Islam invites all human beings and jinns. Everyone, regardless of race, salam: Spirit and Form, which throws light on the basic principles of Islam from the spiritual perspective, is a reference book in all regards. The book talks about the three important steps that take a human being to the presence of the Divine. Islam, the first of these steps, is to surrender. The second is submission, the state of mind that finds its true meaning once crowned with faith or iman.
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Praise be to Allah the Almighty, who has granted us the serenity of belief in Islam, and peace be upon Prophet Muhammad who has guided mankind from darkness to light.
Every sound human being can understand that this world has been created for a purpose. In order to fulfill this purpose Allah the Almighty has sent prophets with religions to guide mankind. All these religions have been the same in essence and they have been called Islam. Islam is Allah’s greatest gift to man since through Islam people of faith may preserve the purity of their divine-given nature and may change their world into a rose garden. At our core is a deep longing to return to the Creator and the state of tawhid in Islam makes this pos-sible. It enables us to spiritually return to our Lord and this is life’s greatest pleasure.
Those who want to be sincere servants of Allah should cultivate an understanding of the inner aspects of Islam and should fulfill its com-mandments. Those who realize a high level of religious practice both in form and spirit will attain to the love and reward of Allah. On the other hand, those who do not heed Allah’s invitation to return to Him, will be doomed and will be losers in the Hereafter. The blue skies have never shed tears over sinners, and it is the same skies that have destroyed the enemies of Allah through fierce thunder and torrential rain. Our sun is the same sun that once illuminated the castles and palaces of Pharaoh, Nimrod and other unfortunate people. Today it illuminates the ruins of their kingdoms. Hence none of them could attain eternal life as they had wished. Only those who have served Allah sincerely have attained this felicity and its concomitant rewards.
The essence of Islamic faith is to declare that there is no God but Allah and Prophet Muhammad is his messenger. After declaring this fact one becomes a believer, but Islam is not only a religion of dogma. One needs to complement his faith with good deeds. The holy Quran always mentions having faith in Allah and doing good deeds together. Faith is perfected through both the worship of Allah the Almighty and good deeds. Historically, those believers who have perfected their faith have found neither life’s difficulties nor the threats of the non-believers to be problematic. When the tyrant Pharaoh severely punished the magicians for their faith in Moses (a.s.) they did not abandon their faith but rather said: “Our Lord: Pour out upon us patience and cause us to die in submission” (Araf, 7:126) Likewise, the early Christians who were thrown to wild animals because of their faith did not renounce faith in the unity of God but chose instead to taste the spiritual plea-sure of martyrdom. Hadrat Sumayya, who had feared even a needle prick in her past, did not fear the hot irons as they branded her body due to her strong faith in Islam. Her husband followed suit as he refused to turn back from the path of Islam even though he was sav-agely killed. The lives of the companions of the Prophet (pbuh) and the lives of some of the followers of other holy religions before the advent of Islam repeatedly testify to the ability of faith to conquer dis-belief.