You mentioned the other day that apart from Rasul-ul-Ikram, there were other law-bearing prophets. Now, I want to know if the basic laws brought by these prophets are vastly different, because as we see religion today, there are many differences in the practices between the different religions, and I was just wondering if these practices originate from the laws brought by the prophets, or are they all completely man-made?
Well, the Holy Qur’an throws some light on this subject by telling us that the fundamentals of all laws were the same. And no laws, whether they were preliminary or appeared very early in the history of mankind or later, that is not relevant. No law whatsoever, whenever it was revealed, approved idolatry for instance, each law that was revealed to man spoke of the unity of God, unsplit unity of God. So every law enjoined upon the followers to say, worship Allah, and to spend in the way of Allah, and to spend on mankind and be kind to them, you know, these sort of things. This has been mentioned in Surah This is the verse which I had in mind. And they were not commanded except to worship Allah, and to be sincere to Him in religion and to benefit from it, and to perform prayer, and to give zakah, and that is the right religion.
Each prophet which came before brought this fundamental teaching, and people differed later on, it says, after this fundamental teaching had been revealed to them. They did not differ before this very clear manifest law had been revealed unto them. So your question is answered in this verse, that fundamentally all law that was revealed to mankind was the same, yet having known it very clearly, and when everything was made manifestly clear, they differed with each other, that is to say, they were distorted in their own mind, so they distorted the teaching which was given to them. You have a son? Why is there such a great difference in some of the basic practices of the different religions, like the way people say prayers or praise God or things like this? No, this is not basic.
The way you say a prayer is not basic. Prayer itself is basic. This is basic. The attitude of a worshipper. He does not mix up his worship of Allah with anything else. He is completely straight in his direction, in his bearing, and is submissive only to Allah. That is the description of this verse. If that remains, then the differences of posture do not mean anything. That is not considered by the Holy Qur’an to be fundamental. Whether you say a prayer by sitting or by standing or do ablution or not, I mean, all these minor details are not fundamental in the Qur’an, according to the Holy Qur’an.
