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ISLAM IS SIMPLE
by Nasir Shamsi
Religion of God is simple. Its purpose is to guide humans on the
right path, the path that leads to God. God is Merciful and He
loves His creation. To guide us all, He sent His Prophets, His
Chosen People, with a defined code of conduct. Some of them had
written scriptures. Each Prophet was given a set of rules, a
code of conduct, according to the circumstances of the time and
the place.
As the human consciousness developed over time, God sent new
Scriptures to redefine their way of life. That explains an
abiding relationship and a continuous and uninterrupted chain of
Divine guidance in the names and form of Adam, Noah, Abraham,
Ishmael, Isaac, Jacob, David, Solomon, Moses, Jesus and
Muhammad, the last Prophet. They all represented ONE AND ONLY
ONE GOD...only with a Scripture to conform to the changing
world. The Last of them came to reconfirm the previous
Scriptures and to redirect and guide the people who had drifted.
Anybody therefore who believes in One God and ALL Prophets is a
Muslim.
The key to complete surrender (Islam) to God is the belief in
His ONENESS ( Tawheed) and the belief in all Prophets, including
the Last and the Final Prophet and the Last book, Quran. As a
Muslim, we enjoy a special realtionship with people of the Book,
the Jews and the Christians and a human tie with all other human
beings, characterized by human love and compassion.
We cannot hate even an animal because it too shares with us this
space on earth. Just as God is One, we all are One under Him,
the One and Only One God. Islam is as simple as that.
Islam is a way of life. It is neither a state nor statecraft.
Islam is simple, very simple. People came to Madina to accept
Islam. They stayed in the city of the Prophet for half a day, a
full day, perhaps for a night at best. During this short stay,
they learnt to say the kalimah and the Prophet told them: do
good, avoid bad things, pray, fast, give charity, be good to
your parents, wives and children; there will be reward for good
deeds and punishment for the bad deeds, on the Day of Judgment.
During this short stay, the travelers prayed with the Prophet
once or twice and left Medina, many of them never to return. Yet
these were the first emissaries of Islam who carried new faith
to the distant lands. Unless Islam was simple, how could it be
possible for these one-time visitors to go and impart the
message of Islam to thousand others ?
When asked how best to practice din, the Prophet (s) answered, "
The din is easy and whosoever will deal with din harshly, it
will defeat him. So be straight, follow the middle course, give
good news and seek help by moving in the morning or the evening
or part of the night. (Al-Bukhari 38)
Islam is religion of nature--deen-e fitra--- the the way of
fitra. There is a tradition of the Prophet to affirm this
statement too. In other words, there is a primordial, the
primary, the original way, predetermined by Allah, the Creator
of all life. There seems to be a Divine blue print according to
which a person is to build his life structure. At the core of it
is the pillar of "
LAA "-- frequently referred to by Iqbal and other sages -- the
Denial of all deities, humans or non-humans and submission to
one and only one God. Belief in One God, in other words, is
ingrained in the human nature.
Quran refers to the Original Covenant ( Aeh'ad-e Alast ) that
was taken from every soul, for submission to Allah and Allah
alone.This primordial Contract refers to the most essential
belief in One and only One Deity, Allah, to the exclusion of any
other deity. Allah speaks of a time before the creation of the
world:
˜when your Lord brought forth from the Children of Adam, from
their reins, their seed, and made them testify of themselves, He
said:˜Am I not your Lord ' (alastu bi-rabbikum ) ? They said,
˜Yea! We testify! That was lest you should say on the Day of
Arising: ˜Of this we were unaware. (7:171)
The belief in One God, this Unity of Belief implies also the
unity of all human kind, the belief in the essential equality of
all humans--men and women-- regardless of their caste, creed,
color and economic position. The compliance with the primordial
blue print keeps one within the boundaries of Iman. The
departure from it is ' kufr' . That to my mind sums up the
nature
and spirit of all religion.
It is pity Deen stands divided today into numerous splinter
groups, each so much away from the Axis of the Primordial Faith,
yet each claiming to be the only one on the right. On a closer
look, all of them are drifters. They confuse means with the end,
most of them clinging to the dust of the path, forgetting what
was their goal. Iqbal refers to this false sense of religion
in this verse:
hazaron boot hein
jamm'a ki aastinon mein
mujhey hey hukme azaan LA ilah il ALLaH
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