Auron ka hai Payaam aur, mera Payaam aur hai, / Ishq key dardmand ka tarz-e-kalaam aur hai! (Iqbal)
Faiths of the World unite! For, to parody Marx, what do you have to lose except maybe your prejudice, fear and distrust of one another?
And maybe a little bit of your smugness and arrogance that you alone are right and everyone else is wrong?
For, your shared motto in this time of peril for humanity should be: Serve Humanity or Perish! And that, if you haven’t noticed, is what is happening to so many religions around the world. They are withering on the vine through their lack of relevance and applicability to the human situation in its totality and full diversity.
It is, therefore, in our view, time for the different faiths, religions and cultures of the world to come together to create a common culture of hope for humanity!
Not by compromising or giving up all or any of the core elements of your unique identity or belief, but by exploring commonalities and continuities in your several faiths, belief systems and experiences.
For, as God is the God of all, mutual cooperation should also be the joint motto, spirit and common goal of all – at least all those seriously searching for or sincerely professing faith in God.
AND IT MAKES PERFECT SENSE
And it makes perfect sense. For, if the entire universe is one inter-correlated kaleidoscope of diversities and multiplicities, then it makes sense for the ultimate origin and source of that universe to be one too.
Again, it stands to reason that the central message going out from that one central seat of power, knowledge and authority – God Almighty – to the peripheries of the universe should also be one.
That is why all divine sources of guidance to humanity, no matter how you look at them, in one way or another they all come round to talking about one God, the maker and master of all.
THE BIBLE HAS ONLY ONE GOD
That could be the reason, do you think, why there is such striking near-unanimity among the Biblical Prophets – and the Bible – in their basic message of monotheism, notwithstanding eons separating some of them from some others?
The Bible and the Prophets agree on one thing: There is only one God.
If Abraham was an uncompromising iconoclast, and monotheist, the first article in the Law of Moses, hundreds of years later, The First Commandment, proclaimed: Thou shalt have no God besides God.
For Jesus, hundreds of years later, the most important commandment was also: Thou shalt have no God besides God.
Don’t take my word for it, read your Bible.
And yet hundreds more years later, the alpha and omega of the message of Muhammad – May God bless him and all the other prophets of God – was Laa Ilaaha Ilaaha Illaa Allah, meaning: There is no God but God.
ECHOES ELSEWHERE
Hindus claim the freedom to apotheosise, venerate and worship anything that makes sense to them. But the cognoscenti among the followers of the Hindu faith would concede that presiding over all the wealth of numbers and variations in the Hindu pantheon is the Supreme Lord, referred to by many names, including Brahman.
Engage the wise and the learned among Native Americans in a discussion on this topic and they will keep bringing you back to what they would call the Great Being.
So, if, more or less by common consent among the belief systems and faiths of the world, God is one, and his core message to his creation is also one, it makes sense that at least some of the basic practices emanating from that divine source should also be bound by a common thread.
Don’t you think so?
DIVINE LAW OF COOPERATION
Muslims, why not tell the world a simple and most basic truth about Islam – that Islam is about the divine law of cooperation?
That is right. Divine Law of Cooperation – that is what Islam is all about.
I don’t know. So, help me if you will – Muslims and non-Muslims alike. Which other system – from 1400 years ago – tells its people, in such clear and categorical terms, to let cooperation be the guiding principle in their life?
Which other system – from 1400 years ago – issues a general call to the adherents and practitioners of all other systems in the world to come and sit around a table to thrash things out between them and emerge with a commonly agreed agenda or set of beliefs and principles?
I know for a fact that Islam does those things: from 1400 years ago. Those are then among the guiding principles of the Islamic way life. At least they should be. Those then should be among the fundamental beliefs and practices of Islam, right?
They are.
HEAR THE QUR’ĀN SPEAK
Don’t take my word for it; hear the Qur’ān speak – in God’s own words.
Here is the Qur’ān on the subject of cooperation: Ta’awanoo ‘alal birri wat-taqwaa.
Paraphrase: Work together – Cooperate! – in matters that pertain to goodness and that are based on the true fear and love of God. So when it comes to these things – Birr and Taqwaa: meaning “virtue” and “piety” – make sure you extend your fullest cooperation.
Now tell me something: How can someone, totally illiterate, sitting in a cave somewhere in the barren desert of 7th-Century Arabia issue such a lucid call for cooperation? And also, at the same time, lay out such unerring framework for that cooperation – 1400 years ago?
So, it makes sense that something like this had to have divine roots, correct?
So, let us not forget the divine expression Ta’awun – Cooperation.
NO COOPERATION IF IT MEANS HURTING PEOPLE
But that is not all. Now look to see if the call to cooperation is a sweeping and unconditional one. Let us continue with that beautiful and most glorious and miraculous Aayat of the Qur’ān. And this is what we are going to see: This most amazing and divinely ordained Cooperation Principle stops at the door when there are bad things involved – such as sinning against God or hurting and causing injury to human beings or to God’s other creation.
Divine Law of Non-Aggression. So, there is to be absolutely, positively no cooperation to commit aggression – to causing injury to people and committing all kinds of wrongs and excesses against them.
I did not make up that word. It is the expression the Qur’ān uses: ‘Udwaan, which means “Aggression” – pure and simple.
There is no other way to translate it from its original Arabic, the language in which the Qur’ān was revealed, and in which it is preserved, and read and recited and committed to memory, to this day – verbatim: just in the form and shape in which it was revealed to and given out by Prophet Muhammad, Sallallahu Alaihi wa Sallam!
May God Almighty bless him and all the other prophets of God!
So also, there is to be no cooperation when it comes to betraying God’s trust in you and committing all kinds of sins against him.
Want to hear the Qur’ān again? Here goes: Wa laa ta’awanoo ‘alal ithmi wal ‘udwaan.
Paraphrase: Do not cooperate when it comes to committing a sin or an act of Aggression – ‘Udwaan in the words of the Qur’ān.
So, let us remember this: No Ta’awun when it comes to ‘Udwaan! Meaning: No Cooperation when it comes to Aggression!
I am sorry, but my head is spinning under the momentous impact of these divine expressions. And their relevance to the human situation in all places and at all times, including our own times today.
DIVINE VS. HUMAN LEGISLATION
This is divine legislation – for all of humanity, and for all times. You violate it, you pay a penalty – just like all other laws in life. And that is what human beings have been doing all their life: Persistently violating God’s laws of Non-Aggression and mandated Cooperation and paying a dear, dear price throughout their history.
It takes your breath away.
These are God’s eternal and invariant laws on earth. Violating them and trifling with them would unleash the floods of all kinds of chaos and mayhem on earth. Entire human history is testimony to the truth and validity of this divine piece of legislation.
Folks, just tell me this: How much clearer does it get? And when, and from what divine or human source, did you last hear a clarion call like this against all forms of aggression?
And then why are we not paying any heed to it? And, instead, why are we continuing to create mayhem and mischief on earth by violating God’s Law of No-Aggression and Mandated Cooperation over and over again?
Don’t quote me the United Nations. For, the UN is but a babe-in-arms, born yesterday. And also, what many people don’t realise is that what the United Nations says today, the United nations can UNSAY or change or go silent about tomorrow.
That is the nature of human legislation – and human life in general.
I am talking, instead, about something that is as eternal and as immutable as an Aayat – a passage – of the Qur’ān: From 1400 years ago. I am talking about divine laws, not about human legislation.
And also tell me this: If you don’t think this is from God, then who do you think this is from? Who do you say made this up – something as modern, as profound and as revolutionary as this?
And then, finally as they say, tell me this: How different to you think our world would have been if this Aayat – this miraculous passage from the Qur’ān – had been the guiding light of our national and international policies, legislation, ideologies, doctrines and practices over the past hundred years or two?
[Write to the author at Drsyedpasha@aol.com. Also visit www.IslamicSolutions.Com and Listen to Pasha Hour International.]