Posted by To believe in acceptance and not just tolerance of other religions is to believe that God is greater than religion.
I believe in God. I try say my prayers every day; usually 2-3x. I give regular charity. I’ve missed one day of fasting during Ramadan in the past 7 years. Someday, I may make a pilgrimage to Mecca. “An-na Muslim.” I am a Muslim. I submit to the will of Allah, to the will of God, to the will of Yahweh, to the will of Bhagvan, to the will of Khuda. A rose by any other name…
As is the case in many other major world religions, one of the central teachings of Islam is the oneness of God. Muslims are led to believe that Pre-Islamic Arab society was polytheistic and idolatrous. But what do we mean by idolatrous? Is it simply that they worshipped many Gods? The oneness of God teaches us that it is important not to forget the reasons behind the rituals that we perform in His honor. After all, one of the major objections that the leaders of Prophet Muhammad’s tribe (Banu Quraysh) had to his new religion was that it threw away the teachings of their ancestors.
Islam wiped out the many Gods or Avatars of Pre-Islamic Arab society in an attempt to remind the masses that we are trying to commune with God, not necessarily with His individual Avatars. The danger of allowing individual, separate manifestations of God is that it is possible to lose sight of the reasons for which we have these manifestations in the first place. People may begin to worship the symbol itself as did the people of Moses worship the Golden Calf while Moses was away receiving the Ten Commandments.
Catholicism, with its heavy emphasis on ritual, must fight this battle. Hinduism, with its sometimes thousands of daily manifestations, is in the same boat. Non-Arabic speaking Muslims who say their prayers in Arabic and do not understand the meanings of their ‘salat’ (prayer) are in danger of the same ritualistic trap, regardless of their intentions.
Intention is one of the most important facets in any performed ritual but it cannot be the scapegoat by which we allow ourselves to remain ignorant of the meanings behind our prayers. If we only pray because it is a ritual, a tradition established for us by the Prophet Muhammad, then our intentions mean nothing; we cease to be truly Muslim and we cannot be separated from the leaders of Banu Quraysh who rejected Prophet Muhammad’s Islam on the basis that it was a radical departure from the traditions of their forefathers.
We cannot use the excuse that translations of the Qur’an are imperfect. The Qur’an was written in a 6th century Arabic that not even present-day Arabic speakers can fully comprehend. They have translation problems as well! In fact, I would contend that the Qur’an is translated from the Mind of God into the word of Man and everyone has the right to hear the Word of God in the language that he speaks in his heart. Thus our quest to understand Islam must be as dedicated and purposeful as God intended.
