Mūsā and the Eternal Speech, and Why There Are Other Religions

The previous chapter explained that the Ashʿarīs (and it should be remembered that this is not necessarily Imam al-Ashʿarī's own opinion; this is the Ashʿarī school) believe that Mūsā (peace be upon him) absorbed the eternal speech, and that the Māturīdīs say that it was a created form. A question that naturally arises is whether one can just leave it at that, and have no inclination to one group or the other in this matter, or whether the Māturīdī opinion has to be adopted.

One can, absolutely. It is not something anyone has to insist on, this way or that way. These are possibilities; these are not things that one has to be convinced about one way or the other. We just have to believe that Allah spoke to Mūsā (peace be upon him), because He mentions that in the Qur'an, and that is our belief.

Someone may also ask: if Islam is indeed the correct religion, then how come Allah created many other religions? How is that to be answered? How come there are non-Muslims, if our religion was planned out before theirs, and so our religion is also planned out?

The way it was is that Allah (swt) sent Ādam (peace be upon him). He sent Ibrāhīm (peace be upon him). He sent many of the prophets, one after the other. Sometimes there were different prophets in different areas. They sometimes had a message that was for a specific group of people. The message of Mūsā (peace be upon him) was to that group. After Mūsā (peace be upon him) passed away, when ʿĪsā (peace be upon him) came, and he brought this new message, the new book, it was required of the Banī Isrāʾīl to believe in ʿĪsā (peace be upon him). Many of them did not. Basically, they stayed a step behind. And they continued on whatever they had of their religion left with them, after all the corruption in it, and so on and so forth.

Then there were the Christians who believed in ʿĪsā (peace be upon him): the initial Christians, meaning the initial people who followed ʿĪsā (peace be upon him), like the Ḥawāriyyūn and others. Slowly, slowly, that religion became corrupt.

Then came Muhammad (peace be upon him). So now people were required to follow this new prophet, who was from Allah, who was refreshing the previous religion, as Allah (swt) mentioned in Sūrat al-Ṣaff, where ʿĪsā (peace be upon him) had already said that "there'll be a prophet to come after me." And the Prophet (peace be upon him) would say, and Allah (swt) says, that this is just confirming what they have already.

So basically, the other religions that exist today are all just a corrupted continuation of the previous prophets' sharīʿah, or ways of the prophets, and of religions that had originally been pure.

We know about the Christians, and we know about the Jews. When it comes to Hinduism, for example, we do not really know. If there is something in the Vedas, in the books of the Hindus, that conforms to what is mentioned in the Qur'an, then we are not going to deny that. If it contradicts, then we are going to deny that. And if we do not know, we leave it; there is no point speaking about it. For there are things in the Vedas which talk about, for example, the coming of Muhammad (peace be upon him). So Allah knows best; there could have been prophets in India and other places.

The point is that there are other religions because they are remnants of previous God-sent religions, or there are modern-day contemporary religions and others that people have just made up. That is why there are other religions.