01-22-2005, 09:31 PM
The capacity, not for change, but for expansion, undoubtedly constitutes a key factor in Islam's continuing dynamism. For other faiths busily reforming themselves to such a degree that they would be unrecognizable to the faithful of an earlier generation, have thereby lost confidence in those spiritual and ethical teachings which by their very nature challenge the world, and may not be challenged, which transform, and are not transformed.
Islam approached on its own terms and not through the distorting images of the lives of lapsed or disorientated Muslim or of the intense and hostile propaganda, will always be a potent summons to the free, rational and natural good state of man regardless of habitat.
As most converts to Islam will explain, the reason for their conversion is not usually pinpointed to one set reason, but several, with each individuals journey being unique. Islam has appealed to many because of its simple and intellectually satisfying creed-time.
In Islam there is no rite of initiation, no sacrament of belief. It is a faith of the individual, which transforms societies. And it is a faith without intermediaries, without the spiritual brokerage of a priestly class or monopolized by a formal hierarchy of clergymen and Rabbis, as in Christianity and Judaism.
Islam has never been the monopoly of one particular race or nation. The Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) had said to the tribesmen of Makkah, "I am the Messenger of Allah sent to you and to humanity at large." When we look at a map of the modern world we find that the great majority of Muslims are not Arabs, the racial community into which the Prophet (pbuh) happened to have been born. Eighty-five percent of his Ummah (community) are of other stock, including Turks, Africans, Indonesians, six million Europeans, and seven million Americans. And never has there ever been any consciousness of race in Islam, for the Qur’an teaches that all are one family, and that "the most noble in God's sight is he who fears Him most." Likewise, the Prophet affirmed, "there shall be no distinction between white and black."
In our own day, Islam has an appeal to many in the so-called <b>advanced</b> world who have become disenchanted with a mysterious and amorphous Judo-Christianity on the one hand and the insatiable demands of materialism on the other. Many also come to Islam to find <b>liberation from racism and oppression</b>.