TOLERANCE IN ISLAM
Ramabriga
An Abridged Version of the 1927 Lecture
by
Muhammad Marmaduke Pickthall
An Abridged Version of Pickthall's Lecture
In the eyes of history, religious toleration is the highest evidence of culture in a
people. It was not until the Western nations broke away from their religious law that they
became more tolerant, and it was only when the Muslims fell away from their religious law that
they declined in tolerance and other evidences of the highest culture. Before the coming of
Islam, tolerance had never been preached as an essential part of religion.
If Europe had known as much of Islam, as Muslims knew of Christendom, in those days, those
mad, adventurous, occasionally chivalrous and heroic, but utterly fanatical outbreak known as
the Crusades could not have taken place, for they were based on a complete misapprehension.
Innumerable monasteries, with a wealth of treasure of which the worth has been calculated
at not less than a hundred millions sterling, enjoyed the benefit of the Holy Prophet's
(Muhammad’s) Charter to the monks of Sinai and were religiously respected by the Muslims. The
various sects of Christians were represented in the Council of the Empire by their patriarchs,
on the provincial and district council by their bishops, in the village council by their
priests, whose word was always taken without question on things which were the sole concern of
their community.
The tolerance within the body of Islam was, and is, something without parallel in history;
class and race and color ceasing altogether to be barriers.
One of the commonest charges brought against Islam historically, and as a religion, by Western
writers is that it is intolerant. This is turning the tables with a vengeance when one
remembers various facts: One remembers that not a Muslim is left alive in Spain or Sicily or
Apulia. One remembers that not a Muslim was left alive and not a mosque left standing in Greece
after the great rebellion in l821. One remembers how the Muslims of the Balkan peninsula, once
the majority, have been systematically reduced with the approval of the whole of Europe, how
the Christian under Muslim rule have in recent times been urged on to rebel and massacre the
Muslims, and how reprisals by the latter have been condemned as quite uncalled for.
In Spain under the Umayyads and in Baghdad under the Abbasid Khalifas, Christians and Jews,
equally with Muslims, were admitted to the Schools and universities - not only that, but were
boarded and lodged in hostels at the cost of the state. When the Moors were driven out of
Spain, the Christian conquerors held a terrific persecution of the Jews. Those who were
fortunate enough to escape fled, some of them to Morocco and many hundreds to the Turkish
empire, where their descendants still live in separate communities, and still speak among
themselves an antiquated form of Spanish. The Muslim empire was a refuge for all those who fled
from persecution by the Inquisition.
The Western Christians, till the arrival of the Encyclopaedists in the eighteenth century, did
not know and did not care to know, what the Muslim believed, nor did the Western Christian seek
to know the views of Eastern Christians with regard to them. The Christian Church was already
split in two, and in the end, it came to such a pass that the Eastern Christians, as Gibbon
shows, preferred Muslim rule, which allowed them to practice their own form of religion and
adhere to their peculiar dogmas, to the rule of fellow Christians who would have made them
Roman Catholics or wiped them out.
The Western Christians called the Muslims pagans, paynims, even idolaters - there are plenty of
books in which they are described as worshiping an idol called Mahomet or Mahound, and in the
accounts of the conquest of Granada there are even descriptions of the monstrous idols which
they were alleged to worship - whereas the Muslims knew what Christianity was, and in what
respects it differed from Islam. If Europe had known as much of Islam, as Muslims knew of
Christendom, in those days, those mad, adventurous, occasionally chivalrous and heroic, but
utterly fanatical outbreak known as the Crusades could not have taken place, for they were
based on a complete misapprehension. I quote a learned French author:
“Every poet in Christendom considered a Mohammedan to be an infidel, and an idolater, and
his gods to be three; mentioned in order, they were: Mahomet or Mahound or Mohammad, Opolane
and the third Termogond. It was said that when in Spain the Christians overpowered the
Mohammadans and drove them as far as the gates of the city of Saragossa, the Mohammadans went
back and broke their idols.
“A Christian poet of the period says that Opolane the “god” of the Mohammadans, which was
kept there in a den was awfully belabored and abused by the Mohammadans, who, binding it hand
and foot, crucified it on a pillar, trampled it under their feet and broke it to pieces by
beating it with sticks; that their second god Mahound they threw in a pit and caused to be torn
to pieces by pigs and dogs, and that never were gods so ignominiously treated; but that
afterwards the Mohammadans repented of their sins, and once more reinstated their gods for the
accustomed worship, and that when the Emperor Charles entered the city of Saragossa he had
every mosque in the city searched and had "Muhammad" and all their Gods broken with iron hammers.”
That was the kind of "history" on which the populace in Western Europe used to be fed. Those
were the ideas which inspired the rank and file of the crusader in their attacks on the most
civilized peoples of those days. Christendom regarded the outside world as damned eternally,
and Islam did not. There were good and tender-hearted men in Christendom who thought it sad
that any people should be damned eternally, and wished to save them by the only way they knew -
conversion to the Christian faith.
It was not until the Western nations broke away from their religious law that they became more
tolerant; and it was only when the Muslims fell away from their religious law that they
declined in tolerance and other evidences of the highest culture. Therefore the difference
evident in that anecdote is not of manners only but of religion. Of old, tolerance had existed
here and there in the world, among enlightened individuals; but those individuals had always
been against the prevalent religion. Tolerance was regarded of un-religious, if not
irreligious. Before the coming of Islam it had never been preached as an essential part of
religion.
For the Muslims, Judaism, Christianity and Islam are but three forms of one religion, which, in
its original purity, was the religion of Abraham: Al-Islam, that perfect Self-Surrender to the
Will of God, which is the basis of Theocracy. The Jews, in their religion, after Moses, limited
God's mercy to their chosen nation and thought of His kingdom as the dominion of their race.
Even Christ himself, as several of his sayings show, declared that he was sent only to the lost
sheep of the House of Israel and seemed to regard his mission as to the Hebrews only; and it
was only after a special vision vouchsafed to St. Peter that his followers in after days
considered themselves authorized to preach the Gospel to the Gentiles. The Christians limited
God’s mercy to those who believed certain dogmas. Every one who failed to hold the dogmas was
an outcast or a miscreant, to be persecuted for his or her soul’s good. In Islam only is
manifest the real nature of the Kingdom of God.
The two verses (2:255-256) of the Qur’an are supplementary. Where there is that realization of
the majesty and dominion of Allah (SWT), there is no compulsion in religion. Men choose their
path - allegiance or opposition - and it is sufficient punishment for those who oppose that
they draw further and further away from the light of truth.
What Muslims do not generally consider is that this law applies to our own community just as
much as to the folk outside, the laws of Allah being universal; and that intolerance of Muslims
for other men's opinions and beliefs is evidence that they themselves have, at the moment,
forgotten the vision of the majesty and mercy of Allah (SWT) which the Qur’an presents to them.
In the Qur’an I find two meanings (of a Kafir), which become one the moment that we try to
realize the divine standpoint. The Kafir in the first place, is not the follower of any
religion. He is the opponent of Allah’s benevolent will and purpose for mankind - therefore the
disbeliever in the truth of all religions, the disbeliever in all Scriptures as of divine
revelation, the disbeliever to the point of active opposition in all the Prophets (pbut) whom
the Muslims are bidden to regard, without distinction, as messengers of Allah.
The Qur’an repeatedly claims to be the confirmation of the truth of all religions. The former
Scriptures had become obscure, the former Prophets appeared mythical, so extravagant were the
legends which were told concerning them, so that people doubted whether there was any truth in
the old Scriptures, whether such people as the Prophets had ever really existed. Here - says
the Qur’an - is a Scripture whereof there is no doubt: here is a Prophet actually living among
you and preaching to you. If it were not for this book and this Prophet, men might be excused
for saying that Allah’s guidance to mankind was all a fable. This book and this Prophet,
therefore, confirm the truth of all that was revealed before them, and those who disbelieve in
them to the point of opposing the existence of a Prophet and a revelation are really opposed to
the idea of Allah's guidance - which is the truth of all revealed religions. Our Holy Prophet
(pbuh) himself said that the term Kafir was not to be applied to anyone who said “Salam”
(peace) to the Muslims. The Kafirs, in the terms of the Qur’an, are the conscious evil-doers of
any race of creed or community.
I have made a long digression but it seemed to me necessary, for I find much confusion of ideas
even among Muslims on this subject, owing to defective study of the Qur’an and the Prophet's
life. Many Muslims seem to forget that our Prophet had allies among the idolaters even after
Islam had triumphed in Arabia, and that he “fulfilled his treaty with them perfectly until the
term thereof.” The righteous conduct of the Muslims, not the sword, must be held responsible
for the conversion of those idolaters, since they embraced Islam before the expiration of their
treaty.
So much for the idolaters of Arabia, who had no real beliefs to oppose the teaching of Islam,
but only superstition. They invoked their local deities for help in war and put their faith
only in brute force. In this they were, to begin with, enormously superior to the Muslims. When
the Muslims nevertheless won, they were dismayed; and all their arguments based on the superior
power of their deities were for ever silenced. Their conversion followed naturally. It was only
a question of time with the most obstinate of them.
It was otherwise with the people who had a respectable religion of their own - the People of
the Scripture - as the Qur’an calls them - i.e, the people who had received the revelation of
some former Prophet: the Jews, the Christians and the Zoroastrians were those with whom the
Muslims came at once in contact. To these our Prophet's attitude was all of kindness. The
Charter which he granted to the Christian monks of Sinai is extant. If you read it you will see
that it breathes not only goodwill but actual love. He gave to the Jews of Medina, so long as
they were faithful to him, precisely the same treatment as to the Muslims. He never was
aggressive against any man or class of men; he never penalized any man, or made war on any
people, on the ground of belief but only on the ground of conduct.
The story of his reception of Christian and Zoroastrian visitors is on record. There is not a
trace of religious intolerance in all this. And it should be remembered - Muslims are rather
apt to forget it, and it is of great importance to our outlook - that our Prophet did not ask
the people of the Scripture to become his followers. He asked them only to accept the Kingdom
of Allah, to abolish priesthood and restore their own religions to their original purity. The
question which, in effect, he put to everyone was this: “Are you for the Kingdom of God which
includes all of us, or are you for your own community against the rest of mankind?” The one is
obviously the way of peace and human progress, the other the way of strife, oppression and
calamity. But the rulers of the world, to whom he sent his message, most of them treated it as
the message of either an insolent upstart or a mad fanatic. His envoys were insulted cruelly,
and even slain. One cannot help wondering what reception that same embassy would meet with from
the rulers of mankind today, when all the thinking portion of mankind accept the Prophet's
premises, have thrown off the trammels of priestcraft, and harbor some idea of human brotherhood.
But though the Christians and Jews and Zoroastrians refused his message, and their rulers
heaped most cruel insults on his envoys, our Prophet never lost his benevolent attitudes
towards them as religious communities; as witness the Charter to the monks of Sinai already
mentioned. And though the Muslims of later days have fallen far short of the Holy Prophet's
tolerance, and have sometimes shown arrogance towards men of other faiths, they have always
given special treatment to the Jews and Christians. Indeed the Laws for their special treatment
form part of the Shari'ah.
In Egypt the Copts were on terms of closest friendship with the Muslims in the first centuries
of the Muslim conquest, and they are on terms at closest friendship with the Muslims at the
present day. In Syria the various Christian communities lived on terms of closest friendship
with the Muslims in the first centuries of the Muslim conquest, and they are on terms of
closest friendship with the Muslims at the present day, openly preferring Muslim domination to
a foreign yoke....
From the expulsion of the Moriscos dates the degradation and decline of Spain. San Fernando
was really wiser and more patriotic in his tolerance to conquered Seville, Murcia and Toledo
than was the later king who, under the guise of Holy warfare, captured Grenada and let the
Inquisition work its will upon the Muslims and the Jews. And the modern Balkan States and
Greece are born under a curse. It may even prove that the degradation and decline of European
civilization will be dated from the day when so-called civilized statesmen agreed to the
inhuman policy of Czarist Russia and gave their sanction to the crude fanaticism of the Russian
Church.
There is no doubt but that, in the eyes of history, religious toleration is the highest
evidence of culture in a people. Let no Muslim, when looking on the ruin of the Muslim realm
which was compassed through the agency of those very peoples whom the Muslims had tolerated and
protected through the centuries when Western Europe thought it a religious duty to exterminate
or forcibly convert all peoples of another faith than theirs - let no Muslim, seeing this,
imagine that toleration is a weakness in Islam. It is the greatest strength of Islam because it
is the attitude of truth.
Allah (SWT) is not the God of the Jews or the Christians or the Muslims only, any more than the
sun shines or the rain falls for Jews or Christians or Muslims only.
Source http://www.cyberistan.org/islamic/toleran1.html
** Posted from http://www.teranews.com **
Faris Jawad
uNmaiviLambi
> TOLERANCE IN ISLAM
> An Abridged Version of the 1927 Lecture
Do not keep posting about islam. Just show me one verse in koran where
God spoke *directly* to Mo. Do you have any evidence at all that God
spoke to him and that it was God who spoke to MO? Just answer this and
we will proceed. Till then it is a waste of time
Htnakirs
History has a lot of happy stories, but I am not sure if that will
alter anyone's observation about the present events in Muslim world.
The core issue that afflicts Islam is not that it contains obviously
offensive parts, but that there are adherents who insist on executing
even those parts, and usually legitimising it by using the excuse that
it is mentioned in the holy book.
harmony
"uNmaiviLambi" <tripur...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:be65a8db-74d9-4e24...@l42g2000hsc.googlegroups.com...
god did not, but a cooked up thingy called alla did.