Why Islam is the true religion?
Ever since Man appeared on earth - from the time of Adam - the Creator appointed the most righteous person in a particular society as a prophet to guide mankind towards Truth with ultimate goal of reaching Him. Throughout history, He would send a prophet whenever people slipped into moral decline and aimless lives; after an earlier prophets' message became corrupted and adulterated. All Prophets carried the same message to all nations.
A simple straightforward message as the condition of salvation: Belief in One God (the Creator) and unifying Him in worship. Every Prophet was the way for his followers in his time to get the salvation, and that was by following his teachings; worshiping like the Prophet does, not worshipping the Prophet himself or any other intermediary (idol, saint, priest, etc.), as it is the right of the Creator to be worshipped alone and the right of the human being to have direct connection with His Creator. This is the message of Islam which started with Prophet Adam and was completed with Prophet Muhammad. "
.., this day I have perfected for you your religion and completed My favor upon you and have approved for you Islam as religion,.."
(Qur'an 5:3)
85. Whoever seeks other than Islam as a religion, it will not be accepted from him, and in the Hereafter he will be among the losers.
The Holy Quran (2:85)
to introduce people to the Religion of Islam. It is an attempt to demonstrate to all truth-seekers and open-minded people that what was sent by God to all nations through all messengers throughout history is one unique message (i.e. Pure Monotheism). All God’s pious messengers endeavored to guide their people to the truth. But many people chose to follow their interpretations and thus went far from the prophetic teachings.
Throughout time, there have always been honorable individuals who refused to base religious beliefs upon such frail foundations as the whims of others, the fads of peers, the traditions of family, or even the convictions of seemingly sincere and pious clergy.
to analyze the scriptural foundation of the three Abrahamic faiths of Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
In doing so, I hope to help readers identify the valid links in the chain of revelation and differentiate the truth of God’s guidance from the falsehoods of human corruption.
Analysis of the foundation of Christian doctrines has become very popular recently, and many respected scholars have discovered that much of Christian canon derives from non-biblical sources. The real shock is that many of these non-biblical sources actually contradict the teachings of Jesus Christ. For example, nowhere in the foundational manuscripts of the New Testament does Jesus Christ refer to himself as a literal Son of God. He identifies himself as the Son of Man eighty-eight times, but not once as a Son of God in a literal, begotten and not made sense. Nor does Jesus Christ espouse the Trinity. In fact, in three separate passages he teaches the exact opposite, defining God as One—never as a Trinity.
Trinitarian dogma was derived not from the record of what Jesus said or taught, but from what others said or taught. Jesus was quoted as having called himself the Son of Man; others claimed he was the Son of God. Jesus taught God is One; others proposed God is three-in-one. Could the teachings be more opposite? And should we care?
After all, Jesus died for our sins. Or so someone said. Someone, that is, but once again, not Jesus. He said no such thing. So is there a problem here?
Perhaps Christians shouldn’t be surprised to find that Moses and Jesus taught the same things. After all, Christians claim that both received revelation from the same source. Now, the idea that God changed overnight from the wrathful God of the Old Testament to the forgiving God of the New Testament conveniently dismisses inconsistencies between the two revelations. But not everybody accepts that explanation. Those Christians who consider God to be perfect and never-changing should be more surprised to find differences .
And should we
investigate it?
to find the truth of God in the union of common sense, scriptural analysis, and innate understanding of the Creator.
Pensées Judaism, Christianity and Islam constitute the three Abrahamic faiths.
Although familiar by name, Judaism and Christianity prove surprisingly difficult to define. But define them we must .
We start from the beginning by learning what Judaism means .
1 — Judaism
The term Jew originated as an ethnic definition of the descendents of the tribe of Judah, with Judaism being a contraction of Judah-ism. Orthodox Judaism defines a Jew as one born of a Jewish mother or one, independent of bloodline, converted to the Judaic faith. More liberal movements of Judaism (e.g., Reform) deny the necessity of the maternal bloodline, and propose that a child born of a Jewish father is equally considered a Jew, if raised Jewish. Although modern definitions vary, most include, implicitly or explicitly, adherence to Mosaic Law as expressed in the Torah and Talmud. Historically, however, even this was not agreed upon, for the Sadducees believed only the written law and prophets to be binding, and rejected the Talmud. Ideological differences divide Orthodox from Conservative, Reform, and Reconstructionist movements, all of which possess smaller sectarian subdivisions. Geographic origins distinguish the Sephardim (from Spain) from the Ashkenazi (from Central and Eastern Europe); religious/political differences divide Zionists from non-Zionists (such as the Neturei Karta Jews); and Hasidic Jews are dissociated from non-Hasidic (also known as Misnagdim, or “opponents”) on the basis of their practices, extreme religious zeal, and devotion to a dynastic leader (known as a rebbe). Although considering themselves a nation, present-day Jews are not united upon culture or ethnicity, are not a race in the genetic sense of the term, and do not unanimously agree upon a creed. Nonetheless, the most widely accepted tenets of Jewish faith are probably those defined by the twelfth-century rabbi Moshe ben Maimon (Maimonides), known as his Thirteen Principles of Jewish Faith .
Traditionally, Jewish identity had been defined biologically. According to rabbinic Judaism, if one’s mother was Jewish, than one was Jewish, regardless of one’s actions or beliefs.without believing in God .
one who does not believe in God can still come very to living a life that is fully Jewish .
2 — Christianity
If the term Jewish is difficult to define, the term Christian is even more fraught with problems.
One stumbling block is that early Christians considered themselves Jews, as acknowledged in the following: “The Christians did not initially think of themselves as separate from the Jewish people, though Jesus had had severe things to say about Pharisees.
(But then, so has the Talmud.)” Initially, the Jews clashed over acceptance of Jesus Christ as a prophet. Subsequently, a steady flow of doctrinal evolution eroded a giant crevasse between the entrenched Jews and the new sect of Christian-Jews. Yet both groups considered themselves Jewish.
Notably, Jesus never identified himself as a Christian and never claimed to have established Christianity on Earth. In fact, while the word Christian is encountered three times in the Bible
(Acts 11:26; Acts 26:28; Peter 4:16)
, none of these verses use the label Christian in a context which bears the authority of Jesus or of God.
Most significantly, there is no record of the word Christian ever issuing from the lips of Jesus. We read in Acts 11:26 that “the disciples were called Christians first in Antioch”—which means the term Christian was first applied to the disciples by non-believers around 43 CE.6(EN— Explanatory Note, as opposed to a bibliographical reference.) It was not a polite term.
Contrary to popular belief, the term Christian appears to have been conceived in contempt. Christian is what disbelievers called the followers of Christ—a distasteful name to believers who knew themselves as Jews, following the latest in the line of Jewish prophets. And yet, that very label is now worn with pride, despite the fact that, “It is not the usual designation of the NT, which more commonly uses such terms as brethren
(Acts 1.16), believers
(Acts 2.44), saints
(Acts 9.32), and disciples (Acts 11.26).
” Furthermore, with regard to the term Christian, “It appears to have been more widely used by pagans, and according to Tacitus it was in common use by the time of the Neronian persecution
(Annals, 15.44).
” In other words, the term Christian was a derogatory label imposed upon believers by their enemies. And yet, the term stuck and with typical Christian humility, was eventually accepted.
The second difficulty with the word Christian is that of definition. If we apply the term to those who affirm the prophethood of Jesus Christ, then Muslims demand inclusion, for the Islamic religion requires belief in Jesus Christ as an article of faith. Granted, the Islamic understanding of Jesus differs from that of the Trinitarian majority of those who would identify themselves as Christian. However, many Islamic beliefs are remarkably consistent with those of classic Unitarian (EN) Christianity. If we apply the label Christian to those who follow the teachings of Jesus, we face a similar difficulty, for Muslims claim to follow the teachings of Jesus more faithfully than Christians. That claim hurls a hefty gauntlet in the face of Christianity, but is made with sincerity and commitment, and deserves examination.
Should we associate the label of Christianity with the doctrines of original sin, the Deity of Jesus, the Trinity, crucifixion, and atonement? Makes sense, but here’s the problem: Although these doctrines define creedal differences between Trinitarian Christianity and Islam, they also define creedal differences between various sects of Christianity. Not all Christians accept the Trinity, and many deny Jesus’ alleged divinity. Not even the doctrines of original sin, the crucifixion, and atonement achieve universal acceptance within the fractured world of Christianity. Subgroups of Christianity have canonized widely variant creeds, but no single definition has ever gained unanimous acceptance.
Hence, the world of Christianity has been divided since the time of Jesus. History chronicles an initial two hundred years, during which the disciples and their followers split from Paul and his divergent theology. This early period is crucial to an understanding of Christianity, for one can reasonably expect the purity of Christology (doctrines of Christ) and Christian creed to have been best represented among those closest to the teachings of Jesus. However, our knowledge of this period is vague, with disappointingly little verifiable information surviving to the present day. What is clear is that opinions differed wildly. Some early Christians believed God manifested His message on Earth through inspiration, others through incarnation. Some believed the message was conveyed through direct transmission and interpretation by the prophet himself, others spoke of spiritual enlightenment, as claimed by Paul. Some followed the Old Testament Law taught
by Jesus; others negated the laws in favor of Paul’s “Justification by Faith.” Some (such as the disciples) believed God’s law was to be interpreted literally. Others (such as Paul) felt the law was to be interpreted allegorically.
Whether the apostles ever agreed upon a creed is unclear. What is commonly known as the Apostles’ Creed is not, in fact, the creed of the apostles, but rather a baptismal formula that evolved over an indefinite period. Encyclopaedia Britannica states that the Apostles’ Creed “did not achieve its present form until quite late; just how late is a matter of controversy.
” So how late is “quite late”?
According to Ehrman, the Apostles’ Creed was derived from credal formulas conceived in the fourth century. That dates its origin, at the very earliest, three hundred years from the time of the apostles, and many would say considerably later.
Just as different understandings of Christology evolved over centuries, so too has the creed of Christianity remained in debate to the present day. Some seek answers in the New Testament and early Christian documents; others question the integrity of the New Testament in the first place—a discussion deferred to the final chapters of this book. From these murky origins, the third century saw the many and varied Unitarian schools thrown into conflict with the newly conceived Trinitarian formula. This came to a head when Emperor Constantine sought to unify his empire under one Christian theology, and imperially summoned the Council of Nicaea, the First Ecumenical Council, in 325 CE. Convened to address the Unitarian theology of Arius, a prominent priest of Alexandria, seven ecumenical councils followed in well-spaced sequence over the next six centuries. A further thirteen councils (considered ecumenical by the Roman Catholic Church, but not by the Orthodox) followed, the most recent being the Second Vatican Council of 1962–65, to make a total of twenty-one. And yet, debate continues to rage over issues which have failed to achieve unanimous acceptance.
Hence, Trinitarian theology has not only been at odds with Unitarian theology for the past two millennia, but has roused contentious debate among its own constituents. Historically, the greatest upheavals came in the form of gnostic theosophy, the schism between the Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches and, later still, the eruption of the Protestant Reformation in the sixteenth century. From the metaphysical seeds planted by Martin Luther, John Calvin, the Anabaptists and the Anglican reformers, myriad theologies grew, persisting to the present day in such a plethora of sects as to require religious encyclopedias to catalog the variants.
With such tremendous diversity, how should the term Christianity be defined?
If used to identify those who claim to adhere to the teachings of Jesus Christ, then Muslims deserve inclusion. If used to define any specific system of beliefs to ideologically separate Christianity from Islam, these same tenets of faith divide the world of Christianity itself. Hence, any attempt to define a term of such uncertain origin and meaning, and one that has defied definition by billions of people over two thousand years, would seem futile at this point. Consequently, for the purposes of this book, the term Christian is applied in the colloquial sense of the word, to all who identify with the label, whatever the beliefs of their particular Christian sect may be.
3 — Islam .
As Margaret Nydell states in Understanding Arabs, “The God Muslims worship is the same God Jews and Christians worship (Allah is simply the Arabic word for God; Arab Christians pray to Allah).”
The word Islam is the infinitive of the Arabic verb aslama, and is translated, “to submit totally to God.
” Furthermore, “The participle of this verb is muslim (i.e., the one who submits completely to God) by which the followers of Islam are called.” The word Islam also connotes peace (being from the same root as the Arabic word salaam), with the understanding that peace comes through submission to God. Unlike the terms Judaism and Christianity, both of which aren’t mentioned in their own bibles, Islam and Muslim are mentioned numerous times throughout the Holy Qur’an. Hence, those who consider the Holy Qur’an the revealed word of God find divine authority for the terms Islam and Muslim within their own scripture.
The above is the literal definition of Muslim—a person who submits to the will of God. What, then, is the definition in accordance with Islamic ideology?
The Islamic
understanding is that true believers, since the creation of humankind, have always accepted belief in God as one God and in the teachings of the messenger of their time. For example, Muslims—meaning those who submitted to the will of God—during the time of Moses would have testified that there is no God but Allah, and Moses was the messenger of Allah. Muslims during the time of Jesus would have testified that there is no God but Allah, and Jesus was the prophet of Allah. For the last 1,400 years, Muslims have acknowledged Muhammad ibn (son of) Abdullah to be the last and final messenger of God. To this day, a person enters Islam and becomes Muslim by stating, “I testify that there is no god but Allah, and I testify that Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah.” Islam acknowledges the testimony of faith to be valid only if made by sincere and willing adults who understand the full meaning and implications of what they are saying. Despite the erroneous assumption that Islam was spread by the sword, the religion forbids coercion, as per the commandment “Let there be no compulsion in religion . . .”
(TMQ 2:256). Furthermore, an entire chapter or the Holy Qur’an
(TMQ, Chapter 109) teaches the following :
In the name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful, Say:
O you that reject faith!
I worship not that which you worship, Nor will you worship that which
I worship.
And I will not worship that which you have been wont to worship, Nor will you worship that which I worship.
To you be your way, and to me mine.
The seventeenth-century English philosopher John Locke, though ranked in history as a Unitarian Christian, provided a most beautiful argument, which might serve the purpose of all (Muslims included) who seek to explain the futility of forced conversion :
No way whatsoever that I shall walk in against the dictates of my conscience, will ever bring me to the mansions of the blessed. I may grow rich by art that I take not delight in; I may be cured of some disease by remedies that I have not faith in; but I cannot be saved by a religion that I distrust, and by a worship that I abhor. . . . Faith only, and inward sincerity, are the things that procure acceptance with God. . . . In vain therefore do princes compel their subjects to come into their church-communion, under pretence of saving their souls. If they believe, they will come of their own accord; if they believe not, their coming will nothing avail them. . . .
It is notable that the slander of Islam having been spread by the sword was largely perpetuated by religious institutions that are themselves notorious for nearly two millennia of forced conversion, often by the most sadistic means. Clearly, testimony of faith cannot be coerced when a religion requires sincerity in the first place. Nearly three hundred years ago, the following comment was offered by George Sale, one of the first to translate the Qur’an into English, a self-professed antagonist of the man, Muhammad, and a hater of the Islamic religion :
I shall not here enquire into the reasons why the law of Mohammed has met with so unexampled a reception in the world (for they are greatly deceived who imagine it to have been propagated by the sword alone), or by what means it came to be embraced by nations which never felt the force of the Mohammedan arms, and even by those which stripped the Arabians of their conquests, and put an end to the sovereignty and very being of their Khalifs: yet it seems as if there was something more than what is vulgarly imagined, in a religion which has made so surprising a progress.
It is just such sentiments that have prompted modern scholars to cast aside the popularized slander of coercion. Hans Küng, believed by many Christian scholars to be, in the words of former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord George Carey, “our greatest living theologian,” writes,
Were whole villages, cities, regions and provinces forcibly converted to Islam? Muslim historiography knows nothing of this and would have had no reason to keep quiet about it. Western historical research, too, has understandably not been able to shed any light here either. In reality, everything happened quite differently.
And truthfully, how can claims of forced conversion be seriously entertained when Indonesia, the country with the largest Muslim population in the world, “never felt the force of the Mohammedan arms,” having assimilated the Islamic religion from nothing more than the teachings and example of a few merchants from Yemen? Such forces of Islamic progress are witnessed to this day. Islam has grown within the borders of countries and cultures that were not the conquered, but rather the conquerors of many of the Muslim lands. In addition, Islam continues to grow and prosper within populations that stand in expressed contempt of the religion. No difficulty should be encountered, then, in accepting the following comment :
No other religion in history spread so rapidly as Islam. By the time of Muhammad’s death
(632 AD) Islam controlled a great part of Arabia. Soon it triumphed in Syria, Persia, Egypt, the lower borders of present Russia and across North Africa to the gates of Spain. In the next century, its progress was even more spectacular. The West has widely believed that this surge of religion was made possible by the sword. But no modern scholar accepts that idea, and the Koran is explicit in support of freedom of conscience.
It is worth noting that Islam does not differentiate between believers of different periods. The Islamic belief is that all messengers since Adam conveyed God’s revelation. The faithful submitted and followed, the unfaithful didn’t. Therefore, ever since Cain and Abel, humankind has been divided between the pious and impious, between good and evil.
slam professes a consistency in creed from the time of Adam, and asserts that the tenets of faith declared at each and every stage in the chain of revelation were the same— without evolution or alteration. As the Creator has remained perfect and unchanged throughout time, so has His creed. The Christian claim that God changed from the wrathful God of the Old Testament to the benevolent God of the New Testament is not honored by the Islamic religion, for it implies that God was imperfect to begin with and required spiritual adjustment to a higher, faultless state.
Because Islam’s teachings have remained constant, there are no creedal inconsistencies. Is it true that early man lived by one creed and set of rules, the Jews by another, and the Christians a third? That only Christians are saved by Jesus Christ’s atoning sacrifice?
Islam answers “No” to both questions. Islam teaches that from the creation of man until the end of time, salvation depends on acceptance of the same eternal creed, and adherence to the teachings of God’s prophets.
Along this line of thought, a person might question how different religions view the fate of Abraham, as well as that of other early prophets. Was Abraham subject to the laws of Judaism? Apparently not. If Judaism refers to the descendants of Judah, then Abraham, being the great-grandfather of Judah, was most certainly not a descendant. Genesis 11:31 defines Abraham as being from an area in Lower Mesopotamia called Ur of Chaldees, in what is now present-day Iraq. Geographically speaking, and applying the terminology of today, Abraham was an Arab. Genesis 12:4–5 describes his move to Canaan (i.e., Palestine) at the age of seventy-five, and Genesis 17:8 confirms he was a stranger in that land. Genesis 14:13 identifies the man as “Abraham the Hebrew”— “Hebrew” meaning :
Any member of an ancient northern Semitic people that were the ancestors of the Jews. Historians use the term Hebrews to designate the descendants of the patriarchs of the Old Testament (i.e., Abraham, Isaac, and so on) from that period until their conquest of Canaan (Palestine) in the late 2nd millennium BC. Thenceforth these people are referred to as Israelites until their return from the Babylonian Exile in the late 6th-century BC, from which time on they became known as Jews.
So Abraham was a Hebrew, in a time when the term Jew did not even exist. The descendants of Jacob were the Twelve Tribes of the Israelites, and only Judah and his line came to be known as Jews. Even Moses, despite popular opinion, was not a Jew. Exodus 6:16–20 identifies Moses as a descendant of Levi and not of Judah, and therefore a Levite. He was a lawgiver to the Jews, certainly, but not a Jew by the definition of that time in history. This is not to diminish who he was and what he did, certainly, but just to state the case for the record.
So if Abraham was not a Jew—and most certainly he was not a Christian—what laws of salvation was he subject to? And what about the other prophets preceding Moses? While the Jewish and Christian clergy struggle over this point, Islam teaches that “Abraham was not a Jew nor yet a Christian; but he was true in Faith, and bowed his will to Allah’s (which is Islam), and he did not join gods with Allah (God)” (TMQ 3:67). In addition to stating that the religion of Abraham was that of “submission to God” (i.e., Islam), this passage of the Holy Qur’an teaches that an individual’s faith and submission is more important than the label by which that person is known.
