All:
I just pulled this article on how Islam views other religions by using a web
search engine.  All I had to do was use a simple search engine such as
Google.com to get answers to questions about the religion.

This is an absolutely beautiful piece.

Here goes:





How Does Islam Regard Other Religions?
Mahjubah, The Islamic Magazine for Women
Mag 1995,
Vol. 14, No. 5, Pages: 19-22
By: Fodhlallah Wilmot
Word Count: 3909



This century has witnessed the growth of a new awareness that mankind must
live together, every group interdependent with all the others. The unity of
mankind is being felt with increasing intensity around the globe.

There are a number of implications regarding the interdependence of Man from
Islam's theory of God, its theory of revelation, its theory of Man and it
theory of society and each of these in turn carries implication for the place
of other faiths in Islam's consideration.

Theory of God

Islam's insistence on the absolute unit and transcendence of God is an
affirmation of God's lordship over all men. To hold God as Creator means that
all men are His creatures.

Muslims therefore, believe that God has not graded any special status to any
person or group. His love, providence, care for and judgement of all men must
be one.

In Islam, all people-Muslims and non-Muslims-stand to God in identically the
same relationship, i.e. they are judged objectively by the same law. This is
made clear in the following verses of the Quran.

"On that day (the Day of Judgement), men will come forth in sundry bodies so
that they may be shown their deeds. So he who does an atom's weight of
goodwill see it and he who does an atom's weight of evil will see it." (99:
6-8)

Theory of Revelation

In Islam, the Divine Will, the thought or content of the religious and moral
imperative is knowable directly through revelation or indirectly through
science. Muslims believe that revelation is not a privilege peculiar to
Muslims but that the phenomenon or prophecy is common to, and present in
every people and nation. The Quran says:

"There is no people unto whom we have not sent a prophet warner."

Muslims, therefore, believe that non-Muslims aren't underprivileged in this
respect although their revelations may have, according to the Islamic
perspective, been dissipated, lost or tampered with.

Science is an indirect way of learning the Divine Will. Its prerequisites are
the senses, intellectual curiosity and the will to research and discovery,
the availability of data and communicability of experience, memory and the
preservation of knowledge, reason and understanding or the capacity to grasp
synthesis and develop knowledge.

None of these are the monopoly of any group.

Theory of Man

Muslims believe that Man is not a fallen being but innocent; that God has
created him in the best of forms and endowed him with a purposive, causal
efficacy.

The Muslim does not look upon the non-Muslim as a fallen, hopeless creature,
but as a perfect creature, as a perfect man capable to himself of achieving
the highest righteousness.

Together with this dignity, Muslims believe that non-Muslims

what Islam calls din al-fitrah or natural religion the census nominees by
which Man recognizes God as transcendent and holy and hence worthy of
adoration.

"Life up your faith towards the religious like a hanif. That is the natural
religion with which God has endowed all men at their creation. No exception
or change befalls God's creation." (30:30)

Muslims believe that din al-fitrah or naturalize religion is something both
Muslims and non-Muslims possess by birth. In other words, din al-fitrah is
original religion which Muslims define as Islam.

In Islam's view, the historical religions are outgrowths of din al-fitrah
containing with them different amounts or degrees of it.

From the Islamic perspective, the differences of the various religion of din
al-fitrah are due to accumulations, figurations, interpretations or
transformations of history, i.e., of place, time, culture, leadership and
other particular conditions.

The Muslim, therefore, respects the adherent of another religion as a carrier
of din al-fitrah, the religion of God as well as his own religious tradition
as one based on din-al-fitrah.

Islam's discovery of din-al-fitrah and its vision of it as the base of all
historical religions is, Muslims believe, a breakthrough of tremendous
importance in inter-religious relations.

For the first time, it has become possible for an adherent of one religion to
tell an adherent of another religion:

"We are both equal members of a universal religious brotherhood. Both our
traditional religions are de jure for they have both issued from and are
based on a common source, the religion of God which He has implanted in both
of us equally, din al-fitrah."

"Rather than see how much your religion agrees or disagrees with mine, let us
both see how far both our religious traditions agree with din al-fitrah, the
original and first religion".

"Say, O people of the book! Come now to agreement with us, based on a fair
principle common to both, namely, that we shall worship none but God. That we
shall never associate any other with Him; that we shall never take one
another as lords besides God." (3:64)

"Rather than assume that each of our religions is Divine as it stands today,
let us both, cooperatively wherever possible, try to trace the historical
development of our religions and determine precisely how and when and where
each has followed and fulfilled or transcended and deviated from din
al-fitrah.

"Let us look into our holy writ and other religious texts and try to discover
what change has befallen them, or been reflected in them, in history".

Islam's breakthrough then is the first call to scholarship in religion, to
critical analysis of religious text of the claim of such texts to revelation
status.

Islam assigns to the confession of faith the value of a condition, only
acclaims the good works where and by whomever they are done, it regards them
as the only justification in the eyes of God and warns that not an iota of
good work or mischief will be lost on the Day of Reckoning.

The non-Muslim, therefore, has the public record of works he has done to
justify him in Muslim eyes; to establish him as a man of great piety and
saintliness. For in Islam, good deeds earn merit with God regardless of the
religious adherence of their author.

From the Islamic point of view, moreover, salvation consists of nothing more
than such merit as the good works earn. The act of faith is a work which is
added and whose inclusion affects the whole.

Islamic ethics being totally world-affirming, positive and governed by public
law, the non-Muslim has as much potential and room for meritorious work as
the Muslim.

Muslims believe that it is only Islam that allows its adherents to call
non-adherents to the religion than they themselves, and to do so religiously.

Persuasion, not Compulsion -Theory of Society

Islam has defined the will of God, the norms of human conduct and ends of
human desire in terms of values which are societal. Muslims believe that they
must strive to transform this world and mankind into an actualization of the
Divine pattern.

This cannot be achieved unless mankind is convinced of its moral and
utilitarian value and, therefore, the non-Muslim will need to be involved.
This can only be achieved voluntarily. Islam lays down very clearly that
there must never be any compulsion in religion.

The Quran laid down the method of persuasion to be used by Muslims when
attempting to discuss matters with non-Muslims.

Islam teaches that the majority, no matter how large or overwhelming, have no
right to coerce even a single person. Islam recognize that the non-Muslim is
not to be coerced or subversively influenced to conversion, but that he is
fully entitled to pursue his non-Islamic culture and pass it on to his
descendants.

The very survival of the Eastern Churches in Asia, regarded as heretical by
the rest of Christendom, is evidence of Islamic tolerance. No religion has
preserved the shrines of another in its own base to the same extent as Islam.

Muslims are taught that it is their religious obligation to enforce the
observance of the religious law of others as long as the adherents of these
religions live in their midst. Muslims believe that Islam's concept of din
al-fitrah is the only idea capable of pulling modern man out of his
predicament.

FROM THE QUR'AN:

"Religious goodness does not consist in your ritual worship, turning your
faces towards the east or towards the west. Rather, it consists in believing
in God, in the Day of Judgement, in His angels, Books, and Prophets, as well
as in sharing one's wealth, for His sake, with the relative, the orphan, the
destitute, the wayfarer, in spending it for the ransom of those who are not
free, as well as in observing the prayers, paying the zakat, fulfilling one's
contracts and promises, in holding firm in good times and ill times, or under
constraint; in being always truthful. These are the truly felicitous."(2:171)

Perhaps the greatest implication of Islam's confession that there is no god
but God (with its tacit assumption that everyone has been endowed by God with
natural religion-dine al-fitrah)- is its universalism.

All humans are, in Islam's view, potentially God's vicegerents on earth. All
are subjects under moral obligation and all the objects of one another's
moral action.

Obviously the greatest threat to this universalism, and hence to Islam, is
particularism, the view that some people are to value their distinction from
the rest of humankind more than their communion.

Of course humans do differ from each other. But undeniable as the difference
may be, the point that Islam makes is that they are irrelevant for measuring
a person's worth.

A human's creatureliness before God, the ultimate base uniting each person
with all humanity, is far more important.

To assert the opposite is to divide humankind into separate entities with the
danger that an individual will feel that his group is superior to the other
and on that basis, take away from all others to give to his own group.

Although Islam agrees with the principle of the priority of next of kin, it
insists on defining the benefits of society in terms of the well-being of all
people.

No Master Race:

Islam rejects therefore all varieties of ethnocentrism which leads to the
concept of 'the master race', 'the people of God', 'the chosen of God' who
regard others as 'the subject races', 'people of the devil'. 'people of
inferior gods'.

Islamic universalism holds that all people are entitled by nature to fill
membership of any human corporate body, for everyone is at once subject and
object of the one and same moral law. The unity of God is inseparable from
the unity of His will, which is the moral law.

Under this one law, Islam seeks to rally the whole of humankind on equal
terms. It does not hold or tolerate to hold, a doctrine of election. Nobody,
according to Islam, has been predestined to any station in this world or the
next.

The universalism of Islam does not, however, preclude it from differentiating
between people on the basis of their moral endeavor and achievement.

Such preclusion would be equally contrary to the moral law which assigns
'moral worth' in direct proportion to a person's moral accomplishments.

Indeed, discrimination based on moral worth is obligatory, for this sort of
discrimination encourages people to excel in good deeds, which is the purpose
of creation itself.

Islam, however, is a missionary religion and missionary zeal is a duty
incumbent upon every Muslim. Mission is endemic to Islam as a universal
religion for every Muslim wishes that Islam would be the conscious religion
of every person.

In fact, Muslims believe that Islam was the original religion of everyone but
that it has been changed by time and culture into something else.

Islam's missionary spirit of da'wah (calling) does not contradict its
recognition of all religions as de jure. Islam invites the adherents of all
religions to the task of criticism.

According to Prof. Esmail Faruqui, a noted Muslim scholar, no religion is
priori ruled out by the Muslim even though Muslims believe that Islam is the
truth among many competing claims.

A Muslim on meeting some one who worships, for example, an 'x' or 'y',
whatever that may be, is not free to call him a pagan or to regard him as
condemned by God; rather he must talk with him to discover what his religion
is, in the belief that God must have sent a prophet to him.

Prof. Esmail Faruqui states that believing that God, in His mercy, must have
told him something, the Muslim meets with the non-Muslim with a view to being
instructed about his faith, and then Muslim invites the non-Muslim to
research his own tradition in order to discover the essential message that
God has given him.

And, if in relation to that central revealed core, it turns out that the rest
of the beliefs and practices of that religion as developed through history
have been distorted, that would be an empirical discovery for the Muslim.

But Muslim must never make a priori decision which condemns a man because he
does not believe in 'my God, my way'.

However, if it is found that another man's religion has been corrupted and
falsified beyond recognition, then the Muslim has a duty to tell the
non-Muslim about the Quran, which Muslims believe to be God's final
revelation and to present it to him as rational truth and invite him to
consider it.

From the Islamic point of view, to say that the adherents of

other religions are equal members of a universal religious brotherhood
because all religions are based on a common source, does not mean that all
religions are the same or that Islam is trying to syncretism different
faiths.

Muslims accept other religions as de jure and believe that true tolerance
means permitting every adherent of a religion to live his life in accordance
with the religious values and traditions, no matter how incorrect they may
seem from the Islamic point of view.

It is not tolerance to try to pretend that differences do not exist. For
example, when presented with two objects one of which is black and the other
white, it is not tolerance to say that both are gray.

Neither is it tolerance to say that one particular religion is the same as
another religion.

To say that religions with different beliefs, dogma and practices are the
same is either hypocrisy or stupidity, and neither hypocrisy nor stupidity
can be the basis of tolerance.

For Muslims tolerance lies in the willingness to accept difference and
acknowledge the right of others not only to believe differently but do order
their lives according to that belief. Further, to say that all religions are
the same or that they are equal, is neither logical nor rational because it
would mean the juxtaposition in consciousness of contrary claims to the truth
without the demand for a solution of their contradiction.

True Tolerance:

By avoiding all these pitfalls and shortcomings through its concept of din
al-fitrah as the base of all historical religions, Islamic da'wah invites the
non-Muslim to examine his religion, to analyses his religious texts and see
how close or how far his religion is from dim al-fitrah which, for Muslims,
is the criterion for determining truth.

With the rising tide of Islamic awareness in the world and calls by Muslims
for the implementation of Islamic law (the Shari'ah), some quarters have
voiced concern about the effect on non-Muslims.

It would, however, be a wrong presumption to assume that under Islamic law
non-Muslims would lose their rights and suffer. In fact there are clear
guidelines in the Quran and the traditions of Prophet Muhammad (s.a.w.),
which speak of straightening and cementing relationships between Muslim and
non-Muslim citizens. The basic foundation of the relationship is found in the
Quran:

"God does not forbid you to act considerately or to act fairly towards those
who have never fought you over religion nor have evicted you from your homes.
God loves the fair-minded. God only forbids you to be friendly with those who
have fought you over religion and evicted you from your homes and who helped
others in your eviction. Those helped other in your eviction. Those who
befriend them are wrongdoers." (60: 8-9)

The words 'does not forbid you', are in fact, in this context positive
command ordering Muslims to deal with non-Muslims kindly and justly unless
they are clearly out to destroy the Muslims to deal with non-Muslims kindly
and justly unless they are clearly out to destroy the Muslims. The best
example of such treatment can be seen from the life of Prophet Muhammad
(s.a.w.) himself who ordered the Muslim convert Asmah Abubakr to visit her
non-Muslim mother and to treat her well as Asmah was under the misguided
notion that she should not be friendly with her (the mother) after she had
converted to Islam.

Protection:

The fundamental rights of non-Muslims, according to the Shari'ah, are their
protection from all external threats, their protection from internal tyranny
and persecution and their right to their own personal law according to the
teachings of their own religion.

The protection from external threats is the normal duty of any state. It is
the duty of the head of state and those in authority to look after the
interests of all the citizens. Of more relevance to the contemporary scene is
the question of the rights of non-Muslim citizens under the Shari'ah. The
most important protection to be accorded to non-Muslim citizens is protection
from internal high-handedness, persecution, tyranny and injustice.

To assault, injure or abuse a non-Muslim or even backbite him is just as
immoral as it is to do such things in respect of a Muslim. The Muslims are
duty-bound to spare their hands and tongues from hurting the non-Muslim
citizens. They must not keep enmity or hatred against them.

Since Muslims believe that God hates tyrants and punishes them both in this
world and the next, Prophet Muhammad (s.a.w.) himself warned Muslims against
any high-handedness towards the non-Muslim citizens (called dhimmis in
Arabic) - e.g. "One who hurts dhimmi hurts me, hurts God. Also whosoever I am
a complainant, I shall ask for his right on the Day of Resurrection."

In Islam all humans are equal and even if one does not choose to follow the
religion of Islam he has every right to live in peace and tranquillity in a
Muslim country as an honored citizen with all rights and privileges.
According to the teachings of the Quran neither the religion of Islam nor the
Shari'ah can be forced on anyone against his will. The main emphasis of the
Shari'ah is on the sanctity of the concept of legal due process to guarantee
the life, liberty, property and honor of every human being, Muslim and
non-Muslim. Therefore Islamic law is fair to all.

Muslims believe that the guarantees of the Shari'ah go far beyond the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The Shari'ah guarantees freedom of
opinion and the right to advocate one's idea in public both in speech and
writing. The Shari'ah guarantees the inviolability of a citizen's home,
private life and honor and prohibits the authorities from doing anything
against this fundamental guarantee.

Because the right to express one's opinion is meaningless (and perhaps even
dangerous) without sound knowledge, Islam makes it the citizen's right and
the Government's duty to have a system of education which would make
knowledge freely accessible to every man and woman in the country.

Progress:

A Muslim government also is responsible, according to the Shari'ah to provide
its citizens with such economic facilities as are necessary for the
maintenance of human happiness and dignity. Therefore the affairs of the
community must be arranged in such a way that every individual man and woman,
Muslim and non-Muslim, shall enjoy that minimum of material well-being
without which there can be no human dignity, no real freedom, and in the last
resort no spiritual progress. This does not mean that the state should or
ever could, ensure carefree living from its citizens. It does mean, however,
that every citizen has:

a) The right to productive and remunerative work while of working age and in
good health. b) Training at the expense of the State, if necessary, for such
productive work.

c) Free and efficient health services in case of illness. d) Provision by the
state of adequate nourishment, clothing and shelter in cases of disability
resulting from illness, widowhood, unemployment due to circumstances beyond
individual's control, old-age or under-age.

Justice:

The socio-political scheme of Islam aims at justice for Muslim and non-Muslim
alike and the desire of Muslims to establish the Shari'ah is driven by moral
considerations,. The Quran makes it obligatory to provide justice for all
people and under the Shari'ah. Non-Muslims enjoy freedom of religion and
religious worship, the freedom to maintain their own languages and customs
and open their own schools, their right of life, honor, privacy and free
movement. The Islamic Shari'ah also guarantees freedom from arbitrary arrest
and detention, the right of peaceful assembly and association, freedom of
expression and association and political freedom. The right of non-Muslims to
property, freedom to practice any profession or trade and to assistance from
the public treasury of the Muslims, if they are in need, are all guaranteed.

All personal matters of non-Muslims are to be decided in accordance with
their own personal law. The corresponding laws of the Shari'ah are not to be
enforced on them. If something is forbidden to Muslims but allowed in their
religion then they will have the right to use that thing and the courts in
the country will decide their cases in the light of their own personal law.
This has been the rule of all Muslim governments since the time of Prophet
Muhammad (s.a.w.). The non-Muslims are given the fullest freedom in the
performance of their religious rites and communal festivals.

Once Caliph Omar noticed an old non-Muslim begging and he fixed a pension for
him, saying: "By God it is undoubtedly not just that we derive benefit from a
person in the prime of his youth but leave him to beg in the streets when he
is stricken with old-age. " Caliph Omar also fixed pension for all the aged
and invalid non-Muslims.

Penal Code:

Every non-Muslim enjoys security and equal justice under the Shari'ah. Under
the Shari'ah no distinction of race, religion, citizenship, economic or
social status or personal capabilities can ever obliterate the rights of a
non-Muslim. Muslims and non-Muslims are to be treated as equal before the
law. The penal laws of Islam are the same as for the Muslims and the
non-Muslims - although Imam Malik exempts the non-Muslims from the Islamic
punishment for adultery and he states that such cases should be referred to
the offender's co-religionists.

The penal laws of Islam are only a small part of the Shari'ah which is
primarily concerned, as can be seen from the above, with social and economic
justice. The penal laws of Islam are concerned with theft, murder, highway
robbery, rebellion and accusations of adultery. The laws concerning the other
matters are too detailed to discuss here but the aim is prevention but only
on clear evidence.

The penalties often mentioned for such offences are, as has been mentioned,
the maximum penalty. Islam imposes a rigid code of punishment for the
microscopic minority of hard-core criminals to ensure an atmosphere of peace
and security for the rest of the society.

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