Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Islam is the religion taught in its fundamentals by all the prophets. It is the religion which the first human being was instructed to follow. It is the religion of Noah, Abraham, Moses, Jesus and Muhammad and all other prophets (peace be upon them all) throughout the existence of human beings. From the world view of Islam, most of the world's major religions originated in the pure religion of Islam itself and only through the teachings being lost, forgotten or wilfully corrupted have these religions changed. Judaism claims special status for the Jews as the chosen people - a status which cannot be acquired except through birth [1] and which makes a Jew superior to any non-Jew (goyim) whatever their beliefs. Christianity insists that you must believe in various doctrines which form the foundations of what is distinctively 'Christian' belief in order to be 'saved' (i.e. that Jesus (peace be upon him) died to atone for the sins of Mankind, that Allah is a trinity etc.). This doctrine, the (Catholic) church itself admits [2], didn't develop until several hundred years after Christ and so cannot possibly have applied to those before Jesus nor to his early followers. In contrast to this, Islam has at its core, a simple message which applies to all human beings before Muhammad (pbuh) and all after his time: "...And they say: "None shall enter paradise unless he be a Jew or a Christian." Those are their (vain)
desires. Say: "Produce your proof if you are truthful." Nay whoever submits his whole self to Allah and is a doer of good, he will get his reward with his Lord; on such shall be no fear nor shall they grieve." Qur'an 2:111-112
The word used in this verse for 'submits' is 'aslama'. It is from this verb that the word 'Islam' comes as 'the submitting'. Islam is a word that doesn't have any connection with an area or a particular character from history, it is the one and only truly universal religion and fittingly it has a truly universal name: The word "Islam" means voluntary submission to the will of Allah
For the Muslim, belief in Allah forms a foundational requirement of rationality and belief in Muhammad as the prophet of Allah follows from applying the rational mind to the evidence of his mission. There are many ways in which we may describe rational thinking. From the world view of Islam there is good thinking and bad thinking and 'rational' thinking is nothing more than morally good thinking. Someone who strives to do that which is right in the way he thinks, who is sincere and avoids self deception, someone who seeks the truth, avoids biases and prejudice in his opinions, who seeks knowledge from all available sources, someone who reflects on what he sees and always looks for explanations and doesn't accept that things are as they are simply without any reason, someone who tries to avoid any contradictions in his understandings, such a person is rational and such a person is one who seeks to think, learn and decide in a morally good way. If someone tries to do what is morally right they are already acknowledging that there is a moral good to achieve. Such moral value only exists if existence as a whole achieves something morally good, i.e. if existence has a purpose. If you think that existence as a whole has no purpose and achieves nothing, then it follows that whatever you do in life achieves exactly nothing as well - your life would contribute no value to existence. There is no moral good in doing what your own desires find good or what your family or nation finds good. The only way what you do achieves a moral good is if it achieves something towards the purpose of existence. Every good that can be achieved is either instrumental to the purpose of existence and therefore a true moral good or it is false good and worth nothing. The core of all value and purpose to existence is commonly known by the name Allah or God. He is the ultimate purpose to existence and the achievement of what is morally good equates to getting closer to Him. Allah is more than we can ever fully understand but in order to have morally good thinking it is essential to believe in Allah in some sense whatever name we use for Him. It is also essential to reject as having any hold over us anything or anyone who asserts that a good can be achieved without it being instrumental to the purpose to existence. i.e. without it being for the sake of Allah. A person who has amoral thinking or immoral thinking acknowledges that there is no inherent value to the way they think and will see no problem in changing the criteria by which they decide to accept or reject conclusions. Whatever definition of rationality could be used there is, for such people, no reason why they should accept it. If being rational by some definition leads to conclusions they don't like then they can just change the definition. In extreme cases there can never be enough evidence and strong arguments for them to accept a statement as true, they just continually move the criteria of what constitutes for them convincing evidence and argument.
Being rational means being a moral thinker. Being a moral thinker means believing in Allah. Only the irrational disbelieve.
Whatever your gods may be, becoming a Muslim frees you from the service of them and brings you to the service of Allah and only Allah. Believing that Muhammad is the messenger of Allah flows from believing in the Qur'an.