The holy Quran
stated about one religion that is meant for all mankind. Being the only Holy Scripture
that talks about religion other than Islam depicts its universality and
uniqueness in its content. The only religion that is approved by God is Islam
while all other claimed religions are considered false religion.
Quran stated that
God only send one religion with messengers as a mean to deliver the message of
truth. Those messages are all the same in terms of aqidah which is belief in
one God who created everything in this universe, to worship only Him and not to
associate with any other creations.
Initially human
started with believing in one God but after some time, they started to practice
polytheism. From time to time, people of different tribes tend to deviate from
true religion and thus the reason of God continuously send His messengers as guidance
to human being. All prophets and messengers were given the same message but the
difference between all the messages that were sent was only the matter of
shari’ah which differs from each other to relevantize the people of certain
time but the aqidah is still the same. Initially people were guided but after
some events misled by other factors such as culture demand and lack of
conviction and commitment to the religion. Messengers were continuously sent by
Allah for man to be guided from Adam a.s. to the last and final messenger and
prophet Muhammad peace be upon him.
True religion does
not develop and will never develop as there is only one true religion till the
end of time. The polytheists were responsible by making people deviated from
true teaching of religion for example Judaism and Christianity. They claimed to
be revealed religion though now they are far deviated from truth that was sent
by prophets. The Quran addressed the religion before the coming of Prophet
Muhammad peace be upon him as ‘Hanif’. Though it is differ from the term ‘Islam’,
it still delivers the same message as Islam.
There is an
assumption that says Islam developed from Christianity and Christianity developed
from Judaism. This Is not true when initially there is only Islam. The
followers are actually made the holy religion distorted by changing the
scripture, add and discard whatever they like. They are driving people into
destruction, far from the truth. They, especially the Jews even killed the
Prophets which shows their rejection of what was being delivered to them.
The main factor of
misguidance and the birth of false religions is that people tend to blend both
culture and truth. Different tribe has different culture and it is an element
that is hard to draw off especially after the message of truth had come to them
which subsequently requires them to eliminate whatever culture and tradition
that clashes to shari’ah. One that does
not contrary to shari’ah is allowed to be practiced.
Part of negative
tradition is worshipping idols which clearly against the shari’ah to associate something
other than Allah. People of the past would tend to adopt elements that are
close to them or something that they could see with their bare vision. Since
they could not see God, they tend to create an image or symbol as a
manifestation of God. The practice was then developed from believing that it
was a manifestation of God to believing that the idols are gods. This is when
deviation starts to occur and polytheism became practice which led to total
digression.
Consequently,
false religions began to appear due to development caused by human itself. True
religion never developed as it does not influence by distortion. Whereas only false
religions – which actually invented by human – continue to develop as time goes
by.
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Quranic Perspective on Other Religions module
IIUM, 2015
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