This is a direct quote from the book, “What Everyone Should Know About Islam and Muslims” by Suzanne Haneef. The entire book is available for free at the link: http://www.islamicbulletin.org/free_downloads/new_muslim/what_everyone.pdf
In Western society today we hear a great deal of talk about
“freedom.” Such freedom, Islam asserts, is in reality enslavement:
enslavement to one’s own ego or to other human beings or
their ideas and values. And all enslavement to anything or anyone
other than God Most High is enslavement to something
which is not worthy to be the master of a human being, for only
the Exalted Creator and Sustainer of the universe can be worthy
of occupying this place in the life of one who has been made (as
the Quran states) superior even to the angels. True freedom does
not consist of license to do whatever one wants while being the
slave of one’s own particular deity; rather freedom consists of
being free from enslavement to anything or anyone other than
one’s real Master. Islam’s unique task is thus to liberate the
human being from enslavement and servitude to anything other
than God, and to free him to worship and serve Him alone.
“Say (0 Muhammad), ‘Verily, my prayer and my worship,
my life and death, are for God, the Lord of the worlds. He has
no associate (in His divinity). This I am commanded, and I am
the first of those who submit.’ Say: ‘Shall I seek for a lord
other than God when He is the Lord of all things?’ Every soul
draws the earning (of its acts) on none but itself. No bearer of
burdens can hear the burden of another. In the end you will all
return to God: then He will tell you about that concerning
which you differed. It is He Who has made you vicegerents of
the earth and has raised some of you above others in rank so
that He may test you in what He has given you. Indeed, your
Lord is swift in punishment, yet He is indeed the Forgiving, the
Merciful.” (6:162-165)