RELIGIONS, DOGMAS, AND THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY

There is only one Allah; there is only one way to Him. Since religion is the means whereby to know Allâhu ta’âlâ, there must be only one religion all over the world. Today, there are many different religions and dogmas in the world. If we look closely, it will be understood that the three great religions —Judaism, Christianity and Islam— believe in only one Allah and have the same basic principles of faith, and that these three religions complement each other. These three religions are just like three successive links in a chain. As the centuries passed away, the corrupt and changed religions were purged and corrected until finally Allâhu ta’âlâ sent “Islam”, which is the most perfect and the truest religion. As we have repeatedly mentioned in this book, the word “Islam” has two meanings. It means to give oneself up to Allâhu ta’âlâ, and it is the name of the final religion conveyed by Muhammad (’alaihi ’s-salam). Ahl-i kitâb (religions with holy books) is the name of the other two religions.

We shall try to tell you how these religions were sent by Allâhu ta’âlâ. We shall explain their fundamentals. Beside these three great religions, there are some religions without the concept of Allah, which are based on moral principles only. These are irrelevant to our subject, but they are believed to be religions by great masses of people in the world. Therefore, we think that it will be a good idea to first give information about them before dealing with the main subject.

Brahmanism, Zoroastrianism, and Buddhism are the most important ones among them. A short time ago, these three religions were the faiths of one and a half billion people. Indians, Burmese, Laotians, Japanese, Chinese, Malays, Koreans, and various other peoples that are their neighbours used to believe in these religions. It is possible to meet some Buddhists among Europeans and Americans, but they are very few. According to the latest international statistics, the number of those holding these religions decreased to as low as 400 million. The reason for this is the affectiveness of communistic propaganda and the fact that the young generation in China does not attach any importance to any religion. Now, let us examine these religions in detail and see the human role in them.