PRESENTING ISLAM IN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE

[The "purist" approach to find out the prevalent realities of this cosmos]

They are only as follows:

1. That there is the Supreme Authority Who created man first with three strong urges and one freewill to satisfy the urges. One may call that ultimate authority God or Allah;

2. That Supreme Authority created this universe for man with all that was necessary to maintain him on earth till doomsday and harnessed all that it contains for the use of man.

3. Man was descended on earth when it was made habitable through evolutionary process in billions of years in his most perfect form as he is today as His vicegerent, not as "master" of all what he surveys but as "Trustee" of what he sees or possesses so that he/she is responsible and Accountable to Him for all of his/her actions and deeds on earth. [And that he/she does not behave recklessly as we see around us]

4. That the Supreme Authority, while sending the man on earth, committed Himself to go on sending the Guidance as how to live, act and behave on earth as and when needed by man.

5. That the Supreme authority arranged Guidance for man through His appointed Messengers to deliver and demonstrate as how to live, act and behave while on earth in using the authority of vicegerent and that of Trustee in fulfilling his/her urges.

6. The Messengers have been coming to earth in thousands at different times and at different places with only one message: "Be obedient to your Creator and Sustainer and follow me, the Prophet of the time".

7. This process maintained the continuity of the messengers and that of the Message, the Guidance and explains as why so many messengers of God came on earth one after the other in a continuous process in a chain from Adam to Muhammad (peace be upon all of them), the most prominent of them were Noah, Abraham, Moses, David, Solomon, Jesus and Muhammad [pbut].

8. The tradition of the Creator and Sustainer through this process appears to be that when the previously delivered Guidance was lost, mutilated or innovated by its followers, He sent another Prophet with updated Guidance for the humans of that time. Thus came the Torah, the Zabur, the Bible and the Qur'an in a sequence.  Naturally, the last guidance, is the most perfect and completely updated version of Guidance for man to follow and it is available to man in its most original form and contents along with the life of the Messenger who brought it intact.

9. That when the next Messenger comes, it automatically replaces the previously available Guidance brought by the earlier Messengers as they all became redundant in the presence of the new updated Guidance from God and the life of the current Messenger becomes model for mankind. Thus all the previous codes of conduct or ways of life stood replaced when the final last Guidance came to the earth with the arrival of the lost Messenger from the Creator and Sustainer as it is perfect and fulfills the entire needs of mankind till the end of this world. It explains that is why no Messenger of God came after the last Messenger as there was no need of it"

10. Man’s wandering in the wilderness of this "frustrated" world and making efforts to solve the human problems through the zigzag puzzles of humanly created dogmas, myths, guess works and suppositions have overshadowed the foregoing prevalent truth of this universe and the fundamental realities of his existence altogether through inventing or designing the man-made cults and Isms - an exercise in futility as man is not competent to do that.

Request: please go through these hard facts of human's historical development on earth and then envision where you stand. This is the "purest" way to create "balance" in the disbalanced human life that you, me and everyone needs most. It would give you the requisite "free ticket" that will suffice one's  entire passage from birth to death, from cradle to grave and from earth to heaven with eternal peace of mind at every step of your life. What more the mortal frame of a human being can desire?

I will be extremely pleased to have your questions to get the position of man on earth further clarified. I have put the theme in a systematic order so that you are able to proceed step by step accordingly.       

Shamim Siddiqi

February 10, 2006