Follow One, Respect All

FOLLOW ONE, RESPECT ALL communities. They believe inter-community harmony can only occur when these differences are somehow destroyed. ‘Bulldoze them all!’ some such people might demand. However, this approach is so impractical that it is not even worth discussing. Faced with the reality of religious differences, some people seek to somehow or the other prove that all religions are the same, that they are identical to each other. However, seeking to prove that all religions are the same or identical by extracting portions from different scriptures that resonate with each other is like someone culling portions from the Constitutions of different countries and publishing them together in a single book and then claiming that all the Constitutions of the world are the same and that they all have the same rules and clauses and provisions! This imaginary universal Constitution may greatly please the author of such a book, but it will likely not be acceptable to even a single country. The same holds for those who seek to prove that all religions are identical because there are significant differences among the various religions at the level of theology. I have studied this issue in detail and found that claiming that all religions are the same does not correspond to reality. There are so many differences between the different religions that it is impossible to prove them to be the same practically. For instance, one religion says that God is one. Another religion talks of several gods. One religion believes a personal God brought the universe into existence, while another religion denies the existence of such a Being. And