raised his eyes up to heaven. “By God,” he said, “is anyone among you able to light a fire from a flame of the sun? Well, I am no more capable of forsaking the message that God Himself has entrusted to me.”

desperate terms to leave them alone. “Muhammad,” Abu Jahl once said to him, “will you stop insulting our gods? If you just want us to bear witness that you have communicated your message, then all right: we bear

seeking the grace of God and His good will. Their marks are on their faces, the traces of their prostrations. Thus they are described in the Torah and in the Gospel: (they are) like the seed which puts

that it rises stout and firm upon its stalk, delighting the sowers. Through them God seeks to enrage the unbelievers. God has promised those of them who will believe and do good work forgiveness and a rich

kinship and the rights of our neighbours, and to refrain from crimes and from bloodshed. So we worship God alone, setting naught beside Him, counting as forbidden what He has forbidden and as licit what He

against us, and have persecuted us to make us forsake our religion and revert from the worship of God to the worship of idols. That is why we have come to your country, having chosen you above all others;

was for them a life of enlightenment as opposed to a life of ignorance; it was a discovery of One God, and abandonment of idols. They had abandoned an unruly life for a life of divine guidance, revealed

of so much evil and suffering in the world counts against any vision of an all-powerful and loving God (p. 7) Here I have to say that evil is a relative world. An evil is an evil so long as it cannot be

creation plan of the Creator. The creation plan of God provides the only criterion by which to judge the nature of the matter. The creation plan of God as revealed to His Prophet is that this world is a

Prophet Muhammad: “O God! Show me the truth as it is and give me the strength to follow it. And Show me falsity as it is, and protect me from it.” (Tafsir Ibn Kathir, vol. 1, p. 427) And “O God! Show me things

personality. Wise is one who builds up such a personality. As far as everyday experience is concerned, God gives natural gifts to all of us equally. But, subsequently it is the duty of the human being to turn

used in this text is rabbani, i.e. devoting oneself to God and to no other. That is to say that your love and your fear should all be for God and God alone. The true goal of Islam is thus to form such devout

etc. The Example of the First Man God created the first man Adam and settled him and his wife Eve (Hawwah) in paradise. But Adam did not fulfill his promise. God had forbidden him to eat the fruit of

from paradise. Then, both of them showed genuine repentance. They earnestly sought the forgiveness of God; then they were forgiven and regained their entry into paradise, provided they adhered to the faith

one’s intentions, and only God knows the reality of people’s intentions. That is why it is only for God, or, for the prophets, on the basis of the knowledge given to them by God, to declare in a clearly

Prophet Muhammad: “O God! Show me the truth as it is and give me the strength to follow it. And Show me falsity as it is, and protect me from it.” (Tafsir Ibn Kathir, vol. 1, p. 427) And “O God! Show me things

personality. Wise is one who builds up such a personality. As far as everyday experience is concerned, God gives natural gifts to all of us equally. But, subsequently it is the duty of the human being to turn

a pilgrimage to the Kabah, the House of God in Makkah (hajj); and fasting for the month of Ramadan (sawm). These then are the fundamental principles, or pillars of Islam. The rest of the teachings fall

that to God, the real faith (iman) is that which reaches into the deepest recesses of the heart; which awakens human consciousness in such a way as to bring to the individual the realization of God. That