Conclusion

We believe that religion is the spirit of the physical world we live in. This spirit is what awakes the community up from its catalepsy and motivates it towards good. This ‘good’ is the main and perennial source of the life which is recommended by the Holy Qur’an.

The Holy Qur’an speaks about two sides of the cosmos or Alem: Alem al-Amr and Alem al-Halq. Alem al-Amr is the source of eternal and perennial values, which is also called in the Qur’an as Umm al-Kitab. Every change in the world takes its source and model from this source, nothing has been left out of this source. On the other hand, in Alem al-Halq which we live in and experience the results of these values, we have been provided with many faculties and abilities by God to be an another important source of value to lead a wise and beneficial life, which is good for us, good for our fellow beings, good for environment, etc.

This ‘good’ feeds on many principles:

— Submission to God. The feeling that we submit us only to God makes us free. As He is our Lord and he is the main Sustainer of us, we are not obliged to submit ourselves to anybody else who is not eligible for this kind of submission, as he himself indeed needs such a submission. So a believer can just retain his honour against every act aiming to distort it by submitting himself to God.

— A wide field of liberty which takes its source from the senses of responsibility and discipline. Through this principles a believer can be aware of the fact that he was not created in vain and there are some responsibilities entrusted to him to realize in order do deserve to be named as the real believer.

— Justice and kindness. Justice is the central concept of the Qur’an. It plays very important part in relations between God and His creatures (we call this an ontological justice) on the one hand, and among human beings (behavoral justice).

— Equality on the basis of brotherhood. Equality protects us from every evil that leads people to claim superiority one another, so turns the world into a blood lake. History has been witnessing what kind of genocides have been committed because of this superiority claim which in fact has no any ethical, metaphysical basis.

— Taqwa. This consciousnes of God give the believer a sense of knowing and doing what is best for himself and for others. Taqwa is not only a mental situation, but also it gets the believer to do some good deeds. So it is the sister concept of Akhlaq or ethics. In a verse God uses Taqwa as the opposite of Zulm / wrongdoing (Hacc 22: 37). That means it has also a place in our social life as an act.

These and other values or principles that we should follow in our personel and social life are supported by religion itself to create a wise and just society in which everybody entitles to what one deserves.