Muslim Personalities
Meaning of Islam
The meaning of the word Islam is "submission" and "peace". In
the course of making an individual muslim---that is, one who is
in a state of islam or submission to the
One True God---Islam profoundly affects his thinking and
behaviour. Indeed, there is no aspect of a person's life, nor of
the life of the society which is made up of such people, which
it does not touch and transform in keeping with the basic
concept, that of the Lordship and Sovereignty of God and man's
responsibility to Him. Islam's first requirement is belief and
second action. Out of its concepts and beliefs, a certain attitude toward life, toward one's own self, towards other human beings, toward the universe; a certain kind of personality; a distinctive type of human interaction; a particular mode of worship, of family life, manners, living habits and so on in relation of all aspect of life, takes its devlopment.
We live in an age of tremendous upheaval and uncertainity. People everywhere are groping anxiously for something that can save humanity, which has lost its way and is on the brink of unprecedented disaster. It may be true that today we live in an era of the ultimate in material civilization and progress, but in the realm of the values and morals, mankind appears to be closed to bankruptcy.
In the Islamic view, these probleme are fundamentally of a spiritual nature, the result of man's having lost sight of who he is in relation to himself, to other humanbeings, and above all to God, in Whom being itself, and all human relationships, originate. And until he able to find meaningful and correct answers to the ultimate questions, and solutions to his problems which are compatible with the fundamental realities of existence and his own nature, his life will remain adrift without a base and without direction, his personality will be distorted and fragmented, his human nature absued by permitting its animal part to dominate, and his societies full of overwhelming problems.
Islam claims to provide such answers and
solutions, ones which are compatible with reason, logic, realities of the physical
universe, and with human nature itself. For Islam is, above all, a view of the total Reality, encompassing the existence and attributes of the Creator, man's relationship with Him, his role and
purpose in this world, and the relationship between this life and the life fo the Hereafter, which puts all that exits into proper perspective and gives balance and direction to the life of human beings and their societies.
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