[pnews-news] Islam is a Different Matter

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Religion is a Different Matter and Islam is a Very Different Matter

The following is an excerpt from the introduction of
Islam and the Destiny of Man by Gai Eaton; State University of New York 
Press, 1985

  Religion is a different matter.

Other subjects may lend themselves, in varying degree, to objective study, 
and in some cases personal commitment serves only to distort what should 
be a clear and balanced picture. Religion is a different matter because 
here objectivity only skims the surface, missing the essential. The keys 
to understanding lie within the observer's own being and experience, and 
without these keys no door will open. This is particularly true of Islam, 
a religion which treats the distinction between belief and unbelief as the 
most fundamental of all possible distinctions, comparable on the physical 
level to that between the sighted and the blind. Believing and 
understanding complement and support one another. We do not seek for an 
adequate description of a landscape from a blind man, even if he has made 
a scientific study of its topography and has analyzed the nature of its 
rocks and vegetation. In Islam every aspect of human life, every thought 
and every action, is shaped and evaluated in the light of the basic 
article of faith. Remove this linchpin and the whole structure falls 
apart.

For the unbeliever this article of faith is meaningless and, in 
consequence, nothing else in the life of the Muslim makes sense. Even for 
the faithful Christian the 'sublime' and the 'mundane' relate to different 
dimensions, and he is disturbed by any confusion between the two. Islam 
does not recognize this division. For the Muslim, his worship and his 
manner of dealing with his bodily functions, his search for holiness and 
his bartering in the market, his work and his play are elements in an 
indivisible whole which, like creation itself, admits of no fissures. A 
single key unlocks the single door opening on to the integrated and 
tight-knit world of the Muslim.

That key is the affirmation of the divine Unity, and of all that follows 
from this affirmation, down to its most remote echoes on the very 
periphery of existence, where existence touches on nothingness. Islam is 
the religion of all or nothing, faith in a Reality which allows nothing to 
have independent reality outside its orbit; for if there were such a 
thing, however distant, however hidden, it would impugn the perfection and 
the totality of that which alone is.

It follows that one cannot speak of Islam without adopting a specific 
point of view and making that point of view quite explicit.

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Islam is all or nothing. There is no doubt. There is the word of Allah 
through Gabriel to Muhammad. That is it. And Islam requires complete 
"submission" (the meaning of Islam) to Allah.

     H


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