Nature & Islam

Complete Dependence

In our being (existence) and our life, we are completely dependent on Allah, our Creator. This existence and life is given to us by Him; We are not self-existent. We cannot survive without His will. We are also dependent on material conditions. We cannot exist without water, air, food, light, a certain temperature, and so on.


We cannot have a comfortable life without the help of other members of the society. No one can produce for himself whatever he needs of clothes, shelter (house), furniture, etc. With the progress and development of human societies these needs increase. Thus, we are dependent on our Creator and his blessings in the material universe and in the social universe.

Our knowledge and understanding, we are not needless. With his God-given intellect every human being is able to understand many facts such as the truth of the religion and the.; existence of Allah and to acquire some easy and simple:) information about the nature and the environment around him. I With his God-given conscience, every human being understands) the general rules of morality, e.g., justice is good and oppression is bad. This theoretical and practical knowledge is common between men in primitive societies and men in advanced ones.


But what; makes us different from those ancient (earliest) people is what we have received from the prophets, especially the Noble Prophet of Islam, the seal of the prophets, whose message is the last and the;; most perfect message of our life and what we have received from the past generations. These two sources, religion and inherited knowledge, are very important. They serve as the point of departure for every field in the sciences, arts, literature, technology and positive laws (contracts) which have become very complicated, developed and advanced. For example, today when a chemist starts to work on a project, he uses the results of previous discoveries and inquiries.

Many of those achievements have become trivial. Perhaps university students today know more than chemists in the 18th or even 19th century. Or in Islamic sciences, today we use many works on different subjects made by great scholars in the past centuries. Without them we would have to start from the beginning. But we are still on the way. What we know is much less than what we do not know.


Thus, we are completely needful and dependent in our existence, our life and our knowledge. We should not be proud of ourselves. We should not think we are needless or that our knowledge and understanding are perfect.