FEBRUARY 24 The Return to Religion

the concepts we have developed? (The Hindustan Times, May 31, T.S. Eliot has said: Where is the wisdom that we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge that we have lost in information? A book called (published in 1989) Wisdom, Information and Wonder, by Dr Mary Midgley, elaborates—as its title suggests—on the above rhetorical questions, and makes a significant contribution to the new thinking of the latter half of the 20th century. In his book, The Secular City, Professor Harvey R. Cox (published in 1965 in the U.S.A.) showed that people had lost interest in religion. But the same writer in another book titled, Religion in the Secular City, published in 1984, has shown that religion in the U.S.A. has seen a revival. The same has been found to be true of the western countries. God wants the message of His religion to be communicated to all human beings; Islam being the final religion, He has taken special care to safeguard it from all human additions and interpolations. Islam is thus the only totally preserved and genuinely historical of all the religions; as such, it deserves pride of place as the sole reliable guide to pious living. This attribute of Islam has rendered its communication very easy. If believers in Islam do not, by their own foolishness, create problems unnecessarily, they can continue the work of Islamic da‘wah without any hindrance. And then, no intellectual hurdles have to be surmounted to understand Islam. That is one of the qualities that has made Islam such an acceptable religion. The only task now is to introduce Islam to people in a purely positive way, so that on their own they will feel attracted to it, and will adopt it in response to their own desires. The return to religion, in respect of its potential, is a return to Islam. Who will rise to convert this potential to reality? Who will join us in this Plan of God?