Returning to the definition
of Islam first provided in the opening chapter, Islam is the religion of all
people who submit themselves completely to the will of the One God from the beginning
of time till the end of the world.And
God has said concerning this belief:
And whoever seeks a
religion other than Islam, it will not be accepted from him and he will be
amongst the losers in the Hereafter. {3:85}
And He also reveals in that
same surah of the Quran:
And verily the only
religion in the sight of God is Islam {3:19}
So, without doubt, Islam is
an exclusivist belief. As seen in the verses of the Quran listed above, whoever
comes before the Almighty in the Hereafter believing anything else shall be consigned
to eternal punishment. What then if a person lived and the message of Islam
never reached them during their lifetime and there was no reasonable way for
them to obtain such knowledge? Or if the message of Islam they received - from
either a sinful and misguided Muslim person or a biased book - was so distorted
with inaccuracy, error and/or hypocrisy that they were, in fact, rejecting this
false message and not true Islam? Such people will then be tested by God on the
Day of Judgment – but such people are a very small minority.
Indeed, God states clearly
and repeatedly in the Quran, “And God is not unjust to His servants” {3:182,
8:51, and 22:10} and the Prophet Muhammad pbuh also states in one Hadith,
And no one is fonder of
accepting an excuse than Allah. For this reason, He has sent Messengers as
announcers of glad tidings and warnings. [Bukhari]
To this end, the insane,
mentally challenged and children before the age of puberty will not have any
judgment and will have no accountability, because in Islam accountability
requires understanding. Thus, God gives mankind all the opportunity to be
guided aright, and in the rare case that this guidance doesn’t reach them, nor
do they have the ability to sincerely seek it out due to lack of correct
information, then He will deal with them justly in the Hereafter.
What makes Islam different
in regards to its exclusivity is that, once again, it is the faith of all the
believers from the first generation of humanity till its last. When one looks
at other faiths in comparison, you find that all other religions tie their salvation
– if any – to a certain person or idea that came long after many civilizations
had existed on earth.
For example, in
Christianity, a person must accept Jesus as their personal savior in order to
attain salvation, yet Jesus came near the end of life on earth (according to
Christian and Muslim beliefs). Most people agree that if Jesus was really the
key to salvation that he should have been sent to people at the beginning of
creation, not towards its end. Is it consistent with the justice and logic that
God demonstrates all around us that He tie salvation to something that the
majority of humanity weren’t able to experience because they lived before its
time?
Although belief in the
afterlife is a matter of the unseen as described in the Quran, God never asks
the believer to have “blind faith,” as has been frequently “required” in other religions.
Instead, God continually provides logical evidence throughout the Quran for
everything that He asks us to accept.
Then did you think that We
created you uselessly and that to Us you would not be returned (for account)?{23:115}
And not equal are the blind
and the seeing, nor are those who believe and do righteous deeds and the evildoer.
Little do you remember.{40:58}
Or do those who commit
evils think We will make them like those who have believed and done righteous
deeds—that they will both be equal in their life and their death? How poor is
the judgment that they make.{45:21}
And We did not create the
heaven and the earth and that between them aimlessly. That is the assumption of
those who disbelieve, so woe to those who disbelieve from the Fire.{37:27}
These verses are all
indicative that seeking and implementing justice is an innate human sense found
throughout all societies from the dawn of time till today. Indeed, the level of
civilization of a people is often directly correlated to their implementation
of justice in their society. How then can the manifestation of all Perfection,
God, allow such injustice to occur by allowing the righteous and the corrupt to
both have the same end?
A Resurrection that We Witness Every Year
And Allah has sent down
rain from the sky and given life thereby to the earth after its lifelessness.
Indeed in that is a sign for a people who listen.{16:65}
He brings the living out of
the dead and brings the dead out of the living and brings to life the earth
after its lifelessness. And thus will you be brought out.{30:19}
Throughout time, people of
doubt have questioned how the Creator would be able to bring them back to life
for judgment after they had decayed into dust and bones. Once again, God answers
such questions with logical answers, one of which can be seen over and over
again every year – the death of the earth every winter, and its return to life
in the spring. This is a resurrection that all people have witnessed and
likewise a great sign from God.
Is it So Strange that the Creation will be Repeated?
And he presents for Us an
example and forgets his [own] creation. He says, “Who will give life to bones
while they are disintegrated?”Say, “He
who produced them the first time will again give them life, and He is, of all creation,
Knowing.”{36:78-79}
The next compelling argument
presented above asks why this resurrection should be so difficult when indeed
it was God that brought both mankind and the entire universe into existence from
nothing. In fact, it should be far easier for Him to bring us back into
existence with actual working materials, be they bones or dust, as opposed to
nothing at all, as was done with the first creation.
A Sign from Prehistoric Times
Yet, the evidences don’t
stop there. God engages His creation on yet a higher level, and that it is the
realm of scientific understanding. Using verses in the Quran reinforced with scientific
knowledge, He drives the point even further to those who still have doubts.
God states that He would
bring them back to life even if mankind were stones, as seen in the following
passage from the Quran:
And they say, “When we are
bones and crumbled particles, will we really be resurrected as a new
creation?”Say, “Be you stones or iron
or any creation which is great within your estimation.” And they will say, “Who
will restore us?” Say, “He who brought you forth the first time.” Then they will
nod their heads toward you and say, “When is that?” Say, “Perhaps it will be
soon.” {17:49-51}
Why would God tell the
disbelieving people that He would resurrect them even if they were stones? The
amazing answer comes with the discovery of fossils.
A fossil is defined in the
Merriam-Webster dictionary as, “a remnant, impression, or trace of an organism
of past geologic ages that has been preserved in the earth's crust”. One of the
few ways that we know anything at all about prehistoric life is through such
fossils. Some people refer to specimens of dinosaurs as "dinosaur
bones", but in fact, they are not. No organic material can remain
unchanged for millions of years. That is why many of the artifacts of the past
that survive to be looked upon and studied by human eyes do so as stones,
or fossils.
How do things turn to
stone, or become fossilized? First of all, only a very small amount of
prehistoric life was fossilized. In order for this phenomenon to take place,
conditions had to be exactly right. Only the hard parts of an organism can
become fossilized, such as teeth, claws, shells, and bones. The soft body parts
are usually lost, except for in very special conditions.
Specifically though, an
animal would die and be buried in sand or earth that over the next few
centuries would continue to pack harder and harder, partly preserving the bone
or shell and also infusing it with rock-like minerals in a process called permineralization.
Over millions of years, the original bone or shell is completely replaced by
the minerals and what remains is a rock-like copy of the original shell.The fossil has the same shape as the original
object, but is actually rock.
Amber too has been recently
found to preserve species from millions of years ago. Amber, in fact, creates
the world's most perfect fossils. It's an unusual stone that begins as sap
flowing from some types of trees. Sometimes insects, plants or other small
animals become trapped in that sap, and go on to become preserved in
near-perfect, three-dimensional condition. Over millions of years of hardening
and fossilization, the resin eventually becomes the stone amber and can be
found in very few areas around the world where the conditions were just right for
its formation and preservation.
How does all of this
information then relate to the resurrection? The disbelieving peoples found it
difficult to believe that God would resurrect them from dust and bones, so God
shows them how even if they were to have turned to stone – stone here being even
more difficult than actual bones as a substrate from which to recreate - that
He is well capable to resurrect them with ease and thus the stone fossils that
remain show His power to easily preserve the remnants of past life even under
very challenging circumstances.
Again, another example of
the use of scientific knowledge not discovered for over one thousand years
after the revelation of the Quran is a miracle for you and me, people of the
twenty-first century.God is telling you
that, as the Creator of the Heavens and the Earth, He is well acquainted with
our make-up and composition. He is the One that takes our souls away, and He is
the One well capable of giving us life again. And from His immense Mercy and
concern for us, He answers every doubt – for example, here about the idea of
the resurrection - so as to give us every chance to accept Him and submit to
Him, thereby achieving success, both in this life and the hereafter.
Each year thousands of
American women convert to Islam.One study
estimates that of the nearly 20,000 US converts in 2000, nearly 7,000 were
female.These women are diverse in ethnicity,
race, and socio-economic status.A common
assumption is that most women who convert do so because they are engaged or
married to a Muslim. Muslim men, though, are specifically permitted to marry
chaste Christian or Jewish women.Thus,
a woman does not have to convert to Islam to marry a Muslim.Of course, the fact that a woman does not
have to convert for a man does not mean that she does not do so.
I graduated from a liberal
women’s college in the Northeast—one of the Seven Sisters.I practiced law for over eight years including
a position with a large urban prosecutor’s office and then conducted scientific
research in a leading university for nearly seven years.A number of people whom I meet cannot understand
how someone with my academic background and presumed intelligence could convert
unless I was married to a Muslim man. I did not convert for a man, and the
available evidence suggests that this reason is not prevailing in other women
either.
What then attracted me and
so many other women to Islam?While
spirituality is a very personal matter and the factors that most influence a
particular individual’s decision to convert vary, common themes emerge when
American converts, both male and female, are asked why they chose Islam.Some of the main factors that emerge when
talking with converts include: “Islam makes sense” and it resolves issues in their
prior religion or belief system that either confused or disturbed them; Islam prohibits
blindly following the faith and requires Muslims to use their intelligence to
increase their understanding of God; Islam provides a complete way to live
one’s life with clear guidelines; and Islam promotes values that appear to be
lost in the dominant, non-Muslim secular society.
With respect to women
converts in particular, one of the most intriguing aspects of conversion
concerns those women who begin to investigate Islam more closely in an effort
to confirm their already negative attitudes toward the
religion--specifically, that Islam oppresses and devalues women, and promotes violence,
intolerance and hate.To their surprise,
they discover quite the opposite.Islam
not only promotes peace, tolerance, and love, but in Islam women are highly
regarded, equal before God with a pivotal role to play in both their families
and society-at-large.They learn that
from the beginning, women contributed to Islam’s success and the spread of
Islamic knowledge, and that some of the earliest and most influential scholars
of Islam were women like ‘Aisha, a wife of the Prophet Muhammad pbuh (May Allah be
pleased with her).Far from oppressing
women, Islam produces and nurtures strong female role models of piety,
intelligence, and dignity.
These women also discover
the truth about the beloved Prophet Muhammad (may Allah bless him and grant him
abundant peace) and the unjust vilification against him.The Quran has been translated to describe the
Prophet as having an “exalted standard of character” (68:4) and a “beautiful
pattern of conduct” (33:21).Muslims
believe that the Prophet reached the highest attainable stage of human
perfection and that he exemplifies beautiful behavior.He treated women with respect, love, and
appreciation and instructed his Companions and followers to do the same.
To the extent that women
are devalued or abused in countries inhabited by mostly Muslims, they find that
this attitude or conduct toward women is not inherently part of Islam but
results from cultural factors and the misinterpretation of Islam often for secular
ends.Of the few countries that apply
Islamic Law, none do so completely or without error.Perhaps, this should not be too surprising as
the Prophet is reported to have said: “The best of my people is my generation,
then those who follow them, then those who follow them.”It would be a mistake to hastily reject Islam
based on the incorrect practice of others when you yourself could be among the
guided.
After prior misconceptions
about Islam are shattered, American women investigating Islam often look more
critically at their own reality.They
begin to ask exactly what does “liberation” and “equality” mean and whether the
American lifestyle truly delivers what it professes.Studies consistently show that women in the
United States earn less than men; that of the hundreds of thousands of rapes
and sexual assaults each year in the U.S., the vast majority involve men as
perpetrators and women as survivors; that intimate partner violence against women
is epidemic often with fatal consequences; and that beauty, youth, and sex
appeal appear to be more valued than piety, character, intelligence, and
societal contribution. Although such facts do not lead to the conclusion that
America is morally bankrupt or has nothing worthwhile to offer the rest of the
world, they do suggest that all is not perfect in the land of milk and
honey.
In the final analysis, many
American women find Islam liberating--freeing their minds, bodies, and spirits
from veils of ignorance and guiding them to a harmonious existence in this life
and ultimately the presence of the Lord in the next. Conversion though
transcends logic and explanation, and words can only express what is in our
thoughts.The light of Faith is a blessed,
undeserved and indescribable gift that illuminates our hearts.And for that, all praise and gratitude is due
to Allah.
