RELIGIOUS HARMONY — Not Religious Uniformity

the many-ness of reality; on the contrary, it stresses reality’s oneness. That is, according to Islam, reality is one, not many. That is why, in describing monotheism, the Quran states: That is God, your true Lord. What is there, besides the truth, but error? How then can you turn away? THE QURAN 10: 32 This verse makes it clear that monotheism (i.e. belief in one Lord being the Creator, Sustainer and object of worship) is the truth. All other paths lead one away from, rather than towards, the truth. The fact that certain religious thinkers believe in the many-ness of reality is of no concern to Islam. With oneness as its ideal, it cannot accept many-ness even as a hypothesis. Both points — the oneness of Absolute Reality, and salvation as the prerogative of the true believer in this oneness — form a major part of Islamic ideals. Just being born into a certain group or community or associating oneself with others of similar persuasion does not entitle one to salvation, be one a Muslim or a non-Muslim. Islam advocates the policy of tolerance and respect for one another in everyday dealings. Now let us deal with the fact that in practice, different kinds of religious groups do exist. Then, given the various kinds of differences separating them, let us consider how to bring about harmony between them. One solution commonly advocated is to spread the conviction that all religions are essentially one: that they are simply diverse paths leading to a common destination. Islam, however, does not accept this view, and, in any case, experience has shown that repeated attempts to bring about harmony on this basis have been a failure. The Emperor Akbar attempted to achieve harmony by state enforcement of his self-formulated religion, ‘Din-e-Ilahi’; Dr Bhagwan Das spent the best part of his life producing a thousand-page book titled Essential Unity of All Religions; Mahatma Gandhi attempted to spread this ideal at the national level by a countrywide movement whose slogan was Ram Rahim ek hai, meaning Ram and Rahim were one and the same. But