THE PROPHET OF ISLAM
“GOD-
THERE IS NONE LIKE UNTO HIM” (Holy
Qur’an)
But
what is the correct faith from which right action spontaneously proceeds,
resulting in complete satisfaction? Here the central doctrine of Islam is the
Unity of God. There is no God but the one God, that is the pivot from which
hangs the whole teaching and practice of Islam. He is unique not only as
regards His divine being, but also as regards His divine attributes. As regards
the attributes of God, Islam adopts here as in other things too, the law of the
golden mean. It avoids on the one hand, the view of God which divests the
divine being of every attribute and rejects, on the other the view which likens
Him to things material. The Qur’an says, on the one hand, there is nothing
which is like Him; on the other, it affirms that He is Seeing, Hearing,
Knowing.
He is the King who is without a stain of fault
or deficiency, the mighty ship of His power floats upon the ocean of justice
and equity. He is the Beneficent, the Merciful. He is the Guardian over all.
Islam does not stop with this positive statement. It adds further what is its
most special characteristic, the negative aspect of the problem. There is alone
no-one else who is guardian over anything. He is the mender of any breakage. He
is the restorer of any loss whatsoever. There is no god but the one God, above
any need, the Maker of bodies, Creator of souls, the Lord of the day of
judgement and in short, in the words of the Qur’an: “Say! Call upon Allah, or
call upon Rahman. Whatever name you call Him, (it is well) for to Him belong
the most beautiful names.” (Holy Qur’an 17:110)
POSITION
OF HUMAN BEINGS IN CREATION
Regarding
the position of man in relation to the universe, the Qur’an says: “Allah is He
Who has subjected to you the sea, that you may sail your ships through it by
His command, that you may seek of His bounty and that you may be grateful; and
He has subjected to you all that is in the heavens and on earth as from
Himself. Behold, in that are signs indeed for a people who reflect.” (Holy
Qur’an 45:12-13)
But
in relation to God, the Qur’an says: “He (Allah) it is Who has created death
and life, that He may test as to which of you is best in deed. And He is
exalted in might, oft-forgiving;” (Holy Qur’an 67:2)
In
spite of free-will, which he enjoys to some extent, every man is born under
certain circumstances and continues to live under certain circumstances beyond
his control. With regard to this, God says, according to Islam, it is My will
to create any man under conditions that seem best to Me. Cosmic plans finite
morals cannot fully comprehend. But I will certainly test you in prosperity as
well as in adversity, in health as well as in sickness, in heights as well as
in depths. My ways of testing differ from man to man, from hour to hour. In
adversity, do not despair and do not resort to unlawful means. It is but a
passing phase. In prosperity, do not forget God. God’s Gifts are given only as
trusts. You are always on trial; every moment on test. In this sphere of life
“there is not to reason why, theirs is but to do and die.” If you live, live in
accordance with God; and if you die, die in the path of God. You may call it
fatalism. But this type of fatalism is a condition of vigorous increasing
effort, keeping you ever on the alert. Do not consider this temporal life on
earth as the end of human existence. There is a life after death and it is
eternal. Life before death is only a connecting link, a door that opens up the
hidden reality of life. Every action in life, however insignificant, produces a
lasting effect. It is correctly recorded somehow.
THIS
LIFE IS PREPARATION FOR THE HEREAFTER
Some
of the ways of God are known to you, but many of His ways are hidden from you.
What is hidden in you and from you in this world will be unrolled and laid open
before you in the next. The virtuous will enjoy the blessings of God which the
eye has not seen, nor has the ear heard, nor have they entered into the hearts
of men to conceive of them. They will march onward, reaching higher and higher
stages of evolution. Those who have wasted opportunity in this life, shall
under the inevitable law, which makes every man taste of that he has done, be
subjected to a course of treatment of the spiritual disease which they have
brought about with their own hands. Beware, it is a terrible ordeal. Bodily
pain is torture, you can bear it somehow.
Spiritual
pain is hell, you will find it unbearable. Fight in this life itself the
tendencies of the spirit prone to evil, tempting you into iniquitous ways.
Reach the next stage when the self-accusing spirit in your conscience is
awakened and the soul is anxious to attain moral excellence and revolts against
disobedience. This will lead you to the final stage of the soul at rest,
contented with God, finding its happiness and delight in Him alone. The soul no
more stumbles. The stage of struggle passes away. Truth is victorious and
falsehood lays down its arms. All Complexes will then be resolved. Your house
will not be divided against itself. Your personality will get integrated round
the central core of submission to the will of God and complete surrender to His
divine purpose. All hidden energies will
be released. The soul then will have peace. God will then address you, “(To the
righteous soul will be said :) “O (you) soul, in (complete) rest and
satisfaction! Come back to your Lord – well pleased (yourself) and well-pleasing
to Him! Enter you, then among My devotees! You, enter my heaven!”
MAN’S
DESTINY
This
is the final goal for man: to become on the one hand the master of the Universe
and on the other to see that his soul finds rest in his Lord, that not only his
Lord will be pleased with him but that he also pleased with his Lord.
Contentment, complete contentment, satisfaction, complete satisfaction, peace,
complete peace, will result. The love of God is his food at this stage and he
drinks deep at the fountain of life. Sorrow and frustration do not overwhelm
him and success does not find him vain and exulting.
Thomas
Carlyle, struck by this philosophy of life writes: “And then also Islam, that
we must submit to God; that our whole strength lies in resigned submission to
Him, whatsoever He does to us, the thing He sends to us, even if death and
worse than death, shall be good, shall be best; we resign ourselves to God:”
The same author (Carlyle) continues, “If this be Islam”, says Goethe, “do we
not all live in Islam?” and Carlyle himself answers this question of Goethe,
“Yes, all of us that have any moral life, we all live so. This is yet the
highest wisdom that heaven has revealed to our earth.”
Carlyle
continues: “The word of such a man (Muhammad) is a voice direct from nature’s
own heart; men do and must listen to that, as to nothing else; all else is wind
in comparison….”.
