Ideals And Realities Of Islam Analysis

Written by Syed Hossein Nasr in January 1965, this book of ‘Ideals and Realities of Islam’ comprises of six main chapters. In general, the gist of this book is to clear things up regarding Islam. During the particular time the book is wrote, many of the Westerners came out with critiques and their own point of view regarding Islam without deeply understanding the religion which then somehow affected the young Muslims to lose their spiritual balance and feel estranged from their own tradition. The author as well tried to answer in many cases, the charges made by Western works against Islam especially as it concerned such fundamental elements of the faith as the Al-Quran and the hadith. In the same time, the author presented the point of view
Islam considers man as he is in essential nature and God as he is in His absolute Reality. Besides, Islam as a religion based not on the personality of the founder but on Allah Himself and Prophet Muhammad is the channel through who man receive message from Allah. Without the aid of God, man cannot discover by himself the ‘Straight Path’ because of the nature imperfect. Thus, in order for men to trust God and leads man back to himself, the basis of religion is needed which are the qualities of intelligence, will and speech. The real nature of intelligence is ultimately is realizing that laa ilaa haill’ Allah, that is to come to know that in the end there is only one Absolute Reality. Nature of the will in the other hand means to be able to choose freely between two alternatives while speech is the central of Islam which is the daily prayers. In brief, in return for all the blessings that God has given, man must in turn remember his real nature and always keep the real goal of his journey. Compared to Christianity, man has sinned and needs miracle to save him ; like they are all born with sins and need baptism to clear themselves but in Islam, there is no original sin as if we are born with purity. In this case, though the starting point of Islam and Christian is different, still both believe in necessity of revelation to save man. There are claims by the Western that Islam is the religion of the sword. This is not true as actually Islam limits the war while Christianity left it outside its consideration. Obviously the total wars of this century have begun in the West where Christianity has been dominating religious