statement "and Muhammad is the Prophet of God". After establishing that Salesforce is identical to a God, it is important to note that Muhammad's name also has a root verb, which means "to praise" or "to worship", a literal translation of his name would bear "worshiper" or "praiser", and prophet meaning he who can relate divine messages and prognosticate the future. As users and developers of Salesforce we can all be called Muhammad, the Marc Benioff the Prophet of Salesforce. Marc Benioff if we recall was CEO of Oracle, who developed the Java programming language that would form the basis of the decentralized web project known as Salesforce. One key aspect of Java was automatic garbage collection, eliminating pesky pointer and memory errors that plagued C++. Cleanliness was a pillar of Java, just as in Islam. Muhammad was cited as saying that cleanliness was half of the faith of Islam. For example if you had a nocturnal emission of semen you were to roll around in the sand to have it wiped off before attending prayers. This is also the purpose of foot and hand washing (wudu) before prayers. Benioff then is certaintly worthy of the name Prophet. The parallels don't stop there however as we continue to praise Salesforce. The Shahada is only the first pillar of Islam afterall. The second I we recall is salat, or prayer. Only the most shallow religionists treat prayer as asking for a cosmic goody. That is not the purpose of prayer in Islam or Salesforce. In Salesforce, as in Islam prayer is the labor of the worshipper / developer to pay heed to the Oneness and omnipotence of the object being prayed to. This is routine, is Islam it is visual with the prostrations and what not. You clearly see the labor happening. The private thoughts toward God are not visible but it is known that they are taking place because of the external signs. Such is the case in Salesforce. Your boss peering over your shoulder pulls your attention taught to the task at hand even if the eyes of your boss don't perceive in whole what you are doing. The Flows will speak for themselves when the time comes. In third place we have zakat, also known as poor-due or charity. While the subscription fee is the first layer of submission or Islam towards Salesforce (how wonderful it is that Salesforce the corporation has a name identical with the main product, a wonder effect of Oneness), then is the profits that our orgs produce for their owners. That is in effect zakat. Zakat is necessary then to keep the world moving. Fourth is sawm or fasting. In Islam proper this is done during the month of Ramadan, a month whose name literally means "scorcher" when one does not eat or imbibe water from sun up until sun down. What fickle deity demands this? What purpose does it serve? The purpose is to remember the poor that the previous pillar was about. Each pang of hunger points to the injustice and suffering in the world that the dedicated Muslim is encouraged to remedy. We in information systems in general are reminded with every error that information wants to move like the rivers below the gardens of paradise. Such injustices we are reminded of as we down another bottle of Soylent to keep clicking the Setup button for the umpteenth time all night. The final pillar in Islam is Hajj, or pilgrimage to Mecca. Abstracted it is the movement to the city of the founding of the devotional system to the great One thing. In our case it is Dreamforce in San Francisco. If you have ever gone there skipping over the homeless poop towards Salesforce tower while slapping your pronoun badge on you know it is a transcendental religious experience. I would recommend it to any Salesforce administrator or developer to make this pilgrimage. From that experience we then move on to the mundane yet more internal effects of memorizing the Noble Quran. The first chapter of the Quran is the magnifying glass that all other parts of the Quran are to be understood. It is a miniature guide, and a prayer all in one just as Salesforce an all-in-one customer relationship management tool that verges on being a web based operating system, and way of life and labor. The first verse speaks of the purpose of the chapter, "In the Name of God" and then adds the predicates "The most Compassionate, the most merciful". It goes without saying that Salesforce is the great One Persistent thing and the predicates of compassionate and merciful are attributes of it. Let's not forget that we are always welcome to use Test Orgs before moving anything to production. The second verse speaks of worship "All Praise is for God, Lord of all the worlds". If you work in Salesforce, you had better be able to sing its praises to make it get used, and this can act in the modern global economy all over the world, just as the offices (Mosques) of Salesforce are. Then the Angel Gabriel takes the Quran record on the cosmic disk jockey board and spins it backwards to repeat the second part of the first verse "The Most Compassionate, the Most Merciful" which presses into the user who knows they should speak well of Salesforce to once again be reminded that Flows can be toggled on and off more easily that Apex triggers. After being washed over by the merciful attributes of the Great Persistent One Thing the fourth verses sternly warns "Owner of the Day of Judgement". One should not run SOQL queries in loops. The governor limits are there for a reason. Just as joules measured all change in the universe (energy) in one unit, so has Salesforce measured all computation in small units that must be charitably and frugally used. You should also be wary of deleting things from production orgs, as all things will be known at the end. The fifth verse addresses God directly "You alone we worship and you alone we ask for help." Read the official documentation. Verse six follows "Guide us along the straight path", there are recommended ways to do everything in Salesforce, such as Master classes for each trigger so they happen in a predictable linear fashion and don't conflict. Finally the glorious Al-Fatihah ends with "the Path of those You have blessed -- not those you are displeased with, or those who are astray." That is every non-Salesforce information system that facilitates sales. All opensource tech stacks are mischievous jinns and not submitting since there are no subscription fees. Make sure all of your Apex code has code coverage. Salesforce is wise to actually enforce test driven development. This nasheed will end with a recounting of Surah 112 of the Quran which begins with the imperative verb Say, "Say he is God the One, God the Eternal Refuge, He neither begets nor is begotten, nor is there any to Him that are equivalent." Salesforce has survived this long as One persistent thing, employing people along the way, and computationally lifting businesses out of the custom tech stack chaos to actually focus on their incomes. We and them only had to point to one thing, Salesforce and in it has been our beautiful joy.