‘La- ilaha illa-llah, Muhammadur Rasulu-llah’ - There is no deity except Allah, and Muhammad is his Messenger
“In the name of Allah, the most benificient, the most merciful”
“And hold fast,All together, by the rope God stretches out for you, And be not divided among yourselves, And remember with gratitude God’s favour on you:For ye were enemies And He joined your hearts In love, so that by His grace,Ye became brethren” Qur’an 3:103
Allah is the proper noun in Arabic for God: the most compassionate, the most merciful; the creator and sustainer of the universe. Arabs, Christians and Jews also use it alike: Eloh-im in Hebrew, ‘Allaha’ in Aramaic, the mother language of Jesus. ‘OM’ in Hindu scriptures is the same as Allah written in Arabic. The word Allah does not have a plural or gender. Allah does not have any associate or partner, and He does not beget nor is He begotten. And Muhammad (peace be upon him and his family) is the messenger of Allah.
Islam was revealed to Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him and his family) in 571-632 CE and is the last in line of the Abrahamic family of revealed traditions. Its message, addressed in eternity, calls upon a people that are wise, a people of reason, to seek in their daily life, in the pulse of nature, in the ordering of the universe, in their own selves, in the very diversity of humankind, signs that point to the Creator and Sustainer of all creation, the one, who alone is worthy of their submission.
Islam beautifuly spread with peace and compassion. It attracted within its fold, inhabitants of the lands stretching from the central regions of Asia to the Iberian Peninsula in
Europe. A major world religion, Islam counts a quarter of the globe’s population among its adherents - one billion faithfuls living in every part of the world: Arabia, Asia, Africa, Central Asia including north-west China, and Americas, Australia, Europe, and Israel; bound to their faith by the affirmation of the witness that there is no divinity except God, and Muhammad (peace be upon him and his family) is His Messenger.
“And when she (Holy Mary) withdrew from her people unto a place towards the east, and secluded herself from them; and we sent unto her Our Spirit, and it appeared unto her in the likeness of a perfect man. She said: I take refuge from thee in the Infinitely Good, if any piety thou hast. He said: I am none other than a messenger from thy Lord that I may bestow on thee a son most pure. She said: How can there be for me a son, when no man hath touched me, nor am I unchaste? He said: Even so shall it be; thy Lord saith: It is easy for thy Lord. That He may make him (Jesus) a sign for mankind and a mercy from Him; and it is a thing ordained.” (Qur’an 19:16-21)
“The fact that one Revelation should name others as authentic’”, Cyril Glasse remarks of Qur’anic liberalism toward the Christian and Judaic traditions (and those outside these traditions), “is an extraordinary event in the history of religions”. Diversity in seventh century Arabia is richly mirrored in the verses of that revelation that stressed its continuity rather than exclusivity: in cognizance of complex truths, tolerance is enjoined upon Muslims, a value whose benefit was denied to them as a nascent minority. Thus, “every community has a direction to which it should turn”. Mankind was made “into nations and tribes, that you may know each other” – for “if God had pleased He would made you a single people”. Theologically, the central principle of divine unity (tawhid), which also unifies the secular and religious spheres in Islam, validated the experiences of those adhering to other faiths.
“Nine eleven has scarred America, but not just America. It has scarred the Islamic world, and hundreds of millions of devout and practicing Muslims for whom the word of the Quran is the word of God. We have clarity and direction enough when the Quran affirms that to save a life is, as if, to save humankind altogether” said Aga Khan at the Inauguration of the Ismaili Jamatkhana and Center, Houston, June 23, 2002.His Highness Aga Khan, the 49th Fatimid Imam-Caliph is a direct lineal
descendant of Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him and his family) through his cousin and son-in-law, Aly, the first Imam-Caliph, and his wife Fatima, the Prophet’s daughter.
Aly in Shi’i tradition of Islam is the Amirul Mu’minin (Master of the faithful) and is revered as the fourth rightly guided Caliph by the Sunni school of thought after Hazrat Abu Baker, Hazrat Umar and Hazrat Uthman.
“O Humankind! We have created you out of male and female and constituted you into different groups and societies, so that you may come to know each other – the noblest of you in the sight of God, are the ones possessing taqwa.” (49:11-13)
The human quality that encompasses the concept of the ideal ethical value in the Qur’an is summed up in the term taqwa, which in its various forms occurs over two hundred times in the text. It represents, on the one hand, the moral grounding that underlies human action, while on the other; it signifies the ethical conscience which makes human beings aware of their responsibilities to God and society. Thus when applied in the wider social context taqwa becomes the universal, ethical mark of a truly moral community.
The norms and assumptions that characterise belief and action in Islam have their initial inspiration in two foundation sources. One is the message revealed by God to the Holy Prophet and recorded in Quran. The second is Sunnah, the recording of the Prophet’s life, his words, actions and habits, his character, struggle, piety, and success that has come in time to represent for Muslims, a timeless pattern for daily life.
In time, the relationship between the Qur’an and the life of the Prophet elaborated to include the framework within which values and ethics could be determined. This process involved application of human reasoning, and this continuous interaction between reason and revelation provided the basis for formalised expression of ethics in Islam.
Sarojini Naidu speaking about Islam says, “It was the first religion that preached and practiced democracy; for in the mosque, when the minaret is sounded and the worshippers are gathered together, the democracy of Islam is embodied five times a day when the peasant and the king kneel side by side and proclaim ‘God alone is great.” The great poetess of
India continues, “I have been struck over and over again by this indivisible unity of Islam that makes a man instinctively a brother. When you meet an Egyptian, an Algerian, an Indian and a Turk in London, it matters not that Egypt is the motherland of one and India is the motherland of another.”
Gibbon, a historian of world repute says, “A pernicious tenet has been imputed to Mohammedans, the duty of extirpating all the religions by sword.” This charge based on ignorance and bigotry, says the eminent historian, is refuted by Quran, by history of Musalman conquerors and by their public and legal tolerance of Christian worship. The great success of Mohammad’s life had been affected by sheer moral force, without a stroke of sword.
Swami Vivekanananda, the distinguished Hindu savant, had this to say of Muslim impact on India: “The Muslim conquest of
India came as a salvation to the down-trodden, the poor.That is why one-fifth of our people have become Muslim.”
Muslims and Christians have far more in common than they have differences, Britain’s Prince Charles said at the opening of ‘Spirit and Life’ exhibition of Islamic art in London Thursday, 12 July 2007.
‘So much attention is paid to the outward differences between faiths. Almost reflexively, this becomes translated into seemingly impenetrable divisions between people,’ said Prince Charles, who has made the promotion of inter-faith understanding one of his main interests.
There is absolutely no difference in Islam between man and woman as both of them are promised the same reward for good conduct and the same punishment for evil conduct. The Qur’an says: “And for women are rights over men similar to those of men over women.” (2:226).Quran, in addressing the believers, often uses the expression ‘believing men and women’ to emphasise the equality of men and women. It says: “For Muslim men and women, for believing men and women, for devout men and women, for true men and women, for men and women who are patient and constant, for men and women who humble themselves, for men and women who give in charity, for men and women who fast, for men and women who guard their chastity, and for men and women who engage much in Allah’s praise, for them has Allah prepared forgiveness and great reward.” (Qur’an 33:35)
Sultan Muhammad Shah Aga Khan III, founder of Pakistan, 48th Fatimid Imam-Caliph, refused to identify humankind
without proper attribution to gender equity. In his view, the general well-being of every community depends on the emancipation of its women. No artificial barriers should obstruct their betterment. No prejudices, however narrow should deprive them of their natural rights and proper social status. Again and again he stressed the commanding importance of educating girls. He went to the extent of declaring that “Personally, if I had two children and one was a boy and the other a girl, and if I could afford to educate only one, I would have no hesitation in giving the higher education to the girl.”
The Shari’ah regards woman as intellectual and spiritual partner of man. It encourages fair division of labour between spouses. Advantage woman, it relocates the more strenuous work to the man while that of less strenuous nature to the woman. In Sharia, management of family including health, education and economy is equally vested with the mother.
The Shari’ah as a matter of fact encourages policy of tolerance, conciliation and consensus, both in the family and the society. This eventually becomes a stepping stone for inter faith harmony.
The social and intellectual part played in the life of Arabia by Imam Hussain’s daughter, Sakina, and by the daughter of Talha and the great grand daughters of Caliph Hazrat Abu Baker is yet to have a parallel in human history. According to H.E. Barnes in “A History of Historical Writings” (Oklahoma, 1937, p. 93), “In many ways the most advanced civilization of the Middle Ages was the civilization of the people of the faith of Islam.”
Indeed, Muslims are the ones who submit to God. It is a community of the middle path and balance. The Qur’an teacheth to avoid extremes, to enjoin good and forbid evil, using the best of arguments. Muslims are religiously required to shun compulsion, propagate peacefully and leave each to their own faith. Islam encourages all to vie for goodness: it is the nobility of conduct which endears one in the sight of God. In its perfect sense, Islam refers to the inner struggle of the individual, waged singly and in consonance with fellow believers, to engage in earthly life, and yet, to rise above its complexity in search of the Divine. In Islam this quest is only meaningful if kept in tandem with the effort to do good for the kin, the orphan, the needy, the sick, the vulnerable; to be just, honest, humble, tolerant and forgiving.
Aga Khan, the Fatimid Imam Caliph has emphasized the view of Islam as a thinking, spiritual faith, one that teaches compassion and tolerance and that upholds the dignity of man, Allah’s noblest creation. In the Shia tradition of Islam, it is the mandate of the Imam of the time to safeguard the individual’s right to personal intellectual search and to give practical expression to the ethical vision of society that the Islamic message inspires.
Addressing, the International Conference on the Example (Seerat) of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him and his family) in Karachi in 1976, the Aga Khan said that the wisdom of Allah’s final Prophet in seeking new solutions for problems which could not be solved by traditional methods, provides the inspiration for Muslims to conceive a truly modern and dynamic society, without affecting the fundamental concepts of Islam.
The divine revelation to Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him and his family) opened new horizons, in that it has become a binding force for the humanity living in far-flung lands, the diverse languages and dialects it speaks, and the multitude of traditions – scientific, artistic, religious, and cultural – which goes in to the making of a distinctive ethos. This message of global pluralism is inspiring today and shall remain so even tomorrow, and thereafter.
Excerpts from “Aga Khan Fatimid Imam Caliph” ©2007 by Anwar Merchant Enquiries for publishing of this book is solicited.