Religion
Al-Risala (English), March-April 2001, p. 28
By Maulana Wahiduddin Khan
Maulana Wahiduddin Khan is named as the default author of the periodical; a piece that carries another writer’s byline is credited to that writer.
In a similar way, as testified to by the Quran, Jesus was a prophet. Even Gautam Buddha is considered a prophet by his followers. But neither Jesus Christ nor Gautam Buddha come up to the strict standards of history. For example, there are long periods of Jesus’s life about which nothing is known, and the stories of the New Testament were not written until more than a century after his death. Three languages— Syriac, Greek and Hebrew—were prevalent during the time of Christ, yet we have no way of knowing with certainty, about the language in which he communicated his message to his people. In the times of Gautam Buddha, Pali and Sanskrit were in vogue. But there is no historical evidence as to which language he spoke. The actual words spoken by Gautam Buddha are not on record. There are some who claim to have proofs that Gautam Buddha spoke in Pali, but it has not been established by the scholars of Buddhism. The reason is that, in ancient times, before the age of the press, the concept of historiography was very limited. At that period, it was only a record of kings and generals; only events relating to victory and defeat were considered worth recording. All other incidents remained unrepresented and since the prophets or the reformers were not associated with events of a political nature, the historians did not consider their lives worthy of being immortalized. The case of the Prophet Muhammad was exceptional in that it was quite different from that of the other prophets. Circumstances were such that he became involved in all kinds of political events, and he and his companions were able to usher

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