The Source of Religion
According to Islamic belief, the source/founder of religion is Allah. Having established religion, Allah informed man of the rules He wanted them to follow by means of the prophets, and he gave the prophets the duty of making sure these rules were understood and implemented. If in this sense prophets are the secondary source of religion, the validity of their explanations is under the control of divine revelation.
For this reason, someone who believes in religion and tries to live according to its principles will have surrendered to God, who is the Creator of us all and whose sacredness is unquestionable, rather than to a system produced by man. It is only this awareness that saves a person from being enslaved to slaves and enables him to feel the pleasure of real freedom and being subject to divine truths.
One of the many characteristics of Islam that separates it from other religions is its not seeing any human being, including prophets, as possessing divine power and its not presenting any personal views other than what Allah has revealed as religion (here a reminder should be made that Prophet Muhammad's true sunnah is a type of revelation and it is binding on believers). For this reason, Islam is not the religion of Muhammad (pbuh) and those who believe in Islam are not Muhammadans.
All true religions came from Allah and as long as they maintained their purity, they remained valid. The first human being was a prophet and the religion revealed to him was the religion of tawhid (unity). Consequently, the common name of the true religion brought by all the prophets from Adam to Muhammad (pbuh) is Islam. People strayed from the true religion throughout history and Allah sent prophets, informed people of the hanif/tawhid religion from the beginning and created them with a nature suitable to accepting this religion (Rum 30/30). In view of this verse, Islamic scholars have said that the desire in man to accept the truth and the true religion is innate and that the concept of the hanif religion means being suitable for acceptance of the straight path.
Islam's view on man and religion are not compatible with the claims of human and religious evolution. According to Islam, man was created in the best possible form (Tin 95/4). All human beings from Adam on have the mental, spiritual and physical capacity to comprehend the principles of the tawhid religion and apply them to their lives.
