Our life in this world should not be as it is, with all the hatred, the unnecessary violence, the lies, the deceit, the oppression, unfairness, poverty and injustice.

It is against all reason that this world is as it is now. It could be different, and it can be different.

I remember the happiness of some of the years of my childhood when I would wander out from my home in the hot sun of an East African afternoon, past some trees and then along a dusty red path to where a pool lay beneath a waterfall. Hours would be spent swimming, or sitting watching the water fall and flow, and there was for me no world beyond, except my home and the few square miles around in which I roamed and the few places where I was taken to by my parents - Lake Nivasha, a beach near Mombasa; a river where hippos wallowed; a colourful, busy market in some town whose name I never knew.

I remember the storekeeper beyond the bridge over the railway line whose treasured glass counter I broke by playing with one of the heavy weights he used to measure out some of his goods on his shiny scales. I remember his smile as I stood there amid the shattered glass, waiting and a little afraid.

I remember a journey into the bush where I heard only the sound of the wind and a distant storm, breaking over some distant hills to begin once again another rainy season, and where I stood watching for what seemed a long time large ants as they trailed in profusion along the trail they had made.....

There was a happiness, a peace, a simple contentment then which is still remembered now, over forty years later. Where has this world that I then knew and lived in gone?

In many ways, I myself have helped to destroy it. I have "grown up" and become involved in the affairs of the world and the affairs of my own heart and my own beliefs. I have added to the impatience that besets the world; I have added to the strife; to the violence and even to the hatred. And I have done these things - as many others have - because my perspective, at its worst, was of me - my life, my concerns - and at best, was of my own beliefs of how the world should be.

My intentions were good - but the results for the most part were just as bad as if I had had no good intentions at all.

But now - now I understand that the world is as it is because we have made it so just as people like me keep it this way, with its injustice, its hatred, its unnecessary violence, its glaring divide between poverty for many and wealth for a few.

The world could be as it could be if we wanted to change it by means which did not change it for the worst. To change it for the better we must have a better perspective - one which is far beyond our own: far above the perspective of our own life, our own beliefs, our own desires. What is this higher perspective we need in order to change life for the better?

Not long ago I converted to Islam because I understood Islam as the way to change our world, our life, in a good way - a way to bring us to that peace which is both within ourselves and external to ourselves. Not long ago I converted to Islam because I discovered it to be the most noble way of living I had ever known.

But above all I converted to Islam because I accepted that there was no god but the one God, Allah, and that Muhammad was His Messenger and Prophet who revealed to us human beings the truth about how we should live our lives.

The world is as it is because many of us have forgotten Allah and many more have never even known Allah or been made aware of Allah - never known or been aware of that higher perspective which a knowledge or awareness of the one true God brings. The world is as it is because many of us have forgotten - as I forgot - that we are but the creations of Allah and that our life, here on this planet, is but a test - a path that can lead us toward Paradise.

The truth that Muhammad revealed is that most of us live our lives according to our own desires or according to human ideas, and that we strive to create societies based upon and governed by either the desires of one person or some human idea and human law, whereas true peace, and true happiness, can only arise from an acceptance of Allah's law - from our own realization that we are His creation and have duties and responsibilities toward Him, our fellow human beings and toward ourselves. We have a duty to do good, to refrain from doing what is wrong; we have a duty to enjoin others to do good and a duty to enjoin others to refrain from doing what is wrong.

What is good is what is honourable, just, fair, decent; what is wrong is what is ignoble, unjust, unfair and indecent, and we remember what is good, and what is wrong, when we remember Allah and our dependence upon Allah.

"This present life is only like the water which We send down from the clouds so that the luxuriant herbage sustaining humans and animals may grow until - when the earth has put on that lovely garment and becomes adorned with its beauty and the people believe that they are its masters - We send down Our scourge upon it by night or in broad day, laying it waste as though it had never blossomed yesterday. Thus do We make clear Our signs to those humans who use reason." (Interpretation of Surah 10, v.24-25)

The happy memories of my childhood I sense are but the faintest glimmer of what awaits us among the fountains in the gardens of Paradise.

"What your heart desires and your eyes delight in will be there in that Garden of Paradise you can inherit through your deeds in your life in this world." (Interpretation of Surah 43, v.71-72)

"There is no reward for kindness except kindness - so which of the benefits of your Creator will you deny?" (Interpretation of Surah 55, v.60-61.)