Islam As It Is
FOREWORD
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objects of human ambition are numberless, and can
arouse in the human breast all kinds of hopes, fears,
longings and agonies. The fulfillment of these ambi-
tions is obviously associated with happiness, and
their non-fulfillment with grief.
Religion directs human beings just as certainly
towards a goal, but it is along quite another path,
because the goal, itself, is so different. The kind of
life led by those directed in this way entirely
depends upon the nature of the religion they have
adopted. Their thinking, emotions, activities,
commitments, transactions all revolve around
whatever has been accepted by them as their
religion. Their lives are ruled by it, so that just as
they make all-out efforts in their everyday lives to
attain material goals, so do they spare no effort to
attain the non-material goals placed before them by
religion. Even if they cannot draw near to these
goals, they take care to do nothing, which would
take them further away from them.
The non-material goal of religion demands the same
will, effort, concentration and dedication as the
material goal. But the quality of such application in
