Badges mark quoted or attributed material (Qur'an, hadith, another author, an opposing view). Unbadged passages are Maulana Wahiduddin Khan's own words.
CONCLUSION
Understanding the creation plan of God and living a principled life is the lifestyle which is called Islam.
“I slam” is an Arabic word which means “submission, surrender and obedience to God.” In religious terms, this means that the individual who embraces Islam as his religion must put the Almighty first and foremost in his life, bowing to His wishes in all matters great and small.
Everything in the universe—the sun, the moon, the stars—have all completely subjugated themselves to His will; they cannot make the slightest deviation from the path He has ordained for them. Similarly, all other elements in nature function in obedience to the laws of nature laid down for them by their Maker. The universe, therefore, literally follows the religion of Islam in that it has surrendered to God, the Lord of the Universe.
But there is a difference between the status of man and that of the physical world. The physical world has been given no option but to submit to God, whereas man has been given free will, so that he may opt for either good or bad ways. To this end he has been given a thinking faculty, and a conscience with which to make moral judgements for himself. He has the ability to accept and reject in order to follow certain principles in life. He is not bound by fixed laws like all other created beings. He has been given freedom of thought, option and action.
It is through this liberty of choice that man is being tested. But after being given a thinking faculty, a conscience and an ability to judge between good and bad ways, he was not just left to his own resources. God did not just leave man in a world where there was no way to find the truth. Divine provision for him went much further than that. To see how God gave His guidelines to mankind, we have to go right back to the beginning of creation. He took Adam, the first man—whom He had made not just an ordinary mortal but also a prophet—and taught him everything that He wanted from man, so that human beings would not be left without proper direction or guidance. From time to time thereafter, He sent large numbers of prophets to the world—the last of these being the Prophet Muhammad—so that human beings, who tended to stray, could be recalled to the path of virtue.
What is the path of virtue? It is the path outlined as per the Creation Plan of God. The Creator of the world has created this world, as one half of a pair—the present limited world, in which we pass our lives after birth, is the first half; and the next eternal world where we live after death is the other half. The Creator of man has thus created him as an eternal creature and has divided his life into two stages — the pre-death period or the limited life in this world and the post death period or the eternal life after death. The limited period before death is meant to be a test for man, while the eternal period after his death will be the period for his reward or punishment, based on his performance in the test in this life. This is the scheme of existence for this world as devised by its Creator. The real aim of creation is to select those who are fit to inhabit the world of Paradise. Evil people will not be selected to inhabit Paradise.
The essence of God’s Creation Plan is to test man in the pre-death period. If man proves himself to be eligible for entry in Paradise, God Almighty will select him to live in Paradise eternally. God has given each person complete freedom–not simply as a gift, but as a test. The result of this test would enable God to know who misused his freedom and who put his freedom to the best use. This was, and still is, the divine scheme of things for man. In the pre-death period of life, an individual has the chance to qualify himself for Paradise, so that in the post-death period of life he may be settled as a deserving candidate in this perfect world.
When one understands the creation plan of God, he realizes that the purpose of creating a human being in this world is to give him the opportunity to be the most superior of the creatures so that he may be credited with being one of those special beings who bound himself to living a principled life, in spite of having no compulsion to do so. It is this very lifestyle which is called Islam.