Sundaymail Editor
Umari Stambuli
Islam rejects characterising God (Allah) in any human or material form or depicting Him as favouring certain individuals or nations on the basis of wealth, power or race.
He created the human beings as equals.
They may distinguish themselves and get His favour through virtue and piety only, but the Creator must be of a different nature from the things created because if He is of the same nature as they are, He will be temporal and will therefore need a maker.
It follows that nothing is like Him.
If the maker is not temporal, then He must be eternal, but if He is eternal then He cannot be caused, and if nothing caused Him to come into existence, nothing outside Him causes Him to continue to exist.
This then means that He must be self-existent and self-sufficient.
If He does not depend on anything for the continuance of His own existence, then this existence can have no end.
The Creator is therefore Eternal and everlasting: “He is the first and the last.” The believer’s attitude
In order to be a Muslim, you must surrender oneself to God Almighty, it is necessary to believe in the Oneness of God, in the sense of His being the only Creator, Preserver, Nourisher.
However, this belief alone is not enough. Together with this, what must be added is for one to acknowledge the fact that it is God Almighty alone who deserves to be worshipped, and thus abstain from worshipping any other thing or being.
Any being created by God Almighty or any object manufactured by humans cannot be deserving of worship in any way whatsoever.
Having achieved this knowledge of the One True God, man should constantly have faith in Him, and should allow nothing to induce him to deny the truth.
When faith enters a person’s heart, it causes certain mental states which result in certain actions.
Taken together these mental states and actions are the proof for true faith. The Prophet Muhammed (Peace Be Upon Him) said: “Faith is that which resides firmly in the heart and which is proved by deeds.”
Foremost among those mental states is the feeling of gratitude towards God Almighty at all times, which could be said to be the essence of Ibadah (worship).
A True Believer loves, and is grateful to God Almighty for the bounties He bestows upon him, being aware of the fact that his good deeds, whether mental or physical, are far from being proportionate to all the Divine favours and bounties.
However, he is also always anxious lest God Almighty should punish him, here or in the Hereafter for any of his wrong doings.
He, therefore, surrenders himself to Him and serves Him with great zeal and humility. One cannot be in such a mental state without being mindful of God Almighty almost all the time.
Remembering God is thus the life force of faith, without which it fades and withers away.
The Holy Qur’an promotes this feeling of gratitude by highlighting the attributes of Allah (God Almighty) very frequently.
Online Reporter