Islam as a Religion

As the basic meaning of religion religare is “to bind together”, Islam is likewise comprehensive and all inclusive. This means that nothing falls outside the parameters and borders of Islam as a religion. As each religion is a holistic identity and entity by itself with its own community, Islam embraces all aspects of life including those that are considered to be outside the domain of religion by some communities, such as the so-called worldly matters. Islam as an institutionalised and structured belief system does not just deal with matters of life and death or origins and identities or directions and destinies, Islam provides a comprehensive system of thought that governs, supports and develops the intellectual, spiritual and daily matters of living in a diverse world.

The Meaning of Islam

Islam as a religion is described as din which means a complete system of thought and life. The root word of din also denotes the idea of being in “debt”. Putting them as a whole, the word al-din points toward the idea of indebtedness of the human beings to God, their Creator and Sustainer. This indebtedness produces a state of inborn bondage to God, which Muslims calls Allah, and thus a natural inclination in the human beings to reach out to God connecting them back to God. When this feeling is translated into actions, the willingness to submit to a Transcendental authority takes place. Submission is a meaning of the word Islam which comes from the root meaning of “peace” and “security”, pointing us towards ideas and concepts of willingness, acceptance, obedience, surrender and resignation to Allah the Almighty Creator. Both these words dīn and islām complement and enhance each other, namely the submission of a human being to God as an expression of indebtedness and bondage which necessitates obedience and trust in Him. Obedience to the Creator is expressed in various forms such as through the rites and rituals, compliance with the do’s and don’ts, proper conduct and behaviour, performing responsibilities and respecting rights of all and sundry, doing all that is good and worthy as reflected in the lifestyle and the ethical conduct of Muslims, the followers of Islam. The word Muslim, which denotes the follower of islām means “the one who submits”. Therefore a Muslim is he who surrenders or submits to Allah  and the best among the Muslims are the Messengers and Prophets who are in themselves role-models to the various communities that they were sent to, culminating with the last Prophet and Messenger Muḥammad peace be upon all of them.

As a proper noun al-islām, it is the religion of Allah sent to human beings in the form of revelation through His Messenger and Prophet Muḥammad peace and blessings be upon him via the Archangel Jibril. As a religion, Islam is not based upon the personality of the founder but on Allah Himself. The Prophet is the channel through whom human beings received a message pertaining to the nature of the Absolute and subsequently the relative, a message that contains the doctrine and the method on how to live a life that will inevitably cease. 

Tawhid - The Testimony of Faith

The most fundamental concept in Islam is the concept of tawḥid. This concept is encapsulated in the testimony of faith which every Muslims will say at least 9 times a day; “I bear witness that there is not God but Allah and I bear witness that the Prophet Muhammad is His messenger”. The repetition reminds the Muslims of the importance and centrality of Allah and the Prophet in their thoughts and lives. It binds the billions of Muslims all around, regardless of race, economic status, power and intelligence to a unified message. This testimony creates a religious community or ummah that places the sovereignty of Allah and taking the Prophet as the pinnacle role-model. A person joins the community of Muslim by pronouncing this testimony of faith. It comprises of two parts where the first half testify to the absolute monotheism of the Divine and the second establishes the principle of actions for a Muslim.

Absolute monotheism is central in Islam. Muslims belief in one God who is also the creator God and therefore the all supreme with no association to His divinity at all. He is the God of everyone and everything. Everything and everybody come from Him, belong to Him and will return back to Him. This absolute monotheism gives Islam its universalistic and inclusivist stature. Islam is universal because it possesses the dynamics which can and are indeed necessary to accommodate changes and developments that occur along with time and space. Islam is inclusive because it embodies within its structure the mechanism to accommodate everybody and everything, human as well as other non-living things. Simultaneously, absolute monotheism shows the unique identity of Islam which makes it exclusive as well. Islam has its own identity, characteristics and elements revealed by Allah to the Prophet Muhammad peace and blessings be upon him, transmitted through the whole line of generations of Muslims where, at every generation uses their self-knowledge and intelligence to bring the immutable wisdom of the early version of Islam at the revelatory moment to our current moment.

The second half of the testimony indicates the bringing of completion of all the other revelations given to the previous prophets starting with the first Prophet Adam to the last Prophet Muhammad peace be upon all of them. Prophet Muhammad peace and blessings be upon him being the last and the final prophet is therefore the seal of the prophets that had come throughout the historical lives of human beings on Earth. A Muslim believes that the message of Unity/tawhid began from Prophet Adam peace and blessings upon him. He was a monotheist from the very beginning. Human beings did not evolve gradually from polytheism to monotheism. On the contrary, from time-to-time human beings deviated through religious decadence from the original monotheism of the first man into polytheism, and has to be reminded periodically of the original doctrine of Unity/tawḥid. These reminders come from Heaven through the prophets who by means of successive revelations, renew the religious and spiritual life of human beings on earth by reminding them the doctrine of unity and living by this doctrine. Although that Islamic conception of history is one of a series of cycles of prophets where each cycle followed by a gradual decay leading to a new cycle or phase, it does not imply that this cycle will go on indefinitely. Islam believes that the history of the present humanity has a beginning and an end marked by eschatological events described by the Quran and Prophetic sayings /Ḥadith.