Belief in God also means that
God alone deserves human worship.
God alone deserves human worship.
From an Islamic perspective, worship is not merely
praising, honoring and offering sacrifices to a deity. To call on the deity for
help is a fundamental part of worship. Consequently, calling on anyone other
than Allaah in prayer is to worship them. The Prophet’s companion, Nu‘maan ibn
Basheer quoted him as saying, “[Calling on anyone in] prayer is worship.” (Sunan
Abu Dawud, vol. 1, p. 387, no. 1474). If one believes that nothing takes place
except by God’s will alone, it makes no sense to call on anyone other than God.
(The Moral Foundations of Islamic Culture, pp.)
Design Indicates a Designer
The variety and complexity of the intricate systems
which constitute the fabric of both human beings and the world in which they
exist indicate that there must have been a Supreme Being who created them.
Design indicates a designer. When human beings come across footprints on a
beach, they immediately conclude that a human being had walked by there some
time previously. No one imagines that the waves from the sea settled in the
sand and by chance produced a depression looking exactly like human footprints.
Nor do humans instinctively conclude that they were brought into existence without
a purpose. Since purposeful action is a natural product of human intelligence, humans
conclude that the Supreme Intelligent Being who created them must have done so
for a specific purpose. Therefore, human beings need to know the purpose for
their existence in order to make sense of this life and to do what is
ultimately beneficial for them.
Throughout
the ages, however, there has been a minority among humans who have denied the
existence of God. Matter, in their opinion, is eternal and mankind is merely a
chance product of accidental combinations of its elements. Consequently, to them,
the question “Why did God create man?” had and still has no answer. According to
them, there simply is no purpose to existence. However, the vast majority of humankind
over the ages has believed and continues to believe in the existence of a Supreme
Being who created this world with a purpose. For them, it was and still is important
to know about the Creator and the purpose for which He created human beings. (The
Purpose of Creation, pp. 5-6.)
Many
others, as was previously mentioned, claimed and continue to claim that there
is no purpose at all. Human existence is merely a product of chance. There can
be no purpose if life evolved from inanimate matter which only became animate
by pure luck. Humankind’s supposed ‘cousins’, the monkey and apes are not
bothered with questions of existence, so why should human beings be bothered
with them? (Ibid., pp. 7-8.)
to be continued....
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