Suleyman Eris - Islam: Belief and Practice

• The Purpose of Life and Belief
• Islamic View of Mankind
• The Prophet Muhammad
• The Quran
• Islamic Civilization

Who am I? Where do I come from? What is my final destination? What does death demand from me? Who is my guide on this journey?

It is in all of these questions that the essential problem of human life lies, and our individual and collective happiness requires being able to give the correct answer to the vital questions mentioned, as well as in disciplining our faculties so that we may produce a harmonious, peaceful individual and social life. Since it is not possible for the human intellect to totally comprehend where true human happiness lies, in both this world and the next, humanity needs a universal intellect, a guidance from beyond human reason and experience, to whose authority all may assent freely. That guidance is the religion revealed and perfected by God through His Prophets. With Islam, God completed the religion He revealed and chose for humanity:

This day I have perfected your religion for you, completed My Favor upon you, and have chosen for you Islam as your religion. (Maidah 5:3)

Islam means submission to God, peace, and salvation. It is only through submission to God that one can attain the peace in both individual and social spheres, and salvation in both this world and the next. This is why all the prophets came with the same doctrine of faith, the same precepts of worship and good conduct, and the same principles for regulating social life. It is only in some secondary matters of law that they differed; and this was only in connection with the time and conditions in which they lived.

The name of the religion that encompasses this doctrine and these precepts and principles is Islam. Names of other religions were given by either their followers or by their opponents, and they were given some time after their messengers had left this world. Islam is the eternal religion and it brings nothing that is fundamentally new; instead it has come to re-establish the primordial religion, and to reaffirm the Truth, which is beyond time. As a re-establishment and a reaffirmation, Islam is a synthesis of the universal Revelation: it is the recapitulation of all the previous messages which Heaven has vouchsafed mankind. It is this which gives it its astonishing capacity to integrate, within a single community, believers of very different ethnic origins, while still respecting their particularities.

All the prophets came with Islam and communicated this message, but their followers failed to observe and preserve it, making changes to it over time. It was communicated for the final time by the Prophet Muhammad, peace and blessings be upon him, in a way that would embrace all people until the end of time. So it is only the Islam which the Prophet Muhammad preached that is approved by God as the true religion:

Say (O Messenger): We have believed in God (without associating any partners with Him), and that which has been sent down on us, and that which was sent down on Abraham, Ishmael, Isaac, Jacob and the Prophets who were raised in the tribes, and that which was given to Moses, Jesus, and all other Prophets from their Lord; we make no distinction between any of them (in believing), and we are Muslims (submitted to Him wholly and exclusively). (Al Imran 3:84)

It is important to note that the Prophet Muhammad is not the founder of Islam, but the Messenger of Islam. Islam is the natural way of life. God is the originator of Islam, and Adam, the first person on earth, is the first Muslim. Likewise, the Prophet Abraham, who lived 2,500 years before the Prophet Muhammad, is called a Muslim in the Quran (Al Imran 3:60). All the prophets carried the same message from Godthe message of Islam, of peace and piety.

In its most fundamental aspect, Islam is epitomized in the most frequently recited of all Quranic phrases, the Basmala or Bismillahir-rahmanir-rahimIn the name of God, The Merciful, The Compassionate. God manifests Himself via His absolute, all-inclusive Mercy and Compassion, and Islam is founded upon that affirmation. The Quran calls the Prophet Muhammads mission a mercy for all the worlds (Hajj 21:107).

Since the One God is Infinite and Absolute as well as the Infinitely Good, He could not but create. His infinitude implies that He contains within Himself all possibilities, and such possibility had to be realized in the form of creation. It is in the nature of the good to give of itself, and the Infinitely-Good could not but radiate the reality that constitutes the world.