The most important belief in Islam is to firmly believe in the absolute oneness of God. Religion is a means to help a person develop their relationship with God and everything else stems from it. A question I often pose to people, which I think is the most important question that we should ask ourselves, yet more often than not we tend to sidestep it, avoid it, maybe because we don’t want to know the answer; yet without posing this question, what is the point to our existence?
The question is: ‘What is our purpose in life, why were we created?’
If there is a God, a creator, then it must follow there must have been a purpose why God created us, why we are here? Either God created us for fun, some sort of enjoyment, or it was a complete accident or there was a reason. For the answer to this important question, we must turn to God’s own Words as to why we were created. The Holy Qur’an Chapter 51, verse 57 states:
“I have created the Jinn and the men so that they may recognise Me and Worship Me.”
According to this verse, the real purpose of man’s life is to worship Allah and to recognise Him and to become completely devoted to Him. To achieve this purpose, Allah has taught us the way to worship Him and it is through the daily prayers. This enables us to talk to our Maker, to express our needs and more importantly to recognise Him and submit to Him. Therefore it is only when mankind recognises that there is a true, living God and then strives to win the pleasure of Allah, that they fulfil their purpose in life.
Every prophet of Allah has always informed us to worship the One God and submit to Him. God sends His Prophets into the world in order to enable mankind to recognise God and obtain His Love and Understanding, and thus get rid of sins and acquire the ability to perform good deeds. This is the real purpose of their advent. Therefore, we see that it is only when mankind recognises that there is a true, living God and then strives to win the pleasure of Allah, that he will be able to be rid of his sins and strive to do good works.
People understand deep down that there is a God, as everywhere they look they see signs of a Creator. Although some try to justify this and say it just happened, we evolved and developed, they really know that how can all this be just an accident? And whilst no doubt we have evolved, we are different to other animals and life forms. Therefore they can accept that there had to be a Creator, but they don’t really believe that the Creator is still alive. If so, where is He? Why doesn’t He reveal Himself, stop the suffering, the wars, the famine etc. So this is missing from their lives, that there is a living God.
If they really believed in a living God, and therefore understand that they will be answerable for all their actions and that there is a Hell and Heaven, then of course they will start to fear committing sin and instead run after the pleasure of Allah. That is what is missing and this is the real purpose of the Prophets, to help mankind recognise Allah and understand this.
Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, the Promised Messiah and Imam Mahdi has said:
“Man has to adopt two things in order to establish a true relationship with God:
One is to shun evil and the other is to strive for righteousness. God has allowed man to pursue both paths freely. In fact, He has embedded in the nature of all human beings the ability to love their Creator. Also, He has granted all human beings the ability to refrain from sinfulness and selfish desires. Yet to shun evil in its entirety and adopt righteousness with all its requirements entails an effort on the part of man to obtain the recognition of the Almighty God. For there are two things which attracts someone to love a person. One is good morals and the other is apparent beauty. And to find these in God, one has to see Him through His prophets. Know that Islam is the only religion that leads one to the true recognition of the Almighty, and the Holy Prophet is the only prophet, by following whose footsteps, one is granted the ability to enter the door to Divine light and glory.”
This is a wonderful insight into the importance of the Prophets. Yes we can know there is a Creator from His wonderful creation, but how, how to develop that true relationship with Allah?
As has been pointed out by the Promised Messiah, we need to have that relationship to help us shun evil and strive for righteousness. Of course there are many people who do not commit evil and do good works, but without having God, what is the motive? We can quickly slip and do something bad, that is the weakness within us, but to shun evil completely takes effort and we need an incentive to ensure we stay firmly on that path.
The Promised Messiah has pointed out, that just as love of a person helps us to strive to win that love, so too we can develop our love for Allah, through His prophets as they have attained that love and are the best people to show us the way and through following the prophets, we can find and develop that love and obtain those blessings that the prophets attained.
The Promised Messiah has explained this further:
“One who has not partook of having the understanding and love of God, cannot fulfil the requirements of Prayer, Fasting, Alms, Charity and other good deeds. Divine understanding and love is a gift from God Himself. One can obtain it only through His Grace. And, one who is blessed with it, progresses in faith and treads the path of righteousness many times more. It is through recognising God that one’s heart is blessed with a light from God. One loves God truly and fears Him truly only when one is blessed with perfect recognition of His attributes. One comes to detest the Nafs-e-Ammarah (the self that incites to evil and selfish desires in oneself) only when one recognises the Almighty God.”
Our natural self is to incline to do evil and please our desires and this is why the desires of hate, jealousy pride etc. quickly arises in us, but through striving to win the pleasure of God, we can overcome these desires.
In the book ‘An Elementary Study of Islam’, the writer, Hazrat Mirza Tahir Ahmad has said:
“Man’s intentions and subsequent actions are always guided and controlled either by fear or hope, and there is no exception to this rule. Those who do good deeds do so out of fear and hope, and those who indulge in vices are motivated by the same. The fears of non-believers belong to the negative ungodly category, and they shape their lives in accordance with these worldly fears. Sometimes they are afraid of earning the displeasure of monarchs and authorities, sometimes they are afraid of society in general or of despots and bullies. Again sometimes they act evilly out of a fear of poverty and loss etc. So, in a world full of vices, a large part of human actions can be explained with reference to these fears.
The belief in Unity dispels these fears altogether and brings to one’s mind the importance of the fear of God, which means that one must not be afraid of the displeasure of the ungodly, but should always endeavour to avoid displeasing God, and shape one’s life according to that fear alone. In the positive sense, the same applies to all human motivations and consequent actions. Man always lives by some motive to please someone, himself being no exception. In fact, more often than not, he works to please himself even at the cost of those who are otherwise dear to him.”
For a Muslim, we always turn to the example of our Prophet for guidance and we see that with the Holy Prophet Muhammad, may peace and blessings of Allah be upon him, Allah was everything to him. Whatever he said or did, he did it for Allah’s sake. Before doing anything, it had to be with Allah’s blessings.
He was always in prayer, speaking to His Creator, seeking the blessings of Allah. In fact, he used to stand so long in his prayers, that his feet would swell.
His wife, Aisha, on seeing his condition, would become very anxious. She once said to him:
“God has honoured you with His Love and Nearness, why subject yourself to so much discomfort and inconvenience?”
The Holy Prophet replied,
“If God has, by His Grace and Mercy, conferred His love and Nearness to me, is it not my duty in return to be always rendering thanks to Him? Gratitude should increase in proportion to the favours received.”
The Holy Prophet used to say:
“For a Muslim, life is full of all good and nobody but a true believer finds himself in that position. for if he meets with success he is grateful to God and becomes the recipient of greater favours from Him. On the other hand, if he suffers pain or tribulations he endures it with patience and thus again makes himself deserving of God’s favours.”
Finally I will give another quote from the book ‘An elementary study of Islam’. Hazrat Mirza Tahir Ahmad has said:
“The Islamic concept of Unity also inculcates in man the realisation of the oneness of the human species, and does away with all such barriers as divide man into racial, ethnic and colour denominations. This gives birth to the universal concept of equality in Islam, which is its distinctive feature. Hence from the vantage point of God, all human beings, whereever and in whichever age they were born, stand equal in His sight.”
These days some scientists are constantly trying to attack religion and prove that there is no God. Man in his weakness and desire to justify not having to follow God, so that he may run after the worldly pleasures, jumps at such suggestions and quickly dismiss God. But to fulfil our purpose in life, we need to recognise the One God and strive to win His Pleasure and Nearness, only then will we find the real peace and comfort which we all seek in life. The belief in the unity of God is the way to achieve the purpose of our creation and through the worship of the One God we can get closer to God and undergo a holy transformation within ourselves.