I think the sublimest conception of life is the one in which we regard ourselves as the agents of a Perfect Being Who guides and controls our Destiny. It is absurd to think that we can chalk out and control the destiny of Hummanity when even the greatest of us cannot control the destiny of Hummanity when even the greatest of us control our own impluses and do not know when we start our life and how we are going to end it. If, instead of having this sense of Providence instilled into our minds, we had been left at the hands of our own impluses, which are nothing but forces of arrogance and impetuosity, we would long have been extinct from the world as social beings, attempting the perfection of ourselves--individually and collectively.

As for the nature of his Providence whom we should apply to in spirit for the guidance of our individual and collective destinies, there is a divergence of opinion. I personallly am inclined to think that the person of the Providence should be one and all-comprehensive--admitting of no division and decentralization. People in this county talk so glibly about the different things in Islam, but they seldom take the trouble of understanding the spiritual meaning of the Monotheism for which that religion stands.

People would be well advised to recognize the fact that all attempts to confuse the issue raised on this score by the Islamic Faith are inevitably leading to the disintegration of the socio-Spiritual life of Humanity.

Now, if the Will at the source is decidedly One, and possesses a perfect resourcefulness that comprehends all time and space, it is only reasonable to think that the procedure adopted for the guidance of Humanity must be the same all throughout and all over the world. If the moral and spiritual guidance of Humanity was effected in one nation and at one time through any incarnation of God, it must be the same in other nations and at other times. But if it had been through Prophethood in one nation and at one time, the same should be the case in all other nations and at all other times. Its is this fact, more than all others, that made me change my Faith from Christianity to Islam. For, if I am to believe in the theory of Incarnation as presented by Christianity, otherwise a sublime religion, I find myself morally obliged to believe in all those God-incarnations which are upheld by different pagan nations. Indeed the Quran brought a great relief to my spiritual mind by stating that the method of God's revealing His Will to Humanity as experience and witnessed by the numberous and successive generations of Hebrew Prophets has been the one and only method known to Humanity, and that the method of Incarnation was only the figment of the pagan mind, which has no foundation in fact. The Quran clearly lays it down that all the religious heroes worshipped as Incarnations of the Divinity were nothing but human beings inspired by the Holy Spirit of God, and were deified only after their death.

The Islamic conception of Prophet
I quite realize, however, the difficulty of a Christian in appreciating the effectiveness of Prophethood in the matter of the spiritual Redemption of Humanity, for his conception of Prophethood is the effect of the stories he reads of the Prophets in the Old Testament which we posses. If the Prophets were what these stories would have us believe, it is indeed only possible that instead of leading us to Salvation they will lead us to predition, unless some more effective methods were adopted for our Redemption.

The Islamic conception of Prophethood, which, in my opinion, is the original conception of it in the Hebrew Tradition as well, is very different. The Prophet, receiving as he does the direct touch of the perfect attributes of God, is, according to Islam, the moving embodiment of all positive virtues, whoes very company transforms the most sinful into a virtous man. In fact, it is absurd to think that the Fountain-head of all virtue and purity will speak to a person who is more impure than an average man of the world, as the Prophets are depicted to be in our Old Testament Records, or that he should be leading a whole nation into moral conduct and spiritual elevations. The Quran, therefore, gives me a great reassurance when it asserts that all those stories in the Old Testament that hold up the Prophets in a bad light are spurious.

Given the Islamic standard of spirituality in the Prophet, humanity needs only Prophets, and nothing more or less than Prophets, for its Redemption, but indeed confusing. If God would take material shape for our Redemption, what would happen to His responsibilities as the Controller of the Universe and its Destinies? Christianity tries to solve this difficulty by assuming another person in the Divinity called the Father. But this only confuses the issue of the control. It is only the power at that should be called God, and not the agencies that are subordinate to it. If, however, we ascribe Divinity both to the Invisible Spiritual Power that is at the source of Creation and to the supposed Incarnation whom people find living among them, we create a diarchy in the Universe which is incompatible with any peaceful and progressive administration of it. Moreover, the pole of God as an Incarnation has always been found to be on of Helplessness, whereas He is found to be better able to manage the situation in His invibility. To me, this conception of God Incarnation seems to be the result of spiritual poverty in a nation that prevents it from perceiving spiritual things spiritually.

Madame Khalida Buchanan-Hamilton
(President of the Muslim Society in Great Britain)