Dear Kunal,
Thanks for your email, and sending your blogged article. I do not possess a firm grip on the penmanship as you do, so literary expressions may be missing from here. I may not be able to demonstrate language skills however, am confident that my words would definitely leave some effective imprints upon the reader if these are read without preconceived ideas or an specific mindset. Please, read it carefully:
- I also have been through the same stage you went passed however, instead of getting the non authentic material about various religions, discussing religions with followers who are not well conversant with respective faiths, and doing some 'self brain-storming' on such an important issue (as you seems to have done) what I did was, started studying the 'authenticated syllabus' of Masters in the Comparative study of religions and studied only authentic material provided in respective divine books 'officially' inscribed by either God himself or by any of His designated person (may be a messenger, Avtaar or Angel).
- You wont believe that it helped me enormously to find out the truth about God, His messengers, Angels, Spirits or the human beings...
- I read the Bhagwat Geeta, Upanishad, Garanth Sahab (religious book of Sikhs) the Bible, some portions of Torah (Jewish divine book) and Al-Quran...
- Besides the difference of many principles (which are understandable owing to the difference in eras, regions, people, culture and social norms) I found various similarities in there. Even the books of Hindu and Sikh religions which are not considered as divine bear the teachings pretty analogous to Islam, Christianity and Judaism.
- Every religion of this world declares that there is One God, even the Upanishad informs us about God's supremacy and His divinity as 'Nahi hae nahi hae .... Zara bhi nahi hae, koi aur uss jesa'.
- If you look towards everything which is all around you, is undoubtedly portray an operative 'system' thru which this world, universe and something ahead of it, is running. The day and night, the weathers, the living creations, the animals, the skies, the land, the rivers, the oceans....... and even the human body. Just take the example of human body the systems of which are so complexed and technically interlinked that cannot be even understood easily, no surprise that today even a small 'hand' has a specific doctor to treat and does a surgery! What do you think that this complicated machine which comes into being, goes through and ceased to function through a 'self-destruction' mechanism by completing a peculiar cycle is done on it's own? of course not! these all phenomena depict a divine power, a Personality and a Creator , a GOD behind this all. ......... A single God ........ May you call Him God, Eeshwar, Bhagwan or Allah, He is the One & only and He is the supreme.... there are uncountable examples and evidences which could be given in support of the presence of God, however since you have already found the truth so let's not discuss it any further.
- After reading these all aforesaid material I also found out that all of these religious inscriptions say something about a 'last messenger' of God, even the Upanishad talks about an 'Antim Rishi' who wd come from western directions and from the land of deserts (Arabia) who would teach the mankind about worshiping the God.
- I also found out that Bible and Torah were though divine inscriptions bestowed upon Jesus and David from God but the people who were blessed with these (especially their religious men) kept amending these with the passage of time to incorporate their own advantages and gains. If one studies these carefully, one could easily find out these amendments where these religious leaders are described as superior to common followers. Only Quran was the last divine revelation, the last book of God which remains unchanged till date (even after one thousand and five hundred years, it's single letter could not be amended) and will remain as such till the end of this world. how strange? but fact remains as this book of 114 chapters and million of words is learnt by heart by billions of people and during every period there have always been millions of HUFFAZ (people who have memorized complete Quran) present to counter check any of the effort to carryout a change.
- Coming over to questions raised by you, I wont touch upon those related to Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity or other religions but I definitely respond to your queries about Islam and its historical events, which might have created in your mind owing to insufficient knowledge about Islam:
- First of all, Holly Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) was a human being and NOT the son of God. You probably mixed up present day's christians believes, with Islam (even the true Christianity doesn't state Jesus Christ as the son of God). Quran very clearly in many chapters tells us that "And Muhammad is a human being like you who is selected as the last messenger of Allah, he does not say a single word from himself but just speaks of Allah's words"........ there are a number of occasions where Allah has shown that when Muslims did not obey their holy Prophet they suffered heavy losses (like present).
- Holy Prophet (PBUH) went away from Makkah to Madina not to be saved from Jews but per a divine planning revealed to him by God himself, moreover those people who were after holly Prophet's life were Mushriks not Jews, No Jew was residing in Makkah then. this travel of Holy Prophet to Madina proved strangely beneficial and resulted intospread of Islam in every corner of Arabia and rest of the world.
- Holy Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) has not ever called anyone a 'Kaafir', Yes! Quran did but to only those who were involved in conspiracies against Islam, Muslims and human kind. these people are even present today as well... God has very clearly stated in his last book that He may forgive any of the biggest sins BUT..... Will NOT tolerate SHIRK (to worship someone else besides Allah or to consider someone else as a power sharer with Him) Now how natural it is! while in childhood have you ever tried sharing someone else with your father or your mother? calling some close relatives as 'Barri Amma' or 'Barri Mata' and Chhotay Baapu is something different and telling your mom that she could keep her meal with herself you have some other 'mothers' who could feed you, is totally different. Mom probably could listen it one odd time but after that she would be furious to spank you like hell....... So if a mother can't tolerate her child looking towards another woman as his mother so how come the God the Creator of the universe (and everything) can bear it. Moreover, if the divine powers could be shared with Him, there would have been a chaos in this world......
- Holy prophet's parents/grand parents were practicing the 'Deen e Ibrahimi' or Deen el Abrahim' (the religion brought by Abraham), before the Prophet (PBUH) declared the revelations of God to the Arabs whole of the region was in-fact following this religion but not with the true teachings. Leaving aside Muhammad's mother, father, grand father, one of his uncle 'Abu Talib' all others were Mushriks and were having hundreds of idols for being worshiped besides God. Even within 'Ka'aba' (Allah's home in Makkah thru which every Muslim keeps direction for prayers) there were 360 idols placed. which were removed by Prophet when after 10 years whole of the Makkah had embrassed Islam.
- The holy Prophet's arrival was indicated in Bible as well as in Torah, moreover it was a Jew Rabbi who identified Muhammad as Allah's last messenger when he was just 11 years old was travelling to Syria with his uncle (and adoptive parent) so, some of the Jews and Christian religious leaders (not all) considering Islam as a threat to their own 'engineered' Christianity or Judaism always apposed it. instead of accepting the Islam's teachings and it's divinity they created an aura of mystery around it and portrayed it as a religion of flesh eating barbarians. However, there are hundreds of historical examples when numerous Jew as well as Christian scholars have accepted Islam. Here I must point towards millions of Muslims who do not know true teachings of their religion and have indulged in awkward practices, Taliban are also example of such thick-headed people.
- Answering your query about Sai Baba of Shirdi or thousands of such saints, all of such 'pious people' spread that God is one, 'Allah ek hae', 'Prati nama Ma'astee' (as in Upanishad, there is no picture of God) However, none of them has ever taught to make idols (or statues) of them and start worshiping. As there are numerous temples where Sai Baba is worshiped as a god or God's messenger.
Ultimately, we reach to the conclusion that in every era, in every region and on every race God has sent His messengers who spread the words of God in their followers,however after every few years when people started leaving true teachings of respective religions and adding own ideas into, those were replaced with a new messenger. Every messenger of God gave the same religion to his disciples (with minor variations as discussed above) however, the latest one is to be followed logically as when a new apostle comes it nullifies the previous one.
I am hopeful that this email of mine would contribute towards clarifying some of your doubts and queries. I will however, advise you to read Quran and Hadith (Sayings / events of Muhammad) in detail as these are commonly available in the market in any language you want.
with sincere regards.
Arif Hakim
--- On Tue, 9/21/10, Kunal Pandya <kunal@kunalpandya.com> wrote:
Arif Hakim
--- On Tue, 9/21/10, Kunal Pandya <kunal@kunalpandya.com> wrote:
From: Kunal Pandya <kunal@kunalpandya.com>
Subject: Arif , Origin of Gods
To: abdulhakimarif@yahoo.com
Date: Tuesday, September 21, 2010, 1:31 PM
Arif, http://www.kunalpandya.com/viewblog/38/Origin_of_Gods Who is god? Where is god? Is there a god anyway? Some people say that if you believe in ghost, you got to believe in god or vice versa. Because if there is some negative power, there has to be a positive power; and there is no meaning of a positive power if there is nothing negative in this world. 'The balance of power' law. Well, but this is not why I am writing this article. I have a question - is there anything like a god or ghost anyway? I'm not asking if one of them exist, I'm questioning the existence of both of these figures or entities or powers or anything as such. Read on http://www.kunalpandya.com/viewblog/38/Origin_of_Gods -----
