Religious Problem in India

Author(s): Annie Besant
Publisher: Theosophist Office Adyar

Page 45

ISLĀM
37
Sufi; the dervishes say: "Neither fear we hell, nor desire we heaven." Asceticism of the most severe kind is enjoined, fasts lasting many days, and other austerities. But they are the most liberal of men: "The ways unto God are as the number of the breaths of the sons of men." But I have no time to linger further on this fascinating topic.
That is the mysticism of Islam, and Oh! that Islam may again embrace it within its pale, as it does not embrace it to-day. When Islam thus recompletes itself, it will be ready to link itself in brotherly love with other creeds. For the blessed union between the faiths of the world does not lie in the exoteric side, where forms are different and ceremonies are varied, and each suits the idiosyncracies of its people, and speaks to God in its own tongue. The union of religions lies in the spiritual truth, lies in the philosophic ideas, and lies above all in the mysticism whereby man knows himself as God, and seeks to return to Him whence he came.
My brothers, most of you here are Hindus; you are not of the faith of Islam; that matters not. You say, ; ; the Sufi says: An-al-haq ; Haq-tu-i; I am God; Thou art God. How then are ye different, when God is One? Try to understand it and you will love it; try to see all that is noble in it and you will join hands with seventy millions of Musulmans in India; they are part of the Indian nation; without them we cannot be a people; then let us learn to love and not to hate; let us learn to understand and not to criticise; let us love our own faith above