What is the Islamic view of humanity and its relationship with religion?

What is the Islamic view of humanity and its relationship with religion?

Immediately after our birth, we have no conscious knowledge of ourselves or our surrounding environment. And yet we are not aliens, but rather beings who are fitted to survive here. For example, each person’s body is made up of the same elements that exist in nature. The building blocks making up Earth’s mineral, vegetable, and animal elements also constitute the sperm and the egg that, when joined, initiate our earthly life. And yet no one knows how this inanimate matter is transformed into living forms. We can say only that it is a direct gift of the Creator. Thus we are children of nature and aware of ourselves as creatures made by the Creator. Such awareness makes us aware of the second aspect of our being: our heavenly aspect.
Typically, children are born into a welcoming environment and know the embrace of parents and a wider family of relatives. Moreover, they are immediately provided with the most perfect nourishment: a mother’s milk. As they grow, children experience the world as a fully ordered environment of sight and sounds, heat and light and rainfall, and an infinite diversity of plants, fruits, and animals. All of these enable children to exercise and enlarge the senses, feelings, and intellect implanted within them by the Creator.
Likewise, their bodies function without their conscious effort or decision. Each person receives a minutely arranged and coordinated physical body as a gift from the Creator when He bestows life, so that his or her life may be supported and mature. Very little of what we have can be said to be our own doing. In fact, without the Creator’s help, we could not even manage our own bodies and therefore would die.
The One Who created the universe and subjected it to our stewardship is also the One Who created us. Given this, it makes perfect sense to consider what our responsibility is and, considering all that we have been given, to reflect on how we will answer for ourselves and for what has been placed in our care. Human responsibility before the Creator is voluntary, whereas all non-human creatures perform their duties without reflection but also without defect.
The apparent efficiency of modern technology obscures our relative impotence and vulnerability. We cannot create even a leaf or a fly, although we are free to tamper with God’s creation to the extent He wills. We have no dominion over our body’s operations, such as its hunger or thirst, or the world. We cannot determine our parents, our time and place of birth and death, or our physique or physical structure. We have to use the natural world to sustain and enlarge our lives. The One Who subjected nature to us also implanted within us the necessary intellectual faculties by which we can use nature. Our intellect is capable of obtaining some knowledge of nature’s orderly operations and then formulating laws based upon the observed uniformity and reliability. These laws are our imperfect, human intimations of the supreme laws created and used by the Supreme Being to create the universe.
The quality of being human comes from our immaterial and spiritual aspects, not from our natural and material aspects. The spirit and intellect do not originate in the physical body, for the spirit’s departure from a dead body reduces that body to something that will decompose into the soil. The body remains for a while, but all of its former senses are now absent. This means that the spirit uses the body, and that only life gives the body any meaning.
This body–spirit relation can be understood somewhat by the following analogy: A factory, no matter how complex, sophisticated, and excellent, has no more value than a pile of mechanical junk if there is no electricity to operate it. This does not mean that the spirit is everything in and of itself and that the body is junk; rather, the spirit needs matter or a corporeal form to express its powers and functions.
A fruit tree’s future life is encapsulated in its seed, and a tree is worth only as much as the value of the fruit it yields. In the same way, each person’s life-history is recorded and is of value only in proportion to the number of good deeds done and the level of virtue attained. Again, just as a tree increases by means of the seeds in its fruit, we prosper by our good deeds, the weight and consequence of which one day will be revealed to us.
We scatter our deeds in this world and harvest the results in the next world. Given this, the All-Majestic, All-Powerful, All-Wise Creator, Who brings us into existence from non-existence and Who brings us to life by breathing the “spirit” into our bodies fashioned from nature’s clay, will resurrect us after we decompose into the ground. For Him, doing so is as easy as bringing day after night, spring after winter, and making what appears to be dry wood at the end of autumn yield grapes the following summer.
In addition to all of this, we have three principal drives: desire, anger, and intellect. We desire or lust after the opposite sex, and love our children and worldly possessions. We direct our anger at what stands in our way, and by using it can defend ourselves. Our intellect enables us to make right decisions. The Creator does not restrain these drives, but rather requires us to seek perfection through self-discipline so that we do not misuse them. It is this struggle that determines our humanity, for without it we would have no purpose and would be the same as all other non-human creatures.
Only people mature spiritually and intellectually, for no other part of creation has the necessary ingredient for this process: free will. All of them live lives that are wholly determined within nature, for without free will they have no way to keep themselves within the correct limits. If we ignore these limits, we may usurp the property of others or seek illicit sexual relations, or use our intellect to deceive others.
This is why our powers must be held in check. Our intellect was given to us to be used with wisdom, and our desire and anger to be used lawfully and in moderation. Moreover, since we are social beings we must restrain ourselves, or else wrongdoing, injustice, exploitation, disorder, and revolution will occur.
But what is lawful and right, moderate and wise? Who decides the criteria, and how will they be accepted by people? Who am I? Where do I come from? What is my final destination? What does death demand from me? Who is my guide on this journey, beginning from clay and passing through the stages of a sperm-drop, a blood-clot, and a lump of flesh, another creation where the spirit is breathed into my body, and finally reaching the grave and through there to the Hereafter? In all of these questions lie the essential problem of human life.

What is truth and where does it come from?

It is rare for even two or three people to agree on the truth of a matter. If the rich and powerful define truth, their truth will exclude or disadvantage the poor and vice versa. Truth cannot be decided by majority vote, for truth is truth regardless of how many people vote for it. Truth is—and can only be determined by—the Truth, another name for God, Who created humanity and the universe. Our task is to discover that truth and abide by it.
Of course there are some universal truths, such as honesty, generosity, altruism, truthfulness, helpfulness, and compassion. These are essentially reflections of our true nature. Created by the One, Who is All-Wise, All-Generous, All-Compassionate, every person has an innate inclination toward these virtues. Therefore they are confirmed and established by Islam, which was revealed by God through His Prophets to show humanity how to resolve all of its psychological and social problems.
While constant change is observed in nature, there is an underlying aspect of permanence in everything. For instance, a seed germinates underground and grows into a tree without the laws of germination and growth changing. Likewise the essential purposes of all people, regardless of any external material or other changes in their lifestyles, as well as their impact on our lives and environment have remained unchanged since the creation of Adam and Eve. All of us share certain general conditions of life and value: we are born, mature, marry, have children, and die; we have some degree of will and common desires; we share certain values, such as honesty, kindness, justice, courage, and so on.
Thus all Prophets sent by God were sent with the same message concerning God’s Absolute Oneness and Absolute Transcendence: He does not beget nor is He begotten, for He is Eternally Self-Existent. Each created being naturally depends on his or her Creator. Only the Creator is Self-Existent, unique and single, and not composite, subject to change, or contained by time or space. Belief in such a Divine Being constitutes the primary foundation of the Divine religion preached by all Prophets. Its other pillars are belief in the Resurrection, all Prophets without distinction, angels, Divine Scriptures, and Divine Destiny (including human free will).
Through sincere faith and worship, as well as adherence to the Prophets’ pristine teachings, we can attain the highest degree of elevation, even becoming worthy of heaven. There is no other escape from the snares of worldly life, the oppressive ignorance of false human-made systems, or the tyranny of self-appointed  clerical authority.
Those who do not use their free will to discipline themselves face the danger of enslavement by their passions. Such lack of self-discipline causes us to wrong others, for the goal of such behavior is to satisfy our desires. Since the Divine religion does not allow such wrongdoing, those who pursue it try to corrupt religion in order to justify their whims and fancies. This causes disorder, oppression, unending conflict, and destruction. God wills mercy for His creatures, not oppression or injustice, and that they live in peace so that justice prevails. However, history relates that the followers of all earlier Prophets split into opposing factions and tampered with the religion to serve a given sect’s local cultural preference or interest.
All previous Prophets were sent to restore the Divine religion to its original purity by purging the innovations and deviations added by its adherents. This is why Prophet Muhammad was sent after Jesus to preach the same pillars of faith. God revealed to him the Qur’an, which contains the eternal principles for our individual and collective life. Since God decrees that the Qur’an is absolutely and permanently preserved, Prophet Muhammad is the last Messenger.
Unfortunately, Judaism and Christianity rejected the Divine Messages and Prophets that came after the ones sent to them: The Jews rejected Christianity and Jesus, as well as Islam and Muhammad, and the Christians rejected Islam and Muhammad. So these two religions finally became so exclusive that Judaism took on the form of a national religion and Christianity presented itself as the only true religion. However, Islam honors the religious experience of those who came before its revelation, because Islam confirms and completes what is true in those religions. Given this, Muslims say that Prophet Abraham and all other Prophets were Muslim. Such an outlook explains why Islamic civilization, from its very beginnings, was and remains tolerant, plural, and inclusive. It has always been this way, except for the rarest of exceptions