In understanding our position on this earth, there are two important things that we need to know, among many many things, about our relationship with God. One is Uluhiyyah and the other is Rububiyyah.

Rububiyyah means understanding that we come from Allah and are indebted to him. If you talk about free will, and freedom of choice, can you say that you willed yourself to be born by your mom and dad? Did you choose to be born on this earth? Did you choose your time and place of birth, your family background, how rich or smart your parents had to be or how good they were as parents? Then if you didn't, who made that choice for you?

Uluhiyyah means doing everything for Allah. Why do you do what you do? What meaning do you get when you've done everything you wanted, and it was extremely easy to do? If you work to please someone, how often it is that you won't please him a second or third time round? Why should we even bother about ourselves? In the bigger picture, how can what we do ever matter to anyone?

At the essence of it all, the concept of God still prevails and stands through the test of time or geographical location. You can talk about Allah to an African in Somalia, a Filipino in the Philipines or a technocrati in Sweden. Given that you know their language and mode of thinking, of course. You wouldn't want to affront them with arabic verses that they'd just see as middle eastern music. =)