Advice of Scholars - ISLÂM

An excerpt taken from the fifty-seventh page of the booklet Râbita-i sherîfa by Sayyid Abdulhakîm ibni Mustafâ Arwâsî:

Islam is the way and rules which Allâhu ta’âlâ sent to His beloved Prophet Hadrat Muhammad through an angel named Jabrâil. Islam will make people comfortable and happy in this world and the next. Everything superior and useful is within Islam. Islam has gathered within itself all the visible and invisible excellences of the past sharî’ats. All sorts of happiness and success are within it. It consists of that which is essential and moral to unerring, unfailing minds.

People with faultless creation will not refuse or hate it. There is no harm in Islam. There is no benefit outside of Islam, nor can there be any. To think of any benefit outside of Islam would mean to expect wine from a mirage. The Sharî’at commands us to improve countries and promote people, to love and help one another and to live in brotherhood, and asks us to respect the commandments of Allâhu ta’âlâ and pity creatures, to love the land and the flag of the native land, to obey the laws, and to pay taxes honestly and in time. It bears responsibility towards every creature. It provides for the purification of the nafs, and distinguishes bad habits from good ones. It commands us to have good habits, and severely refuses and prohibits bad habits.

It commands us to get on well with non-Muslim citizens, owners of bid’at and those who follow different madhhabs, and it commands chastity and modesty in every respect. It forces us to be completely healthy. It refuses and prohibits laziness and wasting time. It absolutely commands agriculture, trade and arts. It attaches due importance to knowledge, science, techniques and industry. It asks men to help and serve one another mutually. It forces us to protect the lives, property and chastities of those in other religions, sects and faiths, and severely prohibits to attack them or to form organizations that interfere with politics and state affairs. It teaches us the rights of individuals, children, families and peoples, and it observes a right and responsibility towards the living, the dead and the coming generations, towards everybody. It is Sa’âdat-i dârayn, that is, it includes the happiness of this world and the next.

Other religions are not so. All other religions have been defiled, and ideas and thoughts issuing from the human mind have taken the place of divine rules. For this reason, they have never been lâyataghayyar and have remained only as forms and dead words over against an ever-improving and changing life. Allâhu ta’âlâ has based the Islamic dîn upon principles that will provide improvements to address the progress of life and life’s ever-changing needs. To say that the Sharî’at is the unchangeable rules based on the needs of the Middle Ages would mean to slander the Islamic dîn.