“If Islam is the most perfect understanding of religion why are Muslims the most under-developed communities?”

This is a question I am frequently asked.

I also receive the following question from certain allegedly enlightened groups:

“The understandings of Unity-Oneness and humanism are present in a perfect form in Taoism, Buddhism and even in Kabbalah - Jewish mysticism. Muslimism, however, is a crude, formalistic, tyrannical and combatant understanding, which is totally devoid of love. All this is quite observable in our world today. How can you still exalt this disputant teaching?”

First of all, you can’t exalt something that is already exalted. Let us first recognize this…

Islam is the only and most perfect embodiment, the quintessential understanding of “religion”, there is no other religion on earth that can compare with or supersede it! And Muhammad (saw), who brought this understanding to us, is the most magnificent human being and the most sublime Spirit of Infinity to have came to this world. He is the servant, the Rasul, and the final Nabi of Allah, unmatched and exceptional in every sense.

As for why this is so…

For centuries and centuries people worshipped deities. They worshipped idols and totems erected in the name of this or that deity. They worshipped sculptures that apparently symbolized this or that god. They exalted and prayed to a being somewhere beyond and outside them, in space or on earth. Believing that all their attainments and accomplishments come from these gods, they devoted themselves to these assumed external objects.

So here’s the problem.

Could there be a “god” (“ilah” in Arabic) who could really be dwelling on earth or somewhere in space, remotely controlling the world and those who live on it?

(Some claim this ‘heavenly god’ concept came from extraterrestrial societies from outer space (i.e. the sun gods) which has been adapted to our present-day as the idea of a God in space with courier angels who work for him!)

Intellectual minds that question this from a universal point of view realize the irrationality and invalidity of such alleged deities and the contradiction of this notion with the universal reality.

An early representation of an opposition to this understanding was Taoism, which emerged in China during the 4^thto 3^rdcenturies BC. According to Taoism, existence comprises an indivisible wholeness despite the seeming multiplicity according to the human eye, and consciousness is the eye of this wholeness observing itself! Consciousness can recognize its essence to the extent that it perceives its true nature, and that recognition will eventually end up in “nothingness”! The end result is the experience of “nothingness” within “nothingness”!

Buddha, on the other hand, proposed that we reach “Nirvana” as a final destination. To those who considered themselves as merely this body and believed they would merely deteriorate after death, he explained that they are in fact conscious beings, that their lives will continue even after their bodies turn to soil, that they are the “ones” created from the “One” and that they are not comprised only of a physical body but also of a sacred spirit, so if they could purify their spirit, they could attain Nirvana and live within that Spirit of Oneness.