What is Islam?
﴿ما الإسلام؟ ﴾
]English – إنجليزي[
2011 -1432
Amongthe blessings and favors that God has bestowed upon humanity is that He endowedthem with an innate ability to recognize and acknowledge His existence. Heplaced this awareness deep in their hearts as a natural disposition that hasnot changed since human beings were first created. Furthermore, He reinforcedthis natural disposition with the signs that he placed in Creation that testifyto His existence. However, since it is not possible for human beings to have adetailed knowledge of God except through revelation from Himself, God sent HisMessengers to teach the people about their Creator Who they must worship. TheseMessengers also brought with them the details of how to worship Allah, becausesuch details cannot be known except by way of revelation. These twofundamentals were the most important things that the Messengers of all thedivine revelations brought with them from God. On this basis, all the divinerevelations have had the same lofty objectives, which are:
1.To affirm the Oneness of Allah - the praised and glorified Creator – in Hisessence and His attributes.
2.To affirm that Allah alone should be worshipped and that no other being shouldbe worshipped along with Him or instead of Him.
3.To safeguard human welfare and oppose corruption and evil. Thus, everythingthat safeguards faith, life, reason, wealth and lineage are part of this humanwelfare that religion protects. On the other hand, anything that endangersthese five universal needs is a form of corruption that religion opposes andprohibits.
4.To invite the people to the highest level of virtue, moral values, and noblecustoms.
Theultimate goal of every Divine Message has always been the same: to guide thepeople to Allah, to make them aware of Him, and to have them worship Him alone.Each Divine Message came to strengthen this meaning, and the following wordswere repeated on the tongues of all the Messengers: “Worship Allah, you have nogod other than Him.” This message was conveyed to humanity by prophets andmessengers which God sent to every nation. All of these messengers came withthis same message, the message of Islam.
Allthe Divine Messages came to bring the life of the people into willingsubmission to Allah. For this reason, they all share the name of Islam, whichmeans submission in Arabic. Islam, in this sense, was the religion of all theProphets, but why does one see different variations of the religion of God ifthey all emanated from the same source? The answer is twofold.
Thefirst reason is that as a result of the passage of time, and due to the factthat previous religions were not under the Divine protection of God, theyunderwent much change and variation. As a result, we see that the fundamentaltruths which were brought by all messengers now differ from one religion toanother, the most apparent being the strict tenet of the belief and worship ofGod and God alone.
Thesecond reason for this variation is that God, in His infinite Wisdom andeternal Will, decreed that all the divine missions prior to the final messageof Islam brought by Muhammad, may the Peace and Blessings of Allah be upon him,be limited to a specific time frame. As a result, their laws and methodologiesdealt with the specific conditions of the people whom they had been sent toaddress.
Humanityhas passed through numerous periods of guidance, misguidance, integrity, anddeviation, from the most primitive age to the heights of civilization. Divineguidance accompanied humanity through all of this, always providing theappropriate solutions and remedies.
Thiswas the essence of the disparity that existed between the different religions.This disagreement never went beyond the particulars of the Divine Law. Eachmanifestation of the Law addressed the particular problems of the people it wasmeant for. However, the areas of agreement were significant and many, such asfundamentals of faith; the basic principles and objectives of the Divine Law,such as protecting faith, life, reason, wealth, and lineage and establishingjustice in the land; and certain fundamental prohibitions, some of the mostimportant of these being idolatry, fornication, murder, theft, and giving falsewitness. Moreover, they also agreed upon moral virtues like honesty, justice,charity, kindness, chastity, righteousness, and mercy. These principles as wellas others are permanent and lasting; they are the essence of all the DivineMessages and bind them all together.
Butwhere does the message of Muhammad fit in with the previous messages revealedby God? A brief history of the prophets might clear this point.
Thefirst human, Adam, followed Islam, in that he directed worship to God alone andnone else and abided by His commandments. But through the passage of time andthe dispersal of humanity throughout the earth, people strayed from thismessage and began directing worship to others instead of or along with God.Some took to worshipping the pious who passed away amongst them, while otherstook to worshipping spirits and forces of nature. It was then that God startedto send messengers to humanity steering them back to the worship of God Alone,which accorded to their true nature, and warning them of the grave consequencesof directing any type of worship to others besides Him.
Thefirst of these messengers was Noah, who was sent to preach this message ofIslam to his people, after they had started to direct worship to their piousforefathers along with God. Noah called his people to leave the worship oftheir idols, and ordered them to return to the worship of God Alone. Some ofthem followed the teachings of Noah, while the majority disbelieved in him.Those who followed Noah were followers of Islam, or Muslims, while those thatdid not, remained in their disbelief and were seized with a punishment fordoing so.
AfterNoah, God sent messengers to every nation who had strayed from the Truth, tosteer them back to it. This Truth was the same throughout time: to reject allobjects of worship and to direct all worship without exception to God and noneelse, the Creator and Lord of all, and to abide by His commandments. But as wementioned before, because each nation differed in regards to their way of life,language, and culture, specific messengers were sent to specific nations for aspecific time period.
Godsent messengers to all nations, and to the Kingdom of Babylon He sent Abraham –one of the earliest and greatest prophets – who called his people to reject theworship of the idols to which they were devoted. He called them to Islam, butthey rejected him and even tried to kill him. God put Abraham through manytests, and he proved true to all of them. For his many sacrifices, God proclaimedthat he would raise amongst his progeny a great nation and choose prophets fromamongst them. Whenever people from his progeny started to stray away from theTruth, which was to worship none but God alone and to obey His commandments,God sent them another messenger steering them back to it.
Consequently,we see that many prophets were sent amongst the progeny of Abraham, such as histwo sons Isaac and Ishmael, along with Jacob (Israel), Joseph, David, Solomon,Moses, and of course, Jesus, to mention a few, may the Peace and Blessings ofGod be upon them all. Each prophet was sent to the Children of Israel (theJews) when they went astray from the true religion of God, and it becameobligatory upon them to follow the messenger which was sent to them and obeytheir commandments. All of the messengers came with the same message, to rejectworship of all other beings except God Alone and to obey His commandments. Somedisbelieved in the prophets, while others believed. Those that believed werefollowers of Islam, or Muslims.
Fromamongst the messengers was Muhammad, from the progeny of Ishmael, the son ofAbraham, may the Peace and Blessings of God be upon him, who was sent as amessenger in succession to Jesus. Muhammad (pbuh) preached the same message ofIslam as the previous prophets and messengers – to direct all worship to GodAlone and none else and to obey His commandments – in which the followers ofthe previous prophets went astray.
Soas we see, the Prophet Muhammad was not the founder of a new religion, as manypeople mistakenly think, but he was sent as the Final Prophet of Islam. Byrevealing His final message to Muhammad, which is an eternal and universalmessage for all of mankind, God finally fulfilled the covenant that He madewith Abraham.
Justas it was incumbent upon the those who were alive to follow the message of thelast of the succession of Prophets which was sent to them, it becomes incumbentupon all of humanity to follow the message of Muhammad (pbuh). God promisedthat this message would remain unchanged and fit for all times and places.Suffice it to say that the way of Islam is the same as the way of the prophetAbraham, because both the Bible and the Quran portray Abraham as a toweringexample of someone who submitted himself completely to God and directed worshipto Him alone and none else, and without any intermediaries. Once this isrealized, it should be clear that Islam has the most continuous and universalmessage of any religion, because all prophets and messengers were “Muslims”,i.e. those who submitted to God’s will, and they preached “Islam”, i.e.submission to the will of Almighty God by worshipping Him Alone and obeying Hiscommandments.
Sowe see that those who call themselves Muslims today do not follow a new religion;rather they follow the religion and message of all prophets and messengerswhich were sent to humanity by God’s command, also known as Islam. The word“Islam” is an Arabic word which literally means “submission to God”, andMuslims are those who willfully submit to and actively obey God, living inaccordance with His message.
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