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Religion is a contract between God and humanity, and all of its conditions favor and benefit us. As complex and civilized beings who, in addition to many other things, need a secure coexistence with other people, we seek peace and justice in our individual and collective lives. Just as individual motives differ, humanity’s “collective reason” cannot comprehend the true nature of that necessary peace and justice or how to realize it in practice. The subsequent need for a transcendent reason—religion—therefore was given to us by God. Religion is nothing more than an assemblage of the principles laid down by God for human happiness and security in both worlds and for the realization of justice in practical life.
Since people’s essential nature and needs never change over the course of time, all Prophets preached the same fundamentals of religion. Any differences were confined to secondary matters related to the ever-changing circumstances of life. The religion chosen by God Almighty to ensure individual and collective human felicity in both worlds, and which He revealed through all Prophets, is Islam. Islam means belief in and submission to God, and thereby peace and justice in our individual and collective lives. Judaism and Christianity are names given to the earlier revelations of Islam under Prophets Moses and Jesus, respectively. No Israelite Prophet ever said Judaism. Jesus never claimed to establish Christianity on Earth or called himself a Christian. Christian appears only three times in the New Testament and first by pagans and Jews in Antioch about 43 AD, long after Jesus had left this Earth (Acts 11:26). Islam can be best summed up in the Basmala, the formula uttered at the start of every good act: In the Name of God, the All-Merciful, the All-Compassionate. The word translated as the All-Merciful is al-Rahman, which denotes God as the One Who, out of His infinite Mercy, protects and sustains, as well as guarantees the life of and provides for, all members of creation without exception. The word translated as the All-Compassionate is al-Rahim, which denotes God as the One Who has special mercy for His good, believing, devoted, and upright servants in both worlds. Moreover, the Qur’an states that the Prophet was sent as a mercy for all worlds [all species of beings] (21:107). A religion so based on mercy and compassion seeks to revive, not to kill. Unfortunately, modern materialistic thought is fed by modern science’s extreme positivism and rationalism. It therefore reduces life to the physical or material dimension and ignores the fact that peace, harmony, and contentment in this world depend upon human spirituality. A true spiritual life, one based on enlightening the mind or intellect through scientific knowledge and enlightening the heart and refining feelings through belief, religious knowledge, worship, and inspiration, is essential to the Prophets’ preaching. For example, the Qur’an proclaims: Respond to God and the Messenger, when the Messenger calls you to that which will give you life [which will revive you intellectually and spiritually] (8:24). Muhammad Asad, a Jewish convert to Islam, likens Islam to a perfect work of architecture: All its parts are harmoniously conceived to complement and support each other, nothing lacking, with the result of an absolute balance and solid composure. Therefore, it gives almost as much importance to our physical life as it does to our spiritual life. Islam regards each person as the representative of its kind and as having the same value as all humanity. This is why God condemned Cain, for his unjust murder of his brother Abel introduced murder into history. As a result, he is held indirectly responsible for all killings until the end of time. As this sin is considered so grave, the Qur’an declares that one who kills someone unjustly is just like one who kills all of humanity, and that one who revives someone either spiritually or physically is just like one who restores all of humanity to life either spiritually or physically (5:32). Clearly, a religion that attaches to such importance to the life of each person will never preach killing for its own sake or glorify it. Islam also does not approve of forced conversions, but rather seeks to remove whatever prevents us from making a free choice of what we will believe by establishing an environment in which all beliefs can be presented freely. Once this is guaranteed, Islam asks us to use our God-given free will to choose and reminds us that we will be held responsible for it, as well as for whatever we did in this world, in the Hereafter: There is no compulsion in religion, as right and guidance have been distinguished from wrong and deviation (2:256).
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Islam & Humanity 
