Every human being, Islam affirms, stands to benefit from these divine dispensations. The road to felicity is a free and open highway which anyone may tread of his own accord. Everybody is innately endowed with all these rights and privileges. God has granted them to all without discrimination. "Nature", "the earth", "the heavens" - all belong to each and every human.
Indeed, God has done all this and even more! He has implanted His own religion (Fitrah) into every human birth. The true religion is innate, with which all humans are equipped.
Behind the dazzling religious diversity of mankind stands an innate religion inseparable from human nature. This is the primordial religion, Ur-religion, the one and only true religion.
� The religion with Allah is Islam: Nor did the People of the Book differ except after the knowledge had come to them out of greed [and jealousy] between them; and whoever denies the signs of Allah, Allah is certainly swift in calling to account� (3:19).
Everyone possesses it unless acculturation and indoctrination, misguidance, corruption or dissuasion have taught him otherwise. Prophet Mohamed (PBUH) said:" Every newborn child is born on the innate nature (Islam: complete surrender to Allah). Then his parents change him into Judaism, Christianity or Magianism"[20].
Finally, Islam entertains no idea of "the fall of man", no concept of "original sin". It holds no man to stand in an innate, necessary predicament out of which he cannot pull himself. Man, it holds, is innocent. He is born with his innocence. Indeed, he is born with a thousand given perfections, with faculties of understanding, and an innate sense with which to know the true God. In this all men are equal, since it follows from their very existence, from their creation. This is the basis for Islamic Universalism[21].
[20] Kauthar M. Al-Minawi, The Child's Rights in Islam. Translated by Saifuddin H. Shaheen. (Safir Press, Riyadh, 1992).
[21] Isma'il al-Faruqi, Towards a Critical World Theology. Towards Islamization of Disciplines. (The International Institute of Islamic Theology, 1989) p.443.
