five principles, as the principles of belief and action, are recognized by all nations of the earth, and these are the common principles on which all religions are based. In fact, these five fundamental principles of the holy religion of Islam are imprinted on human nature. Now, I take them separately as detailed in the Holy Qur-án.
Conception of God in Islam.
Of the three fundamental principles of belief, the first is a belief in God. The belief in a power higher than man, though not seen by him, can be traced back to remotest antiquity, to the earliest times to which history can take us: but different peoples indifferent ages and different countries have had different conceptions of the Divine Being. Islam, in the first place, preaches a God Who is above all tribal deities and national gods. The God of Islam is not the God of a particular nation, so that He should look after their needs only, but He is described in the opening words of the Holy Qur-án as being the "Lord of the worlds"; and thus, while widening the conception of the Divine Being, it also enlarges the circle of the brotherhood of man so as to include all nations of the earth, and so widens the outlook of human sympathy. The Unity of God is the noble theme on which the Holy Qur-án has laid great stress. There is absolute Unity in Divine nature; it admits of no participation or manifoldness. Unity is the keynote to the conception of the Divine Being in Islam. It denies all plurality of persons in Godhead and any participation of any being in the affairs of the world. His are the sublimest and most perfect attributes, but the attribute of mercy reigns over all. It is with the names Ar-Raḥmán and Ar-Raḥím that every chapter of the Holy Qur-án opens, and Beneficent and Merciful convey to the English reader of the Holy Qur-án only a very imperfect idea of the deep and all-encompassing love and mercy of God indicated by the original words. "And My mercy encompasses all things" says the Holy Qur-án (7:156). Hence the Messenger who preached this conception of the Divine Being is rightly called in the Holy Qur-án "a mercy to all the nations" (21:107). The great Apostle of the Unity of God could not conceive of a God who was not the Author of all that existed. Such detraction from His power and knowledge would have given a death-blow to the very loftiness and sublimity of the conception of the Divine Being. Thus while Islam, in common with other religions, takes the existence of God for its basis, it differs from others in claiming absolute Unity for the Divine Being, and in not placing any limitation upon His power and knowledge.
Unity.
The Unity of God is, as I have said, the one great theme of the Holy Qur-án. The laws of nature which we find working in the universe, man’s own nature, and the teachings of the prophets of yore, are again and again appealed to as giving clear indications of the Unity of the Maker. Consider the creation of the innumerable heavenly bodies: are they not, with their apparent diversities, all subject to one and the same law? Think over what you see in the earth itself, its organic and inorganic worlds, the plant and animal life, the solid earth, the seas and the rivers, the great mountains: is there not unity in all this diversity? Think over your own nature—how your very colours and tongues differ from each other; yet in spite of all these differences are you not but a single people? Look at the constant change which everything in the universe is undergoing, the making and unmaking, the creation and recreation of all things, the course of which does not stop for a single instant: is there not a uniform law discernible in this?
