FROM MAULANA’S DESK

FROM MAULANA’S DESK 1. The World’s 500 Most Influential Muslims 2020, Royal Islamic Strategic Studies Centre, Jordan. Maulana Wahiduddin Khan, born in 1925, in Azamgarh, Uttar Pradesh, is an Islamic spiritual scholar who is well-versed in both classical Islamic learning and modern disciplines. The mission of his life has been the establishment of worldwide peace. He has received the Padma Vibhushan, the Demiurgus Peace International Award and Sayyidina Imam Al Hassan Peace award for promoting peace in Muslim societies. He has been called ’Islam’s spiritual ambassador to the world’ and is recognized as one of its most influential Muslims1. His books have been translated into sixteen languages and are part of university curricula in six countries. He is the founder of the Centre for Peace and Spirituality based in New Delhi. LIFE WITHOUT GOD I N the post-scientific age, it became commonplace for many to register themselves as following ‘no religion’. People started to introduce themselves as ‘nonreligious’. It is true indeed that science opened up for human beings hitherto unknown knowledge. Man has penetrated macro- as well as microworld. Facilities and ease of life that a person enjoys today could never be conceived without science. Science proved many ideas about the physical world as unfounded. Scientific enquiries continued, by leaps and bounds, shattering one cherished article of faith after another. Though major scientific minds refrained from making a direct claim about the non-existence of God, a crop of academicians emerged who fashionably started calling themselves ‘atheists’. This practice had gained ground. The question arises then if religion indeed is a vestigial part of human life. Is the universe as far as we know it, which is just 4% of the cosmos, enough to convince of looking no further? Is there nothing beyond this material world? Does science account for every question that is posed