Evergreen Faith “There is, I should say, a need and there is even a demand for a new religion. We want a creed to reorganize and justify in due proportion all hu¬man interests and at the same time to supply the intellect with that to which it can hold with confi¬dence. Whether we shall get this religion, and if so, how, whether by modification of what exists or in some other way, I am unable to surmise, but it is not so far as I can see in the power of philosophy to supply this demand. And I must doubt the possibility of religious doctrine being able in the end to meet our metaphysical requirement of ultimate consistency.” “All that in my opinion we can reasonably desire is on one side a general faith and on the other side such a critical philosophy as would be able in some sense to justify and support this faith. To think that any positive metaphysical doctrine must remain esoteric is but a refuge amidst general destitution. Therefore, a religious belief founded otherwise than metaphysics, and metaphysics able in some sense to justify that creed seem to me what is required to fulfill our wishes. And though this fulfillment is ~a thing which I cannot myself expect to see, and though the obstacles in its way are certainly great, on the other hand I cannot regard it as impossible.” (RH. Braiday, Essays on Truth and Reali¬ty, p. 446 - 447) During the course of time, God has sent countless Prophets to the world. The religion that was revealed to them, and which they com¬municated to mankind, was the true and authentic religion of God; it was the answer to the call of man’s inner nature; it showed man the way to spiritual fulfillment in this world, and salvation in the next. As time went by, however, man corrupted true, divinely revealed religion to make it accord with his own desires. The religion that he fol¬lowed became man-made rather than God-inspired. He manipulated the teachings of true ~religion so that they fit in with his short-term ma¬terial interests, rather than his long-term spiritual needs. This has been the case with every religion, and man has invariably found himself in a spiritual vacuum. The urge to find truth remained em¬bedded in his soul, but the course of spiritual fulfillment, which has been forged by the Proph¬ets, had become obscured; man still asks ques¬tions, but there was no one to provide the an¬swers. God then has mercy on mankind. He sent a final Prophet to the world, one whose religion would always remain immune to any attempt at changing it; one whose Scriptures would remain intact for all time, so that anyone who desired true spiritual solace would be able to have re¬course to his teaching, and emulate his practices. The final Prophet was Mohammad, “on whom be peace”; The book that was revealed to him was Qur’an. A record of his life and teachings is preserved in the traditions of the Prophet, as well as books on prophet’s ¬biography dealing with the inner force that in¬spired the Prophet as well as the outward actions that he performed. The preservation of true religion, however, was confined to the basic teachings; it did not ex¬tend to the manner in which these teachings were practiced by those who claimed to be followers of the final Prophet. The scriptures of Islam re-mained in exactly the same form as they had been in the Prophet’s day. Muslims, howev¬er, while paying lip service to those scriptures, followed the path of other peoples before them; they adopted a corrupt version of religion; unable to interfere with the scriptures themselves, they developed a style of life, which was in practice, far removed from the scriptures to which they swore allegiance. The problem that had prevailed before the coming of Islam now reared its head in a new form. Whereas, prior to this, people who sought the truth had been frustrated by the absence of any clear-cut model in the human world, they now became frustrated by an inability to differen¬tiate between the theory and teachings or true Is¬lam on one hand, as opposed to the religion practiced by Muslims on the other. The former would have provided them with the spiritual and intellectual fulfillment that they sought; the latter appeared as any other religion corrupted and dis¬torted beyond all recognition. So once again philosophers sought a “new religion”. If they had looked at Islam in its origi¬nal form, as it had been revealed by God and taught by the Prophet, they would have found a religion ever-young, an eternally new re¬ligion, ideally suited to cater for man’s spiritual needs in every age; but instead they looked at Is¬lam as it was practiced by Muslims, and there they found an old, decrepit religion, adapted to cater for the material needs of a few men, but not the spiritual needs of the whole human race. The need for a “new religion”, then which many philosophers, have expressed, is in fact, a need for true religion as God revealed it. It is, in fact, a need for true Islam, for Is¬lam is the only religion preserved in its original form. If philosophers were able to separate true Islam from the version of Islam practiced by Muslims, they would look no further for an an¬swer to their soul’s quest; they would find that what they had been searching for far wide is here before their very eyes.
Posted on: Wed, 05 Jun 2013 14:43:57 +0000
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