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People were not ripe enough intellectually to be told that He who is nearer than the camel's neck and the vital vein in one's own body is none other than the Self, and so the highest truth was not imparted to them in plain, undisguised language.
This, we fancy, was the main consideration which led Mahomed to preserve silence on some of the most important problems of religion.
However, the error which the followers of Islam have fallen into is one which nullifies the little good that may be found in their interpretation of their faith. If we start with a belief in the eternal and unbridgeable duality between God and man, thus investing the latter with all conceivable kinds of negative powers and qualities, the whole faith becomes self-contradictory; for belief, being the builder of character, can only build according to what is believed, never in opposition to it. Hence, if the belief in the irremediable, irremissible inferiority of the soul be deeply rooted in the mind, it is not possible for it to attain to higher spiritual unfoldment.
It is our wrong interpretation of scriptures which leads us into conflicting and mutually contradictory dogmas, and causes us to adhere to them with the full force of stupid bigotry that never fails to attend on prejudice. We thus not only become the causes of our own undoing, but also richly deserve the scathing condemnation of all unbiased minds, of which Schopenhauer's opinion of the Qur'an furnishes a fairly good instance. Says the great Philosopher :
"Consider, for example, the Koran, This wretched book was
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