is a very exalted task. God will bless those who engage in it with a lofty position in Paradise. Shahadah is precisely what is also called dawah, or calling people towards God. It is to convey, in a peaceful

peaceful manner, God’s message to humankind. It is to explain the reality of life to people in a manner that is intelligible to them. It aims to enable seekers of Truth to learn about God’s Creation Plan

evidence for Truth so that in the Hereafter they will not be able to claim that they had no idea what God had wanted of them. Different words are used in the Quran to refer to shahadah or the dawah mission

contrary, the love of God is real love—feelings produced for real reasons, and when these feelings are engendered in man they are everlasting. Death cannot put an end to them. God gave man existence, and

system. Such being the case there are innumerable things in this world—all put there for man’s benefit. God alone is the giver of all these bounties. No other being has been instrumental in the granting of these

blessings. When man acknowledges these blessings wholeheartedly, that is another name for the love of God.

CLOSENESS TO GODGod will only accept those who have developed a divine personality in themselves in this world. In the Hereafter only divine souls will find a place in the vicinity of God in Paradise.

will not accept not-self.” The most fortunate people in the Hereafter will be those who can have God’s company, once they are lodged in the divine vicinity of Paradise. These fortunate people will be those

degree as may enable him to realize God at a deeper level. The life before death has the status of a preparatory period. What man must do here is discover what God wants from us and then he should build

Khadija and I got annoyed. ‘She was just an old woman,’ I said. ‘God has given you better than her instead.’ This angered the Prophet, who said: ‘God knows, he has given me no better than her. She believed when

faith in me when others denied me. She gave me financial support when others left me in the cold. And God gave me children by her, which He has not given me by my other wives. The special historical status

status that Mary and Khadija enjoy is due to the fact that they both gave themselves entirely up to God; they both attached their own will to that of the Almighty. When the Judaic era was drawing to a close

is meant to bring man to his senses so that he may reform himself and save himself from God’s chastisement. God provided for all kinds of necessary things in this world, but these things were not meant

meant to be luxuries. They were meant, instead, to be merely facilities. For the truth is that God made this world purely as a preparatory ground, and man was required to build in it a heavenly personality

instead of preparing himself for paradise, he began building a ‘paradise’ in this world itself. God continued to send warnings of different kinds, but man could not be brought to his senses. In this

Discovery of One’s Ignorance The journey of realization of God begins with ‘la ilaha’ (there is no god) and then it finishes with ‘illallah’ (but God). The individual must first of all become a seeker and

intellectual learning. It is a natural reality to which there is no exception. Ma‘arifah or the discovery of God is not something to be inherited that a father may give to a son and the grandson may receive from

his forebears. Ma‘arifah is ultimately something of a personal nature. Whenever anyone attains to God’s realization, it will happen only as a result of personal effort. Without personal effort, no one can

submission to God’s will. Submission, in fact, is the name of that natural response from a person to God, the response that is expressed by human beings after their realization of God. It is with this

that that life has developed which is called a religious life. What is realization of God? The realization of God is the realization of that Being who has created man, who has granted man with a personality

completely helpless. This helplessness is the meeting point between God and man. Acknowledging one’s helplessness make one deserving of God’s succour being granted to him. Among human beings there are those

and others who are weak believers. Referring to this difference, there is a Hadith which says: “To God, the strong believer is better and more loving than the weak believer, but there is goodness in both

goodness of the strong believer is that God has created him with greater capability, and the goodness of the weak believer is that, due to his lesser ability, God has compensated him with more divine succour

In God’s knowledge, although total freedom will result in a jungle of oppression and corruption in the human world, there would also be exceptions. In this wilderness of oppression and perversion, extraordinary

extraordinary individuals would appear like the divine flowers amidst thorns. God wanted to pick these divine flowers, and He, therefore, assigned the angles to prepare a record of every human being. Based

in the Hereafter, the super civilization will be formed through the total unfolding of the words of God. This matter is further explained in other verses of the Quran. One verse is as follows: If all the

HUMAN EQUALITYISLAM AND HUMAN EQUALITY In Islam all greatness is reserved for God alone. All human beings are equally God’s creation. In this way, there is no difference between one man and other. In Islam

over a nonArab. No white man had superiority over a black man. Superiority derives only from being God-fearing rather than from race or colour. Among human beings there are many differences to be found

for people to have such features as make them recognisable to one another. To meet this social need, God has created apparent differences from various respects between people, so that the smooth functioning