Obstacles to Belief

Islam teaches that religion reached its ultimate postulate when it taught humanity to worship one God and humanity has to assimilate His attributes of goodness within human limitation. It is generally known that La ilaha ill Allahu Muhammad ur Rasulullah sums up the religion of Islam; That there is non of worship besides God and Muhammad is His Prophet. Muslims are taught that the essential belief is the belief in One God; the Prophet is clarifier and practiser of that belief and not the end to that unto himself. He is a servant of God like all the other prophets and all good and believing men. Whoever believes in God also believes and reveres all the great and good men who have shown the path of righteousness to man. No Muslim is a true Muslim if he believes in one prophet and not in the other. And the test of true Prophethood laid by Islam is believing, preaching and practising the unity doctrine.

Science has reached its ultimate postulates only recently, but according to Islam religion reached it long ago to every civilised nation. “And there is not a people but a Warner gone among them” 35:25. This is the doctrine of the fundamental unity of religion in its essentials. Different people have followed different laws and customs and adopted different modes of worship at different times but the belief in One God was the abiding element of truth. Whenever this truth faded from the minds of the people they became ignorant and unjust, and social injustice and tyranny practised by them brought upon them the wrath of God. The wages of sin is death and nations that lose the vision of truth perish; vice begins to preponderate over good, ultimately leading to destruction.

When comparing science with religion, some people assert that science is universal, provable, and demonstrable and its results exactly predictable while about religion the world is divided into hostile groups. Truth must be universal while a religion as believed and practised by different groups contradicts one another. The Quran has dealt with this question repeatedly and given clear answers. It says Religion too is concerned with Universal truth; there is only one Religion and all the religions are sects of it; that one True Religion is Belief in the Unity of all Reality and belief in Moral Order or the essential difference in Good and evil. The results of which appear both hear and hereafter. In whatever creed Islam has found individuals living on this belief it has unstintingly given praise to them and promised them the highest rewards of good life.

All religions have a tendency to become forwarded and hardened into orthodoxies claiming domination of truth and salvation, barring the door of paradise to all others who do not profess certain doctrines or follow certain rituals, customs or conventions. Islam was aware of this tendency that dogmas are the living faith of the dead that have become the dead faith of the living. In order to warn humanity against this tendency it defined the fundamentals of religion once for all, wherever they are found, truth and well-being are there. God is not the monopoly of any particular people or creed.

According to the Quran living a virtuous life or doing well to others is the chief aim in all religious beliefs and practices. Conventional differences are of little account except as customs and uniformities binding a particular group socially. Islam is full of praises of other scriptures and whenever it mentions essential elements of religion it says you will find it also in other scriptures. It calls others scriptures Light and guidance in which essentials of religion are given. It enjoins on all Muslims to revere all prophets, who have anywhere at any time, preached the doctrine of One God and social justice.

Islam accepts and responds to the demand of reality that reality is one and therefore all truth should be one. It invites humanity of the fundamentals of one faith which has no sectarian elements and which makes all modes of worship as of secondary importance. There is no doubt that Islam organised on a definite plan and created its own conventions; but it has the fullest appreciation of the life of those who somehow have stood outside that system but still have a hold on the essentials.