THERE IS NO GOD BUT HIM

T O T H E R E A D E R
The reason why a special chapter is assigned to the collapse of the theory of
evolution is that this theory constitutes the basis of all anti-spiritual philosophies.
Since Darwinism rejects the fact of creation, and therefore the existence of God,
during the last 140 years it has caused many people to abandon their faith or fall
into doubt. Therefore, showing that this theory is a deception is a very important
duty, which is strongly related to the religion (deen). It is imperative that this
important service be rendered to everyone. Some of our readers may find the
chance to read only one of our books. Therefore, we think it appropriate to spare
a chapter for a summary of this subject.
In all the books by the author, faith-related issues are explained in the light of
the Qur'anic verses and people are invited to learn God's words and to live by
them. All the subjects that concern God's verses are explained in such a way as
to leave no room for doubt or question marks in the reader's mind. The sincere,
plain and fluent style employed ensures that everyone of every age and from
every social group can easily understand the books. This effective and lucid
narrative makes it possible to read them in a single sitting. Even those who
rigorously reject spirituality are influenced by the facts recounted in these books
and cannot refute the truthfulness of their contents.
This book and all the other works of the author can be read individually or
discussed in a group at a time of conversation. Those readers who are willing to
profit from the books will find discussion very useful in the sense that they will
be able to relate their own reflections and experiences to one another.
In addition, it will be a great service to the religion to contribute to the
presentation and reading of these books, which are written solely for the good
pleasure of God. All the books of the author are extremely convincing. For this
reason, for those who want to communicate the religion to other people, one of
the most effective methods is to encourage them to read these books.
It is hoped that the reader will take time to look through the review of other
books on the final pages of the book, and appreciate the rich source of material
on faith-related issues, which are very useful
and a pleasure to read.
In these books, you will not find, as in some other books, the personal views of
the author, explanations based on dubious sources, styles that are unobservant
of the respect and reverence due to sacred subjects, nor hopeless, doubtcreating,
and pessimistic accounts that create deviations in the heart.
BASIC TENETS
OF ISLAM
HARUN YAHYA
Mankind! The truth has come to you from your
Lord. Whoever is guided is only guided for his
own good. Whoever is misguided is only
misguided to his detriment. I have not been set
over you as a guardian.
(Sura Yunus: 108)
May, 2002
About The Author
The author, who writes under the pen-name HARUN YAHYA, was born in Ankara in 1956.
Having completed his primary and secondary education in Ankara, he then studied arts at Istanbul's
Mimar Sinan University and philosophy at Istanbul University. Since the 1980s, the author has
published many books on political, faith-related and scientific issues. Harun Yahya is well-known as
an author who has written very important works disclosing the imposture of evolutionists, the
invalidity of their claims and the dark liaisons between Darwinism and bloody ideologies such as
fascism and communism.
His pen-name is made up of the names "Harun" (Aaron) and "Yahya" (John), in memory of the
two esteemed prophets who fought against lack of faith. The Prophet's seal on the cover of the
author's books has a symbolic meaning linked to the their contents. This seal represents the Koran,
the last Book and the last word of God, and our Prophet, the last of all the prophets. Under the
guidance of the Koran and Sunnah, the author makes it his main goal to disprove each one of the
fundamental tenets of godless ideologies and to have the "last word", so as to completely silence the
objections raised against religion. The seal of the Prophet, who attained ultimate wisdom and moral
perfection, is used as a sign of his intention of saying this last word.
All these works by the author centre around one goal: to convey the message of the Koran to
people, thus encouraging them to think about basic faith-related issues, such as the existence of God, His
unity and the hereafter, and to display the decrepit foundations and perverted works of godless systems.
Harun Yahya enjoys a wide readership in many countries, from India to America, England to
Indonesia, Poland to Bosnia, and Spain to Brazil. Some of his books are available in English, French,
German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Urdu, Arabic, Albanian, Russian, Serbo-Croat (Bosnian), Polish,
Malay, Uygur Turkish, and Indonesian, and they have been enjoyed by readers all over the world.
Greatly appreciated all around the world, these works have been instrumental in many people
putting their faith in God and in many others gaining a deeper insight into their faith. The wisdom,
and the sincere and easy-to-understand style employed give these books a distinct touch which
directly strikes any one who reads or examines them. Immune to objections, these works are
characterised by their features of rapid effectiveness, definite results and irrefutability. It is unlikely
that those who read these books and give a serious thought to them can any longer sincerely advocate
the materialistic philosophy, atheism and any other perverted ideology or philosophy. Even if they
continue to advocate, this will be only a sentimental insistence since these books have refuted these
ideologies from their very basis. All contemporary movements of denial are ideologically defeated
today, thanks to the collection of books written by Harun Yahya.
There is no doubt that these features result from the wisdom and lucidity of the Koran. The
author certainly does not feel proud of himself; he merely intends to serve as a means in one's search
for God's right path. Furthermore, no material gain is sought in the publication of these works.
Considering these facts, those who encourage people to read these books, which open the "eyes"
of the heart and guide them in becoming more devoted servants of God, render an invaluable service.
Meanwhile, it would just be a waste of time and energy to propagate other books which create
confusion in peoples' minds, lead man into ideological chaos, and which, clearly have no strong and
precise effects in removing the doubts in peoples' hearts, as also verified from previous experience. It
is apparent that it is impossible for books devised to emphasize the author's literary power rather
than the noble goal of saving people from loss of faith, to have such a great effect. Those who doubt
this can readily see that the sole aim of Harun Yahya's books is to overcome disbelief and to
disseminate the moral values of the Koran. The success, impact and sincerity this service has attained
are manifest in the reader's conviction.
One point needs to be kept in mind: The main reason for the continuing cruelty and conflict, and
all the ordeals the majority of people undergo is the ideological prevalence of disbelief. These things can
only come to an end with the ideological defeat of disbelief and by ensuring that everybody knows about
the wonders of creation and Koranic morality, so that people can live by it. Considering the state of the
world today, which forces people into the downward spiral of violence, corruption and conflict, it is clear
that this service has to be provided more speedily and effectively. Otherwise, it may be too late.
It is no exaggeration to say that the collection of books by Harun Yahya have assumed this
leading role. By the Will of God, these books will be the means through which people in the 21st
century will attain the peace and bliss, justice and happiness promised in the Koran.
The works of the author include The New Masonic Order, Judaism and Freemasonry, Global
Freemasonry, Islam Denounces Terrorism, The Disasters Darwinism Brought to Humanity,
Communism in Ambush, Fascism: The Bloody Ideology of Darwinism, The 'Secret Hand' in Bosnia,
Behind the Scenes of The Holocaust, Behind the Scenes of Terrorism, Israel's Kurdish Card, The
Oppression Policy of Communist China and Eastern Turkestan, Solution: The Values of the Qur'an,
The Winter of Islam and Its Expected Spring, Articles 1-2-3, AWeapon of Satan: Romantism, Signs
from the Chapter of the Cave to the Last Times, Signs of the Last Day, The Last Times and The Beast
of the Earth, Truths 1-2, The Western World Turns to God, The Evolution Deceit, Precise Answers to
Evolutionists, The Blunders of Evolutionists, Confessions of Evolutionists, The Qur'an Denies
Darwinism, Perished Nations, For Men of Understanding, The Prophet Moses, The Prophet Joseph,
The Prophet Mohammed, The Prophet Solomon, The Golden Age, Allah's Artistry in Colour, Glory is
Everywhere, The Importance of the Evidences of Creation, The Truth of the Life of This World, The
Nightmare of Disbelief, Knowing the Truth, Eternity Has Already Begun, Timelessness and the
Reality of Fate, Matter: Another Name for Illusion, The Little Man in the Tower, Islam and the
Philosophy of Karma, The Dark Magic of Darwinism, The Religion of Darwinism, The Collapse of
the Theory of Evolution in 20 Questions, Allah is Known Through Reason, The Qur'an Leads the Way
to Science, The Real Origin of Life, Consciousness in the Cell, A String of Miracles, The Creation of
the Universe, Miracles of the Qur'an, The Design in Nature, Self-Sacrifice and Intelligent Behaviour
Models in Animals, The End of Darwinism, Deep Thinking, Never Plead Ignorance, The Green
Miracle: Photosynthesis, The Miracle in the Cell, The Miracle in the Eye, The Miracle in the Spider,
The Miracle in the Gnat, The Miracle in the Ant, The Miracle of the Immune System, The Miracle of
Creation in Plants, The Miracle in the Atom, The Miracle in the Honeybee, The Miracle of Seed, The
Miracle of Hormone, The Miracle of the Termite, The Miracle of the Human Body, The Miracle of
Man's Creation, The Miracle of Protein, The Miracle of Smell and Taste, The Secrets of DNA.
The author's childrens books are: Wonders of Allah's Creation, The World of Animals, The
Splendour in the Skies, Wonderful Creatures, Let's Learn Our Religion, The World of Our Little
Friends: The Ants, Honeybees That Build Perfect Combs, Skillful Dam Builders: Beavers.
The author's other works on Quranic topics include: The Basic Concepts in the Qur'an, The
Moral Values of the Qur'an, Quick Grasp of Faith 1-2-3, Ever Thought About the Truth?, Crude
Understanding of Disbelief, Devoted to Allah, Abandoning the Society of Ignorance, The Real Home of
Believers: Paradise, Knowledge of the Qur'an, Qur'an Index, Emigrating for the Cause of Allah, The
Character of the Hypocrite in the Qur'an, The Secrets of the Hypocrite, The Names of Allah,
Communicating the Message and Disputing in the Qur'an, Answers from the Qur'an, Death Resurrection
Hell, The Struggle of the Messengers, The Avowed Enemy of Man: Satan, The Greatest Slander: Idolatry,
The Religion of the Ignorant, The Arrogance of Satan, Prayer in the Qur'an, The Theory of Evolution, The
Importance of Conscience in the Qur'an, The Day of Resurrection, Never Forget, Disregarded Judgements
of the Qur'an, Human Characters in the Society of Ignorance, The Importance of Patience in the Qur'an,
General Information from the Qur'an, The Mature Faith, Before You Regret, Our Messengers Say, The
Mercy of Believers, The Fear of Allah, Jesus Will Return, Beauties Presented by the Qur'an for Life, A
Bouquet of the Beauties of Allah 1-2-3-4, The Iniquity Called "Mockery," The Mystery of the Test, The
True Wisdom According to the Qur'an, The Struggle with the Religion of Irreligion, The School of Yusuf,
The Alliance of the Good, Slanders Spread Against Muslims Throughout History, The Importance of
Following the Good Word, Why Do You Deceive Yourself?, Islam: The Religion of Ease, Enthusiasm and
Excitement in the Qur'an, Seeing Good in Everything, How do the Unwise Interpret the Qur'an?, Some
Secrets of the Qur'an, The Courage of Believers, Being Hopeful in the Qur'an, Justice and Tolerance in the
Qur'an, Basic Tenets of Islam, Those Who do not Listen to the Qur'an, Taking the Qur'an as a Guide, A
Lurking Threat: Heedlessness, Sincerity in the Qur'an.
© ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
BASIC TENETS OF ISLAM
HARUN YAHYA
Edited by: David Livingstone
ISBN No.: 81-7231-xxxxx
Edition: 2002
Price: ------
Published by Abdul Naeem for
Islamic Book Service
2241, Kucha Chelan, Darya Ganj, New Delhi - 110 002 (INDIA)
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All translations from the Qur'an are from "The Noble Qur'an: a New Rendering of its Meaning in English"
by Hajj Abdalhaqq and Aisha Bewley, published by Bookwork, Norwich, UK. 1420 CE/1999 AH.
Website: http: // www.harunyahya.com
E-mail: info@harunyahya.com
PREFACE 8
THERE IS NO GOD BUT HIM 10
GOD ENCOMPASSES EVERYTHING 13
GOD IS NEAR TO MAN 14
GOD CREATED EVERYTHING ACCORDING TO
A FIXED DECREE 16
GOD HAS POWER OVER EVERYTHING 17
GOD SEES AND KNOWS EVERYTHING 20
ALL BEINGS ARE SUBJECTED TO GOD 22
FALSE BELIEFS ABOUT GOD 24
FAITH IN GOD FREE OF IDOLATRY 27
ASSESSING GOD WITH A JUST ASSESSMENT 29
GOD'S INFINITE GREATNESS AND POWER 31
LOVE OF GOD AND FEAR OF GOD 35
THE QUR'AN IS A GUIDE 39
BELIEF IN THE BOOKS REVEALED BY GOD
AND BELIEF IN HIS MESSENGERS 41
FAITH IN THE ANGELS 43
THE TEMPORARY NATURE OF THE LIFE OF THIS WORLD 44
MAN IS BEING TESTED 46
DEATH IS NOT THE END 50
BELIEF IN THE HEREAFTER 53
FAITH IN THE DAY OF JUDGEMENT 55
THE RESURRECTION 58
THE DAY OF JUDGEMENT 60
PARADISE AND HELL 62
THE AIM IS TO ATTAIN THE GOOD PLEASURE OF GOD 67
SIN AND REPENTANCE 70
RELIGION IS IN CONFORMITY WITH
THE NATURAL INCLINATION OF MANKIND 72
BELIEVERS MUST BE TOGETHER AND COOPERATE 78
THE LAST WORD 81
THE MISCONCEPTION OF EVOLUTION 82
CONTENTS
8
PREFACE


This book is written for those who have recently been
introduced to Islam, and who already have knowledge and
some degree of conviction about Islam, but which may have
had their origin in inadequate or invalid sources. The
information people gather about Islam is, in most cases,
limited to what their families, friends or certain books
present. However, accurate information about Islam can be
accessed only by referring to the Qur'an, the source of Islam.
The Qur'an is the final revelation sent by God, as
guidance to mankind. While the Torah and the Gospel, the
two holy books preceding the Qur'an, were also revelations
from God, in time, they were distorted and lost their quality
as the divine word of God. Although they may contain parts
of the original word of God, their greater part consists of
words and interpolations of man. The only book revealed by
God to have survived completely intact, is the Qur'an. It
contains only that which has been revealed by God. God sent
down His message, either by way of Gabriel, or through
direct inspiration to the Prophet Muhammad (saas). The
Qur'an consists of only that which was revealed to the
Prophet Muhammad (saas), sent down in stages, for a period
of twenty-three years.
At every state, the revelation was immediately recorded
in writing, or committed to memory, by the Prophet's
companions. Today, all Muslims wherever they are, read the
same Qur'an. No contradiction or discrepancy can be found
in any of the copies. (In our day, the Qur'an of Uthman, the
third Caliph, is displayed in Topkapi Museum, Istanbul.)
Evidence that the Qur'an is from God is the total absence of
any sort of contradiction in the Qur'an. According to the
Book of God:
Will they not ponder the Qur'an? If it had been from
other than God, they would have found many
inconsistencies in it. (Sura an-Nisa': 82)
The Qur'an is guidance to lead man to the path of
rectitude. It is the revelation of God, sent to bring man from
darkness to light. By way of the Qur'an, Our Lord, the
Creator of man and all living things, directs His servants to
the straight path. In a verse, God states:
Mankind! Admonition has come to you from your Lord
and also healing for what is in the breasts and guidance
and mercy for the believers. (Sura Yunus: 57)
God's existence, His unity, the signs of creation, and the
life of the hereafter, are those basic facts most stressed in the
Qur'an. In many verses of the Qur'an, God invites man to
think and to ponder on the divine wisdom in God's creation,
and on the transience of the life of this world, and the
permanence of the life of the hereafter. As well, we can also
find in the Qur'an accounts of the lives of the prophets; their
sincerity in faith, their commitment to God's cause, and their
Preface
9
determination in spreading the divine message. Finally, a
number of verses in the Qur'an also provide us with insight
into how we should conduct ourselves in our everyday lives.
In this book, based on information provided by the Qur'an,
we will discuss God, His attributes, the real purpose of our
existence in this world, what we need to do to comply with it,
the reality of death and that which awaits us, the afterlife.
We highly recommend that you read this book carefully,
and reflect upon its lessons, because they are intended to
draw you nearer to your Creator, and show you the way to
infinite bliss and salvation.
THERE IS NO GOD BUT HIM


The essence of Islam is to know of the existence of God,
and to understand that there is no god but Him. To practice
Islam is to allow this truth to manifest itself in every aspect of
one's life. According to the Qur'an:
Your God is One God. There is no god but Him, the All-
Merciful, the Most Merciful. (Sura al-Baqara: 163)
Most people think that matter, the underlying substance
of the universe, has an absolute existence, and regard God as
but an abstract idea. (God is truly beyond what they ascribe
to Him) The truth is, however, only God truly exists, and the
rest is merely His creation.
The entire universe and everything in it was created by
God. Before the creation of the universe, nothing existed, in
BASIC TENETS OF ISLAM
10
the material sense. It was all non-existence. At the moment
when the universe was created, the Al-Awwal (The First) and
Al-Akhir (The Last) God, Who is unbounded by time and
space, created time, matter and space. The Qur'an relates this
matter as follows:
The Originator of the heavens and earth. When He
decides on something, He just says to it, "Be!" and it is.
(Sura al-Baqara: 117)
Contrary to the perceived wisdom, God did not create
matter and then leave it on its own. Everything happening,
even at this very instant, is ordained by God. Every raindrop,
each child that opens its eyes to the world, the process of
photosynthesis in plants, all the bodily functions of living
things, the courses of stars in far remote galaxies, each seed
sprouting forth, or any other event that we might think of, or
fail to think of, are all ordained by God. It is God Who creates
all things. Every event occurs within His command:
It is God Who created the seven heavens and of the earth
the same number, the Command descending down
through all of them, so that you might know that God
has power over all things and that God encompasses all
things in His knowledge. (Sura at-Talaq: 12)
He Who originates creation and then regenerates it and
provides for you from out of heaven and earth. Is there
another god besides God? Say: "Bring your proof if you
are being truthful." (Sura an-Naml: 64)
Were the universe left to its own will, it would become
disordered, scattered and corrupted. However, the perfect
There Is No God But Him
11
12
equilibrium in all things, from the cells of a living organism,
to the stars in deep outer space, all reveal the existence of
something that is controlling them at every moment, with the
same perfection as their original creation. In any corner of the
universe, one will always come to recognize a flawless plan:
He Who created the seven heavens in layers. You will
not find any flaw in the creation of the All-Merciful.
Look again—do you see any gaps? Then look again and
again. Your sight will return to you dazzled and
exhausted! (Sura al-Mulk: 3-4)
Denying that God is the Creator, and attributing divinity
to that which He created, despite the abundance of proof to
the contrary, is as nonsensical as claiming that a skyscraper
was not built by construction workers, but came into being
by the free will of bricks, or the placement of one on top of
the other by pure coincidence.
The perfect order in the universe, and the supreme design
of living things, reveals to us that they must have all been
created by a single Creator. If there were other gods, that is,
others capable of similarly ordaining their will, disorder and
confusion would prevail. That there is no god but Him, and
that no other being in the universe has any similar power, is
related in a verse of the Qur'an as follows:
God has no son and there is no other god accompanying
Him, for then each god would have gone off with what
he created and one of them would have been exalted
above the other. Glory be to God above what they
describe. (Sura al-Muminun: 91)
BASIC TENETS OF ISLAM
In the supplication below, the Prophet Muhammad (saas)
stressed that there is no deity but God and a believer has to
turn to Him in all matters:
None has the right to be worshipped but God, the Majestic, the
Most Forbearing. None has the right to be worshipped but God,
the Lord of the Tremendous Throne. None has the right to be
worshipped but God, the Lord of the Heavens and the Lord of the
Honourable Throne. (Al-Bukhari)
As stressed above, there is no other god beside Him. He
has no son. He is above such human attributes. We clearly
understand from the verse below that those religions
claiming that God has a "son" are misguided. The Oneness of
God is further emphasized in the Qur'an as follows:
Say: "He is God, Absolute Oneness, God, the
Everlasting Sustainer of all. He has not given birth and
was not born. And no one is comparable to Him."
(Sura al-Ikhlas: 1-4)
GOD ENCOMPASSES EVERYTHING


Some people think that God is found in a certain place.
The belief that God is up in the sky, in a remote corner of the
universe, is held by many people. The fact is, however, that
God is anywhere, encompassing everything. He is the actual
and the only absolute being, to Whom all beings are
subjected:
God Encompasses Everything
13
God, there is no god but Him, the Living, the Self-
Sustaining. He is not subject to drowsiness or sleep.
Everything in the heavens and the earth belongs to
Him. Who can intercede with Him except by His
permission? He knows what is before them and what is
behind them but they cannot grasp any of His
knowledge save what He wills. His Footstool
encompasses the heavens and the earth and their
preservation does not tire Him. He is the Most High, the
Magnificent. (Sura al-Baqara: 255)
God has everything within His grasp at any given
moment. There is no creature He does not hold by the
forelock. He has power over all things and is exalted high
above any weakness or inability.
GOD IS NEAR TO MAN


Many people think God is far away. However, as stated in
the Qur'an, "...Surely your Lord encompasses the people
with His knowledge..." (Sura al-Isra': 60), He is very near. He
sees and knows every aspect of a human being, and hears
every word he utters. He is knowledgeable of even one's
inner thoughts. This is related in the Qur'an as follows:
We created man and We know what his own self
whispers to him. We are nearer to him than his jugular
vein. (Sura Qaf: 16)
BASIC TENETS OF ISLAM
14
God is so near to man that He hears the prayer of
everyone—even if he prays inwardly—and it is He Who
answers it:
If My servants ask you about Me, I am near. I answer
the call of the caller when he calls on Me. They should
therefore respond to Me and believe in Me so that
hopefully they will be rightly guided. (Sura
al-Baqara: 186)
God knows what a person harbours in his heart. He
knows whether he engages in a deed to earn His consent, or
to satisfy his own lower soul. God reminds us that He knows
our inner thoughts:
...Know that God knows what is in your selves, so
beware of Him! And know that God is Ever-Forgiving,
All-Forbearing. (Sura al-Baqara: 235)
Though you speak out loud, He knows your secrets and
what is even more concealed. (Sura Ta Ha: 7)
God's Messenger, the Prophet Muhammad (saas) also
reminded Muslims when they prayed that God is very close to
them by saying, "You are calling a Hearer, One very close by; The
One Who you are calling is closer to each one of you."(Al-Bukhari and
Muslim)
As He is with you at every moment, God is with you as
you are reading this book; He sees what you are doing and
knows what you are thinking. This fact is related in the
Qur'an as follows:
Do you not see that God knows what is in the heavens
and on the earth? Three men cannot confer together
God Is Near To Man
15
secretly without Him being the fourth of them, or five
without Him being the sixth of them, or fewer than that
or more without Him being with them wherever they
are. Then He will inform them on the Day of Rising of
what they did. God has knowledge of all things. (Sura
al-Mujadala: 7)
GOD CREATED EVERYTHING ACCORDING TO
A FIXED DECREE


We have created all things according to a fixed decree.
(Sura al-Qamar: 49)
Destiny is part of God's perfect creation and all events,
past and future, are known to Him as in a timeless "single
moment."
It is God Who created matter. What we call time is the
motion of matter. Time is a dimension which is relative only
to man. Only man perceives the passage of time; a human
being can recognize his own existence only as it exists in
time. God, however, is not bound by time, for it is He Who
created it. In other words, God is independent of the flow of
time; God does not need to wait to see what will happen in
the future. God is truly exalted above all such deficiencies.
God knows of a future event (future for us) before it happens,
because God, the First and the Last, is not bound by time, and
because He is the Absolute and the Infinite. Not bound by
BASIC TENETS OF ISLAM
16
time, God is aware of an event which, from our perspective,
will take place thousands of years later. In fact, it is He Who
willed, determined and created it. This truth is revealed in a
verse as follows:
Nothing occurs, either in the earth or in yourselves,
without its being in a Book before We make it happen.
That is something easy for God. (Sura al-Hadid: 22)
GOD HAS POWER OVER EVERYTHING


God, the Creator of everything, is the sole possessor of all
beings. It is God Who heaps up the heavy clouds, heats and
brightens the earth, varies the direction of the winds, holds
birds suspended up in the sky, splits the seed, makes a man's
heart beat, ordains photosynthesis in plants, and keeps
planets in their separate orbits. People generally surmise that
such phenomena occur according to "the laws of physics,"
"gravity," "aerodynamics," or other physical factors; however,
there is one point these people ignore: all such physical laws
were created by God. In fact, the only possessor of power in
the universe is God.
God rules all the systems in the universe, regardless of
whether we are aware of them, or if we are asleep, sitting,
walking. Each of the myriad of processes in the universe, all
essential to our existence, is under God's control. Even our
ability to just take a small step forward depends on countless
17
God Has Power Over Everything
minutely predetermined details, including earth's force of
gravity, the structure of the human skeleton, the nervous
system and muscular system, the brain, the heart, and even
the rotation speed of the earth.
Attributing the existence of the world and of the entire
universe to sheer coincidence is complete delusion. The
exquisite order of the earth and the universe completely
contradicts the possibility of formation through coincidence,
and is, rather, a clear sign of God's infinite might. For instance,
the earth's orbit around the sun deviates only 2.8 mm in every
29 kms from the right path. If this deviation were 0.3 mm
longer or shorter, then living beings all over the earth would
either freeze or be scorched. While it is virtually impossible
for even a marble to revolve in the same orbit without any
deviation, the earth accomplishes such a course despite its
gigantic mass. As stated in the Qur'an, "...God has appointed
a measure for all things..." (Sura at-Talaq: 3). In effect, the
splendid order in the universe is maintained as a result of
fantastic systems that depend on highly delicate equilibriums.
Many hold the perverted belief that God "created
everything and then left them on their own." However, any
event, taking place in any area of the universe, occurs solely
by God's Will, and under His control. The Qur'an states the
following:
Do you not know that God knows everything in heaven
and earth? That is in a Book. That is easy for God. (Sura
al-Hajj: 70)
BASIC TENETS OF ISLAM
18
It is very important to grasp this fact for someone who
strives to come near to God. The prayer of Prophet Muhammad
(saas) quoted below is a very good example of this:
O God: All the Praises are for You: You are the Lord of the
Heavens and the Earth. All the Praises are for You; You are the
Maintainer of the Heaven and the Earth and whatever is in
them. All the Praises are for You; You are the Light of the
Heavens and the Earth. Your Word is the Truth, and Your
Promise is the Truth, and the Meeting with You is the Truth,
and Paradise is the Truth, and the (Hell) Fire is the Truth, and
the Hour is the Truth. O God! I surrender myself to You, and I
believe in You and I depend upon You, and I repent to You and
with You (Your evidences) I stand against my opponents, and to
you I leave the judgment (for those who refuse my message). O
God! Forgive me my sins that I did in the past or will do in the
future, and also the sins I did in secret or in public. You are my
only God (Whom I worship) and there is no other God for me
(i.e. I worship none but You). (Al-Bukhari)
Elaborate processes taking place in the bodies of living
things are impressive examples that help us to grasp God's
might. For instance, at every moment, your kidneys filter
your blood and extricate those harmful molecules to be
excreted from the body. This screening and elimination
process, which can be carried out by a single kidney cell, can
only be accomplished by a giant haemodialyser (artificial
kidney). A haemodialyser was consciously designed by
scientists. A kidney, however, does not sense, or have a
decision-making centre, nor the faculty of thought. In other
God Has Power Over Everything
19
words, an unconscious kidney cell can accomplish tasks that
otherwise demand an elaborate thinking process.
It is possible to encounter millions of such examples in
living beings. Molecules, composed of unconscious matter,
perform tasks so remarkable they would otherwise suggest
consciousness. The consciousness apparent in these cases
though is, of course, of God's infinite wisdom and knowledge.
It is God Who designed the kidney cells, as well as the
molecules discussed, and Who orders them to accomplish
their respective tasks. In the Qur'an, God informs us that He
constantly sends down "commands" to the beings He created:
It is God Who created the seven heavens and of the
earth the same number, the Command descending
down through all of them, so that you might know that
God has power over all things and that God
encompasses all things in His knowledge. (Sura at-
Talaq: 12)
Clearly, God, Who created everything in the universe, is
surely able to bring the dead to life. Of this fact, God states
the following:
Do they not see that God—He Who created the heavens
and the earth and was not wearied by creating them—
has the power to bring the dead to life? Yes indeed! He
has power over all things. (Sura al-Ahqaf: 33)
BASIC TENETS OF ISLAM
20
GOD SEES AND KNOWS EVERYTHING


People cannot see God—unless He wills—, being the
main reason why so many often falsely presume that God
cannot see them (truly, God is far above that which they
ascribe to Him). God sees and knows all things, down to the
minutest detail, as indicated in a verse of the Qur'an as
follows:
Eyesight cannot perceive Him but He perceives
eyesight. He is the All-Penetrating, the All-Aware. (Sura
al-An'am: 103)
Wherever a person may be, God is surely with him. Right
at this moment, as you are reading these lines, God sees you
and knows exactly what crosses your mind. Wherever you
go, or whatever you do, this is always the case. As the Qur'an
explains:
You do not engage in any matter or recite any of the
Qur'an or do any action without Our witnessing you
while you are occupied with it. Not even the smallest
speck eludes your Lord, either on earth or in heaven.
Nor is there anything smaller than that, or larger, which
is not in a Clear Book. (Sura Yunus: 61)
It is He Who created the heavens and the earth in six
days, then established Himself firmly on the Throne.
He knows what goes into the earth and what comes out
of it, what comes down from heaven and what goes up
God Sees and Knows Everything
21
into it. He is with you wherever you are—God sees
what you do. (Sura al-Hadid: 4)
The Prophet Muhammad (saas) also reminded believers
to keep this in mind when he said, "God is above the Throne
and nothing is hidden from God of your deeds."
Aware of this fact, a believer submits himself to his Lord,
seeks refuge in Him, and fears nothing but Him. God's
command to Prophet Moses, and Aaron, who hesitated in going
to Pharaoh to summon him to Islam, is a lesson for all believers:
He said, "Have no fear. I will be with you, All-Hearing
and All-Seeing." (Sura Ta Ha: 46)
ALL BEINGS ARE SUBJECTED TO GOD


All beings in the universe, either living or non-living, are
under God's command. They can act only if He wills. They
can only perform those tasks which He wills. For example,
honeybees, who produce more honey than their actual need,
could not possibly know that honey is beneficial to humans;
nor could they be aware of the precise chemical composition
that makes it so useful and delicious. In fact, in addition to
not knowing why they produce an abundance of much
honey, nor could they possess the intelligence to construct
the orderly hexagonal honeycombs, each of which is a
miracle of design and mathematics. It is God, to Whom all
beings are subjected, that causes bees accomplish these feats.
BASIC TENETS OF ISLAM
22
That bees act in compliance with God's command is related
in the Qur'an as follows:
Your Lord revealed to the bees: "Build dwellings in the
mountains and the trees, and also in the structures
which men erect. Then eat from every kind of fruit and
travel the paths of your Lord, which have been made
easy for you to follow" From inside them comes a drink
of varying colours, containing healing for mankind.
There is certainly a Sign in that for people who reflect.
(Sura an-Nahl: 68-69)
Bees' compliance with God's commands in the manner in
which they conduct themselves is not an anomaly. God
provides us with this example to allow us to understand that
all beings, including man, act by His Will. The Qur'an
indicates that this is a sign for those who reflect. All beings
are entirely subjected to His command:
Everyone in the heavens and earth belongs to Him. All
are submissive to Him. (Sura ar-Rum: 26)
Some religions consider Satan to be a being apart from
and independent of God. Some attribute individual power to
Satan. However, both opinions are incorrect. Satan, as well as
the disbelievers who follow him, are subjected to God's Will.
God created Satan to put man to test, and endowed him with
the ability and authority to call mankind to disbelief. God's
address to Satan is related in the Qur'an:
He (God) said, "Get out! you are accursed!
My curse is upon you until the Day of Reckoning."
He (Satan) said, "My Lord, grant me a reprieve until the
All Beings Are Subjected To God
23
Day they are raised again." He said, "You are among the
reprieved until the Day whose time is known."
He said, "By Your might, I will mislead all of them
except for Your chosen servants among them."
He said, "By the truth—and I speak the truth—
I will fill up Hell with you and every one of them who
follows you." (Sura Sâd: 77-85)
Just as man is, Satan is also entirely under God's control,
and subjected to His Will. He is not a being possessing a will
apart from and independent of God; he can neither make
such decisions nor carry them out. In the trial set for human
beings in this life, he is merely a being that is expected to
distinguish the righteous from the corrupt.
FALSE BELIEFS ABOUT GOD


The Torah and the Gospel, the earlier revelations from
God, have lost their original authenticity, since the words and
interpolations of man have been incorporated into them. This
is one of the reasons for which the Qur'an was sent. That the
holy books preceded the Qur'an were distorted by man is
related by God as follows:
Woe to those who write the Book with their own hands
and then say "This is from God" to sell it for a paltry
price. Woe to them for what their hands have written!
Woe to them for what they earn! (Surat Al-Baqara: 79)
BASIC TENETS OF ISLAM
24
Among them is a group who distort the Book with their
tongues so that you think it is from the Book when it is
not from the Book. They say, "It is from God," but it is
not from God. They tell a lie against God and they
know it. (Sura Al 'Imran: 78)
Distortion of the Torah and the New Testament led
proliferation of false beliefs among their adherents. These
holy books include beliefs and ideas that derive from outside
of God's true religion. This manifests itself in the distortion of
the true revelation, and the depiction of God as a being with
weaknesses and imperfections peculiar to human beings.
(Truly, God is above what they ascribe to Him).
In the corrupted Torah, for instance, a story has been
fabricated in which God is depicted as a being who was
defeated in wrestling bout with the Prophet Jacob (as).
Similarly, in another tale, it is claimed that having created the
world in six days, God became weary and rested on the
seventh day. However, God, being exalted far above any
imperfections, cannot become weary or in need of rest. This
is related in the Qur'an as follows:
We created the heavens and the earth, and everything
between them, in six days and We were not affected by
fatigue. (Sura Qaf: 38)
Do they not see that God—He Who created the heavens
and the earth and was not wearied by creating them—
has the power to bring the dead to life? Yes indeed! He
has power over all things. (Sura al-Ahqaf: 33)
This reveals that the adherents of these books have
False Beliefs About God
25
swerved from the straight path, and have not had an accurate
understanding of God and His attributes.
The Qur'an, on the other hand, is under God's protection,
and is the only book revealed by God to have survived intact.
The Qur'an is the book of Islam, the only true religion:
It is We Who have sent down the Reminder and We
Who will preserve it. (Sura al-Hijr: 9)
If anyone desires anything other than Islam as a religion,
it will not be accepted from him, and in the hereafter he
will be among the losers. (Sura Al 'Imran: 85)
The Qur'an refers to the erroneous beliefs adopted by
Christians and Jews, and makes known the correct belief. For
instance, their saying, "God has a son (Jesus)," which is one of
the tenets of Christianity, is said to be merely an irrational
belief and a lie said against God:
They say, "God has a son." Glory be to Him! No,
everything in the heavens and earth belongs to Him.
Everything is obedient to Him, the Originator of the
heavens and earth. When He decides on something, He
just says to it, "Be!" and it is. (Sura al-Baqara: 116-117)
Some other verses related to this matter are as follows:
People of the Book! Do not go to excess in your religion.
Say nothing but the truth about God. The Messiah,
Jesus the son of Mary, was only the Messenger of God
and His Word, which He cast into Mary, and a Spirit
from Him. So believe in God and His Messengers. Do
not say, "Three." It is better that you stop. God is only
One God. He is too Glorious to have a son! Everything
BASIC TENETS OF ISLAM
26
in the heavens and in the earth belongs to Him. God
suffices as a Guardian. (Surat An-Nisa': 171)
He is the Originator of the heavens and the earth. How
could He have a son when He has no wife? He created
all things and He has knowledge of all things.
(Sura al-An'am: 101)
Christian belief maintains that God created the universe
and then left it to its own. Yet, as stated earlier, God
commands Will over the universe at every single moment; it
is constantly within His control. Nothing can happen
without His Will and control:
He Who originates creation and then regenerates it and
provides for you from out of heaven and earth. Is there
another god besides God? Say: "Bring your proof if you
are being truthful." (Sura an-Naml: 64)
God keeps a firm hold on the heavens and earth,
preventing them from vanishing away. And if they
vanished no one could then keep hold of them. Certainly
He is Most Forbearing, Ever-Forgiving. (Sura Fatir: 41)
To counter these false notions, and many others not
mentioned here, God gives His sublime attributes for us in
the Qur'an. This is in order to, not only answer these
erroneous claims, but also to guide those guilty of them to
the true religion of God.
Everyone must acknowledge that God is One, and that
nothing is comparable to Him; He is free of any weaknesses.
He encompasses everything, He exercises His command over
creation at every moment, He is near to man, He has the
False Beliefs About God
27
power to do anything, He is the Most Merciful, He is the Just,
He is the King of the Day of Judgement, He sees and hears
everything, and is the most sublime in attributes.
FAITH IN GOD FREE OF IDOLATRY


Have you seen him who has taken his whims and
desires to be his god? Will you then be his guardian?
(Sura al-Furqan: 43)
"Shirk," the word used for idolatry in Arabic means
"partnership/association." In the Qur'an, it refers to ascribing
associates to God, or deeming someone or something, called
idols or false-gods, worthy of worship beside or in addition to
God. Idolatry, though, is not limited to worshipping totems or
non-living beings. Because man's responsibility is to serve his
Creator, and to strive to earn His good pleasure alone, his
pursuit of any other goal is to ascribe worship to something
other than God. For instance, a person would be guilty of
idolatry if he were to seek the pleasure of people instead of
God's. Likewise, it would again be ascribing associates to God
if one's purpose in life is to satisfy his whims and desires rather
than to earn God's good pleasure. Many people ascribe
divinity to things like money, status, wealth and so on.
The Qur'an refers to idolaters of Arab society, who set aside
a portion of their crops and cattle for their idols, as follows:
They assign to God a share of the crops and livestock He
BASIC TENETS OF ISLAM
28
has created, saying, "This is for God,"—as they allege—
"and this is for our idols." Their idols' share does not
reach God whereas God's share reaches their idols! What
an evil judgement they make! (Sura al-An'am: 136)
As is mentioned in the verse above, idolaters assign a part
of their wealth to God, and another part to their idols. This is
characteristic of the delusion of idolaters.
Loving a being more than God or loving him/it as one
ought to love God is again a form of idolatry. Similarly,
someone who fears a being as he should fear God, idolizes it,
since he assumes that that being possesses a might apart
from and independent of God.
Muslims, however, firmly believe that everything is
created by God, that all affairs are regulated by Him, that
causes do not have any power to produce a result
independently, that every event is predetermined and
created by God, that God is the possessor of the ultimate will
and judgement. This is the kind of belief system that God
reveals to us in the Qur'an. Deviation from these tenets,
believing that everything occurs spontaneously, as the result
of coincidences, attributing the power to create to some other
causes, are all forms of ascribing associates to God. God does
not forgive idolatry:
God does not forgive anything being associated with
Him but He forgives whoever He wills for anything
other than that. Anyone who associates something with
God has gone very far astray. (Sura an-Nisa': 116)
When God's Messenger (saas) was asked, "What is the
Faith In God Free Of Idolatry
29
biggest sin in the sight of God?", he also said, "To set up rivals
unto God although He alone created you." (Al-Bukhari)
ASSESSING GOD WITH A JUST ASSESSMENT


They do not measure God with His true measure. God
is All-Strong, Almighty. (Surat Al-Hajj: 74)
God manifests His infinite might and knowledge in
everywhere. The perfection of every part of the human body,
the knowledge in the design of a flower, the beauty in its
colour and scent, the glory in the heavens and the universe,
the order in the orbits of the planets, the fish in the depths of
oceans, and the intricate design in everything you see around
you, are all clear manifestations of God's infiniteness and
power. Some disbelievers, despite perceiving God's existence
and His infinite might, deny Him out of arrogance. They do
not acknowledge God's true greatness. Because they lack
wisdom, they fail to see the evident signs of God's existence
and of His greatness manifested in all beings. The inattention
of these people is expressed in a verse as follows:
How many Signs there are in the heavens and earth! Yet
they pass them by, turning away from them.
(Sura Yusuf: 105)
Only those who reflect on the purpose of the creation
around them, who have a clear faculty of discernment, who
apply their minds and use their conscience, can recognize the
BASIC TENETS OF ISLAM
30
31
truth that which these signs imply. They are those who
believe. One of the primary attributes of a believer is his
ability to be perceptive. Believers, who are capable of
exercising their minds, unencumbered by false motives,
come to recognize God's artistry and power through His
creation, and thus have a full appreciation of His greatness
and glory. A verse of the Qur'an relates that those who are
able to think clearly see God's signs wherever they turn:
In the creation of the heavens and earth, and the
alternation of the night and day, and the ships which
sail the seas to people's benefit, and the water which
God sends down from the sky—by which He brings the
earth to life when it was dead and scatters about in it
creatures of every kind—and the varying direction of
the winds, and the clouds subservient between heaven
and earth, there are Signs for people who use their
intellect. (Sura al-Baqara: 164)
A person so disposed recognizes the signs of God's
existence everywhere he looks, perceiving Him for His true
might. Believers keep their minds continually occupied with
remembrance of God, while the majority of humanity spend
their lives without a thought to these facts. In a verse of the
Qur'an, the ideal behaviour of a Muslim is related as follows:
...those who remember God, standing, sitting and lying
on their sides, and reflect on the creation of the heavens
and the earth: "Our Lord, You have not created this for
nothing. Glory be to You! So safeguard us from the
punishment of the Fire." (Sura Al 'Imran: 191)
Assessing God With A Just Assesment
BASIC TENETS OF ISLAM
32
GOD'S INFINITE GREATNESS AND POWER


God created the order of the universe in superb detail to
allow man to grasp His greatness. A verse referring to this
order reads, "...so that you might know that God has power
over all things and that God encompasses all things in His
knowledge." (Sura at-Talaq: 12). Faced with the sublimity of
the details of this order, man becomes in awe, recognizing
that God's wisdom, knowledge and might is infinite.
So expansive is God's knowledge that what for us is
"infinite" is in His sight already ended. Every event that has
taken place since the creation of time, until deep into eternity,
was predetermined and ended in God's sight. (See
Timelessness and The Reality of Fate, by Harun Yahya) This is
related in the Qur'an as follows:
We have created all things in due measure. Our
command is only one word, like the blinking of an eye.
We destroyed those of your kind in the past. But is there
any rememberer there? Everything they did is in the
Books. Everything is recorded, big or small.
(Sura al-Qamar: 49-53)
Man must seek to appreciate the extent of God's
knowledge, and reflect to comprehend His greatness.
Billions of people have appeared on earth since time
immemorial. Therefore, God created billions of pairs of eyes,
billions of different fingerprints, billions of different eye
tissues, billions of different types of humans... If He so willed,
He could also create billions more. As stated in the Qur'an,
"...He adds to creation in any way He wills. God has power
over all things." (Sura Fatir: 1)
God also possesses the power to create many other things
beyond our limited imagination. The entire extent of the
treasures God has bestowed in this world for His servants is
all within His sight. He sends down to us only that which He
wills, all within a measure predetermined:
There is nothing that does not have its stores with Us
and We only send it down in a known measure.
(Sura al-Hijr: 21)
This matter, manifested everywhere in God's superb
creation, holds true for both that which we know as well as
that which we do not. To this, God draws attention in the
verse, "...and He creates other things you do not know."
(Sura an-Nahl: 8), He creates many other things of which we
are entirely unaware.
God has created many worlds and beings which we
cannot see. To better understand the possibility of the
existence of other worlds, we should consider the following:
a picture is two dimensional—width and length. The world
in which we live, however, is 3 dimensional—width, length
and depth—(time can be considered as the 4th dimension).
The rest is beyond our comprehension. However, in the sight
of God, there are other dimensions. Angels, for instance, are
beings that live in another dimension. According to the
Qur'an, angels can see and hear us from the dimension and
space in which they exist. Furthermore, the two angels,
God's Infinite Greatness And Power
33
seated on our either shoulder, each, and at every moment, is
recording every word we speak and every deed we do. Yet,
we do not see them. Jinn are also beings of another
dimension, as we are informed by the Qur'an. They, like us
human beings, are also tested, all through their lives, and will
ultimately be brought before judgement by God. However,
they are possessed of completely different attributes than
humans; their existence is dependent upon an entirely
different system of cause and effect.
These are all facts that deserve careful consideration in
order to attain a better grasp of God's splendid creation. It is
within God's power to create innumerable new worlds,
beings and situations. Furthermore, each is He able to create
with a limitless degree of differentiation. Indeed, in a nature
unknown to us, God will create Paradise and Hell. While
systems left to their own in this world tend to age, become
corrupted, and eventually expire, in Paradise, unaffected by
the passage of time, nothing will deteriorate; "rivers of milk
whose taste will never change" is an example to elucidate this
feature of Paradise. The human body too will not degenerate;
nor will anything ever age. According to the Qur'an,
everyone in Paradise will be of like age, will live together for
all eternity, in the best condition, and without growing older
or losing their beauty. God also informs us in the Qur'an that
in it will be bursting springs for us from which to drink. Hell,
on the other hand, will be utterly different; in it, God will
create unimaginable torment. No one will be able to conceive
the pain of such torment until he experiences it.
BASIC TENETS OF ISLAM
34
God's Infinite Greatness And Power
35
On everything in this world, God has placed a limit.
Everything has a finite existence. This being the case, in order
to comprehend "eternity," and God's infinite might, we need to
exercise our minds and compare these ideas with something
that is familiar. We can only come to know to the extent that
God permits us. God, however, is infinite in knowledge. Let us
consider the following example, God has created 7 basic
colours. It is impossible for us to visualize another colour. (The
case is similar to describing the colour red to someone who is
blind by birth; no description would be adequate.) However,
God is able to create more than these basic colours. Although,
unless He so wills, we will never be able to have a grasp that
which is beyond what He has willed for us to know.
All that we have just mentioned belongs to that
knowledge that God has allotted us in this world. But, one
point deserves particular attention; because God's power and
might is infinite, anything can happen, and at any time, by
His will. God's Messenger, the Prophet Muhammad (saas)
also referred to the eternal power of God when he said, "The
seven heavens and the seven earths are no more in God's Hand than
a mustard seed in the hand of one of you." God explains the
infiniteness of His knowledge in the Qur'an as follows:
If all the trees on earth were pens and all the sea, with
seven more seas besides, was ink God's words still would
not run dry. God is Almighty, All-Wise. (Sura Luqman: 27)
In brief, no matter how hard we strive to do so, we cannot
possibly come to grasp the extent of God's knowledge,
because it is unlimited. We can comprehend it only as far as
36
God permits us to do so:
God, there is no god but Him, the Living, the Self-
Sustaining. He is not subject to drowsiness or sleep.
Everything in the heavens and the earth belongs to
Him. Who can intercede with Him except by His
permission? He knows what is before them and what is
behind them but they cannot grasp any of His
knowledge save what He wills. His Footstool
encompasses the heavens and the earth and their
preservation does not tire Him. He is the Most High, the
Magnificent. (Sura al-Baqara: 255)
LOVE OF GOD AND FEAR OF GOD


God says, "Do not take two gods. He is only One God.
So dread Me alone." (Sura an-Nahl: 51)
Fear of God is one of the essential attributes of a believer.
Because, it is fear of God that draws a person nearer to God,
makes him attain a deeper faith, enables him to conduct
himself responsibly towards God every moment of his life,
and nurtures his dedication to values of the Qur'an. The fact
that the good morals God expects from His servants come
with the fear of God is reaffirmed by the Prophet
Muhammad (saas) in these words:
Fear God wherever you are; if you follow an evil deed with a
BASIC TENETS OF ISLAM
good one you will obliterate it; and deal with people with a good
disposition. (At-Tirmidhi)
Failure to understand the real meaning of fear of God
causes some to confuse it with other kinds of mundane fears.
However, fear of God differs greatly from all other type of fear.
The Arabic word used in the original text of the Qur'an
(khashyat) expresses overwhelming respect. On the other
hand, the Arabic word used in the Qur'an to refer to worldly
fears (hawf) expresses a simple kind of fear, as in the fear one
feels when faces with a wild animal.
A consideration of the attributes of God leads to a better
understanding of these two kinds of fear, both expressed by
different words in Arabic. Worldly fears are usually caused
by a potential threat. For example, one may fear being
murdered. However, God is the All-Compassionate, the Most
Merciful and the Most Just. Therefore, fear of God implies
showing respect to Him, the All-Compassionate, the Most
Merciful and the Most Just, and avoiding exceeding His
limits, rebelling Him and being of those who deserve His
punishment.
The consequences that a fear of God has on people make
this difference apparent. Faced with a deadly danger, a person
panics; seized with hopelessness and desperation, he fails to
exercise his reason and discover a solution. Fear of God,
however, actuates wisdom and adherence to one's conscience.
Through fear of God, a person is motivated to avoid that
which is evil, corruptive, and likely to cause either physical or
mental harm to him. Fear of God fosters wisdom and insight.
Love Of God And Fear Of God
37
In a verse of the Qur'an, God informs us that it is through fear
of God that wisdom and understanding is acquired:
You who believe! If you have fear of God, He will give
you a criterion (by which to judge between right and
wrong) and erase your bad actions from you and forgive
you. God's favour is indeed immense. (Sura al-Anfal: 29)
Worldly fears cause man anxiety. Fear of God, however,
not only gives rise to increased spiritual strength, but also to
peace of mind.
It is through fear of God that man avoids those evil actions
displeasing God. A verse of the Qur'an states, "...God does
not love anyone vain or boastful." (Sura an-Nisa': 36). AGodfearing
person strives diligently to abstain from boasting, and
to engage rather in actions to earn God's love. For that reason,
fear of God and love of God are mutually exclusive.
Fear of God, in fact, removes the obstacles to drawing
nearer to God and earning His love. Foremost of these obstacles
is one's lower self. From the Qur'an, we learn that there are two
aspects of the soul; the one inspiring evil and mischief, and the
other, guarding against every inclination to evil.
...the self and what proportioned it and inspired it with
depravity and a fear of God, he who purifies it has
succeeded, he who covers it up has failed. (Sura
ash-Shams: 7-10)
Struggling against this evil, and not giving in it, requires
spiritual strength. This strength derives from fear of God. A
God-fearing person is not enslaved by the selfishness of his
soul. The awe he feels for God draws him away from
BASIC TENETS OF ISLAM
38
thoughts and deeds unworthy of His pleasure. Averse of the
Qur'an informs us that only those who fear God will take
heed of the warnings imparted to them:
You can only warn those who act on the Reminder and
fear the All-Merciful in the Unseen. Give them the good
news of forgiveness and a generous reward.
(Sura Ya Sin: 11)
Man's striving must be to feel a more profound fear of
God. To effect this noble sentiment, he must reflect upon
God's creation and recognize the supreme artistry and power
represented in its every detail. His thinking must enable him
to attain a better grasp of His grandeur and add to his awe.
Indeed, God commands us:
You who have fear! Have fear of God with the fear due
to Him and do not die except as Muslims.
(Sura Al 'Imran: 102)
So have fear of God, as much as you are able to, and
listen and obey and spend for your own benefit. It is the
people who are safe-guarded from the avarice of their
own selves who are successful. (Sura at-Taghabun: 16)
The more a believer fears God, the more loving he
becomes. He better acknowledges the beauty of God's
creation. He acquires the ability to recognize the multitude of
people, nature, animals, and in everything around him, as
reflections of God's sublime attributes. Consequently, he
comes to feel a deeper love for such blessings, as well as for
God, their Creator.
A person who grasps this secret also knows what love of
Love Of God And Fear Of God
39
God is. He loves God, over and above anything else, and
understands that all beings are the work of His creation. he
loves them in accordance with God's pleasure. He loves
believers who are submissive to Him, but feels aversion for
those who are rebellious towards Him.
The true love that makes man happy, brings him joy and
peace, is love of God. Other forms of love, felt for beings
other than God, are, in the words of the Qur'an, love peculiar
to idolaters, and consistently leads to anguish, sorrow,
melancholy and anxiety. The idolaters' love and the love
believers feel for God are compared in a verse as follows:
Some people set up equals to God, loving them as they
should love God. But those who believe have greater
love for God... (Sura al-Baqara: 165)
THE QUR'AN IS A GUIDE


That is the Book, without any doubt. It contains
guidance for those who have fear of God (Sura
al-Baqara: 2)
The Qur'an is the word of God. God has revealed the
Qur'an to introduce Himself, to communicate people the
purpose of their existence, inform them of the nature of this
life, the basis of the test put to them in this world, and their
responsibilities towards their Creator, to give them the good
news of the hereafter, and describe what constitutes good
BASIC TENETS OF ISLAM
40
morals. The Qur'an was revealed by Gabriel to the Prophet
Muhammad (saas). Immune to any possible distortion, it is a
Book by which people will be held to account on the Day of
Judgement. In one verse, God informs us that the Qur'an is
under His protection:
It is We Who have sent down the Reminder and We
Who will preserve it. (Sura al-Hijr: 9)
The unique style of the Qur'an, and the supreme wisdom
of its teachings, is clear evidence of its being the word of God.
This aside, the Qur'an has many miraculous attributes,
certifying that it is the revelation of God. A number of
scientific discoveries, that could only be attained in the 20th
and 21st centuries, were declared in the Qur'an 1400 years
ago. This information, that was impossible to verify
scientifically at the time of the Qur'an's revelation, has
proved once again that it is the word of God.
Another important characteristic of the Qur'an is that—
contrary to the Torah and the Gospel—it contains no
contradiction whatsoever. This is yet further evidence that it is
the word of God. God reminds humanity of this fact as follows:
Will they not ponder the Qur'an? If it had been from
other than God, they would have found many
inconsistencies in it. (Sura an-Nisa': 82)
The Qur'an is guidance for mankind. It is also the
definitive criterion by which to distinguish right from wrong,
for which reason another name of the Qur'an is "Furqan," that
is "Discrimination":
...He has sent down the Furqan (the Standard by which to
The Qur'an Is A Guide
41
42
discern the true from the false). Those who reject God's
Signs will have a terrible punishment... (Sura Al 'Imran: 4)
The Qur'an is a book that admonishes humanity:
This is a communication to be transmitted to mankind
so that they may be warned by it and so that they will
know that He is One God and so that the wise will pay
heed. (Sura Ibrahim: 52)
The Qur'an is the final revelation from God, and will
remain until the Day of Judgement. Although the Torah and
the Gospel were true scriptures at the time they were
revealed, they have lost the quality of their authenticity,
because of the reasons explained earlier. God informs us that,
in His sight, Islam is the only religion:
If anyone desires anything other than Islam as a religion,
it will not be accepted from him, and in the hereafter he
will be among the losers. (Sura Al 'Imran: 85)
BELIEF IN THE BOOKS REVEALED BY GOD
AND BELIEF IN HIS MESSENGERS


Since the time the Prophet Adam (as) was sent to the
earth, God has sent messengers to every nation, to
communicate to them the existence of God and the hereafter,
and to convey the divine message. Some of these messengers
are those prophets whose names are mentioned in the Qur'an
BASIC TENETS OF ISLAM
and to whom books were revealed. A Muslim must not
discriminate between them, but respect them all equally,
since they were all prophets of the true religion. God
commands Muslims to believe in all the prophets, without
making distinction:
Say, "We believe in God and what has been sent down
to us and what was sent down to Abraham and Ishmael
and Isaac and Jacob and the Tribes, and what Moses and
Jesus were given, and what all the Prophets were given
by their Lord. We do not differentiate between any of
them. We are Muslims submitted to Him." (Sura
al-Baqara: 136)
The only book by which humanity is responsible in our
time is the Qur'an, revealed to the Prophet Muhammad
(saas). Because, as the Qur'an informs, the earlier books,
which were originally revealed to communicate the truth to
mankind, were later altered through additions and deletions:
Woe to those who write the Book with their own hands
and then say "This is from God" to sell it for a paltry
price. Woe to them for what their hands have written!
Woe to them for what they earn! (Sura al-Baqara: 79)
For this reason, Islam was revealed by God as the final
religion. God, in a verse of the Qur'an, commands as follows:
...Today I have perfected your religion for you and
completed My blessing upon you and I am pleased with
Islam as a religion for you... (Sura al-Ma'ida: 3)
The Qur'an also informs us that the Prophet Muhammad
(saas) is the last prophet:
Belief In The Books Revealed By God And Belief In His Messengers
43
Muhammad is not the father of any of your men, but the
Messenger of God and the Final Seal of the Prophets.
God has knowledge of all things. (Sura al-Ahzab: 40)
Consequently, the only true religion for all times, since
the era of the Prophet Muhammad (saas), until the Day of
Resurrection, is Islam, and its source, the Qur'an.
FAITH IN THE ANGELS


Angels, as the Qur'an informs us, are the servants of God,
who carry out His commands. God has assigned them
different duties. Gabriel, for instance, delivers the divine
revelation to prophets. There are the angels on each side of a
man, writing down whatever he does; angels welcoming
people to Paradise, and those angels who are the guardians
of the Hell; the angels that take back the souls of men, the
angels who assist the believers, the angels who communicate
to the messengers who among their rebellious people will
receive God's punishment, the angels who give the good
news of a newborn to the messengers. Angels are obedient
beings, who are never arrogant, but who continually glorify
God:
Everything in the heavens and every creature on the
earth prostrates to God, as do the angels. They are not
puffed up with pride. (Sura an-Nahl: 49)
Throughout history, angels have delivered God's
BASIC TENETS OF ISLAM
44
messages to mankind. Angels appeared to many prophets,
and, in some cases, to sincere believers, such as Mary, and
communicated to them the commands and the divine
wisdom of God. God informs us about faith in angels in the
Qur'an, making it a prerequisite of faith in the Qur'an for
Islam. In a verse of the Qur'an, it is stated that faith in angels
is an attribute of a believer:
The Messenger has faith in what has been sent down to
him from his Lord, and so do the believers. Each one
has faith in God and His angels and His Books and His
Messengers. We do not differentiate between any of His
Messengers. They say, 'We hear and we obey. Forgive
us, our Lord! You are our journey's end.' (Sura
al-Baqara: 285)
THE TEMPORARY NATURE OF THE LIFE
OF THIS WORLD


The life of this world is a trial for humanity. Though God
has created countless allurements for man in this world, He
has also warned him against becoming overly concerned by
them, and forgetting God and His religion. In a verse of the
Qur'an, God states that the ostentation of this world is
temporary, and that the real pleasure is Paradise, as reward
for God's contentment:
We made everything on the earth adornment for it so
The Temporary Nature Of The Life Of This World
45
that We could test them to see whose actions are the
best. (Sura al-Kahf: 7)
Know that the life of the world is merely a game and a
diversion and ostentation and a cause of boasting
among yourselves and trying to outdo one another in
wealth and children: like the plant-growth after rain
which delights the cultivators, but then it withers and
you see it turning yellow, and then it becomes broken
stubble. In the hereafter there is terrible punishment
but also forgiveness from God and His good pleasure.
The life of the world is nothing but the enjoyment of
delusion. (Sura al-Hadid: 20)
While the believer also enjoys those blessings that are
described as the pleasures of this world, unlike the
disbeliever, he does not consider them the purpose of his life.
He may desire to possesses them, but only for the purpose of
giving thanks to God, and to use them to earn God's consent.
He does not pursue out of greed. Because, he knows that that
which is of this world is short-lived, just as is his own life. He
knows that, after his death, such things will be of no benefit
to him. Furthermore, he knows that if he pursues only
worldly things, at the expense of nobler goals, for them he
sacrifices his hereafter. In a verse of the Qur'an, this
important truth is related as follows:
To mankind the love of worldly appetites is painted in
glowing colours: women and children, and heaped-up
mounds of gold and silver, and horses with fine markings,
and livestock and fertile farmland. All that is merely the
BASIC TENETS OF ISLAM
46
enjoyment of the life of the world. The best homecoming
is in the presence of God. (Sura Al 'Imran: 14)
The allure of the things of this world is an essential factor
in the test placed upon man in this world. The Satan resorts
relentlessly to allurements in his attempts to deceive man.
Believers, however, are those people who, though they may
be attracted to such allurement, are aware of their true worth.
Cognizant that these are the temporary blessings of this
world, and that by them they are being tested, the deceptive
attraction of these things does not delude them. For this
reason, they are not deceived by the Satan, and are able to
save themselves from eternal torment. In the Qur'an, God
warns mankind as follows:
Mankind! God's promise is true. Do not let the life of
the world delude you and do not let the Deluder delude
you about God. (Sura Fatir: 5)
On the other hand, those who are without faith, and thus
are bereft of wisdom, feel an inner inclination to this world.
Under Satan's influence, they make the attainment of the
temporary goods of this world the ultimate purpose of their
lives. The condition of such people is stated as follows:
No indeed! But you love this fleeting world and you
disregard the hereafter. (Sura al-Qiyama: 20-21)
The Temporary Nature Of The Life Of This World
47
MAN IS BEING TESTED


God has created everything according to His divine
wisdom, and has rendered many things to man's service.
Clearly, many things in the universe, from the solar system to
the ratio of oxygen in the atmosphere, from the animals that
provide us meat and milk to water, have been created to
serve man. If this fact is recognized to be evident, it follows
that it is illogical to think this life has no purpose. Definitely,
there is a purpose to this life, explained by God as follows:
I only created jinn and man to worship Me. (Sura
adh-Dhariyat: 56)
Only a minority of humanity understand this purpose of
creation and lead their lives thereby. God has granted us life
on earth to test whether or not we will conform to this very
purpose. Those who sincerely serve God, and those who
rebel against Him, will be distinguished from one another in
this world. All those blessings (his body, senses, property...)
given to man in this world, are a means by which God tests
him. In a verse of the Qur'an, God relates the following:
We created man from a mingled drop to test him, and
We made him hearing and seeing. (Sura al-Insan: 2)
Man's duty in this world is to have faith in God and the
hereafter, to conduct himself in compliance with the
commands of the Qur'an, to observe the limits set by God,
and to try to earn His good pleasure. The continuing trials of
BASIC TENETS OF ISLAM
48
this life over time reveal those people who are committed to
accomplish these tasks. Because God demands a true and
sincere faith,—which is the kind of faith that is not attainable
only by saying "I believe"—man must demonstrate that he
has true faith in God and His religion, and that he will not
swerve from the right path despite the cunnings of Satan.
Similarly, he must demonstrate that he will not follow the
disbelievers, nor prefer the desires of his own self over God's
pleasure. His response to the events in his life will reveal all
these qualities. God will create certain hardships, during
which man must show patience, in order to expose the
degree of his dedication to faith in God. This fact is stated in
the Qur'an as follows:
Do people imagine that they will be left to say, "We
believe," and will not be tested? (Sura al-'Ankabut: 2)
In another verse, God states that those who say, "We
believe" will be tested:
Or did you imagine that you were going to enter
Paradise without God knowing those among you who
had struggled and knowing the steadfast? (Sura Al
'Imran: 142)
This being the case, disappointment in the face of
difficulties would not be the right response to allow oneself
to have. Such difficulties may be great ordeals or just trivial
daily problems. A believer must consider all such
circumstances as part of the trial placed upon him, place his
trust in God, and conduct himself in compliance with His
pleasure. In a verse of the Qur'an, those difficulties placed
Man Is Being Tested
49
upon the believers are related as follows:
We will test you with a certain amount of fear and
hunger and loss of wealth and life and crops. But give
good news to the steadfast (Sura al-Baqara: 155)
The Prophet Muhammad (saas) also reminded the
believers of this, by saying, "Whoever accepted it [God's trial],
will enjoy God's Pleasure and whoever is displeased with it, will
incur God's Displeasure." (At-Tirmidhi)
Not only will difficulties, but also blessings in this world
serve to test man. God tries man with every benefit He
bestows upon man, to see whether or not he will be thankful.
As well, God creates many circumstances through which
man adopt a certain attitude. In the midst of these trials, man
may formulate a decision, either in compliance with God's
pleasure, or his own soul. If he recognizes such an incident to
be a trial from God, and conforms his conduct accordingly to
earn God's pleasure, then he succeeds in his test. However, if
his decision is in accordance to the dictates of his own soul, it
will both be a sin, which he will greatly regret in the
hereafter, and a source of anxiety in this world, as it troubles
his conscience.
Indeed, God creates everything that happens in this
world as a trial. Those events considered to be mere
"coincidence" or "bad luck" by the ignorant, are actually
circumstances created according to the great subtleties of a
divine plan. Of this, God gives the example of Jews who
broke the Sabbath, tempted by an abundance of fish:
Ask them about the town which was by the sea when
BASIC TENETS OF ISLAM
50
they broke the Sabbath—when their fish came to them
near the surface on their Sabbath day but did not come
on the days which were not their Sabbath. In this way
We put them to the test because they were deviators.
(Sura al-A'raf: 163)
The Jews may have thought that the fish came forth to
them on a Saturday by "coincidence," but, the event was
predetermined as a trial for them by God. As this case makes
clear, there is a divine purpose and a test in every occurrence
in life. All that befalls a believer has been determined in order
that he keep this notion in mind, and that he try to succeed at
his test, and adopt a form of behaviour that is in compliance
with the consent of God.
DEATH IS NOT THE END


Every self will taste death. We test you with both good
and evil as a trial. And you will be returned to Us. (Sura
al-Anbiya': 35)
Death, which is certain to happen to all of us, is a very
important fact in one's life. We can never know exactly what
we will experience in an hour or even in the next moment.
This being the case, it is obvious how wrong it would be to
plan our lives based on events that may never happen.
Death, on the other hand, is the only thing that is certain to
happen. Only the recognition of this basic truth makes us
Death Is Not The End
51
understand that we must found our lives according to it.
Death is also a part of the trial of man. God informs us in the
Qur'an that He created death and life to try man:
He Who created death and life to test which of you is
best in action. He is the Almighty, the Ever-Forgiving.
(Sura al-Mulk: 2)
Death is the end of merely the life of this world—thus the
end of the trial—and the beginning of the next life. For this
reason, believers have no fear of death. The thought of death
does not distress them, because, every moment of their lives
is spent in the pursuit of good deeds as preparation for the
hereafter. For disbelievers, however, fear causes them great
distress, because they consider it a complete annihilation.
Thus, they avoid all thought of death. But it is futile. No soul
can escape death when the predetermined time for it has
come. This, in a verse, is stressed as follows:
Wherever you are, death will catch up with you, even if
you are in impregnable fortresses...(Sura an-Nisa': 78)
To avoid the thought of death is to avoid the truth. As
death will eventually catch up with man sooner or later, it is
wise to conduct oneself with a mind busy with the thought of
death. This is the rational disposition by which believers
abide. Until death comes upon them, they engage in good
deeds, as God commands us in the Qur'an:
And worship your Lord until what is Certain comes to
you. (Sura al-Hijr: 99)
Thinking about death strengthens one's spirit and will. It
BASIC TENETS OF ISLAM
52
prevents one's lower soul from leading him astray, by being
lured through the false temptations of this world. It instils
him with the resolve and determination to avoid all forms of
behaviour unpleasing to God. It is for this reason that a
believer must often think about death, never forgetting that
all people, including himself, will someday die.
From the Qur'an, we learn what really happens to
someone who dies, and what he or she actually experiences
and feels. When we see someone dying, we only observe his
"biological death." The truth is, however, the dying person,
though in a totally different dimension, confronts the angels
of death. If he is a disbeliever, his death causes him great
pain. The angels of death, after extracting his soul, beat and
torment him. A disbeliever's trauma is described as follows:
...If you could only see the wrongdoers in the throes of
death when the angels are stretching out their hands,
saying, "Disgorge your own selves! Today you will be
repaid with the punishment of humiliation for saying
something other than the truth about God, and being
arrogant about His Signs." (Sura al-An'am: 93)
How will it be when the angels take them in death,
beating their faces and their backs? That is because they
followed what angers God and hated what is pleasing
to Him. So He made their actions come to nothing. (Sura
Muhammad: 27-28)
On the contrary, death promises great joy and bliss for the
believers. Contrary to disbelievers, whose souls are torn from
them violently, the souls of believers are drawn from them
53
Death Is Not The End
gently. (Sura an-Nazi'at: 2) This experience is similar to the
case of the soul in sleep, which leaves the body and moves
into a different dimension (Sura az-Zumar: 42).
Gardens of Eden which they enter, with rivers flowing
under them, where they have whatever they desire.
That is how God repays those who have fear for Him:
those the angels take in a virtuous state. They say,
"Peace be upon you! Enter Paradise for what you
did."(Sura an-Nahl: 31-32)
BELIEF IN THE HEREAFTER


The life of the world is nothing but a game and a
diversion. The abode of the hereafter—that is truly Life
if they only knew. (Sura al-'Ankabut: 64)
Either reward or punishment awaits man at the end of the
trial that is the life of this world. Those who engage in good
deeds, and have faith in God, earn the good pleasure of God,
and are rewarded with an eternal Paradise. The wicked,
those who deny God and transgress His limits, however,
deserve Hell, where they will encounter eternal punishment.
Man never actually disappears. From the very moment
we are created, our eternal life begins. That is, we have
already started our eternal life. Once our trial has ended, and
immediately following the moment of transition, which we
call death, we will live on into eternity. Whether that time
will be spent in torment or in bliss depends on one's
BASIC TENETS OF ISLAM
54
commitment to the Word of God, the Qur'an, and his
fastidiousness in observing His limits. This entire system, the
universe, the world, human beings, and everything created
for human beings, have been designed for an ultimate
purpose; the life in the hereafter. God informs us that man's
existence in this world is not without a purpose and that, in
the hereafter, after his short life in this world, man will have
to offer an account of his deeds:
Did you suppose that We created you for amusement and
that you would not return to Us? (Sura al-Muminun: 115)
Eternal life is an enormous blessing in comparison to the
very short life of the present, which is no more than a
"moment". It is truly a great mercy that, in return for
following those basic inclinations that are natural to a human
being—such as having faith and seeking God's approval—,
God bestows upon him the reward of eternal life in Paradise:
As for those who believe and do right actions, We will
lodge them in lofty chambers in Paradise, with rivers
flowing under them, remaining in them timelessly, for
ever. How excellent is the reward of those who act.
(Sura al-'Ankabut: 58)
The life of the hereafter is important in the sense that it
represents the manifestation of God's infinite justice, as well
as the provision of His infinite blessings. The hereafter will
be the place where everything a man does in this world will
be repaid, where justice and compassion will prevail. The
absolute justice of the hereafter is described in a verse as
follows:
55
Belief In The Hereafter
...Say, "The enjoyment of the world is very brief. The
hereafter is better for those who have fear. You will not
be wronged by so much as the smallest speck." (Sura an-
Nisa': 77)
God, Who possesses the might to create everything, can
surely create the hereafter:
Does He Who created the heavens and earth not have
the power to create the same again? Yes indeed! He is
the Creator, the All-Knowing. (Sura Ya Sin: 81)
FAITH IN THE DAY OF JUDGEMENT


"And the Hour is coming without any doubt and God
will raise up all those in the graves." (Sura al-Hajj: 7)
The Day of Judgement is the day the duration
predestined for this universe comes to an end. That day, the
trial placed upon humanity will come to an end, and this
world, the arena of this trial, will reduce to nothing. This is
the end promised by God in the Qur'an. That the physical life
of the universe will come to an end is a fact confirmed by
scientific observation. In the Qur'an, a number of verses that
depict the Day of Judgement are as follows:
So when the Trumpet is blown with a single blast, and
the earth and the mountains are lifted and crushed with
a single blow, On that Day, the Occurrence will occur
BASIC TENETS OF ISLAM
56
and Heaven will be split apart, for that Day it will be
very frail. (Sura al-Haqqa: 13-16)
On the Day of Judgement, God will raise all people who
have died:
Then on the Day of Rising you will be raised again.
(Sura al-Muminun: 16)
On that day, God will gather the people and raise them all:
God, there is no god but Him. He will gather you to
the Day of Rising about which there is no doubt. And
whose speech could be truer than God's? (Sura an-
Nisa': 87)
The Day of Rising is the day when each one will stand in
God's presence, and every single deed each engaged in will
be disclosed:
On that Day you will be exposed—no concealed act you
did will stay concealed. (Sura al-Haqqa: 18)
That day, everyone will receive the reward for their
deeds, and God will carry out His infinite justice:
We will set up the Just Balance on the Day of Rising and
no self will be wronged in any way. Even if it is no more
than the weight of a grain of mustard-seed, We will
produce it. We are sufficient as a Reckoner. (Sura al-
Anbiya': 47)
The Day of Resurrection is that time when God will bring
an end to the physical existence of the universe, the earth and
everything in it. In that moment, God, the Creator of all such
laws, will render all physical laws ineffective, unleashing a
Faith In The Day of Judgement
57
chain of unprecedented disasters beyond one's imagination.
A series of very delicate equilibriums make life possible
for us in this world. The distance of the world to the sun, and
the speed at which it spins on its axis, are perfectly
determined for the sake of man's survival on this planet. The
gravitational force, the atmosphere that serves as a ceiling to
protect the earth against celestial bodies that may destruct it,
and many other similar systems have been all been
specifically created. It is God, the Lord of all the worlds, Who
created these finely tuned equilibriums in order to make life
possible, before even man existed. It is God Who sustains the
universe at every moment:
God keeps a firm hold on the heavens and earth,
preventing them from vanishing away. And if they
vanished no one could then keep hold of them.
Certainly He is Most Forbearing, Ever-Forgiving. (Sura
Fatir: 41)
At that moment when God will disrupt the functioning of
these varied delicate equilibriums, everything will perish.
That moment will be the Day of Judgement. People whose
souls will go through the Day of Judgement will be terrified
by the horror of that day:
Mankind, have fear of your Lord! The quaking of the
Hour is a terrible thing. On the day they see it, every
nursing woman will be oblivious of the baby at her
breast, and every pregnant woman will abort the
contents of her womb, and you will think people drunk
BASIC TENETS OF ISLAM
58
when they are not drunk; it is just that the punishment
of God is so severe. (Sura al-Hajj: 1-2)
How will you safeguard yourselves, if you are
disbelievers, against a Day which will turn children
grey? (Sura al-Muzzammil: 17)
God informs us what other things will happen on the Day
of Judgement:
When the sun is compacted in blackness,
when the stars fall in rapid succession,
when the mountains are set in motion,
when the camels in foal are neglected,
when the wild beasts are all herded together,
when the oceans surge into each other,
when the selves are arranged into classes,
when the baby girl buried alive is asked
for what crime she was killed,
when the Pages are opened up,
when the Heaven is peeled away,
when the Fire is set ablaze,
when Paradise is brought up close:
then each self will know what it has done. (Sura at-
Takwir: 1-14)
Faith In The Day of Judgement
59
THE RESURRECTION


He makes likenesses of Us and forgets his own creation,
saying, "Who will give life to bones when they are
decayed?" Say "He Who made them in the first place
will bring them back to life." (Sura Ya Sin: 78-79)
The resurrection is a re-creation of life after death. Death
is not the cessation of existence. The world, which God has
created to put man to test, will serve to determine his lot in
the afterlife. After death, every soul will be re-created in a
new body, and begin its life in the hereafter, where God will
place him either in Hell or Paradise, depending on his deeds
in the world. The resurrection of humanity is easy to
accomplish for God. In a verse, the rising of the people all
together on the Day of Judgement is described as follows:
It is We Who give life and cause to die and We are their
final destination. The Day the earth splits open all
around them as they come rushing forth, that is a
gathering, easy for Us to accomplish. (Sura Qaf: 43-44)
Some people doubt that God could raise man from the
dead. However, it is God Who first created man out of
nothing, and therefore, certainly has the power to bring him
back to life again. God informs us of this fact in the Qur'an:
Mankind! If you are in any doubt about the Rising, know
that We created you from dust then from a drop of sperm
then from a clot of blood then from a lump of flesh,
BASIC TENETS OF ISLAM
60
formed yet unformed, so We may make things clear to
you. We make whatever We want stay in the womb until
a specified time and then We bring you out as children so
that you can reach your full maturity. Some of you die
and some of you revert to the lowest form of life so that,
after having knowledge, they then know nothing at all.
And you see the earth dead and barren; then when We
send down water onto it it quivers and swells and
sprouts with luxuriant plants of every kind. That is
because God is the Real and gives life to the dead and
has power over all things. (Sura al-Hajj: 5-6)
To make an example of this re-creation, God draws our
attention to natural phenomena around us. After rainfall,
God revives dead, barren soil where nothing could grow so
that it becomes productive again. Similarly, bringing man
back to life after his death is easy for God:
It He is Who sends out the winds, bringing advance
news of His mercy, so that when they have lifted up the
heavy clouds, We dispatch them to a dead land and send
down water to it, by means of which We bring forth all
kinds of fruit. In the same way We will bring forth the
dead, so that hopefully you will pay heed. (Sura al-
A'raf: 57)
Everything is easy for God. The Qur'an states that the
creation or resurrection of humanity is like that of a single
person:
Your creation and rising is only like that of a single self.
God is All-Hearing, All-Seeing. (Sura Luqman: 28)
The Resurrection
61
THE DAY OF JUDGEMENT


Asking, "When is the Day of Judgement?" (Sura adh-
Dhariyat: 12)
What you are promised is certainly true—the
Judgement will certainly take place! (Sura adh-
Dhariyat: 5-6)
God holds man responsible for his deeds. Every person,
who has been tested in this world, will be called to account of
his deeds on the Day of Judgement. On that day, he will
witness that nothing was kept hidden from God, and his
every good or evil deed will be disclosed:
The Day when they will issue forth and when not one
thing about them will be hidden from God. "To whom
does the kingdom belong today? To God, the One, the
Conqueror! Every self will be repaid today for what it
earned. Today there will be no injustice. God is swift at
reckoning." (Sura Ghafir: 16-17)
Man does not always receive the punishment he deserves
in this world. God grants a time to some, though He informs
us that He will pay them in full for all their evil deeds in the
hereafter. This being the case, it is unwise that those who
commit illicit acts should assume they have evaded
punishment, simply because they have escaped the law and
thus were not punished in this world. On the Day of
Judgement, they will see that man can keep nothing hidden
BASIC TENETS OF ISLAM
62
from God. By His name "al Hafiz" (He Who preserves all
things in detail), God knows man's every deed and
commands His angels keep their record. God informs us of
this fact in the Qur'an:
When the two Receivers receive (him), seated on the
right hand and on the left, He uttered no word but there
is with him an observer ready. (Sura Qaf: 17-18)
God, Who knows all things down to their minutest
details, Who witnesses every moment of a man's life,
whether he utters a word aloud or keeps it in his heart, will
judge man justly on the Day of Reckoning, when the attribute
of God's justice will be fully known:
We will set up the Just Balance on the Day of Rising and
no self will be wronged in any way. Even if it is no more
than the weight of a grain of mustard-seed, We will
produce it. We are sufficient as a Reckoner. (Sura al-
Anbiya': 47)
God, the Just, is infinitely merciful and kind towards His
servants. God promises that he who does a good deed will
receive ten like it, while he who does evil will be awarded
only with what he deserves:
Those who produce a good action will receive ten like
it. But those who produce a bad action will only be
repaid with its equivalent and they will not be
wronged. (Sura al-An'am: 160)
At the time of reckoning, people will be led to either
Paradise or Hell, depending on the side from which they
receive their books:
The Day Of Judgement
63
As for him who is given his Book in his right hand, he
will be given an easy reckoning and return to his family
joyfully. But as for him who is given his Book behind
his back, he will cry out for destruction but will be
roasted in a Searing Blaze. He used to be joyful in his
family. He thought that he was never going to return.
But in fact his Lord was always watching him! (Sura al-
Inshiqaq: 7-15)
PARADISE AND HELL


The Companions of the Fire and the Companions of
Paradise are not the same. It is the Companions of
Paradise who are the victors. (Sura al-Hashr: 20)
When God created the Prophet Adam (as), the first man
on earth, and his wife, He placed them in Paradise. However,
as we are informed by the Qur'an, in Paradise, Adam and his
wife were tempted to evil and transgressed God's prohibition.
This story allows us to recognize that a human tends to
appreciate the beauty and value of something good if he can
compare it to something evil. He grasps the wickedness of
evil if he knows that which is good. The value of something
can be appreciated by comparison. Having been placed in
Paradise first, the Prophet Adam (as) and his wife had never
been to a place that could be compared to Paradise, and thus
failed to appreciate the difference. Therefore, people who
BASIC TENETS OF ISLAM
64
would otherwise fail to value the blessings and perfection of
Paradise, are given the chance to compare by being first
created in this world, a place where good and evil exist
simultaneously.
For the purpose of better comparison, on the Day of
Judgement, when everyone will be raised, God will gather all
people around Hell and then save those people of faith who
were attentive in their observance of His limits. Someone
who sees Hell with his own eyes will certainly understand,
from his own experience, that Paradise is a great salvation
and blessing:
By your Lord, We will collect them and the evils
together. Then We will assemble them around Hell on
their knees. Then We will drag out from every sect the
one among them most insolent towards the All-
Merciful. Then it is We Who will know best those most
deserving to roast in it. There is not one of you who will
not come to it. That is the final decision of your Lord.
Then We will rescue those who had fear of God and We
will leave the wrongdoers in it on their knees. (Sura
Maryam: 68-72)
In this world, God promises Paradise, a life of infinite
beauty, to those who can appreciate this truth:
But as for those who believe and do right actions, We
will admit them into Gardens with rivers flowing under
them, remaining in them timelessly, for ever and ever.
God's promise is true. Whose speech could be truer than
God's? (Sura an-Nisa': 122)
Paradise And Hell
65
Those who have chosen the way of untruth, although
they were warned and guided to the straight path, will be
placed in Hell, where an eternal punishment will be inflicted
on them. Surely, this is the fulfilment of God's infinite justice:
Those who are disbelievers will be driven to Hell in
companies and when they arrive there and its gates are
opened its custodians will say to them, "Did
Messengers from yourselves not come to you, reciting
your Lord's Signs to you and warning you of the
meeting on this Day of yours?" They will say, "Indeed
they did, but the decree of punishment is justly carried
out against disbelievers." (Sura az-Zumar: 71)
The nature of man is inherently disposed to practicing the
values and character praised in the Qur'an. This is the model
of a believer that pleases God. God makes clear to man what
is evil and what is good. In addition, God has given man
eyes, ears, a heart and the faculty of judgement, with which
to distinguish good from evil. Because, through these
qualities, man may easily come to recognize God's existence
and greatness, and have faith in Him, it is apparent that those
who choose to disbelieve would not deserve to be treated the
same as believers. God describes how these two groups will
be distinguished in the hereafter as follows:
God calls to the Abode of Peace and He guides whom
He wills to a straight path. Those who do good will
have the best and more! Neither dust nor debasement
will darken their faces. They are the Companions of
BASIC TENETS OF ISLAM
66
Paradise, remaining in it timelessly, for ever. But as for
those who have earned bad actions—a bad action will
be repaid with one the like of it. Debasement will
darken them. They will have no one to protect them
from God. It is as if their faces were covered by dark
patches of the night. Those are the Companions of the
Fire, remaining in it timelessly, for ever. (Sura Yunus:
25-27)
God gives an account of life in Paradise. He promises this
life to those who believe and conduct themselves righteously
in this world. This is the good news communicated to the
believers:
Those are the Ones Brought Near
in Gardens of Delight.
A large group of the earlier people
but few of the later ones.
On sumptuous woven couches,
reclining on them face to face.
There will circulate among them, ageless youths,
carrying goblets and decanters
and a cup from a flowing spring—
it does not give them any headache
nor does it leave them stupefied.
And any fruit they specify
and any bird-meat they desire.
And dark-eyed maidens
like hidden pearls.
As recompense for what they did.
Paradise And Hell
67
They will hear no prattling in it
nor any word of wrong.
All that is said is, "Peace! Peace!"
And the Companions of the Right:
what of the Companions of the Right?
Amid thornless lote-trees
and fruit-laden acacias
and wide-spreading shade
and outpouring water
and fruits in abundance
never failing, unrestricted.
And on elevated couches
We have brought maidens into being
and made them purest virgins,
devoted, passionate, of like age,
for the Companions of the Right.
A large group of the earlier people
and a large group of the later ones. (Sura al-Waqi'a: 11-40)
While God gives to believers the good news of Paradise,
a place of bliss and salvation, with its bounteous blessings, ,
He also lets the disbelievers know that they will be sent to
Hell. The Qur'an provides an account of Hell, a place of
unbearable torment:
And the Companions of the Left:
what of the Companions of the Left?
Amid searing blasts and scalding water
and the murk of thick black smoke,
providing no coolness and no pleasure.
BASIC TENETS OF ISLAM
68
Before that they were living in luxury,
persisting in immense wrongdoing
and saying, "When we are dead
and turned to dust and bones,
shall we then be raised again
or our forefathers, the earlier peoples?"
Say: "The earlier and the later peoples
will certainly all be gathered
to the appointment of a specified Day.
Then you, you misguided, you deniers
will eat from the tree of Zaqqum,
filling your stomachs with it
and drink scalding water on top of it,
slurping like thirst-crazed camels.
This will be their hospitality on the Day of Judgement!"
(Sura al-Waqi'a: 41-56)
Paradise And Hell
69
THE AIM IS TO ATTAIN
THE GOOD PLEASURE OF GOD


Say: "I am commanded to worship God, making my
religion sincerely His." (Sura az-Zumar: 11)
Once having grasped the extent of God's infinite might, to
forget His existence and remain heedless is merely to delude
oneself. What God demands from human beings is that they
seek to earn His good pleasure as their sole priority in life.
Since it is God Who created man, provided him his
sustenance and all other such blessings, and Who promised
him eternal life in the hereafter, it would be an act of
ingratitude for man to seek the pleasure of others, or the
gratification of his own self, as his primary aim. The
punishment for such ungratefulness is eternal hellfire.
There are two choices a man can make; he can either
found his life on God's good pleasure, and thus earn the
reward of His Paradise, or choose the path that leads to Hell.
A third option is not available for him. This is clearly
expressed in the following verse:
Who is better: someone who founds his building on fear
of God and His good pleasure, or someone who founds
his building on the brink of a crumbling precipice so
that it collapses with him into the Fire of Hell? God does
not love wrongdoers. (Sura at-Tawba: 109)
BASIC TENETS OF ISLAM
70
Those values praised in the Qur'an are those founded on
purely that which achieves God's pleasure. For example, selfsacrifice,
which is pleasing to God, is valid only if the person
does not expect anything for it in return, but rather only to
attain God's good pleasure. It is related in the Qur'an that
believers conduct themselves correctly only to seek God's
countenance:
They give food, despite their love for it, to the poor and
orphans and captives: "We feed you only out of desire
for the Face of God. We do not want any repayment
from you or any thanks." (Sura al-Insan: 8-9)
God's Messenger, the Prophet Muhammad (saas) also
stated in a hadith that God's Pleasure must always be held
above man's pleasure:
Whoever seeks God's Pleasure at the expense of men's
displeasure, will win God's Pleasure and God will cause men to
be pleased with him. And whoever seeks to please men at the
expense of God's Displeasure, will win the Displeasure of God
and God will cause men to be displeased with him. (narrated by
Ibn Hibban in his Saheeh)
The greatest honour and gratification man can ever attain
is God's good pleasure. God makes His servants pleased with
Him through the multitude of blessings He bestows on them.
In a verse of the Qur'an, the reward for believers who are
pleased with God, and with whom God is pleased, is related
as follows:
Their reward is with their Lord: Gardens of Eden with
The Aim Is To Attain The Good Pleasure Of God
71
72
rivers flowing under them, remaining in them
timelessly, for ever and ever. God is pleased with them
and they are pleased with Him. That is for those who
fear their Lord. (Sura al-Bayyina: 8)
God's good pleasure is not only earned solely by
performing certain acts of worship at definite times. God's
good pleasure is also earned by conducting oneself correctly
throughout one's lifetime. The following verse informs us
that a believer's entire life must be oriented towards a single
goal:
Say: "My prayer and my rites, my living and my dying,
are for God alone, the Lord of all the worlds." (Sura al-
An'am: 162)
SIN AND REPENTANCE


One of the reasons for people's detachment from the
religion is that they consider themselves unforgivable out of
the deep distress they feel because of the sins they have
committed. Satan attempts repeatedly to instil such despair
in human beings. To one who has committed a sin, he
stealthily whispers the message, "You are wicked and
rebellious against God." If he has committed only a few sins,
Satan tempts him to sin still more. Towards his purpose,
Satan employs the feeling of embarrassment man feels
towards God, but manipulates this feeling in order to draw
BASIC TENETS OF ISLAM
73
man further distant from God.
However, like all others, this trick of Satan's is a feeble
one. The fact that someone committed a sin does not mean
that he has been cursed by God, and that he will never be
able to follow the straight path again. Not just one simple sin,
but even if he were to commit the greatest sins, over and over
again, he will always have the opportunity to repent and turn
towards God. God informs us in the Qur'an that He will
forgive each person who sincerely repents of his sins, that is,
asks for forgiveness and remains firm in not committing the
same sin again:
But if anyone repents after his wrongdoing and puts
things right, God will turn towards him. God is Ever-
Forgiving, Most Merciful. (Sura al-Ma'ida: 39)
God is infinite in mercy. In a verse of the Qur'an, He
provides the good news to His servants, "...I am the Ever-
Returning, the Most Merciful" (Sura al-Baqara: 160). Every
individual has the opportunity to repent. God even accepted
the repentance of Jews, who went astray and worshipped an
idol they made out of gold, after having believed in Him, and
forgave them:
And when Moses said to his people, "My people, You
wronged yourselves by adopting the Calf so turn
towards your Maker and kill your own (guilty) selves.
That is the best thing for you in your Maker's sight."
And He (God) turned towards you. He is the Ever-
Returning, the Most Merciful. (Sura al-Baqara: 54)
After repentance and asking for God's forgiveness, a
Sin And Repentance
person may well again become heedless, committing the
same sin again. In fact, this may happen many times over.
However, provided that that person repents once and for all,
and is committed to not sin again, he may hope for God's
mercy.
Nevertheless, as it is in every issue, the important factor
is sincerity. An insincere action is unacceptable in God's
sight. If one is not resolved to ending his sinning, and says, "I
will repent eventually," he is clearly insincere, which is likely
to bring sorrow to man. God warns those who hold such
rationale as follows:
God only accepts the repentance of those who do evil in
ignorance and then quickly make repentance after
doing it. God turns towards such people. God is All-
Knowing, All-Wise. There is no repentance for people
who persist in doing evil until death comes to them and
who then say, "Now I make repentance," nor for people
who die disbeliever. We have prepared for them a
painful punishment. (Sura an-Nisa': 17-18)
BASIC TENETS OF ISLAM
74
RELIGION IS IN CONFORMITY WITH THE
NATURAL INCLINATION OF MANKIND


So set your face firmly towards the religion, as a pure
natural believer, God's natural pattern on which He
made mankind... (Sura ar-Rum: 30)
Surely, it is God Who best knows the nature of man,
which He has Himself created. This being the case, He is the
One Who best knows people's needs and the ways to meet
them. From how to maintain one's physical well-being, to
how to remain spiritually strong, or how to attain a satisfying
social life, are all known to God. For example, a human
being, by nature, is attracted to all forms of mercy, love and
virtuous conduct. He expects to be treated with mercy and
compassion. He detests and avoids injustice, immorality, and
all forms of wickedness. He feels so by God's Will. Because,
God has instiled these values as part of a human's nature, he
likes the good and avoids the wicked.
There are certain basic values in the Qur'an that God
commands man to adopt; to be compassionate, merciful,
reliable, honest and humble and to avoid tyranny, injustice
and wickedness. In other words, that which is demanded by
the religion of Islam, which God has revealed to mankind,
and what man is naturally inclined to, are like the lock and
the key that unlocks it, in perfect harmony with one another.
God informs us of this fact in the Qur'an as follows:
Religion Is In Conformity With The Natural Inclination Of Mankind
75
So set your face firmly towards the religion, as a pure
natural believer, God's natural pattern on which He
made mankind. There is no changing God's creation.
That is the true religion—but most people do not know
it. (Sura ar-Rum: 30)
Unless people observe the limits set by God in the Qur'an,
they wrong their own souls. Because, by failing to adopt the
values that are in accordance with their creation, they
appropriate attitudes against their very nature; this causes
anxiety not only in themselves, but also makes them
troublesome to society. As here stated:
...God does not wrong people in any way; rather it is
people who wrong themselves. (Sura Yunus: 44)
We need to keep in mind that one can only live by the
values praised by the religion of Islam if he feels it sincerely,
with a heartfelt desire. A religion that is imposed by force is
both unacceptable in God's sight, as well as a cause for the
proliferation of insincere people, referred to as hypocrites in
the Qur'an. This leads to the formation of an undesirable
societal structure. God commands that people must not be
compelled in the name of religion:
There is no compulsion where the religion is
concerned. Right guidance has become clearly distinct
from error. Anyone who rejects false gods and has
faith in God has grasped the Firmest Handhold, which
will never give way. God is All-Hearing, All-Knowing.
(Sura al-Baqara: 256)
BASIC TENETS OF ISLAM
76
Consequently, in no realm does the religion of Islam exert
pressure on people; on the contrary, it provides the basis
upon which true freedom of conscience can be established. A
person who adopts the values of the Qur'an can in no way be
bound. Since he lives in compliance with his faith of his own
accord, and through the exercise of his reason, he always
feels contented and at peace.
Those who do not adhere to these religious values, on the
other hand, can never attain the freedom believers enjoy, due
to the countless norms and traditions that prevail in society.
Societies that fail to live according to the values of Islam
formulate values and criteria themselves, embracing taboos,
and thereby, of their own doing, merely limit the freedom
endowed to them by God. This being the case, those who are
distant from the religion remain deprived of spiritual
freedom, due to inappropriate rules and sanctions the society
has imposed on them, as well as the many principles they
unnecessarily adopt themselves.
The main force binding man, greater than any law of
society, is the corruption of his own soul. Immoderate desires
are a source of continual anxiety to him. They foster in him
feelings of insecurity and fear of the future. Because of these
negative tendencies within himself, he becomes ensnared in
a difficult struggle with his various passions and desires. His
soul relentlessly commands him to accumulate more assets,
to make more money, or to win the admiration of others. Yet,
these are all insatiable desires. The desire for wealth is a
deep-seated passion, common to many. However, the
Religion Is In Conformity With The Natural Inclination Of Mankind
77
fulfilment of this desire only arouses further false desires.
Essentially, worldly desires always tend to become part of a
vicious cycle.
Man can only save himself from such ignorance through
faith in God and surrender to Him. As the Qur'an puts it: "...It
is the people who are safe-guarded from the avarice of their
own selves who are successful." (Sura al-Hashr: 9)
Man attains freedom only when he ceases to be a slave to
his passions. From then on, satisfying the endless desires
mentioned above finally ceases to be his purpose in life. He
begins a life in which earning God's good pleasure becomes
his only purpose, the purpose for which God created him.
This is true freedom; being a servant to God, and thus
liberating oneself from everything other than God. It is for
this reason that the wife of Imran prayed thus:
...My Lord, I have pledged to You what is in my womb,
devoting it to Your service. Please accept my prayer.
You are the All-Hearing, the All-Knowing. (Sura Al
'Imran: 35)
For the same reason, Abraham said to his father:
Father, why do you worship what can neither hear nor
see and is not of any use to you at all? (Sura Maryam: 42)
Throughout history, the messengers God sent to
humanity invited them to save themselves from the
corruption of their own souls, or becoming servants to
human beings, to serve only God. Only when they save
themselves from such perversion, which is against the
BASIC TENETS OF ISLAM
78
purpose of their creation, can they find relief. It is for this
very reason that God's messenger (saas) is depicted in the
Qur'an as a person who "...relieves people of their heavy
loads and the chains which were around them":
...those who follow the Messenger, the Unlettered
Prophet, whom they find written down with them in
the Torah and the Gospel, commanding them to do right
and forbidding them to do wrong, making good things
lawful for them and bad things unlawful for them,
relieving them of their heavy loads and the chains
which were around them. Those who believe in him
and honour him and help him, and follow the Light that
has been sent down with him, they are the ones who are
successful.' (Sura al-A'raf: 157)
Another factor in Islam's conformity with human-nature
is its simplicity. God has also made the religion, which He
has revealed as a religion in conformity with the creation of
the human being, easy to practice. This fact is stressed in
various verses:
God desires to make things lighter for you. Man was
created weak. (Sura an-Nisa': 28)
...God desires ease for you; He does not desire difficulty
for you... (Sura al-Baqara: 185)
But as for him who believes and acts rightly, he will
receive the best of rewards and we will issue a command,
making things easy for him. (Sura al-Kahf: 88)
From a drop of sperm He created him and proportioned
him. Then He eases the way for him. (Sura Abasa: 19-20)
Religion Is In Conformity With The Natural Inclination Of Mankind
79
This simplicity also holds true for acts of worship.
Regarding the rite of fasting, a religious duty observed during
the month of Ramadan, God commands the following:
The month of Ramadan is the one in which the Qur'an
was sent down as guidance for mankind, with Clear
Signs containing guidance and discrimination. Any of
you who are resident for the month should fast it. But
any of you who are ill or on a journey should fast a
number of other days. God desires ease for you; He
does not desire difficulty for you. You should complete
the number of days and proclaim God's greatness for
the guidance He has given you so that hopefully you
will be thankful. (Sura al-Baqara: 185)
To conclude, Islam is a religion that is entirely in
conformity with the nature of man. Because, it is God Who is
pleased with Islam as a religion for man, and it is He Who
has created him. God desires not difficulty but ease for His
servants, and determined as their religion those values that
best conform to their needs, wishes and manner of living. In
a verse of the Qur'an, our Lord commands as follows:
...Today disbelievers have despaired of overcoming
your religion. So do not be afraid of them but be afraid
of Me. Today I have perfected your religion for you and
completed My blessing upon you and I am pleased with
Islam as a religion for you... (Sura al-Ma'ida: 3)
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80
BELIEVERS MUST BE TOGETHER AND COOPERATE


Hold fast to the rope of God all together, and do not
separate. Remember God's blessing to you when you
were enemies and He joined your hearts together so that
you became brothers by His blessing. You were on the
very brink of a pit of the Fire and He rescued you from
it. In this way God makes His Signs clear to you, so that
hopefully you will be guided... (Sura Al 'Imran: 103)
People generally tend to make friends with others who
possess similar qualities of character. They prefer people who
share their outlook on life, enjoy the same things, and with
whom they can get along well. As a consequence, those who
share the same views inevitably build a strong bond among
themselves. Honourable and honest people attract
honourable and honest people like themselves; they do not
make friends with wicked people. People who are dishonest
and prone to mischief, on the other hand, tend to associate
with others who are dishonest.
Believers, who are the only group, among all others, with
whose character God is pleased, must, in accordance to God's
command, and in conformity with their natural inclination,
always remain together.
Indeed, it is an act of worship commanded by God in the
Qur'an. God commands believers to remain together with
other believers, and not to obey those who are irreverent:
Restrain yourself patiently with those who call on their
81
Believers Must Be Together And Cooperate
Lord morning and evening, desiring His face. Do not
turn your eyes from them, desiring the attractions of
this world. And do not obey someone whose heart We
have made neglectful of Our remembrance and who
follows his own whims and desires and whose life has
transgressed all bounds. (Sura al-Kahf: 28)
Believers are the only group of people on earth that seek
God's pleasure. Only they adopt the character traits with
which God is pleased. These are not sufficient alone,
however; it is necessary for there to be an environment where
these values may be practiced and people to whom they may
be exercised. God wants us to be just, to behave
compassionately and mercifully, to enjoin what is right, and
to adopt the values praised in the Qur'an. However, one
cannot adhere to these values without the existence of other
people. In other words, to be a compassionate and selfsacrificing
person, one needs to be around the type of people
who can appreciate this excellence of character, as well as
deserve such treatment. Such people are the believers.
No sincere believer wants to make friends with someone
who does not conduct himself as God commands, who has
not adopted the values of the Qur'an, and thus, who wants
only to be around other thoughtless people like himself.
Furthermore, he does not nurture affection towards people
who do not respect his beliefs, who condemn him because of
his faith in God and his living his life by the values of the
religion, and wants to drive him away from society and treat
him with hostility:
82
BASIC TENETS OF ISLAM
You who believe! Do not take My enemy and your
enemy as friends, showing love for them when they
have rejected the truth that has come to you, driving out
the Messenger and yourselves simply because you
believe in God your Lord. If you have gone forth to
strive for My sake and seeking My pleasure, keeping
secret the love you have for them, I know best what you
conceal and what you make known. Any of you who do
that have strayed from the right way. If they come upon
you, they will be your enemies and stretch out their
hands and tongues against you with evil intent, and
they would dearly love you to become disbelievers.
(Sura al-Mumtahana: 1-2)
God informs us that it is not right to harbour love for such
people, nor to make friends with them, and adds that
believers must always remain with other believers:
You who believe! Have fear of God and be with the
truly sincere. (Sura at-Tawba: 119)
Of course, a believer must approach everyone, including
disbelievers, with a friendly and tolerant manner, and treat
them justly. However, treating disbelievers with tolerance
and justice is very different from actually adopting them as
close friends. A believer takes only those who are believers
like him as friends. This is God's command:
Your friend is only God and His Messenger and those
who believe: those who attend to their prayers, pay the
welfare tax (zakat), and kneel down in worship. (Sura
al-Ma'ida: 55)
Believers Must Be Together And Cooperate
83
THE LAST WORD


The facts described throughout this book are those that
are the most important in regards to this life. Because man is
a being who was created by God, and will ultimately return
to Him, nothing can be more important than knowing God
and how to serve Him.
Therefore, you need to pay due attention to these facts,
and reconsider your goals in life, and, if necessary, reorient
your actions and the direction of your lives in the light of the
following facts.
Do you know God, your Creator?
Do you give thanks to Him?
Are you aware of the Book He has sent you as a guide to
the true path?
Or, what do you do to live by this Book?
We assure you that these are the most important issues
related to your life. All else will pass or perish, but God will
remain for all eternity. God's promise too, that is, the Day of
Judgement and the hereafter, will exist. You will someday
die, and will then be raised again, and called forth to God to
give account of your deeds.
Do not forget that both a happy life in this world, and a
blissful life in the hereafter, depend on your service to God.
This is the reason for which God created you. Surrender
yourself to the purpose of your creation, worship Him and
turn towards Him.
BASIC TENETS OF ISLAM
84
He is Lord of the heavens and the earth and everything
in between them, so worship Him and persevere in His
worship. Do you know of any other with His Name?
(Sura Maryam: 65)
The Last Word
85
THE MISCONCEPTION OF EVOLUTION


Darwinism, which seeks to deny the fact of creation in
the universe, is nothing but an unscientific fallacy. This
theory, which argues that life originated from inanimate
matter through coincidences, has been demolished with the
recognition that the universe was created by God. It is God
Who created the universe and Who designed it down to its
smallest detail. Therefore, it is impossible for the theory of
evolution, which holds that living beings are not created by
God, but are products of coincidences, to be true.
Unsurprisingly, when we look at the theory of evolution, we
see that this theory is denounced by scientific findings. The
design in life is extremely complex and striking. In the inanimate
world, for instance, we can explore how sensitive are the
balances which atoms rest upon, and further, in the animate
world, we can observe in what complex designs these atoms
were brought together, and how extraordinary are the
mechanisms and structures such as proteins, enzymes, and cells,
which are manufactured with them.
This extraordinary design in life invalidated Darwinism at
the end of the 20th century.
We have dealt with this subject in great detail in some of our
other studies, and shall continue to do so. However, we think
that, considering its importance, it will be helpful to make a
short summary here as well.
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86
The Scientific Collapse of Darwinism
Although a doctrine going back as far as ancient Greece, the
theory of evolution was advanced extensively in the 19th
century. The most important development that made the theory
the top topic of the world of science was the book by Charles
Darwin titled The Origin of Species published in 1859. In this
book, Darwin denied that different living species on the earth
were created separately by God. According to Darwin, all living
beings had a common ancestor and they diversified over time
through small changes.
Darwin's theory was not based on any concrete scientific
finding; as he also accepted, it was just an "assumption."
Moreover, as Darwin confessed in the long chapter of his book
titled "Difficulties of the Theory," the theory was failing in the
face of many critical questions.
Darwin invested all his hopes in new scientific discoveries,
which he expected to solve the "Difficulties of the Theory."
However, contrary to his expectations, scientific findings
expanded the dimensions of these difficulties.
The defeat of Darwinism against science can be reviewed
under three basic topics:
1) The theory can by no means explain how life originated
on the earth.
2) There is no scientific finding showing that the
"evolutionary mechanisms" proposed by the theory have any
power to evolve at all.
3) The fossil record proves completely the contrary of the
suggestions of the theory of evolution.
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87
In this section, we will examine these three basic points in
general outlines:
The First Insurmountable Step:
The Origin of Life
The theory of evolution posits that all living species evolved
from a single living cell that emerged on the primitive earth 3.8
billion years ago. How a single cell could generate millions of
complex living species and, if such an evolution really occurred,
why traces of it cannot be observed in the fossil record are some
of the questions the theory cannot answer. However, first and
foremost, of the first step of the alleged evolutionary process it
has to be inquired: How did this "first cell" originate?
Since the theory of evolution denies creation and does not
accept any kind of supernatural intervention, it maintains that
the "first cell" originated coincidentally within the laws of
nature, without any design, plan, or arrangement. According to
the theory, inanimate matter must have produced a living cell as
a result of coincidences. This, however, is a claim inconsistent
with even the most unassailable rules of biology.
"Life Comes from Life"
In his book, Darwin never referred to the origin of life. The
primitive understanding of science in his time rested on the
assumption that living beings had a very simple structure. Since
medieval times, spontaneous generation, the theory asserting
that non-living materials came together to form living
organisms, had been widely accepted. It was commonly believed
BASIC TENETS OF ISLAM
88
that insects came into being from food leftovers, and mice from
wheat. Interesting experiments were conducted to prove this
theory. Some wheat was placed on a dirty piece of cloth, and it
was believed that mice would originate from it after a while.
Similarly, worms developing in meat was assumed to be
evidence of spontaneous generation. However, only some time
later was it understood that worms did not appear on meat
spontaneously, but were carried there by flies in the form of
larvae, invisible to the naked eye.
Even in the period when Darwin wrote The Origin of Species,
the belief that bacteria could come into existence from non-living
matter was widely accepted in the world of science.
However, five years after the publication of Darwin's
book, Louis Pasteur announced his results after long studies and
experiments, which disproved spontaneous generation, a
cornerstone of Darwin's theory. In his triumphal lecture at the
Sorbonne in 1864, Pasteur said, "Never will the doctrine of
spontaneous generation recover from the mortal blow struck by
this simple experiment."1
Advocates of the theory of evolution resisted the findings of
Pasteur for a long time. However, as the development of science
unraveled the complex structure of the cell of a living being, the
idea that life could come into being coincidentally faced an even
greater impasse.
Inconclusive Efforts in the 20th Century
The first evolutionist who took up the subject of the origin
of life in the 20th century was the renowned Russian biologist
The Misconception Of Evolution
89
Alexander Oparin. With various theses he advanced in the
1930's, he tried to prove that the cell of a living being could
originate by coincidence. These studies, however, were doomed
to failure, and Oparin had to make the following confession:
"Unfortunately, however, the problem of the origin of the cell is
perhaps the most obscure point in the whole study of the
evolution of organisms."2
Evolutionist followers of Oparin tried to carry out
experiments to solve the problem of the origin of life. The best
known of these experiments was carried out by American
chemist Stanley Miller in 1953. Combining the gases he alleged
to have existed in the primordial earth's atmosphere in an
experiment set-up, and adding energy to the mixture, Miller
synthesized several organic molecules (amino acids) present in
the structure of proteins.
Barely a few years had passed before it was revealed that
this experiment, which was then presented as an important step
in the name of evolution, was invalid, the atmosphere used in
the experiment having been very different from real earth
conditions.3
After a long silence, Miller confessed that the atmosphere
medium he used was unrealistic.4
All the evolutionist efforts put forth throughout the 20th
century to explain the origin of life ended with failure. The
geochemist Jeffrey Bada from San Diego Scripps Institute accepts
this fact in an article published in Earth Magazine in 1998:
Today as we leave the twentieth century, we still face the biggest
unsolved problem that we had when we entered the twentieth
century: How did life originate on Earth?5
BASIC TENETS OF ISLAM
90
The Complex Structure of Life
The primary reason why the theory of evolution ended up
in such a big impasse about the origin of life is that even the
living organisms deemed the simplest have incredibly complex
structures. The cell of a living being is more complex than all of
the technological products produced by man. Today, even in the
most developed laboratories of the world, a living cell cannot be
produced by bringing inorganic materials together.
The conditions required for the formation of a cell are too
great in quantity to be explained away by coincidences. The
probability of proteins, the building blocks of cell, being
synthesized coincidentally, is 1 in 10950 for an average protein
made up of 500 amino acids. In mathematics, a probability smaller
than 1 over 1050 is practically considered to be impossible.
The DNA molecule, which is located in the nucleus of the
cell and which stores genetic information, is an incredible
databank. It is calculated that if the information coded in DNA
were written down, this would make a giant library consisting of
900 volumes of encyclopaedias of 500 pages each.
A very interesting dilemma emerges at this point: the DNA
can only replicate with the help of some specialized proteins
(enzymes). However, the synthesis of these enzymes can only be
realized by the information coded in DNA. As they both depend
on each other, they have to exist at the same time for replication.
This brings the scenario that life originated by itself to a
deadlock. Prof. Leslie Orgel, an evolutionist of repute from the
University of San Diego, California, confesses this fact in the
September 1994 issue of the Scientific American magazine:
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91
It is extremely improbable that proteins and nucleic acids, both
of which are structurally complex, arose spontaneously in the
same place at the same time. Yet it also seems impossible to have
one without the other. And so, at first glance, one might have to
conclude that life could never, in fact, have originated by
chemical means.6
No doubt, if it is impossible for life to have originated from
natural causes, then it has to be accepted that life was "created"
in a supernatural way. This fact explicitly invalidates the theory
of evolution, whose main purpose is to deny creation.
Imaginary Mechanisms of Evolution
The second important point that negates Darwin's theory is
that both concepts put forward by the theory as "evolutionary
mechanisms" were understood to have, in reality, no
evolutionary power.
Darwin based his evolution allegation entirely on the
mechanism of "natural selection." The importance he placed on
this mechanism was evident in the name of his book: The Origin
of Species, By Means Of Natural Selection…
Natural selection holds that those living things that are
stronger and more suited to the natural conditions of their habitats
will survive in the struggle for life. For example, in a deer herd
under the threat of attack by wild animals, those that can run faster
will survive. Therefore, the deer herd will be comprised of faster
and stronger individuals. However, unquestionably, this
mechanism will not cause deer to evolve and transform themselves
into another living species, for instance, horses.
BASIC TENETS OF ISLAM
92
Therefore, the mechanism of natural selection has no
evolutionary power. Darwin was also aware of this fact and had
to state this in his book The Origin of Species:
Natural selection can do nothing until favourable individual
differences or variations occur.7
Lamarck's Impact
So, how could these "favourable variations" occur? Darwin
tried to answer this question from the standpoint of the
primitive understanding of science in his age. According to the
French biologist Lamarck, who lived before Darwin, living
creatures passed on the traits they acquired during their lifetime
to the next generation and these traits, accumulating from one
generation to another, caused new species to be formed. For
instance, according to Lamarck, giraffes evolved from antelopes;
as they struggled to eat the leaves of high trees, their necks were
extended from generation to generation.
Darwin also gave similar examples, and in his book The
Origin of Species, for instance, said that some bears going into water
to find food transformed themselves into whales over time.8
However, the laws of inheritance discovered by Mendel and
verified by the science of genetics that flourished in the 20th
century, utterly demolished the legend that acquired traits were
passed on to subsequent generations. Thus, natural selection
fell out of favour as an evolutionary mechanism.
Neo-Darwinism and Mutations
In order to find a solution, Darwinists advanced the
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93
"Modern Synthetic Theory," or as it is more commonly known,
Neo-Darwinism, at the end of the 1930's. Neo-Darwinism added
mutations, which are distortions formed in the genes of living
beings because of external factors such as radiation or replication
errors, as the "cause of favourable variations" in addition to
natural mutation.
Today, the model that stands for evolution in the world is
Neo-Darwinism. The theory maintains that millions of living
beings present on the earth formed as a result of a process
whereby numerous complex organs of these organisms such as
the ears, eyes, lungs, and wings, underwent "mutations," that is,
genetic disorders. Yet, there is an outright scientific fact that totally
undermines this theory: Mutations do not cause living beings to
develop; on the contrary, they always cause harm to them.
The reason for this is very simple: the DNA has a very
complex structure and random effects can only cause harm to it.
American geneticist B.G. Ranganathan explains this as follows:
First, genuine mutations are very rare in nature. Secondly, most
mutations are harmful since they are random, rather than
orderly changes in the structure of genes; any random change in
a highly ordered system will be for the worse, not for the better.
For example, if an earthquake were to shake a highly ordered
structure such as a building, there would be a random change in
the framework of the building which, in all probability, would
not be an improvement.9
Not surprisingly, no mutation example, which is useful, that
is, which is observed to develop the genetic code, has been
observed so far. All mutations have proved to be harmful. It was
BASIC TENETS OF ISLAM
94
understood that mutation, which is presented as an
"evolutionary mechanism," is actually a genetic occurrence that
harms living beings, and leaves them disabled. (The most
common effect of mutation on human beings is cancer). No
doubt, a destructive mechanism cannot be an "evolutionary
mechanism." Natural selection, on the other hand, "can do
nothing by itself" as Darwin also accepted. This fact shows us
that there is no "evolutionary mechanism" in nature. Since no
evolutionary mechanism exists, neither could any imaginary
process called evolution have taken place.
The Fossil Record: No Sign of
Intermediate Forms
The clearest evidence that the scenario suggested by the
theory of evolution did not take place is the fossil record.
According to the theory of evolution, every living species
has sprung from a predecessor. A previously existing species
turned into something else in time and all species have come into
being in this way. According to the theory, this transformation
proceeds gradually over millions of years.
Had this been the case, then numerous intermediary species
should have existed and lived within this long transformation
period.
For instance, some half-fish/half-reptiles should have lived
in the past which had acquired some reptilian traits in addition
to the fish traits they already had. Or there should have existed
some reptile-birds, which acquired some bird traits in addition
to the reptilian traits they already had. Since these would be in a
The Misconception Of Evolution
95
transitional phase, they should be disabled, defective, crippled
living beings. Evolutionists refer to these imaginary creatures,
which they believe to have lived in the past, as "intermediate
forms."
If such animals had really existed, there should be millions
and even billions of them in number and variety. More
importantly, the remains of these strange creatures should be
present in the fossil record. In The Origin of Species, Darwin
explained:
If my theory be true, numberless intermediate varieties, linking
most closely all of the species of the same group together must
assuredly have existed... Consequently, evidence of their former
existence could be found only amongst fossil remains.10
Darwin's Hopes Shattered
However, although evolutionists have been making
strenuous efforts to find fossils since the middle of the 19th
century all over the world, no transitional forms have yet been
uncovered. All the fossils unearthed in excavations showed that,
contrary to the expectations of evolutionists, life appeared on
earth all of a sudden and fully-formed.
A famous British paleontologist, Derek V. Ager, admits this
fact, even though he is an evolutionist:
The point emerges that if we examine the fossil record in detail,
whether at the level of orders or of species, we find – over and
over again – not gradual evolution, but the sudden explosion of
one group at the expense of another.11
This means that in the fossil record, all living species
BASIC TENETS OF ISLAM
96
suddenly emerge as fully formed, without any intermediate
forms in between. This is just the opposite of Darwin's
assumptions. Also, it is very strong evidence that living beings
are created. The only explanation of a living species emerging
suddenly and complete in every detail without any evolutionary
ancestor can be that this species was created. This fact is
admitted also by the widely known evolutionist biologist
Douglas Futuyma:
Creation and evolution, between them, exhaust the possible
explanations for the origin of living things. Organisms either
appeared on the earth fully developed or they did not. If they did
not, they must have developed from pre-existing species by some
process of modification. If they did appear in a fully developed
state, they must indeed have been created by some omnipotent
intelligence.12
Fossils show that living beings emerged fully developed
and in a perfect state on the earth. That means that "the origin of
species" is, contrary to Darwin's supposition, not evolution but
creation.
The Tale of Human Evolution
The subject most often brought up by the advocates of the
theory of evolution is the subject of the origin of man. The
Darwinist claim holds that the modern men of today evolved
from some kind of ape-like creatures. During this alleged
evolutionary process, which is supposed to have started 4-5
million years ago, it is claimed that there existed some
"transitional forms" between modern man and his ancestors.
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97
According to this completely imaginary scenario, four basic
"categories" are listed:
1. Australopithecus
2. Homo habilis
3. Homo erectus
4. Homo sapiens
Evolutionists call the so-called first ape-like ancestors of
men "Australopithecus" which means "South African ape." These
living beings are actually nothing but an old ape species that has
become extinct. Extensive research done on various
Australopithecus specimens by two world famous anatomists
from England and the USA, namely, Lord Solly Zuckerman and
Prof. Charles Oxnard, has shown that these belonged to an
ordinary ape species that became extinct and bore no
resemblance to humans.13
Evolutionists classify the next stage of human evolution as
"homo," that is "man." According to the evolutionist claim, the
living beings in the Homo series are more developed than
Australopithecus. Evolutionists devise a fanciful evolution scheme
by arranging different fossils of these creatures in a particular
order. This scheme is imaginary because it has never been proved
that there is an evolutionary relation between these different
classes. Ernst Mayr, one of the most important proponents of the
theory of evolution in the 20th century, contends in his book One
Long Argument that "particularly historical [puzzles] such as the
origin of life or of Homo sapiens, are extremely difficult and may
even resist a final, satisfying explanation."14
By outlining the link chain as "Australopithecus > Homo
BASIC TENETS OF ISLAM
98
habilis > Homo erectus > Homo sapiens," evolutionists imply
that each of these species is one another's ancestor. However,
recent findings of paleoanthropologists have revealed that
Australopithecus, Homo habilis and Homo erectus lived at
different parts of the world at the same time.15
Moreover, a certain segment of humans classified as Homo
erectus have lived up until very modern times. Homo sapiens
neandarthalensis and Homo sapiens sapiens (modern man) coexisted
in the same region.16
This situation apparently indicates the invalidity of the
claim that they are ancestors of one another. A paleontologist
from Harvard University, Stephen Jay Gould, explains this
deadlock of the theory of evolution although he is an
evolutionist himself:
What has become of our ladder if there are three coexisting
lineages of hominids (A. africanus, the robust australopithecines,
and H. habilis), none clearly derived from another? Moreover,
none of the three display any evolutionary trends during their
tenure on earth.17
Put briefly, the scenario of human evolution, which is
sought to be upheld with the help of various drawings of some
"half ape, half human" creatures appearing in the media and
course books, that is, frankly, by means of propaganda, is
nothing but a tale with no scientific ground.
Lord Solly Zuckerman, one of the most famous and
respected scientists in the U.K., who carried out research on this
subject for years, and particularly studied Australopithecus
fossils for 15 years, finally concluded, despite being an
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99
evolutionist himself, that there is, in fact, no such family tree
branching out from ape-like creatures to man.
Zuckerman also made an interesting "spectrum of science."
He formed a spectrum of sciences ranging from those he
considered scientific to those he considered unscientific.
According to Zuckerman's spectrum, the most "scientific"-that is,
depending on concrete data-fields of science are chemistry and
physics. After them come the biological sciences and then the
social sciences. At the far end of the spectrum, which is the part
considered to be most "unscientific," are "extra-sensory
perception"-concepts such as telepathy and sixth sense-and
finally "human evolution." Zuckerman explains his reasoning:
We then move right off the register of objective truth into those
fields of presumed biological science, like extrasensory
perception or the interpretation of man's fossil history, where to
the faithful [evolutionist] anything is possible - and where the
ardent believer [in evolution] is sometimes able to believe several
contradictory things at the same time.18
The tale of human evolution boils down to nothing but the
prejudiced interpretations of some fossils unearthed by certain
people, who blindly adhere to their theory.
Technology In The Eye and The Ear
Another subject that remains unanswered by evolutionary
theory is the excellent quality of perception in the eye and the ear.
Before passing on to the subject of the eye, let us briefly
answer the question of "how we see." Light rays coming from an
object fall oppositely on the retina of the eye. Here, these light
BASIC TENETS OF ISLAM
100
rays are transmitted into electric signals by cells and they reach
a tiny spot at the back of the brain called the centre of vision.
These electric signals are perceived in this centre of the brain as
an image after a series of processes. With this technical
background, let us do some thinking.
The brain is insulated from light. That means that the inside
of the brain is solid dark, and light does not reach the location
where the brain is situated. The place called the centre of vision
is a solid dark place where no light ever reaches; it may even be
the darkest place you have ever known. However, you observe a
luminous, bright world in this pitch darkness.
The image formed in the eye is so sharp and distinct that
even the technology of the 20th century has not been able to
attain it. For instance, look at the book you read, your hands with
which you hold it, then lift your head and look around you.
Have you ever seen such a sharp and distinct image as this one
at any other place? Even the most developed television screen
produced by the greatest television producer in the world cannot
provide such a sharp image for you. This is a three-dimensional,
coloured, and extremely sharp image. For more than 100 years,
thousands of engineers have been trying to achieve this
sharpness. Factories, huge premises were established, much
research has been done, plans and designs have been made for
this purpose. Again, look at a TV screen and the book you hold
in your hands. You will see that there is a big difference in
sharpness and distinction. Moreover, the TV screen shows you a
two-dimensional image, whereas with your eyes, you watch a
three-dimensional perspective having depth.
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101
For many years, ten of thousands of engineers have tried to
make a three-dimensional TV, and reach the vision quality of the
eye. Yes, they have made a three-dimensional television system
but it is not possible to watch it without putting on glasses;
moreover, it is only an artificial three-dimension. The
background is more blurred, the foreground appears like a paper
setting. Never has it been possible to produce a sharp and
distinct vision like that of the eye. In both the camera and the
television, there is a loss of image quality.
Evolutionists claim that the mechanism producing this sharp
and distinct image has been formed by chance. Now, if somebody
told you that the television in your room was formed as a result
of chance, that all its atoms just happened to come together and
make up this device that produces an image, what would you
think? How can atoms do what thousands of people cannot?
If a device producing a more primitive image than the eye
could not have been formed by chance, then it is very evident
that the eye and the image seen by the eye could not have been
formed by chance. The same situation applies to the ear. The
outer ear picks up the available sounds by the auricle and directs
them to the middle ear; the middle ear transmits the sound
vibrations by intensifying them; the inner ear sends these
vibrations to the brain by translating them into electric signals.
Just as with the eye, the act of hearing finalises in the centre of
hearing in the brain.
The situation in the eye is also true for the ear. That is, the
brain is insulated from sound just like it is from light: it does not let
any sound in. Therefore, no matter how noisy is the outside, the
BASIC TENETS OF ISLAM
102
inside of the brain is completely silent. Nevertheless, the sharpest
sounds are perceived in the brain. In your brain, which is insulated
from sound, you listen to the symphonies of an orchestra, and hear
all the noises in a crowded place. However, if the sound level in
your brain was measured by a precise device at that moment, it
would be seen that a complete silence is prevailing there.
As is the case with imagery, decades of effort have been
spent in trying to generate and reproduce sound that is faithful
to the original. The results of these efforts are sound recorders,
high-fidelity systems, and systems for sensing sound. Despite all
this technology and the thousands of engineers and experts who
have been working on this endeavour, no sound has yet been
obtained that has the same sharpness and clarity as the sound
perceived by the ear. Think of the highest-quality HI-FI systems
produced by the biggest company in the music industry. Even in
these devices, when sound is recorded some of it is lost; or when
you turn on a HI-FI you always hear a hissing sound before the
music starts. However, the sounds that are the products of the
technology of the human body are extremely sharp and clear. A
human ear never perceives a sound accompanied by a hissing
sound or with atmospherics as does HI-FI; it perceives sound
exactly as it is, sharp and clear. This is the way it has been since
the creation of man.
So far, no visual or recording apparatus produced by man
has been as sensitive and successful in perceiving sensory data
as are the eye and the ear.
However, as far as seeing and hearing are concerned, a far
greater fact lies beyond all this.
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103
To Whom Does the Consciousness that Sees
and Hears Within the Brain Belong?
Who is it that watches an alluring world in its brain, listens
to symphonies and the twittering of birds, and smells the rose?
The stimulations coming from the eyes, ears, and nose of a
human being travel to the brain as electro-chemical nervous
impulses. In biology, physiology, and biochemistry books, you
can find many details about how this image forms in the brain.
However, you will never come across the most important fact
about this subject: Who is it that perceives these electro-chemical
nervous impulses as images, sounds, odours and sensory events
in the brain? There is a consciousness in the brain that perceives
all this without feeling any need for eye, ear, and nose. To whom
does this consciousness belong? There is no doubt that this
consciousness does not belong to the nerves, the fat layer and
neurons comprising the brain. This is why Darwinistmaterialists,
who believe that everything is comprised of matter,
cannot give any answer to these questions.
For this consciousness is the spirit created by God. The
spirit needs neither the eye to watch the images, nor the ear to
hear the sounds. Furthermore, nor does it need the brain to
think.
Everyone who reads this explicit and scientific fact should
ponder on Almighty God, should fear Him and seek refuge in
Him, He Who squeezes the entire universe in a pitch-dark place
of a few cubic centimeters in a three-dimensional, coloured,
shadowy, and luminous form.
BASIC TENETS OF ISLAM
104
A Materialist Faith
The information we have presented so far shows us that the
theory of evolution is a claim evidently at variance with
scientific findings. The theory's claim on the origin of life is
inconsistent with science, the evolutionary mechanisms it
proposes have no evolutionary power, and fossils demonstrate
that the intermediate forms required by the theory never existed.
So, it certainly follows that the theory of evolution should be
pushed aside as an unscientific idea. This is how many ideas
such as the earth-centered universe model have been taken out
of the agenda of science throughout history.
However, the theory of evolution is pressingly kept on the
agenda of science. Some people even try to represent criticisms
directed against the theory as an "attack on science." Why?
The reason is that the theory of evolution is an
indispensable dogmatic belief for some circles. These circles are
blindly devoted to materialist philosophy and adopt Darwinism
because it is the only materialist explanation that can be put
forward for the workings of nature.
Interestingly enough, they also confess this fact from time to
time. A well known geneticist and an outspoken evolutionist,
Richard C. Lewontin from Harvard University, confesses that he
is "first and foremost a materialist and then a scientist":
It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow
compel us accept a material explanation of the phenomenal
world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori
adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of
investigation and a set of concepts that produce material
The Misconception Of Evolution
105
They said "Glory be to You!
We have no knowledge except what You
have taught us. You are the All-Knowing,
the All-Wise."
(Sura al-Baqara: 32)
explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how
mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is
absolute, so we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.19
These are explicit statements that Darwinism is a dogma
kept alive just for the sake of adherence to the materialist
philosophy. This dogma maintains that there is no being save
matter. Therefore, it argues that inanimate, unconscious matter
created life. It insists that millions of different living species; for
instance, birds, fish, giraffes, tigers, insects, trees, flowers,
whales and human beings originated as a result of the
interactions between matter such as the pouring rain, the
lightning flash, etc., out of inanimate matter. This is a precept
contrary both to reason and science. Yet Darwinists continue to
defend it just so as "not to allow a Divine Foot in the door."
Anyone who does not look at the origin of living beings
with a materialist prejudice will see this evident truth: All living
beings are works of a Creator, Who is All-Powerful, All-Wise and
All-Knowing. This Creator is God, Who created the whole
universe from non-existence, designed it in the most perfect
form, and fashioned all living beings.
1. Sidney Fox, Klaus Dose,
Molecular Evolution and The Origin of
Life, W.H. Freeman and Company,
San Francisco, 1972, p. 4.
2. Alexander I. Oparin, Origin
of Life, Dover Publications, NewYork,
1936, 1953 (reprint), p. 196.
3. "New Evidence on Evolution
of Early Atmosphere and Life",
Bulletin of the American Meteorological
Society, vol 63, November 1982, p.
1328-1330.
4. Stanley Miller, Molecular
Evolution of Life: Current Status of the
Prebiotic Synthesis of Small Molecules,
1986, p. 7.
5. Jeffrey Bada, Earth, February
1998, p. 40
6. Leslie E. Orgel, "The Origin
of Life on Earth", Scientific American,
vol. 271, October 1994, p. 78.
7. Charles Darwin, The Origin
of Species by Means of Natural Selection,
The Modern Library, New York, p.
127.
8. Charles Darwin, The Origin
of Species: A Facsimile of the First
Edition, Harvard University Press,
1964, p. 184.
9. B. G. Ranganathan, Origins?,
Pennsylvania: The Banner Of Truth
Trust, 1988, p. 7.
10. Charles Darwin, The Origin
of Species: A Facsimile of the First
Edition, Harvard University Press,
1964, p. 179.
11. Derek A. Ager, "The Nature
of the Fossil Record", Proceedings of the
British Geological Association, vol 87,
1976, p. 133.
12. Douglas J. Futuyma, Science
on Trial, Pantheon Books, New York,
1983. p. 197.
13. Solly Zuckerman, Beyond
The Ivory Tower, Toplinger
Publications, New York, 1970, pp. 75-
94; Charles E. Oxnard, "The Place of
Australopithecines in Human
Evolution: Grounds for Doubt",
Nature, vol 258, p. 389.
14. "Could science be brought to
an end by scientists' belief that they
have final answers or by society's
reluctance to pay the bills?" Scientific
American, December 1992, p. 20.
15. Alan Walker, Science, vol.
207, 7 March 1980, p. 1103; A. J. Kelso,
Physical Antropology, 1st ed., J. B.
Lipincott Co., New York, 1970, p. 221;
M. D. Leakey, Olduvai Gorge, vol. 3,
Cambridge University Press,
Cambridge, 1971, p. 272.
16. Jeffrey Kluger, "Not So
Extinct After All: The Primitive Homo
Erectus May Have Survived Long
Enough To Coexist With Modern
Humans," Time, 23 December 1996.
17. S. J. Gould, Natural History,
vol. 85, 1976, p. 30.
18 Solly Zuckerman, Beyond
The Ivory Tower, p. 19.
19. Richard Lewontin, "The
Demon-Haunted World," The New
York Review of Books, January 9, 1997,
p. 28.
NOTES
Many people think that Darwin's Theory of Evolution is a proven fact. Contrary to this conventional wisdom,
recent developments in science completely disprove the theory. The only reason Darwinism is still foisted on
people by means of a worldwide propaganda campaign lies in the ideological aspects of the theory. All secular
ideologies and philosophies try to provide a basis for themselves by relying on the theory of evolution.
This book clarifies the scientific collapse of the theory of evolution in a way that is detailed but easy to
understand. It reveals the frauds and distortions committed by evolutionists to "prove" evolution. Finally it
analyzes the powers and motives that strive to keep this theory alive and make people believe in it.
Anyone who wants to learn about the origin of living things, including mankind, needs to read this book. The
Evolution Deceit is also available in German, Italian, French, Spanish, Indonesian,Malay, Russian, Albanian
and Serbo-Croat (Bosnian).
ALSO BY HARUN YAHYA
Fascism and communism, which made humanity suffer
dark times, are considered to be opposed ideas.
However, these ideologies are fed from the same
source, on the grounds of which they can attract
masses to their side. This source has never drawn
attention, always remaining behind the scenes. This
source is the materialist philosophy and its adaptation to
nature, which is DARWINISM. The acknowledgement of
the scientific invalidity of this theory that serves as a
basis for cruel dictators and vicious ideological trends
will bring about the end of all these detrimental
ideologies. This book is also available in French.
In the Qur'an, God tells
people many secrets. People
who are unaware of these
secrets experience the
trouble and distress caused
by this throughout their lives.
For those who learn these
secrets of the Qur'an,
however, the life of this world
is very easy, and full of joy
and excitement. This book
deals with the subjects God related to people as a
secret.
The content of this book
is an extremely important
truth that astounded large
numbers of people, and
caused their outlook on
life to change drastically.
We can sum up this
reality like this: "All
events, people, buildings,
cities, cars, places, which
are a part of our life in
this world, in short, everything we see, hold,
touch, smell, taste and hear, are actually
illusions and sensations that form in our brain."
The plan, design, and
delicate balance
existing in our bodies
and reaching into even
the remotest corners of
the incredibly vast
universe must surely
have a superior Creator.
Man is unable to see
his Creator yet he can
nevertheless grasp His
existence, strength, and wisdom by means of
his intellect. This book is a summons to think. A
summons to ponder over the universe and living
beings and see how they have been created
flawlessly. Allah is Known Through Reason is
also available in Urdu and French.
When a person examines his own body or any other
living thing in nature, the world or the whole universe, in
it he sees a great design, art, plan and intelligence. All
this is evidence proving God's being, unit, and eternal
power.
For Men of Understanding was written to make the
reader see and realise some of the evidence of creation
in nature. For Men of Understanding is also available in
French, Indonesian, Urdu, German and Russian.
That people do not adopt the
moral values of the Qur'an
and submit to God underlie
the personal and social
depression, pain, fears and
lack of confidence that is
widely experienced today.
This book explains the
detriments that disbelief
gives to people and
discloses the only way to
salvation, which is submission to God.
The unprecedented style
and the superior wisdom
inherent in the Qur'an is
conclusive evidence
confirming that it is the
Word of God. Apart from
this, there are a number of
miracles verifying the fact
that the Qur'an is the
revelation of God, one of
them being that, 1,400
years ago, it declared a number of scientific facts
that have only been established thanks to the
technological breakthroughs of the 20th century.
In this book, in addition to the scientific miracles
of the Qur'an, you will also find messages
regarding the future. Mracles of the Qur'an is also
available in Serbo-Croat (Bosnian) and Russian.
In this book you will find
explanations about eternity,
timelessness and
spacelessness that you will
never have encountered
anywhere else and you will
be confronted by the reality
that eternity has already
begun. The real answers to
many questions people
always ponder such as the
true nature of death, resurrection after death, the
existence of an eternal life, and the time when all
these things will happen are to be found here…
Many societies that
rebelled against the will of
God or regarded His
messengers as enemies
were wiped off the face of
the earth completely... .
Perished Nations
examines these penalties
as revealed in the verses
of the Quran and in light
of archaeological
discoveries. This book is also available in French,
German, Spanish, Russian and Portuguese.
Colours, patterns, spots
even lines of each living
being existing in nature
have a meaning. An
attentive eye would
immediately recognise
that not only the living
beings, but also
everything in nature are
just as they should be.
Furthermore, he would
realise that everything is given to the service of
man: the comforting blue colour of the sky, the
colourful view of flowers, the bright green trees
and meadows, the moon and stars illuminating
the world in pitch darkness together with
innumerable beauties surrounding man… Allah's
Artistry in Colour is also available in Indonesian
and Arabic.
Today, science has proven that the universe was
created from nothing with a Big Bang. Moreover,
all physical balances of the universe are
designed to support human life. Everything from
the nuclear reactions in stars to the chemical
properties of a carbon atom or a water molecule,
is created in a glorious harmony. This is the
exalted and flawless creation of God, the Lord of
All the Worlds. The Creation of the Universe is
also available in French.
Man is a being to which God has granted the
faculty of thinking. Yet a majority of people fail to
employ this faculty as they should… The purpose
of this book is to summon people to think in the
way they should and to guide them in their efforts
to think. This book is also available in
Indonesian.
Darwin said: "If it could be
demonstrated that any
complex organ existed, which
could not possibly have been
formed by numerous,
successive, slight
modifications, my theory
would absolutely break
down." When you read this
book, you will see that
Darwin's theory has
absolutely broken down, just as he feared it would.
A thorough examination of the feathers of a bird, the
sonar system of a bat or the wing structure of a fly
reveal amazingly complex designs. And these designs
indicate that they are created flawlessly by God.
People who are oppressed,
who are tortured to death,
innocent babies, those who
cannot afford even a loaf of
bread, who must sleep in
tents or even in streets in
cold weather, those who are
massacred just because they
belong to a certain tribe,
women, children, and old
people who are expelled from
their homes because of their religion… Eventually,
there is only one solution to the injustice, chaos,
terror, massacres, hunger, poverty, and oppression:
the morals of the Qur'an.
How was matter and time
created from nothingness?
What does the Big Bang
theory signify about the
creation of the universe?
What is the parallelism
between Einstein's Theory of
Relativity and the Qur'anic
verses?
All of these questions are
answered in this book. If you
want to learn the truths about space, matter, time and
fate, read this book.
In the Qur'an, conscience
has a meaning and
importance beyond its
common and everyday use.
This book introduces the real
concept of conscience that is
related in the Qur'an and
draws our attention to the
kind of understanding,
thought, and wisdom that a
truly conscientious person
has. This book will make you recognise the voice of
your conscience and accordingly help you to
differentiate it from other sources of inspiration.
Never plead ignorance
of God's evident
existence, that
everything was created
by God, that everything
you own was given to
you by God for your
subsistence, that you
will not stay so long in
this world, of the reality
of death, that the Qur'an
is the Book of truth, that you will give account for
your deeds, of the voice of your conscience that
always invites you to righteousness, of the
existence of the hereafter and the day of account,
that hell is the eternal home of severe
punishment, and of the reality of fate.
This book maintains that the
source of the scourge of
terrorism does not come from a
divine religion, and that there is
no room for terrorism in Islam.
It is revealed, in the light of the
verses of the Koran and with
examples from history, that
Islam forbids terrorism and
aims to bring peace and
security to the world.
While watching television or
reading the paper, you see many
items which you do would not like
to see or hear: destitute people,
murders, quarrels, ill-treatment,
and much more… Certainly, you,
too, would like to live in a peaceful
and secure society where people
live in harmony and friendship.
This book is a summons to those
who want goodness to prevail: it
calls on them to do goodness and to form an alliance with
other good people like themselves.
The way to examine the universe
and all the beings therein and to
discover God's art of creation
and announce it to humanity is
"science." Therefore, religion
adopts science as a way to
reach the details of God's
creation and therefore
encourages science. Just as
religion encourages scientific
research, so does scientific
research that is guided by the facts communicated by
religion yield very rapid and definite results.
The world is a temporary
place specially created by
God to test man. That is
why, it is inherently flawed
and far from satisfying
man's endless needs and
desires. Each and every
attraction existing in the
world eventually wears out,
becomes corrupt, decays
and finally disappears. This
is the never-changing reality of life.
This book explains this most important essence of
life and leads man to ponder the real place to which
he belongs, namely the Hereafter.
Fascism is an ideology that has
brought great disasters to
humanity. Not only has it
caused millions of people to be
killed and tortured simply
because of their race, but it has
also attempted to abolish all
human values. The main
purpose of the book is to
present various fascist
tendencies which appear under
different methods and guises, and expose their real origins
and objectives. The book also attempts to tear down the
mask of fascism, and reveal that fascism is definitely an
anti-religionist system.
Moses is the prophet whose
life is most narrated in the
Qur'an. The Qur'an provides
a very detailed account of his
struggle with Pharaoh, the
unfavourable conduct of his
people and the way the
Prophet Moses summoned
them to the way of God. This
book provides a thorough
examination into the life of
the Prophet Moses in the light of the Qur'anic verses.
The Qur'an has been sent down
as a book easily understandable
to everyone. Everyone who
believes in God and follows his
conscience can take counsel
from the verses of the Qur'an
and obey the commands in the
verses. However, those who
follow their lower self fail to
measure God with His true scale,
entertain doubts about the
hereafter, interpret the verses of the Qur'an wrongly in
their own crooked reasoning. In this book, the reasons
why those who do not use their intellect misinterpret the
Qur'an are examined and some examples of the unwise
interpretations and objections they make concerning the
verses are reviewed and answered.
This book deals with how
the theory of evolution is
invalidated by scientific
findings and experiments
in a concise and simple
language.
A study that examines
and seeks to remind us of
the basic moral principles
of the Qur'an, particularly
those that are most likely
to be forgotten or
neglected at times.
Scientific progress makes
it clear that living beings
have an extremely
complex structure and an
order that is too perfect to
have come into being by
accident. Recently, for
example, the perfect
structure in the human
gene became a top issue
as a result of hte completion of the Human
Genome Project. In this book, the unique creation
of God is once again disclosed for all to see.
In a body that is made up of
atoms, you breathe in air, eat
food, and drink liquids that are
all composed of atoms.
Everything you see is nothing
but the result of the collision of
electrons of atoms with
photons.
In this book, the implausibility
of the spontaneous formation
of an atom, the building-block
of everything, living or non-living, is related and the
flawless nature of God's creation is demonstrated.
These
millimetersized
animals
that we
frequently
come
across but
don't care
much
about
have an excellent ability for organization and
specialization that is not to be matched by any other
being on earth. These aspects of ants create in one a
great admiration for God's superior power and
unmatched creation.
We fall sick many times
throughout our lives. When the
events of "sickness" and
"recovering" take place, our
bodies become a battleground
in which a bitter struggle is
taking place. Microbes invisible
to our eyes intrude into our body
and begin to increase rapidly.
The body however has a
mechanism that combats them.
Known as the "immune system," this mechanism is the
most disciplined, most complex and successful army of
the world. This system proves that the human body is
the outcome of a unique design that has been planned
with a great wisdom and skill. In other words, the
human body is the evidence of a flawless creation,
which is the peerless creation of God.
Just as a tiny key opens a
huge door, this book will
open new horizons for its
readers. And the reality
behind that door is the
most important reality that
one can come across in
one's lifetime. Relating the
amazing and admirable
features of spiders known
by few people and asking
the questions of "how" and "why" in the process,
this book reveals the excellence and perfection
inherent in God's creation.
The purpose of this book is
to display the miraculous
features of plants and
hence to make people see
"the creation miracle" in
things they often encounter
in the flow of their daily
lives and sidestep.
Reading and understanding
this book will be an
important step in coming to
an understanding of one's
Creator.
Darwin's theory of evolution
maintained that all living
beings emerged as a result
of chance coincidence and
thus denied Creation. Yet
the evidence that was
forthcoming proved to ´´be
otherwise. Scientific
developments did not
favour the evolutionist
standpoint and simply
opposed it. Different branches of science like
biochemistry, genetics, and palaeontology have
demonstrated that the claims that life originated as
a result of "coincidences" is foolish. This is a book
you will read with pleasure and as it makes explicitly
clear why the theory of evolution is the greatest
aberration in the history of science.
In the Qur'an, there is an
explicit reference to the
"second coming of the Jesus
to the world" which is heralded
in a hadith. The realisation of
some information revealed in
the Qur'an about Jesus can
only be possible by Jesus'
second coming…
One of the principal deceptions that impels people
into delinquency and makes them pursue their own
desires is their heedlessness of death. Both human
beings and the universe they live in are mortal.
What awaits the disbelievers in the next world is
more dreadful: the eternal wrath of hell. This book,
based on the verses of the Qur'an, makes a
detailed depiction of the moment of death, the day
of judgement, and the penalties in hell, and it
sounds a warning about the great danger facing us.
Death Resurrection Hell is also available in Polish.
The Qur'an has been revealed to us so that we
may read and ponder. Basic concepts in the Qur'an
is a useful resource prepared as a guide to
thinking. Some basic Islamic concepts like the soul,
conscience, wisdom, loyalty, submission to God,
brotherhood, modesty, prayer, patience, ascribing
partners to God are discussed in the light of
Qur'anic verses. The Basic Concepts of the Qur'an
is also available in Portuguese.
The most
serious
mistake a
man makes
is not
pondering. It
is not
possible to
find the truth
unless one
thinks about
basic questions such as "How and why am I here?," "Who
created me?," or "Where am I going?." Failing to do so, one
becomes trapped in the vicious circle of daily life and turns
into a selfish creature caring only for himself. Ever Thought
About the Truth? summons people to think on such basic
questions and to discover the real meaning of life. This
book is also available in French.
God, in the Qur'an, calls the
culture of people who are not
subject to the religion of God
"ignorance." Only a comparison of
this culture with the honourable
thoughts and moral structure of
the Qur'an can reveal its primitive
and corrupted nature. The
purpose of this book is to take this
comparison further, displaying the
extent of the "crude
understanding" of ignorant societies.
There are questions about religion
that people seek answers to and
hope to be enlightened in the best
way. However in most cases,
people base their opinions on
hearsay rather than acquiring them
from the real source of religion: the
Qur'an. In these booklets, you will
find the most accurate answers to
all the questions you seek answers
for and learn your responsibilities
towards your Creator.
The
purpose of
this book is
to warn
people
against the
day on
which they
will say "If
only we did
not rebel
against God. If only we listened to the messengers…" and
therefore feel deep regret. This is a summons to live for
the cause of God when there is still time. This book is also
available in French.
"Everything that constitutes
our life is a totality of
perceptions received by
our soul. All things that
make our world and our
lives meaningful are like a
dream; we perceive them
only as images in our
brain, and have nothing to
do with their originals…" In
the book, which consists of
a conversation between four
people, the prejudices that prevent people from
understanding this great truth are removed, and
the misconceptions they have are explained.
In societies distant from religion,
right is often presented as wrong,
and vice versa. Unbecoming
behaviour which will not please
God may be favoured and
encouraged. Romanticism is one of
those wrong sentiments which is
assumed to be “right”. This book
reveals what a serious threat
romanticism – which is imagined to
be a simple character trait – poses
to societies and individuals, and
shows how easy it is to eliminate
this danger.
God creates every word one utters,
and every event one experiences,
from the moment one is born into
this world. For a believer who
understands this fact, uninterrupted
joy of faith becomes an unchanging
quality of life. The fate decreed by
God is flawless. In this entity made
up of millions of events, there is only
goodness, benevolence, and
wisdom for everyone who looks at
them with an eye for goodness.
If a person is recently
introduced to Islam, many
questions may cross his mind
since he has just quit the
society of ignorance and has
not yet learned the faculty to
think according to the Qur'an.
Answers from the Qur'an
aims to reply these questions
substantially according to the
principles of the Qur'an.
These books, prepared for kids,
are about the miraculous
characteristics of the living things
on the Earth. Full colour and
written in a concise style, these
books give your children the
opportunity to get to know God
and His perfect artistry in creation.
The first books of these series are
The World of Our Little Friends
The Ants and Honeybees That
Build Perfect Combs. These books
are also translated into French,
Russian and Serbo-Croat
(Bosnian).
When you read this book you,
along with Yusuf, will learn a
great deal about beavers. You
will learn that Yusuf's new friends
build intricate constructions with
innate skills. And finally, you will
learn that it is God, the Creator
of all of us, Who endowed them
with these skills.
As you read this book, you will
see that our universe and all
the living things therein are
created in the most perfect way
by our Creator, God. You will
learn that God created
everything in the universe so
that we may live in it in the
most peaceful and happy way.
Dear kids, while reading this book you
will see how God has created all the
creatures in the most beautiful way and
how every one of them show us His
endless beauty, power and knowledge.
This book is also published in French.
Children!
Have you ever asked yourself
questions like these: How did
our earth come into existence?
How did the moon and sun
come into being? How did
oceans, trees, animals appear
on earth? Who was the first
human being? In this book you
will find the true answers to
these questions.
YOU CAN FIND ALL THE WORKS OF
HARUN YAHYA ON THE INTERNET
• Scientific refutation of Darwinism, the greatest
deception of our age.
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morals of the Qur'an.
• Harun Yahya's political, scientific and faith-related
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HARUN YAHYA ON THE INTERNET
www.creationofuniverse.com
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www.freebookcenter.net
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The interactive CD, The Evolution
Deceit, is a giant archive
comprising 22 books written by
Harun Yahya, 5 documentary films
based on the works of the author,
16 audio presentations, 75
coloured posters, and many
articles. Audio presentations are
produced in the form of tapecassettes.
This film is about the
ideologies fostered by
Darwinism and the
pain these ideologies
caused mankind. In
this film, you will see
that Darwinism is not
a scientific theory but
a dogma defended for
the sake of political
and philosophical
concerns.
This film is about
the clear signs
that demonstrate
God's existence
and perfect
power of
creation.
This
documentary
describes how a
human being is
created, and
which stages he
goes through to
come into
existence.
This film is
about you.
In this film, you
will watch these
amazing
architects in
nature feeling
wonder at the
characteristics
God has inspired
in these
creatures.
This film examines the
extraordinary
technology in the cell,
similar to that in a
space ship. The miracle
of creation observable
in every cell, from that
making up the eye to
the one making up the
liver, is investigated with
impressive computer
animations.
INTERACTIVE CDS
DOCUMENTARY FILMS
With this CD, you will also
possess a giant archive
comprising the full texts of all
of Harun Yahya's works, a
65-minute documentary film
on how scientific discoveries
confirm the miracle of the
Qur'an, and 10 audio
representations lasting a
total of 6 hours.
You can watch
everything you
want to know
about the creation
of the universe
since the Big
Bang in this
documentary with
spectacular shots.
As you watch the
wonderful
creatures in this
film, you will also
think about how
they were created.
Thus you will once
more see the signs
of God's
spectacular artistry
of creation.
This film will take you to
a journey from Australia
to the deep recesses of
the oceans, form
scorching deserts to the
mysterious Amazon
jungles. The creatures
you will see will show
you how God's power
and grandeur in creation
is manifested in every
part of the earth.
Ants accomplish
extraordinary tasks, which
even human beings would
have difficulty in doing.
The "wisdom" displayed by
these tiny creatures
proves that they are
created and assigned to
carry out their specific
tasks by the Creator, Who
rules over all of nature.
In this film, you
will see these
amazing features
in animals, and
see the signs
displayed in
nature for man,
and God's artistry
in creation as
manifested in
these animals.
Are you aware of
the magnificent
world lying under
the sea? This film
opens the door to
the undersea
world, making
you admire the
artistry in God's
creation.
In this film, some
very important
facts that will
entirely change
your outlook on the
material world are
related.
This film deals with the most basic claims of the theory of evolution on the one hand, and on the other hand reveals the
clear signs of creation. It is also available in German, Russian and Arabic.
The titles in this series include The Theory of
Evolution The Fact of Creation, The Creation
of the Universe/The Balances in the Earth,
The Miracle in the Cell/The Miracle of Birth,
The Miracle in the Eye/The Miracle in the Ear,
The Design in Animals/The Design in Plants,
The Miracle in the Honeybee/The Miracle in
the Ant, The Miracle in the Mosquito/The
Miracle in the Spider, Self-Sacrifice in Living
Things/Migration and Orientation, The Miracle
of Creation in DNA, Miracles of the Qur'an.
The audio cassettes
Perished Nations
and The Dark Face
of Darwin were
inspired by the works
of Harun Yahya
The Collapse of Evolution
The Fact of Creation audio
cassette is also available in
Russian.
THE FACT OF CREATION AUDIO CASSETTE SERIES
The Qur'an has many miraculous aspects which
prove that it was sent by God. One of them is that
some scientific facts, which we have only been able
to discover with the technology of the 20th century,
were stated in the Qur'an 1,400 years ago. These
facts, which could not have been known at the time of
the Qur'an's revelation, once again show to the
people of today that the Qur'an is the word of God.
Watch this film to learn about these facts.
Miracles of the Qur'an is also available in Russian
and Arabic.
How does modern astronomy prove the fact of creation
in the universe? How does the Big Bang Theory
invalidate materialist philosophy? How did the
seamless universe we live in come into being? What is
the source of the spectacular order and balance in the
universe? You will find the answers in this film. This
film has also been produced in German.
In this film, you will watch many
miraculous features of birds such as
their soaring techniques, the
aerodynamic structure of their bodies,
the secrets in their migration and
orientation, and their flight techniques.
You will once more see that the power
of Our Lord encompasses everything.