Religion, morality and material success

A question which is raised these days perhaps more than ever before by the young, those who have not had proper guidance and those who do not follow religion is that since worldly education leads to good morals what is the point of abiding by religion? It is said that morals can be instilled without any religious education, in fact it is maintained that people who do not follow religion have better morals than religious people. In particular this allegation is levelled at followers of Islam. Adherents of other faith have distanced themselves from their beliefs but even non-practicing Muslims associate themselves to the faith they were born in, therefore in reality this allegation is aimed at Muslims.

Efforts are made to influence our youth against religion. A good aspect of Western education is that it emphasises research and exploration but this needs to be done methodically. Parents are not able to answer adolescents when they question them on these issues, either due to lack of time owing to societal or economic pressures or because they simply do not have the knowledge. Many a time rather than answer the adolescents parents suppress them. This leads the adolescents to assume that although Islam claims to be the true faith with all the resolutions to problems, it does not have the answers in practical terms and in keeping with the times.

Youngsters take all this in quietly but they have the freedom to do so, they distance themselves from religion. As a result in spite of Islam being a living faith we find people among Muslims who reject religion and existence of God. In light of this we all need to reflect as to how we should practice our faith and also inspire our youngsters to practice.

Most certainly Islam is a perfect religion and the Holy Qur'an is a complete Book and the blessed model of the Holy Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be on him), an embodiment of the Qur'an, is before us. It was his blessed model that generated a revolutionary change in his Companions (may Allah be pleased with them), they understood faith, they understood morality and they also progressed in the material sense. They kept all three aspects within their context.

Youngsters should try, in fact so should adults, to understand correct morals, material success and spirituality and then put them all in practice. When youngsters will understand this point it will open up avenues of success for them and they will realise how beautiful the teaching of Islam is and they will recognise the lies of Islam's detractors. Questions that are raised today are not something new; this has been going on in the past because people do not try to understand religion in its correct form. So-called religious scholars present fictitious, erroneous solutions to people and plunge the educated people in further confusion about religion. At times people themselves make incorrect inferences about religion.

God sent the Promised Messiah (on whom be peace) to address these problems and he imparted insight to us. Hazrat Musleh Maud (may Allah be pleased with him) delivered a Friday sermon on the correlation between morality, material gain and religion and the Islamic viewpoint on the matter and how the Holy Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be on him) demonstrated this through his practices.

It is difficult to separate religion, morality and man's material needs. A religious person cannot separate morality from religion and he also does not abandon the thought of having material needs. Indeed, this would stop the cycle of material progress. However, although correlated these matters are also distinguishable. People who do not follow religion maintain that man needs good morals and material success. However, a true Muslim will maintain that man is also in need of religion because it takes man to God.

Islam alone makes the correlation between spirituality, morality and material success. Howeve