I thought this article was remarkably tolerant and made a lot of
sense.
Islam Is A Faith Like Any Other Religion
17 Jul 2007, 0017 hrs IST,Tahir Mahmood
Believing in the existence of One Supreme and Omnipresent God, one
tends to respect the spirituality of all religious faiths as the
common heritage of mankind. If there is a God, it has to be One:
there cannot be one God for Muslims and another for followers of
other religions. If He is merciful and compassionate as the Qur'an
says, He cannot reserve Heaven for one chosen community and commit
all others to Hell.
In accordance with the Qur'anic exhortation that God sent His
messengers to all parts of the globe only some of whom the Holy
Book names, include among them Moses and Christ, Buddha and
Mahavir, Ram and Krishna, and give them equal respect. The Holy
Vedas and the Bhagavad Gita are, like the Torah and the Bible,
covered by the Qur'anic concept of suhif-il-oula or earlier
scriptures.
Believing in the symbolic and metaphorical nature of teachings of
the Qur'an and all other holy books, i do not always take them
literally and hardly adhere to any rites and rituals. I have a firm
faith in the divinity of the Holy Qur'an, but find no sense in
reading it ritually without understanding its meaning and message.
Prophet Muhammad was a great social reformer whose revolutionary
teachings were much ahead of his time. His authentic saying 'verily
i am a human being so obey me in religious matters but not
necessarily in worldly affairs' is the guiding principle of my
life.
Whatever Prophet Muhammad did in his personal life is not Sunnat to
be blindly followed by all for all times to come.
There is nothing wrong in adopting innocuous local customs.
Everything Arab is not necessarily Islamic, too. No religion can
claim to have a monopoly on truth. If religion has to be retained
in society it has to be as a cementing force, not a dividing
element. If religions create rift between people we would be happy
without any.
Followers of various religions claim the existence of rudiments, or
even complete formulations, of human rights in their scriptures and
other holy books. Cons-picuous violations of human rights should
not take place in the name of religion. Religions are not ends in
themselves but means to achieve justice, fairplay and humane
solutions to all our societal and individual problems. Rigid rules
of religion should be ignored where this ensures a more humane
behaviour.
The following is a translation of my Urdu poem: "What comes out of
the core of my heart do i state/ Humanity is suffering, and a cure
may i suggest i may not be keeping fast on a hot summer day/ To the
hungry but a piece of bread i must give away/ Obligatory religious
tax i might be failing to pay/ But a crying child i should make
smile on my way/ ...A helping hand to cross the road i offer to the
blind/ Rather than offering to a shrine a devotional cover/
Offering a garment to the poorly clad do i prefer/ Flowers for
worship i don't pick every morning/ But those thorns on the road i
keep on removing/ Ram's name i do not keep on ritually uttering/
But a promise made to anyone i must be fulfilling/ These values of
humanism as my religion i cherish/ Everyone else's religion too
these values be, i wish".
