The victorious team who glorifies the Creator of the universe, as all the assets of the universe do, and the defeated team who glorifies other than the Creator; so man must choose his team well.
There is no deity but the Creator:
My children were amazed at my visit with their father to the World Cup in Doha, knowing that we do not have football inclinations. Our visit to the World Cup happened concurrently with the distribution of my new book in Doha. The title of the book is: The Greatest World Cup – Your status is where you place yourself.
I told my children:
The topic of my new book is a comparison between a footballplayer’s mission in the World Cup and man’s mission on planet Earth. I liked to have a practical and realistic evaluation.
Dr. Muhammad Abdullah Daraz says in his Book “the Religion”:
“The religious instinct is common to all human races, even the most barbaric ones. The interest in the divine meaning and the supernatural (taking an idol), is one of the universal tendencies of humanity.”
The words of Dr. Al-Daraz were evident in the features of the faces of the World Cup visitors and their behavior as they rushed to reach the stadiums to support and glorify the players of their teams.
The cheers resounding everywhere, similar to the pilgrimage.
It was as if everyone, instead of cheering: At your service, O God, at your service, they cheered on the name of the team and the team players.
Everyone’s fear and panic happen due to losing a football game, while everyone forgets or ignores the fact that the real loss is the existence of a paradise as wide as the heavens and the earth, while there is no place for man in it.
That is because loss tastes bitter, and some people, if they experience a worldly loss, they suffer from grief that almost destroys their lives, and it may actually take their lives.
But the real loss is not the loss in this life, and it is not the loss of money, position, job, trade or game. The real loss is the loss of eternal life, and the bliss of this world is not a measure of winning or losing. How many winners in this world will be losers on the Day of Resurrection?!
God said:
Worship then whatever ˹gods˺ you want instead of Him.” Say, “The ˹true˺ losers are those who will lose themselves and their families on Judgment Day. That is indeed the clearest loss.” Al-Zumar: 15].
I heard an interview with an Argentinian woman in which she says that the World Cup is her life. Over the course of four years, she accumulates her entire monthly salary in preparation for the next World Cup season.
This is called worship and religiosity.
Football star fans call the Argentine player Lionel Messi “Dios”, which means “God” in Spanish, but the Pope of the Vatican had another opinion.
In an interview with the Spanish TV channel La Sexta, Pope Francis praised the player from his country, Argentina, but said that he should not be described as God.
The Argentine government has decided to issue a postage stamp with the image of Messi, and if the next stage aims to make a statue of him, the result will be a new religion that calls for the worship of Lionel Messi. Similar happened in ancient civilisations when they glorified people until they eventually worshipped the statues of those people. Same goes for what happened with the people of God’s Prophet Noah, peace be upon him.
The Church of Maradona, for example, is a church of a sarcastic religious nature. It was consecrated in the city of Rosario, Argentina, after the Argentine soccer player Diego Maradona, who is considered to be an image of God on earth or God Himself.
It was founded by Maradona fans on October 30, 1998, which is the player’s birthday. Therefore, thousands of church members celebrate “Maradona Christmas” or Maradona’s birthday every year in his church in Rosario, just as Christians celebrate Christ’s birthday in the Church of the Nativity in Jerusalem.
It has been categorically proven that people can not live without sanctifying a specific symbol. It has also been proven that Islam is unlike any other religion, neither in terms of worldly life and its view of the group and the individual, nor in terms of the afterlife. There is no progress or materialistic civilization can fill the void of religiosity, which was and still an innate need for all.
Islam says there is no deity worthy of worship except the Creator, Whose attributes are beyond the attributes of human beings. The Creator Who begets not, nor was He begotten. He does not incarnate in a human or an animal form. This faith frees Human beings from any other worship. The doctrine of the incarnation is the basis of paganism, because when people believe in the embodiment of the Creator in any of His creatures, so, anything can be worshipped.
The Ever-Lasting:
Scholar Said Al-Naurasi said:
Repeating “Oh, God The Ever-lasting, you are The Everlasting” strips the heart of anything other than the Creator, the Almighty, so, he performs what resembles a surgical operation in it, and cuts it off from everything other than Him, Glory be to Him. Clarifying this meaning according to the opinion of Dr. Tariq Ramadan:
“The human being, with what the Creator deposited in him, is associated with most of the assets of the universe by various bonds and ties. In that unifying essence of unlimited readiness for love, what makes him have a deep love towards assets in general, so he loves the great world as he loves his house. Whereas the assets – towards which man directs his love – do not last, rather they soon disappear”.
“That is why man always tastes the torment of separation. That endless love becomes a source of endless moral torment for neglecting his right to be connected to his Creator. The pain he suffers stems from his negligence, as the readiness of love was entrusted to him only to direct him to the One Who has absolute immortal beauty. While the man did not make good use of his love, directing it to transient mortal beings, which caused him the pain of separation”.
When a person says: “Oh God, The Ever-lasting, you are The Ever-lasting,” he declares complete innocence of the negligence of his Creator, severing relations with those mortal beloveds, and completely abandoning them before they abandon him. Then pay attention to the Beloved Who remains, Who is the Creator, Glory be to Him alone”.
and the belief that nothingness came with everything is rational!!
Knowing the Creator:
Jeffrey Lang, an American mathematics professor who left atheism and converted to Islam, said in his book “The Struggle for Faith”:
“I realized that no one knows loneliness like an atheist. When an ordinary person feels lonely, he can pray with the depths of his soul to someone he knows and the supplicant will be able to get the response. The atheist cannot allow himself to exercise this pleasure, because he must crush that craving and remind himself that it is futile.
Engineer Loai Sabri says:
Faith in the Creator should not be based only on knowledge of His attributes. Rather, it must extend to the glorification of divine attributes.
A person’s faith is measured by the extent of the perception that this person puts in his heart about the Creator, which results in feelings, emotions, reactions, and actions to varying degrees according to the extent of the Creator’s glorification in the soul.
The more man increases his fear of the Creator, the more he maintains his deeds closer to the Creator’s satisfaction, and far from His anger.
The conception of the Divine Self must not depart from the scope of exalting the Creator from what is not befitting His majesty. Also, it must not depart from the circle of good thinking of the Creator.
There are some dogmas adopted by the followers of the man-made religions concerning the incarnation of the Creator in the body of Christ, or about the crucifixion and death of Christ to forgive human sins, along with something similar in the Hindu faith, justifying that as mercy and favor from the Creator over His creation, considering the Creator’s waiver of some of His rights or attributes as a mercy and love for His creation. But in reality, this is an insulting justification that the followers of these religions accept for their Creator, while they do not accept it for themselves or even for their beloved.
The origin of a sound belief about the Creator must be based on glorification and impartiality, without attaching perceptions about the Creator that a person hates to attribute to himself.
With sight or insight?
The religion of the Creator:
The religion of the Creator is a system of life that regulates man’s relationship with his Creator and then his relationship with those around him.
Religion is the source, measure, and motive of morality.
When people set human values (man-made religion), those values are not only subjected to right, wrong, and modification, but also do not provide the motive that makes people adhere to them.
They are merely slogans that make human luxury, pleasure and comfort the value itself. These slogans do not give man a value or purpose that goes beyond his pleasure in this wordly life.
Some people may be fooled by these slogans (man-made religion) for some time. But when applying these slogans, a person will place his comfort, luxury and enjoyment above any slogan.
Contrary to the religion of the Creator, which gives man a value and purpose in this life that does not stop at the limits of his pleasure and lust.
The religion of the Creator gives man a value and purpose that transcends himself. The ultimate human goal is the satisfaction of the Creator, love, piety, and fear of Him, and a paradise after death in which he lives with the true heroes just like the companions and prophets who spent and sacrificed their lives for higher values than mere luxury and fleeting pleasures.
We may find people deceived by the slogan (embrace humanity and then embrace whatever religion you want).
I remember during my tours around the world, I saw that some humanitarian associations, who deal with eliminating child labour, are the same ones that use children in cleaning work within the association.
Writer Mustafa Mahmoud says:
Religion is the deep feeling in moments of loneliness and abandonment, telling us that we are not alone, but with an unseen company, a hidden being, and a hidden hand that can pull us out, a higher entity that would inspire us, a strong pillar that will protect us, and a mighty one that would correct us.
A young man’s questions caught my attention, in which he says:
Can you set a law that no one violates?
It is the impossible dream of all rulers and legislators throughout history. Do you know why no one achieved this dream?
Despite all the rules, laws, and restrictions that rulers put in place to govern their societies, randomness remains an integral part of the life of human societies.
Every law continues to derive its application force from the force of its drafter and implementer. There are exceptions for every rule, and for every law there are violators.
But what about the laws of the universe?
A universe that some claim is a random, serendipitous universe without a dominant Creator, can its mathematical and logical laws and rules (which no one made!) be violated?
Can it be broken and does it have exceptions?
Could it someday become the part that’s greater of the whole? Or to find someday that 1 + 1 = 3?
Mathematics and physicist Eugen Wigner says:
“The unbelievable effectiveness of mathematics in the natural sciences is something bordering on the realm of mystery, and there is no rational explanation for that. The miracle of adapting the language of mathematics to the formula of the laws of physics is a great gift that we do not understand and do not deserve.”
Richard Thomas says:
“These things—the mathematician—cannot be accidents, they must be from a higher cause, and that reason is the supposition that this great mathematical theory describes nature.”
The new humanistic religion claims that all man-made human values are good.
But in fact, the one who annihilated peoples, set fires, threw bombs, and polluted nature, water and air, is the person who embraces the new religion of humanity.
The Russian writer Leo Tolstoy says in his book The Wisdom of the Prophet Muhammad:
“The law of the Qur’an will prevail in the world because of its compatibility with reason and its harmony with wisdom. I understood and realized that what humanity needs is a heavenly law that establishes truth and destroys falsehood. The Islamic law will pervade the whole world because of its harmony with the mind, and its mixing with wisdom and justice.”
From the teachings of Islam are:
- Worshiping the Creator of the universe and resorting to Him directly.
- He is the One and Only Creator Who does not come to earth in any animal or a human form. He Who created Adam without a father or a mother, and Who created Jesus Christ without a father. He is the One Who creates but does not give birth.
- Human beings must abandon the worship of idols and the doctrine of the Trinity, and refrain from resorting to mediators such as priests, saints, and refrain from resorting to graves and to the Prophet of God Muhammad or any of his family members, or to any of God’s prophets asking for help.
- Humans must believe in all the prophets of God from Adam to Muhammad, including Jesus Christ and Moses, may peace be upon them all.
- Humans must believe in the Day of Judgment, where human beings will be held accountable for their actions.
There is no God but the Creator:
Scholar Said Al-Naurasi said:
The human soul yearns for unlimited needs, and is targeted by countless enemies. In this great word, the soul finds a rich source of inspiration, which opens for it the doors of vast treasuries of mercy, from which it receives what reassures all its needs, and guarantees all demands. You will also find in it a firm foundation and a satisfactory support that repels all evil from it, and diverts it from all damages.
These words can show man the power of his Lord, the truth; can guide him to his Almighty Owner, Creator and his Idol. With this clear vision and recognition of the One and Only Creator, this word saves the human heart from the darkness of loneliness and delusions, and saves his soul from the pain of sadness and distress, but rather guarantees him eternal joy and lasting happiness.”