[112:1] In the name of Allah, the Gracious, the Merciful. [112:2] Say 'He is Allah, the One! [112:3] Allah the Independent and Besought of all. [112:4] 'He begets not, nor, is He begotten, [112:5] And there is none like unto Him. -- Holy Qur'an
We believe that the object of man’s creation is that man should worship the One and Only God Who created him and to interact kindly with God’s creation.
We believe that God is one, Who is living today as He was living before, and Who spoke before, and hears today as He heard before. We believe it is a false notion that in this age He hears but does not speak. indeed, He both hears and speaks. All His attributes are eternal and everlasting.
None of His attributes have fallen into disuse. He is the One without a partner; He has no son and no consort. He is the peerless one Who has no equal and like Whom no individual is absolutely qualified with any quality, and Whose attributes are not shared by anyone.
None of his powers lacks anything. He is the fountainhead of all excellences and combines in Himself all powers. All graces originate from Him and everything returns to Him. He is the Master of all kingdoms and possesses every perfect quality. He is free from every defect and weakness. Nothing manifests itself without Him. He manifests Himself through His powers and His signs and we can find Him only through Him.
Hazrat Ahmad, the Promised Messiah (alaihissalaam) says:
Our Ever-living and All-Sustaining God talks to me like one person talks to another. I ask Him something and supplicate Him and He answers in words full of power. If this should happen a thousand times, He does not fail to answer. In His words He discloses wonderful hidden matters and displays scenes of extraordinary powers till He makes it clear that He alone is the One Who should be called God. He accepts prayers and intimates their acceptance. He resolves great difficulties and through repeated supplications revives those who are sick unto death. He discloses all these designs of His in advance through His words which relate to future events. He proves that He is the God of heaven and earth. (Naseem-e-Dawat, p.28)
The Holy Qur’an says “Aye! It is in the remembrance of Allah that hearts can find comfort” (13:29). We seek comfort. We understand in religious terms that God is One. We believe that he hears and speaks today and we have the examples of many prophets who demonstrated complete and deep faith in God.
And we believe that religion is the way of life to attain the highest spiritual, moral and physical spheres leading to a living relationship with God. But despite it all, we continue to move, sometimes in a clumsy manner dealing with our own trials and tribulations searching within ourselves to establish a relationship with God that allows us to enjoy peace and tranquility in our lives.
It’s not easy. To obtain a tranquil state, we must attain a complete realization of God which means to fight off satanic forces, evils and sin. Each and every one of us must wage a daily battle with those forces that would keep us from remembering God in our hearts. And it begins by remembering first and foremost that Almighty Allah observes all of our acts and thoughts – nothing is hidden. To understand and believe this will have his outer and inner being well disciplined to fight the forces of satan.
To understand certainty of faith is to be thoroughly convinced of the fact that you are always under God’s observation.
A certain Sheik once had a disciple whom he favored above his other disciples, thus exciting their envy. One day the Sheik gave each of them a fowl and told each to go and kill it in a place where no one could see him. Accordingly each killed his fowl in some retired spot and brought it back, with the exception of the Sheik's favorite disciple, who brought his back alive, saying that he had found no such place as God sees him everywhere. The Sheik said to the others, 'You see now this youth's real rank; he has attained to the constant t remembrance of God'. In the traditions it is written that God has said, 'Paradise is for those who intend to commit some sin and then remember that My eye is upon them, And forbear'.
A man who attains to a complete realization of God would naturally eschew immoralities and evils of all kinds. And, conversely, the more a man is involved in vice the farther away from God he drifts. The Holy Qur’an says: 'Those who sin in ignorance', (6:120), meaning that the real cause of sin is lack of true knowledge and realization of God, which is a self-evident truth.
A sensible man will not knowingly thrust his hand into fire: he will not eat food which to his knowledge contains poison: he will not enter a house which he is certain is about to fall: he will not thrust his hand into the hole of a serpent: nor will he enter the den of a lion unarmed. Men being so much afraid of fire, poison, serpents, and lions. how can it be supposed that they would rush into and revel in vices and immoralities if they had a perfect knowledge and realization of God and knew that these things were more deadly than poisons and more dangerous than serpents and lions? It is therefore clear that sin is the result of ignorance and lack of true realization of God.
The Promised Messiah and Holy Founder of the Ahmadiyya Community has elaborated this truth:
“Then why does a person commit sin deliberately? The reason is that he has not that certainty in this matter as he has in other matters of the kind that we have mentioned. The first duty of a person, therefore, is to acquire certainty with regard to the existence of God, and to adopt a religion through which this certainty can be acquired so that he should fear God and shun sin.
“How can such certainty be acquired? It cannot be acquired through mere stories, It can not be acquired through mere arguments. The only way of acquiring certainty is to experience God repeatedly through conversations with Him or through witnessing his extraordinary signs, or by keeping company with someone who has that experience.
(Naseem-e-Dawat, pp.81-82)
The purpose of religion is that man should obtain deliverance from his passions and should develop personal love for God Almighty through certain faith in His existence and His perfect attributes. Such love of God is the paradise which will appear in diverse shapes in the Hereafter. To be unaware of the true God and to keep away from Him and not to have any love for Him is the hell which will appear in diverse shapes in the Hereafter. Thus the true purpose is to have full faith in Him.
Religion is inherent in man; without religion in its simplest, highest sense, no man or nation can survive or prosper. A true religion is a dynamic power to lead man to real happiness which lies in the complete fulfillment of the highest ideals as already indicated in the words of the Holy Qur’an: Beware only in remembering God lies the satisfaction of the heart.
Take God as your ideal in all of your thoughts, words and actions and you will never have to be sorry in this life or the hereafter. For your character, says the Master Prophet Muhammad (sallallahu 'alaihi wasallam) , adopt the ideal of God.
Not just an outward form of worship. Adopting the ideal of God and certainty of faith means a complete acceptance of the highest ideals of life of which man has any knowledge; it entails a genuine effort to live up to them in one's daily life.
A believer’s faith must color the whole of his life, all his contacts the domestic circle, in his business and in his pleasures. In all things and in every aspect of life a man must be heightened, deepened, warned and enlightened by the religion to which he yields obedience. One who has firm belief in God and His powers is never disturbed by anything and things that go bump in the night or day cannot fright him. By patient endurance he attains to success in his affairs.
Hence, to a world crushed with the weight of material ambition; a world blind to the significance of moral and spiritual forces as the ultimate basis of the existence of society, there can be no better antidote to sin than the message brought by the Holy Prophet of Islam, that there is an Ever-Living and Ever-Seeing God Who still rules the actions of man, that man can acquire a connection with Him; that there is the possibility of developing a reciprocity of love between Him and man; that God reveals His Will to man, and human progress must always be bound up with the fundamental idea of the existence of a Supreme Being.
Our only recourse is to bow down before God and remember that Allah’s promise is true. That he will shelter you from Satan. You should never be deceived by Satan who creates those promptings in your heart, those thoughts that turn you against family and Jama’at.
You should seek Allah’s protection otherwise you will lose in this life and the next life. Depend on God. Trust in Him. Develop a link with God and maintain your connection with him in certitude. If so, He will bestow his favors on you.
May Allah enable every human being to have trust in God. May Allah protect us from Satan and save us from sin.
Hasan
Notes: Review of Religion, p. 32, Need for Religion and Belief in God, Ata Ullah Kaleem)
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