Bilal Philips – My Writings The True Religion of God

			So now I come Rahmatullahi Wa Barakatuh. We're looking at the writings. During the 80s. I explained
that my first writings were the Islamic Studies series, books one to four, which were originally
books one to six. But in publication, we just, I went as far as books one to four. At the same time.
		

			The issue of necessity, requiring me to write came up through the channel of Dawa, calling people to
Islam. In the 80s, mid 80s, especially onwards, I became involved in promoting Islam among non
Muslims in reallt. And
		

			what I did was to develop the first you could say, Tao, a booklet for the Islamic call and guidance
centers, which began in Riyadh, I was with those who founded the very first one in Alberta, in
Riyadh. And those centers spread out across Saudi Arabia, all major cities ended up having them. So
some material was needed for giving to non Muslims to get an idea about Islam. In the mid to late
80s, I was invited to a major lecture in the Ma'am, we're in one of the football stadiums, people
from the ministry, which of our cough, you know, had organized this lecture. And it brought
basically Filipino workers to this stadium, they brought quite a large number, because there were
		

			many Filipinos, coming to Riyadh and working on various projects there. So they brought
		

			1000s and 1000s of them, they filled the stadium. And I gave a talk, which I prepared, called the
true religion of God, and Alhamdulillah, the talk was well received, and a number of people accepted
Islam afterwards. And it was suggested to me that I put this in the form of a booklet. So I sat down
to write a small book, or booklet, entitled, the true religion of God. This is the booklet.
		

			Now it has been translated into many different languages, you can see it's the same cover.
		

			And the language here is Filipino. And it's been translated into Hindi, and into many, many other
languages. You can find them on Islam house.com
		

			They have in Bengali and Nepali and many of the various languages that Dawa
		

			or the effort to invite people to Islam was active Alhamdulillah this booklet, which basically,
rationally looked at the need to question what we believe in,
		

			are we sure that we are following in fact, the true religion of God? Because of course, there are so
many different religions and and all the religions claim that they are the true religion of God. So
invited those to, to question since we didn't choose this religion, we were just born into it,
whatever religion we're in, and invite them to look at what are the criteria for a true religion,
and then showing that Islam in fact, is the only religion which fulfills those criteria. Now, this
book has a little more to it in that after I had published it, and it was printed in the multiple
1000s and probably went into millions etc.
		

			This book needed an upgrade. So what I, what I did was I decided to rewrite it
		

			and expand on it a bit. And then I gave it to both of my parents to go over. And I asked them to
look it over and let me know, whatever they thought was off, not quite clear, illogical, or
whatever. And they came back to me with a number of points, etc. And I went through and corrected,
changed, modified, etc. Until they said, Yeah, it's fine. Now it's fine. So what I next did was to
say to them, are you sure this, nothing wrong with it? It's now clear, and you've understood it.
		

			It's logical, et cetera, et cetera? And they said, Yes, yes, yes, yes. So at that point, I said to
them, so why don't you accept Islam? So this became a means for me to give them Dawa, to invite them
to Islam, my own parents, and it caught them.
		

			They said, Okay, give us a copy of the Quran, we'll, we'll start to look at it seriously. And I
mean, they were never opposed to Islam.
		

			They were quite comfortable with living amongst Muslims, they spent many years 2030 years living
amongst Muslims. Most of their friends by that time were Muslims. So they were quite comfortable
with Islam and Muslims in that sense. But to take it on themselves, that was another issue. But
anyway, this was a method of Dawa, which I used with them, they did later on in 93, accept both
accepted Islam.
		

			Not directly from that book. That's another story. But
		

			that is the significance of
		

			the book in the sense of its evolution, development, and its origin.
		

			The true religion of God, I've done an upgrade of it since then, maybe about 10 years ago called is
their true religion.
		

			I
		

			gave a lecture about that in Qatar, and that was incorporating the true religion of God, along with
further concepts to help people understand that there must be a true religion. And ultimately, that
that religion is in fact, Islam. BarakAllahu li Walakum wa rahmatullahi wa barakato