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Are all religions equal? Are all they teaching the same?

Are all religions equal? Are all they teaching the same?

Author: Giridhar Mamidi
Publication: Bharatiya Pragna
Date: July 2002

It is very common for a number of learned persons especially, Indian politicians and some scholars and Swamis to say that all religions teach the same thing and it is only selfish and power-hungry and mischievous people who create differences, in fact strife between the followers of different religions. Bharat Ratna Bhagavandas even wrote a book, "The Essential Unity of all Religions". So great a person like Mahatma Gandhi not only subscribed to this but even made the bhajan "Eeswar Allah tere naam" quite popular. Discerning people would notice that it is only the Hindus including Mahatma Gandhi who say these things. Have we ever come across any Mullah or Maulvi or Maulana or Islamic scholar who has said that all religions are equal and that they all teach the same thing and all have equal validity? Or that Allah can also be called Eswar or that Prophet Mohammed could be equated to the avatars like Buddha, Krishna or Rama of Hindu Gods? Have we come across any Christian Bishop or Cardinal or any Rev. Father saying that Hinduism and Christianity are equally valid?

If any Muslim or Christian cleric or scholar says that all religions are teaching the same thing and all are equally good, then there is obviously no case for any proselytization or conversion. Since many a Hindu politician and some Swamis say that all religions teach the same, they don't see any need to convert others to Hinduism or resist Hindus being converted to other religions. Hinduism of course, does not want any converts because its concept of life and the relation of man to objects of nature and God and among ourselves is entirely different from faiths like Islam or Christianity. Let us see how totally different the religions are.

Hinduism has no founder, has no agent like a Prophet or a Pope between God and man. It has no one holy book which alone is sacred and whose teachings or writings or messages are valid for all time to come and whosoever questions such teachings or writings is a an apostate or a heretic. Christianity has a founder, Jesus Christ; Islam has a founder, Prophet Mohammed. It is not sufficient to believe in God; Christians must believe that Jesus Christ is the only son of God and that he was immaculately conceived. Christians believe that what is written in the New Testament is the word of God, though there are several versions and differences in the description of the same phenomena of the New Testament written by different apostles. Similarly, it is not sufficient if Muslims believe in Allah; their belief in Allah alone without belief and faith in Prophet Mohammed is invalid. In both cases, it can be seen that it is not God who is supreme; His supremacy is shared by the son of God in one case and that of the Prophet in another. In Hinduism, not only every person can directly reach God without any agent to assist them but this right is believed to be available even to animals has can be observed in cases like "Gajendra Moksham".

It is Prophet Mohammed who will decide on the judgment day whether a person will go to hell or heaven; and it is not God who does this.

Christianity believes that all human beings are born in sin and that Jesus Christ redeemed the sin of all human beings for all time by his death on the Cross. Hinduism believes that all human beings are the children of God, of deathlessness "Amruthasya Puthrah". While in Christianity, there is only one son of God, Hindus believe that all human beings including Christians and Muslims are sons of God. Islam believes that only those who are born as Muslims are non-sinners; the rest are all living in false faith and false belief and therefore they should all be converted to the true faith, Islam.

It is not enjoined upon any Hindu that he should convert non-Hindus to Hinduism. Every Christian is told that it is his duty to spread the gospel, to convert non-Christians to Christianity. Muslims also believe that their religion, Islam is the only true religion. We therefore, see the two faiths Christianity and Islam pre-competing with one another to convert everyone else to its own faith. This would certainly lead to tension and conflict as it has done with terrible slaughter in the past and promises another slaughter as postulated in the book, The Clash of Civilizations (Islamic and Christian) by Prof. Samuel Huntington of Harward University.

Hindus, including Buddhists, Jains, and Sikhs believe in the theory of karma and rebirth. One has to enjoy or suffer the consequences of his actions. If they are not fully accounted for in this life, one has to account for them in the next life. It is only through a series of more and more rightous lives that the Hindus believe they attain moksha and kaivalya or freedom from the cycle of birth and death, dissolving himself in the primordial cause or divinity. Christians and Muslims do not believe in Karma theory or in rebirth. They think that all the dead will be revived on the Day of Judgment and that their God Allah or Yahwey will assign him to hell or heaven for eternity, depending upon the strength of his faith in his God and his messenger.

Muslims think that they are superior to every person of a different faith. Maulana Mohammed Ali, the "brother" of Mahatma Gandhi in the Khilafat movement said this very eloquently when he observed and then reaffirmed later on that "As a follower of Islam I am bound to regard the creed of even a fallen and degraded Mussalman (as) entitled to a higher place than that of any other non-Muslim irrespective of his high character, even though the person in question be Mahatma Gandhi himself'. (From the book: Understanding The Muslim mind by Rajmohan Gandhi).

Many Muslims objected to Gandhi being called a Mahatma. The objection was that none other than Muslims can be a great soul. Christians believe that whosoever does not convert to Christianity, is doomed to hell. There is no equality of all human beings according to Islam or Christianity. That is the reason why the 58 nations of the Organisations of Islamic Countries (OIC) produced and adopted an Islamic Declaration of Human Rights, different from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that all other members of the United Nations signed and adopted.

Hinduism does not prohibit inquiry into God or any text considered by any of them as sacred. A Hindu can be an atheist or agnostic. Hinduism holds that every person must use reason and in the light of reason, intellect and discriminating power, he can reject any of the concepts in Hinduism without inviting ex-communication or any punishment. People have written scurrilous things about Rama, Sita and about Krishna and Radha without coming to any grief. Hinduism holds that one may conceive of God in any image, call him by any name and worship God in whatever manner he likes. Thus total freedom of thought, writing and expression about divinity is available in Hinduism. Everyone is free to reject without any punishment whatever he does not like in Hinduism. This is obviously not so in Christianity and Islam. Christianity launched inquisition to identify and punish heretics; it burnt to death a scientist (Bruno) who said that the earth was going round the Sun because the Papacy held that he was speaking contrary to the revelation in the Bible. Inquiry into the Koran or Hadith is unthinkable in Islam. If an Islamic cleric holds that the word or writing of a person is offensive to the sentiment of Muslims or blasphemous, then a fatwa to kill the offender is issued. There are thousands of fatwas issued like this. We are very familiar with the fatwas issued against Salman Rushdie and Taslima Nasreen for their allegedly blasphemous writings.

It is quite clear that all religions are not the same nor or they equal. The brother- hood obtaining in Islam is confined to those who believe in it. According to them humanity is already divided into the virtuous and sinners. Tolerance has different meaning for different religions. The same thing is in regard to respect for other's religion. When one is in a minority then they would see the virtue of secularism and tolerance. But when and where they are a majority, they do not show tolerance or respect for others' religions. When the people of particular religion are in a majority, then the people of the minority religions are dhimmies; that is, protected people in return for certain payments like Zazia. Moslems want that India should be secular and that Muslims should have freedom of worship, have their own laws for marriage and divorce and inheritance and that their sentiments should be respected but these freedoms and regard are not conceded to Hindus in Islamic countries eg: Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Bangladesh Afghanistan etc.,). Moslems and Christians can propagate their religion and convert Hindus but conversion of Moslems or Christians by Hindus is called intolerance and fascism. If a Muslim renounces his religion, it is punishable by death; apostasy is a crime in Islam. Hindus can renounce religion with impunity.

Conflicts between and clash of religions is barbaric. In a globalising world, people will move from country to country to eventually settle even. There are only a few countries where all citizens belong to only one religion. If all the citizens of nation-states do not show equal and reciprocal respect for others' cultures and religions and languages, nations would be engulfed in communal wars. When some countries are nuclear armed and fanatic and resort to resolution of differences by violence and warfare, then the entire humanity might disappear in the nuclear holocaust. It is therefore necessary that men of good will and humanity try to moderate the intolerance, exclusiveness and self righteous attitude and proselytizing zeal so that multiple faiths and multiple cultures can all flourish with equal and reciprocal respect for one another. Tolerance should not be truce, but sincere acceptance of the equal validity of other's faiths, beliefs and cultures.

(The author is Chartered Accountant and is reachable at: giridharmamidi@rediffmail.com)
 


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