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ISLAM: THE UNIVERSAL RELIGION OF
BROTHERHOOD AND SOLIDARITY
Islam, literally meaning peace, submission, and
obedience, is first of all, the religion for the whole universe.
Islam as the religion for the whole of the
universe
We see that the universe is an orderly
universe, a cosmos, whose parts are linked together and are
working together towards the same purpose and common goal.
Everything in the universe is assigned a place in a grand scheme
which is working in a magnificent and superb way. The sun, the
moon, the stars and in fact all the heavenly bodies are knit
together in a splendid system. They follow an unalterable law and
do not make even the slightest deviation from their ordained
course. Everything in the world, from the little whirling electron
to the mighty nebulae, invariably follows its own laws. Even in
the human world the laws of nature are quite manifest. Man’s
birth, growth, and the life are all regulated by a set of ‘biological’
laws. All the organs of his body from the small tissues to the
heart and brain are governed by the laws prescribed for them.
The universe, although it seems monotonous,
blindly obeying a set of laws, is neither a factory as thought of
by theists of the eighteenth century, nor is it a chaos as
conceived by the existentialist philosophers, which has nothing to
say to man. Instead, it is a lively, dynamic organism each part of
which works according to the position it occupies in the whole,
and fulfills its share in the system of mutual relationships. God,
on the other hand, is not a passive power which has left the
universe to itself so that it should work automatically but is an
ever-active Power the theophanies of Whose Names reflect in the
mirror of the universe unceasingly. By each reflection of the
Divine Names or, in other words, by the incessant flashes of the
Divine theophanies is the universe renewed so that each moment a
completely new universe is manifested. This renewal, however,
depends on certain immutable principles without which it would
have been impossible for man to live since he must have some
unchanging principles according to which he could regulate his
life. These principles, which we deduce by observing the natural
events, do not have real and external existence but have nominal
existence only, are called natural laws. They have been all laid
down by the Creator and Ruler of the universe, so that the entire
creation obeys these laws of God. That is why Islam is, first of
all, the religion of the universe, for Islam signifies nothing but
obedience and submission to God, the Lord of the universe. The
sun, the moon, the earth, and all other heavenly bodies are thus
‘Muslim’. So is the case with air, water, and heat, stones,
trees, and animals. Everything in the universe is ‘Muslim’ for
it obeys God by submission to His laws. Even a man who refuses to
believe in God, or offers his worship to someone other than God,
has perforce to be a Muslim as far as his bodily existence is
concerned. For his entire life, from the embryonic stage to the
body’s dissolution into dust after death, and every tissue of
his muscles and every limb of his body follow the course
prescribed for each by God’s law. Thus, in Islam, God, nature,
and man are not remote from each other nor are they alien to each
other, and they certainly are not opposed to each other. It is God
Who makes Himself known to man through nature and man himself, and
nature and man are two books (of creation) through each word of
which God is visible. Islam is the name of the code according to
which nature operates without any disobedience, and man is
required, but not forced, to live by using his free will.
Islam as God’s grace flowing in the
arteries of the universe and as the religion governing human
life
Islam, being a word derived from ‘silm’
meaning also salvation and peace as well as submission, is the
expression of God’s grace flowing in the arteries of the
universe. Islam being the Divine system to which all the creation
except man has willingly submitted itself, there is no disorder
observed throughout the universe. Islam is the firm, unbreakable
rope stretched from Heaven, to which all creatures hold fast and,
by means of which, man will be able to ascend Paradise, from where
he came down to earth. Islam is a link which connects all
creatures into a single unity, and this explains why it is the
religion of universal brotherhood and solidarity.
Islam can be likened to a string of prayer
beads. Each bead on the string stands for a species. When the
string breaks, they will all scatter. This is just the case with
the world, especially with the Muslim World at present, where
people have been divided into groups of different classes, of
races, nations, territories and economies. They look upon nature
as “a prostitute to be used without any sense of obligation and
responsibility toward her.”
The principle of
Tawhid in Islam implies
the necessity of man’s being in harmony with the world around
him. The vast realm of the universe, which is in submission to one
God only, displays a coherence and harmony of which the human
world is also a part. Although the human world is subject, in
addition to the general laws of nature, to a particular set of
laws special to itself, yet it is also in harmony with other laws
governing the rest of the phenomena beyond it. Man, unlike his
fellow creatures who tread the path of nature, is endowed with the
power of free will. He carries the gift of freedom together with
the obligation to harmonize his life with the rest of nature -a
harmony which is also the path of his exaltation and progress.
This is the path upon which God has originated the nature of
mankind:
So set thy face to the religion, a man of
pure faith - God’s original nature in which He originated
mankind. There is no changing God’s creation. That is the
right religion; but most men know it not. (30:30)
Islam seeks to unite man with the vast domain
of being, and strives to create an absolute unity between the
universe and man. Man is the most essential partner in the realm
of existence; and a Muslim is the co-religionist of all creatures
in the universe:
What, do they desire another religion
than God’s, while to Him has surrendered whosoever is in
the heavens and the earth, willingly or unwillingly, and to
Him they shall be returned? (3:83)
Have you not seen how to God prostrate
all who are in the heavens and all who are in the earth, the
sun, the moon, the stars and the mountains, the trees and
the beasts, and many of mankind?.. (22:18)
The mission of other Prophets
The religions prior to Islam were not meant to
be universal religions. As far as their fundamental messages and
teachings are concerned, the religion of Moses and of Jesus was
not different from Islam, yet neither did contain complete
guidance for all aspects of human life for all nations and ages.
During the countless centuries of human history, when the
different nations of mankind lived in more or less complete
isolation, there was no means of rapid communication between one
nation and another, so God sent different Prophets to the
different peoples. Moses and Jesus were two of these national
Prophets, both were the Prophets to the Israelites. This is what
DR. C.J. Cadoux writes regarding the limited scope of the mission
of Jesus:
The office of Messiahship with which
Jesus believed himself to be invested, marked him out for a
distinctly national role: and accordingly we find him more
or less confining his preaching and healing ministry and
that of his disciples to Jewish territory, and feeling
hesitant when on one occasion he was asked to heal a Gentile
girl. Jesus’ obvious veneration for Jerusalem, the Temple,
and the Scriptures indicate the special place which he
accorded to Israel in his thinking, and several features of
his teaching illustrate the same attitude. Thus, in calling
his hearers ‘brothers’ of one another and frequently
contrasting their ways with those of ‘the Gentiles’, in
defending his cure of a woman on the Sabbath with the plea
that she was a ‘daughter of Abraham’ and befriending the
tax-collector Zacchaeus ‘because he too is a son of
Abraham’, and in fixing the number of his special
disciples at twelve to match the number of the tribes of
Israel -in all this Jesus shows how strongly Jewish a stamp
he wished to impress upon his mission.” (The Life of
Jesus, pp. 81,82)
Jesus himself declared his mission to be
restricted to the Israelites by saying: “I have been sent only
to the lost sheep of the people of Israel.” (Matthew,
15:24)
Each nation having been separately guided to
the truth by the national Prophets, the time ultimately became
ripe for the World-Prophet (peace be upon him) to be raised to
preach the universal religion. Thus, when the world was on the eve
of becoming one, God raised up the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon
him) to transmit the essential message of all the Prophets, shorn
of all that was of a temporary and limited nature and purged of
all the later adulterations and misinterpretations. God revealed
to him the all-embracing religion as a universal faith, containing
the unadulterated message of all the Prophets. He united the
peoples of all nations and lands into a single world-wide
brotherhood and gave the world a complete code of life for the
whole of humanity. So there is nothing in Islam which is of
benefit only to the people of a particular region or age. The Holy
Quran enjoins nothing which is not of uniformly inspiring,
edifying and practicable for peoples of all nations and times. The
religious and moral teachings of Islam are of a universal nature.
Islam is the consummation of all religions: A
good Muslim is also a good follower of Moses and Jesus
Since the religions prior to Islam were of a
national character, their followers tended to believe that they
were chosen peoples. The Christians acknowledge only the Prophets
of Israel while the Jewish people reject the Prophethood of Jesus.
Islam says, however, that it would be a denial of the universal
providence of God to assert that Prophets were raised for one
nation only. According to the Holy Quran, God is the Lord and
Sustainer of all the worlds. As He has not discriminated between
nations in sending His revelations, so Muslims make no distinction
between any of His Messengers:
The Messenger (Muhammad) believes in what
was sent down to him from his Lord, and the believers; each
one believes in God and His angels, and in His books and His
Messengers; we make no division between any of His
Messengers. They say, ‘We hear, and obey. Our Lord, grant
us Thy forgiveness; unto You is the homecoming. (2:285)
Islam is the consummation of all religions. By
accepting the Prophets and Scriptures of all nations, Islam
affirms the unity and universal providence of God and the
universality of religious experience, and also seeks to bring
together people of all races and creeds in a single all-embracing
Faith and Brotherhood. Further, a ‘Muslim’ is also the true
follower of all Prophets including Moses and Jesus. Such being the
case, while Christian means ‘the one who follows Jesus Christ’
and Judaism has completely turned into the racial religion of
Jewish people only, Muslims totally reject the term of ‘Muhammadanism’,
a term used of them by non-Muslims. To understand Islam as its
adherents do, one should purge the word ‘Muhammadan’ or ‘Muhammadanism’
from one’s vocabulary. The labeling of Islam as Muhammadanism is
the result of a false analogy with Christianity. Muslims do not
worship Muhammad as Christians worship Christ. Muhammad was
neither a god, nor an incarnation, nor the son of God. He never
claimed to be more than a man who received revelations from God.
He did not make Islam, he simply received the Message of Islam.
Islam does not accept contradictions in any
field of life
Since Islamic
Tawhid, as an expression
of human existence, implies the equality and unity of all human
beings in their relation with God, it bears the notion of
homogeneity, equality and unity of human origin. Humanness is the
single basic element ingrained in the nature of all human
individuals. Human beings associated with the different social
strata are neither the creations of different gods so that any
disparity could exist in their essential nature, thus giving rise
to insuperable barriers between them; nor do the upper classes of
society have a more powerful god than the lower classes. All are
the creation of one and the same God, and all are uniform in their
fundamental essence:
O mankind, fear your Lord, Who created
you of a single soul.. (4:1).
Thus, Islam cannot accept legal, physical,
class, social, political, racial, national, territorial, genetic,
or even economic contradictions. The Islamic world-view of
Tawhid implies a mode of looking upon all human beings as a
unity and eliminates all contradictions between black and white,
ruler and ruled, employers and employees, intellectuals and the
masses, noble and vile, clergy and laity, eastern an western, Arab
and non-Arab, capitalist and proletarian etc. All such
contradictions are reconcilable only with the world-view of shirk
-dualism, trinitarianism or polytheism, and are absent with the
philosophy of Tawhid. The Holy Quran declares that
mankind have been created male and female and formed into races
and tribes so that they may know one another and not take pride in
their color or race or claim superiority over others on account of
their color, race or social or economic status; the noblest among
them in the sight of God is the most God-fearing of them. The Holy
Prophet (God’s peace and blessing be upon him) is also reported
to have said: “Your God is one, you are from Adam and Adam is
from dust; an Arab has no superiority over a non-Arab nor white
over a black except on account of piety and righteousness.”
The Islamic belief in the unity of mankind is
the corollary of the doctrine of the Unity of God. The self-same
God is the Creator and Nourisher of men and women of all nations,
races, colors, creeds and cultures. Hence all mankind are slaves
of God and the most dear to Him is one who is the best of them.
The Holy Prophet is reported to have said:
God says to His slaves on the Day of
Reckoning: “ O man, you did not visit Me when I was ill.”
Man responds: “How could it be that I would visit You
since You are the Lord of the creation?” God says: “Do
you not remember that my servant so-and-so got ill but you
did not visit him. If you had visited him, you would have
found Me with him. O man, you did not give Me food when I
asked you for it.” Man responds: “How could it be that I
would give You food seeing that You are the Lord of the
creation?” God says: “Do you not remember that my
servant so-and-so asked you to give him food but you did not
do so. If you had given him food, you would have found Me
with him.” God continues: “O man, you did not give Me
water when I asked you.” Man responds: “How could it be
that I would give You water since You are the Lord of the
creation?” God retorts: “Do you not remember that my
servant so-and-so asked you to give him water but you did
not. If you had given him water, you would have found Me
with him.”
The Prophet (God’s peace and blessings be
upon him) informs us that a prostitute finally deserved to go to
Paradise since she gave water to a thirsty dog out of compassion,
whereas another woman went to Hell because she had left a cat
dying of hunger.
This is Islam with its arms wide-open to all
creatures, regions and ages.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
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Said Nursi, Mektubat (The Letters 1,
The Letters 2), Istanbul
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Muhyiddin an-Nawavi,
Forty Hadiths
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Abu’l-A‘la al-Mawdudi,
Tafhim al-Qur’an,
(Turkish trans),1991
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Towards Understanding Islam, 1970
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G. W. Choudhury, Islam and the
Contemporary World, London,1990
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A. Izzeti, The Revolutionary Islam,
1980
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U.A. Samad, Islam and Christianity,
1977
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A.C. Morrison, Insan, Kainat ve Otesi
(Turkish
trans.)1973
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S.H. Nasr, Ideals and Realities of Islam,
London,1966
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