WHY ISLAM ALONE
We seldom hear the adherents of other religions
complaining about their faiths being
misunderstood. For instance Hindus, Buddhists
and Christians do not hold that their respective
religions are badly understood. One reason is
that they do not mix their religions with
communal politics, and do not generally try to
advance their own worldly interests in the name
of their religions — as present-day Muslims are
doing on a large scale.
One who studies Islam, directly from its sacred
scriptures, is astonished to find that the original
Islam is totally different from what it is now
generally held to be. Other religions are known to
people as they are; hence the need to rediscover
them does not arise. The problem of
misapprehension applies therefore exclusively to
Islam. There is a great need to study Islam from its
original scriptures in order to re-discover it in its
original form. In modern times many books have
been published with the aim of removing
misunderstandings about Islam. One title is as
follows:
‘Islam, the Most Misunderstood Religion’.
But titles such as these are not in accordance with
the actual state of affairs. These books start with the
premise that non-Muslims have mistakenly come to
regard Islam as a religion of intolerance and
violence and then they attempt to remove these
misapprehensions. But the actual question to be
addressed is why there should ever have been such
misunderstanding. It has to be conceded that it is
based not on some allegation but rather on the fact
that the Muslims of today, in almost every country,
repeatedly display violence and intolerance
towards others. They have adopted this course of
action in the name of Islamic movements or Islamic
Jihad. Were Muslims to do so in the name of their
own communal interest and people attributed that
to Islam, this would amount to misunderstanding
based on an allegation. But when Muslims
themselves attributed their activities to Islam, it
becomes a case of proper understanding and not that of
misunderstanding.
Furthermore, the educated class of modern times is
obsessed with the concept of anthropology, which
treats religion as a social phenomenon instead of as
a vehicle for revealed truth. Therefore, according to
their way of thinking, they naturally come to regard
the activities of Muslims to be Islam itself. And their
thinking is further confirmed when they find that
Muslims engage themselves in these activities in the
very name of Islam.
Given this state of affairs, the real task to be
performed is to differentiate between Islam as such
and Muslims. It should be made clear that Islam
and Muslims are not necessarily one and the same
thing, so that one must differentiate between Islam
and Muslims. Islam is an ideology. One who adopts
this ideology in full is a Muslim; otherwise he is not
a Muslim. It is essential that Muslims be judged in
the light of Islamic ideals: Islam should not be
judged in the light of what Muslims do in the name
of Islam.
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