Who Is a Submitter?

If you have never encountered the word Submitter before, this may be the most important thing you read today - because there is a reasonable chance you have been one your entire life without knowing it.

A Submitter is a person who submits to the will of God. Not to a religious institution, not to a tradition, not to a scholar or a clergy - to God alone. The Arabic word for this state of submission is Islam, and the one who lives it is called a Muslim. But the meaning behind these words is far older and far wider than any particular religion as it is practiced today. Submission describes a relationship between a person and God - a recognition that God alone holds all power, that no other entity possesses any authority independent of Him, and that the only fitting response to this reality is to devote one's life and worship to Him completely.

This is not a new idea. It is, in fact, the First Commandment - repeated across every scripture God has ever revealed:

Hear, O Israel! The Lord our God is One God!
Therefore you shall adore the Lord your God
with all your heart,
with all your soul,
with all your mind,
and with all your strength.
(Deuteronomy 6:4-5; Mark 12:29-30; Quran 3:18)

The same command, in three different scriptures, across three different eras of revelation. Submission to God alone is not the property of any single religion - it is the foundation beneath all of them.

So what does it actually take to qualify? The Quran gives the minimum criteria with remarkable clarity and equally remarkable inclusivity:

Surely, those who believe,
those who are Jewish,
the Christians,
and the converts; anyone who
(1) believes in God, and
(2) believes in the Last Day, and
(3) leads a righteous life,
will receive their recompense from their Lord.
They have nothing to fear, nor will they grieve.
(Quran 2:62, 5:69)

Three conditions: belief in God, belief in the Last Day, and a righteous life. No mention of a particular label, a particular community, or a particular set of rituals. A person who meets these three conditions - whatever name they have given their faith - is, by the Quran's own definition, a Submitter. The question worth sitting with is a simple one: does that description fit you?