Notes On Islam

I firmly believe that Islam is the best religion in the world - I mean, Islam rightly understood and interpreted and not the Muhammadanism of some of our formularist Maulavies,who say that a man goes to Hell or Heaven according as he wears his trousers lower or higher than his ankles! They have degraded our religion by paying undue attention to formulas and forms to the exclusion and neglect of its living spirit and reality.

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I need not now go into details, or refer to other religions, to shew that the spirit of Islam is not inconsistent with their true spirit, if rightly conceived and interpreted in the light of modern science. I hope I shall be able some day to write down the result of my own thought and investigation in the matter.

I content myself at present with drawing your attention to the first characteristic of Islam, and I propose to write a few Notes to draw your special attention to its second characteristic which is the more remarkable-the characteristic that it is quite consistent with modern ideas of science.

No scientific idea influenced the thought of the last century more profoundly than the idea of progress or development embodied in what is called the Law of Evolution. It is now widely accepted. You will be surprised to know that many an Islamic tenet is entirely in accord with it.

Indeed Maulana Rumi outlined it poetically in his famous Masnavi in the thirteenth century, in the same manner as Lord Tennyson did in his Princess in the nineteenth. I desire that you should try to understand it in its modern form.

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Religion. - No thinking man can help asking himself the questions: "Whence has this world come? Whither is it bound to go?" in other words, "What was the origin ? and what will be the end ? of the world of men, animals, plants and things that I perceive?" The answers which each man gives to these questions constitute his religion.

A few earnest persons (poets, philosophers and theologians) try to answer these questions for themselves by patient study and earnest thought. But a large majority of men and women merely take the answers taught them by their parents, teachers or priests. There may possibly be a small number of men who do not trouble themselves about these questions. These are not "thinking men" and may therefore be left out of account.

Religion is a silent and subtle power that works in the heart of man and makes for righteousness. It is generated by his conviction as to the beginning and end of himself and the world in which he lives and moves.