THE IDEOLOGY OF LIFE

Man is born with an inquisitive nature. This is what differentiates him from other species and life forms. Since, he is endowed with a reasoning faculty, he cannot help but question the activities and phenomena that take place around him.  He remains restless unless he finds rational answers to questions pertaining to the Ideology of Life such as: Who am I?, Where did I come from?, What is the purpose of my life?, Why do I have so many desires?, Is life governed by destiny or free will?, Why is there suffering in the world?, Does God exist?, How do I achieve salvation?, Why shouldn’t I only live for today?, What happens after death?...  The questions are many, however, the answer is only one – a reason-based understanding of man’s purpose as per the ideology of life.

According to the Islamic concept of the ideology of life, man is a pleasure-seeking animal. He has an abundance of desires and thus seeks to create a world where he may fulfil all of them. Yet there is no one who can achieve that goal; everyone is destined to die with desires unfulfilled.

This destiny, however, is special to man — no other creature shares this fate. As is known, the physical world, the mountains, the rivers, the stars, etc. have no desires at all, and this saves them from the problem of unfulfilled desires.

Why this tragic state-of-affairs? The reason for this is that man has unlimited intellectual capability but physically he is a limited being. This disparity in his inner nature causes the problem.