I S I I lV i

AND

B U D D H IS M
IN T H E
MCDEDN
W CDLD

IM RAN N AZAR HOSEIN

 Imran N. Hosein is presently the Imam of Masjid
Dar al-Quran in Long Island, New York. A former
diplomat in the Trinidad and Tobago Foreign
Service, he gave up his career in 1985 in order
to devote himself full-time to preaching Islam.

He studied Islam under the guidance of the out

standing Islamic scholar and sufi Shaikh, Maulana
Dr. Muhammad Fadlur Rahman Ansari, at the
Institute of Islamic Studies in Pakistan. He also
studied Philosophy at the University of Karachi
IMRAN N. HOSEIN and International Relations at the University of
the West Indies (In s titu te of In te rn a tio n a l
Relations) and the Graduate Institute of International Studies in
Geneva, Switzerland.

He has traveled extensively while serving the cause of Islam around

the world. Since 1989, for example, he has made nine Islamic lecture-
tours of South East Asia.

Since writing his book on Buddhism at age 29 he has emerged as a

prolific writer. His latest works, published in the Ansari Memorial Series
(to honor to his teacher 25 years after his death), include the following
seven titles:

Dreams in Islam - A Window to Truth and to the Heart;

The Religion of Abraham and the State of Israel - A View from Islam;
The Caliphate The Hejaz and the Saudi-Wahhabi Nation-State;
The Importance of the Prohibition of Riba in Islam;
The Prohibition of Riba in the Quran and Sunnah;
One Jamaat One Ameer - The Organization of a Muslim Community in
the Age of Fitan; and
The Strategic Significance of the Fast of Ramadan and the Isra and
Miraj.

The distinctive character of his Islamic thought is its originality. He is

gifted with the ability to use the Quran (and Hadith) to first understand,
and then to explain, the world today, - its politics, its economics, its
spiritual moral and social predicament, and the stage in the historical
process in which we are today located. He is also gifted to locate, and
to articulate with passion, that specific guidance in the Quran and Hadith
with which Muslims should respond to the awesome challenges of this
age.
 ISLAM AND BUDDHISM
IN THE
MODERNWORLD

Imran N. Hosein

Published by
Centre For Research and Training in Dawah Methodology
(CRTDM)
The Muslim Converts Association of Singapore
32 Onan Road, The Galaxy,
Singapore 424484
Tel: (65) 348 8344 Fax: (65) 4406724
 All rights reserved by Author

I s'. edition p u b lish ed b y W orld Federation o f Islam ic M issions

K arachi. Pakistan. 1972.
R eprinted 1976.

IS B N 981-04-1329-7

C over D esigned by
S. M ohdir

This edition p u b lish ed by The M uslim Converts Association

o f Singapore. 1999.

P rin ted by:

K erjaya P rin tin g Industries P te L td
Singapore
 Dedication
to
the Shaikh al-Islam
of Trinidad and Tobago

His E m inence

Dr. Muhammad Fazl-ur-Rahman al-Ansari

al-Qaderi
M.A., B.Th., Ph.D.

This is the fir s t f r u it o f th a t tra in in g I have

been receiving from y o u f o r the last six years.
I dedicate it to yo u a s a h u m b le token o f
gratitude f o r the deep love, affectionate care,
and patern al concern with which you have
been w a tc h in g o v e r m y lif e a n d th e
development o f my thought.
 FOREWORD

It gives me great pleasure to introduce Imran Hoseins research

monograph on Islam and Buddhism in the Modern World which
forms his first attempt in the field of authorship and which can
safely be said to be the first book on this topic ever written by an
Islamic scholar.

The author, who is a dear pupil of mine, has inherited the illustrious
traditions o f modem scholarship in Philosophy and Religion rep
resented by Dr. Syed Zafar-ul-Hassan M.A., LL.B., Dr. Phil. (Erl.),
D. Phil. (Oxon.) and Dr. Sir Muhammad Iqbal M.A. , Ph.D.,
D.Litt.D., Bar-at-Law, and o f missionary endeavour represented
by His Eminence Muhammad Abdul Aleem Siddiqui al-Qaderi (of
blessed memory), and I am proud of him. Though young in years,
he is already on the road to ripeness in wisdom, and I am sure that
his continued labour as a researcher will bring to him greater and
greater glory in the cause o f Truth.

Already, the present book is a very promising achievement. His

treatment o f the subject demonstrates clear-headedness, objec
tivity and logical acumen o f a high order. And his approach, in
keeping with the spirit o f Islam, is sympathetic towards Buddha
and Buddhism, - in sharp contrast to the malicious and vindictive
approach so often demonstrated by Christian and Arya Samaj
scholars in their writings on Islam.

I pray to God to bless this book with the choicest success. Amen!

Dr. Muhammad Fazl-ur-Rahman al-Ansari al-Qaderi

December 25, 1971

Islamic Centre,
North Nazimabad-B,
Karachi. Pakistan.
 PREFACE
(to first edition)

It was in July 1971, ju st after my graduation at the

Aleemiyah Institute of Islamic Studies, that its President, Dr.
Muhammad Fazl-ur-Rahman Ansari al-Qaderi, asked me to write
a book on Buddhism, informing me that he had been deeply im
pressed by my examination-script relating to the question-paper
on Comparative Religion. I was then packing to return to my home
in Trinidad, West Indies. But because o f the love and respect I
have for my spiritual and academic preceptor, I found myself com
pelled to undertake this research assignment. The time at my dis
posal was not unlimited. In fact, I could devote only twenty-one
days to accomplish this difficult job. But I feel Allahs Grace has
blessed me with the privilege of making a fruitful contribution to
the cause of Truth.

For all my academic and spiritual attainments, I am deeply

indebted to the unique and revolutionary scheme of education visu
alized and realized by Dr. Muhammad Fazl-ur-Rahman Ansari
al-Qaderi at the Aleemiyah Institute o f Islamic Studies. This
Islamic Institute was founded in Karachi, Pakistan, for producing
Islamic leaders who would be comprehensively educated in Islam,
Comparative Religion and Modem Thought.

I also owe a deep debt o f gratitude to the learned Maulana

himself whose rich multi-dimensional scholarship has assisted me
in understanding the problems o f Religion and Philosophy more
than anything else, and whose dynamic religious personality has
influenced my development immensely.

I owe gratitude also to Anjuman Sunnat wal Jamaah

Association o f Trinidad and Tobago for assisting my studies
in Pakistan.
 Last, but not the least, I am deeply grateful to my revered
mother who bore all the hardships of her widowhood with excep
tional fortitude and grace while I stayed away from her for six
years, at the Aleemiyah Institute, in quest of knowledge.

Imran N. Hosein

October 1, 1971

6, Main Road, Chaguanas.

Trinidad. West Indies.
 PREFACE
(to second edition)

Twenty-seven long years have passed since I wrote this

book in 1971 at age 29. This new edition, published by The Mus
lim Converts Association of Singapore, emerged in the wake o f
two public lectures which I delivered on this subject in Singapore
and in the Malaysian island of Penang in August 1998.

I have restricted myself, in this new edition, to minor editing

of the text. But I have left the language of my youth unchanged.
Editing and new comments amount to less than one percent o f the
total text. The reader may wish to obtain the audiocassette of my
lecture on this very subject (particularly the lecture delivered in
Penang) since I introduced new analysis on the subject, analysis
which is not to be found in the book. The cassettes may be ob
tained through the publishers o f this book. In fact the Muslim
ConvertsAssociation of Singapore has an extensive collection of
recordings of lectures which I have delivered in Singapore over
the years.

The spirit with which this book was written was one of
profound respect for Gautama Buddha. In the years that have passed
since I wrote the book, my respect for Gautama has remained
unchanged. Buddhists of South East Asia, where this edition is
being published, should find in this book much that will provoke
thought. Just as important is the assurance that they will find
nothing in it which, viewed objectively, should cause offense.

I gratefully acknowledge the kind assistance of members

of the Muslim StudentsAssociation of Rutgers University in New
Jersey, my dear wife, Aisha, and her daughter, Nicole, who took
turns in typing the manuscript for me into a computer file, and thus
simplified the work of editing and printing.
 I also wish to thank the Muslim Converts Association of
Singapore for publishing this book, and Br. Mohamed Nassir for
all the efforts he made to have it published.

Finally, a word about that distinguished scholar, Professor

Yusuf Saleem Chisti, who taught me Buddhism at the Aleemiyah
Institute of Islamic Studies. I did acknowledge my debt of grati
tude to him in the Preface which I wrote to the first edition of this
book. Unfortunately I was already back home in Trinidad, West
Indies, when the book was published in Pakistan in 1972, and I
found, to my great sadness, that my acknowledgement of Prof.
Chistis input into this book did not appear in that Preface. He is
now no longer in this world. But I take the opportunity, in this new
edition of the book, to acknowledge my profound debt of gratitude
to him, and to pray for Allahs Mercy on his soul. Ameen!

Imran N. Hosein

Darul Arqam,
Singapore.

January 12, 1999

 CONTENTS

Chapter Page
I. Sources of Buddhism 1
(i) Pali Literature 3
(ii) Sanskrit Literature 5
I. The Life of Buddha 6
II. Background of Gautamas Mission 10
III. The Basic Teachings of Gautama Buddha 13
(i) Four Noble-Truths 16
(ii) Noble Eight-Fold Path 17
(iii) Nirvana 19
V. The Buddhist Philosophy 23
(i) Theory of DependentOrigination 25
(ii) Theory of Karma 27
(iii) Theory of UniversalFlux 32
(iv) Theory of Not-Self 36
VI. The Philosophical Schools of Buddhism 42
(i) Madhyamika School o f Nihilism 43
(ii) Yogacara School of SubjectiveIdealism 45
(iii) Sautrantika School o f Indirect Realism 48
(iv) Vaibhashika School of Direct Realism 49
VII. The Religious Schools of Buddhism 51
(i) Hinayana (ii) Mahayana on:-
(a) This World 53
(b) The Other World 55
(c) An Abiding Reality 56
(d) God 57
(e) The Self 59
(f) Concluding Remarks 60
VIII. The Influence of Buddhism on Christianity 64
IX. Buddhism and the Encounter with World Religions 71
(i) Hinduism 71
(ii) Christianity 73
(iii) Islam 54
X. Comparison of Islam and Buddhism 85
(i) Scriptural 85
(ii) Dimensional 89
(iii) Archetypal 93
(iv) Comparative Evaluation of their respective
Philosophies of Life 101

(a) Buddhist Philosophy of Life 101

(b) Islamic Philosophy of Life 112

Glossary 139
Index 142
 Chapter One

SOURCES OF BUDDHISM

Preliminary Observations

Gautama Buddha achieved enlightenment at the age of

about thirty-five. From then until he died, forty-five years later, he
devoted his entire life to preaching his religious doctrines. Yet he
never paid any attention to the vitally important task of recording
his message in a permanent written form (i.e., as a book/scripture)

As a matter of fact, the only founder of a religious community

who ever paid any proper attention to this task was Prophet
Muhammad (divinely blessed is he and in eternal peace). The
Quran enjoys the unique distinction o f being the only revealed
scripture in the world today which has come directly from the
founder of the religious community. It is also the only original
revealed scripture which has survived historical criticism in
respect of its integrity, authenticity, genuineness and purity.

Gautama Buddha is the founder o f Buddhism. His teachings

are authoritative and binding on all Buddhists. The Buddhist is
duty-bound to try and find out what were the original teachings of
Buddha. If he fails in this task, and yet persists in calling himself
a Buddhist, he must be honest enough to admit that what he
believes in may not be the original teachings of Buddha, - nay,
they may even be quite different from that which Buddha taught!

Now historical criticism has proved quite conclusively that

the original teachings o f Buddha can never be known. What is
1
now claimed to be his teachings may or may not be so. No one can
tell. But many authorities seem to speak with one voice that the
Buddhism that is presented to the world is quite different to that
which Buddha preached. For example, Dr. Edward Conze, in his
eminently readable book, Buddhism, Its Essence and Development,
has this to say: The Truth is that the oldest stratum o f the existing
scriptures can only be reached by uncertain inference and conjecture.
One thing alone do a ll these attem pts to reconstruct an
original Buddhism have in common. They all agree that the
Buddha s doctrine was certainly not what the Buddhists under
stood it to be. Mrs. Rhys Davids, for instance, purges Buddhism oj
the doctrine o f n o t-self, and o f monasticism. To her, some
worship o f the Man is the original gospel o f Buddhism. H.J.
Jennings, in cold blood, removes all references to reincarnationfrom
the scriptures, and claims thereby to have restored their original
meaning. Dr. P. Dahlke, again, ignores all the magic and mythology
with which traditional Buddhism is replete, and reduces the
doctrine o f the Buddha to a quite reasonable, agnostic theory.'

For his part Dr. Conze frankly and honestly states: / confess
that I do not know what the original gospel o f Buddhism was.2

It seems that the teachings o f Gautama Buddha, like the Gospel of

Jesus, were preserved in the memories of their disciples. Shortly
after the death of Buddha, a Counci- was held at Rajagaha so that
the Buddha-word might be recited and agreed upon. But in this
Council there were differences of opinion or, rather, conflicting
memories. The Council, it appears, decided to give preference to
the opinion o f Kayshapa and Ananda, prominent disciples of
Buddha. The very most, therefore, which later Buddhist literature
can claim for their source, is the teachings of Gautama Buddha as
interpreted by Kayshapa and Ananda. And even this is conceding

1 Conze, Edward :Buddhism, Its Essence and Development, p.27

2 Ibid.

2
too much, for, as Christmas Humphreys casually admits: The his
toricity o f these two Councils is impugned by certain scholars.3
(There was a second Council at Vesali about a hundred years later).

It was not until four hundred years had passed, after the death
of Buddha, that the Buddhists could overcome their misfounded
trust in human memory and distrust for the written word.4 And
even when they started writing down their doctrines and compiling
their Canon, as it has come down to us, they paid scant regard to
just about everything the historian requires in order to assess the
authenticity, integrity, genuineness and original purity o f a
document. Dr. Conze remarks: Buddhism is a body o f traditions
in which few names stand out, and in which few er dates are
precisely blown. It is indeed most exasperating when we try to
apply our current ideas o f historical criticism. Langlois and
Seignobos in their textbook o f historical method, state that
a document whose author, date and provenance1 cannot be
determined, is ju st good fo r nothing. Dr. Conze goes on to
remark sadly: Alas, that is the case with most o f the documents on
which we build a history o f Buddhism.6

Pali Literature

The most important o f the Pali texts, so important, in fact,

that it may be taken as the Bible o f Buddhism, is the Tri-pitaka. It
is generally conceded to be among the earliest recorded Buddhist
literature and is placed at the 1st Century B.C. It therefore
depends on a long, prior, oral tradition.

The Tri-pitaka, or three baskets of law, is composed of three

books:

3 Humphreys, Christmas: Buddhism, p.45

4 Conze, Op. cit., p.29
5 ie., the source from which it has come.
6 Conze, Ibid.

3
 (i) Vinaya Pitaka- Rules of conduct. This is the book of
discipline. The original Buddhism was, par excellence, the
Buddhism o f the Bhikshus (monks) who lived the monastic life to
be trained for preaching and disseminating the religious teachings
of Gautama Buddha. This monastic life had to be strictly ordered.
The Vinaya Pitaka deals, in the main, with the rules of the order

(ii) Sutta Pitaka- Discourses. The Sutta Pitaka is a collection

of the sermons and discourses of Gautama Buddha and incidents
in his life. It is, perhaps, the most important of the Pitakas as a
source-book of Buddhist doctrine. It consists of five divisions
known as Nikayas.

Gautama Buddha was essentially an ethical thinker. The

Buddhist ethics is enshrined in its most famous form in the Pali
text, the D ham m apada7 (the path o f virtue). In fact the
Dhammmapada may well rank as the most famous o f all the
Pali literature. It is composed entirely of aphorisms and short
pithy statements conveying truths o f great import with respect
to the spiritual uplift o f man.

(iii) Abhidhamma- Analysis of Doctrine. This third basket

is the basket of metaphysical doctrines. It is generally known as the
Buddhist metaphysics. But, in particular, it formed the foundation of
the Realist schools o f the Buddhist Philosophy (Sautrantika, or
Critical Realism, and Vaibhashika, or Direct Realism).8

According to a leading authority on Buddhism, Mrs. Rhys

Davids, the Abhidhamma is nothing more than an analytical
and logical elaboration o f what is already given (i.e., in the
first two pitakas). It contains analyses and expositions of
Buddhist doctrines.

7 Its complete English translation can be found in Radhakrishan and Moore: Source
book o f Indian Philosophy, pp. 292-325
8 Chatterjee and Datta: An Introduction to Indian Philosophy, p. 176

4
Sanskrit Literature

While Pali was used or alm ost m onopolized by the

Hinayana sect of Buddhism, Sanskrit was preferred by their
Mahayana rivals. We may also note that their attitudes to their
scriptures show a marked contrast. The Hinayana scriptures
( Tri-Pitaka, for example) simply present an account, both
historical and analytical, of the Buddha and Buddhist teachings
and precepts. The Mahayana school, on the other hand, shows a
distinct tendency to ascribe sacred propensities to the texts.9

The Sanskrit texts (of Mahayana) it appears, have not been

reduced to a collection or a Canon (as in Pali).'0Much of the original
Sanskrit literature has now been lost. Fortunately some o f them
were translated into other languages (mostly Chinese). They are
preserved in Chinese and are now being retranslated into their
original Sanskrit.

The most famous work in Sanskrit, the Mahavastu, has been

restored from its Chinese translation. The Mahavastu (which
literally means sublime sto ry ) consists o f a volum inous
collection of legendary stories.

Lalitavistara, another Sanskrit text, discovered by Prof.

Hodgson, is regarded as one of the holiest of the Sanskrit texts. It
belongs to the 1st century A.C., that is, some 500 years after
Buddha, and contains all the miracles which the superstition-loving
folk had fathered on an obliging Buddha over this-long stretch of
time.

9 Cf. Ninian Smart:: Article on Buddhism in Encyclopaedia o f Philosophy,

Vol.l,p.419
10 Humphreys, Christmas:Buddhism, p.237.

5
 Chapter Two

THE LIFE OF BUDDHA

There are three Gautama Buddhas, namely:

i. Historical Buddha.
ii. Transcendental Buddha.
iii. Mythological Buddha.

In this chapter we shall restrict our discussion to the his

torical Buddha. He was bom about 560 B.C.l 1 His family name
was Gautama and his given name was' Siddhartha (ie., one who
has accomplished his aim). He was also called Sakyamuni (i.e.,
the sage o f the tribe of Sakya) and he called himself Tathagata (he
who has arrived at the truth). He was bom in the village of Lumbini
near Kapilavastu,12 the capital of a subordinate kingdom south of
the Himalayas, ruled by his father, Raja Suddhodana. His moth
ers name was Mahamaya.

Legend has it that an astrologer foretold to his father, the king, that
young Gautama would forsake the throne and the royal life, would
renounce the world and lead the life of a wandering ascetic on the
day when he would see four things:

11 Some say 800 B.C. Some go as far in the other direction as 200 B.C. When we
give names, dates and other historical data, let it be remembered that we do not do
so on the authority o f any text which can survive historical criticism. There is no
such text in Buddhism. All our dates, etc., therefore, can amount to nothing more
than plausible guesswork.
12 Some Muslim scholars have attempted to identify Kapil with Dhul Kifl o f the
Quran, f being used in Kifl since there is no p in Arabic. Allah knows best.

6
 an old man,

a sick man,

a diseased man

a dead man.
The king built a special palace to which young Gautama
was confined. Therein he was provided with all the worldly pleas
ures he could possibly desire. There were dancing and singing
girls, games, good food, etc. But he was forbidden to leave the
palace. When he had come o f age he was married to the beautiful
Yasoddhra who had caught his eye from among the host of belles
the king had presented to the reluctant, pensive youth. As was
customary at that time, the Prince had to engage in open competi
tion in the manly sports to prove his mettle and win his spurs
before he could win the hand of the fair maid. Legend has it that
he gave a more than creditable account of him self3

When Gautama was 29 years of age he saw, on the same

day, an old man, a sick man, a diseased man and a dead man. The
impact of the dark side of life was so great on him that on that
very night he renounced the world and left his wife and baby-son
secretly, donning the robes o f the wandering ascetic. It is said that
he spent some six years in his quest for truth, - a quest which was
bom when he came face to face with the fact of suffering.

He studied the sacred lore of the Hindus and practiced the

Hindu disciplines and exercises but found no answer to the burn
ing problems of his life. Similarly he passed through Jainism. He
practiced rigorous fasting and went through a period of extreme
self-mortification (which he found to be damaging). Still he at
tained no enlightenment. He finally gave up his rigorous exercises

13Arnold, Sir Edwin: The Light o f Asia. The most beautiful account o f the life o f
Buddha 1 have read!

7
(and in the process lost the five disciples who had clung to him)
and returned to his common sense to take up his begging bowl and
resume the life of the wandering mendicant. Six years of search,
along the two most widely recognized roads to salvation known to
India, philosophic meditation and bodily asceticism, had yielded
no results.14

In refusing to continue his self-mortification, Gautama had

realized that whatever truth a man may reach is reached best by a
nourished brain in a healthy body. Such a conception was abso
lutely foreign to the ideas of the land and age.15

Gautama was now thrown back on his own resources and it

was not long before he sighted his goal as he sat rapt in meditation
under a Bodhi tree. He passed through different stages of medita
tion until finally he attained enlightenment and saw, with the spir
itual eye, the answers to all the problems which were consuming
his soul. Thus he came to be known as Gautama, the Buddha (or
the enlightened one).

After this he spent the next forty-five years of his life in

preaching to mankind the truths he had discovered. His first ser
mon was delivered at Samath (a city close to Banaras in India which
the author visited in 1971). Here he expounded the famous four
noble tru th s that all is suffering (dukht), it has a cause (tanha),
this cause can be removed, and there is a method by which it can
be removed. This method consists in following the noble eight
fold path of right views, right resolve, right speech, right conduct,
right livelihood, right endeavour, right thinking and right
meditation.

Gautama Buddha spent the rest of his life in ministering to

14 Brelvi, Mahmud: Islam and its Contemporary Faiths, p.68. His chapter on Bud
dhism is short and terse, but suffers from a complete absence o f documentation.
15 Wells, H.G.: Outline o f History, p.390.

8
the moral needs of mankind, travelling from city to city bare-footed,
clean-headed, and with nothing more than his saffron robe, his
walking stick, and his begging bowl. He died in 480 B.C. at the
age of eighty.

9
 Chapter Three

BACKGROUND OF GAUTAMAS MISSION

Buddhism is essentially a revolt against the falsehoods, evils

and tyrannies o f the Hinduism o f the 5th century B.C. Hindu writ
ers seem very eager to overlook this point. It is quite possible that
Hinduism, in one or more of its many strains, emerged in history
as authentic religion founded on revealed truth. It must certainly
have been monotheistic. Over a period of time that truth was cor
rupted with polytheism and idolatry. The corruption of truth led,
in turn, to the corruption of values.

Man is essentially a moral being, and the primary objective

o f religion is to build the character and moral personality o f the
individual, and through the individual, mankind at large. Hindu
ism had completely lost sight o f this objective and had replaced
character building with idol-worship and ritualism as ends-in-them-
selves. Secondly, Hinduism had robbed the individual of his free
dom and individuality (except where he was a Brahman) and had
chained him in the rigid fetters o f the caste-system, - the institution
which forms, and must form, the corner-stone of that system of
dominance which is the Hindu social order.

Buddha arose to set the perspective aright. It was because

of this background that he confined his teachings to ethics and
refused to discuss metaphysics (with which India was already over
saturated). Only thus can we possibly understand and explain his
silence about the problem of the existence or non-existence of God.
It may be, also, that because India was (and still is) seeped in idol-
worship and in the worship of thousands of gods and goddesses,
10
the reversion from such rank polytheism, naked anthropomorphism
and animistic idolatry16to a monotheism might have been too sud
den a step. Perhaps it was necessary that the slate be first wiped
clean. Hence Buddha remained silent on the question o f God. (He
did not deny the existence of God!). Similarly he remained silent
in respect of a transcendental dimension of existence (i.e., the un
seen world) for, on being questioned as to what would be the life
of the Buddhist who attained Nirvana (salvation), he responded
with the analogy of a flame. He asked: what becomes of a flame
after it is extinguished?

The revolt against Hinduism is enshrined in the movement

of the religious consciousness from a stagnant and slavish depend
ence in Hinduism, to a free and dynamic self-dependence in Bud
dhism. In fact Buddhas parting words to his disciples before he
died were:

All component things are subject to decay. Work out your

own salvation with diligence!

This revolt also found expression in Buddhas scathing de

nunciation of ritualism and sacrifice. Similarly he declared the
Vedas and Vedic teachings to be quite useless!

The second point to note is that Buddha, like Muhammad

(s) and Jesus (s) set the individual free. Anyone can attain salva
tion. Salvation is not restricted to the priestly caste of Brahmans
who monopolized the reading of the sacred writings and who poured
molten lead into the ears of every Sudra who dared overhear their
reading! Buddha gave the Brahmans a slap in the face, which found
a resounding echo in the harsh and bitter condemnation of the Jew

16 It is interesting to note that despite the passage o f over 2,500 years and the
strong impact o f Islam, polytheism and idol-worship still persist in India to this
day. Indeed the very virulence with which ancient idolatry persists in India indi
cates that it is destined to play a final inglorious role in this the last stage o f
history.

11
ish Rabbis, Scribes and the Pharisees by Jesus (s) and Muhammad
(s). Buddha, in fact, did away with the inhuman caste-system and
opened the doors of religion to the lowest of the low.

Hinduism exerted two influences on Buddha, one negative,

the other positive. We have discussed the former. Let us now
briefly discuss the latter. The positive influence of Hinduism on
Buddha was such that in its basic characteristics it was and is
virtually an offshoot of Hinduism.17

The uniquely Hindu doctrines of Karma and Awa Gawan

(reincarnation and transmigration of souls) which form the foun
dation o f the Hindu philosophy o f religion, were accepted by Bud
dha and absorbed into Buddhism (though in a modified form). We
shall discuss these doctrines in the fifth Chapter, which deals with
Buddhist philosophy.

17 Thus writes Dr. F. R. Ansari in his powerful and terse booklet: Which Reli
gion?, p. 9.

12
 Chapter Four

THE BASIC TEACHINGS

OF GAUTAMA BUDDHA

Basically, and originally, Gautama Buddha was emphatically

an ethical thinker. His teachings were, in the main, ethical. It is
these we shall discuss here.

Suffering

Just as all Christian theology revolves around the fig

ment o f sin18so too does all Buddhist theology revolves around
the fact o f suffering' . After spending some six years in his
quest for truth, Buddha arrived at the conclusion that all is
suffering! (sarvan dukham). Since this is the corner-stone on
which the entire structure o f Buddhism is founded, we may be
excused for dwelling on it for a while.

We propose to investigate this statement from two different

standpoints, the first: a critical analysis, the second: a sympathetic
understanding.

Now suffering is, and must always be, associated with

feeling and emotion. We shall hardly be disposed to name
as suffering that which is not accompanied by some feeling

18 According to Islam, sin is an acquisition and not a heritage . The Prophet o f

Islam declared that every child is bom free from sin, that is, with a clean and pure
moral constitution. It is only a perverted, intellectually dishonest, and morally
under-developed personality which can conceive o f a baby as having a basically
sinful constitution inherited from the original sin o f Adam!!

13
o f pain or em otion o f grief. In this sense of the word, it is
clearly an over-statement to say that all is suffering. We all
experience the feeling o f pleasure and the emotion o f joy
and happiness. Indeed, no one can deny having experienced
joy and happiness. It may not have been in the measure, or for
as long as one would have liked. But while it is there it is real,
and when it is gone it is treasured in memories, not as some
thing which was unreal, but rather as something which was as
real as the suffering which may have proceeded or followed it.
We shall have to rewrite all our psychology textbooks if we wish
to deny the feeling of pleasure and the emotion of happiness.

But it may be that Buddha did not use the word dukht in this
sense, the psychological sense. Perhaps he meant it as an intellec
tual assessment o f the life of the world as a whole. Now, without
a metaphysics to support him, Buddha would face difficulty to
project this, his fundamental teaching, as anything more than his
own personal viewpoint. For, all is suffering would be a univer
sal judgement and, as such, it presupposes a standpoint, a criterion,
and a world-view. It rests on a statement of the meaning, purpose
and destiny of, not only human life, but all life. Is the world a
moral order (or immoral, or amoral)? Consciously or unconsciously,
all is suffering must rest on a metaphysics. It is Buddhas short
coming that he did not work out metaphysics. Without this meta
physics his judgement cannot but be relative. We all have our dif
ferent outlooks towards life and our different goals in life. Joy and
suffering, pleasure and pain would be relative to our individual
readings o f the world and our individual goals in life.

Thus even with this interpretation of dukht, all is suffering

is indefensible.

Let us now proceed to a sympathetic understanding of Buddhas

statement. We have not been able to find any literature on this subject,
i.e., the psychological background of the fundamental statement
of Buddhism, and our own knowledge of psychology is limited.
14
 It is an undeniable fact that different people view the same
world differently. The identical environment may be heaven in the
estimation of one person and hell in the view of another.

Now, the facts are as follows: Buddhas moral consciousness

was highly developed, and the more highly-developed and refined
the moral personality, the more is the pain and suffering that it has to
endure, and the more sensitive must it be to the pain and suffering of
others. It was, perhaps, Buddhas sensitivity to the moral degrada
tion of mankind, the evils present on earth, the ephemeral nature of
the mundane joys to which men cling, and the inevitability of decay
and death, that led him on the sweeping statement: all is suffering.

Secondly, all Buddhists are agreed that Buddhas develop

ment from infancy through childhood and adolescence to adult
hood (to the age of 29 to be precise), was abnormal. In fact, he is
the only person, perhaps in the whole history of mankind, who was
deliberately kept away from the fact o f suffering until he was 29
years of age. As we have previously noted 19 he was kept away
from the view of old age, sickness, disease and death. And, to
make matters worse, this abnormality was supplemented with an
other abnormality. He was fed up to his throat, so to say, with the
joys of this world, dancing and singing girls, good food and drink,
luxurious clothes, joyful sports, and as pleasant and beautiful an
abode and environment as the royal purse could afford. He was, in
fact, confined in a cage of happiness!

At the age of 29 he came into contact with the real world,

with the fact of suffering which he never knew before, and, what is
just as important, with the ephemeral nature o f the joys and happi
ness which he, up till then, believed to be real and permanent. It
was only natural that this should give rise to an abnormal impact
o f the reality ofsuffering and unreality o f happiness on the mind of
the disillusioned young man. We believe this to be the fundamen

19 See pages 6-7

15
tal psychological explanation fo r the over-emphasis on suffering
on which Buddha founded his religion!

All is suffering constitutes the first of the famous four

noble tru th s, which form, with the noble eight-fold p ath, the
very essence of Buddhism.

Desire

In analysing suffering, Buddha found that it had a cause,

and that was desire (tanha). In its technical sense Buddha
used tanha to stand for the desire and craving for life. This is
the second o f the four noble truths.

Now, if tanha is taken in its general sense to mean desire

as such, it is obvious that all desires do not lead to suffering. It is
only wrong desires or desires in a wrong measure, which lead to
suffering. The Q uran, for example, asks mankind to restrain
the desires o f the baser self20- not all desires. It is the desire of
the baser self which, as a matter o f fact, really leads to suffering.

As we noticed earlier, tanha has a technical sense, the

desire and craving for life. We shall examine it critically when
we discuss the theory o f dependent origination in the chapter
on Buddhist Philosophy.

The third o f the noble truths states that, not only has suf
fering a cause, tanha, but this cause can be removed, and ought
to be removed. If the cause is present, the effect will arise! Do
away with the cause, the effect will vanish! But the total nega
tion o f desire is just not possible, for, in the words of Dr. Ansari,
it turns human beings into stones. It is only stones who may be
conceived to have no desires. As regards human beings, desire

20 Ref: .JJjH g s % and follow not ( i.e., restrain the ego from) lower desires.
(Quran: 38:26).

16
is the first and forem ost condition o f their activity and the most
vital foundation o f their progress. Dr. Ansari concludes by de
claring that: In the domain o f moral philosophy, the doctrine
o f the total negation o f all desire is a hopeless doctrine.21

Finally, Buddha expounds the m ethod through which

tanha can be eliminated. This method is the observance o f the
Noble Eight-Fold P ath (ariya atthangika magga). This path
is the fourth o f the four noble tr u th s o f Buddhism.

The Noble Eight-Fold Path

The first thing one has to do is to understand and accept

the four noble tru th s . This is called Right Views.

After we have accepted the fo u r noble tr u th s , we

should resolve to transform our life in the light o f their teach
ings. Renunciation of the world takes precedence. This con
stitutes right resolve or aspiration.

Next comes the practical and concrete manifestation o f

this effort to transform ourselves. The first step is that we must
learn to guard our tongue from slander, back-biting, idle gos
sip, falsehoods, etc. This is the stage called right speech.

When taken even further, this involves guarding our en

tire behaviour, not just speech. We have now reached the stage
of over-all conduct. Buddha insists that it must be checked,
moulded and sustained as right conduct.

But all this effort will go to waste if we pursue a wrong

means of livelihood. Our means o f sustenance must not be il
legal or immoral. They must be good and pure and permissi
ble. This constitutes right livelihood.

21 Ansari, Op. cit., p. 12

17
 Next comes right endeavour. No matter how high we
may rise in our moral progress as moral agents, the fact re
mains that we are always subject to attacks (on our moral con
stitution) both from within and from without. The wrong hab
its and the effects o f evil deeds o f our past life lie submerged in
the subconscious or the unconscious and, if we are to be
lieve Freud, they can and do play an important role in motivat
ing our conscious behaviour. We must always be on guard to
inhibit them if they should threaten our moral personality.

Secondly, the evils and temptations o f the outside world

are always knocking at our door, and sometimes if we should
even innocently open our door, temptation would walk right in
and close the door behind him/her.

Right endeavour is really a defense mechanism of pre

paredness to fight these challenges to our moral integrity, both
from within and without, so that the fruits achieved till then in
our moral struggle may not go waste and be lost.

Right thinking is really right remembering. We must

never allow ourselves to forget the truths we have already learnt.
Rather, we must be constantly revolving them in the mind so
that we may derive a sustained benefit from those truths.

One such truth, according to Buddhism, is the filthiness

o f the human body, which is nothing more than a piece of skin
stretched over such impurities as:

hairs o f the head, hairs o f the body, nails, teeth, skin,

muscles, sinews, bones, marrow, kidneys, heart, liver,
sero u s m em b ra n es, spleen, lungs, in testin es,
mesentery, stomach, excrement, brain, bile, digestive
juices, pus, blood, grease, fat, tears, sweat, spittle, snot,
flu id o f the joints, urine.

18
 A frame o f mind developed on such thoughts can act as
a powerful defense-mechanism for meeting all the wiles that
Jezebel22 and her consorts may plan for the innocent celibate.

Finally we come to the last stage o f right meditation or right

concentration.

Right concentration, through four stages, is the last step in the path
that leads to the goal - Nirvana.

(i) The first stage o f concentration is on reasoning and

investigation regarding the truths. This gives rise to the joy
of pure thinking.

(ii) The second stage o f concentration is unruffled

mediation, free from reasoning, etc. There is, then, a joy of
tranquillity.

(iii) The third stage o f concentration is detachment from even

the joy of tranquillity. But though there may be indifference
to the joy of concentration, still a feeling of bodily ease
persists.

(iv) The fourth stage o f concentration is detachment from

this bodily ease as well. The state that is attained thereafter
is that o f perfect equanimity and indifference. This,
according to Chatterjee and Datta, is the state o f nii~vana, or
perfect wisdom. 23

Nirvana

Now the very important question arises: what is nirvanal It

is very important that we should have a clear understanding of

22 Symbolising a provocative, devilish woman.

23 Vide: Chatteijee and Datta: An Introduction to Indian Philosophy.

19
nirvana, for it constitutes the goal of life in Buddhism, and unless
one knows exactly what is his goal in life one can hardly be ex
pected to pursue a sustained and integrated effort to achieve that
goal.

At the very outset it may be said that no one can say with
certainty as to what is nirvana! There are a number of conflicting
interpretations. According to Poussin it is a happy state, pure anni
hilation, an inconceivable existence, or a changeless state.24
Dasgupta says it is a hopeless task to explain Nibbana (nirvana)
in terms o f worldly experience, and there is no way in which we
can better indicate it than by saying that it is a cessation o f all
sorrow.25

Buddhist thought has found this problem to be particularly

knotty. A distinction was drawn between two phases of nirvana,
i.e., nirvana with substrate and nirvana without substrate. The
saint who has attained nirvana lives on with a substrate, that is, the
physical and mental state, which constitutes him as an individual.
It is when the saint dies that the real problem arises. Does he or
does he not survive death? Buddha refused to answer this ques
tion. This is important, for it implies that neither personal nor im
personal immortality has any place in Buddhist theology, and on
the question of immortality Buddhism must leave a blank. Of
course, we are free to speculate what is the answer to the unan
swered question. But that speculation cannot be elevated to the
rank of a doctrine.

Our own reading is as follows: it cannot be disputed that

Buddha himself must be believed to have attained what he calls
nirvana, and that having already attained nirvana he was asked:
What is nirvanaT His answer concerning the extinguishing of
the flame can be interpreted to mean that the saint ceases to exist in

24 Dasgupta:History o f Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1, p. 108.

25 Ibid., p. 109

20
the psychological sense. The individual I, or the empirical I, is
psychologically annihilated or, rather, submerged. What remains
is transcendental and, being so, is outside the scope of Buddhist
teachings. Nirvana, then, would be that state which, when achieved,
assumes the psychological conclusion o f death to self and life in
an unknown which is beyond self. If this interpretation is correct,
it displays a remarkable similarity to the Quranic ideal where the
individual self, instead of being destroyed, instead of a passive
passing away, is said to be bought26 by Allah. Here, as in Bud
dhism, it would be a psychological sale (and a psychological state)
and not extinction.

So much then for our observations, but the fact remains that
the Buddhist has only two avenues open to him, both of which are
unsatisfactory. Either he conceives of the state of nirvana (after
death) to be the extinction of the self, - the passage to non-exist-
ence, or he frankly and honestly admits that he knows not what is
nirvana. On both these counts nirvana cannot function as the su
preme goal in life. If it be the passage to extinction then the goal of
life would be to put an end to life. Such would constitute a thor
oughly frightening proposition for those who care for human
happiness. But it could be used as an admirably effective tool in
the hands of the despotic dictator, the exploiting industrialist and
landlord, and the imperialists who seek to perpetuate their control
over the nice, unconcerned Buddhists. And, on the other hand, if
nirvana is unknowable then it cannot function at all as the goal of
life.

We shall see later how the Buddhists escaped this predica

ment by turning Buddhism upside down.27

26 ... ill Ijj Surely Allah hath purchased o f the believers

their persons and their goods; for theirs ( in return) is the garden ( o f paradise)......
And who is more faithful to his covenant than Allah? Then rejoice in the bargain
which ye have concluded: That is the achievement supreme. (Quran: 9:111)
27 See Mahayana doctrines in Chapter Seven: The Religious Schools o f Bud
dhism.

21
This constitutes a discussion on the Four Noble Truths, the No
ble Eight-Fold Path and nirvana, which constitute, in fact, the
essence of Buddhism.

22
 Chapter Five

THE BUDDHIST PHILOSOPHY

As Buddhist thought evolved, it found expression in a

wide range o f philosophical positions despite the earnest at
tempt of the Buddha himself to avoid philosophy. This philo
sophical evolution of Buddhist thought came about because of
two factors. Firstly, Buddha him self unwittingly laid down the
foundation of a philosophical system. Secondly, the Buddhists
had to justify Buddhas teachings, defend it from the severe
criticism it had to face in India and outside, and convert other
thinkers to their fa ith .28

In so far as we can categorize the philosophical teach

ings of Buddha, we find them to contain the germs o f the fol
lowing philosophical schools:

Pragmatism

Because Buddhist doctrine is really a doctrine of salva

tion, Buddhists have been intensely practical regarding all mat
ters pertaining to salvation. The value o f a thought, idea or
doctrine is to be judged, in their view, on the scale o f salvation.
If it is relevant to salvation it becomes a truth. If it is irrel
evant to salvation it is thrown out of the w'indow as useless!
This, surely, is paying heed to the parting words o f Buddha:

Work out your own salvation with diligence!

28 Chatteijee and Datta : Op. cit., p. 161

23
 This is pragmatism, wherein the truth of a doctrine lies
in its practical utility.

Dialectical Pragmatism

As with Hegel, Buddhist philosophy says of every en

quiry into truth or reality that it must land the enquirer into
contradictions. Kant also refers to antinomies of pure reason,
but in his philosophy they are limited to four. For Buddhist
philosophy, pure reason, when applied to reality, leads us al
ways to antinomies or contradictions. This, therefore, is the
dialectical nature o f Buddhist philosophy.

A ll views about ultimate reality involve contradictions.

The only thing can be said o f reality is that it is void.29

Psychology

Buddhist effort is directed primarily to gaining control

of the mind, - o f the mental processes, by meditating on them.
In consequence Buddhist thought is impregnated with what we
call psychology. In fact, as Prof. Brelvi says, salvation in Bud
dhism is focused upon redemption by psychological self-cul-
ture'30. The psychology o f nirvana would, we believe, be an
extremely interesting field o f study if the psychological nir
vana we referred to earlier (see pp. 19-20) be accepted as a
plausible interpretation.5'

Buddhist psychology is spotlighted in another sphere in its

analysis of the empirical self. It is outstanding, original and pro
vocative but, in the absence o f a metaphysics, it is incomplete.

29 See Nagarjunas views on p. 41

30 Brelvi, Mahmud: Islam and its Contemporary Faiths, p.70
31 The only book on the subject seems to be that o f Johanssen: The Psychology of
Nirvana.

24
We shall enter into an elaborate discussion on this subject in a
short while.

Positivism

Buddha rose in arms against the over-speculative Hindu

philosophy. Our thoughts should be confined to this world!
That which cannot be positively demonstrated (three-fourth of
Hinduism) cannot be accepted as knowledge. This position is
now known as positivism.

Phenomenalism

Like Kant, Buddha taught that we can have knowledge only

of the phenomena we experience. O f that which lies beyond
phenomena, namely, the noumena, the thing in itself, we can
never know. This is called phenomenalism.

Empiricism

As Buddha demonstrated in his own life, experience is the

source of knowledge.

The Philosophical Implications of B uddhas Ethical Teachings

I-Dependent Origination:

The corner-stone on which the Buddhist philosophy is built is

the theory o f dependent origination. What this theory in fact states
is that no object or event is independent in respect of its mundane
existence, or its appearance. All objects are dependent for their
existence, or appearance, on other objects, - all events on other events.
There is a causal connection running through all things, such that a
is the cause of b, and b is the cause of c, and c is the cause of d, etc.
This theory states that all is contingent and nothing is necessary. It
therefore leaves no room for a self-existent, self-subsistent reality
25
or the God of Islam. It also rules out, on the other hand, nihilism,
or the theory that something existing can be annihilated or can
cease to be. Buddha therefore claims to hold the middle view that
everything that we perceive possesses an existence that is depend
ent on something else, and that thing, in turn, does not perish with
out leaving some cause.31

Buddha applied this philosophical theory to his theology

and traced the cause o f suffering through some twelve intermedi
ary stages or links until he arrived at the last cause, the will to live
or the clinging to life. This is the technical meaning of the term
tanha referred to earlier (p. 15). The cause being the clinging to
life, the effect, he summarily concludes, is life itself, i.e., birth
with its attendant suffering. Chatteijee and Datta consider this to
be very important contribution of Buddhism, namely, the concep
tion that the external phenomenon o f life or the living organism is
due to an internal impetus o f desire, conscious or unconscious.33
This, they assert, anticipates the Bergsonean elan vital.

Both the philosophical theory and, what we call its theo

logical application, are defective. The Scottish philosopher,
David Hume, has shown very conclusively that there is no
necessary relation between cause and effect such that, given
the former, the latter must appear.

Islam makes a different use of the law of causality than Bud

dhism. For Buddhism, the causal law is absolute and universal.
There is, therefore, a necessary relation between cause and effect.
Islam makes causality relative to the spatio-temporal dimension
of existence. This is possible because Islam is founded on
belief in the existence of an unseen world which transcends
causality. Also, even within this spatio-temporal dimension of
existence, Islam accommodates a divine participation both in

32 Chatteijee and Datta: Op. cit., p. 153

33 Ibid. p. 140

26
nature and in human affairs. This does not, however, affect the
practical utility o f the law o f causality in the hands o f the
Muslim scientist!

Secondly, and this is very important, the universal law of

causation, even if affirmed despite the troublesome Scot, can only
be affirmed within the framework of observable phenomena.
Take it beyond or before this and we enter into the region of
guesswork. That which precedes life is beyond our observation.
Hence the theological application of this theory is defective.
The jump from clinging to life, as the cause, to birth as the
effect, just cannot be proved. It cannot be admitted as more
than a mere hypothesis, and a very far-fetched one too! And even as
a hypothesis, it fails to answer the most vital question of the origin
of life. That which can end, must also have begun sometime.

What, in fact, the elan vital of Bergson, or the clinging

to life of Buddha, can explain, is the phenomenon of social
and individual survival in the face of seemingly insurmount
able odds threatening death or extinction. Clinging to life is
an exclusively human phenomenon. It cannot be applied to
nature. Nature functions according to immutable laws. It is in
man alone, through the agency o f the self-directed human will,
that the possibility of clinging to life in the matrix o f suffering
can arise.

II-Karma:

The theory of Karma (which Buddha borrowed from

Hinduism) is the moral application of the theory of dependent
origination. It is an inexorable, immutable law of justice and moral
retribution which states, in as many words, that every single act
has its necessary, inescapable consequence, be it for better or for
worse. As the Dhammapada puts it:

Neither in the sky, nor in the midst o f the sea, nor by entering
27
 into the clefts o f mountains, is there known a place on earth
where, stationing himself, a man can escape from (the
consequences o f) his evil deed. 34

There can be no relaxation to this law, for the slightest

deviation will break down the structure of causal necessity which
runs through the theory of dependent origination.

Together with the theory of karma there is also the theory of

the transmigration o f souls (another Hindu loan to Buddhism).55
Not only does karma govern this life but, also, our previous lives.
In fact, in accordance with the manner in which we lived our
previous life, karma determines in what station or status we shall
be reborn in this life. A good past life may earn for us the reward
of being bom as a human being. Invariably the animal life was the
punishment for those who fell below human qualification. It
becomes difficult in such a society to argue the case for the
prevention of cruelty to animals. Of course, the thought that a
donkey may be your dead uncle may deter you from beating it.
But, by the same token, you cannot object to a man beating a dog
and defending himself on the ground that whoever the dog may be,
that person must have lived a very evil life to have been reborn as
a dog - and so he/it deserves punishment!(35)

The defect o f the theory of karma is that it can easily give

rise to the problem o f despair if faithfully believed in and applied
to the ups and downs of the moral struggle. Despair, in turn, de
stroys the psychological drive or impetus, which must be present
for healthy participation in the moral struggle.

Islam solves the problem of despair with its concept of Allah,

34 Radhakrishnan and Moore: Op. cit. p.302.

35 Strangely enough this doctrine also found its way into Greek thought. Pythago
ras supported it so firmly that the Greeks made fun o f him. Once, they say, he
(Pythagoras) was passing by when a dog was being ill-treated. Stop, he said,
dont hit it! It is the soul o f a friend! I knew it when I heard its voice. (Xenophanes).

28
Who is full Compassion and MercyJ6and Who Himself proclaims
to sinners:

*> ' 0 0 * 'Q ' ' j o c- ' ?s c $ o s

.4JUI j * IjlsJij I l^. Iji^Ll ^ JJI ijiL c 1J J i

. ^ 1 jjkkji > i j i . o /d i a il ji

Say: Oh my Servants who have transgressed against their

souls, despair not o f the Mercy o f Allah: fo r Allah forgives all sins
(i.e., on sincere repentance and amendment o f conduct): fo r He
is Oft-Forgiving, Most Merciful.37

Secondly, Islam provides the psychological impetus for

healthy, vigorous participation in the moral struggle with its sys
tem of rewards and punishments (heaven and hell) which does not
remain confined within the limits of a mathematically-computer-
ized exactitude (as in karma) but which is balanced in favour of
rewards for the good:

*^l "^-9 ajlJ-JL e l> j-oj jJ,Lt iXs =l>

.1*%

He who does good shall have ten times as much to his credit;
and he that does evil shall not be recompensed except according to
his evil.38

The basic defect of Buddhist ethics is that it lacks metaphysics.

It ignores mans emotional nature, his religious consciousness. Man,
in his moral struggle, craves for a source of unfailing hope and

36 In the name of Allah, the Most Compassionate, the Most Merciful. (Quran: 1:2)
37 Abdullah Yusuf Ali: Translation and Commentary o f the Quran, (39:53).
38 Ibid., (6:160).

29
comfort. This can only be provided with the concept of a compas
sionate, loving, forgiving God who is full of grace, and with a system
of rewards and punishments balanced in favour of good. Islam, and
Islam alone, provides both. Buddhism provided neither and has
paid the penalty of being turned upside down by unassuming
Buddhists who today worship even idols and statues of Buddha,
and the gods of Hindudom!

The theory of transmigration o f souls, as found in Buddhism,

is quite puzzling. Transmigration o f souls normally involves the
transference of a soul-substance from one body (which is now dead)
to another body (which has just been bom). But there is no such
transference in the Buddhist theory. The Buddhist conceives of
himself as a pre-existent moral entity, which died in a previous
existence, and transferred its moral status to that conglomeration
of skandas39 which he calls himself. Had moral perfection been
achieved there would have been no transfer. The very fact of his
existence, therefore, casts a slur on the aboriginal purity and status
of his moral personality.

The purpose of his life, and all his lives to come, is to achieve
nirvana or deliverance from the recurring cycle of birth and the
suffering to which birth gives rise. But the theory of transmigra
tion o f souls, with its accompanied theory of karma, falls to the
ground when we ponder over the fact that we have no way o f re
membering the pitfalls o f our previous life because o f which we
have landed ourselves into this life. O f what use is another life if
we can unknowingly repeat all the mistakes of the previous life?
Dr. Ansari has made a devastating attack on this theory. We quote
him at length:

This theory, however, does not stand the test o f reason. In

the first instance, to realise that a person is suffering or benefiting
on any particular occasion in this life because ofaction performed

39 Scanda: an incongruous transitory element.

30
in a previous life on this earth, it is necessary that every human
being should have a complete picture o f his supposed previous life
at all moments and on all occasions. Otherwise, the purpose o f his
re-birth would be defeated. But no such picture exists in the mind
o f any human being. Secondly, i f we pick up an immature seed
from a tree and wish to get a tree from that seed in spite o f its
immaturity, we never paste orpin that seed back on the tree. Rather,
we try to get the best o f the seed by providing better manure and
better conditions. Similar is the case with the human personality.
When a human being leaves this world without achieving that purity
and maturity which is necessary fo r salvation, nature should not
and would not paste and pin him again on the tree o f earthly life
but should provide fo r him conditions whereby his impurity and
immaturity may be remedied and he may be able to proceed on the
path o f evolution. Thirdly, evolution is an established law o f the
human personality as well as o f the universe. But evolution is
always linear and never cyclic. Hence on this score also the theory
o f salvation through transmigration o f souls is unacceptable. 40

The reader would be astonished to learn that Prophet

Muhammad (s) has prophesied the emergence of a last stage of
history when Allah will release Dajjal, the False Messiah, into the
world. Dajjal has a two-fold mission. Firstly, he will deceive the
Jews in the greatest act of deception history will ever witness. In
consequence of being deceived by Dajjal the Jews will establish
the Zionist Movement and embark on an effort to restore the State
of Israel in the holy land o f Palestine. In the process o f doing so
they will commit such betrayal of Truth and such vile acts as would
earn for them the most awesome divine punishment ever visited
upon any people in all history.

But Dajjal will pursue a second mission as well, and that

would be to seek to deceive all the rest o f mankind and lead
them down the road of godlessness, decadence, destitution.

40 Ansari, Op.cit. pp. 8-9

31
anarchy, universal corruption, sexual perversity, etc. One of
his tricks would be to pursuade mankind to worship him instead
o f A lla h . In o rd er to cap tu re the ado ratio n and
worship o f mankind he would create a civilization which would
perform such astonishing feats as would sweep mankind off
their feet. The Prophet (s) prophesied that Dajjal would lay claim
to being able to bring the dead back to life, i.e., the dead would
be reborn. He said:

And with him (i.e., Dajjal) there would be raised shayateen

(i.e., disbelieving jinn) who will assume the appearance o f
the dead, would speak to the living (in the voice o f the dead
and with the memory o f the dead): don 'tyou recognise me?
I am your father! (or) I am your brother! (or) some close
relative.
(Kanz al-Ummal Vol 7, Hadith No 2078).

The Prophet (s) has therefore prophesied the emergence of

an age in which there will astonishing evidence which would
appear to validate the Hindu and Buddhist theory of rebirth and
transmigration o f souls. My view is that the phenomenon of
cloning, which has recently emerged in the world of science (1997),
will eventually result in the emergence of human clones. From
there it would only one more step to the claim of bringing the dead
back to life. I expect this prophesy to be fulfilled by, perhaps, the
year 2020. When it is fulfilled Muslims who are faithful to the
Prophet (s) would not be deceived. They would see through Dajjals
awesome deception. 2020 will sweep all the rest of mankind off
their feet in awesome deception.

III-The Theory o f Universal Flux:

It is a fa c t and a necessary constitution o f Being that all its

constituents are transitory, momentary and fleeting.

(Buddha)
32
 This theory of universal flux (anicca) is also derivable from
the theory of dependent origination. Nothing is real, hence
nothing is permanent. Nothing is necessary. All is contingent,
and hence all is transitory.

All component things are subject to decay. Work out your

own salvation with diligence.
(Buddha)

Things are constantly coming into being and passing away.

They exist only for moments, and for even less than moments.

This theory has its counterpart in the philosophical thinking

of many nations. The Greeks, for example, had it in the famous
Heraclitus who taught the concept of a universal flux to such an
extent that, as he says: We step and do not step into the same river,
for fresh and every fresh waters are constantly pouring into it.41

Iqbal, the great Muslim philosopher-poet, has expressed the

same idea in his beautiful couplet:

Perennial serenity (denoting changelessness) is impossible

in the world o f natural phenomena. (Indeed) permanence
is found only in the fa c t o f change itself.42

The fact of change also finds expression in the Quran, but

in a different perspective from its Buddhist counterpart. Both
Buddhism and Islam affirm the action of change in the order of
natural phenomena. Islam goes even further to characterize Allah
Himself as dynamic to the extent that He constantly reveals
Himself in a new Glory and Splendour.43

41 Gomperz: Greek Thinkers, Vol. 1 , p.66

42 Sukoon mahal hai kudrat kay karkhanay main,
Thabat sirf tagayyur ko hai zamanay main.
43 Every day He (reveals Himself in a new manifestation of) His glory and
splendour. (Quran: 55:29)

33
 The important difference is the use which Buddhism and
Islam make o f the fact of change. The Buddhist application is
negative and potentially destructive, the Islamic application is
positive and constructive. Let us explain.

Buddhism uses the universalflux to turn away the individual

from the life o f this world and to strengthen his commitment to the
other-worldly life. The application is therefore psychological in
nature and negative in intent.

The Islamic application is also psychological when applied

to the goods and pleasures which men cling to in this life, and
when it affirms the more permanent nature of the life here
after:

. / J } \ j li i jjj llJjJI sLpJI LiJl IJ

O my people, surely the life o f the present is nothing but a

temporary convenience: It is the hereafter that is the home oj
permanence, constancy and stability.
(Quran: 40:39)

The Islamic application is psychological in nature but

positive in intent, for it turns man away from the life of this world
when lived as an end-in-itself and converts the life of this world to
a-means-to-an-end. Unlike Buddhism, Islam does not ask that the
believer should turn away from this world so full of change. Islam
asks that the believer should ponder and reflect over the fact of
change in this world. Iqbal has grasped this idea when he says: It
is our reflective contact with the temporal flux o f things which
trains us fo r an intellectual vision o f the non-temporal.44

But the Islamic application is more than psychological. It is

44 Iqbal, Dr. M:Reconstruction o f Religious Thoughts in Islam, p. 14

34
creatively suggestive within the framework of physical science:

J / i 3>J dU'i J jl .jLfJfj JlLtl J&I L li

It is Allah who alternates the night and the day: Verily in

this there is a rule (of guidance) fo r those who are observant (oj
the phenomena within them and around them).
(Qur 'an: 24:44)

The Quran directs us to observe the constitution o f the

heavens and the earth and its basic characteristic of change. This
is beautifully portrayed in the alternation of day and night, of light
and darkness. Such observation cannot but lead the enquiring mind
to the scientific quest of unravelling the secrets of the natural
order, be it through physics or chemistry or biology, or medicine,
etc. The Quran points to the fact that change in the natural order
is not at random. It is meaningful, purposeful and displays a
distinct pattern or design. This quest is such that when it is
undertaken and the secrets of the heavens and the earth b;gin to
reveal themselves, the heart o f the believer bursts forth in the cry:

Us U_jj

Our Lord! Thou hast not created this in vain.

(Q uran: 3:188)

This in turn leads to a specific attitude towards the universe

we inhabit. It is reality to be reckoned with, and, in fact, it is in
reckoning with reality (as in Islam), and not in detachment (as in
Buddhism), that man grows to his true greatness. Iqbal has con
veyed this idea in a very thought-provoking observa.ion:

It is the lot o f man to share in the deeper aspirations o f the

universe around him and to shape his own destiny as well as
35
 that o f the universe, now by adjusting himself to its forces,
now by putting the whole o f his energy to mould itsforces to
his own ends and p u rp o se s.....................I f he does not take
the initiative, i f he does not evolve the inner richness o f his
being, i f he ceases to fe e l the inward push o f advancing life,
then the spirit within him hardens into stone and he is re
duced to the level o f dead matter. But his life and the on
ward march o f his spirit depend on the establishment oj
connections with the reality that confronts him.45

This is Islams constructive use of the fact of change, - the

flux. The Buddhist use was quite different. It is, we believe,
difficult to find any Buddhist contribution in the field of physical
science which has emerged in consequence of the impact of
Buddhism on scientific thought and research. If we are wrong we
would like to corrected. On the other hand there is a glorious legacy
of Muslim contribution to scientific thought over 1400 years which
has emerged in direct consequence of the impact of the Quran.

Islam, with its dynamic approach to reality, succeeded in

building a virile and dynamic culture. Indeed history will not end
before authentic Islam challenges all its rivals in the world and
emerges trium phantly as the dominant force in the world.
Buddhism, with its escapist approach to reality, has constantly
produced passive cultures. The dynamism of Islam will become
increasingly evident as Muslims prepare themselves to challenge
the political imperialism, the economic exploitation and oppression,
and the moral decadence and godlessness of the dominant modem
western civilization.

IVThe Not-Self (Anatta):

In my opinion, the most distinctive contribution of Buddhist

thought to knowledge has been in the field of philosophical

45 Iqbal, Dr. M.:Reconstruction o f Religious Thoughts in Islam, pp.l 1,12

36
psychology. In their analysis of the self, the Buddhists found that
man had no immortal abiding changeless substance in him called
soul or ego. Man, they said, is just a composition of five
skandas46 with a name attached to this composition. These five
skandas are:

the body,

feelings,

perceptions,

impulses and emotions, and

acts o f consciousness.

Further analysis yielded nothing which could not be brought

under the heading of one or the other of the five skandas. The
Buddhists concluded, illogically therefrom, the Buddhist doctrine
that there is no immortal abiding soul, - illogical because all that
they could legitimately conclude was the unreality of the empirical
self!

The theory of the not-self has two applications in Buddhist

philosophy: firstly, in the realm of morals; secondly, in the realm
of psychology.

In projecting the idea o f self or ego as being unreal, a

figment of the imagination and a convenient appellation, Buddha
was apparently making a laudable attempt at cutting at the roots of
the moral evils which arise from excessive love of self. This
constitutes a sympathetic understanding of Buddhas attack on the
ego. The sins of the ego are the most widespread, the most serious
and the most vicious. In fact, the very first sin committed in
creation, according to the Quran, was a sin of the ego. Iblis (Satan)

46 Skanda: an incongruous transitory element.

37
disobeyed the command of Allah to bow before Adam (s) because,
as he argued:

.ijd f jU J o - ijl

7 am better than he. Thou hast created me from fire. And

him Thou hast created from clay.
(Quran, 7:12)

We cannot, therefore, over-emphasize the magnitude of the

sins of the ego. Buddha, without any metaphysics, had to stop at
the destruction of the empirical self. Islam, with its metaphysics,
solves the same problem in an effective and acceptable way. Islam
does not ask that the empirical self be destroyed or annihilated (as
a misreading o f the Sufi doctrine of fana might seem to indicate).
Rather, Islam demands that the individual ego be sublimated in the
service o f the divine Ego (jihadfi sabil Allah).47 Within the sphere
of morality this is achieved through active participation in the moral
struggle resulting in the purification (rather than destruction)
of the self (tazkiyah al-nafs). This purification process begins with
the taming o f the carnal animal self or the self prone-to-evil
(al-nafs al-ammarah). This is the intensely practical stage of the
purification process.
N ext comes the stage o f psychological conditioning
involving the quickening to life of the self-reproaching spirit,
or the self, conscious o f evil it has committed, and regretful of
having done so (al-nafs al-lawwamah).

Finally, we come to the stage of the beatified self or the

self, free-from-evil, and in a state of peace and contentment
(al-nafs al-mutmainnah). Here the sublimation of the finite self

47 Strive and struggle in the way o f Allah with all your possessions and with your
complete selves. (Quran: 9:39)

38
and its submission to the Infinite Self is complete and perfect.
This is the Nirvana of Islam!

The Critique o f the Empirical S e lf

As mentioned earlier, this is Buddhisms unique contribu

tion to philosophical thought, i.e., its analytical investigation of
the concept of T . Nagasena, the monk, silenced Melinda, the
King, when the King challenged the doctrine o f not-self:4S

In exactly the same way, your Majesty, in respect o f me,

Nagasena is but a way o f counting, term, appellation,
convenient designation, mere name fo r the hair o f my
head, hair o f my body . . . brain o f the head, form,
sensation, perception, the predispositions and conscious
ness. But in the absolute sense there is no ego to be found.

The King had flung a very persuasive challenge at the monk:

Bhante Nagasena, i f there is no ego to be found, who is

it, then, furnishes you priests with the priestly requisites,
- robes, food, bedding and medicine, the reliance o f the
sick? Who is it makes use o f the same? Who is it keeps
the precepts? Who is it applies him self to meditation?
Who is it realizes the paths, the fru its and nirvana? Who
is it destroys life? Who is it takes what is not given to
him? Who is it commits immorality? Who is it tells lies?
Who is it drinks intoxicating liquor? Who is it commits
the five crimes which constitute proximate karma?49 In
that case there is no merit; there is no demerit; there is
no one that does, or causes to be done, meritorious or

48 For an interesting dialogue on the subject see Radhakrishnan and Moore, Op.
cit., pp. 280-284
49 i.e., karma that bears fruits in this life.

39
 demeritorious deeds; neither good nor evil deeds can have
any results. Bhante Nagasena, neither is he a murderer
who kills a priest, nor can you priests, Bhante Nagasena,
have any teacher, preceptor or ordination.

Now all that Nagasena (and Buddhism) did was to show

that the empirical self could not be advanced as the answer to the
question. But that does not dispose of the question! The self,
ego, or I, is there as an immediate intuitive experience for each
and every man. For Descartes, in fact, the only thing which was
free from doubt was the self-certitude of the thinking ego (ego
sum, ego existo).50 Secondly, the moral struggle becomes
meaningless, even impossible, if the moral agent is without a
permanent individuality on the basis of which he can be held
responsible for his evils and rewarded for his good deeds.

It is the demand o f morality that there be a real, perma

nent self. It is indeed surprising to find this grave slip in Bud
dhism, taking into consideration the fact that Buddha was
essentially an ethical thinker. No amount o f analysing or
pruning can remove the experience of the I as a permanent
entity having a real existence, in fact, an existence more real
than anything else.

Islam it is, which, hearkening to the insistent universal

experience o f the ego, affirms the reality of the self or ego.
Islam agrees with Buddhism that the empirical self is not real.
But Islam goes on where Buddhism stopped, and in fact had to
stop, to make the transcendental s e lf the real self. In so
doing Islam raises man above and beyond everything in this
spatio-temporal dimension. Islam recognises him as the crown
o f creation , the small divine or, in the langauge o f the Qur an,
the khalifatullah ala al-ard. He is the representative of Allah

50 Meditations II, Descartes Philosophical Writings, Selected and Translated by

N.K. Smith.

40
on earth who is to pursue the mission entrusted to him by
Allah, the mission of struggle for realizing the supremacy of
Truth, al-haq, over all its rivals.

Later Buddhism (Mahayana) was, as we shall see later, forced

to take the step of recognizing the reality o f a transcendental
dimension o f existence. But Mahayana took the step only
half-way. The little individual ego was recognized as false or
unreal, but in its place Mahayana posited the existence o f a
universal transcendental self (which is the self of all beings),
thus depriving the Mahayanist of his personal identity. Islam, it is,
which affirms the individual transcendental self and makes it fully
personal, when it establishes the doctrine of personal immortality.

41
 Chapter Six

THE PHILOSO PHICA L SCHOOLS OF BUDDHISM

Buddhist philosophical thought is centered around two

major problems:

Is there any Reality?

Can it be known?

The first problem is metaphysical, or, to be more precise,

ontological. And the second problem is epistemological. As a
m atter o f fact these are really the basic problem s o f all
philosophical thought through the ages.

In answer to these two questions, about thirty different

philosophical schools arose in Buddhism. We shall briefly
discuss here the better-known major schools only.

To the metaphysical question Is there any reality, men

tal or non-mental?, three different replies have been given:-

i. The madhyamika hold that there is no reality -

mental or non-mental; all is void (sunya).

ii. The yogacara hold that only the mental is real; the
material world is devoid of reality.

iii. The realists hold that both the mental and the non
mental are real.
42
 In respect of the epistemological question Can reality be
known? the realists are divided into two groups:

iii-a sautrantika, or indirect realists, who hold that external

objects are not perceived directly, but are known by inference.

iii-b vaibhashika, or direct realists, who hold that the exter

nal world is perceived directly.

The Madhyamika School o f Nihilism or Relativism

There is a very important phrase in the Q uran which Mus

lims repeat very often. It reads:

. juLJI &\
Allah is He on Whom all depend, but Who is H imself inde
pendent; or: Allah is the only necessary being, all else is contin
gent; or: Allah alone exists, all else subsist.
(Q uran: 112:2)

By virtue of this verse, the Muslim thinkers concluded that

the world is neither Real, because only Allah is Real, nor is it
Unreal, because it subsists. The world, rather, is relatively Real. It
partakes of Reality. It subsists as real by the Grace of the Real.

In much the same m anner the M adhyam ika school

philosophized that the phenomenal world is neither Real nor Un
real. Neither is mind real, nor is matter real. They based their
arguments on two main teachings o f Buddha, i.e., the theory of
dependent origination and the theory of the universal flux.

That which is real must be permanent, unchanging. That

which is subject to change, to decay, - which comes into being
and passes away, cannot be real. But all the world is in a
43
constant flux. The universal flux characterizes both the mental
and non-mental. Therefore the world cannot be real.

Again, according to the theory of dependent origination,

there is a universal law o f causation operating in this world
such that every effect is dependent on some cause which
precedes it. Now that which is dependent for its existence on
something other than itself, - that which is not self-existent and
independent, cannot be real. Hence the external phenomena
are not real.

At the same time the external world cannot be called

unreal because an unreal thing like a bachelor-husband can
never come into existence

The chief exponent o f this Madhyamika philosophy,

Nagaijuna, summed up the case very neatly in the pert expression,
all is void (sunya). Hence the school came to be known as
nihilism. This school may also be called relativism, because of
the relative nature o f the existence of all things.

But Nagarjuna did not remain confined within the boun

daries o f original Buddhism. He went on to give a two-level
doctrine o f truth, very much like Kants phenomena-noumena,
and Bradleys appearance-reality. Beyond the unreality of
the phenomenal world there is a transcendental dimension of
existence which cannot be described (by virtue of the fact that
it transcends experience). It is this transcendental reality which
is real and abiding.

This formed part o f the philosophical foundations of the

Mahayana sect o f Buddhism when they ventured to interpret
nirvana, not as state, or an ethical ideal, but as a metaphysical

51 This is the dialectical nature o f Buddhist thought through which all judgments
about reality are shown to be contradictory. See p. 19

44
entity in a transcendental dim ension o f existence. The
Mahayana went on to formulate the doctrine which identified
Buddha himself with this transcendental reality, thus opening
the way for the worship o f Buddha as God. This was some
thing undreamt of in early Buddhism, and my Buddhist readers
may wish to pause to reflect over this for quite a while.52

The Yogacara School o f Subjective Idealism

The Yogacara school, agreeing with Nagarjuna that all

matter was unreal, differed with him concerning the reality of
the mind. According to them if the mind was also unreal then
there would be no means o f affirming even the truth o f the
Madhyamika teachings! For them, mind alone is real.

Yogacara then went on to use acute philosophical arguments

to disprove the real existence o f external objects. Objects must
be either atomic (partless) or composite (composed o f parts).
But if atomic, they will be too small to be seen, and if composite,
they cannot be seen as a whole, - in which manner they are in
fact seen. (Cf. Gestalt school o f psychology).

Another difficulty which arises, if the reality o f external

objects is to be affirmed, is that the consciousness o f the object
cannot arise before the object has come into existence. Neither
can it arise afterwards, because the object, being momentary,
vanishes as soon as it arises. It also cannot arise simultaneously
with consciousness, being the cause o f consciousness, after it
has ceased to exist. For, in that case, the object, being in the
past, there cannot be any immediate knowledge o f it. There
fore, if objects arc regarded as p o ssessin g an existence
independent of the mind, knowledge o f present objects (which
we must admit always to have) remains unexplained.

52 It will o f considerable interest to my Buddhist readers to note that for some 500
years after his death, there were no statues o f Buddha.

45
 Mind, therefore, is all that exists. All else depends on
the mind for its existence. This is called subjective idealism
and it found expression in western philosophy in the views of
Bishop Berkeley {esse est percipi).

There are a number o f serious objections to the Yogacara

philosophy. If an object depends for its existence solely on the
mind, how is it that the mind cannot create, at will, any object
at any time? How do we explain the fact that objects do not
change, appear, or disappear at the will of the perceiver? To
answer these objections, the Yogacara school gave a far-fetched
theory o f the mind. Mind they say, is not a single, unchanging
entity. It is a storehouse o f impressions (presumably o f past
experience). Out o f this storehouse the impressions arise, now
from here, now from there, to form a veritable stream of
consciousness. The intriguing question is, how did this storing
take place at the beginning; and secondly, how is it that every
single store-house is unique and different from every other
store-house, and yet, if a mango is shown to a class of children
they will all perceive it as a mango? And if it a Pakistani mango
(the best in the world) they would all want a bite of it? (My
readers in South East Asia would want to replace the mango
with a sultan durian).

The Yogacara is more concerned with developing the moral

side o f this mind-theory. If mind is something becoming, some
thing flexible and changing, then mind can be trained and
developed on the right lines to ward off the arising of undesir
able mental states and develop the ideal state of nirvana.

But this is opening the doors to the control of the mental

stream. If it is possible to control this stream and direct it to
productive channels conducive to the attainment of nirvana,
then the original objection has to be met. How it is that the
mind cannot create, at will, any object at any time (best of all,
a sultan durian in the month o f July)?
46
 From the Quranic point of view the Yogacara philosophy
is false and dangerous. Both mind and matter possess degrees of
reality. True, mind is more real than matter, more real and funda
mental than body. Mind is a part of personality, which was
bestowed to man as the famous amanah (trust).53 And, it is man,
the fully personal being, to whom the heavens and the earth are
subjected.5'' Hence mind possesses a more real existence than
matter. But matter also possesses a degree of real existence, for
Allah created the heavens and the earth with Truth (al-haq).
Yogacara destroys this balance, gives mind the status o f being
the only reality, and makes o f the external world a figm ent o f
our imagination, a dream, maya , possessing no reality at all.

As a philosophical theory this can float around harmlessly

in the philosophy classroom. But when this philosophical theory
finds expression in life, in religion, it must, without fail, lead
to the establishment of the institution o f monasticism, the
severance of worldly ties and the adoption of that peculiar sex
philosophy which leads to celibacy. This, as we intend to show
later, brings in its wake such perversions, sufferings, compli
cations, and misery that we consider it the duty o f sociologists,
psychologists, philosophers, theologians and others, apart from
the world Muslim community, to strike out as forcefully as
possible against the anti-world philosophy and the institutions
of monasticism and celibacy to which it gives rise. The Roman
Catholic church has probably had to face enough lawsuits filed
against it because of grave sexual misbehavior on the part of
celibate priests that it would now be prepared to see the light of
Truth.

53 Verily we proposed to the heavens, to the earth and to the mountains to receive
the trust ( o f personality), but they refused the burden and they feared to receive
it. Man alone undertook to bear it. (Quran: 33:72)
54 Do you not see that Allah has subjected to your (use) all things in the heavens
and on earth. (Quran: 31: 20)

47
The Sautrantika School o f Realism

The Sautrantika believe in the reality, not only o f the

mind, but also o f external objects. They point out that without
the supposition o f some external objects, it is not possible to
explain even the illusionary appearance of external objects.

Their argument for recognizing the reality of external

objects is directed primarily to the refutation of the arguments
of the idealists.

If one never perceived anywhere, any external object, he

cannot say, as the idealists do, that through illusion consciousness
appears like an external object. The phrase like an external
object is a meaningless as Tike the son o f a barren woman,
because an external object is recognized by the idealists to be
wholly unreal and never perceived.

Again, the idealists argue from the simultaneousness of

consciousness and object to their identity. But this argument is
defective. The object and the mind are clearly independent of each
other, for if they were identical, then when I perceive a horse (or a
rambutan), I should say I am the horse (or rambutan).

Finally, if there were no external objects, the distinction

between the consciousness of a pot and the consciousness of a
watch could not be explained, because consciousness, watch
and pot would all be identical. Hence we must admit the existence
of external objects.

Sautrantika as Indirect Realism or Representationism:

In respect of the question: can reality be known? the Realists

are divided into two schools. Sautrantika made an analysis of
perception and concluded that it is not just a simple matter of mind
and object. There are, in fact, four factors involved in an aet of
48
perception. Chatteijee and Datta have listed them thus:

There must be the object to impart its form to conscious

ness, there must be the conscious mind (or the state o f the
mind at the just previous moment) to cause the conscious
ness o f the form, there must be the sense to determine the
kind o f consciousness, that is, whether the consciousness o f
that object would be visual, tactual or o f any other kind.
Lastly, there must be some favourable auxiliary condition,
such as light, convenient position, perceptible magnitude,
etc. All these combined together to bring about the percep
tion o f the object.35

On the basis o f this analysis o f the act o f perception,

Sautrantika concluded that it was impossible to perceive the
object directly. The object reaches the mind indirectly, first
generating in the mind the form (of the object). It is this copy or
representation of the object in its own consciousness which the
mind immediately knows. But from this it can infer the object
without which the copy would not arise.

In short, Sautrantika argues that perceptions are reflections

or copies of external objects which can only be known to exist by
inference. This is indirect realism.

The Vaibhashika School o f Direct Realism

The Vaibhashika, like the Sautrantika, affirmed the reality of

both mind and matter. This metaphysical agreement, however, did
not extend to epistemology. Taking strong objection to the indirect
realism of Sautrantika, Vaibhashika affirmed the possibility of
perceiving the object directly. This is direct realism. According to
them inference from impressions can only be possible through a
prior perception of the object. Only he who has seen fire and smoke

55 Chatteijee and Datta: Op. cit. p. 174

49
conjoined can infer fire from smoke. But, according to Sautrantika,
we have never perceived any objects directly. If this is so, inference
is not possible. He, who has never seen a mango, can never infer
a mango from an impression in the mind, of a mango!

50
 Chapter Seven

THE RELIGIOUS SCHOOLS OF BUDDHISM

It is very clear from a study o f the original teachings of

Gautama Buddha (which we have attempted to analyse in this
book) that he encouraged the other-worldly life, or the life of
detachment from the affairs o f this world. In freeing the
individual from the Hindu caste system and the religious
monopoly o f Brahmans, he went to the other extreme to make
every man an island unto him self. For example, in his last
words, which he spoke to his chief disciple, Ananda, he said:

Be lamps unto yourselves, be ye refuge to yourselves, betake

your selves to no external refuge. Hold fa st to the truth (the
dhamma or the law). Look not fo r refuge to anyone except
yourselves.

Decay is inherent in all component things. Work out your

own salvation with diligence.56

The most natural interpretation of the Buddhaic dispensa

tion was that it was a religion o f self-help.

Each man is the master of his own destiny - for better or for
worse. There are no intermediaries between man and deliverance
(like the Brahman priestly class of Hinduism, the Rabbis of Judaism,
and the Padres of Christendom). True enough, this gave rise to a
religious response which is free, dynamic, spontaneous, creative

56Maha-Parinibbana Sutta, vi. 1.11. Quoted from Chatteijee and Datta: Op.cit. p. 177

51
and original. But, on the other hand, it also amounted to each man
unto himself, and as is well known, in a dispensation of each
man unto him self, the devil easily takes the hindmost!

This was the original, accepted interpretation of the Bud

dhas teachings. The Buddhist accepted the four noble truths
and walked along the noble eight-fold path until nirvana was
reached. Nirvana was a state o f contemplative quietude out of
which the saint would never emerge to render any form of
assistance to his fellowmen struggling to achieve salvation. For
the Buddhist who was struggling to achieve nirvana, the doors
o f this world were closed.

But, if the doors of this dimension (the spatio-temporal) are

closed, perhaps there is another dimension o f existence which
transcends this, and whose doors are open.

Here, again, the struggling Buddhist is let down. He faces closed

doors. Buddha consistently refused to affirm or deny the existence of
a transcendental dimension of existence with transcendental verities
like God and soul and an abiding reality.

The Hinayana sect of Buddhism, in sticking to original

teachings of Buddha, refused to open the doors of either of the two
worlds.

The Mahayana sect o f Buddhism, flying in the face of

the original teachings o f Buddha, opened both the doors. In
the discussion that follows we shall point out the doctrinal
grounds and trace out the historical and psychological reasons
for this about-face on the part o f the Mahayana.

For a religious way of life to be true (i.e., the pragmatic test

of truth), it must be universally applicable. Theoretically, at least,
it must be possible for all of mankind to adopt it. If all of mankind
cannot adopt it, as is the case with Hinayana Buddhism, it can
52
either be false, or partially true, but cannot be true in the complete
sense of the word.

Now, the life of Buddha bears testimony to the fact that he

conceived of his teachings as universally applicable. He himself,
for forty-five years, traveled hundreds (maybe thousands) of miles
from city to city reaching out the message of Buddhism as far as he
could. Also, he sent his emissaries as missionaries of Buddhism to
different peoples.

Buddhism may claim today to be a world-religion. But

Buddhism, as Buddha taught it, could never have succeeded in be
coming a world-religion. The Mahayana school of Buddhism there
fore changed the Buddhist doctrines with the noble objective of
making them universally applicable. Buddhism flourished, but at
the expense o f Buddha!

This World

Firstly, then, we should consider the opening of the doors of

this world, which were locked with the key: work out your own
salvation!

From the time of Buddha himself, the Buddhists have been

divided into two groups - the monks and the laity. After the first
two or three hundred years o f existence of Buddhism, a number of
royal personages became Buddhists. Among them was the famous
Asoka, who spared no pains in reaching out the message of
Buddhism to mankind. The ranks of the laity grew considerably.
But it was not a pleasant proposition, either for them or for the
likes of Asoka, that the sangha (monastic order) was the only road
to salvation. The pressure which the lay-folk exerted was two
pronged. The first, of course, was the legitimate human demand
that they too should be able to strive for salvation (indeed, who
does not want to save his soul?). The second was more forceful.
The monks were dependent for their overall sustenance on the
53
charity of the lay-folk. And the easiest way to a mans heart is through
his stomach (which is the basic reason why Dajjal has been using
riba to reduce all o f non- White humanity to a state o f destitution. He
has also, in turn, utterly corrupted western civilization and its
clients around the world by injecting them with that blind greed
which seduces them into becoming the bloodsuckers o f mankind).
Thus when it came to a matter of bread and butter, the monks
naturally found it expedient to lend a sympathetic ear to the
legitimate demands of the lay-folk and to admit into Buddhism a
participation by the monk in assisting the lay-folk in their moral
and spiritual struggles. (This innovation was at the expense of
Buddhas last command: work out your own salvation!). As if this
was not enough, they went on to hold out the possibility of
salvation even for the layman.

The Mahayana sect, which opened the doors to this world

through their innovations, were quick to defend themselves against
the indignant orthodox Hinanyanists. And what telling arguments
did they use!

One of the pre-requisites for admission into nirvana is that the

saint should have conquered and obliterated his personal self or 1.
This is a difficult task! Now the monk who devotes himself exclusively
to the task of working out his own salvation, is being terribly selfish, for
he is showing no concern for the salvation of mankind. Even when he
has attained nirvana, has he not attained it for himselfalone? Thus the
self has not been conquered. It is still very much there.

And not only is he very selfish, but he is also very cruel!

Imagine a family stranded in the middle of a forest with wild
animals threatening to attack at any time. What shall we think of the
brother who sneaks off and tries to escape without giving a thought
for the safety and survival of the other members of the family?

The Mahayana sect argued that mankind should be assisted

in its struggle for salvation. They pointed for support to Buddhas
54
long life of missionary endeavour. They claimed this to be a
living commentary of the truth o f their stand. He who seeks to
achieve nirvana, they argued, should first help his brothers to
nirvana, in the same manner in which the man in the forest should
first help his family to safety before he makes good his own
escape. Such a man or w ould-be-B uddha, they called a
bodhisattva in contra-distinction to the arhat, the selfish saint
who seeks to achieve nirvana for himself alone, - who takes the
short cut to salvation (Hinayana) rather than the long and difficult
road (Mahayana).

This policy-change contributed in no small measure to

the survival and spread of Buddhism. The religion, as preached
by Buddha, was an ideal which could only be practiced by the
select few (the monks) and which demanded renunciation of
the world and the worldly life. But that would have resulted in
the end of mankind, for it called for the universal acceptance o f
the institution of monasticism and, with it, the institution of
celibacy. The Mahayana, by turning away from the solo flight
of the lone to the alone, adjusted the perspective o f Buddhism
and made it a religion for the common man as well (even though
he be comfortably or uncomfortably married, living a settled
or unsettled life at home and performing all his functions and
duties as a father and a husband).

The Other World

As we mentioned earlier, the Hinayana sect stuck to the origi

nal teachings of Gautama Buddha and consistently refused to
affirm a transcendental dimension of existence with its unseen
verities. But this unique experim ent o f religion without a
transcendental dimension o f existence fa iled . Today the
overwhelming majority of the Buddhists believe, in some form or
the other, in a transcendental dimension o f existence and in
unseen verities. In fact, popular Buddhism today is saturated
with unseen verities with charms and magic and disembodied
55
spirits.57 The cause and history of this failure form extremely
valuable material for the daring psychologist of religion who would
like to prove the existence o f a transcendental dimension of
existence from a study o f the religious consciousness.

The Mahayana sect opened the doors of the other world, the
transcendental dimension of existence, and in so doing they restored
belief in an abiding reality, God and soul to their religious way
of life. Again they made the orthodox Hinayanis furious. But again
they could bring to their defense some plausible arguments.

An Abiding Reality

As we saw in our discussions on the theories of dependent

origination and universal flux, if the world possessed any reality
at all, it was an ephemeral reality and not an abiding reality. It was
contingent - and not necessary, dependent - and not independent,
fleeting - and not permanent. The second of the two fundamental
statements of Buddhism is sarvam kashnikam, i.e., all is fleet
ing.5*

The Madhyamika school of Buddhist philosophy, consistent

with the teachings of Buddha, denied the reality of the world, both
mental and non-mental. But this did not amount to a denial of all
reality. Rather, it denied only the reality of the apparent phenomenal
world perceived by us. Behind this phenomenal world there is a
reality which is not describable by any character, mental or
non-mental, that we perceive. The Mahayanis accepted this
metaphysics and defended their apparent innovation on the ground
that Buddhas silence on the ten metaphysical questions concerning
things beyond our experience did not imply their non-existence. It
rather signified their indescribability. They argued that the life and
teachings of Buddha provided hints to the truth of this interpretation.

57 Cf. Tantra, or magical Buddhism, in Conze, Op. cit., p. 174

58 The other statement is sarvam dukham, i.e., all is suffering.

56
God

In the original teachings o f Buddha, and in the Hinayana

Buddhism, there is no concept of God, nor of any deity. This does
not connote atheism (denial o f the existence of God). It is rather a
refusal to affirm the existence o f any deity. Apparently a disciple
once asked Buddha whether God existed. He refused to reply to
the question. When pressed for an answer, he responded with a
question: if you are suffering from a stomach ache, would you be
concerned with the reliefo f the pain or with studying the prescription
o f the physician? It is not my business or yours tofin d out whether
there is a God, - our business is to remove the suffering o f the
world.

But man is by nature a religious being and his religious

constitution is such that he craves for a personal deity who can
be the worthiest object of worship. The worship o f a Supreme
Being seems to be programmed in human nature itself. This
argument is located in the psychology of religion. The history of
religion all through the ages delivers incontestable evidence of
such.

My teacher of the philosophy o f history, Dr. Burhan Ahman

Faruqi, reached the same conclusion using a different approach
and with another argument. This is what he says:

Man fin d s h im s e lf c o n fro n te d in his co u rse w ith

insurmountable obstacles. On the one side stands he with
his innate yearning after harmony with reality, after moral
perfection and happiness, after knowledge and after
beauty. On the other stands the universe, unamenable to
harmony with his moral and spiritual yearnings, and un
willing to accede to the demands o f his soul. He finds
himself helpless, - forlorn. There must be a Being who
has the power, as well as the will, to help him, i f he is to
be rescued. Hence it is that religious consciousness
57
 affirms the existence o f such a Being.59

Buddhism faced this problem by providing dhamma, or the

impersonal law, in place of God. But t'-iat could not satisfy the cravings
of mankind. The religion of self-help had to be converted into the
religion ofpromise and hope! The Hinayana could not hold out any
promise of external help to the forlorn multitudes. To such miserable
creatures the Mahayana held out the hope that the Buddhas watchful
and compassionate eyes are on all miserable beings. In other words,
the Mahayana made a god out of Buddha! The Mahayana performed
this impressive ontological acrobatics by identifying Buddha with the
reality it had accepted. In its philosophical or speculative form (i.e.,
madhyamika) this reality was not away from, but within, the phenom
enon. In other words, it was a n immanentreality. But when applied
to religion this immanence had to be converted to transcendence.
Thereafter Buddha could be identified with it for it to become a
qualitative, transcendent, personal, describable or knowable reality!
This is the triumph of personal deity in religion.

The learned writer o f the article, Mahayana in the Ency

clopaedia of Religion and Ethics, strikes a different note. Accord
ing to him, it was not a natural evolution of God within Buddhism
but rather the effect of Hinduism on Buddhism:

It is almost certa in .................that this transformation o f the

Buddha may be explained by the natural evolution o f the
Buddhist dogma on Hindu soil. The resemblance between
the Buddha reigning peacefully in paradise and sending
images o f him self down to this world, on the one hand, and
Krsna (Krishna) gladdening beings in his own world
(Goloka) and appearing in a human form, on the other, is
striking and contains a valuable lesson. "60

59 Faruqi, Dr. B.A. The Mujaddids Conception of Tauhid, p. 32. This book was his
thesis for the Ph.D. in philosophy at Aligarh Muslim University. It is an excellent work.
Vol. 8, p. 334

58
 Dr. Conze attempts to explain the same point by directing
attention to the eclectic nature o f Buddhism:

The Buddhists would fin d no objection whatsoever in the

cult o f many gods because the idea o f a jealous God is
quite alien to them; and also because they are imbued
with the conviction that everyones intellectual insight is
very limited, so that it is very difficult fo r us to know
when we are right but practically impossible to be sure
that someone else is wrong. Like the Catholics, the Buddhists
believe that a Faith can be kept alive only i f it can be
adapted to the mental habits o f the average person. In
consequence we fin d that in the earlier Scriptures, the
deities o f Brahmanism are taken fo r granted and that,
later on, the Buddhists adopted the local gods o f any
district to which they came. 6

To conclude this discussion, the religion of no God was

transformed into a religion of many Gods - big and small, strong
and weak, male and female. The man-God Buddha appears on
earth in human form (i.e., incarnates) from time to time. Christianity
presents no less amazing a spectacle. There too, God comes down
to earth to walk and talk like other men. But he is the son-God62

The Self

The Mahayana did a complete job of opening the doors o f

the transcendental dimension o f existence. Buddha and early

61 Conze, Op. cit., p. 42

62 Some may argue that Christianity should be warmly applauded for the support it
has lent, in spite o f its emphasis on monasticism, to the institution o f the family.
Even God has a family! The family-God o f Christianity is Jesus, the only
begotten son o f God, Mary is the mother o f God and, to complete the family,
there is God, the father! But, seriously now, it is an unpardonable act o f
blasphemy that one should attribute to Allah, the One God, the belief that He has
a spouse, or a son, or daughters.
59
Buddhism had done a thorough job of demonstrating the unreality
of the empirical self. And because the doors of the transcendental
dimension of existence were closed, Buddha, it is said, concluded
that there was no self. But this was a highly unpalatable dish for
most Buddhists. It evoked a feeling of dread to be told that there is
no self. Even more, it is quite absurd to labour for salvation
when there is no one to be saved.

The Mahayana, like Islam, pointed out that there does exist
a real self. But this is a transcendental self, not the empirical self
or the small individual ego.

There are two differences, however, between the Mahayana

and Islam, in respect of their concept of the self. Firstly, Islam
does not conceive of the empirical self as wholly unreal. It does
possess a measure of reality, but it is not the real self. Secondly,
whereas Islam affirms the existence of exclusively individual tran
scendental selves, the transcendental self of the Mahayana is a big
single self (Mahatman) which is the self o f all beings. The
Mahayana is therefore faced with the problem of personal iden
tity, a problem which Islam solved admirably. Apparently
Chatterjee and Datta overlooked this serious problem when
commenting that the devout Mahayanist thusfinds his selfrestored
in a more elevating and magnified fo rm 63

Concluding Remarks

Some writers have attempted to explain that this struggle

between the Hinayana and the Mahayana was a struggle between two
equally noble motives, namely, greater purity and greater utility.64

For example, an eminent Japanese writer comments:

63 Chatteijee and Datta, Op. cit., p. 183

64 Ibid., p. 183

60
 It (Mahayanism) is the Buddhism which, inspired by a
progressive spirit, broadened its original scope, so far as it
did not contradict the inner significance o f the teachings of
the Buddha.65

But as we have pointed out, the Mahayana created what

amounts to a veritable revolution in Buddhism. It opened the
doors which were closed by Buddha himself. Our view is that
this phenomenon can best be described as Buddhism s struggle
for survival. Buddhism survived and flourished, but at the
expense of Buddha. Our view is that the innovations of the
Mahayana sect opened the doors for the complete corruption of
Buddhism. The religion taught by Buddha (like the religion taught
by Jesus) is dying or almost dead. Most modem scholars, as we
noted earlier, agree that Buddhism must have been quite different
from what it has subsequently been interpreted 'o be. In fact,
Buddha actually prophesied this when declared that his teachings
will ultimately decline and disappear from the earth.66

This disappearance is almost complete today, for mar.y

Buddhists are sunk in the most loathsome superstitions and
childish rituals. Original Buddhism has experienced total change.

H.G. Wells has described this in a very pithy language:

Gautamas disciples unhappily have cared more fo r the

preservation o f his tree (the Bo-tree which still exists) than
o f his thought, which from the first they misconceived and
distorted. 67

Writing on the corruptions of Buddhism, Mr. Wells makes these

interesting observations:

65 Suzuki, D.T.: Outlines o f Mahayana Buddhism, p. 10

66 Vide: Anagata-vamsa , see also p. 2.
67 Wells, H.G. An Outline o f History, p. 392
61
 Tibet today is a Buddhistic country, yet Gautama, could he
return to earth, might go from end to end o f Tibet seeking
his own teaching in vain. He would find the most ancient
type o f human ruler, a god-king, enthroned, the Dalai
Lama,68 the living Buddha . At Lhasa he wouldfin d a huge
temple filled with priests, abbots, and lamas - he whose
only buildings were huts and who made no priests - and
above a high alter he would behold a huge golden idol, which
he would learn was called Gautama Buddha ! He would
hear services intoned before this divinity, and certain
precepts, which would be dimly familiar to him, murmured
as responses. Bells, incense, prostrations, would play their
part in these amazing proceedings. At one point in the
service a bell would be rung and mirror lifted up, while
the whole congregation, in an access o f reverence, bowed
lo w e r ......................

About this Buddhist countryside he would discover a number

o f curious little mechanisms, little wind-wheels and
w ater-w heels spinning, on which b rief prayers were
inscribed. Everytime these things spin, he would learn, it
counts as a prayer. To whom? , he would ask. Moreover,
there would be a number o f flagstaffs in the land carrying
beautiful silk fla g s - silk flags which bore the perplexing
inscription, On M ani Padme hum , the jew el is in the
lotus Whenever the fla g flaps, he would learn, it was a
prayer also, very beneficial to the gentlemen who paid fo r
the fla g and to the land generally. Gangs o f workmen,
employed by pious persons, would be going about the country
cutting this precious formula on cliff and stone. And this, he
would realize at last, was what the world had made o f his
religion.69

68 At the time when Wells wrote his book, the Dalai Lama had not as yet fled to
New Dehli
69 Wells, Op. cit., pp. 408-9

62
 My Buddhist readers will be amazed to learn that the very
same disease, which befell Buddhism, is now attacking Islam.
Around the world today hordes o f secularly-educated Muslim
pseudo-scholars are hard at work attempting to reinterpret Islam in
such a way as to make it compatible with todays essentially
godless, increasingly decadent, and awesomely deceptive modem
world. Contemporary Islamic modernism is, perhaps, the most
dangerous enemy Islam has ever had to face in all its history.

Nowhere in the strange modem world o f Islam has the

advance o f Islamic modernism been more ominous than in
Malaysia, - until, by divine providence, a great evil axe fell. We
hope that the eyes of misguided Islamic modernists may now be
opened Ins ha Allah.

63
 Chapter Eight

INFLUENCE OF BUDDHISM ON CHRISTIANITY

Preliminary Observation

There are two Buddhisms, the original gospel of Buddha

(whatever it may have been) and what has generally passed as
popular Buddhism through the ages.

Similarly there are two Christianities. The first is the

religious message, which was taught by Jesus himself. The
second is the Christianity which has survived to this day after
innumerable changes and deviations were made from the original.
Prophet Muhammad (s) has prophesied that Jesus (s) will one day
return to the world. When he comes back he will, among other things,
break the cross. This will result in the end of that Christianity
which is based on the Cross.70

When we discuss the influence of Buddhism on Christianity,

we will, in fact, be discussing the influence o f Buddhism on
popular Christianity. The original teachings of Christianity (which
are still preserved to some extent among the Unitarians), like the
teachings o f Islam71, were promulgated by the same Divine
Being, under the cover o f divine sanction, through divinely-
appointed messengers who were granted divine guidance!

70 Christian readers may wish to listen to a lecture on the subject: An Islamic View of die
Return o f Jesus which I delivered in Singapore in August 1998. The audiocassette may be
obtained from the publisher o f this book The Muslim ConvertsAssociation of Singapore.
71 In its proper connotation Islam stands for authentic religion. Hence the religion
taught by Jesus was Islam.

64
The Influence

Before the birth of Christ, Buddhist teachings, in some form

or the other, had reached the shores of the Mediterranean. In fact,
from there Buddhism went on to influence Greek thought.
Students o f early Greek philosophy are all familiar with the
Pythagorean transmigration o f souls, and the Platonic concepts
of reminiscence and the dialectic - i.e., the real world of ideas
and the unreal world of particulars. If, therefore, the research
scholar discovers numerous sim ilarities, or even identities,
between Buddhist and Christian teachings, institutions, rituals,
and myths, he must be forced to admit that, in all likelihood,
one religion must have influenced the other. This influence is
less likely to be a Christian influence on Buddhism because
Buddhism arose five centuries before Christianity. There might
have been some two-way traffic, but the conclusion must be
that if one religion influenced the other it is more likely to be a
Buddhist influence on Christianity.

Many Christian scholars have, in fact, admitted that the

Christian gospels have, to some extent, been influenced by
Buddhist doctrines.

We shall try briefly to trace out the similarities between

Buddhism and Christianity. For a more exhaustive study on
the subject we must refer the reader to chapter three o f the book,
Islam and Christianity in the Modern World, where the author,
Dr. Ansari, discusses the Pagan Foundations o f Christianity
with an Argument from Buddhism.

What seemed to appeal most to the early Christians was

the miraculous side of Buddhism. Dr. Conze gives three ex
amples:

i. Saint Paul walking on water trod in the footsteps

o f many Buddhist saints.
65
 ii. Buddhists are very fond o f the twin-miracle: Fire
streamed fo rth from the upper part o f the body o f
the Tathagata and from his lower part proceeds a
torrent o f water . In John 7:38 we find the curious
statement: He that believes in me as the Scriptures
have said, out o f his belly shall flo w rivers o f
living water .

iii. The Tathagata could, if he so wished, remain fo r an

aeon,72ju st as Christ abideth fo r an aeon . / J

Some Christian scholars go far beyond Dr. Conze to make

claims such as the following:

All the tales, miracles, similies and proverbs o f the Christian

Gospel have their counter-part in the Buddhistic Gospel.74

Others, like T.W. Doane, claim that, with the exception of

the death o f Jesus on the cross and the doctrine of vicarious
atonement, the lives and doctrines of Buddha and Jesus correspond
and coincide with each other entirely.75T.W. Doane goes on to make
investigations which yield more than fifty points of identity or close
similarity between Christian and Buddhist beliefs.75

We shall depend, for the most part, on the classroom notes

o f my distinguished teacher of comparative religion, Prof. Yusuf
Saleem Chishti, to bring out some twenty-four such striking
resemblances: -

72 i.e., an immense period o f time.

73 Conze, Op. cit., p. 104
74 Melamed,S.M.: Spinoza and Buddha - Visions o f a Dead God.
75 Doane, T.W.: Bible Myths and their Parallels in Other Religions.
76 Ibid., pp. 287-97. These have been reproduced in Dr. Ansaris book: Islam and
Christianity in the Modem World, pp, 78-91.

66
Both Jesus a n d Buddha w e re m ira cu lo u sly conceived;

Both were born wondrously;

The fathers o f both Jesus and Buddha were given news by

angels before the birth o f their sons;

Both were born o f virgin mothers;

On the day o f Buddhas birth, a Brahman predicted his

future greatness; Likewise we read in the Gospels that some
wise men from the East visited Mary and predicted the
future greatness o f Jesus. (Luke:- 2:8-40);

The Brahman came to Buddha s mother through the air.

Simon came by the spirit into the temple;

Both steadily grew in wisdom and stature;

Before becoming the Buddha, Siddhartha observed a fa st

fo r 49 days. Before becoming the Christ, Jesus fasted fo r
40 days;

Buddha was tempted by Satan (Mara). So was Jesus.

Mara said to Buddha: I f you believe in me I will turn the

Himalayas into gold. Buddha replied: He who has seen pain,
how can he bow to lust? On hearing this, the evil one
vanished. Jesus was also tempted in the wilderness and the
same thing happened with him;

After overcoming the temptation, Siddhartha received

enlightenment to become the Buddha. Similarly Jesus
became the Christ.

After the enlightenment, Buddha performed many miracles.

67
 Jesus also performed many miracles after becoming Christ;

The Buddha was transfigured and his body shone like a

star. Jesus was also transfigured and his body shone;

Buddha sent 12 disciples to carry his message to all classes

o f mankind. Jesus also had 12 disciples;

Buddha was known as the incomparable physician (healing

the blind, the sick, the lepers, etc., by mere touch). Jesus
was also, in the same sense, a great physician;

Buddha washed a sick monk with his own hands. Jesus also
washed the fe et o f his disciples;

Buddha converted a robber named Angolimara. Jesus also

converted a thief on the cross;

Buddha converted a harlot named Ambapali and dined with

her. Jesus converted a harlot who anointed his feet;

Both Buddha and Jesus were accused by their enemies o f

being hypocrites - living in abundance ;

Both bade theirfollowers to lay upfo r themselves a treasure

which neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, nor thieves break
through to steal;

Both taught in parables and their parables are veiy similar

if not, in some cases, identical. For example the Gospel,
attributed to Jesus, borrowed from Buddha the parables o f
the prodigal son and the sower;

Both condemned ceremonial religion;

Both made triumphant entries into their native cities;

68
 A n d both a d v ise d their d isc ip le s n o t to strik e in return.

Apart from these influences of Buddhism on Christian be

liefs, Buddhism left its indelible imprint on the institutions and ritu
als of the Christian religion. Neither in the life of Jesus, nor in the
Gospels, is there any foundation for the Christian institution of
monasticism. From whence, then, did it come? There are many
authorities who hold the view that monasticism in Christianity is
derived almost wholly from Buddhism. H.C. Lea, for example,
remarks: In this (monasticism), as in some other fo rm s o f
asceticism, we may look to Buddhism fo r the model on which the
Church fashioned her institutions.77 Lea also points to the
influences of Buddhism in the legend o f the life o f Christ.78 Then
he goes further to show the Buddhist origin of many Christian
rituals:

Many o f the observances o f Latin Christianity would seem

explicable by derivation fro m B uddhism , such as
monasticism, the tonsure, the use o f beads, confession,
penance, and absolution, the sign o f the cross, relic worship,
and miracles wrought by relics, the purchase ofsalvation by
gifts to the Church, pilgrimages to sacred places, etc., etc.
Even the nimbus, which in sacred art surrounds the head
o f holy personages, is to be found in the sculptures o f the
Buddhist Topes, and the Sangreat, or Holy Cup o f the Last
Supper, which was the object o f lifelong quest by the
Christian knight, is like the Patra or begging dish o f
Buddha, which was the subject o f many curious legends.
It is no wonder that when the good Jesuit missionaries o f
the sixteenth century found among the heathens o f Asia so
much o f what they were familiar with at home, they could
not decide whether it was the remains o f a pre-existing
Catholicism, or whether Satan, to damn irrevocably the

77 Lea, H. C. : History o f Sacerdotal Celibacy, p.71

78 Ibid., p. 16

69
 souls o f men, had parodied and travestied the sacred
mysterious and ceremonies, and introduced them in those
distant regions. We may therefore perhaps, ascribe to
Buddhist beliefs, at least a portion o f the influence which
led the Church into the extravagances o f asceticism.79

A Christian missionary has in fact left his impressions for us

of how perplexing he found this possession o f a common tradition
of worship:

The c r o s s the mitre and dalmatica, the cope, which

the Grand Lamas wear on theirjourneys, or when they are
performing some ceremony out o f the temple; the service
with double choirs, the psalmody, the exorcisms; the
censer, suspended from five chains, which you can open or
close at pleasure; the benedictions given by the Lamas by
extending the right hand over the heads o f the faithful;
the chaplet, ecclesiastical celibacy, spiritual retirement,
the worship o f the saints, the fasts, the processions, the
litanies, the holy water, all these are analogies between the
Buddhists and ourselves. m

We have provided just a sample of the kind of evidence which

can be presented in a proper research work to demonstrate the
plausibility o f the claim that Buddhism exerted a profound
influence on Christianity. Both being missionary religions
competing for the souls of men, this appears to constitute a very
great embarrassment for Christianity. On the other hand it may,
perhaps, help to explain the ease with which a significant number
of Buddhists in South East Asia and the Far East are entering into
Christianity in search o f upward mobility. Perhaps they also feel
at home in Christianity!

79 Ibid., p. 17
80 Hu, E.R.: Travels. Quoted by H.G. Wells in his Outline o f World History, p. 399

70
 Chapter Nine

BUDDHISM AND THE ENCOUNTER WITH

WORLD RELIGIONS

Hinduism

We noted earlier that Buddhism arose as a revolt against Hin

duism. Buddha proclaimed the Vedas to be quite useless. He struck
a heavy blow against the religious monopoly of the Brahman, and
the caste system, by opening the doors of salvation to even the
lowest of the low. He counteracted the over-metaphysical and
over-ritualistic features of Hinduism by making of Buddhism a
purely ethical system, and by replacing rituals and sacrifices with
the struggle for the moral transformation of the personality.

But Hinduism, in-turn, scored victories over the new

rebellious religion by influencing it to adopt the Hindu theories
o f karma, transmigration o f souls, ahimsa (non-violence), etc.
In fact, the Hindu influence on Buddhism has been so powerful
that some writers regard Buddhism as virtually an off-shoot of
Hinduism."

In its encounter with Hinduism, Buddhism both lost and

gained. It lost on two grounds. Firstly, Hinduism succeeded in
giving Buddhism a strongly Hindu coloring. Secondly, Hinduism
eventually succeeded in ousting Buddhism from India. Some
Orientalists and Hindu writers accuse Islam o f persecuting the
Buddhists and contributing to their being driven out o f India.

81 Ansari, Dr. F.R.: Which Religion?, p. 9

71
Nothing could be farther from the truth because, by the time
Islam became the dominant power in India, the expulsion of
Buddhism had already been com pleted/2 Indeed, it was not
Islam but the resurgent, militant intolerant Hinduism which
committed this crime. H.G. Wells refers to this event as follows:

For som e tim e Buddhism flo u rish ed in India. But

Brahminism, with its many gods and its endless variety o f
cults, always flourished by its side, and the organization o f
the Brahmins grew more powerful, until at last they were
able to turn upon this caste-denying cult and oust it from
India altogether... there were persecutions and reactions, but
by the eleventh century, except fo r Orissa, Buddhist
teachings was extinct in India.83

Another famous historian, Arnold Toynbee, does not

mention Islam at all when he says: Buddhism was expelled from
India by a part-Buddhaic Hindu.84 Thus did Buddhism lose to
Hinduism.

The Muslims now living in India face a similar threat from

militant Hinduism. Our view is that today s dominant modem
western civilization will self-destruct. History will not end,
however, before Islamic civilization is forced to respond to,
and successfully dispose of, both Jewish and Hindu
oppression.

The encounter o f Buddhism and Hinduism witnessed

significant successes for Buddhism. In the mutual influence of
Hinduism and Buddhism, Hinduism was improved while Buddhism
was debased. Humphreys, for example, has this to say:

82 Islam became dominant in India at about 1000 A.C. The tide turned against
Buddhism in India in the seventh century. Cf. Christmas Humphreys: Op. cit. p. 57
83 Wells,. Op. cit., p.409
84 Toynbee,A.: A Historians Approach to Religion, p.90

72
 The popular forms o f Hinduism, as the compound o f Indian
religions based on the Vedas and Unpanishads may by
called, had been enormously improved by Buddhist moral
philosophy, while Buddhism had in many respects been
debased by its lazy tolerance o f the forms o f Hinduism85

Buddhism made all her converts from Hinduism without

Hinduism being able to reclaim them . W hen H induism
succeeded in ousting Buddhism from India, it was not the manly
way, i.e., on the battle-front o f ideas, but through persecution.
This also constitutes a victory for Buddhism, for it implies th; t if
the Buddhists can regain a foothold in India, their missionaries
are certain to achieve significant successes.

Christianity

In the preceding chapter we attempted to show the great

influence which Buddhism exerted over Christianity. In the
encounter o f these two w o rld -relig io n s, B uddhism has
undoubtedly emerged the victor to the extent that the devout
Mahayani Buddhist who goes to a Catholic country will hardly
have cause to be homesick.

There is little evidence to show that Christianity exerted a

similar influence over Buddhist beliefs, and, until the emergence
o f essentially godless E uro-C hristianity, less evidence o f
Christian missionary successes in the Buddhist countries.
Christianity had a golden opportunity for a trial o f strength with
Buddhism when western im perialism thrust itself into the
eastern lands. The Buddhists did not offer any serious resistance
to that thrust, and individual Buddhists have, indeed, been
converting to Christianity. But Christianity failed to win over
a single Buddhist country, and B uddhist conversions to
Christianity have largely been motivated by considerations of

85 Humphreys, Op. cit. p. 58

73
upward m obility. In fact it will always remain the most
difficult task for the innocent Christian missionary to sell
C hristianity to the w orld o f Buddhism. It would be like
sending coals to New castle!*6

Islam

There is very little memory left in the world today of a

historic encounter which took place between Islam and Buddhism
in history. Both M uslim and Buddhist readers would benefit
from an effort to step back into history for a moment and
examine that encounter which resulted in a resounding victory
for Islam.

Firstly: Islam influenced Buddhist doctrine without incor

porating into itself, in return, anything from Buddhism. I refer
here to the Buddhist concept of Adi-Buddha:

Sometime around 800 A.C., according to Dr. Conze, a

doctrine was propounded in various places and in varying
forms, which tried to derive thefive Tathagatas as emanations
from one, original, first or primeval Buddha, who is some
times called the Adi Buddha and who is the eternal living
principle o f the entire Universe.87

This concept of Adi-Buddha, which constitutes the first and

only monotheistic trend in Buddhism, arose in the north-west of
India in the wake o f the encounter of Islam and Buddhism.

Secondly: Islam succeeded, where no other religion has

succeeded, in winning to its fold millions of Buddhists in Central

86 Buddhist conversions to Christianity in Singapore and Malaysia etc., do not

appear to represent the triumph o f one belief-system over another.
87 Conze, Op. cit. p. 190
88 Ibid., p. 43

74
Asia, South-West Asia, South-East Asia and China. In some cases
an entire nation of Buddhists was won over to Islam.

Now this is a remarkable fact! The three great missionary

religions of the world are Islam, Christianity and Buddhism.
Christianity and Buddhism preceded Islam by five hundred and one
thousand years respectively. They therefore had a clear
head-start in the field. They drew their converts from secondary and
tribal religions and cults, some o f which have now disappeared.
Islam, on the other hand, drew over three-fourths of her converts from
areas under the influence of the great religions of the world, and these
included the proselytizing religions, Christianity and Buddhism.189

Another remarkable thing is that Islam is the only Semitic

religion which has been able to achieve any measure of success
in its confrontation with the ancient religions of the East, i.e.,
Hinduism, Confucianism, Toaism and Shintoism. In fact, the only
other religion that succeeded in this field was Buddhism; but
then Buddhism, in turn, could achieve no success against the
Semitic faiths.90

It is a truly remarkable thing that since the Prophet Muhammad

(s) preached Islam fourteen hundred years ago, to this day, no reli
gion in the world, missionary or non-missionary, world-religion,
national religion, or tribal religion, has succeeded in winning over
Muslims to its fold. We mean thereby real conversion, not curry
conversion. It does no credit to Christian missions in poverty-
stricken Indonesia to boast of converts won through ration cards or
through years of brain-washing in educational institutions. Nor
can Russia, China or India be gleeful about Muslims who are falling
as victims of brute force and barbarism, or because of their
systemic forced alienation from their religious institutions and their
springs of religious inspiration.

89 Vide: Masdoosi, A.: Living Religions o f the World, p. 105

90 Ibid., p. 105

75
 In its confrontation with Islam, Buddhism was the loser. To
prove our point we shall draw from one very significant historical
event and, in doing so, we hope to silence those critics who still
persist in their accusation that Islam was spread through force, or
through natural historical causes (Toynbee), and not through the
inherent truth, superiority, and dynamism of the faith, and the im
pact of the personality of its founder, Prophet Muhammad (s).

In the beginning o f the thirteenth century the centers of

civilization, Christian, Buddhist and Muslim, east of Egypt, fell
victims to one o f the most amazing and heart-rending destructions
in history. The Mongols, who had been consolidated into a
war-machine by Jenghez Khan, swept down from obscurity to
conquer China in the East, and then, in 1218, moving westwards,
to plunder, kill, destroy and lay waste the cities of the Muslim
Khwarizmian empire. Kashgar and Khokand were razed to the
ground and their inhabitants passed under the sword. Bokhara was
reduced to ashes. Finally Samarkand itself, the capital, was
destroyed, and o f its million inhabitants only 50,000 remained to
tell the fate of the ruined city.

Thereafter nothing could stop the Mongols as their armies

laid waste the centers of civilization. One by one, Balkh, Urganj,
Nessa, Nishapur, Herat, Rai, Dinwar and Hamadan fell to the
merciless sword o f Jenghez Khan. Millions were slaughtered with
a barbarity too heart-rending to narrate. But in 1221 A.C., after the
Mongols had destroyed half the Islamic world, they were checked
by the Iraqian troops o f the Caliph Mustansir. They then turned in
another direction and, by 1241 A.C., they had swept across Asia to
Russia, ravaged Poland and occupied Hungary.

But the destruction o f Islam was not yet complete. It

remained for Halaku Khan to resume in 1258 A.C. where Jenghez
Khan had left off in 1221 A.C. Halaku invaded the capital city of
the Muslim Abbaside Empire, Baghdad, and in six weeks of rape,
slaughter, burning and unimaginable horrors, reduced Baghdad to
76
ruins. According to Ibn Khaldun, a population o f over two million
was reduced in six weeks to less than 400,000.91

Out of this wave of Mongol destruction it was the Muslims

who suffered the most. Thomas Arnold gives a vivid description
of the Muslim plight. He says:

There is no event in the history o f Islam that, fo r terror or

desolation, can be compared to the Mongol conquest.

When the Mongol army marched out o f Herat, a miserable

remnant o f forty persons crept out o f their hiding places
and gazed horror-stricken on the ruins o f their beautiful city, -
all that were left out o f a population o f over 100,000. In
Bokhara, so famed fo r its men o f piety and learning, the
Mongols stabled their horses in the sacred precincts o f the
mosques and tore up the Qur 'an to serve as litter; those oj
the inhabitants who were not butchered were carried
away into captivity and their city reduced to ashes.
Such, too, was the fa te o f Samarkand, Balkh, and many
another city o f Islamic civilization and the dwelling
places o f holy men and seats o f sound learning, -
such, too, the fate o f Baghdad, thatfo r centuries had been
the capital o f the Abbasid dynasty.92

Ibn al-Athir, the famous Arab historian, has also written on

this subject. His introduction to the subject would suffice to give
the reader an idea of the destruction wrought by the Mongols. Here
are his introductory comments:

I shall have to describe events so terrible, and calamities so

stupendous, that neither day nor night have ever brought

91 A detailed account o f this ghastly story is to be found in Ameer Ali: A Short

History o f the Saracens, pp.391-401
92 Arnold, Sir Thomas: The Preaching o f Islam, p .218

77
 forth the like; they fe ll on all nations, but on the Muslims
more than all; and were one to say that since God created
Adam the world have not seen the like, he would but tell the
truth, fo r history has nothing to relate that at all approaches it.93

I have brought the proceeding historical quotes to the attention

of the reader because they are most important for understanding
and appreciating the significance of what follows.

The Mongols were without a stable religion that could stand

its own against the m ajor world religions with which their
conquests had brought them into intimate contact. The primitive
religion o f the Mongols was shamanism. The civilized races
with which the conquest o f the Mongols brought them into
contact, comprised large numbers of Buddhists, Christians and
Muslims, and the adherents o f these three great missionary
faiths entered into rivalry with one another fo r the conversion
o f their conquerors.94 We turn to Thomas Arnold for an initial
description o f that encounter:

Buddhist priests held controversies with the Shamans in the

presence o f Jenghez Khan; and at the courts o f Mangu
Khan and Qubily the Buddhist and Christian priests and
the Muslim Imans alike enjoyed the patronage o f the Mongol
prince95 The spectacle, says Arnold, o f Buddhism, Christianity
and Islam emulously striving to win the allegiance o f the
fierce conquerors that had set their fe et on the necks o f
adherents o f these great missionary religions is one that is
without parallel in the history o f the world.96

Now let us take stock o f the situation. Islamic civilization

had been destroyed. The Muslims had been conquered, their centers

93 Ibn al - Athir, Vol.xii, pp. 233-4. Quoted by Arnold, Ibid. p.219

94 Ibid.,p.220
95 Arnold, Op. cit. p. 200 . Arnold quotes from William o f Rubruck.
96 Ibid. p. 200

78
o f learning reduced to ashes, their ulama ( those learned in the
religious disciplines) almost wiped out. In such conditions an
Islamic missionary effort was launched to convert the Mongols.
Surely there could be no place for force there! To make matters
more difficult for Islam there were two powerful competitors in
the field. The task seem ed alm ost im possible. A rnold
agrees:

For Islam to enter into competition with such powerful

rivals, as Buddhism and Christianity were at the outset oj
the period o f Mongol rule, must have appeared a well-nigh
hopeless undertaking. For Muslims had suffered more from
the storm o f the Mongols invasion than the others. Those
cities that had hitherto been the rallying points o f spiritual
organization and learning fo r Islam in Asia, had been fo r
the most part laid in ashes: the theologians and pious
doctors o f thefaith either slain or carried away into captivity.
Among the Mongol rulers, - usually so tolerant towards
all religions, - there were some who exhibited varying
degrees o f hatred towards the Muslim faith. Chingiz Kahn
ordered all those who killed animals in the Muhammadan
(i.e., M uslim ) fa sh io n to be p u t to death, and this
ordinance was revived by Q ubilay who, by offering
rewards to informers, set on fo o t a sharp persecution that
lastedfo r seven years.97

It was in such conditions that the most crucial and historic

confrontation between Buddhism, Islam and Christianity took place.
Islam won a decisive victory. The Mongols were converted to
Islam. Arnold describes it as follows:

In spite o f all difficulties, says Arnold, the Mongols and the

savage tribes that follow ed in their wake were at length
brought to submit to the faith o f those Muslim peoples

97 Ib id ., p .225

79
 whom they had crushed beneath their feet.98 In a similar
strain he comments: But Islam was to rise again from the
ashes o f itsform er grandeur and, through its preachers, win
over these savage conquerors to the acceptance o f thefaith.99

Christianity, which had entertained great hopes of winning

this great missionary battle, failed completely. For an account of
this failure I must refer the reader to Chapter 32, Section 5 of H.G.
Wells Outline o f History, where he discusses the subject: Why the
Mongols were not Christianized. For a detailed account of the
success o f Islam in converting the Mongols, the reader may refer
to Arnolds Preaching o f Islam (Chapter 8) where he discusses:
The spread o f Islam among the Mongols and Tartars.

This defeat of Buddhism and Christianity was particularly

ignominious. It was the greatest and most historic missionary
battle in history involving, as it did, the three great missionary
religions of the world. Islam won the battle in as convincing a
manner as was possible. Among the Mongol kings and ruling
princes there were many who had been converted or brought up as
Christian or Buddhists. Even these were converted to Islam! Arnold
narrates the following:

In the region o f Ogotay (1229-1241), we read o f a certain

Buddhist governor o f Persia, named Kurguz, who in his later
y ea rs abjured B uddhism and became a M usalm an
(i.e., Muslim).100

In the reign o f Timur Khan (1323-1328), Ananda, a

grandson o f Qubilay and viceroy o f Kan-Su, was a zealous
M usulm an (i.e., M uslim ) and had converted a great
number o f persons in Tangut and won over a large number

98 Arnold, Op. cit. p. 226-7

99 Ibid., p. 219
100 Arnold, Op. cit. p. 227. Arnold quotes from C. D. Ohsson, Vol.ii, p. 121

80
 o f the troops under his command to the same faith. He
was summoned to court and efforts were made to induce
him to conform to Buddhism, and on his refusing to abandon
his faith he was cast into prison. But he was shortly
after set at liberty fo r fe a r o f an insurrection among the
inhabitants ofTangut, who were much attached to him 101

Takudar ( the son o f Halaku Khan) ...was the first o f the

Ilkhans (the dynasty founded by Halaku) who embraced
Islam. He had been brought up as a Christian, fo r he
was baptised when young and called by the name of
Nicholus 102 (Halaku Khan s favorite wife was a Chris
tian and favorably disposed the mind o f her husband
towards her co-religionists. His son, Abaqa Khan, though
not a Christian himself, married the daughter o f the
Emperor o f Constantinople. Takudar succeeded Abaqa
as the ruling prince).

The successors o f Takudar were all heathens until, in

1295, Ghazan, the seventh and greatest o f the Ilkhans,
became Musulman (i.e., Muslim) and made Islam the ruling
religion o f Persia...

Ghazan himself, before his conversion, had been brought

up as a Buddhist and had erected several Buddhist
temples in Khurasan, and took great pleasure in the
company o f the priests o f this faith . . .

He appears to have been naturally o f a religious turn in mind,

fo r he studied the creeds o f the different religions o f his
time, and used to hold discussions with the learned doctors
o f each faith.103

101 Ibid., p. 227. Arnold quotes from Rashid al-Din, pp. 600-2
102 Ibid, p.229
103 Ibid. pp. 232-3
81
 His brother (i.e. Ghazan s brother), Uljaytu, who succeeded
him in 1304, under the name o f Muhammad Khudabandah,
had been brought up as a Christian in thefaith o f his mother
and had been baptized under the name o f Nicholas, but
after his mother s death, while he was still a young man,
he became a convert to Islam through the persuasions oj
his wife (who was a Muslim)?. From this time forward
Islam became the paramount faith in the Kingdom o f the
Ilkhans.104

We hope the research o f Thomas Arnold, from whom we

have quoted so extensively, has proved the point to the satisfaction
of the reader, that the encounter between Buddhism and Islam re
sulted in a resounding victory for Islam. It was not possible, nor
necessary, to discuss the entire range of this encounter. We nar
rowed down our discussion to this single confrontation, - the strug
gle to win over the Mongols, and we have shown that it was Islam
which won this greatest of all missionary battles.

In our opinion the only thing which prevents Islam today

from making a more positive impact on the Buddhist world is the
Muslims themselves. They have lost their proselytizing spirit and
their thirst for the acquisition o f knowledge. The spirit of Islam, it
seems, has fled, and all that now remains of Islam in the world is a
mere formalistic, ritualistic shell. When our readers are confronted
by government appointed Islamic institutions, think tanks etc.,
led by scholars correctly dressed in starched shirts, jackets and ties,
they would do well to remember that ominous prophecy of the
Prophet (s) which has now been fulfilled. Ali said that the Prophet (s)
said:

It will not be long before a time comes when nothing will

remain o f Islam but the name, and nothing will remain o f
the Qur 'an but the words; the mosques will be grand

104 Ibid., p. 234

82
 structures but would be devoid o f true guidance, and the
religious scholars ofIslam will be the worse people beneath
the sky; from them w ill issue that which deceives and
corrupts, and they will be the centres o f that deception and
corruption.
(Sunan o f Baihaqi)

It is our fervent prayer that this book of ours may contribute

something towards rekindling a flame of missionary spirit and a
love of knowledge in the hearts of our Muslim readers.

Before we end this chapter there is one very important point

which we would like Muslims to note. This battle of the giants, the
three missionary religions o f the world, was won fo r Islam by the
Sufis. O f special importance, says Arnold, among the proselytising
agencies at work, was the influence o f the pir and his spiritual
disciplines......... the pir, or spiritual guide, and religious orders, -
such as the Naqshbandi, which in the fourteenth century entered
on a new period o f its deveopment, - breathed new life into the
Muslim community and inspired it with fresh fervour.105

We live today in a strange age in which the spiritual heart of

the religious way of life is being subjected to massive attacks from
modernized secularized religious forces. The Protestant movement
in Euro-Christianity, which attacked the spiritual heart of that
religion, has its counterpart in every other religion in the world
today. Islam is no exception. The Wahhabis, i.e., Islamic
Protestants, were the first to launch their venemous attack on the
Sufis of Islam. It has now become fashionable for so many others
to join in that attack on the Sufis. While we hasten to admit that
Sufism, like every thing else in this strange age, is being corrupted,
that does not invalidate authentic Sufism. Indeed, it is Sufism which,
through the ages, has guarded the spiritual heart of Islam. Shall we
attack Islam itself because of the many false versions o f Islam now

105 Arnold, Op. cit. p. 239

83
parading in the world (particularly in Chicago)? One of greatest
scholars o f Islam in this age, Dr. Muhammad Iqbal, was
tremendously influenced by the Sufi master, Maulana Jalaluddeen
Rumi. Maulana Dr. Ansari, to whom this book is dedicated, was a
Sufi Shaikh. And this writer himself belongs to the Qaderiyyah
spiritual order in Sufism.

The tableeghi jam aat is a prominent example of an Islamic

movement which has abandoned the revolutionary struggle of
challenging the forces of falsehood (batil) and evil (munkar) in the
world today, and o f struggling for the reemergence of Islam as the
dominant force in the world. Authentic Sufism has not done so.
This writer has not done so. And yet foolish, ignorant, misguided
Islamic scholarship in this strange age makes a profession of
attacking even authentic Sufism.

84
 Chapter Ten

COMPARISON OF ISLAM AND BUDDHISM

In any future contest between Islam and Buddhism, Islam is

bound to emerge victorious. This must be so because of the clear
superiority of Islam over Buddhism as a religion which is capable
of responding to the awesome challenges of the modem age, -
political, economic, moral, spiritual etc.

We propose, in this chapter, to embark on a comparative

evaluation of Islam and Buddhism with a view to presenting the
facts on the basis of which the reader may be able to undertake a
critical evaluation.

Scriptural Comparison

In Chapter One, we have already discussed the Buddhist

scriptures. We now resume that discussion in the context o f a
comparison with the scripture o f Islam. We have already seen
that the earliest Buddhist scriptures are in Pali and w ere
written some 400 years after the death o f Buddha. They can
not, therefore, give us any reliable historical information about
the life and teachings o f Buddha. Christmas Humphreys, a
Buddhist convert who says o f him self that he studied Buddhism
for thirty years and o f Buddhism in the world today I know
more than m ost, has this to say about the Buddhist Scriptures:

The Buddha himselfwrote nothing, and none o f his teaching

was written down fo r at least four hundred years after his
death. We therefore do not know what the Buddha taught,
85
 any more than we know what Jesus taught; and today at
leastfo u r schools, with sub-divisions in each, proclaim their
own view as to what is Buddhism.106

The scriptures of Buddhism are numerous and mutually con

flicting. Buddhism employed, in the main, two languages for
recording her scriptures. In the Pali language are recorded the
scriptures of the Hinayana sect, and in the Sanskrit language those
of the Mahayana sect. Both these sets of scriptures oppose each
other. This makes a Hinayana-Mahayana reconciliation next to
impossible. Both these languages, Pali and Sanskrit, are now
virtually dead, or survive as literary curiosities. Sanskrit despite
its re-emergence, is still, in its new usage, archaic. The ordinary
Buddhist cannot, therefore, go directly to his scriptures. Like the
Christian, he has to depend on translations.

The scripture of Islam is confined to one single text, the

Quran. It was recorded in the life-time of the founder of the reli
gious community, Muhammad (s), the Prophet of Allah. And it
has survived to this day, over a period of 1400 years, in its original
form without the addition or omission of even a letter. As hostile
a critic as Sir William Muir is forced to admit: Except the Qur an
there is no other book under the sun which, fo r the last twelve
centuries, has remained with so pure a text.107 The scripture of
Islam is in one language, Arabic, which is today a living language
spoken by hundreds of millions o f people all over the world. Thus
the ordinary and even the uneducated Muslim has direct access to
the scripture o f Islam. What is more astonishing is that even after
1400years the Arabic o f the Qur an still retains its position as the
best classical Arabic and the model fo r the entire field o f modern
literary work in that language.108 The Bible, on the other hand,

106 Humphreys, Op. cit. p. 11

107 Munir, Sir, W ..: Life o f Muhammad.
108 George Sale, the hostile critic o f Islam, says: The Koran is universally allowed
to be written with the utmost elegance and purity o f language. It is confessedly the
standard o f the Arabic tongue. The Koran: The Preliminary Discourse, p. 47.

86
which has been retranslated into English from its Greek trans
lation (there is no original Bible) has had to be continuously
revised in search for accuracy. The language, also, is constantly
being modernised.

Secondly, the entire Muslim world accepts the Quran as it

only scripture. Muslims may belong to this or that sect, but they all
believe in the same scripture. Their differences are differences of
interpretation of some verses of the Quran. The possibility always,
therefore, exists, for their differences to be resolved. Indeed, the
biggest sectarian rift in Islam, the Sunni-Shia rift, is certain to be
healed with the advent of Imam al-Mahdi.

As regards the life of Muhammad (s), unlike Buddha, he

stands out in the full glare of history. He is, in fact, the only founder
of a religious community about whose life we have records that
can pass the test of historical criticism. Arnold Toynbee, another
hostile critic of Islam, has this to say:/09

The sources fo r the stu d y o f Islam ic h isto ry fro m

Muhammad s lifetime onwards, are copious, and many o f
them are o f first-rate value from the historian s professional
point o f view. Muhammad s career, unlike Jesus s, can be
followed point by point and, in some o f its chapters, almost
day by day - in the full light o f history110

John Davenport states:

It may be truly affirmed that o f all known legislators and

conquerors not one can be named the history o f whose life
has been written with greater authenticity and fu lle r
detail than that o f Muhammad.1

109Toynbee, A.,: A study o f History, Vol., 12, p. 463

110 Ibid.
111 Davenport, John: An Apology for Muhammad and the Koran, p. 1
87
 From the pen of a distinguished Christian clergyman comes
the very significant statement:

We know less o f Zoroaster and Confucius than we do of

Solon and Socrates: less o f Moses and Buddha than we do
o f Ambrose and Augustine. We know indeed somefragments
o f a fragment o f Christ s life; but who can lift the veil o f the
thirty years that prepared the wayfo r the three. . . . What do
we know o f his mother, o f his home life, o f his earlyfriends,
and o f his relation to them, o f the gradual dawning, or, it
may be, the sudden revelation o f his divine mission. How
many questions about him occur to each o f us that must
always remain questions?

But in Mohammedanism everything is different: here instead

o f the shadowy and mysterious we have history. We know as
much o f Muhammad as we do even o f Luther and Milton.
The mythical, the legendary, the super-natural is almost
wanting in the original Arab authorities, or at all events can
easily be distinguished from what is historical. Nobody
here is the dupe o f him self or o f others; there is the full
light o f day upon all that light can ever reach at all. 2

The question must be raised: is the life and teachings of the

founder o f Islam and Buddhism o f any significance to the
religions them selves, - to Muslims and Buddhists? Both
religions answer in the affirmative that they are of paramount
importance. But todays scientific mind insists on a merciless
examination o f all historical documents which claim to be
religious scriptures. The funeral pyre which modem Biblical
criticism has made of the Christian scriptures has led numerous Chris
tians to abandon the real Christian life, lived by faith, for a mere
formal and social attachment with Christianity. After all it seems
as though we can never know the real life and teachings of Christ!

112 Smith, Rev. Bosworth: Mohammad and Mohammedism, pp. 16-18

88
 Now in the scriptural confrontation between Buddhism
and Islam, it is the Islamic scripture alone which can satisfy all
the demands of the modern scientific mind. In fact, it is the
only religious scripture in the world today which can escape
the funeral pyre! It is, and will always be, possible for us to
have certain knowledge o f Islam and Muhammad. It is, and
will always be, impossible fo r us ever to be certain about what
is Buddhism and who was Buddha.

Dimensional Comparison

This book has depicted the essential teaching of Gautama

Buddha as being exclusively ethical in character. Original
Buddhism was confined to an ethical system. But even as an
ethical system Buddhism is problematical, as our critique of
the fundamental statements of Buddhism, the theories of Karma,
transmigration of souls, not-self, etc., have shown.

Buddhism preaches a philosophy o f detachment from the

world in order that the mental state o f contemplative quietude
may be reach ed . D etac h m en t from the w orld and
otherworldliness belong to the Buddhist philosophy of life. But
detachment as a moral ideal is dangerous. Toynbee draws out
an appalling moral conclusion:

. . . as a moral achievement it is over-whelming; but it

has a disconcerting moral corollary; fo r perfect detachment
casts out pity, and, therefore, also, love, as inexorably as it
purges away all the evil passions.113

Again, Buddhisms moral code is openly hostile to women.

Buddha was never tired of describing the defects and vices of
women and warning the monks to guard against them./M The

113 Toynbee, Op. cit. Vol. 6, p. 144

114 Encyclopaedia o f Religion and Ethics: art: Ethics and Morality, Vol. 5, p. 453

89
Orthodox decried sexual intercourse as the bovine or bestial
habit, and they cultivated a certain contempt for women?The monk
was warned to be perpetually on his guard, and a short dialogue
admirably sums up the attitude of the early Buddhists:

Ananda: How should we behave to women?

Lord: Not to see them!

Ananda: And i f we have to see them?

Lord: Not to speak to them!

Ananda: And i f we have to speak to them?

Lord: Keep your thoughts tightly controlled!5

For more than 1,000 years, Buddhist monks remained

celibate. After that one section of the Buddhists lifted the ban
and perm itted m arriage. But even then woman was not
absolved o f her curse. Women were not free individuals. It
appears from the following incident that she was considered as
a chattel by some o f the highest Buddhist religious personalities.
Padma Sambhava, the Lotus-born, established Buddhism in
Tibet about 770 A.C. He was considered to be a second
Buddha. He accepted from the Tibetan King the gift o f one oj
his fiv e wives.6 Apparently the second Buddha believed in
women as chattel, who could be gifted by a husband to another
man! Similar is the case o f Marpa, the translator, one o f the
greatest teachers o f Tibet. He married when 42 years old, and
he also had eight other female disciples, who were his spiritual
consorts. 7

115 Conze, op. cit., p. 58

116 Ibid., p. 60
117 Ibid., p. 60

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 Islam has a very comprehensive ethical system. It does much
more than minister to the moral needs o f mankind. It, in fact,
provides guidance for every aspect o f human life - be it individual
or social, spiritual or mundane, legal, or political, or economic,
etc. Islam alone, among all the religious systems of the world, can
present an economic teaching on the basis o f its scripture, a
teaching fundamentally different from the existing economic
philosophies of the world/'* a teaching which promises to be
socially progressive and p o litic a lly dem ocratic, in which
laissez-faire and socialism will attain a happy synthesis, in which
capital will be controlled and yet man will be free.'19

Sim ilarly Islam, through its scripture, the Q u ran,

provides significant guidance in politics, law, the different
branches o f science like physics, chemistry, biology, geology,
astronomy, astro-physics, etc. The Q uran urges the exploration
o f space and the conquest o f the heavens. In the field o f
philosophy the Q uran not only gives an ethics, but, also, a
metaphysics (something which Buddhism woefully lacks), a
logic, aesthetics, epistemology, psychology, etc. The Q uran
has made real contributions to the philosophy o f science,
philosophy of history, ph losophy o f religion, psychology o f
mental hygiene and character-building and social philosophy.

The Quran gives detailed guidance in respect of mans

social life. For example, it deals at length with the institutions
of marriage and divorce, inheritance, voluntary and compulsory
charity. It not only emphasizes the brotherhood of man, but
also takes effective measures to bring about, through the
in stitu tio n o f congregational p ray er, the p sy ch o lo g ical
framework which breeds the feeling o f unity within a group
and which grows until (in Hajj, or the pilgrimage to Makkah) it
encompasses mankind at large.

118 Vide: Ahmad, Shaikh Mahmud: Economics o f Islam.

119 Ibid, p. viii

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 The Q uran goes even further to apply itself to the task
of eradicating social evils. The scripture of Islam is the only
religious scripture in the world which lays down a systematic,
effective and workable framework for the eradication of that
dimension o f the institution of slavery which witnesses the
immoral exploitation o f human beings and the unjustified de
nial o f freedom. It was not the Bible but the British Parliament
which abolished slavery in the Christian British Empire in 1833,
- and this was accom plished in the face o f ecclesiastical
opposition. In fact, the Christian Church supported the
slave-trade to the extent that, as Dr. Eric Williams informs us
the bells o f the Bristol Churches peeled merrily on the news oj
the rejection by P a rlia m en t o f W ilberforces bill fo r the
abolition o f the slave-trade.120

Upto to this day, the Q uran is the only scripture, or moral

system in the world (religious and secular), which has applied
itself intelligently to the task of eradicating the evils of sexual
im m orality, and given a code o f sexual m orality that can
effectively solve the sex problems of even the modem age. We
say in te llig e n tly b ecau se Islam, unlike Buddhism and
Christianity, conceives o f sex as natural, normal, necessary, pure
and even sublime.

Again, on the question of sex, the Quran is the only re

ligious scripture which not only makes woman a free individual
but also gives her the right to own property and, even more,
raise her to such a high status that, on the authority of
Muhammad (s) himself: Paradise lies at the fe e t o f thy mother,
she becomes the object o f the highest respect and veneration.
The Buddhist scriptures, like the Bible, are full of negative
comments concerning women. The Hindu wife, likewise, is

120 Williams, Dr. Eric: Capitalism and Slavery, p. 42. This book contains a vivid,
accurate and fully documented account of the slave trade o f 18th and 19th cen
tury Christian Britain.

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expected to mount the pyre o f her dead husband and prove her
fidelity and love to the extent o f being cremated alive while he,
lucky chap, is cremated dead.

Some more social evils which the Q uran eradicates are

the curse of alcohol and gambling, the use o f narcotics and other
deadly or harmful stimulants, the follies o f extravagance and
the vice of miserliness. The hand of the thief is to be cut off.
The lazy good-for-nothing who will not work to earn his own
bread, but prefers to live as a parasite on society, finds that
there is absolutely no scope for such an occupation.

The conclusion is that dimension-wise Islam is far more

comprehensive than Buddhism, for while Buddhism ministers
to the moral needs of mankind, Islam provides guidance in every
sphere o f human life. And even within the closed field o f
ethics, the ethics of Islam, as we have tried to show in our
discussion above and in previous chapters, is demonstrably
superior to the Buddhist ethics.121

Archetypal Comparison

The archetype of Buddhism, Gautama Buddha, is decid

edly inferior in respect of the richness o f his life, the success o f
his mission and the stature o f his moral personality, to the
archetype o f Islam, the Holy Prophet Muhammad (s). Gautama
Buddha, from the time he attained enlightenment at the age o f
thirty-five until he died forty-five years later, devoted his
entire life to only one activity, viz., ministering to the moral
needs of mankind. In this connection he travelled far and wide,
from city to city, covering thousands o f miles on missionary
errand.

121 The readers who would like to examine the entire ethical code o f Islam may
refer to Dr. F.R. Ansaris masterpiece: The Quranic Foundations o f Structure o f
Islamic Society. World Federation o f Islamic Missions. Karachi. 1973. A very
short work on the subject is B.A. Dars: Quranic Ethics.
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 The H oly P ro p h et M uham m ad, from the tim e he
proclaimed prophethood at the age of forty, until he died twenty-
three years'22 later, led a life of such richness that it found
expression as a head o f state, a military commander, a family
man, a lawgiver and judge, a social reformer, a political and
diplomatic prince, an economist, etc., apart from his basic
function of bringing the best morals to perfection.,in For the
entire 23 years o f his ministry he remained in the cities of
Makkah and Madina except for a short trip to nearby Taif and
divers military expeditions.

In connection w ith the success o f their respective

missions, Buddha labored for 45 years but did not live to see
the rise and spread o f Buddhism, - the impact of Buddhism on
the world scene. In fact, he made so small an impact on his age
that no historical reference to him is to be found except in the
Pali scriptures o f the Hinayana sect. Similar is the case with
Christianity. In sharp contrast with that, Muhammads impact
on his age was dramatic, revolutionary, and historic. According
to A.L. Kroeber; Islam had no infancy and no real growth, but
sprang up, Minerva-like, full-blown with the life o f one man.'24
And as for the impact o f Muhammad on his time, the historian
Christopher Dawson comments that history allows the whole
world-situation to be suddenly transformed by the action o f a
single individual like Muhammad . . . 125

In fact, Arnold Toynbee, also, puts his stamp of approval

o f this aspect o f our archetypal comparison when he says:

122 Buddha spent a time twice as long as Muhammad on his mission and did not
achieve half as much.
123 I was raised in order that the best o f morals may be perfected. Thus spoke
Prophet Muhammad (s).
124 The Nature o f Culture, p. 388
125 The Dynamics o f World History, ed. By J.J. Mallory, p. 27

94
 Islam s epiphany was dramatic by comparison with
Christianitys and Buddhism s. Jesu ss life and death
passed unnoticed at the time, except among the obscure
and tiny band o f his Galiliaean Jewish disciples. Our
information about his ministry comes exclusively from
the scriptures o f the Christian Church . . . Siddhartha
Gautama s ministry, likewise, is known only from the
Pali scripts o f the Hinayana . . . Yet Buddhism did not
make a political impact on the world on a grand scale
till about 200 years, and Christianity not till about 300
years, after the founder s day, when their respective
political fortunes were made by their conversions o f
Asoka and Constantine. On the other hand, Islam made
a comparable impact during the fo u n d e rs own life time,
and its po litical fortunes were made by the fo u n d er
h im self'26

Gautama Buddhas mission in life has turned out to be less

than successful; for, as we have shown in our discussion on the
religious schools of Buddhism , the original teachings o f
Buddha have been turned upside down. Buddha closed the doors
of both the worlds. Buddhists have opened the doors of both the
worlds. In fact, if Buddha were to return today he might not be
able to even recognize the religion which he founded.

The religion which Muhammad has taught is very much

the same today as it was during his time. In fact, some
Muslims have taken their repugnance to innovation to such an
extreme limit that, as Dr. Ansari laments, dynamic orthodoxy
has been replaced by conservatism. If Muhammad (s) were to
return today he would find Muslims reading the same Q uran,
worshipping the same God (Allah), praying the same way,
fasting the same way, giving the same compulsory charity,
performing the pilgrimage in the same way as he did!

126 A Study o f History, Vol. 12, p. 461

95
 In order that the reader may be able to judge for himself
the successes of Buddha and Muhammad in their respective
m issions we shall discuss just one point here. Gautama
Buddha remained perfectly silent about the existence of God.
He never affirmed the existence of God. He certainly never
claimed to be God or to be an object of worship. Today ninety-
nine percent o f Buddhists believe in and worship one god, many
gods, and what is even worse, Gautama Buddha himself as god.
The idol-w orship w hich the Buddha revolted against has
returned to Buddhism with such a vengeance that, wherever
there are Buddhists today, there are idols (even o f Buddha
himself, some fifty feet high, some in pure gold, etc.) which
are objects o f worship.

The fundamental statement of Islam, or the declaration

dynam ite o f Muhammad (s), on the basis o f which he raised
the structure o f the religious community in Islam, is La ilaha
ilia Allah, Muhammadur Rasool Allah - There is no God but
Allah and Muhammad is his servant and messenger. Today,
throughout the length and breadth of the earth among the 1,000
million and odd Muslims o f the world, no one can be found who
claims to be a Muslim and who has wavered even the slightest
from this fundamental statement. If any Muslim, in fact, should
believe in any other God than Allah, or if he should raise
Muhammad to a status higher than prophethood, he ceases to
be a Muslim. The only exception to this claim would be Louis
Farrakhan and his group who have preserved the beliefs of Elijah
Muhammad to the effect that Allah appeared in the person of
Farrad Muhammad in Chicago in the beginning of this century.
Whoever holds such a b elief is in manifest shirk and is not a
Muslim. But Farrakhan and his group claim to be Muslims.
And, amazingly, this claim is recognized by ignorant Muslims,
and by equally ignorant Muslim leaders!

The Jews raised Ezra to be the son-of-God. The Christians

went further. They raised Jesus not only to son-of-God, but
96
made him part o f what they called the God h ead . The
Buddhists also made a God o f Buddha. It is only the Muslims
who have remained faithful to the teachings o f the founder in
refusing to exalt Muhammad (s) to the status o f Divinity.

At the time o f the death o f the M uhammad (s), the

people gathered in the mosque were hesitant in believing the
news. Omar, in fact, threatened to kill anyone who said that
Muhammad (s) was dead. Abu Bakr, the sage, went into the
Prophet's home, kissed the dead body on the forehead, and then
went out to make the historic statement to the crowds outside:
Oh people, i f you worshipped Muhammad, then know that
Muhammad is dead. But i f you worship Allah, then know that
Allah is alive and will never die.127

Finally, to bring this archetypal comparison to a close,

let us exam ine the m oral p e rso n a litie s o f B uddha and
Muhammad (s).

Our studies in Buddhism and the life o f Buddha have

created in us deep respect and great love for the man himself,
and a sympathetic appreciation for the conditions under which
he was brought up, and which left a deep impression on his
life. We firmly believe that he had a highly-developed moral
personality and that he led a good life. But as much as he
inspires awe and devotion, the critical student cannot escape
the responsibility of examining Buddhas moral personality in
particular and his over-all personality in general in so fa r as it
forms an archetype fo r human life and conduct.

Again we shall restrict ourselves to a discussion of just one

point, for it is quite sufficient to prove our case.

It is one of the axioms of moral philosophy that the means

127 Cf. Dinet and Ibrahim: The life o f Muhammad, the Prophet o f Allah, p. 210

97
should always conform to the end. Gautama Buddha, by his own
testimony, did achieve his end, namely, enlightenment and
nirvana but the means he adopted did not conform to the end.

At the age of 29 he is reported to have abandoned his young

beautiful wife and his infant son. And for the rest of his life, even
after he had attained the goal for which he left his home, he never
resumed his duties as a husband and a father. He never returned to
his life at home despite the fact that he revisited his native city and
his home. By no stretch of imagination can this act be conceived
o f as pardonable, far less exemplary and archetypal. If all
husbands and fathers were to desert their wives and children and
spend the rest of their lives seeking enlightenment and ministering
to the moral needs o f mankind, the greater part of mankind will be
reduced to unimaginable sufferings. As an archetype, therefore,
Gautama Buddha suffers from a very serious defect.

The archetype of Islam, the holy Prophet Muhammad (s), also

possessed a highly developed moral personality. But far from deserting
his wife and children, he performed his duties as a husband and a father
until his death, with the greatest love, the greatest compassion and
extreme devotion. Muhammad married, when he was 25, a twice-
married widow, 15 years older than himself, who had three children.
For the next 25 years, the most sexually active for male, Muhammad
(s), and sexually subdued for the female, Khadija (ra), the Prophet of
Islam remained loyal, faithful, loving, kind, dutiful and compassionate
to his ageing wife who, when she died, was 65 years old. He then
married Sauda, an elderly widow. And for the next five years she
remained his only wife. After this the Prophet married a number of times
and history records that, with the exception of Aisha, all of these wives
were widows with children or divorced women. His entire married
life thus sets a precedent128, which effectively counteracts the

128 My own mother was a widow with a child when my father married her. He
explained his choice as follows: If Muhammad, the Prophet o f Allah, can marry a
widow with children, so can I.

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stigma, and even prohibition attached to the remarriage o f
widows and divorcees. N ot only th is, but by virtue o f
Muhammad (s) being the archetype o f Islam, Islam has ensured
that all those w h ) emulate its archetype will be kind and
loving, faithful and compassionate to their wives and children.
If all men should follow the example o f Muhammad (s) many
tears of this earth will change to smiles.

We do not propose to go into a detailed description o f the

overall personality of the archetype of Islam. Suffice it to bring
to the notice of the reader that one o f the greatest minds o f the
modern age considered the archetype o f Islam to be eminently
acceptable. George Bernard Shaw says:

The mediaeval ecclesiastics, either through ignorance or

bigotry, painted Muhammedanism in the darkest colours.
They were, in fa ct, tra in ed to hate both the man
Muhammad and his religion. To them M uhammad was
the anti-Christ. I have studied him, the wonderful man,
and in my opinion, fa r from being an anti-Christ, he must
be called the savior o f Humanity. I believe that i f a man
like him were to assume the dictatorship o f the modern
world he would succeed in solving its problems in a
way that would bring it the m uch-needed peace and
happiness. 129

Annie Besant writes:

It is impossible fo r anyone who studies the life and

character o f the great Prophet o f Arabia, who knows how
he taught and how he lived, to fe el anything but reverence
fo r that mighty Prophet, one o f the greatest messengers o f
the Supreme. And although in what I put to you I shall say
many things which may be familiar to many, yet I m yself

129 Quoted in Charms o f Islam, Aisha Bawany Wakf, p. 40

99
 feel, whenever I reread them, a new wave o f admiration,
a new sen se o f reverence fo r that m ighty Arabian
teacher130

The conclusion is, and must be, that the archetype of Islam
is superior to that of Buddhism. The archetype of Islam found
perfection in every aspect of his personality, every dimension of
his life, to the extent that Allah himself declares of him:

Verily thou possesseth greatness (in excellence with regard

to) every dimension o f thine personality.
(Quran: 68:4)

It is the personality of the man Muhammad (s), as much as

the religion which he taught, which even today, 1400 years after
his death, can capture the hearts of men and women of all races,
o f all classes, o f all colours, - men and women of the highest
intellect and greatest learning, - to rekindle and redynamise, again
and again, the revolution which he initiated, - to reawaken, even
in the darkest o f hours, all that is great and divine, noble and
good, in the human personality, - to change the course of human
history and to strive, till death overtakes them, for establishing
here on earth the heavenly abode of peace (dar al-salaam).

No religion can survive without an archetype. No religion

can build a human personality except on the pattern o f its
archetype. A single defect in the archetype leads to ten-fold
defects in the personalities of all those who faithfully imitate it.
Hence nothing less than perfection is acceptable. The archetype of
Islam alone is perfect. It is certainly superior to the Buddhist
archetype.

130 Besant, Annie: The Life and Teaching o f Muhammad, p. 4

100
Comparison o f the Philosophies o f Life o f Buddhism and Islam

A religious philosophy o f life centres around three main

concepts, - Man, the World and God. We shall attempt, in this
section, to compare the Buddhist and Islamic philosophies of life
within the framework of these three basic concepts.

A. The Buddhist Philosophy o f Life

Man

Here we are confronted with such questions as: What is life?

What is the origin of life? What is the purpose of life? What is the goal
or destiny of life? What is the place of man in the scheme of things, etc.?

Buddhism, as we saw in our discussion on the theory of

dependent origination, places the origin of life in 'the craving for
life7, conceives of the purpose of life as being a struggle to escape
the sufferings of the world, and holds out Nirvana or non-existence
as the end of life. The question beyond Nirvana, w hat? is
considered to be inadmissible.

As regards the place o f man in the scheme of things, we

have to look to the theory of Karma and the transmigration of souls
for the position of Buddhism. Life is a cycle of rebirth, which
continues till one has attained salvation. Man is a cog in the wheel.
He might just as well have been an animal, but was bom as a man
by virtue o f his good deeds in a previous life. Buddhism,
fortunately, did away with the Hindu caste system and so escapes
the further criticism of dividing humanity itself. In Hinduism, one
may be bom as a Brahman of high caste and so be closest to
salvation, or one may be bom as an untouchable to live as a
veritable outcaste from society, scorned and abused.

There are certain d isco n certin g co ro llaries to this

philosophy of man as found in Buddhism. Since the purpose of
101
life is to escape from the universal fact of suffering, Buddhism is
led on to a philosophy o f the world that is negative and escapist.
Let us discuss this.

World

Buddha never discussed such all-important questions as the

origin of the world or the destiny of the world. But in so far as the
constitution of the world is concerned, it appears as though he
conceived of the world as being an immoral order, if we may be
permitted to coin the phrase. The world is not so constituted as to be
compatible with success in the moral struggle (i.e., it is not a moral
order). Nor is the w orld indifferent to m ans moral life
(materialism). Rather the world, and all it relates to, constitute the
greatest obstacle to mans pursuit of salvation. This being so,
Buddhism adopts a negative attitude towards the world and
encourages what in religious terminology is called, the otherworldly
life. When this philosophy was applied to Buddhist personality
culture, it gave rise to the ideal of detachment. This philosophy of
otherworldliness with its practical form of detachment gave rise to
important consequences in the domain of morality. The goal o f the
Buddhist philosophy o f life, in so far as it pertains to moral philo
sophy, is not a collective effort for victoiy in the moral struggle,
but, rather, individual effortfo r escapefrom the world.

God

Despite the fact that Buddha remained perfectly silent

on the question o f god, Buddhism evolved for itself the
concept o f god. This it did in an extremely shabby way to
incorporate within itself the very evils against which it rose as
a revolt. Idol-w o rsh ip is now com mon all through the
Buddhist world. And the Hindu incarnate gods have found
expression in Buddhism with Buddha as god, who incarnates
from time to time to render assistance to the forlorn multitudes
struggling for salvation.
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 This conccpt of god falls far short of the requirements of the
authentic religious consciousness which conceives of God as the
embodiment o f all perfection - infinite in respect of His being as
well as His attributes. A god who can be bom as a man, live as a
man, and die as a man, be subjected to all the human privations
and frailties, etc., cannot be conceived of as the embodiment of
perfection, whether he be Gautama or Jesus. It does sound queer
to say that god died at the age o f eighty, or that god, before he was
crucified, complained of having been forsaken!

The philosophy of life in Buddhism as revealed in its

concepts of man, the world and god, gave rise to certain consequences
which mar the serene face of Buddhism. The anti-worldly-life stand
of Buddhism led, within the life-tim e o f its founder, to the
establishment of the institutions of monasticism and celibacy.

Monasticism

Of all religions in the world, Buddhism lays the greatest

emphasis on monasticism. It is impossible fo r the layman to work
out his own salvation while in the world, fettered by its ordinances
and under the spell o f its attractions. He must renounce the world
and become a monk so that, undistracted and at leisure, he might
pursue the highest ends and win fo r himself final deliverance.13'

The criticism of the institution of monasticism is that it tends

to weaken or even distort the perspective of the monk with respect
to the richness of human life as it reveals itself in the theoretical -
the multifarious branches and dimensions of thought and feeling,
and in the practical - the numberless forms of activities which find
expression in mans social life. Monasticism, as an ideal, finds it
indispensable to cultivate in the mind of the monk a certain
contempt for the non-monastic life. This results in his being cut
away and deprived of the springs o f inspiration which ever flow

131 Encyclopedia o f Religion and Ethics, art: Monasticism (Buddhist) vol. 8, p. 796.

103
through and through organized society beckoning the perceptive
consciousness to newer, fresher, more creative worlds of thought
and action. The monastic life, as an ideal or an institution, robs life
of the opportunity to be lived, as it ought to be lived, - as a many
splendoured thing.

But the monastic life as a form of temporary withdrawal

from the world open to all men is, on the other hand, an absolute
necessity if man is to have self-realization. The Q uran
recommends this form of withdrawal. In fact it establishes an
institution of withdrawal. In Chapter 73, Surah al-Muzzammil,
of the Quran this subject is examined and treated thoroughly and
a scientific and beneficial method of withdrawal is actually given.
The following quotations are all from Surah al-Muzzamil:

ji .Sui si* ^ \ jl ^ .Sui Snjdbi .ji>3i tfci i;

4 & V

Oh thou, fo ld ed in garments (i.e. the garments o f worldly

life), stand (in prayer) by night, but not all night, - half o f it or a
little less or a little more.

Standing in prayer by night is a form of withdrawal from the

worldly life. This is very clear from the use of the word Muzzamil
(one folded in garments) in the previous verse. But the Quran
immediately proceeds to forbid a permanent withdrawal (but not
all night!). This withdrawal must be intelligent and temporary
(half of it or a little less or a little more).

S?ji ^LJLc UJ .*)Ljy j l J l J J j j

And recite the Our an in slow, measured rhythmic tones.

Soon shall we send down to thee a weighty message.
104
 The withdrawal, which is to be employed for the purpose of
reciting and pondering over the revelation of Allah, prepares the
soul to serve as an instrument o f the Divine Will.

Truly the rising by night is most potent fo r governing (the

soul) and most suitable fo r (framing) the Word o f (prayer and
praise).

Abdullah Yusuf Ali comments on the above verse as

follows:752. . fo r contemplation prayer and praise, what time can
be so suitable as the night, when calm and silence prevail, and the
silent stars pour forth their eloquence to the discerning soul.

The Surah directs attention to the fact that the day keeps us
preoccupied with multifarious activities:

Sl J , j iu Sj
Truly, there is fo r thee by day prolonged occupation with
ordinary duties.

There must, therefore, be a time for work, and a time for

withdrawal. Neither should incorporate nor intrude upon the other
so that one should devote ones time exclusively to affairs of the
world, or on the other hand, that one should withdraw completely
from the worldly life.

X_L- d l j l j j X j p

l3- Abdullah Yusuf Ali: Translation and Commentary o f Quran , notes 5759, p. 1633

105
 But keep in remembrance the name o f the Lord and devote
thyself (i.e. withdraw) to Him whole-heartedly.133

The withdrawal to Allah, which must be complete while it

lasts, is symbolized by the night, which follows the day.

This is the monasticism of Islam. In this sense every

Muslim is supposed to be a monk for a part of every night of his
(or her) life! But the monasticism arising from an anti-world
philosophy, which establishes itself as a permanent full-time
institution outside o f society, is forbidden in Islam. Such is the
monasticism o f Christianity and Buddhism.

The real value of the idea of withdrawal is that a man has to

live with himselffo r a while in order to really discover himself. And
it is only after he has discovered himself that his life will have real
meaning and creativity - whatever be his area or sphere of activity.

Every man is a voice unto himself.

And he will never worship

The Great God

In the Great Temple

Tillfirst he sits in silence

Before the Eternal Flame,

In the inmost shrine

Within his heart.134

133 Ibid., (73:1-8)

134 The Flame o f Life, one o f my unpublished poems.

106
 This is the ideal Islam, that a man should first realize
himself in order that he may realize the divine truths.'55 When
we examine the life of the Prophet o f Islam we find him again
and again withdrawing at night to the lonely, quiet spots, far from
the madding crowd, in order that he might again and again
rediscover himself and the truth he was to preach.

Thus Islam wants each one of us to be a mystic or monk for

some time in his life. But it should be in the form of dispersed
moments o f withdrawal so planned as not to bring about a
complete rupture with the worldly life.

Secondly, Islam insists that withdrawal is not an end in

itself. Rather, it is a means to an end. Withdrawal is meant fo r
recharging the spiritual dynamo with a view o f returning to life
better equipped to fight the battle o f life.

Celibacy

In the same strain in which Buddha advocated the monastic

life, he also advocated celibacy. He set the example by abstaining
from sex from the day he parted from his wife to the day he died.
The elite of Buddhists, in fact the only real Buddhists, are the monks,
and the primary indispensable foundation of the monastic life is
celibacy. Buddhist and Christian scriptures are very clear on this
issue that abstinence from sex is o f paramount importance for
withdrawal from the world. Thus Christ said: There be eunuchs
which have made themselves eunuchs fo r the kingdom o f heaven s
sake!

In the Dhammapada we read:

men who have not practiced celibacy . . . .pine away like

old cranes in a lake without fish;

135 He who realizes himself realizes his Lord, said Ali (ra).

107
 men who have not practiced celibacy. . . .lie like worn-out
bows, sighing after the past.136

Celibacy, according to Dr. Conze, was a cornerstone of the

monastic life. The orthodox cultivated a certain contempt for
women. This contempt is, of course, easily understood as a defense
mechanism, since women must be a source of perpetual danger to
all celibate ascetics - especially in a hot climate. The reasons for
this rejection of the sex impulse are not far to seek. A philosophy
that sees the source of all evil in craving for sensuous pleasure
would not wish to multiply the occasions for indulgence in sensual
pleasure. As long as the slightest thought o f lust o f a man towards
women remains undestroyed, so long is his mind tied, even as the
sucking calf is bound to its mother.'37

Islam alone, among the religions of the world, has come out
with a stinging denunciation o f celibacy. Prophet Muhammad (s)
declared:

Marriage is o f my ways; he who goes against my ways is

not o f me.

Marriage is a h a lf offaith.

The wisdom o f the Islamic denunciation of celibacy has

been confirmed by modem psychology. Sigmund Freud gave it
a scientific interpretation. He declared (in his book, Sexual-
Problems, March 1908) I have not obtained the impression that
sexual abstinence is helpful to energetic and independent men
o f action or original thinkers, to courageous liberators and
reformers. The sexual conduct o f a man is often symbolic o f
his whole method o f reaction in the world. The man who
energetically grasps the objects o f his sexual desire may be

136 Radhakrishan and Moore: Op. c it ., p. 304

137 Conze, Op. cit. p. 58

108
trusted to show a similarly relentless energy in the pursuit o f
other aims.138

The suppression of the sex impulse leads to neuroses o f a

thousand and one kinds. On the other hand, normal healthy sex
relations in marriage can solve a thousand and one kinds o f
neuroses and ailments.

There are, says H inton, in n u m era b le ills te rrib le

destructions, madness, even the ruin o f lives - fo r which the
embrace o f man and woman would be a remedy. No one thinks o f
questioning it. Terrible evils, and a remedy in delight and jo y !
And man has chosen so to muddle his life that he must say: There,
that would be a remedy but I cannot use it, I must be virtuous. n<J

Dr. Abbasi'"7, quoting extensively from authoritative sources,

lists all the different neuroses, illnesses, etc., which can and have
arisen from sexual abstinence and have been cured by resumption
of sex life. He concludes his well-written article on the following
note:

Now after knowing all these scientific facts and truths, who
can deny the greatness o f Muhammad (s) who vehemently
discouraged celibacy, asceticism and monasticism. . . .He
foresaw the dangers o f celibacy as well as the advantages o f
the married life. Though an ummi (unlettered), he proclaimed
that the conception o f ascetic sexual abstinence was an
entirely false and artificial conception. It is not only ill-
adjusted to the hygienic facts o f the case but it fails even to
invoke any genuine moral motive, fo r it is exclusively self-
regarding and se lf centered. It only becomes genuinely
moral and truly inspiring when we transform it into the

138 Quoted by Dr. Abbasi in his article Problems o f Sex explained in the Light o f
Islam and Modem Science, published in the Voice o f Islam, Karachi, Vol 1, No. 3.
139 Abbasi, Op. cit. p. 96
140 Ibid., p. 96-7

109
 altruistic virtue o f self-sacrifice. When we have done so we
see that the element o f abstinence ceases to be essential.
Self-sacrifice is acknowledged to be the basis o f virtue;
the noblest instances o f selfsacrifice are those dictated by
sexual satisfaction. Sympathy is the secret o f altruism;
nowhere is sympathy more real and complete than in love.
Courage, both moral and physical, the love o f truth and
honor, the spirit o f enterprise, and the admiration o f moral
worth, are all inspired by love as by nothing else in human
nature. Celibacy denies itself that inspiration or restricts
its influence, according to the measure o f its denial ofsexual
intimacy. Thus the deliberate adoption o f a consistently
celibate life implies the narrowing down o f emotional and
moral experience to a degree which is, from the broad
scientific stand point, unjustified by any o f the advantages
piously supposed to accrue from it.141

The Islamic denunciation of the institution of celibacy as

found in Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, etc., has its vitally
important complement in the concept of sex and marriage in
Islam. Again Islam s viewpoint was unique and diametrically
opposed to well-nigh universally accepted sexual philosophy o f its
cc ntemporary faiths. Islam denied that sex is the Satan in man.
Rather sex, like food and water, is a natural biological need which
has to be fulfilled for man to live a normal healthy life. Islam went
further to make the sex act a sublime and holy act and to invest it
with both psychological and spiritual purity. With this foundation
established, Islam could and did wage a successful war against
lust. The Quran makes lust absolutely forbidden:

o j j c j I . i i ) I Ij j * 1j l j 3^La!l I j - o o lU o

141 Ibid., p. 102

110
 But after them (the righteous posterity o f the great prophets)
there followed a posterity who missed prayers and followed after
lusts: Soon, then, will they face destruction.
(Q uran: 19:59)

In fact the command of Allah to Adam and Eve, when He

placed them in the garden, was:

. 3 Ijyij

Do not approach this tree (i.e., lust.).

(Q uran: 2:35)

The Q uran refers to the emergence o f sex consciousness

in Adam and Eve when it speaks o f the sense o f shame
disclosed in their anxiety to cover the nakedness o f their
bodies after they had tasted the forbidden tree 142(20:121).

According to the Quran, the proper psychological frame of

mind for the sex act can only arise when its legal requirements are
fully met. For this reason Islam permits the satisfaction o f the
sexual desire through lawful means only.

But, as Dr. Ansari observes, the institution o f marriage in

Islam is not meant for the mere satisfaction of sexual desire:

Although the union o f man and woman in marriage

involves the satisfaction o f sexual appetite, it is not, in
the view o f the Qur an, the end o f marriage, - the end
being spiritual companionship and mutual love, to which
the sexual union itse lf should contribute, but which is
marked o ff distinctlyfrom mere sexual pleasure. The Holy

142 Most commentaries o f the Quran give a different interpretation o f the verse
relating to the act o f disobedience committed by Adam and Eve.
Ill
 Q u ran says: A nd among His Signs is this, that He
created fo r you mates from among yourselves, that ye
m ight obtain tranquility and solace in them, and He
ordained between you love and mercy. Verily in that are
signs fo r those who reflect (30:21).143

The conclusion is that it is Islam with its positive and

healthy attitude towards social life, sex and marriage, and not
Buddhism with its indispensible institutions of monasticism and
celibacy, which can establish the conditions necessary for the
establishm ent o f a happy stable social order, and for the
fulfillment o f the human longing for a life of peace, happiness
and satisfaction.

B. The Islamic Philosophy o f Life

The P rin cip le o f U nity: O ntological C osm ological and

Epistemological Applications.

The Islam ic Philosophy of Life revolves around the

principle o f unity (taw hid). This principle o f unity has
manifold applications. In its ontological application it gives us
the absolute monotheism o f Islam, - One God. The cosmological
application results in the concept of the world or the universe
as an organized w hole.144 Even in epistemology we find
the p rin c ip le o f u n ity at work. Is la m s th eo ry o f
know ledge is ab so lu tely unique and revolutionary. A ll
knowledge form s one whole. All the different branches of
k n o w led g e are in te r-re la te d and in ter-d ep en d en t. The
perfectly-educated scholar is he who is educated in as many

143Ansari, Dr. F.R.,: The Quranic Foundations and Structure o f Muslim Society,
Vol. 2. p. 36.
144The dislocation or imbalance o f any o f its parts will throw the entire machinery
o f the universe out o f gear. The Americans and Russians would therefore be well
advised to make a through investigation o f the constitution o f the moon before
they start exploding their nuclear devices, etc, up there.

112
different branches of knowledge as possible, and who achieves
a concordance o f all this know ledge on the basis o f the
fundamental truths laid down in the Q uran.

Psychological Application: In the psychological application,

the principle o f unity gives us the unity o f human nature. Man
is a unitary being, - an integrated whole. Both Christianity
and Buddhism oppose this concept. Christianity conceives of
man as a dual being. He is both a physical being and a spiritual
being, and they are always at war because they are diametrically
opposed to each other. The flesh is evil; it is the spirit which is
good. Buddhism surpasses Christianity to give us the multiple
man. Man is a conglomeration, an unholy alliance o f many
different skandas145 which, for the sake o f convenience, are
conceived as a whole and given a name.

Application to mankind: Islam does not stop with man as

a unitary being. It goes on to give the concept o f mankind as
unity. All human beings, irrespective o f color, class, caste746
or creed form one family, - the universal brotherhood o f man.
In the history o f the world it is only Islam which has so far
succeeded in establishing the real brotherhood o f man. H.A.R.
Gibb, the learned orientalist, makes a significant statement
which should be brought to the attention o f our readers
(particularly in this age in which war is relentlessly being waged
on Islam):

But Islam has yet afurther service to render to humanity . . .

No other society has such a record o f success in uniting
in an equality o f status, o f opportunity and endeavour, so
many and so various races o f mankind. The great Muslim
communities o f Africa, India and Indonesia, perhaps also
the small Muslim community in Japan, show that Islam

145 See p. 29.

146 The reader should note that the caste system still exists in Indian Hindu Society.

113
 has still the power to reconcile apparently irreconcilable
elements o f race and tradition. I f ever the opposition o f
the great societies o f the East and the West is to be replaced
by co-operation, the mediation o f Islam is an indispensable
condition.147

Biological Application: In its biological application the

concept o f unity gives us life as a single unitary evolutionary
principle. In respect o f life man is inseparably related and
conjoined to other living organisms or beings. It is by virtue of
possessing personality that man becomes distinct, different and
absolutely unique! Bergson did not make this distinction
between life (which belongs to the order o f creation, i.e., the
determ ined world - alam al-khalq) and personality (which
belongs to the order o f command, i.e., the world of freedom -
alam al-amr).148 He has mixed up both and presented personality
as the flowering o f the elan vital, i.e., the vital life impulse.
But this is entirely arbitrary fo r even the barest sparks o f
personality are not to be fo u n d in the non-human universe.

Dr. Ansari has pointed out three further applications of

the unitary principle. They are as follows:

Application to the Sexes: Islam gives, for the first time, the
principle of the unity of sexes. Woman, according to Islam, is not
to be conceived of as a chattel, an inferior being, or an evil being,
or as a freak of nature (Aristotle)/''9 Rather woman and man are
of the very same essence having both been created from the same
single primeval self.150 In this modern age in which a new
philosophy of gender has created an insane and devastatingly

147 Gibb,H.A.R.: Whither Islam?, p. 379.

148 Cf. Say, the essential human being is from the command o f my Lord. (Quran:
17:85), and: Surely to Him belongs the worlds o f Creation and o f Command.
(Quran: 7:54)
149According to Aristotle it is when nature fails to produce a man that a woman is bom.
150 Al-Quran, 4:1.

114
destructive feminist liberation movement, the philosophy o f
gender in Islam, based on the principle of the unity of the male and
the female, is sorely needed.

Allah uses the analogy of the night and day to describe

the basic male-female relationship and the dual, yet mutually
compatible and inter-dependent roles which the male and the
female must play in human society. (Quran: 92:1-4). The dire
warning, implicit in every painted sunset, with its colorful display
of the enthusiasm and joy with which day approaches night and
plunges into her arms, is that when night foolishly decides that
she wants to become day (modem womens liberation movement),
it will only be a matter of time before day begins to mate with
day, and night begins to mate with night. The sons and
daughters of todays feminists will tomorrow embrace the sexual
perversity of Sodom and Gomorrah.

Application to Economics: In the field of economics, the

principle of unity works for a non-exploitative union of labour and
capital. The free and fair market offers equal opportunity to all.
There are no previledged people in that market. All must assume
risks. All must make effort. The free and fair market restores the
essential unity of mankind. That free and fair market no longer
exists in the world today, and has not existed since the market of
the Ottoman Islamic Empire was destroyed.

Application to the problem o f the conflict o f fa ith and

reason: Dr. Ansari also points to the principle of unity as solving
the vexed problem of the conflict between faith and reason. Islam
alone, among all the religions of the world, brings faith and reason
into a harmonious relationship with its concept of Iman, i.e.,
rationally orientedfaith . Islam can afford this because it is built,
not on dogmas, but on doctrines. It is Christianity, which is built
on dogmas (trinity, incarnation, atonement, etc.), which seeks
precarious refuge in a blind faith, flying in the face of the clear and
elementary requirements of reason.
115
Goal in Life: The second basic principle in the Islamic philosophy
o f life is its goal in life. Once the goal of life is determined,
everything else must be examined in the light of that goal.

In connection with the goal of Nirvana the Buddhist finds

himself in a great muddle. In this life Nirvana may be salvation
from suffering. But what o f the life beyond death? Is the grave or
pyre the end o f life? Buddhism just does not answer! The
Buddhist, faced with this problem, has two options. Either he
interprets Nirvana to mean stark non-existence after death, or he
frankly admits that he does not know what is Nirvana. But neither
o f these interpretations can make Nirvana acceptable as the
ultimate goal in life.

If my destiny is to pass into non-existence, if my goal in life is

to end life, I can hardly be expected to muster up the enthusiasm for
participating competitively, originally, and creatively in the over-all
struggle of life, moral or otherwise, whether it be in thought or in
action. Great achievements come only through great sacrifices
and men are prepared to make the sacrifice of life itself if they are
given a sufficiently attractive goal in life. It would appear that
Buddhism has failed to give this goal.

There is another peculiarity of the Buddhist goal of life. In

Buddhism we come across the peculiar phenomenon of Buddhists
working their way towards their goals, not on the positive
psychology of the pull of the goal, the force of attraction of the
goal, but rather on the negative psychology of the push of the
past and the rejection of the concrete objective reality in the here
and now!

Islam gives two goals in life - one immediate and the

other ultimate. The first being achieved, the second is sure to
be achieved. The goal in this life is, according to the Quran,
to so build the over-all human personality that it becomes godly,
sublime and beatified.
116
 The Q uran commands:

Be godly
(Q uran: 3:79)

But the ultimate goal in life as given in Islam, and

recognized today only by the Sufis, is that fulfillm ent o f
the ultimate longing of the lover for the beloved. It is the
culmination o f the struggle for achieving closeness to Allah
(iqurbah), it is the meeting with the Lord, - with Allah Himself:

. ik J b S c i uj i jis

Therefore he whose goal is the meeting with his Lord, let

him be righteous in his co n d u ct. . .
(Q uran: 18:110)

These two goals in life are inter-related, for w hile

achievem ent o f the form er leads naturally to the latter,
by fastening the over-all gaze on the latter, a pow erful
psychological incentive is built or im petus given for the
successful struggle to achieve the former.

Islam gives as attractive a goal in life as man can possi

bly want. Allah Himself is the goal o f life in Islam. To him do
we belong, says the Quran, and to Him is our return (2:156).
He is the most potent factor in the life of a Muslim. In fact, all
of life is to be saturated with God-consciousness the way love
permeates the totality of the being o f the true lover/5' And it is

151 It may be boldly asserted that no people in the world give the impression o f
being so religious-minded as do Muslims. All o f life is saturated with the con
sciousness o f God (C.R. Waston: What is this Muslim World?, pp. 38-9, London,
117
winning G ods pleasure and meeting Him, which Islam holds
out as the goal in life. The Muslim therefore, advances to his
goal with the positive psychology o f the p u ll o f the goal.

Secondly, the psychological value o f this, the highest goal

in life, is that it serves as the most powerful motivating force
that can act on human behavior. The Muslim can be absolutely
fearless o f the terrors or tyrannies o f this world, or of death,
because for him, beyond death there is Allah. In the darkest
hour Allah is with him. And there is a life in the hereafter which
is better than this life'52, - a life which Allah provides wherein
His righteous servants shall not only enjoy the supreme bliss of
the beatific vision, but shall also have all that their hearts
desire, all that they have been asking for, as a gift from the
Forgiving, the Merciful God.

Now the immediate goal being godliness, all human in

stitutions, whether they serve biological, psychological, social,
political, economic or academic ends, must be so constructed
and maintained as to function as agencies for building and
maintaining the godly personality. In fact, ones whole life must
revolve around this pivotal ideal, - the goal in life of godliness.
This is, perhaps, the most important application of the princi
ple o f unity.

But before the task o f building the godly personality can

be undertaken, certain vital philosophical questions must be
answered, questions which pertain to Islams philosophy of life
and its concepts of man, the world and God.

Firstly, what is human nature? What is the origin of

human life and the nature o f human freedonj? Is man so

1937). We well may ask: What do they know o f this, who never have known the
agony o f love?
152 Quran: 87:16-17

118
constituted that he can become godly? Is the framework of
godliness already present as a built-in nature in man? Or is
man so constituted that his very nature is alien and hostile to
godliness, or indifferent to godliness? To become godly, should
man negate or affirm himself?

Secondly, what is the nature o f the world? And what is

the relationship which exists between man and the universe
around him? Is the world so constituted as to be in harmony
with, or is it an obstacle to the realization of, m ans goal in
life? To become godly, should man negate or affirm the world?

Finally, what is the nature o f God? And what is the

relationship which exists betw een man and God? Is the
relationship between man and God such that man can know
nothing about Him, - and that man has no affinity with Him?
Or is it that God him self can incarnate as Jesus or Buddha or
Ram and walk and talk among men, thereby establishing the
closest affinity with man and providing him with the oppor
tunity of a first-hand observation o f G ods personality and
behavior? (The discerning reader, both male and female,
would have noted the gender difficulty a w riter faces when
using the English language. In every use o f the word m an
in the above paragraphs, as well as here-under, our meaning
includes both male and female! In the Q u ran A llah, using
the A rabic language, em ploys th e w ord in sa a n , w hich
embraces both the male and the female in a non-discriminatory
embrace)

All these questions must be answered before we can

embark upon the task of making men godly. In fact the answers
to these questions will determine whether or not it is possible or
feasible to attempt to achieve the goal in life of godliness.

119
Man

The Origin o f Life and Human Freedom:

As regards the origin of human life, Islam conceives of man

as a created being - created ab novo, out of nothing, with a
constitution which, far from being tainted with a heritage of sin
(original sin - Christianity; karma - Buddhism and Hinduism), is
rather described as being perfect:

.I*JjHu ,j jC-J'il L ai?- jJl)

We have indeed created man in the best o f constitutions

(or nature).
(Qur an: 95:4)

Man therefore begins his sojourn in his earthly state with a

clean slate, a clean bill of health.

In Buddhism, life has its cause in the craving for life. In

other words, man is responsible for his own existence. What
follows is only logical. Since man is the agent of his own
existence, by the same token he is the architect of his own destiny.
He is what he makes himself - no more, no less. Here Buddhism
seems to be in complete agreement with the modem atheistic
existentialism o f men like Jean Paul Sartre.

Such a philosophy cannot escape the problem of despair.

Indeed it holds out to man stark terror and agony and makes man
an infinitely lonely being in an alien, hostile world. This is so
because it actually abandons man to all the terrors of the stormy,
high seas without providing him with as much as a raft or even a
log to which he can cling. And because no man in his right senses
is prepared to accept such a state of affairs, atheistic existentialism
must eventually modify its stand just as Buddhism modified hers.
120
 In Islam it is Allah who created m an, and A llah it
is who fu rth e r endow ed him w ith p e rs o n a lity and
freedom.1S3 And yet Allah is not prepared to abandon man to
himself:

*> 'I , * ''] ) ,, ,

. ^ J
^ dJj Zj j I j I >ji I

Does man think that he will be left forsaken?

(Q u ran: 75:36)

Neither is man the complete architect and master of his

destiny, nor is Allah the despot working out the destiny of man.
Islam strikes the middle course. In so doing Islam escapes the stark
terrors of the complete freedom of existentialism and Buddhism,
on the one hand, and the stultifying, suffocating determinism of
Spinoza or the kismat of the Persians, on the other. Taqdir in
Islam gives man the freedom to p articipatein the making o f his
own destiny. But the point to note is that his heart finds solace, his
tremulous soul is comforted with the knowledge that Allah
Himself also participates with him in the making o f his destiny.

This thought is more than just comforting; it is revolutionary

and dynamic, for it makes of such a Muslim, the most fearless
human being there can ever be. In battle he is prepared to face an
enemy ten times stronger and defeat him. This fearlessness has
been amply demonstrated in Islamic civilization, time and again,
not only on the battlefield but also in the battlefield o f ideas. And
there is a gloriously beautiful tomorrow, prophesied by Muhammad
(s), which is coming, when authentic Islam will once again
re-emerge triumphantly resplendent in history, and all its hostile
rivals will be consigned to the garbage-bin o f history!

l53Quran: 33:72.

121
On Human Suffering

For the Buddhist, the world is made up of suffering, - sarvam

dukkham, all is suffering. Since suffering is ingrained in the
very nature o f the world, it would hardly be worthwhile to try to
confront the suffering o f the world. The purpose of life in
Buddhism is to escape from suffering, - to find salvation from
suffering. The unfortunate reality is that this philosophy of life led
many to leave the world to suffer and to seek shelter in an artificial
mind which is so conditioned as to be unaffected by suffering.

For the Muslim there is suffering in the world. That suffering

is not in the nature of the world. It can be removed. It is the duty
o f the Muslim, on the one hand, not to increase the misery and
sufferings o f the world, and on the other, to strive tirelessly to
decrease them. The attitude here is not that of escape but of
alleviation and amelioration. The fundamental attribute of Allah,
the One God, is compassion'54', His compassion encompasseth all
things.155 The Prophet of Islam was sent by Allah as the source of
compassion for all the worlds.156 And in the famous saying of
the Prophet (s), mankind is urged to be compassionate:

Those who show compassion and mercy will have the

same bestowed to them by the Compassionate One. Oh
you earthly beings, by ye compassionate to one another!
(If ye should do so) He who is in the heavens will show
compassion to you.

This constitutes a positive Islamic attitude and response to

suffering in the world.

154 In the name o f Allah, Most Compassionate, Most Merciful. (Quran: 1:1)
155 Oh Our Lord, Your Mercy encompasseth all things. (Quran: 40:7)
156 And We have not sent thee (Oh Muhammad) but as a mercy unto all the
worlds. (Quran: 21:107)

122
 The Rationale o f Suffering: The Muslim further distinguishes
between the sufferings of which man himself is the architect, and
the sufferings which come from Allah. No motor-car can be
displayed in the salesroom for public sale until it has been
thoroughly tested. No aircraft is delivered to the purchaser until
it has been tested again and again. It is through these testing in
trying situations that defects are discovered and removed to
make the aircraft safer and more reliable.

On the same analogy the human being has to go through tests

so that he may be built into something durable, reliable and
faultless. Allah uses suffering to try man, to test him, to build him:

^ &
L<aJI
^ ^ ^

Be sure We shall test you with something o f fea r and hunger,

some loss in goods, or lives, or the fru its (o f your toil), but
give glad tidings to those who patiently persevere.
(Qur an: 2:155)

By running from suffering man becomes a coward. By

striving for personal immunity from suffering man becomes
callous. By standing up and facing suffering squarely, bearing it
with patience, and working for its alleviation, man becomes a hero.
It is through Islam par excellence that man becomes a hero. This
is so because it is the Quran which builds its philosophy of life on
the concept o f sabr. Sabr m eans patience, forbearance,
composure, equanimity, steadfastness, firmness, self-control, self-
command, self-possession, perseverance, endurance and hardiness.
And the Quran has over a hundred references to sabr.

The second point to note is that it is the Muslim who is

best equipped to exercise sabr. This again is so because it is
123
the Q uran which states that Allah never places on any soul a
burden greater than it can bear.157

On human nature and m ans relation with God

In connection with human nature, Islam affirms the

aboriginal godliness of the human transcendental self. At the dawn
of creation, according to the Quran, Allah addressed a spiritual
gathering o f all of mankind, and took from them a covenant of
godliness, - which covenant signifies the natural godly disposition
of the spiritual being of man.

When thy Lord drew forth from the children o f Adam, from
their loins, their descendents, and made them testify concerning
themselves (i.e. their transcendental selves) (saying:) Am I not
your Lord? (i.e., is not the relationship which exists between
your ownselves and Me such that I am the Creator, Evolver,
Cherisher and Sustainer o f your spiritual beings) ? They said: Yea
we do testify?
(Quran: 7:172)

Man has another dimension o f his being besides the

transcendental in as much as he is also a spatio-temporal being.
In respect o f this dimension also Islam affirms, as no other
religion affirms, that human nature is so constituted as to be in
harm ony with the struggle for godliness. Man, we noted
earlier, has been created in the best of constitutions or nature.75*
But what is more significant is that the human constitution or
nature has been modelled after the Divine Nature:

157 Quran: 2:286.

158 Quran: 95:4.
124
 . L fcii '^ l i ) I jS IJj lb > i

T/ie constitution o f Allah according to which He hath

constituted man.
(Q uran:30: 30).159

Thus is order to practise the religious way of life, according

to the Quran, man does not have to negate himself. Rather, he has
to affirm himself. True religion means living a life in conformity
with one s over-all nature160. In fact the measure of growth of the
individual human personality corresponds exactly to its measure
of affinity with Reality, for man is the microcosm of which Reality
is the macrocosm;

. Lfc-Lc- ^ l l j l 'JsS <dJI c / j Lls . L L -'-> ^ j J U t i l j * i l i

dU's . J j i j i k ) Sf

Wherefore set thou thy face toward the true religion (which
is, to follow) the constitution o f Allah according to which He hath
constituted man. There is no alteration in Allahs creation (i.e.,
human nature does not change!) That is the right religion (living
a life in conformity with human nature) but most men know not.
(Quran: 30:30)

Thus according to the Q uran, man, in his very nature,

possesses a built-in framework o f godliness. This is affirmed
even more emphatically in the hadith literature where it is stated
that Allah created Adam (i.e., man,) in His own surah (likeness).161

159 Rendering by Maulana Abdul Majid Daryabadi (Holy Quran with English
Translation).
160 This is an absolutely unique and creative definition o f religion given by the
Quran.
161 And He created Adam in His own surat (image). Hadith .

125
 Thus, as we pointed out earlier, the Islamic conception of
human nature makes it possible for Islam to say that in order to
attain godliness, man must affirm himself, - man must foster the
growth of very dimension of his being.762 This is in contradistinction
to other religious viewpoints where we find, as in Christianity, that
in order to be godly man must negate himself, - i.e, his physical
being, and in Buddhism where man has to negate not only his
physical being and self, but also his very existence as an individual,
his very I.

World

In connection with the relationship which exists between

man and the universe around him, Islam gives the unique answer
that the universe has been subjugated to man. So that, far from
being an obstacle, the universe becomes a tool which man can use
for his own ends:

j > jo i ^ u i ajiy r^ -jji

Do you not see that Allah has subjugated to your (use) all
things in the heavens and on earth . . . .
(Quran: 31: 20)

To become godly man must build a relationship with nature.

He must be a keen observer of the external phenomena, and he
should reflect over his observations and ponder over his
reflections. In so doing he not only discovers the reality of the
world, but he also establishes for himself a pattern of life which
leads naturally to godliness:

162 Truly he succeeds who promotes the growth o f (all the dimensions of) his
being. And he fails who stultifies that growth (either wholly or partly). (Quran:
(!: 9-10)

126
j } i yC y jiL i u fc r , o i^ u i j h

Behold! In the creation o f the heavens and earth, and the

alternation o f the Night and the Day there are indeed Signs fo r
men o f understanding: those who remember Allah standing and
sitting and lying on their sides, and reflect on the creation o f the
heavens and the earth (until the realization o f A lla h s greatness as
reflected in creation stuns them to the exclamation): Our Lord!
Not fo r nought hast thou created (all) this. Hallowed be Thou!
Give us salvation from the Fire .
(Q uran: 3:190-1)

The world is real. It is not, as in Hinduism, maya, an

illusion, a dream, - not a figment o f my imagination. For
Christianity, and even more so for Buddhism, the world is an
obstacle in the way of mans achievement of moral perfection. Both
of these religions, therefore, in their original orthodox form, deny
this world, turn away from this world, and project, consequently, a
complete other-worldly philosophy of life.

Islam says that the world is real. It says more than this. It says
that the world is so constituted as to be in harmony with man's moral
strivings. In other words, this world is a moral order. It is possible for
Islam to make this statement because Islam (with Christianity and
Judaism) holds that the world is a creation o f Allah out o f nothing.
This means that the total nature of the world has been given by Allah.
But here Islam parts company with the other revealed religions to
assert that Allah not only created an ordered163universe but also placed

l63Quran: 69:3

127
 in it a serious purpose and end. That the creation of the world, of life
and death, is for a moral end, and that the world is a moral order, is
stated in the following verses:

Ml j Jp J U Ij Cj rlJ I aJJ I j

. jjrfJJaj Si

And Allah has created the heavens and the earth with
purpose (and fo r ju s t ends) and in order that every soul may
find the recompense o f what it has earned, and none o f them be
wronged.
(Quran: 45:22)

^JJl .>_j6 / J i , JS JL t jZ j lu iiJI ^JJI I^ L j

Z jJ jJ I > J -S u i ^ 1 f c j f i j L J s G jlj 0 ^ 1

Blessed is He in Whose Hands (i.e., possession) is the

Dominion: and He over all things has Power; He who created
Death and Life, that He might try you (as to) which o f you is best
in conduct, and He is the Exalted in Might, Oft-Forgiving.
(Quran: 67:1-2)

The conclusion in this respect is that, in its quest for

godliness, Islam affirms, rather than denies, the world.

The Buddhist philosophy of the world is negative, the

Islamic is positive! As we explained in the discussion on the
religious schools o f Buddhism, Buddha locked the doors of this
world and preached a philosophy of other-worldliness. Since
all is suffering and the Buddhist seeks to escape from suffering,
he can only do that by severing his relations with the world.
Most Buddhists have watered this down to a spirit of detachment,

128
trying to imply that though the flesh may be weak, still the spirit,
at least, can be Buddhist.

The Quran, as we have seen, teaches that this world is

real, i.e., it is a reality to be reckoned w ith. The world, and all
it contains, have been subjugated to man. Far from escaping
from the world, man finds himself, in Islam, as the virtual
sovereign of the world, the vicegerent o f Allah (khalifatullah)
in the world.

This positive philosophy has some very important impli

cations.

Buddhism with its negative philosophy o f the world has,

in more than two thousand years, contributed very little to the
advance of knowledge in the different fields o f investigation
which pertain to this world and the life o f this world, e.g., the
natural and social sciences. A contribution has been made in
the field of psychology to some extent, but that only negatively
and not positively - since it is not based on an objective
approach.

Islam, on the other hand, with its positive attitude towards

the world (including the em pirical se lf o f m an) actually
inaugurated the scientific era, developed the scientific method,
and laid the foundations for the vast and stupendous advances
in knowledge and discoveries in different branches o f science
which characterizes the modern age. The Our an itse lf served
as the fo u n ta in -h ea d which g u id ed the M uslim s in th eir
academic and scientific pursuits.

Hartwig Hirschfield writes:

We must not be surprised to fin d in the Q uran the fountain

head o f the sciences. Every subject connected with heaven
or earth, human, life, commerce and various trades is
129
 occasionally touched upon, and this gave rise to the
production o f numerous monographs form ing commen
taries on parts o f the Holy Book. In this way the Qur an
was responsible fo r great discussions, and to it was
indirectly due the marvellous development o f all branches
science in the Muslim world . . . 164

Iqbal makes the same point when he comments:

But the point to note is the general empirical attitude o f

the Our an which engendered in its followers a feeling o f
reverence fo r the actual and ultimately made them the
founders o f modern science. It was a great point to awaken
the empirical spirit in an age which renounced the visible
as o f no value in m ans search fo r God.'65

The positive philosophy of the world gave rise, in Islam, to

something which is even more unique. Prophet Muhammad is the
only world leader, and Islam the only religion, which has made the
quest o f all know ledge (including the physical sciences)
compulsory on all its followers, male as well as female. The very
first revelation which the Prophet received began with the word
iqra - pursue knowledge! The revelation then went on to give the
psychology o f the questfo r knowledge, namely that Allah must be
the source o f in sp iratio n and guidance in the pursuit of
knowledge'66. Secularization of education has today effectively
destroyed the link between the Allah and the pursuit of knowledge.
Secondly, it pointed to the fruits of the quest for knowledge. By
acquiring knowledge man is raised stage by stage, in a world which
recognizes values, to the exalted state of honor and glory767. The

IMHirschfield, Hartwig: N ew Researches into the Composition and Exegesis o f

the Quran, p. 9.
165 Iqbal, Op. cit. p. 13.
166 Pursue knowledge in the name o f Allah. (Quran: 96:1)
167 Pursue knowledge and thy Lord, Who is the Most Honored (will raise thee to
a state o f honor). (Quran: 96:3)

130
world today has witnessed such a collapse o f values that
knowledge is now pursued in order to make money, be rich,
control others, and live comfortably. Finally the Quran gives the
method o f the quest, namely the knowledge must be pursued
systematically and acquired in a scientific, organized manner,
through the use of the p en and all that it symbolizes76* Pen
symbolizes the recording o f facts, observations, findings,
hypothesis, etc.; the scientific development of language to serve as
a proper instrument for the pursuit and spread of knowledge. The
words read169teach170, and pen171 imply reading, writing, books,
study, and research. The world of knowledge has today lost sight
of this and is producing more and more people who are technically
efficient in a single branch o f knowledge and are jackasses in
respect of all the rest of the world of knowledge. The intellect is
fed with Me Donalds hamburgers and KFC, and if Michael Jackson
were to start dancing on his head they would all seek to imitate
him, and all their expensive education would dance with them!

The M uslim is duty-bound, therefore, to enter into

different branches of knowledge with a view to accumulating
understanding, assessing and assim ilating, with a critical
outlook, the contributions o f different nations and different
scholars, and thence to proceed to the creative, daring task of
striving to extend the frontiers of knowledge in every single branch
of knowledge. Muslims have now abandoned this quest. And the
scholars of an essentially godless and decadent modem western
civilization have put the scholars of the world of Islam to shame.

God

Without God, Buddhism failed to give satisfactory answers in

connection with the origin o f life, the purpose o f life, the goal

168 Who taught with the pen. (Quran: 96:4)

169 iqra
170 allama
171 bit qalam
131
or destiny o f life, and the place of man in the scheme of things.
Neither could Buddhism give a satisfactory philosophy o f the
world. In fact, without God Buddhism could not but give a
philosophy of life totally inadequate, unsuited and unacceptable
to basic human nature. Because o f this mistake Buddhism has
suffered the humiliation o f being turned upside down to the
extent that it is today difficult to find the original gospel of
Buddha in popular Buddhism.

Islam, with God, gave eminently satisfactory answers

where Buddhism could not. Because o f God man is a created
being with an aboriginally pure moral constitution, a spiritual
being who will survive death, a fully personal being endowed
(as nothing else in the universe has been endowed) with a
creative intellect, self-consciousness and a self-directed w ill
(i.e., free-will). Because o f God the purpose and end of life, as
well as the goal o f life, become positive, dynamic and sublime.
Because of God man occupies the highest place in the scheme
of things. Again because o f God this world is real and is a
moral order, that is, it is so constituted as to be compatible with
success in the moral struggle.

Let us examine the relationship which exists between God

and man. For philosophic Hinduism, God or the absolute, is the
great unknown (DM). For Mahayana Buddhism the transcendental
reality, which has been identified with nirvana, is unknowable.
It is void (sunya). Even ancient Greek thought which, in its last
upsurge took a religious turn in Plotinus, conceived of God, or, as
he called it, the O ne, as unknowable. On this principle it
becomes impossible to determine the relationship which exists
between man and an eternally unknowable God.

Christianity, later Buddhism, popular Hinduism, and even

Judaism have gone to the other extreme. According to Christianity
and later Buddhism, God Himself is a Man. (Christianity: Jesus;
Buddhism: Buddha). He incarnates as a man, comes down to earth
132
to live as a man, to suffer all the human frailties, privations and
limitations, and finally to die as a man. In Hinduism the Gods are
all men (Hinduism also admits of goddesses) who came down to
earth and lived like human beings. The relationship here is not the
promotion o f man to divinity but the demotion o f God to humanity.
Even the God of Judaism does not escape this defect. He may not
be a man, but He certainly behaves like one. For example, there
were Jews who believed that God had a son called Ezra. Then
again, he created the world in six days and became so tired that He
had to rest on the seventh day, etc. etc.!

It is Islam, which, instead of degrading God, recognizes man

as the vicegerent of Allah. Nay, Islam proclaims that Man has
been constituted in such likeness, or on the same pattern as the
Divine Constitution and Nature, that Islam can give to humanity
the ideal seeking to imbue the Divine Attributes. 172

The relationship, therefore, which exists between man and

God, is one of affinity. It is therefore possible for man to become
godly, - to imitate the Divine Personality. In fact Islam has made
this imitation of the Divine Personality compulsory, as we have
just noted.

The second aspect of this relationship is that, as observed

earlier, Allah Himself has appointed man as His Vicegerent
(khalifah) on earth:

? * *
. i i i J e j 'i I J, I

Surely I am going to place on earth one who shall be M y

vicegerent.
(Quran: 2:30)

172 Cf. The hadith: Imbue yourselves with the divine attributes.

133
 This establishes an official close relationship between God
and man.

But, to become godly man must know something of the

divine personality.

Islam says it is possible to know God. The knowledge of

God is to be arrived at through different stages. The first stage is
through revelation. The second stage is through observation,
reason and experience (moral and mystic)/7i. Both these stages,
however, will give us knowledge of God only in so far as He is
related to us - to His creation. In fact the Quran enshrines this
relationship in the famous ninety-nine beautiful names of Allah.
But of God, in himself, - in His essential being and essence, we do
not have any knowledge.

jS *
. La-Lc. "Vj

. . . by cognition they cannot comprehend Him.

(Ouran: 20:110)

Even by analogy he cannot be comprehended; because, in

his essence, nothing is like unto him /74

Thus, the God o f Islam is both unknowable and knowable.

Islam admits knowledge o f God adequate to human requirements.
What more can man want? There are many reasons why man
cannot, and should not have more. To begin with, God is an
infinite being. M an is a finite being. The finite cannot

173 In respect o f the problem o f proving the existence o f God, Islam holds the
position that God is not to be proved (proofs being rational and God being supra-
rational). Rather God is to be achieved. God is to be experienced. But rational
arguments can be used, and in fact must be used, to suggest very strongly the
existence o f God.
174 Quran: 42:11

134
comprehend the infinite. It is fo r the infinite to embrace the
finite and to bestow on it such knowledge as its finitude admits.

Secondly, it is a psychological characteristic o f m ans

rational consciousness that to grasp, comprehend and know a
thing is, in a very real sense, to make it subservient. In the very
act of knowing Gods total nature the rational consciousness will
be undermining and eroding the basic utility o f the belief in
God.

The Concept o f God

What is the nature of the God o f Islam and how does He

compare with His Buddhist counterpart? Buddhism actually
has no God to offer for comparison. What the Buddhists now
worship as God, - i.e., the idols, even Buddha him self who
reincarnates, - is not to be found in original Buddhism. And so
it is not really fair to make these innovations representative of
original Buddhism.

In so far as the general concept o f God is concerned there

are two fundamental questions we can raise. Firstly, ought there
to be a God? And secondly, if there is a God, what should be
His qualities?

In respect of the first question, we shall be content with

drawing the attention of the reader to this monograph as a
whole, - Buddhism experimenting w ithout God, and Islam
insisting on God, and leave the reader to draw his own conclusion.

Now with regards to the second question it must be

admitted that God, in order to be God, ought to be the embodiment
o f holiness and perfection. If He falls short o f holiness and
perfection, He can never function as the highest goal in life or the
explanation of all things for man. This is clearly in consequence
o f the fact that man possesses aesthetic, rational, moral and
135
spiritual or religious consciousness. But God, the perfect being,
cannot be a finite being, for, as Dr. Ansari points out, finitude is
limitation, limitation is shortcoming, shortcoming is defect, and
defect is imperfection.'75

Therefore God, in order to be perfect, must be infinite. Again

God, the infinite being, must be One. There cannot be two infinite
beings, for infinity, by definition, is that which is limitless.

O f all the religions o f the world, it is Islam and Islam alone

which gives the concept o f God as perfect, infinite, and one.

The God of Christianity suffers from the imperfections and

finitudes of man, to the extent that when he (Jesus) was nailed on
the cross, he actually cried out in distress for help:

Eli Eli lema sabachthani

My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me.

(Matthew: 27:46)

Secondly, the Christian concept of God is not monotheistic.

There is a world of difference between God as One, and God as
one in three and three in one . The Christian Godhead is really
triune.

The God of todays Judaism, though One, is not perfect. He

has a defective sense o f justice since He shows open favouritism to
one race of people (the Jews) and excludes the rest of mankind (the
Gentiles) from the possibility o f entering Paradise.

The Gods and goddesses o f Hinduism, are so numerous

that it takes an effort to remember even their names.

175Ansari, Dr. F.R.: Foundations o f Faith, p. 36

136
 In Islam, God is embodiment o f all perfection. He is the
self-existent, self-subsistent, omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient
God, besides whom there is no other. He is the compassionate,
the merciful, the loving, the kind, the generous, the forgiving, the
just. He is fully personal being with whom man can consequently
communicate.

The foregoing discussion has dem onstrated that the

concept of God in Islam is not only rationally acceptable and
sublime, but also absolutely unique and without parallel.

Summary

The Islam ic philosophy o f life revolves around the

principle of unity (tawhid) which finds expression in the unity o f
man, the world and God, and the concept of rationally-oriented
faith. In respect of the goal of life, Islam gives the ideal o f
godliness. Unlike the Buddhist goal o f life, the Islamic goal of
life is definite, positive, and eminently acceptable. Furthermore,
all the prerequisites necessary for the successful struggle to
achieve the goal are met in the Islamic concepts o f man, world,
and God.

Conclusion

The conclusion is that it is Islam and not Buddhism which

meets the requirements o f m ans religious consciousness and,
thus, possesses the capacity to survive the modem age, - an age
which is w itnessing the m ost pow erful challenge to the
religious way of life ever witnessed in history.

Our scriptural, dimensional and archetypal comparison of

Buddhism and Islam as well as the comparison of their respective
philosophies of life have demonstrated the very clear superiority
of Islam.

137
 This confirms the truth of the thrice-repeated Quranic verse
which states:

j/J I j j Ij i J j l j J j l ^ J J I y
. , S'
. aJUL *i

He it is Who has sent His Messenger (Muhammad) with the

guidance and the true religion (i.e., Islam) that it may prevail (time
and again) over all other religions (or ideologies), and Allah
suffices as a witness (that such will be).

(Ouran: 9:33; 48:28; 61:9)

End

138
 Glossary

Abhidhamma: one of the three books which comprise the Tripitaka.

It deals mainly with Buddhist metaphysics.
Adi-Buddha: the great Buddha or the primeval Buddha.
Ahimsa: non-violence.
Alam al-Amr: the world of freedom.
Alam al-Khalq: the determined world.
Anatta: the not-self.
Anicca: the universal flux.
Arhat: the saint of the Hinayana sect.
Awa gawan: transmigration of souls.
Bhikshu: the Buddhist monk who lives the monastic celibate life
and who trains himself for preaching the religious doctrines of
Gautama Buddha.
Bodhisattva: the saint of the Mahayana sect.
Bodhi tree: the famous tree under which Buddha attained
enlightenment.
Dhamma: law (impersonal law).
Dhammapada: a Pali text dealing mainly with Buddhist ethics.
Dukh: suffering.
Fana: the psychological annihilation of the self as a prelude to its
sublimation to the Divine Self.
Hinayana: one of the two famous sects of Buddhism. It is strongly
orthodox.
Iblis: Satan.
Iman: (rationally-orientated) faith.
Jihad f i sabil Allah: struggle in the way of Allah, which inflicts a
cycle of rebirth on anything falling short o f moral perfection.
Khalifatullah: he who can become godly and then function as Gods
representative.
Lalitavistara: a Sanscrit text o f the Buddhist scriptures. Replete
with the miracles of Buddha.
Madhyamika: one of the philosophical schools of Buddhism which
holds that there is no reality.
Mahamaya: Gautamas mother.
139
Mahatma: great self or great soul.
Mahayana: one of the two famous sects of Buddhism. It has
departed to a considerable extent from the original teachings of Buddha.
Nafs al-ammarah: the self prone-to-evil.
Nafs al-lawwamah: the self, conscious o f evil which it has
committed, and regretful o f having done so.
Nafs al-mutamainnah: the self free-from-evil and in a state of
inner contentment and peace.
Nibbana: same of Nirvana.
Nirvana: salvation, enlightenment, the state of contemplative
quietude.
Qur an: the sole scripture of Islam.
Sabr: patience.
Sakyamuni: one of the names o f Gautama. It literally means the
sage of the tribe of Sakya.
Sarvam dukham: all is suffering.
Sarvam kashnikam: all is fleeting.
Sautrantika: one of the philosophical schools of Buddhism. It
corresponds to critical realism.
Siddharta: the given name o f Gautama.
Skanda: an incongruous transitory element.
Suddhodana: Gautamas father.
Sufis: the spiritual luminaries o f Islam.
Sunya: void.
Sutta Pitaka: one of the three books which compose the Tri-Pikata.
It is a collection of the sermons and discourses of Gautama
Buddha and incidents in his life.
Tanha: desire, clinging to life.
Tathagata: the name by which Gautama called himself. It
literally means he who has arrived at the truth.
Tawhid: unity.
Tazkiyah: purification.
Tri-pitaka: a Pali text o f the Buddhist scriptures.
Ummi: unlettered.
Vaibhashika: one of the philosophical schools of Buddhism. It
corresponds to direct realism.
140
Vinaya pataka: one of the three books which compose the
Tri-pitaka. It is the book of discipline.
Yasoddhra: Gautamas young and beautiful wife.
Yogacara: one of the philosophical schools of Buddhism which
holds that only the mental is real and that the material world is
void of reality.

141
 INDEX

Abaqa Khan 81 Baghdad 76,77

Abbasai, Dr. 109 Banaras 8
Abdullah Yusuf Ali 29 Bergson 26, 27, 114
Abhidhamma 4 5 Berkeley, Bishop 46
Abiding Reality 52 - 53 Besant, Annie 99
Abu Bakr 97 Bhikshus 4
Adam 13,38, 78, 111 Bible 86 - 87, 92
Adi-Buddha 74, 75 Bodhi Tree 8
Ahmad, Shaikh Mahmud 91 Bo Tree 61
Ahimsa 71 Bodhisattva 55
Amanat 47 Bokhara 76, 77
Ambapali 68 Bradley 44
Ameer Ali 77 Brahman 10,11,51,59,67,71,
Ambrose 88 72, 101 _
Ananda (the disciple) 2, 3, 51, Brelvi, Prof. Mahmud 8, 24
80, 90 Brotherhood 113
Anatta 36 Buddha
Angolimara 68 as archetype 9 3 -1 0 0
Ansari, Dr. F. R. 16, 17, 30,31, as God 45, 58, 59, 96,
65,7 1 ,9 3 ,9 5 , 111, 112, 102, 132, 135
114, 115, 136 death 1,9
Anthropomorphism 11 development 15
Appearance-reality 44 enlightenment 1,7,8,67,
Archetype 9 3 -1 0 0 98, 102
Arhat 85 incarnation 102
Aristotle 114 life 1,6, 8, 52, 53,88
Arnold, Sir Edwin 7 mission 1 0 -1 2
Arnold, Thomas 77, 78, 79, 80, resemblance to Jesus
81,82, 83 6 6 -6 9
Asoka 53,95 resemblance to
Augustine 88 Krishna 53
Awa Gawan (see also Trans teachings 1 - 3,13 - 22,
migration) 12 2 5 -3 9

142
 moral consciousness 15 en co u n ter with B ud
moral personality 97 - 98 dhism 73
Buddhism influence o f Buddhism
comparison with Islam 6 4 -7 0
8 5 -1 3 8 Compassion 122
encounter with Christia Concentration 19
nity 64 - 70,73 Concept o f God 1 35-137
encounter with Hinduism Confucianism 75
10-12 Confucius 83
encounter with Islam Constantine 95
7 4 -8 4 Conversion 73, 74, 75, 79 - 82
influence on Christianity Conze, Dr. E. 2, 3, 56, 59, 65,
6 4 -7 0 66, 74, 108
philosophical schools Councils 2 - 3
4 2 -5 0 Covenant o f godliness 124
philosophy of 23 - 41
philosophy of life Dahlke, Dr. P. 2
101 - 112 Daryabadi, MaulanaA.M. 125
religious schools 51 - 63 Dasgupta 20
scriptures 1 - 5, 85 - 86 Datta, Chatteijee and4, 19,23,
sources of 1 - 5 26, 49,51,60
Davenport, John 87
Caste system 12,51,71,101,113 Davids, Mrs. Rhys 2, 5
Cause and effect 25 - 27,44 Dawson, Christopher 94
Celibacy 47, 55, 90, 103, Decay 11, 15,33,51
107-112 Dependent Origination 24 - 27,
Change 33 - 36, 43 28, 33,43,44, 101
Chatteijee and Datta 4, 19, 23, Descartes 40
26, 49,51,60 Desire {Tanha) 1 6 -1 7 ,2 6 -2 7
China 75 Despair 28, 120 - 121
Chisti, Prof. Y.S. 66 Destiny 1 20-121
Christ (see also Jesus) 11, 65, Detachment 89, 128
6 7 -6 9 , 83, 107 Dhamma 51, 53
Christianity 13, 59, 75, 80, 94, Dhammapada 4, 27, 107
110, 113, 115, 120, Dialectical Pragmatism 24
127, 136 Doanne, T.W. 66
143
Dukh (see also suffering) 3, Goloka 58
13 - 16, 122 - 124 Gomprez 33

Economics 115 Halaku Khan 76, 81

Ego 3 8 - 4 1 , 60 Hegel 24
Elan vital 26, 27, 114 Heraclitus 33
Empiracal self 24, 38, 39 - 41, Hinayana 5, 52, 53 - 63, 86,
5 9 - 6 0 , 129 94, 95
Empiricism 25 Hinduism 7, 10, 75, 93, 110,
Ethics 10, 1 3 ,2 5 -3 9 , 89, 93 120, 127,132, 136
Eve 111 encounter with Buddhism
Existentialism 120 121 7 1 -7 3
Ezra 96, 133 Hinton 108
Hirschfeld, Hartwig 129, 130
Faith and Reason 115 Hodgson 5
Family 59 Hue, E.R. 70
Fana 38 Human Nature 119, 1 2 4 - 126
Faruqi 57 Hume David 26
Flame, analogy 11, 20 - 21 Humphreys, Christmas 3,5,72,
Four Noble Truths 8,13 - 17, 52 85, 86
Freedom, human 120- 121,132
Freud, Sigmund 18, 108 Iblis (Satan) 37
Ibn Al-Athir 11, 78
Gautama (see also Buddha) 1, Ibn Khaldun 77
3,6, 7, 8,5 1 ,6 1 ,6 2 , 89, Idealism, subjective 45 - 48
93, 95, 102 Idolatry 10, 96, 102, 135
Gestalt 45 Ilkhans 81, 82
Ghazan 81 - 82 Iman 115
Gibb, H.A.R. 113, 114 Immortality 20, 41
Goal in life 14,20,21,115 -119, India 10, 71, 72, 114
131,137 Iqbal Dr. M. 33,35,36,130,131
God 10, 11, 25, 35, 52, 56, Islam 10, 13,36,64,71,72
57 - 59, 96, 102 - 103, and Hinduism 72
117, 122, 124 - 126, archetype 9 4 -1 0 0
131 - 137 causality 26
nature o f 28, 119, 136 - 137 change 33 36
144
 comparison with Jews 96, 136
Buddhism 8 5 -1 3 8 Jihad 38
comprehensive Johanssen 24
guidance 90 - 93 Judaism 132
desire 16
despair 28 - 29 Kan-Su 81
ego 3 7 -3 8 , 40,41 Kant 24, 44
encounter with Kapilavastu 6
Buddhism 72, 73 - 84 Karma 12, 27, 32, 39, 71, 89,
goal in life 115-119,137 101,120
God /Allah 28, 29, 33, Kayshapa 2, 3
131-137 Khadija 98
immortality 41 Khalifatullah 40, 129, 134
man 113, 120-126,132, Khudabandah 82
133 Khurasan 81
marriage 91, 108 - 112 Kismat 121
moral struggle 38 Knowledge of God 113, 129,
philosophy of life 112 131,135
138 Kroeber, A.L. 94
principle ofUnity 112-115 Krsna (Krishna) 58
reality 43, 46 - 47 Kurguz 81
scripture 8 5 - 8 9
self 21, 5 9 - 6 0 Laity 53 - 55
sin 13 Lalitavistara 5
superiority of 137 - 138 Lama, Dalai 62, 70
withdrawal 104-107 Langlois and Seignobos 3
woman 93, 1 0 7 - 112 Lea H.C. 69
world 34 - 35, 43 Lhasa 61,
Life 115
Jainism 7 origin of 12 0 -1 2 1 , 131
Jenghez Khan 76 - 77, 79 Lumbini 6
Jennings, H.J. 2 Lust 111
Jesus (see also Christ) 59, 61, Luther 88
64, 85, 87, 95, 96, 97,
103, 119, 132,136 Madhyamika 42,43 - 45,56, 58
resemblance to Buddha 57 - 69 Mahamaya 6
145
Mahavastu 5 108, 109, 122, 130
Mahatman 60 as archetype 9 4 -1 0 0
Mahayana 5, 41, 44 - 45, 52, Muir, SirW. 86
5 3 - 6 3 ,7 3 - 7 4 , 86,132 Mustansir, Caliph 76
M a n 9 ,17,36,47,57,101,113,
119,120-126,132,133,135 Al-Nafs al-Ammarah 38
relationship with God Al-Nafs al-Lawwamah 38
131 - 135 Al-Nafs al-Mutmainnah 38
Mangu Khan 78
Mankind, unity of 113 - 114 Nagajuna 24,44, 45
Mara 67 Nagasena 40
Marpa 90 Naqshbandi Order 83
Marriage 90,91, 98,108 - 112 Nicholas 82
Mary 59, 67 Nicholus 81
Masdoosi 75 Nihilism (see also Madhyamika)
Maya 47, 127 4 3 -4 5
Melinda, King 39 Nikayas 4
Metaphysics 4, 10, 14, 29, 24, Nimbus 69
38, 56, 91 Nirvana (see also Salvation) 11,
Mind 45 - 47 1 9 - 2 2 , 24, 30, 39, 40,
Milton 88 44, 46, 52, 53, 54, 97,
Monasticism 4, 47, 53, 55, 59, 101, 115-116, 132
69, 1 0 3 - 107 Noble Eight-Fold Path 9, 17
Mongols 7 6 -8 3 19, 52
Monks 53, 54, 55 Not-Self (anatta) 2,36 - 39,40,
Monotheism 10 89
Moore, Radhakrishnan and 4, Noumena 25
27, 39, 103
Morality 92 Ogotay 80
Moral Order 102, 128, 132 Omar 97
Moral Philosophy 102 Origination, dependent 25 - 27,
Moral Struggle 28, 29, 38, 39, 28, 33,43,44, 101
54, 102 132 Orissa 72
Moses 88
Muhammad (O.W.B.P.) 1, 11, Padma Sambhava 90
75, 86, 87, 88, 89, 93, Padres 51
146
Pali Literature 3 - 5 , 85, 94, 95 direct 4, 43, 50
Patra 69 indirect 43, 49 - 50
Paul, Saint 65 Realist 4, 42
Perception 47 - 48 Reality 42 - 50, 56, 58
Personality 48,114,119,121,125 Reincarnation (see also Trans
Pharisees 11 migration) 2
Phenomenalism 25 Relationship with God 129 -1 3 2
Phenomena-noumena 25,44 Relativism 43 - 45
Philosophy of life 101-137 Religion, true 125
Pitaka 4 - 5 Religious Scriptures 1-5,85 - 89,
Plato 65 9 1 -9 3
Plotinus 132 Renunciation of the world 8,17
Polytheism 10, 58, 59 Representationism 49 - 50
Positivism 24 - 25 Right Conduct 9, 17
Poussin 20 Right Endeavour 9, 18
Pragmatism 23 - 24 Right Livelihood 9, 18
Psychology 14, 24, 37, 45, 91, Right Meditation 9, 19
116,117, 130 (or Concentration)
Pythagoras 28, 64 Right Resolve (or Aspiration) 9,
17
Qubilay 78, 79, 81 Right Speech 9, 17
Quran 1,16,21,29,34,37,38, Right Thinking 9, 18 - 19
39,46,47, 8 6 -8 9 ,9 1 - Right Views 9, 17
93, 1 0 4 - 105, 110, 111, Russel, Bertrand 121
112, 113, 114, 115, 116, Russia 7 6 - 7 7
118, 119, 120, 121, 122, Sabr 123
123,124,125,126,127- Sacrifice 110, 117
128, 134, 138 Sakyamuni 1
Sale, George 86
Salvation (see also Nirvana) 8,
Rabbis 11,92 1 1 ,2 3 ,2 4 ,3 0 ,3 1 ,5 1 ,5 2 -5 4 ,
Radhkrishnan and Moore 4,27, 59, 71, 102
39, 108 Sangha 53
Ram 119 Sangreal 69
Realism 48 - 50 Sanskrit Literature 5, 86
critical 4 Samath 9
147
Sartre, Jean-Paul III 120 Suzuki, D.T. 60
Satan 67, 110
Sautrantika 4, 43, 48 - 50 Takudar 81
Science 130 - 132 Tangut 81
Scribes (and Pharisees) 11 Tanha (Desire) 16 - 17,26 - 27
Scriptures 1 - 5,85 - 89,91 - 93 Taoism 75
Seignobos, Langlois and 3 Taqdir 121
Self (see also Empirical Tathagata 7, 65, 66, 75
self) 21, 3 7 - 4 1 , 5 9 - 6 0 Tawhid 112-115, 137
Self-culture 24 Tazkiyah al-Nafs 36
Self-help 51, 57 Tibet 6 0 -6 1 ,9 0
Self-Mortification 85 Timur Khan 81
Self-Sacrifice 109 Topes 69
Sex 90, 92, 1 0 7 - 112 Toynbee, Arnold 72, 76, 87,
Shaw, George Bernard 99 89,95,122
Shamanism 73 Transcendental Dimension
Shintoism 75 5 5 -5 6 , 59
Siddhartha (see also Buddha) Transmigration of Souls 28,
7, 67, 95 2 9 -3 1 ,6 4 ,7 1 ,8 9 , 101
Simon 67 Tripitaka 3 - 5
Sin 13,37,38, 120
Skandas 30, 37, 112 Uljaytu 82
Slavery 92 Unitarians 64
Smart, Ninian 5 Unity, principle of 112 - 115
Smith, Bosworth 87 Universal flux (anicca) 31 -
Socrates 87 34,41
Solon 87 Universe 126-131
Spinoza 121 Upanishads 72
Sublimation of ego 36
Suddhodana, Raja 6 Vaibhashika 4, 43, 50
Sudra 11 Vedas 71, 72
Suffering (see also Dukh) 8,9, Vesali 1
13-16,26,121-123,128 Vinaya pitaka 4
Sufis 36, 84 Void (Sunya) 42, 44, 132
Sunya (Void) 40, 42, 132 Wells, H.G. 8,61,72, 80
Sutta pitaka 4 Williams, Dr. Eric 92
148
Withdrawal 104 - 107
Women 89 - 90, 93,98,107 -
112, 114-115
World 14,34,35,43,102,119,
126-131
the other 55, 56
this 53, 55

Xenophanes 23

Yasoddhra 7
Yogacara 42, 45 - 47

Zoroaster 88
O P IN IO N S O F EM IN EN T S C H O L A R S :

.. . What struck me most while reading Imrans magnificent book was

the lucidity of, and clarity in, the treatment and almost awe-inspiring
simplicity of style with which the argument has been presented by the
author at first to expound and then to critically appraise what, after all,
is a highly complex philosophical conception of Religion by which
considerable bulk of humanity of today claims to regulate its life. In
hundred and odd pages the author has presented to us a comparative
estimate of the two great world religions like Buddhism and Islam, and,
what is vastly more important, he has attempted a critical analysis of
the implications of Buddhism regarded both as an ethics and as a
metaphysic.

By and large, the principal points made in this book tend to show an
amazing and original mind at work. For that reason this book is likely to
be ranked as one of the most significant contributions that have been
made to the literature of comparative religion

A. K. Brohi
(Eminent Muslim Jurist)

. . . an excellent account of Buddhism . . . . Students of comparative

religion will find this monograph of special interest.

Prof. Dr. I. H. Qureshi

(Eminent Muslim Historian)

. . . Imran Hosein has employed in his monograph hermeneutics,

phenomenology of religion and sociology of religion. He, as a serious
student of philosophy, was bound to recognize philosophical reflections
involved in religious matrix. The last chapter of the book is a masterpiece.
He has given full attention to factors which give nuance and
differentiation between Buddhism and Islam

Dr. M. Basharat Ali

(Eminent Muslim Sociologist)