What is Islam to Me?

by Faruq ‘Abd al Haqq

  Islam is to me what Christianity is to most Christians, and Judaism to Jews, and Buddhism to Buddhists. Each of these religions offers a way to fulfill our primordial and universal instinct to seek a transcendent source of truth, love, and justice, and thereby to find meaning in our own lives and in all of creation.

  Islam, like every other world religion, provides its followers with a means to find one’s true identity, which is the person one was created to be, as well as the incentive and strength to become therefore what one already is. 

    Islam, as an external path to the essence of a higher reality, provides guidance in detaching oneself from addiction to the physical world so that one can gain awareness of what the Buddhists call nirvana, but others call “nothing” in the sense of “no thing” or the “transcendent”. 

    This brings awareness of the sacred nature of every person and of the entire universe, so that one’s only wish is to join in the solidarity of interfaith harmony and love to bring peace, prosperity, and freedom for everyone through compassionate justice. 

    Islam for me confirms my understanding that the ultimate is beyond being, but is manifested at the level of being found in the attributes of the divine.  These are personified in Christianity as the trinity of power, mercy, and knowledge, and are known in Islam at a still lower level of manifestation as the human person and most wonderfully as Jesus Christ.