I recently came back to islamabad after couple of years. Among a number of things that have changed, our local mosque which was under construction back then has also been renovated. Since in Italy, we don't have huge mosques with traditional Islamic architecture, I was naturally enthusiastic when the newly appointed imam started delivering the sermon for friday prayers.
Among a number of things that imam said, he repeated this statement a number of times,
"انسانی ضمیر کا جواب جس طرح اسلام دیتا ہے ، کوئی اور مذہب نہیں دیتا"
or "They way that Islam addresses human conscience, no other religion does better".
I am not sure whether the audience chanting the slogans of "Praise be to Lord" or even the imam himself understood what he said himself, so let me break it down for you !
For starters, "addressing human conscience" is not the only objective of Islam. Imagine a triangular relationship between society, state and an individual; now remove the collective aspect of society and state (or shariah as it is commonly recognized term), we'll focus only on "individual islam". Not even that, within individual islam, discard all philosophical and theological concepts (e.g. the concepts of hereafter, heaven, hell, angels, prophets, metaphysics etc), also remove "fiqh" out of the context (i.e. the arguments discussing practices of Islam including Zakat (charity), Hajj, prayers etc). Now what remains is the spiritual aspect of Islam commonly known as mysticism or "tasawwuf". This is what imam referred to as "human conscience" or "انسانی ضمیر", and according to him, no other religion satisfies human conscience better than Islam. However, one religion that discusses human conscience extensively is Buddhism.
The comparison between Buddhism and Islamic mysticism is also very interesting. The object of discussion in Islamic mysticism is God, while that in Buddhism is a human itself. Muslim mystics have always discussed conscience i.e. the ability of a human to determine what is right and wrong from an objective perspective of God, while buddhist usually differentiate between evil and good from a holistic yet subjective human perspective. You'll hardly hear Dalai Lama mentioning God, while Ibn-Arabi hardly discusses anything but God. In buddhism, the objective is to explore universal human nature and keep one's conscience in sync with that objective human ideal conscience. In Islam, however, mystics argue that the potential moral compass is divinely bestowed upon a human being, therefore the objective is explore objective conscience and then to remove the dualism between what one thinks is right/wrong with respect to what God suggests how the differentiation should be.
To conclude, perhaps a more fair statement would be "when it comes to discussing human conscience from a subjective viewpoint of human itself, no religion does it better than Buddhism, while when it comes to discussing human conscience from an objective viewpoint of God, no religion does it better than Islam"
Allah knows the Best !
Among a number of things that imam said, he repeated this statement a number of times,
"انسانی ضمیر کا جواب جس طرح اسلام دیتا ہے ، کوئی اور مذہب نہیں دیتا"
or "They way that Islam addresses human conscience, no other religion does better".
I am not sure whether the audience chanting the slogans of "Praise be to Lord" or even the imam himself understood what he said himself, so let me break it down for you !
For starters, "addressing human conscience" is not the only objective of Islam. Imagine a triangular relationship between society, state and an individual; now remove the collective aspect of society and state (or shariah as it is commonly recognized term), we'll focus only on "individual islam". Not even that, within individual islam, discard all philosophical and theological concepts (e.g. the concepts of hereafter, heaven, hell, angels, prophets, metaphysics etc), also remove "fiqh" out of the context (i.e. the arguments discussing practices of Islam including Zakat (charity), Hajj, prayers etc). Now what remains is the spiritual aspect of Islam commonly known as mysticism or "tasawwuf". This is what imam referred to as "human conscience" or "انسانی ضمیر", and according to him, no other religion satisfies human conscience better than Islam. However, one religion that discusses human conscience extensively is Buddhism.
The comparison between Buddhism and Islamic mysticism is also very interesting. The object of discussion in Islamic mysticism is God, while that in Buddhism is a human itself. Muslim mystics have always discussed conscience i.e. the ability of a human to determine what is right and wrong from an objective perspective of God, while buddhist usually differentiate between evil and good from a holistic yet subjective human perspective. You'll hardly hear Dalai Lama mentioning God, while Ibn-Arabi hardly discusses anything but God. In buddhism, the objective is to explore universal human nature and keep one's conscience in sync with that objective human ideal conscience. In Islam, however, mystics argue that the potential moral compass is divinely bestowed upon a human being, therefore the objective is explore objective conscience and then to remove the dualism between what one thinks is right/wrong with respect to what God suggests how the differentiation should be.
To conclude, perhaps a more fair statement would be "when it comes to discussing human conscience from a subjective viewpoint of human itself, no religion does it better than Buddhism, while when it comes to discussing human conscience from an objective viewpoint of God, no religion does it better than Islam"
Allah knows the Best !
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