Islam's Response to Contemporary Issues — Page 267
Individual Peace 267 birds, all appear in a way superior to man. Man is taught to worship them as gods by virtue of their superiority of some sort over man. In short, man is placed at the lowest order of things and is made subservient to everything, which was only created to serve him. In the Islamic understanding of the scheme of things man is the master, in a manner of speaking, of all creation. Man, therefore, stands under the greatest obligation to the Creator because it is he who has benefited most from the creation of God, Who has constrained everything to the service of man. In other words, man is emancipated from all bondage by accepting just one bondage—that of his Creator. Man is the personification and symbol of the conscience and the consciousness of the entire universe. When he bows and prostrates before his Creator, in him bows and prostrates the whole cosmos. When he returns to the Creator the entire universe returns, in a manner of speaking, to the Creator. This ultimate realisation and the shaping of one’s life to this goal is, according to Islam, the ultimate peace. A phrase in the Holy Quran, oft-repeated by Muslims, encompasses this philosophy in a few words: We belong to Allah and to Him must we ultimately return. 17 Few understand that here the meaning of return is not physical but spiritual. It is not just a statement of fact but a reminder of the purpose of man’s creation. Just as a salmon cannot find peace until it returns to the place of its origin—its spawning ground, the human heart cannot find peace without spiritually returning to its source of creation. This is the meaning of the verse: