What Does Islam Mean?
To understand Islam and to understand your Muslim peers, it’s helpful to know what the word Islam means. It means “submission” or “surrender,” and Muslims generally understand this to mean that individual people and communities will fully submit to God, which is very different from submitting to one’s own personal will. From this, one also hopes to spread an Islamic order and create a socially just society.
Are Muslims The Only Ones Who Are Considered Submitters?
No. Submission to God in the Quran is far more universal than to just be confined to Muslims. Abraham and Jesus, for example, are also considered submitters in the Quran because they too fully submit to God. The second verse in the Quran is very helpful in understanding what submission means. “Praise be to God, Lord of the worlds.” Although there are many interpretations of this verse, Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī explains that the “worlds” refer to all existent things. There is infinite space beyond us and all possibilities can be actualized by God, which includes worlds and universes we know absolutely nothing about. Allah, therefore, is Lord of everything imaginable and not imaginable, he can create all things and all outcomes. Submitters put their trust, hearts, and souls into God, knowing they are cared for in ways imaginable and unimaginable. We can see people across various religions who have such spirits, and according to Islam, this is to be expected and this is okay.
The Universal Message:
The Quran 16:36 says, “We indeed sent a messenger unto every community, ‘Worship God, and shun false deities!’” The beauty of this is that we can see that God has sent messengers to every community. This explains why we can find ancient and thriving religions on every continent, even during times before man could simply hop on a boat or a plane to spread the message to the world. God was able to spread the message himself, in his own way, with special messengers for each community. This has the profound meaning that not only Islam, but other religions are valid and accepted. 45:28 (along with many other passages) solidifies this theme by saying that “Every community is called to its Book”.
How Has This Affected Muslim Views of Others?
Muslims were the first to develop a science of religions. They studied and wrote in scholarly ways about other religions, which seems much easier to do when you do not feel overtly threatened by them. Under these assumptions, very famous Muslims many centuries ago including Ibn Arabi and Jalal al-Din al-Rumi wrote about the inner unity of religions, which is a concept we don’t hear much about, especially in modern times. Typically from skeptics we hear that, “There are so many religions out there that all of them must be wrong.” Or we hear from believers of a particular faith that, “Every other religion is wrong, but mine is right.” The concept that different religions are valid is extremely refreshing to hear. God holds each group accountable to their own “Book”, and the inner unity of each religion binds us all together.
Real Life Example:
About 100 years after Muhammad’s death, the expansion of Islam had spread from North Africa to South Asia, which is truly a massive area of land. Even though many people were motivated by religious fervor and economic prosperity, much of the conquered governments and cultures were kept intact. Muslim rule was oftentimes more tolerant than in the Byzantine and Persian empires and people were not forced to convert, though they oftentimes did choose to. The conquests did seek to spread Muslim rule, but again, not to force conversion. Conquered people had the choice to either convert to Islam if they chose to, to reject conversion but receive protection by paying a poll tax, or to fight it out. Though I’m not celebrating conquest here, for the times I will say that the lack of forced conversion and the different options for peace, as opposed to leaving no survivors, was a pretty decent route to take.
Ending Thoughts:
The Quran speaks at length about Origin and Return, which means all things come from God and return to Him. No matter your faith background, the message here seems to be that all of us can learn to see this unity between ourselves, God, and everything around us, all of us have a right to practice our own faith, and when it is done with love and submission, we can spread peace and harmony everywhere we go.
Sources:
Study Quran
Great Courses Lecture Series Islam – Lectures 1 & 5
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