Life of Ahmad — Page 348
THE ESSENCE OF ISLAM as 348 that the heavenly life of a person begins, and the hellish life of a man also has its root in the impure and blind life of this world. Thus every right-minded man can see from the verse quoted above that a man can be truly Muslim only when his whole self with all its faculties, both physical and spiritual, becomes solely for God and is dedicated to His service, when he returns to the real Donor all that he has received from Him as a trust, and when he is not only a Muslim in belief, but also displays a full portrait of true Islam in the mirror of his practice. In other words, a man is a Muslim in the true sense of the word when his hands and feet, his mind and brain, his intelligence, his anger and pity, his spiritual and physical senses, his honour and his wealth, his comfort and his pleasure and all that is in him, both externally and internally, from the hair of his head to the nails of his toes, even his intentions, his thoughts and his passions follow the will of God, just as the limbs of man follow his will. In short, a man is a true Muslim when his devotion and sincerity attain to a degree that all that is his is no longer his but of God and all his faculties and all his organs are so employed in His service as if they were the limbs of God. Again, careful consideration of the verse quoted above leads to the conclusion that self-