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"O ye who believe! Enter into Islam whole heartedly And follow not the footsteps of the Evil one; For he is to you An avowed enemy". (11 : 208)
The word Islam is derived from the Arabic root "SLM" which means submission to the will of God and obedience to his Law. Thus only through submission to the will of God and by obedience to His Law can one achieve true peace. The true name of the religion is then Islam and those who follow this religion of submission to the will of God are MUSLIMS. According to Islam everything in the world or every phenomenon other than man is administered by God made Laws. This makes the entire physical world necessarily obedient to God and submission to his Laws, which in turn means that it is in a state of Islam, or it is Muslim. The physical world has no choice of its own. It has no voluntary course to follow on its own initiative but always the Law of the Creator. The Law of Islam is submission. Man alone is singled out as being endowed with intelligence and the power of making choices. And because man possesses the qualities of intelligence and choice, he is invited to submit to the WILL of God and obey His Law. When he does choose the course of submission to the Law of God, he will be consistently with the truth and thus in harmony with all the other elements of the universe. But, if he chooses disobedience, he will deviate from the Right Path and will thus incur the displeasure and punishment of the Law. The Message of the Holy Qur'an, the revelation from God is "Islam". It is the religion of the entire universe, all the prophets who appeared from time to time before the Holy Prophet of Islam, Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) were all Muslims and they gave the message of submission to the will of God in Islam, which is the only true religion.
Question:
Answer: If Islam had not come, truth would not have been brought to the world. It was Islam which revived the teachings of Apostles and taught people purity and cleanliness. Outlined below are a few reasons for the necessity of Islam. i) Islam by its advent perfected religion, for teachings of previous revealed books were suited for their own time and had no universal appeal. The Qur'an filled that gap. ii) True teachings of Prophets were corrupted by their followers, which the Qur'an purified. For instance, Christians, by delying Jesus Christ, had built up the unstable and impossible structure of assigning partners to Allah, which was pulled down first. Islam brought the light of the sun of God's unity and presented the true form of God's Glory and Mercy to the world. iii) Ahl-i-Kitab or People of the Book had attributed many shameful act to Prophets, calling some of them liars, cheats and adulterers and thus making all Prophets sinners. Islam strongly refuted these charges and restored the real nobility and dignity of Prophets. iv) The Ahl-i-Kitab or People of the Book by interpreting their sacred Books, had manipulated them and so people's trust on all revealed Books was lost. The Qur'an exposed these manipulations and presented all the real teachings of previous Books anew. The Qur'an set itself up as the criterion to support, what was right and reject what was wrong. We have no need of any previous Book for guidance as the Qur'an now includes teachings of all the Books revealed to Prophets. v) Since previous Prophets and their revealed Books were for particular periods and their people, so they did not contain laws, which were needed by people till the last day. The gap was filled by the Qur'an and, after completing the code of religion, proclaimed that needs of all humanity are served in it by which men will be benefited till the Day of Judgement. "This day have I perfected your religion for you, completed my favour upon you, and have chosen for you Islam as your religion" (V:4)
Question:
Answer: It is true that the Prophet (PBUH) and the message of Islam is mentioned in the revelations which Allah had vouchsafed to earlier prophets and messengers. Indeed Allah tells us in the Qur'an that He had made a covenant with all prophets which stipulated that by the virtue of what He had given them of revelation and wisdom, should a messenger who endorses their own messages be sent to them, they would believe in him and support him. All the prophets had agreed to this covenant and pledged themselves to support that prophet and messenger. It is clear from the Quranic Text and the Prophet's Hadiths that it was Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) who was named in the covenant. Obviously, a pledge given by other prophets is binding on their followers. This is only to be expected since Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) is the last of all Allah's prophets and messengers. He has been given the final and complete form of Allah's single message based on the belief in the oneness of Allah. Since it is the final form, it naturally supersedes all earlier forms. Hence, the need for that pledge. We have a clear example of earlier prophets mention of Islam and its messenger "Jesus, son of Mary said: "O children of Israel, I am the Apostle of God (sent) to you. Confirming the Law (which came) before me, and giving glad tidings of an apostle to come after me, whose name shall be Ahmed". (LXI:6) It is universally known that Ahmad is another name of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH). In this case Allah quotes Prophet Jesus (PBUH) defining his own message and giving the news of that of Mohammad (PBUH) the last of all messengers. This is given in no ambiguous terms. Indeed it could not be made any clearer since the name of the messenger is given. Moreover it cannot be denied, since it is a statement by Allah himself, all this serves as a clear indication of what other messengers told their peoples and what have been included in their own revelations. It goes without saying that a prophet or messenger always complies with Allah's commandments given to him. When a messenger is required to give the news of another prophet or messenger he fulfils that order without hesitation. In this instance, it is Jesus (PBUH) who is quoted fulfilling that order. It is part of the essential beliefs of the Islamic faith that Muslims do believe in the prophets and messengers Allah sent to various peoples and nations throughout history. We believe that all those prophets such as Adam, Noah, Abraham, Lot, Joseph, Moses, David, Solomon, Zachariah and Jesus preached the same message of submission to Allah and worshipping Him alone as the only God in the universe. The basic message advanced by all these prophets, as well as others sent by Allah was that man must worship Allah alone and must not associate with him any partners. Their teachings centered on the need to accept the oneness of Allah as the fundamental, undeniable truth. Teachers of different prophets may differ in matters of detail or the form of worship, but they all share in the view that there can be no compromise in the basic principles of the oneness of God. Allah tells us very clearly in the Qur'an: He says
"The same religion Has He established for you that which He enjoined on Noah - The which we have sent By inspiration to thee And that which we enjoined on Abraham, Moses and Jesus: Namely, that ye should remain steadfast in Religion: and make no divisions thereof" (XLII : 13). We, Muslims accept that the followers of earlier prophets who maintained the basic principle of believing that there is no God other than Allah and followed the teachings of their prophets will be admitted into heaven in the hereafter. Those of later generations are called upon to believe in Islam since it is the final version of the same message preached by their prophets.
Question: If Islam has been the Religion of Abraham, Moses or Jesus then why are these different religions?
Answer: The answer is that they are essentially the same. They differ only in matters of detail. If people share the basic beliefs, they do not quarrel on matters of secondary importance. After all, all prophets stressed to their followers that they must be kind to other people. What we find today, however is that these religions are not essentially the same. They may share certain aspects in common, but differences between them are of essence not merely of detail. There can only be one interpretation for these differences, namely that distortion crept into these religion. Distortion can easily creep into any faith, if human beings are allowed to meddle with it. There are normally two types of people who can distort religions beliefs; rulers and priests. The former have temporal power and the latter the spiritual power. Both types can be manipulated in order to impose the desired interpretation on any principle of faith. History is full of examples where either power was manipulated in order to distort religion beliefs. Indeed, the need for a long line of prophet hood is explained by the fact that every time a messenger is sent by Allah to a certain people, distortion creeps into the message he preached and people are deviated off course united they reach a stage when they are no longer worshipping Allah as He wants to be worshipped. He, therefore, sends them another prophet to explain to them again what they should do in order to maintain the right faith. He, however, has chosen to end the line of prophet hood with Mohammad (PBUH), giving him the SAME message, which He had given to earlier prophets after putting it in its final and complete form. He has also willed to keep it available to mankind in its entirety and purity. He has guaranteed to preserve it from any distortion. Today, 1400 years after the death of Mohammad (PBUH) we have the same message available to us in the Qur'an, the word of Allah, which He has undertaken to preserve. Let us take one example of how distortion creeps into religion. Nowadays, the majority of people believe that in his primitive days, man worshipped certain symbols, or totems. He then moved on to worship natural forces such as the Sun, storms, thunder etc. He believed that such forces, or phenomena can benefit or harm him. By worshipping them, man sought to gain benefit from them and avoid any harm from them. We are further told by scholars of comparative religion and anthropology that when man progressed he began to assign symbols to these forces. This gave forth to worshipping idols and statues, where a statue represented a deity which controlled some of the natural phenomena. Further human progress led to a decrease in the number of idols worshipped, until man got to the stage when he worshipped two deities. One representing good and the other evil. Eventually, man arrived at the stage of maturity, which enabled him to worship a single god. This line of thinking runs totally contrary to Islamic beliefs. We may recite here the same verse (XLII : 13) which we have quoted earlier, specifying that Allah has decreed for us the same faith which He decreed to Noah, Abraham, Moses and Jesus. There are other verses in the Qur'an, which speak clearly of Adam teaching his children the faith of the oneness of Allah. This means that man was given the right faith at the beginning of his life on earth. He, however, moved away from the faith and distorted it, admitting into his belief matters, which cannot be sanctioned by divine faith. In the nature of things that Allah has explained to us, when man deviates from the right faith, his deviation, small as it may be at the beginning, may lead him to reject Allah altogether. As a sign of Allah's grace, He has sent us messengers to purify our faith, every time we have deviated from it. This was the role of Allah's messengers. Yet, some people, equipped with the distinction of scholarly research, try to persuade us that belief in the oneness of Allah is a recent development.
Question:
Answer: Let us remind ourselves that Allah is the most just of judges. He does not commit anyone to punishment when he does not deserve that punishment. It does not give Allah any pleasure to inflict punishment on anyone. A person is punishable because of the evil of what he or she has committed. We have the Quranic principle on which Allah says of Himself "(The apostle were sent) thus, for thy Lord would not destroy for their wrong-doing men's habitation whilst their occupants were unwarned". (VI:131) The role of the messenger is to call on people to abide by Allah's law and to warn them against violating it. Those who have not received the message of Islam even today, because they have been born in families of unbelievers and in non-Islamic societies, are in the same position as those who lived before the message of Islam reached them.
Question:
Answer: What one seems to forget is that there is a great difference between being disobedient and being a total unbeliever. A person may believe in Allah, acknowledge that He is one and accept the message of Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) and still commit sins. It is needless to say that a sin is committed when an express order by Allah or the Prophet (PBUH) is disobeyed or a prohibition violated. Allah calls on His servants to seek His forgiveness. What would He forgive them if they did not commit sins? However, we find that Allah describes in the Qur'an His servants who truly fear Him not as people who never commit a mistake or indulge in an act of disobedience to Allah, but as people who always remember to turn back to Allah in repentance and seek His forgiveness. Read carefully the following "And those who, having done something to be ashamed of, or wronged their own souls, earnestly bring God to mind, and ask for forgiveness for their sins, and who can forgive sins except God ? and are never obstinate in persisting knowingly in (the wrong) they have done. For each the reward is forgiveness from their Lord, and gardens with rivers flowing underneath, and eternal dwelling: How excellent a recompense for those who work (and strive)! (III : 135-136)." You are bound to note that Allah describes those people as God-fearing for whom He has prepared paradise. Nevertheless, they themselves may on occasion commit "a wrong" yet that does not deprive them of their being God-fearing, simply because their sins, although they may be grave at times, are no more than momentary slips. Otherwise, they always turn back to Allah in repentance and seek His forgiveness. Apart from this, all of us are liable to make the occasional mistake, and act against the express teachings of Islam in one matter or another and do many a thing which tends to show that worldly factors weigh more with us than trying to win the pleasure of Allah. Does all this make us Non-Muslims? The answer is that it does not. Allah has created us with the two tendencies of doing good and doing bad. It is the struggle between those two tendencies that proves wither we are true Muslims or not. Our conscious attitude towards this struggle and our positive action of consciously taking the side of obedience to Allah are the two factors, which determine that we are true Muslims. In the ongoing struggle each side of us scores points at any moment in time. If, in the final outcome, the points scored by the good side in us are more than those secured by the bad side, then we are true Muslims and we have won. To describe people as non-Muslims when they profess to believe in the oneness of Allah and the message of Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) is very serious. Moreover, it is counter productive. It is not likely to bring them back to Islam in its pure and correct form. The greater likelihood is indeed that it will make them more hardened and stubborn in their attitude. In order to bring about the change of attitude in any Muslim community, we have to tread carefully and act wisely. Most people in such communities want to follow Islam correctly. They may not know where their mistakes lie. It is only through a long process of education that changes can be effected.
Question: How to embrace Islam, and become a Muslim?
Answer: "Adoption of the Religion of Islam is very simple. Nothing is required except a declaration by the person concerned that he believes in Allah as the only God and in Mohammad (PBUH) as the messenger". What this declaration actually means is an acceptance that worship can be offered only to Allah. Man's position is to obey and implement Allah's laws whatever they are. Should the law of any authority, government, parliament, society or the tribal council clash with Allah's laws then the latter must be implemented without any question. The Prophet (PBUH) says what may be translated as follows " No creature may be obeyed in violation of the laws of the Creator". Now how do we know Allah's legislation? The second half of our declaration provides the answer to this question. Our acknowledgment of Mohammad (PBUH) as Allah's messenger means that we accept him as the man through whom Allah has conveyed to us the code of legislation. He wants us to implement it in our lives for our own benefit. It is through Mohammad (PBUH) that the Qur'an has been sent down to us as the book containing the divine constitution for human life. Mohammad's (PBUH) own pronouncements serve as an explanatory memorandum for the Qur'an, providing the details for what the Qur'an states in general terms, and giving us guidance on how to implement the Qur'an in our lives. Thus obedience to Allah necessitates obedience to Allah's messenger. Indeed Allah commands us "So take what the apostle assigns to you, and deny yourselves that which he withholds from you, And fear God; for God is strict in punishment". (LIX : 7) Thus the declaration means that Allah is the only God to be worshipped, that obedience to Him and submission to His law is an essential part of worshipping Him and that Mohammad (PBUH) His messenger, is the one who has taught us how to worship Allah and conveyed to us His laws. Anyone who make this declaration is a Muslim. The Arabic wording of the declaration is "ASHADU AN LA ILAHA ILLALAH, WA ASHADU ANNA MOHAMMADAN RASALULLAH'. This translates as follows: "I testify that there is no God save Allah and I further testify that Mohammad (PBUH) is His messenger". Once the declaration is made by anyone in full consciousness of its significance, then the person making it is one of the MUSLIMS. Anyone who is embracing Islam is strongly recommended however to have full ablution, that is a complete bath at the time he makes the declaration. This is a gesture which symbolizes washing off all ones past sins. For no one is held accountable for anything he or she did before adopting Islam. When one becomes a Muslim, one is required to do all things Muslim do and to refrain from all those, which they are not allowed to do. This should not prove difficult as many people do observe Islam's teaching throughout the world. It requires, however, a fair measure of determination to conduct one's life in the manner, which is sure to win Allah's pleasure.
Question:
Answer: To give a brief sketch of what is required of a Muslim we mention the five pillars of Islam. The First is the declaration we have already made (given in the last question). The Second is that a Muslim attend regularly to his prayers. These have a specific form, which must be learned. A Muslim prays five times every day of his life. This may sound lie quite a heavy burden but hardly any practicing Muslim finds that prayer interferes with his work. What is required here is a reasonable measure of adaptability. Prayers are invaluable in maintaining one's consciousness of Allah and reminding one of the need to obey His commandments at all times and in all situations. The Third is that Muslims fast from dawn to dusk throughout the lunar month of Ramadhan. When they fast Muslims abstain from food, drink, and sex. Fasting is a great exercise of self-discipline and it is greatly beneficial to the individual and to the community. The Fourth is that Muslims are required to give away every year a portion of their wealth not less than 2.5% to the poor. Eight classes of people may benefit of this tax, which is termed as ZAKAH or purifying alms. When we remember that this taxation is imposed on capital, not on income, we realize that the amount raised is substantial and it goes a long way to wipe out poverty. The Fifth and last pillar of Islam is pilgrimage, which must be performed by those who have the physical and financial ability to perform it. The requirement is to offer pilgrimage at least once in a lifetime. In addition to the five pillars of Islam a Muslim must also refrain from all sinful acts such as murder, adultery, drinking and taking of intoxicants, lying, stealing and all corruption generally. Islam is a religion of serious morality and strict discipline. So a Muslim must always weigh his actions before doing them and avoid all kinds of sin. Should he yield to temptations and commit a sin, he should repent and pray for Allah's forgiveness. According to Islam, all Muslims are equal and should be treated equally. The Prophet (PBUH) emphasized this on many occasions and Allah lays down the only criterion of distinction among Muslims. He says in the Qur'an: "Verily the most honoured of you in the sight of God Is (he who is) the most righteous of you". (XLIX : 13). Yet people may not live upto this very important requirement. Family or tribal or national consideration may lead to different modes of discrimination. Islam shuns such practices. It is often the case, however, that people's practices fall short of their ideals. We have therefore, to distinguish between what Islam lays down and what Muslims do.
Question:
Answer: A person who becomes an apostate, i.e., rejects Islam after having been a Muslim, severs all his ties with his Muslim family. His wife is immediately separated from him (if she is a Muslim) and they are no longer married. She is free to marry someone else after making sure she is not pregnant by observing a waiting period. One the other hand, a Muslim woman cannot be married to a non-Muslim, no matter what religion he follows. When her husband becomes a non-Muslim, that condition takes precedence over the marriage contract and cancels it altogether.
Question:
Answer: The religion of Islam is the final version of the divine message to mankind. It defines the believers as those who believe in Allah as the only God in the universe and believe in Mohammad (PBUH) as His messenger who has conveyed His message to man. Thus, to be a believer, one must accept the unity of Allah and acknowledge all his divine attributes as detailed in the Qur'an and believe in the Prophethood of Mohammad (PBUH). If either of these two conditions is not fulfilled, the person concerned is not believer. Since atheists deny the existence of Allah they are certainly non- believers. Those who claim to believe in divine revelations, which were vouchsafed by Allah to earlier Prophets, such as Christian and Jews, deny the Prophethood of Mohammad (PBUH), hence they cannot be classified as believers in the Islamic sense of the word. They certainly believe in a Book which has a divine origin, but Allah tells us in the Qur'an that distortion crept into earlier revelations He also tells us that He made a covenant with all His messengers that they will follow the Prophet of Islam when he is finally sent to mankind. This covenant applies to the followers of those Prophets. The fact that the people of earlier revelations or the people of the Book, as commonly called by translators of the Qur'an believe in such earlier revelation, did not prevent their description as unbelievers in the Qur'an. Allah says: "Those who reject (truth), among the people of the Book and among the Polytheists, were not going to depart (from their ways) until there should come to them clear evidence" (XCVIII: I). Islam, however, extends to those people a special treatment in recognition of the validity of the origins of their faith. Those who practice idol worship are polytheist, although they may claim to believe in one God. The Arabs in the days of ignorance i.e. before the advent of Islam worshipped idols. The Qur'an tells us that they used to say that they worshipped those idols only to bring them nearer to Allah. They recognized that Allah was the creator of the universe but they sought to get closer to Him through those idols who they claimed to be partners to Allah. Their argument was categorically rejected by Allah. They are then described in the Qur'an as polytheists. It is needless to say that a polytheist is an unbeliever. He claims that Allah has partners and he does not believe in Allah's attributes. He also denies the message of Mohammad (PBUH). Any deviation of this sort is rejected outright by Islam and its advocates are classified as non-believers. Apart from the people of earlier revelations, all unbelievers are treated in the same way. We need not make any distinction between them except on the basis of their attitude towards the Muslim community. Having said that, I must explain that any person who denies something which is necessarily known as part of the faith of Islam, is an unbeliever. Thus, if a person claims to be a Muslim and yet denies any of the essentials of the Islamic faith, such as denying the Day of Judgement or the existence of Angels or any other matter, which every Muslim knows it to be part of Islam is an unbeliever, no matter how strongly he professes to be a Muslim.
Question:
Answer: Allah tells us in the Qur'an: "O ye who believe! When you go abroad in the cause of God, investigate carefully, and say not to anyone who offers you a salutation; "Thou art none of a believer!". (IV:94) The instruction here is very clear. If a person gives us any clear hint that he is a Muslim, as in the case with a person who starts by accosting us with the well known Islamic greeting of "peace be on you", then we must not deny him his rights as a Muslim. Unless we a re absolutely certain that he is not. Hence, if a person goes beyond giving us the Islamic greeting to making the declaration that he believes in the oneness of Allah and the message of the Prophet (PBUH), then he cannot be classified as a non-believer without a clear proof of that fact. Indeed, Islam considers it a grave sin for a person to call a Muslim a Kafir, the seriousness of the accusation is provided by the Prophets (PBUH) pronouncement, "If a man calls another a Kafir the description certainly applies to one of them". This means that either the person described as such is indeed an unbeliever, or if he is a Muslim, then the person who accused him of being a non-Muslim is an unbeliever. In other words, this description of a Muslim as a non-believer takes him personally out of the fold of Islam. Having said that, I must explain that any person who denies something which is necessarily known as part of the faith of Islam, is an unbeliever. Thus, if a person claims to be a Muslim and yet denies any of the essentials of the Islamic faith such as denying the Day of Judgement or the existence of Angels or any other matter, which every Muslim knows to be part of Islam, is an unbeliever, no matter how strongly he professes to be a Muslim. |