The Foundations And Concepts of Islam

-                  Belief in the value of moral excellence, human dignity and other ordinary concepts that high-minded people will feel shy to violate even if they were free from external consequences and material recompense.

-                  Belief in Allaah – may He be Glorified and Exalted – and the fact that He is Ever-Watchful of the secrets and knows all that is hidden; from Whose Commandments and prohibitions the Islaamic Law derives its power and before Whom the senses profusely feel mortified out of love for Him or fear of Him or both. There is no doubt that this type of faith is the stronger of both in exerting authority over human mind. It is also the stronger in resisting the tornadoes of whims and inconsistency of sentiments and quicker in leaving impacts on the minds of people and their leaders.

It is because of this that religion is the best guarantor for the establishment of relationships among people on the basis of justice and impartiality which is a necessity in any society. There is no wonder then that religion occupies in the human society the position of the heart in human body.[70]

If this is the position of religion generally – and what we see in today’s world is multiplicity of religions and creeds, where each group rejoices in its belief and holds tenaciously to it – what then is the true religion that can achieve for the human mind what it yearns for? And what are the general criteria of the True Religion?

 GENERAL CRITERIA OF THE TRUE RELIGION

Every adherent of a creed believes that his creed is the true one, and all followers of a religion believe that their religion is the ideal one and the most upright path. When you ask the followers of adulterated religions or followers of man-made creeds about the proof for their belief, they argue that they found their fathers on a faith and are just following their paths. They then relate narrations and stories whose chains of transmitters are not sound and whose texts are not free from faults and defects. They only depend on inherited books whose authors, recorders and even their original languages and their sources are unknown. They are only mixed-up stories concocted together, magnified and inherited generation after generation without any scholastic verification of their chains of transmitters and precise checking of their texts.

These unknown books, narrations and blind imitations cannot be taken as evidences in matters of religions and beliefs. Or is it possible that all these adulterated religions and man-made creeds are true or false?

It is impossible that all these religions are true, for truth is only one and cannot be numerous. It is also impossible that all these adulterated religions and man-made beliefs are all from Allaah and therefore true. Then, since there are numerous religions and the true is only one, which of them is then the true religion? There should, therefore, be criteria for distinguishing the true religion from the false. If we find that these criteria fit a religion, we know that it is the true religion; and when all or one of these criteria is lacking in any religion, we know that it is a false religion.

The criteria by which we distinguish the true religion from the false ones are:

One: That the religion must be from Allaah, revealed through an angel to one of His Messengers in order to convey it to mankind. For the true religion is Allaah’s, and it is He Who will recompense His slaves and take them to reckoning on the Day of Resurrection concerning the religion that He revealed to them. He says,