As creatures of Allah...

As creatures of Allah, everything and everyone is His servant, without possessing any part of the attributes of divinity. In this relationship of servitude to their Creator, they are all equal. Action without faith in Allah is just as useless as faith without action.

Belief in Allah, including the attributes that He has ascribed to Himself, and in His angels, His books, His messengers, and in the Final Judgement, whereby good and evil are appropriately recompensed, is a precondition for meritorious actions. Their acceptance by Allah depends on this faith in some form. Without this faith, actions are meaningless from their very inception, incapable of acquiring any value, rejected, and neither taken into account nor accepted by Allah.

In the sight of Allah only Islam is the true religion and Allah does not accept any other faith or way of life from people. The meaning of Islam is to worship Allah alone, to ascribe Divine attributes to no one but to Allah alone, and then to submit to His commands and be pleased with His judgements in human affairs and with His prescribed way of life embodied in the Shari'ah. Islam and only Islam is the religion with which the Creator is pleased.

Man, as a species, is the noblest of all the creatures on earth, because he is the deputy of Allah on earth in the sense that to him belong the control and management of this earth and whatever it contains, and because there is no material value on earth that can be raised higher than the value of man or for which man can be sacrificed. All the people on earth came from one origin, and hence, in this regard, they are all equal.

They acquire merit and rank with respect to each other through their faith, consciousness of Allah, and good deeds. Other criteria of distinction among people such as place of birth, family, wealth, nationality, class, and race, have no value in the estimation of Allah and His religion. The ultimate purpose of man's existence is the worship of Allah, in the sense of complete obedience to Allah alone.

Among the require­ments of complete obedience is to respond to His and only His commands in the affairs of life, whether these affairs are big or small, and out of love for Him to direct every intention, every vibration of one's heart, and every action toward Him and Him alone. To be His deputy on earth is the way of life and the religion for man, because the way of life and the religion are equivalent expressions of one reality.