five minutes introduction to islam

Tell me about Islam."

Islam literally means to submit and to surrender. It also means to enter into peace. The idea is that you're in peace with someone when you're not fighting or opposing them. Islam is to enter into submission before God and so to enter into peace with Him, the most Wise and all-Powerful, the One whose Will the whole universe obeys. This is what the purpose of true religion has always been and what every man of God has called towards. And this is the call of every person's nature too, and the reason you consider good as good and bad as bad. Islam is therefore to enter into peace with your own nature too.

"Islam is to testify that there is no god but Allah..."

The beginning of this submission, Islam, in its outward form is to submit to the truth that you know inside yourself, that there is only one God, and bear witness to it. Everything apart from the Creator is, like yourself, a created being and always in need of its Maker, and therefore unworthy of your worship. It is only God who is in no need of anything outside Himself, Absolute and Independent.

The Arabic word for God (is Allah), it is made up of al, the definite article in Arabic meaning the, and ilah which means God or a greater being (that is the object of worship. Allah, then, simply means the God, in contrast to the false forms and images that people's minds have qualified for worship. It isn't, therefore, in any way the 'god of the Arabs' or Muslims but the same One and Only God to whom all true divine traditions called.

Say: He, Allah, is One and Alone, Allah, the Eternally Besought (of all), None is born of Him and He is born of none. And there is none comparable to Him. (Qur'an, 112:1-4). Since He is our Creator and the Creator of everything around us, the One who gave us life and all that we've ever had, it is His right upon us that we recognise Him and are grateful to Him. And since He is the ultimate One in control, it only makes sense that we obey Him and seek His pleasure; anything else that we live our lives chasing after is soon going to end while we, at the end of our road, have to go back to God.