HOW DOES ISLAM REGARD OTHER RELIGIONS? [Electronic resources] نسخه متنی

This century has witnessed the growth of a new
awareness that mankind must live together, every group interdependent with all
the others. The unity of mankind is being felt with increasing intensity around
the globe. There are a number of implications regarding the interdependence of
Man from Islam's theory of God, its theory of revelation, its theory of Man and
its theory of society and each of these in turn carries implication for the
place of other faiths in Islam's consideration.

THEORY OF GOD

Islam's insistence on the absolute unit and transcendence of God is an
affirmation of God's lordship over all men. To hold God as Creator means that
all men are His creatures.

Muslims therefore, believe that God has
not granted any special status to any person or group. His love, povidence, care
for and judgement of all men must be one. In Islam, all people,Muslims and
non-Muslims,stand to God in identically the same relationship, i.e. they are
judged objectively by the same law. This is made clear in the following verses
of the Holy Qur'an.

"On that day (the Day of Judgement), men will come forth in sundry
bodies so that they may be shown their works. So he who does an atom's weight of
good will see it and he who does an atom's weight of evil will see it."
(99:6-8)

THEORY OF REVELATION

In Islam, the Divine Will, the thought or content of the religious and
moral imperative is knowable directly through revelation or indirectly through
science. Muslims believe that revelation is not a privilege peculiar to Muslims
but that the phenomenon or prophecy is

common to, and present in
every people and nation. The Qur'an says:

"There is no people unto whom we have not sent a prophet
warner."

Muslims, therefore, believe that non-Muslims are not
underprivileged in this respect although their revelations may have, according
to the Islamic perspective, been dissipated, lost or tampered with. Science is
an indirect way of learning the Divine Will. Its prerequisites are the senses,
intellectual curiosity and the will to research and discovery, the
availability of data and communicability of
experience, memory and the preservation of knowledge, reason and understanding
or the capacity to grasp synthesis and develop knowledge.None of these are the
monopoly of any group.

THEORY OF MAN

Muslims believe that Man is not a fallen being but innocent; that God has
created him in the best of forms and endowed him with a purposive, causal
efficacy. The Muslim does not look upon the non-Muslim as a fallen, hopeless
creature, but as a perfect creature, as a perfect man capable to himself of
achieving the highest righteousness. Together with this dignity, Muslims believe
that non-Muslims what Islam calls Din al-fitrrh or natural religion the
sensus numinis by which Man recognizes God as transcendent and holy and hence
worthy of adoration.

"Lift up your faith towards the religious like a hanif. That is the
natural religion

with which God has endowed all men at their
creation, No exception or change befalls

God's creation,"
(30:30)

Muslims believe that Din al-fitrah or religio naturalis is
something both Muslims and non-Muslims possess by birth. In other words, din
al-fitrah is original religion which Muslims define as Islam. In Islam's view,
the historical religions are outgrowths of din al-fitrah containing with them
different amounts or degrees of it.

From the Islamic perspective, the
differences of the various religion of din al-fitrah are due to accumulations,
figurisations, interpretations or transformations of history, i.e., of place,
time, culture, leadership and other particular conditions. The Muslim,
therefore, respects the adherent of another religion as a carrier of din
al-fitrah, the religion of God as well as his own religious tradition as one
based on din-al-fitrah.

Islam's discovery of din-al-fitrah and its
vision of it as the base of all historical religions is, Muslims believe, a
breakthrough of tremendous importance in inter-religious relations.
For the first time, it has become possible for an adherent of one religion to
tell an adherent of another religion:

"We are both equal members of a
universal religious brotherhood. Both our traditional religions are similar for
they have both issued from and are based on a common source, the religion of God
which He has implanted in both of us equally; din al-fitrah".

"Rather
than see how much your religion agrees or disagrees with mine, let us both see
how far both our religious traditions agree with din al-fitrah, the original and
first religion".

"Say, O people of the book ! Come now to agreement with us, based on a
fair principle common to both,
namely, that we shall worship none but God. That
we shall never associate
any other with Him; that we shall never take one
another
as lords besides God." (3:64)

"Rather than assume that each of our religions is Divine as it stands
today, let us both, co-operate wherever possible, try to trace the historical
development of our religions and determine precisely how and when and where each
has followed and fulfilled or transcended and deviated from din al-fitrah. "Let
us look into our scriptures and other religious texts and try to discover
what change has befallen them, or been reflected in them, in history".

Islam's breakthrough then is the first call to scholarship in religion, to
critical analysis of religious text of the claim of such texts to revelation
status. Islam assigns to the confession of faith the value of a condition, only
acclaims the good works where and by whomever they are done, it regards them as
the only justification in the eyes of God and warns that not an iota of good
work or mischief will be lost on the Day of Reckoning.

The
non-Muslim, therefore, has the public record of works he has done to justify him
in Muslim eyes; to establish him as a man of great piety and saintliness. For in
Islam, good deeds earn merit with God regardless of the religious adherence of
their author. From the Islamic point of view, moreover, salvation consists of
nothing more than such merit as the good works earn. The act of faith is a work
which is added and whose inclusion affects the whole. Islamic ethics being
totally world affirming, positive and governed by public law, the non-Muslim has
as much potential and room for meritorious work as the Muslim.

Muslims believe that it is only Islam that allows its adherents to call
non-adherents to the religion than they themselves, and to do so
religiously.

PERSUASION, NOT COMPULSION - THEORY OF
SOCIETY

Islam has defined the Will of God, the norms of human conduct and ends of
human desire in terms of values which are social. Muslims believe that they must
strive to transform this world and mankind into an actualization of the Divine
pattern. This cannot be achieved unless mankind is convinced of its moral and
utilitarian value and, therefore, the non-Muslim will need to be involved. This
can only be achieved voluntarily. Islam lays down very clearly that there must
never be any compulsion in religion. The Qur'an laid down the method of
persuasion to be used by Muslims when attempting to discuss matters with
non-Muslims.

Islam teaches that the majority, no matter how large or
overwhelming, have no right to coerce even a single person. Islam recognizes
that the non-Muslim is not to be coerced or subversively influenced to
conversion, but that he is fully entitled to pursue his non-Muslimness and pass
it on to his descendants.

The very survival of the Eastern Churches
in Asia, regarded as heretical by the rest of Christendom, is evidence of
Islamic tolerance. No religion has preserved the shrines of another in its own
base to the same extent as Islam. Muslims are taught that it is their religions
obligation to enforce the observance of the religious law of others as long as
the adherents of these religions live in their midst. Muslims believe that
Islam's concept of din al-fitrah is the only idea capable of pulling modern man
out of his predicament.

FROM THE QURAN

"Religious goodness does not consist in your ritual worship, turning
your faces towards the east or towards the west. Rather, it consists in
believing in God, in the Day of Judgement, in His angels, Books, and Prophets,
as well as in sharing one's wealth, for His sake, with the relative, the orphan,
the destitute, the wayfarer; in spending it for the ransom of those who are not
free, as well as in observing theprayers, paying the zakat, fulfilling one's
contracts and promises, in holding firm in good times and ill times, or under
constraint; in being always truthful. These are the truly felicitous."
(2:171)

Perhaps the greatest implication of Islam's confession that there is no
god but God (with its tacit assumption that everyone has been endowed by God
with natural religion-din al-fitrah) is its universalism. All humans are, in
Islam's view, potentially God's vicegerents on earth. All are subjects under
moral obligation and all the objects of one another's moral action.

Obviously the greatest threat to this universalism, and hence to Islam,
is particularism, the view that some people are to value their distinction from
the rest of humaakind more than their communion. Of course humans do differ from
each other. But undeniable as the difference may be, the point that Islam makes
is that they are irrelevant for measuring a person's worth.

A human's
creatureliness before God, the ultimate base uniting each person with all
humanity, is far more important. To assert the opposite is to divide humankind
into separate entities with the danger that an individual will feel that his
group is superior to the other and on that basis, take away from all others to
give to his own group. Although Islam agrees with the principle of the priority
of next of kin, it insists on defining the benefits of society in terms of the
well-being of all people.

NO MASTER RACE

Islam rejects therefore all varieties of enthnocentrism which leads to the
concept of 'the master race', 'the people of God', 'the chosen of God' who
regard others as 'the subject races', 'people of the devil', 'people of inferior
gods'.

Islamic universalism holds that all people are entitled by
nature to fill membership of any human corporate body, for everyone is at once
subject and object of the one and same moral law. The unity of God is
inseparable from the unity of His will, which is the moral law.

Under
this one law, Islam seeks to rally the whole of humankind on equal terms. It
does not hold or tolerate to hold, a doctrine of election. Nobody, according to
Islam, has been predestined to any station in this world or the next. The
universalism of Islam does not, however, preclude it from
differentating between people on the basis of their moral endeavour and
achievement. Such preclusion would be equally contrary to the moral law which
assigns 'moral worth' in direct proportion to a person's moral
accomplishments.

Indeed, discrimimation based on moral worth is
obligatory, for this sort of discrimination encourages people to excel in good
deeds, which is the purpose of creation itself.

Islam, however, is a missionary religion and missionary zeal is a duty
incumbent upon every Muslim. Mission is endemic to Islam as a universal religion
for every Muslim wishes that Islam would be the conscious religion of every
person. In fact, Muslims believe that Islam was the original religion of
everyone but that it has been changed by time and culture into something else.
Islam's missionary spirit of da'wah (calling) does not contradict its
recognition of all religions as being similar. Islam invites the adherents of
all religions to the task of criticism.

According to Prof. Ismail
Faruqui, a noted Muslim scholar, no religion is priority ruled out by the Muslim
even though Muslims believe that Islam is the truth among many competing claims.
A Muslim on meeting some one who worships, for example, an 'x' or 'y'

whatever that may be, is not free to call him a pagan or to regard him as
condemned by God; rather he must talk with him to discover what his relation is,
in the belief that God must have sent a prophet to him. Prof Ismail Faruqui
states that believing that God, in His mercy, must have told him something, the
Muslim meets with the non-Muslim with a view to being instructed about his
faith, and then the Muslim invites the non-Muslim to research his own tradition
in order to discover the essential message that God has given him.

And, if in relation to that central revealed core, it turns out that the
rest of the beliefs and practices of that religion as developed through history
have been distorted, that would be an empirical discovery for the Muslim. But
Muslims must never make a decision which condemns a man because he does not
believe in 'my God, my way'. However, if it is found that another man's religion
has been corrupted and falsified beyond recognition, then the Muslim has a duty
to tell the non-Muslim about the Qur'an, which Muslims believe to be God's final
revelation and to present it to him as rational truth and invite him to
consider

it.

From the Islamic point of view, to say that
the adherents of other religions are equal members of a universal religious
brotherhood because all religions are based on a common source, does not mean
that all religions are the same or that Islam is trying to syncretise different
faiths.

Muslims accept other religions as close and believe that true
tolerance means permitting every adherent of a religion to live his life in
accordance with the religious values and traditions no matter how incorrect they
may seem from the Islamic point of view. It is not tolerance to try to pretend
that differences do not exist. For example, when presented with two objects one
of which is black and the other white, it is not tolerance to say that both are
grey. Neither is it tolerance to say that one particular religion is the same as
another religion.

To say that religions with different beliefs, dogma
and practices are the same is either hypocrisy or stupidity, and neither
hypocrisy nor stupidity can be the basis of tolerance.

For Muslims
tolerance lies in the willingness to accept difference and acknowledge the right
of others not only to believe differently but do order their lives according to
that belief Further, to say that all religions are the same or that they are
equal, is neither logical nor rational because it would mean the juxtaposition
in consciousness of contrary claims to the truth without the demand for a
solution of their contradiction.

TRUE TOLERENCE

By avoiding all these pitfalls and shortcomings through its concept of din
al-fitrah as the base of all historical religions, Islamic da'wah invites the
non-Muslim to examine his religion, to analyse his religious texts and see how
close or how far his religion is from din al-fitrah which, for Muslims, is the
criterion for determining truth. With the rising tide of Islamic awareness in
the world and calls by Muslims for the implementation of Islamic law (the
Shari'ah), some quarters have voiced concern about the effect on non-
Muslims.

It would, however, be a wrong presumption to assume that
under Islamic law non-Muslims would lose their rights and suffer. In fact there
are clear guidelines in the Qur'an and the traditions of Prophet Muhammad
(s.a.w.a.), which speak of straightening and cementing relationships between
Muslim and non-Muslim citizens. The basic foundation of the relationship is
found in the Qur'an:

"God does not forbid you to act considerately or to act fairly towards
those who have never fought you over religion nor have evicted you from your
homes. God loves the fair minded. God only forbids you to be friendly with those
who have fought you over religion and evicted you from your homes and who helped
others in your eviction. Those who befriend them are wrongdoers."
(60:8-9)

The words 'does not forbid you', are infact, in this context positive
command ordering Muslims to deal with non-Muslims kindly and justly unless they
are clearly out to destroy the Muslims. The best example of such treatment can
be seen from the life of Prophet Muhammad (s.a.w.a.) himself who ordered
theMuslim convert Asmah Abubakr to visit her non-Muslim mother and to treat her
well as Asmah was under the misguided notion that she should not be friendly
with her (the mother) after she had converted to Islam.

PROTECTION

The fundamental rights of non-Muslims, according to the
Shari'ah, are their protection from all external threats, their protection from
internal tyranny and persecution and their right to their own personal law
according to the teachings of their own religion.

The protection from
external threats is the normal duty of any state. lt is the duty of the head of
state and those in authority to look after the interests of all the citizens. Of
more relevance to the contemporary scene is the question of the rights of
non-Muslim citizens under the Shari'ah. The most important protection to be
accorded to non-Muslim citizens is protection from internal high-handedness,
persecution, tyranny and injustice.

To assault, injure or abuse a non-Muslim or even to backbite him is just
as immoral as it is to do such things in respect of a Muslim. The Muslims are
duty-bound to spare their hands and tongues from hurting the non-Muslim
citizens. They must not keep enmity or hatred against them. Since Muslims
believe that God hates tyrants and punishes them both in this world and the
next, Prophet Muhammad (s.a.w.a.) himself warned Muslims against any
high-handedness towards the non-Muslim citizens (called dhimmi in Arabic) - e.g.
"One who hurts dhimmi hurts me, hurts God. also whosoever I am a complainant l
shall ask for his right on the Day of Resurrection."

In Islam all
humaus are equal and even if one does not choose to follow the religion of Islam
he has every right to live in peace and tranquility in a Muslim country as an
honored citizen with all rights and privileges. According to the teachings of
the Qur'an neither the religion of Islam nor the Shari'ah can be forced on
anyone against his will. The main emphasis of the Shari'ah is on the sanctity of
the concept of legal due process to guarantee the life, liberty, property and
honor of every human being, Muslim and non-Muslim. Therefore Islamic law is fair
to all.

Muslims believe that the guarantees of the Shari'ah go far
beyond the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The Shari'ah guarantees
freedom of opinion and the right to advocate one's idea in public both in speech
and writing. The Shari'ah guarantees the inviolability of a citizen's home,
private life and honor and prohibits the authorities from doing anything against
this fundamental guarantee. Because the right to express one's opinion is
meaningless (and perhaps even dangerous) without sound knowledge, Islamic makes
it the citizen's right and the Government's duty to have a system of, education
which would make knowledge freely accessible to every man and woman in the
country.

PROGRESS

A Muslim government also is responsible, according to the Shari'ah, to
provide its citizens with such economic facilities as are necessary for the
maintenance of human happiness and dignity. Therefore the affairs of the
community must be arranged in such a way that every individual man and woman,
Muslim and non-Muslim, shall enjoy that minimum of material well-being without
which there can be no human dignity, no real freedom, and in the last resort no
spiritual progress. This does not mean that the state should or ever could,
ensure carefree living from its citizens. It does mean, however, that every
citizen has:

a) The right to productive and remunerative work while
of working age and in good health.

b) Training at the expense of the
State, if necessary, for such productive work.

c) Free and efficient
health services in case of illness.

d) Provision by the state of
adequate nourishment, clothing and shelter in cases of disability resulting from
illness, widowhood, unemployment due to circumstances beyond individual's
control, old-age or under-age.

JUSTICE

The socio-political scheme of Islam aims at justice for Muslim and
non-Muslim alike and the desire of Muslims to establish the Shari'ah is driven
by moral considerations. The Qur'an makes it obligatory to provide justice for
all people and under the Shari'ah. Non-Muslims enjoy freedom of religion and
religious worship, the freedom to maintain their own languages and customs and
open their own schools, their right of life, honor, privacy and free movement.
The Islamic Shari'ah also guarantees freedom from arbitrary arrest and
detention, the right of peaceful assembly and association, freedom of expression
and association and political freedom. The right of non-Muslims to property,
freedom to practice any profession or trade and to assistance from the public
treaury of the Muslims, if they are in need, are all guaranteed.

All
personal matters of non-Muslims are to be decided in accordance with their own
personal law. The corresponding laws of the Shari'ah are not to be enforced on
them. If something is foibidden to Muslims but allowed in their religion then
they will have the right to use that thing and the courts in the country will
decide their cases in the light of their own personal law. This has been the
rule of all Muslim governments since the time of Prophet Muhammad (s.a.w.a.).
The non-Muslims are given the fullest freedom in the performance of their
religions rites and communal festivals. Once Imam Ali (as) noticed an old
non-Muslim begging and he fixed a pension for him, saying: "By God it is
undoubtedly not just that we derive benefit from a person in the prirne of his
youth but leave him to beg in the streets when he is stricken with old-age." The
Imam also fixed pension for all the aged and invalid non-Muslims.

PENAL CODE

Every non-Muslim enjoys security and equal justice under the Shari'ah.
Under the Shari'ah no distinction of race, religion, citizenship, economic or
social status or personal capabilities can ever obliterate the rights of a
non-Muslim. Muslims and non-Muslims are to be treated as equal before the law.
The penal laws of Islam are the same as for the Muslims and the non-Muslims -
although some according to other schools of thought, exempt the non-Muslims from
the Islamic punishment for adultery and they state that such cases should be
referred to the offender's co-religionists.

The penal laws of Islam
are only a small part of the Shari'ah which is primarily concerned, as can be
seen from the above, with social and economic justice. The penal laws of Islam
are concerned with theft, murder, highway robbery, rebellion and accusations of
adultery. The laws concerning the other matters are too detailed to discuss here
but the aim is prevention but only on clear evidence. The penalties often
mentioned for such offences are, as has been mentioned, the maximum penalty.
Islam imposes a rigid code of punishment for the microscopic minority of
hard-core criminals to ensure an atmosphere of peace and security for the rest
of the society.

Source:

Mahjubah

By: Fadhullah Wilmot