❞ كتاب The Only Way out A Guide for Truth Seekers ❝ ⏤ عبد الله بن سعيد الشهري

Chapter One: Confusion and Deviation 9
 Man: The Inquisitive Creature 11
 The Position of Religion 14
 Religion: An Integral Human Experience 17
 A Working Classification of World Religions 22
 Man-Made Religions 27
 Religion Distorted 31
 Religion Rejected 35
Chapter Two: The Quest for Truth 45
 The Need for Guidance 47
 Truth, Two Needs, and Two Levels of Reality 51
 Existing Through Creation 63
 Which is God? 73
 The Philosophical Concept of God 74
 The Concept of God in Christianity 76
 The Concept of God in Judaism 78
 Non-Monotheistic Concepts 80
 The Concept of God in Islam 82
 God's Lineage 87
 God: Personal or Non-Personal? 92
 God's Proper Name 97
 The Attributes and Two Major Errors 100
Chapter Three: Islam, Science, Creation, and the Human
Origin 111
 On Science, Evolution, and Atheism 113
 Getting Lost in the Details 115
 Evolutionary Creation or Creative Evolution? 126
 Design: Allah's Univocal Sign 133
 Primates, Hominids, or Humans? 146
 Primordial Soup Revisited 151

THE ONLY WAY OUT 7
 A reality Check 155
 On Theistic Evolution 161
 Allah: Eternally Creative 164
 Islam and Science 170
 The Origin of the Universe 173
 Humans: Not a Trivial Detail 180
 The Quran on Human Origin 188
 The Quran on Embryology 191
 Meaning, Purpose, and Human life 203
 Islam and the Meaning of Life 213
 The Essence of Man's Earliest Religion 225
 Unity and Simplicity: Hallmarks of Truth 230
Chapter Four: Explaining Worship 237
 What is Worship? 239
 Three Levels of Worship 242
 Level One: Islam 242
 Level Two: Faith 256
 Level Three: Perfection 303
 Comprehensive Worship 304
 Defining the Framework 316
 Concerning the Sunnah 322
 Islam, Modernity, Postmodernism, and Democracy
327
Chapter Five: Hidden Facts & Deterrent Factors 335
 The Road Not Taken 337
 Towards Truth 350
APPENDIX 1: A Very Short Biography of the Last Prophet 357
APPENDIX 2: An Analysis of the Trinity Doctrine 369
APPENDIX 3: A Very Short Critique of David Hume's Argument and
Demonstrating the Plausibility of Arguing for Theism/Design from Human
Experience 379

All Thanks, All Praise to Allah: The One, The First, and The

Final.

Many people have assisted me in completing this work.
First and foremost were my beloved parents who raised me to
write the present book. I love you dad, I love you mom! My
wife's assistance was more than generous. She gave me all the
time, support, and patience I needed. I do not know how to
reward her magnanimous heart. My dear friend, Abdulkareem
Ibn Adam, read the text with extraordinary attentiveness. His
remarks were very precious; many thanks brother
Abdulkareem. I also thank Anton Schulz whose suggestions
and choice of words were extremely helpful. Abdulaziz Al
Ma'taani! The book cover speaks for itself, a witty choice. I
will not forget my brothers at The Cooperative Office in
Jubail. Without their support, many obstacles would have
prevented this work from coming out. If any one of favor has
been left out, I'm confident that there reward will be with
Allah, The Most Munificent.

“What we call visible nature or this world must be
but a veil and surface-show whose full meaning
resides in a supplementary unseen or other world”.
(William James)(1)
Man never gives up the habit of posing critical questions
about himself and life. Because man is endowed with a unique
faculty of reasoning that is exclusively characteristic of him, it
stands to reason that man has a legitimate right in posing such
questions.
Astonishingly, this involuntary and irresistible habit to
question things has treated all people on an equal basis,
because all various parties develop a natural tendency to put
forward the same basic, but significant, questions. Most - if
not all - of us seem to arrive at the same cul-de-sac when it
comes to answering questions about life such as: why am I
here? And, what will happen to me after death?
Through the ages, these questions have been asked by great
philosophers, scientists, thinkers, and at the same time, simple
villagers, uneducated people and children alike. These are the
kind of questions which force parents to evade answering their
child's curiosity by saying, “It‘s a good idea not to ask these

questions my dear”, or just stand there perplexed and open-
mouthed.

Although, it is true that man has instituted vast and
complex organizations to administer his affairs and seems
to have reached the pinnacle of material progress, he fails to
fathom the mystery of existence, the mystery of infinity and

(1)
James, Williams (1895) Is Life Worth Living? International Journal of
Ethics, Vol. 6, No. 1, (Oct.), p. 10.

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eternity, the mystery of birth and death(1)

. This situation has
encouraged man to adopt different approaches towards
comprehending reality; approaches that involved various
schools of study and research ranging from the science of
philosophy, with all its ramifications, to that of natural science
and natural theology. Brian Greene, a contemporary scientist,
assesses the true value of all scientific undertakings achieved
so far by saying:
"Progress in physics, such as understanding the number of
space dimensions; or progress in neuropsychology, such as
understanding all the organizational structures in the brain; or,
for that matter, progress in any number of other scientific
undertakings may fill in important details, but their impact
on our evaluation of life and reality would be minimal.
Surely, reality is what we think it is; reality is revealed to us
by our experiences"(2)

 This book provides a different way in introducing Islam. Its author lived in the Western society since he was a child and prepared MA and PhD in the greatest British universities, the issue that made him able to know how the West thinks. The book introduces Islam with a mixture between philosophy, religion, culture and science but this time according to the methodology of the early Muslims.