Evergreen Faith

Evergreen Faith

1985 10 October 3-5 Evergreen Faith (974) The need for a “new religion” felt by philosophers is in fact a need for true religion. But few are able to differentiate between the true faith taught by the Prophet of Islam, and the distorted version practiced by those who claim to be his followers.

“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 human interests and at the same time to supply the intellect with that to which it can hold with confidence. 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 a metaphysics and a 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.”

(F.H. Braiday, Essays on Truth and Reality, 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 communicated 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 followed became man-made rather than God-inspired. He manipulated the teachings of true religion so that they would fit in with his short-term material 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 embedded in his soul, but the course to spiritual fulfillment which had been forged by the Prophets had become obscured; man still asked questions, but there was no one to provide the answers.

God then had 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 recourse to his teaching, and emulate his practices.

This final Prophet was Mohammad, may peace be upon him. The book that was revealed to him was the Quran. A record of his life and teachings is preserved in the Hadith, or traditions of the Prophet, as well as books on Seerat – biographies dealing with the inner force that inspired 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 extend to the manner in which these teachings were practiced by those who claimed to be followers of the final Prophet. The scriptures of Islam remained in exactly the same form as they had been in the Prophet’s day. Muslims, however, while paying lip service to those scriptures, followed the path of other peoples before them; they adopted a corrupted 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 which 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 differentiate between the theory and teachings of true Islam on the one hand, as opposed to the religion practised 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 distorted beyond all recognition.

So once again philosophers sought a “new religion.” If they had looked at Islam in its original form, as it had been revealed by God and taught by the Prophet, they would have found a religion ever-young, an eternally new religion, ideally suited to cater for man’s spiritual needs in every age; but instead they looked at Islam as it was practised 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 has been expressed by many philosophers, is, in fact, a need for true religion as it was revealed by God. It is, in fact, a need for true Islam, for Islam is the only religion preserved in its original form. If philosophers were able to separate true Islam from the version of Islam practised by Muslims, they would look no further for an answer to their soul’s quest; they would find that what they had been searching for far and wide is here, before their very eyes.