Page 16 - Basic Tenets of Islam

BASIC TENETS OF ISLAM

Your God is One God. There is no god but Him, the All-
Merciful, the Most Merciful. (Surat al-Baqara: 163)

Most people think that matter, the underlying substance
of the universe, has an absolute existence, and regard Allah
as but an abstract idea. (Allah is truly beyond what they
ascribe to Him) The truth is, however, only Allah truly exists,
and the rest is merely His creation.
The entire universe and everything in it was created by
Allah. Before the creation of the universe, nothing existed, in
the material sense. It was all non-existence. At the moment
when the universe was created, the Al-Awwal (The First)
and Al-Akhir (The Last) Allah, Who is beyond all, created

time, matter and space. In the Qur'an, Allah relates this
matter as follows:
The Originator of the heavens and earth. When He
decides on something, He just says to it, "Be!" and it is.
(Surat al-Baqara: 117)
Allah holds everything under His control also after
creating the matter. Everything happening, even at this very
instant, is ordained by Allah. Every raindrop, each child that
opens its eyes to the world, the process of photosynthesis in
plants, all the bodily functions of living things, the courses of

stars in far remote galaxies, each seed sprouting forth, or any
other event that we might think of, or fail to think of, are all
ordained by Allah. It is Allah Who creates all things. Every
event occurs within His command:
It is Allah Who created the seven heavens and of the
earth the same number, the Command descending

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