“Islam” is an Arabic word which means “submission, surrender and obedience to God.” In religious terms, this means that the individual who embraces Islam as his religion must put the Almighty first and foremost in his life, bowing to His wishes in all matters great and small.

Everything in the universe—the sun, the moon, the stars— have all completely subjugated themselves to His will; they cannot make the slightest deviation from the path He has ordained for them. Similarly, all other elements in nature function in obedience to the laws of nature laid down for them by their Maker. The universe, therefore, literally follows the religion of Islam in that it has surrendered to God, the Lord of the Universe.

But there is a difference between the status of man and that of the physical world. The physical world has been given no option but to submit to God, whereas man has been given free will, so that he may opt for either good or bad ways. To this end he has been given a thinking faculty, and a conscience with which to make moral judgements for himself. He has the ability to accept and reject in order to follow certain principles in life. He is not bound by fixed laws like all other created beings. He has been given freedom of thought, option and action.

It is through this liberty of choice that man is being tested. But after being given a thinking faculty, a conscience and an ability to judge between good and bad ways, he was not just left to his own resources. God did not just leave man in a world where there was no way to find the truth. Divine provision for him went much further than that. To see how God gave His guidelines to mankind, we have to go right back to the beginning of creation. He took Adam, the first man— whom He had made not just an ordinary mortal but also a prophet— and taught him everything that He wanted from man, so that human beings would not be left without proper direction or guidance. From time to time thereafter, He sent large numbers of prophets to the world— the last of these being the Prophet Muhammad— so that human beings, who tended to stray, could be recalled to the path of virtue. It is said that about one lakh twenty thousand prophets came to the world during this period.

Now the question arises as to why there was the need for such great numbers of prophets. It was because after each prophet left the world, people gradually began forgetting his teachings, till a time came when a major part of the teachings of the prophets was lost. Now in the age of the press, these teachings have been extensively published in the form of books, so that there is no fear of their being lost to succeeding generations.