Islam : lit. submission to, having peace with, God; a religion founded by Prophet Mahomad. Although there have been many sects & movements in Islam, they are bound by a common faith & a sense of belonging to a single community; adherents of Islam are called Moslems or Muslims (one who submits). “The ethos of Islam is its attitude toward God: He is awful, transcendent, almighty, just, loving, merciful, & good; to His will they submit; Him they constantly praise & glorify; in Him alone they hope for there is an unbridgeable distinction between Creator & creature; they ask intercession of the prophets & saints, but they (the Shiites perhaps excepted) preserve jealously the distinction between Creator & creature, to Him alone they pray. He has given Man successive revelations through His prophets, but Man constantly falls away from these prophets & the merciful God sends new ones. Since Mahomad’s relations with the Jews & Christians became gradually worse, although Islam accepts Abraham & Jesus as the two principal prophets of God it believes that wherever the Koran differs from the Old Testament & the New Testament, it is because the Jews & Christians have corrupted or perverted the biblical text. Mohammed is the last prophet, & when the world falls away from Islam the end of the world will come. Islam is theoretically, a theocracy, & its caliph the vice-regent of God. The Prophet was succeeded by his last father-in-law Abu Bakr (573-634) as the first caliph; the 2nd caliph was Omar (c.581-killed in 644) who had been adviser to the Prophet & had organised the shura which had first elected Abu Bakr, & after Bakr’s death himself; the 3rd elected caliph was Othman (c.574-656) a son-in-law of the Prophet who belonged to the Omayyad; the 4th & last elected caliph was the Prophet’s first cousin & second convert Ali ibn Abi Tālib (c.602-killed in 661). [Compiled from Encyclopaedias Britannica & Columbia, (1950)] Sri Aurobindo: The first four were real Khalifās. Afterwards it became a political institution. ─ In the first four there was the reality of the Khilafat. They were centres of Islamic culture & had some spirituality. After that the Umayyad & other dynasties came & it became more & more religious & external. When it passed into the hands of the Turks it became a mere political institution without the fact of it. ─ Every time the Light has tried to descend it has met with resistance & opposition…. Sons of Light come, the earth denies & rejects them; afterwards, accepts them in name to reject them in substance. Only a small minority grows towards a spiritual birth, & it is through them that the Divine manifestation takes place.... If kings & emperors had left Buddhism to those people who were really spiritual it would have been much better for real Buddhism. It was after Constantine embraced Christianity that it began to decline…. The same happened to Mohammedanism. When it succeeded, the followers of the Prophet became Khalifās; after them the religion declined. It is not kings & emperors that keep alive spirituality but people who are really spiritual that do so.” [Purani, Evening Talks with Sri Aurobindo, 2007, pp. 268, 269-70, 578-79] Muawiya I established the Umayyad Caliphate (661-750) becoming its first caliph in 661. He was the son of Abu Sufyan, a native of Mecca. He was converted the year of the surrender of Mecca & became Mohammed’s secretary. Under Omar he became the very able governor of Syria. He struggled with Ali over the government of the empire & led in the deposition of Hasan. As the 5th caliph he made Islam an autocracy, retaining the old forms of self-government. He made the Moslem empire the remarkably unified force that it was. Under him the Arabs became an obedient, flexible instrument of war & incorporated the Caucasus, Transoxiana, Sindh, the Maghreb & the Iberian Peninsula (Al-Andalus) into the Muslim world. ─ The Umayyad Caliphate was succeeded by the Abbasside. The rulers of the Ottoman Empire with its capital in Istanbul (Constantinople) claimed caliphal authority from 1517, inaugurating the Fourth major Caliphate (which was dissolved in March 1924). During the history of Islam, a few other Muslim states, almost all hereditary monarchies, have claimed to be caliphates. Historically, the caliphates were polities based in Islam which developed into multi-ethnic trans-national empires. [Vide Columbia Encyclopedia, 1950, & the Internet] Sri Aurobindo a Mohammedan disciple: All fanaticism is false, because it is a contradiction of the very nature of God & of Truth. Truth cannot be shut up in a single book, Bible or Veda or Koran, or in a single religion. The Divine Being is eternal & universal & infinite & cannot be the sole property of the Mussulmans or of the Semitic religions only…. Hindus & Confucians & Taoists & all others have as much right to enter into relation with God & find the Truth in their own way. All religions have some truth in them, but none has the whole truth; all are created in time & finally decline & perish. Mahomed himself never pretended that Koran was the last message of God & there would be no other. God & Truth outlast these religions & manifest themselves anew in whatever way or form the Divine Wisdom chooses. [SABCL 26:483-84] The Mother: In all religions we find invariably a certain number of people who possess a great emotional capacity & are full of a real & ardent aspiration, but have a very simple mind & do not feel the need of approaching the Divine through knowledge. For such natures religion has a use & it is even necessary for them; for, through external forms…it offers a kind of support & help to their inner spiritual aspiration…. But it is not the religion that gave them their spirituality; it is they who have put their spirituality into the religion. Put anywhere else, born into any other cult, they would have found there & lived there the same spiritual life. It is their own capacity; it is some power of their inner being & not the religion they profess that has made them what they are. This power in their nature is such that religion to them does not become a slavery or a bondage…it would be a crime to disturb their faith. [CWM Vol. 3:76-81]
... Persia were converted to Islam. In Persia, Islam replaced the religion of Zoroastrianism. By the middle of the eighth and the beginning of the ninth century, most of Central Asia had come under the influence of Islam. The Saljuk Turks were converted to Islam in around 960 A.D. and they united into one empire the Muslim kingdoms of Western Asia. The Afghans were also converted to Islam around the eighth century... themselves converted to Islam. Thus, although the political empire of the Arab Muslims was destroyed, the new rulers after their conversion to Islam recreated another Islamic empire. Page 16 Persia, which had fallen into the hands of the Mongols, also got converted to Islam in 1295 when Ghazan, the seventh and greatest of the Ilkhans, became a Musulman and made Islam the ruling religion... concepts. Islam believes in one and only one God, while Hinduism accepts many incarnations of the one God. Islam believes in one sacred book, the Koran; Hinduism accepts many scriptures and includes even the Bible and the Koran. Islam has fixed rituals, which every Muslim has to follow; Hinduism has rituals but nothing fixed which every Hindu has to follow. Islam does not ...
... Muslims were supposed to be a different nation with the religion of Islam as the psychological binding factor. All proponents of Pakistan have claimed that Pakistan is bound by Islam and was in fact, created to bring the Muslims of the subcontinent together into a strong and viable Islamic group; in other words, the claim is that Islam was the cementing factor of Pakistan. It can be shown that this is... grounds. We are created on the basis of Islam. Look at Israel: its religion and its ideology are the main sources of its strength. We in Pakistan have lost sight of the importance of these things. And without them you're like a straw being thrown about in the ocean. You're a Sindhi, a Baluch, a Punjabi, a Pathan. Pakistan's binding force has always been Islam. Without it, Pakistan would fall." ... The contradictions However, many writers and thinkers in Pakistan themselves questioned this belief. In an article entitled "Pakistan and Islam: Ethnicity and Ideology by Hazma Alavi" from her book State and Ideology in the Middle East and Pakistan, the author writes: "There is a pervasive belief, held more widely outside Pakistan than in the country itself, that Pakistan ...
... Islamic doctrine divides humanity into two nations that transcend all boundaries of man-made countries: All Muslims in the world are deemed to be part of one single nation called dar-ul-islam (Nation-of-Islam). All non-Muslims are deemed to belong to dar-ul-harb (the enemy, or Nation-of-War). This bi-polar definition cuts across all sovereignty, because sovereignty is man-made and hence inferior... has often been invoked by Muslims to supercede the merits of a given dispute at hand. Orthodox Islam calls for a worldwide "network" of economic, political, social, and other alliances amongst the 1.2 billion Muslims of the world. Pakistan invokes this doctrine to claim Indian Muslims as part of dar-ul-islam, with Pakistan designated as caretaker of their interests. The Al Qaeda global network of terror... terror is simply the extreme case of such a "network" mentality turning violent against the dar-ul-harb . 3. Islamic Triumphalism: A central tenet of Islam is that God's "nation" -- i.e. the dar-ul-islam -- must sooner or later take over the world. Others, especially those who are in the crosshairs, as prey at a given moment, see this as religious imperialism. Pakistan's official account ...
... about the impact of Islam on Indian society as well as effect of Indian society on Islam. It is a tribute to the accommodating spirit of Indian ethos that Islam that came from Arabia did not remain a "foreign" religion and developed a unique Indian flavor, which may not appeal to some puritans but inspires common Indian Muslims immensely. This unique intermingling of Hinduism and Islam led to the development... about each other's faith and philosophy of life. We want our students to realize that there is a common thread that joins different beads representing different religions. In fact, both Hinduism and Islam teach their followers to invoke the blessings of the "Great One" or "Allah" when they begin their education. This is evident from the prayers that the Hindu pupils used to recite in ancient India; it... the country's independence that these sections of our population have taken to acquiring knowledge and it is our earnest hope that this will lead to their educational renaissance. Like Hinduism, Islam has also put a great deal of emphasis on knowledge. The first verses that were revealed to the Prophet (PBUH) are about learning, reading and writing. Says the Holy Quran: Read : ...
... go down before the Muslim aggression. But just when it seemed that India might succumb to the pressure of Islam like all other civilizations before it, there was a spiritual and religious revival of Hinduism. The result was that it not only survived the pressure but also put its impact on Islam in many directions. This was due to its great power of assimilation and inner strength; and because of that... A Vision of United India Chapter 3 The Islamic Invasion of India As stated earlier, Islam, soon after its birth in Mecca and Medina, began to conquer the nations in Africa and the Western part of Asia; and quite inevitably, it was then the turn of India and the invasions began in the eighth century. In the eighth century A.D., there began a series... few centuries. In addition, they desecrated the idols, which the Hindus worshipped. According to 'Sirat-i-Firoz Shahi': "Allah who is the only true God and has no other emanation, endowed the king of Islam with the strength to destroy this ancient shrine on the eastern sea coast and to plunge it into the sea, and after its destruction he ordered the image of Jagannath to be perforated, and disgraced it ...
... But India still lives and keeps the continuity of her inner mind and soul and spirit with the India of the ages. Invasion and foreign rule, the Greek, the Parthian and the Hun, the robust vigour of Islam, the levelling steam-roller heaviness of the British occupation and the British system, the enormous pressure of the Occident have not been able to drive or crush the ancient soul out of the body her... decline she was still able to survive by the same force, abated but not slayable, retreating and maintaining for a time her ancient political system in the south, throwing up under the pressure of Islam Rajput and Sikh and Mahratta to defend her ancient self and its idea, persisting passively where she could not resist actively, condemning to decay each empire that could not answer her riddle or make... European, but it was strong to survive and await every opportunity of revival, made a bid for empire under Rana Sanga, created the great kingdom of Vijayanagara, held its own for centuries against Islam in the hills of Rajputana, and in its worst days still built and maintained against the whole power of the ablest of the Moguls the kingdom of Shivaji, formed the Mahratta confederacy and the Sikh Khalsa ...
... faiths assume a light which never was intended to be there and to see everything in them sub specie Aurobindonis and forget that neither in Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Buddhism, Taoism, Christianity nor Islam has Sri Aurobindo discerned the immediate knowledge of the Supermind - he has not hesitated even to declare that multifarious'Hinduism itself cannot be equated to his own final vision and message -... as illustrating ho more than a new insight into what had been achieved in the past - what, according to you, Christianity had done 2000 years ago and what, according to others, Vedism or Buddhism or Islam had accomplished earlier or later. Sri Aurobindo's specific mission is intimately linked with the fact of evolution - the rising by some means or other from lower grades of embodied consciousness to... entirely agree with Zaehner when he says that intolerance has been a blot on the Church like untouchability in Hinduism. Unfortunately this derives from the Bible itself and disfigures Judaism and Islam as well as Christianity. I put this down to the cultural limitations of the Semitic people, who had an extreme sense of moral dualism. Page 114 This is where I feel that Christianity ...
... be reduced merely to differing religious traditions or differing cultural traditions. Cottingham rightly points out that the problem is more fundamental. Comparing Buddhism and Islam, he points out that while according to Islam, and for that matter according to Judaism also, the ultimate reality is absolutely and unqualifiedly One Personal being, according to Buddhism, ultimate reality Page 104... followed in this experiment were yogic. He practiced in a quick succession methods after methods, and taking recourse to the yogic methods contained in every major religion, including Christianity and Islam, he verified that each of these religions had at its roots a valid yogic experience and realization and that therefore all of them can be united by admitting the truths of all religions in the light... Paganism increased in man the light of beauty, the largeness and height of his life, his aim at a many-sided perfection; Christianity gave him some vision of divine love and charity; Judaism and Islam how to be religiously faithful in action and zealously devoted to God; Hinduism has opened to him the largest and profoundest spiritual possibilities...;" viii A catholic recognition of each ...
... God, the universe and man's place in it. Islam believes in strict, uncompromising monotheism. This belief is central to all the concepts that Islam has developed. From it has sprung the Islamic concept about the unity of mankind; it is also the source of Islam's concept of man, his place in the universe and his relationship with the Creator. Islam believes that Allah (SWT) is the Creator and ... even the pinnacle, of the moral philosophy of Islam. Another feature of Islamic ethics is its balance as well as permanence. Permanence does not mean that the moral philosophy of Islam is static and the door of improvement has been shut on it. It means that people are not free to change it according to their whims and wishes. The moral principles of Islam are usually derived from the Holy Quran and the... God, the universe and man's place in it. Islam believes in strict, uncompromising monotheism. This belief is central to all the concepts that Islam has developed. From it has sprung the Islamic concept about the unity of mankind; it is also the source of Islam's concept of man, his place in the universe and his relationship with the Creator. Islam believes that Allah (SWT) is the Creator and ...
... Arabs. London: Macmillan and Co Ltd, 10th edn. 1970 Islam. A Way of Life. Minneapolis: the University of Minnesota Press, 1970. Joseph Schacht & C. E.Bosworth. The Legacy of Islam. London: Oxford University Press, 1974. Watt, W. Montgomery. Muhammad, Prophet and Statesman. Oxford U. P., (Oxford Paperbacks), 1964. What is Islam? London and Harlow: Longman, Green and Co Ltd, 1968.... delicacy difficult to surpass. Suggestions for further reading Ahmad,Aziz. An Intellectual History of Islam in India. Edinburgh University Press, 1969. Arberry, Arthur, J. The Koran Interpreted. London: Alien & Unwin,1955. Balyuzi, H. M. Muhammad and the Course of Islam. Oxford: George Ronald, 1976. Glubb, John Bagot. The Life and Times of Muhammad. London: Hodder and Stoughton... once in a lifetime, to the holy city of Mecca, for all those who can afford the journey. Zakat is making specified payment to the Common Treasury. The faith of the Arabian Prophet is called Islam, which means the religion of the submission to the Will of God. The perfect submission to the will of the Supreme is not attained simply by observing the prescriptions laid down. Here is how the Koran ...
... Vedic Scriptures, a Christian, if his life is a long self-denial. Wilson —That I admit. Keshav —Then the ethical scheme of Islam is as much thievery law of God, as the ethical scheme of Christianity, and the morals of Hinduism are not less divine than the morals of Islam. Wilson —I hardly understand how you arrive at that conclusion. Keshav —Did you not say, Broome, that religion is an ... every religion is the very law of God, nevertheless you will often find one enjoining a practice which to another is an abomination. And can God contradict himself? Wilson —You mistake the point. Islam, Hinduism, indeed all Scriptural religions were given, because the peoples professing them were not capable of receiving a higher light. Keshav —Is not God omnipotent? Wilson —A limited God ...
... re, 168 Indra , 116,117 Indu Prakash (Bombay daily), 9 Indus-Saraswati civilization, 1oo(fn) industry, 14,43,78, 127, 154 ,216,221 institutions, 9,7,72 , 136 , 141,219 intolerance, 147, 167 Islam, 32 , 44, 53, 129, 143, 158, 167, 170, 217,223 see al so Muslim Islamic culture ,168 ,179 it his a, 98(fn) J Jainism, 151 , 176 , 177 Jallianwala Bagh massacre, 156 (fn) Japan, 88... Muller , F. Ma x, 87 , 95, 96,97, 116 , 117(fn) Mullick, Subodh, 27 Munje, B. S ., 155 music, 65 , 66 Muslim, culture, 168 , 179 , 222 League, 31(fn), 195(fn), 224, 241(fn) religion, see under Islam Muslims, 167 , 169, 173 , 190 com ing India, 158 , 178 ·179,248 India n Muslims , 3 1, 44 , 53, 58, 169 , 181 , 203, 222, 223, 227 , 228, 245 their sense of separateness. 31 , 64, 169 (fn) see... 80, 169, 182,196 divorced from life , 51 , 68, 139 European conception of, 50, 68, 139 , 145-146 Indian conception of, 69, 182 notion of single religion, 147 see also Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, sa Liana dharma, spirituality renunciation (of life), 106 -107, 240 republic (in ancient India ), 137 , 178, 248 revolution, 37, 38 , 110 era of, 140 -141 spiritual, 129 Rig-Veda, see under Veda ...
... and height of his life, his aim at a many-sided perfection; Christianity gave him some vision of divine love and charity; Buddhism has shown him a noble way to be wiser, gentler, purer; Judaism and Islam how to be religiously faithful in action and zealously devoted to God; Hinduism has opened to him the largest and profoundest spiritual possibilities. A great thing would be done if all these God-visions... the vitalistic exaggerations which are the opposite defect of Western culture. 73 May, 1919 [Hinduism] is in the first place a non-dogmatic inclusive religion and would have taken even Islam and Christianity into itself, if they had tolerated the process. 74 * This world of our battle and labour is a fierce dangerous destructive devouring world in which life exists precariously... became the very stuff of the life of all this great surge of humanity between the Himalayas and the two seas.... Invasion and foreign rule, the Greek, the Parthian and the Hun, the robust vigour of Islam, the levelling steam-roller heaviness of the British occupation and the British system, the enormous pressure of the Occident have not been able to drive or crush the ancient soul out of the body her ...
... human equality in the spirit. All men are equal in Islam, whatever their social position or political power, nor is any man debarred from the full development of his manhood by his birth Page 929 or low original station in life. All men are brothers in Islam and the bond of religious unity overrides all other divisions and differences. But Islam also was limited and imperfect, because it confined ...
... too. For all that, her father, ‘Rishi’ Rajnarain Bose (1826-99), was one of the foremost Bengalis of his time. Exposure to Western rationalism caused him to lose faith in Hinduism, and he sought in Islam, Christianity and European philosophy a new synthetic framework for his beliefs. Like many other members of his generation, he discarded the ethical as well as the intellectual standards of his native... Westerners, Roy and his contemporaries wanted to discard its superfluous and superstitious excrescences and to return to the fundamentals. Fundamental was the One God ( Brahman ), as in Christianity and Islam; not considered to be fundamental were the Vedas, avatarhood, karma and reincarnation. The excrescences were the thousands of idols, pujas, sacrifices – animal sacrifices were still the common practice... whom he was the guardian. ‘I never became a Christian,’ Sri Aurobindo would say, ‘and never used to go to church.’ However, a very strong feeling arose in the boy when he read Shelley. ‘ The Revolt of Islam was a great favourite with me even when I was quite young and I used to read it again and again – of course, without understanding everything. Evidently it appealed to some part of the being. There ...
... had settled down they had mingled and been absorbed into the culture of the land, enriching it. Islam was the first culture that could not, or would not, mix, as oil from the Middle East does not mix with water from the Ganges —or any other water of the world for that matter. On what tenets is Islam founded ? The question rises in my mind today, in April 1990, as I write this chapter. What is this... houris and all sorts of sense enjoyments, is by killing these unbelievers." 1 1. The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, II, 352-3. Page 64 And yet. Yet religions like Islam or Christianity — and most others —claim universal Brotherhood as their doctrine. "Mohammedans talk of universal brotherhood, but what comes out of that in reality?" asked Swamiji. And he answered his ...
... invaders - the Arabs and Turks themselves had been swallowed by the aggressive ideology of Islam. Consequently, the Muslims were always dreaming of reviving their empire in India. Their whole behaviour pattern has thus been dominated by this psychological attitude of reconquering India and converting it to Islam, something they failed to do in their earlier attempt. It may be noted that whenever and... and wherever the Muslims conquered a civilization, whether in Egypt or in Persia, it had been converted wholesale to Islam. The only exception was the Indian civilization. They were thus determined to reconquer India and complete the task of converting the whole of India to Islam after driving out the British and partly with the aid of the British. In order to do this, the fiction was invented that the... their forefathers had built with so much bloodshed but which had been lost in the last round. They called upon their confused comrades and converted victims to revert to the old medieval ways when Islam had converted the pagan and peace-loving people of Arabia into a group of marauding conquerors. India with her powerful assimilative capacity had absorbed the earlier aggressions of the Greeks ...
... ALMUENE Let him be anything, he is a Vizier's son. The Turk forgot that. IBN SAWY These are maxims, brother, Unsuited to our Moslem polity. They savour of barbarous Europe. But in Islam All men are equal underneath the King. ALMUENE Well, brother. Turk, you are excused. MURAD Excused! Viziers, the peace. IBN SAWY I'll follow you. Page 9 ALMUENE ... No moral sermonizer. Rude, hardy stocks Transplant themselves, expand, outlast the storms And heat and cold, not slips too gently nurtured Or lapped in hothouse warmth. Who conquered earth For Islam? Arabs trained in robbery, Heroes, robust in body and desire. I'll get this slave-girl for Fareed to help His education on. Be lusty, son, And breed me grandsons like you for my stock. Exit... old enchantment dwells, Find Pekin of the wooden piles, Delhi Of the idolaters, its brazen pillar And huge seven-storied temples sculpture-fretted, And o'er romantic regions quite unknown Preach Islam, sword in hand; sell bales of spice From Bassora to Java and Japan; Then on through undiscovered islands, seas And Oceans yet unnamed; yes, everywhere Catch Danger by the throat where I can find ...
... devotion. This fitted in well with his declared intention to strengthen Pakistan's Islamic identity: In 1977, Zia-ul-Haq, said: "Pakistan, which was created in the name of Islam, will continue to survive only if it sticks to Islam. That is why I consider the introduction of an Islamic system as an essential prerequisite for the country." Contrast that with the oft-quoted statement of Pakistan's founder... Islamic state governed by the Shariah (Islamic Law). "Islam, Pakistan, Jihad" became emblazoned on banners at Pakistani army recruitment, centres, beards proliferated, promotions went with piety, and few could be seen to miss Friday prayers. A new ethos was created; this was to be an army not just for Pakistan, but also for the greater glory of Islam. It was, after all, a different historical epoch. The... any job the nation might entrust to them, including Page 102 political ones. When the Pakistan army was created out of the British Indian army, its leaders emphasized Islam as a unifying force, along with other values of military life derived from the British colonial period, such as discipline, internal cohesion, efficiency, professionalism and esprit de corps. The pragmatic ...
... extraneous matter gathered into this giant body. The inner principle of Hinduism, the most tolerant and receptive of religious systems, is not sharply exclusive like the religious spirit of Christianity or Islam; as far as that could be without loss of its own powerful idiosyncrasy and law of being, it has been synthetic, acquisitive, inclusive. Always it has taken in from every side and trusted to the power... ceremonies, system of cult and worship of Hinduism can only be understood if we remember its fundamental character. It is in the first place a non-dogmatic inclusive religion and would have taken even Islam and Christianity into itself, if they had tolerated the process. All that it has met on its way it has taken into itself, content if it could put its forms into some valid relation with the truth of ...
... Mahomedan opposition; so long as it is the honest Swadeshi article and not manufactured in Shillong and Simla, we welcome it as a sign of life and aspiration. We do not shun, we desire the awakening of Islam in India even if its first crude efforts are misdirected against ourselves; for all strength, all energy, all action is grist to the mill of the nation builder. In that faith we are ready, when the... difficulty. As a political question the Hindu-Mahomedan problem does not interest us at all, as a national problem it is of supreme importance. We shall make it a main part of our work to place Mahomed and Islam in a new light before our readers, to spread juster views of Mahomedan history and civilisation, to appreciate the Musulman's place in our national development and the means of harmonising his communal ...
... with the moderate Hindu community everywhere outside the narrow radius of their personal influence. A third section rejoicing in the leadership of Mr. Amir Ali, are the irreconcilables of militant Islam aspiring to hold India under the British aegis as heirs of the Mogul and keepers of the gateway of India. The Reform Scheme is the second act of insanity which has germinated from the unsound policy... by equally cogent statistics that not only the Hindus but the Mahomedans are a dying race,—even if the Hindus be in some places a little more rapid in the race for extinction than the followers of Islam. With all respect to the earnestness of these two gentlemen we think it would have been well if they had been less strenuous in their discouraging interpretations and chosen a less positive title. The ...
... converted into an empty space with no society or culture of its own. It was obvious that this version of India's history was only a mix of various versions floated by imperalist ideologies - Islam, Christianity, White Man's Burden, and Marxism - which had flocked to this country in the wake of foreign invasions. The message which this "history" conveyed was also loud and clear, namely,... in the short span of a hundred years, took five hundred years to reach the heartland of India due to the stiff and persistent resistance they met at every step; 6. Although the armies of Islam which came in wave after wave succeeded in imposing alien rule over large parts of India and converting some sections of the Indian people, they continued to face a war of resistance, which became ...
... And this was followed by the third period during which invasions from North-West became frequent and a new force of Islam entered into India. Two great efforts were made to arrive at a harmony between the old and powerful Indian culture and the religion and power of Islam. These two great efforts, the one started by Guru Nanak and the other started by Akbar, Page 53 reaffirmed ...
... as follows: *It is a tribute to the accommodating spirit of Indian ethos that Islam that came from Arabia did not remain a 'foreign' religion and developed a unique Indian flavour, which may not appeal to some puritans but inspires common Indian Muslims immensely. This unique intermingling of Hinduism and Islam led to the development of Bhaktii and Tasawwuf, which have affected the hearts and ...
... Young India: "My advice to my Hindu brethren is: Simply help the Mussalmans in their sorrow in a generous and self-sacrificing spirit without counting the cost and you will automatically save the cow. Islam is a noble faith. Trust it and its followers. We must hold it a crime for any Hindu to talk to them about cow-protection or any other help in our religious matters, while the Khilafat struggle is going... place in August 1921 and sent shock waves throughout India. It was the most prolonged and concentrated attack on the Hindu religion, life and property; hundreds of Hindus were forcibly converted to Islam, women were outraged. Gandhi who had brought about this calamity by his communal policy kept mum. He did not utter a single word of reproach against the aggressors nor did he allow the Congress to take ...
... the continuity of India's life - whether her separate identity in culture, social organization, religion and thought would be maintained or whether she would merge with the expanding commonwealth of Islam. Then, India was saved by the spiritual revival of the 14th and 15th centuries. This time the question was different - it was not the continuance of the Hindu culture. Rather, the problem facing India... represented was the final one to which all others must conform. Along with this, there was another problem that confronted Indian culture - it was the relationship of Hinduism with Islam and the problem of their coexistence in the new circumstances under the domination of a people alien to both. It was at this critical moment that the Indian renaissance began and this was essentially ...
... the difficulties before embodying the divine Consciousness. Disciple : Moti Babu told us that you caught the revolutionary spirit from Shelley's Revolt of Islam . Sri Aurobindo : That is not quite true. The Revolt of Islam was a great favourite with me even when I was quite young and I used to read it again and again – of course, without understanding everything. Evidently it appealed ...
... the available books in English literature, but also those in French and other European literature. Naturally, my school studies suffered somewhat. I remember reading Shelley's long poem The Revolt of Islam several times, I enjoyed it so much. Not that I understood all of it clearly, but the idealism it put forth attracted me. Like Shelley, I also began to dream of a new age which would manifest on earth... beauty in their vision and expression they will not only not help you, but even harm you, because the excitement of the story may grip you completely. I just told you how in my youth The Revolt of Islam inspired so many dreams. The boys who joined the Indian Freedom Movement were similarly inspired by Bankim's Anandamath. Nowadays I am told .that the world is flooded with novels and short stories. ...
... “9/11” changed drastically the Western attitude towards Islam, whose millions were formerly supposed to exist behind an invisible wall in the stagnant confined universe of their faith. Suddenly the Muslim religion was studied, and Muslim immigrants in non-Muslim countries obtained equal rights with the local populations. The friction between Islam and the Western ‘Satan’ is far from ended, and hardly... “intelligent design,” there have been several more court cases in which evolution was at stake. Such events seem to be spreading to other countries, sometimes instigated by Muslim students or teachers, for Islam does not accept the theory of evolution. Besides, what doubtlessly intensified the motivation of the anti-religious was the spectacular destruction by Muslim terrorists of the twin towers of the... were put on Rome’s “Index of Forbidden Books.” All this because of the Christian mullahs, madrasas, communal congregations, and fatwas. The three Abrahamic religions – Judaism, Christianity and Islam – are highly esteemed by theologians because they are supposed to be the only monotheisms. This is a gross misconception. “The earliest Greek natural theology was certainly monotheistic … The Greeks ...
... Sufism developed and what Sufism means. Some say that Sufism developed out of historical Islam. Some say it developed as a reaction against Islamic attitudes. Others speak of Christian or Chinese or Indian influences. It is, however, widely believed that Sufism is like the breath that animates the entire body of Islam in both its social and intellectual manifestations, The orders of the... whole structure of that society. Their primary function has been to safeguard certain Islamic spiritual disciplines and make possible their propagation from one generation to another. At the same time, Islam admits that there is something corresponding to Sufism in every other religion and that Sufism can open an easy door for mutual understanding among the many religious and spiritual movements in the... the Hermetic, Pythagorean and Platonic streams. This view reiterates the idea that Sufism is both perennial and universal. Although four major Sufi orders have developed within the. , framework of Islam, the masters of Sufiism speak of their unity and of their common "work", and they believe in the unity of knowledge. This explains why the Muslim Rumi had disciples with Christian, Zoroastrian and ...
... the communities. Even Lord Curzon on a tour of East Bengal, confessed that his "object in partitioning was not only to relieve the Bengali administration, but to create a Mohammedan province, where Islam could be predominant and its followers in ascendancy." It thus provided an impetus to the religious divide and one of the results was the formation of the Muslim League. The Reaction... Hindus in the countryside of East Bengal. H.W. Nevison who visited India as a representative of The Manchester Guardian, reported: "Priestly Mullahs went through the country preaching the revival of Islam and proclaiming to the villagers that the British Government was on the Mohammedan side, that the Law Courts had been specially suspended for three months and no penalty would be exacted for violence... difficulty. As a political question the Hindu-Muslim problem does not interest us at all, as a national problem it is of supreme importance. We shall make it a main part of our work to place Mohammed and Islam in a new light before our readers to spread juster views of Mohammedan history and civilization, to appreciate the Musulman's place in our national development and the means of harmonizing his communal ...
... and Aurobindo agree: these, they think, are the only possible alternatives before mankind, - the three 'religions' of modern man.* Islam comes into the picture also because, in Muhammad Iqbal (and his Asrar-i-Khudi or 'The Secrets of the Self), "Islam found its own Aurobindo". As for Buddhism, it represents "the same kind of spirituality as Sankara's Vedanta; it is not primarily interested... Man to the height of "greater Man" or Superman and unite all in the mystic body of "Cosmic Christ" or Sachchidananda. One final question: How about the other great religions of our time? Islam, for example, and Buddhism; and also - how about Marxism, which is as good as a religion for millions? In the course of three lectures on 'Evolution and the Modern World' given at St. Stephen's College... human ego comes about that the godheads of the soul -justice, liberty, equality, brotherhood - will be realised on a permanent basis in a "kingdom of the saints" as was dreamt of by Christianity, Islam and Puranic Hinduism. 92 That would be the divinised society of the future, and that would also be the true communistic society.* * At the Bombay Seminar on 'Sri Aurobindo and Indian Literature' ...
... classes should be awakened and brought into the current of political life; the great mass of orthodox Hinduism which was hardly even touched by the old Congress movement, the great slumbering mass of Islam which has remained politically inert throughout the last century, the shopkeepers, the artisan class, the immense body of illiterate and ignorant peasantry, the submerged classes, even the wild tribes... enthusiast in accents of poetry, in language of fire, to the thinker in the terms of philosophy and logic, to the Hindu it repeats the name of Kali, the Mahomedan it spurs to action for the glory of Islam. It cries to all to come forth, to help in God's work and remake a nation, each. with what his creed or his culture, his strength, his manhood or his genius can give to the new nationality. The only... Mahomedan opposition; so long as it is the honest Swadeshi article and not manufactured in Shillong or Simla,* we welcome it as a sign of life and aspiration. We do not shun, we desire the awakening of Islam in India even if its first crude efforts are misdirected against ourselves; for all strength, all energy, all action is grist to the mill of the nation-builder. In that faith we are ready, when the ...
... Varahamihira, Aryabhatt, Brahmgupta (v) Fa-Hieun's account of India IV (i) Harsha Vardhana (ii) Huen Tasang's account of India V (i) The coming of Islam, Tenets of Islam (ii) Succession of Sultans, Razia Begum VI (i) Babar's account of India (ii) Beginnings of Sikhism: Guru Nanak (iii) Akbar (iv) Abul Fazal, Faizi and Tansen... Asceticism and the Middle Path (c) Spirit of tolerance, assimilation and synthesis (d) True understanding of religions: Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Zoroastrianism, Christianity, Islam, Sikhism. (e) Synthesis of spiritual experience. 2. Indian Literature: (a) Sanskrit and Tamil (b) Birth of modem Indian languages (c) Great literary masters: ...
... democratic system forced upon the minorities can only mean Hindu Raj. Democracy of the kind with which the Congress Hall Command is enamoured would mean the complete destruction of what is most precious in Islam. We have had ample experience of the working of the provincial constitutions during the last two-and-a-half years and any repetition of such a government must lead to civil war and raising of private... your people, strengthen your organisation and consolidate the Mussalmans all over India. I think that the masses are wide-awake. They only want your guidance and your lead. Come forward as servants of Islam, organise the people economically, socially, educationally and politically and I am sure that you will be a power that will be accepted by everybody". This statement of Jinnah brings out clearly... That proved to be the last straw for Jinnah. Nehru invited Jinnah to participate in the interim government but he declined the invitation. At that time, the president of the All-India-Jamaitul Ulma-I-Islam, Shabbir Ahmad Usmani, declared that no power on earth could crush the Muslims. 'Living he is a Gazi and killed in action he is a martyr'. In Calcutta, August 16 began with public demonstrations ...
... effectively safeguard the rights and interests of Muslim and various other minorities. It is extremely difficult to appreciate why over Hindu friends fail to understand the real nature of Islam and Hinduism. They are not religions in the strict sense of the word, but are, in fact, different and distinct social orders and it is a dream that the Hindus and Muslims can ever evolve a common n... democratic system forced upon the minorities can only mean Hindu Raj. Democracy of the kind with which the Congress Hall Command is enamoured would mean the complete destruction of what is most precious in Islam. We have had ample experience of the working of the provincial constitutions during the last two-and-a-half years and any repetition of such a government must lead to civil war and raising of private... your people, strengthen your organisation and consolidate the Mussalmans all over India. I think that the masses are wide awake. They only want your guidance and your lead. Come forward as servants of Islam, organise the people economically, socially, educationally and politically and I am sure that you will be a power that will be accepted by everybody. Page 195 ...
... would not be in full control. Therefore, with Jamait-e-Islami's help, the Hizbul Mujahideen started taking centre stage along with Harkat-ul-Ansar, which the ISI created by merging Harkat-ul-Jihad-ul-Islam and Harkat-ul-Mujahideen. To keep a tight control on the jihadis, these groups were put together under the United Jihad Council led by the Jamait-ul-Mujahideen leader. In the early nineties, there were... the Taliban, was jihad and its stakes in Kashmir. The practice of jihad as a foreign policy objective by the militia suited Pakistan's interests vis-a-vis the quarrel over Kashmir. The concept of Islam not only ensured a steady flow of 'holy warriors' into Kashmir; it also provided justification for Pakistan's Foreign Policy. Thus, the jihadi groups became their first line of defence and India was... threat to Gen. Musharraf today are a product of the Pakistani state. It was the abdication of the traditional developmental role by the corrupt and decaying state that created the space for political Islam. The strengths of religious extremism in its initial stages had come from state patronage but increasingly popular support for it grew in civil society. The radicalisation of Pakistani civil society ...
... difficulty. As a political question the Hindu-Muslim problem does not interest us at all, as a national problem it is of supreme importance. We shall make it a main part of our work to place Mohammed and Islam in a new light before our readers to spread juster views of Mohammedan history and civilization, to appreciate the Musulman's place in our national development and the means of harmonizing his communal... merit. Equal opportunities will be given to all elements of the nation to progress and share in the guidance of the country. On the deeper cultural and religious plane, we have to reinterpret Islam and all other religions in their true historical perspective. In that context, a university should be Page 178 set up with the aim of studying all religions and synthesising... many-sided perfection. Christianity gave him Page 180 some vision of Divine love and charity, Buddhism has shown him a noble way to be wiser, gentler and purer; Judaism and Islam, how to be religiously faithful in action and zealously devoted to God; Hinduism has opened to him the largest and profoundest spiritual possibilities. A great thing would be done if all these God-visions ...
... reverend Moulvi treated me to a very delicious lecture on religion. 'Hinduism and Islam have the same cardinal doctrines, the three letters, A U M of the Hindus (Aum), and the first three letters of the Koran, A La Am are the same, for, according to philological rules, U is used instead of La. So, Hinduism and Islam have the same basic creed.... To be truthful in speech is also a principal part of... ours. Page 159 when he was on a tour of East Bengal, "that his object in partitioning was not only to relieve the Bengali administration, but to create a Mohammedan province, where Islam could be predominant and its followers in ascendency." We know now how the poisonous seed of Hindu-Moslem dis- unity was sown in Bengal, and under what benign auspices! History perhaps records no ...
... philosophies current in India. In this essay I shall focus on the Vedantic dimensions, partly due to my Samskara , and partly because I do not feel qualified to speak of other theistic traditions like Islam or Christianity in India, and also I have little sympathy with heterodox theologies because of their denial of God. Also as a strategy I believe a personal narration or response has the advantage of... culmination of over five thousand years of experiment with Godliness in India. The remarkable thing about him was that he experimented with a variety of religious traditions, including Christianity and Islam, and effortlessly reached high levels of religious consciousness through these various religious traditions. The lesson the modern intellectual learns from Sri Ramakrishna is the les-son of a positive ...
... purpose to propagate any religion new or old for humanity in the future. A way to be opened that is still blocked, not a religion to be founded, is my conception of the matter. 18 August 1935 Islam, Hinduism, and the Integral Yoga I want to do something to work for Islamic ideals here. I have a strong desire to do this, but somehow it cuts me off very much from the Ashram atmosphere and sadhana... not do—they do it because they are obliged here to look to a higher ideal in which these things have no value. What is kept of Hinduism is Vedanta and Yoga, in which Hinduism is one with Sufism of Islam and with the Christian mystics. But even here it is not Vedanta and Yoga in their traditional limits (their past), but widened and rid of many ideas that are peculiar to the Hindus. If I have used Sanskrit ...
... realisation or the realisation of absolute union between God and man, and Islam not only of these realisations but also of the God with form as well as of the incarnate Godhead, the Avatar. Of course, there are some lines of Christian mysticism that escape here and there from these limits just as the Sufi developments of Islam do, but this is so because overtly or covertly the influence of Hinduism ...
... understood as a two-way relationship: Abraham and his descendants are to keep faith only in God and no other gods, and He is to watch over them. Thus was the monotheism of Judaism, Christianity and Islam said to have been created. The Three, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are the Patriarchs of Judaism, the religion from which Jesus springs. For Jews even today, the Patriarchs are remembered in prayer... n is finally officially expressed in the 4th century in the Nicene Creed. Thus Jesus Christ is the Saviour of humanity. Such an interpretation of 'messiah' remains unacceptable to both Judaism and Islam. (c) Nicene Creed: In 325 CE, the Emperor Constantine called the Council of Nicea to decide and establish the nature of Christ and his mission to humanity. From the earliest times after the Crucifixion ...
... foreign body was imported into what was or had come to be a homogeneous entity, and in a considerable mass. Unlike the previous irruptions that merged and were lost in the general life and consciousness, Islam entered as a leaven that maintained its integrity and revolutionized Indian life and culture by infusing into its tone a Semitic accent. After the Islamic impact India could not be what she was before... identity – it is on this plane that mankind has not yet been able to really meet and coalesce. India's genius has been precisely working in the line of a perfect solution of this supreme problem. Islam comes with a full-fledged spiritual soul and a mental and vital formation commensurable with that inner being and consciousness. It comes with a dynamic spirit, a warrior mood, that aims at conquering ...
... But India still lives and keeps the continuity of her inner mind and soul and spirit with the India of the ages. Invasion and foreign rule, the Greek, the Parthian and the Hun, the robust vigour of Islam, the levelling steam-roller heaviness of the British occupation and the British system, the enormous pressure of the Occident have not been able to drive or crush the ancient soul out of the body her... decline she was still able to survive by the same force, abated but not slayable, retreating and maintaining for a time her ancient political system in the south, throwing up under the pressure of Islam Rajput and Sikh and Mahratta to defend her ancient self and its idea, persisting passively where she could not resist actively, condemning to decay each empire that could not answer her riddle or make ...
... in Pakistan and they are living a life of dignity and harmony with the rest of the country. It follows that steps have to be taken to dismantle the state of Pakistan. This does not mean an attack on Islam; rather it will mean finding out a greater harmony between the two religions and as a final step between all religions. This is the first condition to bring about a deeper understanding and harmony... secularism, economic success, and a strong national defence as the underpinnings of our future. Finally, and most important, we must reinterpret all the religions practised in India - Hinduism, Islam, Christianity and all other religions, which are practised in the country — at a deeper level. The time has come when we have to begin to seriously consider what they all really mean and are in their ...
... foreign body was imported into what was or had come to be a homogeneous entity, and in a considerable mass. Unlike the previous irruptions that merged and were lost in the general life and consciousness, Islam entered as a leaven that maintained its integrity and revolutionized Indian life and culture by infusing into its tone a Semitic accent. After the Islamic impact India could not be what she was before—a... identity—it is on this plane that mankind has not yet been able to really meet and coalesce. India's genius has been precisely working in the line of a perfect Solution of this supreme problem. Islam comes with a full-fledged spiritual soul and a mental and vital formation commensurable with that inner being and consciousness. It comes with a dynamic spirit, a warrior mood, that aims at conquering ...
... to page - 56 differing religious traditions or differing cultural traditions. Cottingham rightly points out that the problem is more fundamental. Comparing Buddhism and Islam, he points out that while according to Islam, and for that matter according to Judaism also, the ultimate reality is absolutely and unqualifiedly One Personal being, according to Buddhism, ultimate reality is not personal ...
... followed in this experiment were yogic. He practiced in a quick succession, methods after methods, and taking recourse to the yogic methods contained in every major religion, including Christianity and Islam, he verified that each of these religions had at its roots a valid yogic experience and realization and that therefore all of them can be united by admitting the truths of all religions in the light... Paganism increased in man the light of beauty, the largeness and height of his life, his aim at a many-sided perfection; Christianity gave him some vision of divine love and charity; Judaism and Islam how to be religiously faithful in action and zealously devoted to God; Hinduism has opened to him the largest and profoundest spiritual possibilities...." 43 A catholic recognition of each ...
... social welfare. In her public activities, she found it necessary to come in close contact with women of different religions; she, therefore, learnt a good deal of the religious tenets of Jainism and Islam. In fact, she became so popular with the muslim women that authorities of a mosque provided her an adjoining hall where she could teach muslim women how to spin and weave and earn some money. Twice... surrender to the Divine as an integrating truth, and he developed in his own mind a synthesis of Shaivism and Vaishnavism. To begin with, my father did not like mother's labour to study Jainism and Islam. But, in due course, he began to be influenced by my mother's train of catholic arguments. My mother's argument was that although different religions did not teach the same thing, each religion taught ...
... And this was followed by the third period during which invasions from North-West became frequent and a new force of Islam entered into India. Two great efforts were made to arrive at a harmony between the old and powerful Indian culture and the religion and power of Islam. These two great efforts, the one started by Guru Nanak and the other started by Akbar, reaffirmed the Indian tendency of ...
... foreign body was imported into what was or had come to be a homogeneous entity, and in a considerable mass. Unlike the previous irruptions that merged and were lost m the general life and consciousness, Islam entered as a leaven that maintained its integrity and revolutionized Indian life and culture by infusing into its tone a Semitic accent. After the Islamic impact India could not be what she was before—a... identity—it is on this plane that mankind has not yet been able to really meet and coalesce. India's genius has been precisely working in the line of a perfect solution of this supreme problem. Islam comes with a full-fledged spiritual soul and a mental and vital formation commensurable with that inner being and consciousness. It comes with a dynamic spirit, a warrior mood, that aims at conquering ...
... a fixing and systemising of all that could be brought into the compass of intelligence and practice, — the most splendid, sumptuous and imposing millennium of Indian culture. 13 Then came Islam. The Punjab, all North India, and even South India felt the effects of the traumatic impact of invader, conqueror and proselytiser. Hinduism was still deeply entrenched, certainly in South India, but... and Bharatavarsha became anaemic and wasted and diseased and degraded. It looked as though the twin movements, Vaishnavite and Saivite, for the revival of Hinduism, and the movement of Sufism in Islam, had also lost their great spiritual drive, and only a memory of god-intoxicated singers like Eknath and Kabir and Tulsi Das and Chaitanya and Farid and Nanak lay behind Page 9 to ...
... and height of his life, his aim at a many-sided perfection; Christianity gave him some vision of divine love and charity; Buddhism has shown him a noble way to be wiser, gentler, purer, Judaism and Islam how to be religiously faithful in action and zealously devoted to God; Hinduism has opened to him the largest and profoundest spiritual possibilities. A great thing would be done if all these God-visions ...
... the offspring of Buddhism, derived its ethics and esoteric teaching at second-hand from the same source. Through Persia Vedanta put its stamp on Judaism, through Judaism, Christianity and Sufism on Islam, through Buddha on Confucianism, through Christ and mediaeval mysticism and Catholic ceremonial, through Greek and German philosophy, through Sanscrit learning and [ sentence left incomplete ] Page ...
... opposed to its credal parts, was absorbed by the religious mind of Hindu India. Even so, it survived in the North and was exterminated not by Shankaracharya or another, but by the invading force of Islam. × This explanation of Indian polytheism is not a modern invention created to meet Western reproaches; ...
... y creative activity has not yet finished its workings. Throughout India the old religious sects and disciplines are becoming strongly revitalised, vocal, active, moved to a fresh self-affirmation. Islam has recently shared in the general stirring and attempts to return vitally to the original Islamic ideals or to strike out fresh developments have preceded or accompanied the awakening to life of the ...
... Denshawi has defeated its object, and, instead of appalling the Egyptians into submission, made them more determined and united. It is now only a question of time for this awakening to affect the rest of Islam and check the European as effectually in Western Asia as he has been checked in the East. In this universal Asiatic movement what part has India to play? What has she done during the year 1313? In ...
... world, preserving the old strong and reposeful civilisation of early Asia, flanks her on the right and has already arisen. The Mahomedan world, preserving the aggressive and militant civilisation of Islam, flanks her on the left and in Egypt, in Arabia, in Persia, is struggling to arise. In India the two civilisations meet, she is the link between them and must find the note of harmony which will reconcile ...
... lied to the British public about Arabi and urged on Gladstone to crush the movement of democratic and humanitarian Nationalism in Egypt, the movement in which all that is noble, humane and gracious in Islam sought fulfilment and a small field on earth for the fine flowering of a new Mahomedan civilisation. The second is now when he is trying in the sordid interests of British capital to crush the resurgent ...
... survive oppression. The Sultan stood between Egypt and complete annexation to England, and therefore he always persisted in laying stress on the suzerainty of the Sultan. The religious solidarity of Islam was a moral asset in his favour and he insisted on this solidarity but never suffered it for a moment to interfere with the distinct existence of Egyptian nationality. The cause of nationality was his ...
... intellectual experiments laid aside and forgotten. She took them up, rethought them in a new light and once more made them part of herself. So she dealt with the Greek, so with the Scythian, so with Islam, so now she will deal with the great brood of her returning children, with Christianity, with Buddhism, with European science and materialism, with the fresh speculations born of the world's renewed ...
... to the British public about Arabi and urged on Gladstone to crush the movement of democratic and humanitarian Nationalism in Egypt, that movement in which all that is noble, humane and gracious in Islam sought to find fulfilment and a small field on earth for the fine flowering of a new Mahomedan civilisation. The second is now when he is trying in the sordid interests of British capital to crush the ...
... splendid and opulent an imagination, too great a gift of flowing and yet uplifted and inspired speech for such descents, and even in his earlier immature poetry, Queen Mab, Alastor, The Revolt of Islam , these powers are there and sustain him, but still the first form of his diction is a high, sometimes a magnificent poetic eloquence, which sometimes enforces the effect of what he has to say, but ...
... "religious" wars, persecutions, State churches and all else that is the very negation of the spiritual life. It is only recently that men have begun seriously to consider what Christianity, Catholicism, Islam really mean and are in their soul, that is to say, in their very reality and essence. But now we have, very remarkably, very swiftly coming to the surface this new psychological tendency of the communal ...
... not the divine Power. It is a Power of Falsehood that is making you do and say extravagant things which are not Islamic but a caricature of Islamic faith and action; its intention is to make not only Islam but all spirituality and religion ridiculous through you. It hopes to disturb the divine work upon earth, even if it can only do it a little. It is trying to spoil your brain and destroy your intelligence ...
... enthusiast in accents of poetry, in language of fire, to the thinker in the terms of philosophy and logic, to the Hindu it repeats the name of Kali, to the Mahomedan it spurs to action for the glory of Islam. It cries to all to come forth, to help in God's work & remake a nation, each with what his creed or his culture, his strength, his manhood or his genius can give to the new nationality. The only q ...
... of the Moors and the averseness to light of their tribes, there is the stuff of a strong, warlike and princely nation in the land which gave birth to these iron men. If ever the wave of Egyptian Neo-Islam and Mahomedan Nationalism sweeps across Morocco, Europe will have to reckon with no mean or contemptible people in the North West of Africa. Cook versus Peary It is with a somewhat sardonic sense ...
... the League, welcomed its birth as a sign of renovated political life in the Mahomedan community. But the Mahomedan community was always coherent, united and separately self-conscious. The strength of Islam lay in its unity and cohesion, the fruit of a long discipline in equality and brotherhood, the strength of the Hindu in flexibility, progressiveness, elasticity, a divination of necessary changes, broad ...
... chief explanatory concept.” 4 Nevertheless, there is obviously more than scientism (i.e. dogmatic science) in the contemporary world. The adherents of the main religions, Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam and Christianity, are counted in the hundreds of millions. The Pope draws crowds of hundreds of thousands; in the year 2001 the participants in the Kumbha Mela, at Allahabad in India, the greatest human ...
... following. When Jesus appeared, what would have been his effect if everyone had insisted on sticking to Moses? Or - to be more relevant to your case - in Mohammed's time, would there have been any Islam if people had clung to the religion prevalent among the Arabs in that period? We have to be plastic to new messages. Then there is another point. Sri Aurobindo is not only one more teacher with ...
... resurrection of the dead and an uplifting of the resurrected bodies of the faithful into heaven after a Last Judgment which will separate the sheep from the goats, the latter going to hell, I suppose. Islam reflects more or less the Christian vision. In Zoroastrianism we find the background of much of Christian belief. After the liberation of the Jews from the Babylonian captivity by the Persian king Cyrus ...
... be different. It doesn't even understand very well how they can be different. Then there come all other beliefs, all other so-called revelations, the heavens and so on. The whole of Christianity and Islam have very easily solved the problem: "Oh, no, things here will never be fine, but over there they can be perfect." That goes without saying. Then there is the whole of Nirvanism and Buddhism: "The world ...
... Zoroastrianism) the obligatory state-religion for Persis and Irāk. In consequence, the Buddhists were banished from these countries and had to emigrate to the countries east of Balkh... Then came Islam." Evidently, with his reference to the frontiers of China and the Greek empire, Albērūnī is following the popular Persian tradition which places King Gushtasp (or Vistašpa, as in the Avesta) ...
... manner and epic content are trying for a divorce. The last effort, on a large scale, was Goethe's Faust, which also falls far short of the epic height and grandeur. Similarly, Shelley' Revolt of Islam, Keats' s incomplete Hyperion have something of the epic accent, but they too do not succeed much. Victor Hugo's La Legende des Siecles, Robert Browning's The Ring and the Book, and Thomas ...
... Philosophers and saints such as Sri Chaitanya (1485-1533) and others of 15th and 16th centuries belong to this stage. There was also during this period a remarkable attempt to combine Vedanta and Islam or of establishing lasting communal harmony. In particular, the work of Guru Nanak (1469-1538) and of the subsequent Sikh Khalsa movement was astonishingly original and novel. The speciality of this ...
... precious contribution to the path of the Divine Love. The yogic system of Guru Nanak, too, manifests a synthesis, and it is a remarkable development that aimed at the assimilation of Hinduism and Islam. Guru Nanak also aimed at purifying the yogic life of his own time. Page 25 Later Systems of the Synthesis of Yoga The Tantric system itself broke down into two parts and this ...
... and it should cover not only the Indian history of yogic science but also the study of yogic methods and their results as we find in the esoteric core of a number of religions such as Christianity, Islam, Zoroastrianism, Judaism, and even in Systems like the Chinese Taoism. Our Intention should be to bring to ourselves the treasures that are available in the records of yogic knowledge, so that our efforts ...
... religion has helped the Hebrews to maintain their identity, even to the present day, and it has provided the basis for three of the major religions of the modem world: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The largest part of the Hebrew scriptures (called today the Old Testament by Christians) was written down by many different authors between about 1000 and 150 BC. It includes rules of law and of ...
... And this is how Yusuf received from Mahatma Junun the great initiation. Many, many years went by, Yusuf grew in wisdom and mastery. He became one of the greatest and most exceptional saints of Islam. From the Mother, Collected Works of the Mother, vol. 9, pp. 67-70. Page 177 ...
... supreme motivation of Karma Yoga and crown of Jnana Yoga. In recent times, Sri Ramakrishna synthesised various systems of Yoga as also inner practices of different religions like Christianity and Islam into a large synthesis. Swami Vivekananda expounded the concept of synthesis of Yoga in his various works. The latest task of synthesis of Yoga has been accomplished by Sri Aurobindo and The Mother ...
... discovered boxing, one of the only sports open to a black athlete in America at that time of strict segregation. Young Cassius took to boxing and eventually rose to fame. In 1964 he converted to Islam and changed his name to Muhammad Ali. He tells us here how he got into boxing in the first place. I was twelve years old, and me and Johnny Willis, my closest buddy, had been out riding ...
... in the bomb outrage or functioning as [the Prosecutor] Mr. Norton's prompter and unfailing aide me-moire.... The Maulvi made me listen to a most entertaining sermon on religion. That Hinduism and Islam had the same basic principles: in the Omkara of the Hindus we have the three syllables, A,U,M; the first three letters of the Holy Koran are A,L,M. According to philological laws, U is used for L; ...
... largely self-taught. As the young boy grew up, his studies covered a wide field: poetry, literature, history; Shakespeare, Shelley and the Bible were his habitual companions. Shelley's 'Revolt of Islam' pleased him a lot, although as he said later, much of it was then not intelligible to him but the vision of freedom from tyranny and injustice appealed to his juvenile sentiment, leaving its impact ...
... divide the communities. Lord Curzon on a tour of East Bengal, confessed that his 'object in partitioning was not only to relieve the Bengali administration, but to create a Mohammedan province, where Islam could be predominant and its followers in ascendancy'. It thus provided an impetus to the religious divide and one of the consequences was the formation of the Muslim League. The people of Bengal were ...
... official Army report on Kashmir: "Why did Pakistan invade Kashmir in the first place? First, Kashmir being a Muslim-dominant state was considered a natural part of Pakistan, which had made Islam the basis of its modern nationality. Second, Khan Abdul Gaffar Khan's Pathanistan Movement was gaining momentum and Kashmir was held out as a bait for luring the Page 69 ...
... associations; clearly such an attempt would be impossible, even if it were desirable in a country full of the most diverse religious opinions and harbouring too three distinct general forms as Hinduism, Islam and Christianity, to say nothing of the numerous special forms to which each has given birth. Spirituality is much wider than any particular religion and in the larger ideas that are now coming on us ...
... spreading of Buddhism, life of Christ and the spreading of Christianity (martyrs, conquest of Europe, Crusades, religious wars, the Papacy and the Reformation), life of Mohammed and the expansion of Islam, the Mauryan period, the Gupta period, Charlemagne and his empire, the Renaissance in Europe, the great geographical discoveries, the French Revolution, the Industrial Revolution, the Napoleonic Conquests ...
... By The Way - Part II For my uncle Nolinaksha-babu's wedding, Kazi Nazrul Islam came to our house. He was my uncle's friend. He also the friend of my eldest uncle, Fenu Bhattacharya Calcutta, Kaka had a music-school and I believe his friendship with Nazrul was linked to this. A Muslim being invited to a Brahmin's wedding? What if he be a poet? Some ...
... unabated to this day, in the form of denial of employment to Bahais in the government and of education to their children, confiscation of their properties, etc. —a calculated onslaught in the name of Islam against these 'heretics,' culminating in the murders of many Bahai leaders with official blessings. Page 154 13 "I Am Fond of You" Life is not linear ...
... beginning of his spiritual life to the end of his earthly days such a docile and devoted child of the Divine Mother, even though he realised the ultimate truths of the Vedânta, Vaishnavism, Christianity, Islam etc. He realises, as Totapuri, the stalwart Vedântin, was made to realise, that the Brahman and His śakti are one, and that it is the brama ś akti or mahāmāya that is the sovereign power, the supreme ...
... now there is even more need of the Khilafat agitation in India ! Disciple : But what does he propose to do over and above writing and speaking ? Sri Aurobindo : He says that the lion of Islam is not dead though the jackals are shouting around it. Disciple : It would be interesting now to watch the development since Yakub Husain and others have favoured the Angora decision and Mad ...
... of education they receive at Aligarh but by a more liberalising education. The Turks, for instance, are not fanatical because they have more liberal ideas. Even when they fight it is not so much for Islam as or right and liberty. It was the Madans and the Christians who began the religious wars – i.e., fighting for religion. First the Jews began persecuting and then the Christians when they began ...
... Royd Street, where he stayed all evening being treated by the detective, Maulvi Shams-ul-Alam, "to a delicious lecture on religion". Under the cover of expatiating on the links between Hinduism and Islam, the Maulvi made a naive attempt to pump Sri Aurobindo for incriminating information, but of course without success. He was then taken in rain and storm to the lock-up at Lal Bazar and lodged for ...
... and later became imperial powers. The Danes also were a part of that power game, and got a few toeholds in India. If we look back, we find that after the fall of the Roman Empire and the rise of Islam, Muslim merchants had monopolized in a couple of centuries all trade between the East and the West. But canons placed aboard ships enabled European vessels to dominate foreign waters—an advantage fully ...
... classes should be awakened and brought into the current of political life; the great mass of orthodox Hinduism which was hardly even touched by the old Congress movement, the great slumbering mass of Islam which has remained politically inert throughout the last century, the shopkeepers, the artisan class, the immense body of illiterate and ignorant peasantry, the submerged classes, Page 795 ...
... the Bengali and the Mahratta The relation of the Bengalis to other races of India Bengali & Mahratta creation & concentration traditions. weight of intellectual basis. Rajput. Islam. Bihar. resulting unerringness of tendency as illustrated by vernacular literature, preparatory light for religious & social reconstruction. tendency towards science & industry—failure in education ...
... at a memorial meeting of a President of the British Association. We think at the recent Tyabji-Bose meeting in London, Babu Romesh Chandra Dutt must have discoursed, therefore, on the greatness of Islam, and Sir Henry Cotton on the saving grace of Brahmo-Theology. We anxiously await full reports of their speeches. Page 186 ...
... rewards of virtue has been rejected by man; the Upanishads belittled it ages ago in India and it is now no longer dominant in the mind of the people; the similar lure in popular Christianity and popular Islam has no meaning for the conscience of modern humanity. The lure of a release from birth and death and withdrawal from the cosmic labour must also be rejected, as it was rejected by Mahayanist Buddhism ...
... unity and the godhead in man were left to the inner spiritual effort of individuals. The power of expansion and assimilation diminished and when powerful and aggressive forces broke in from outside, Islam, Europe, the later Hindu society was content with an imprisoned and static self-preservation, a mere permission to live. The form of living became more and more narrow and it endured a continually ...
... ; clearly such an attempt would be impossible, even if it were desirable, in a country full of the most diverse religious opinions and harbouring too three such distinct general forms as Hinduism, Islam and Christianity, to say nothing of the numerous special forms to which each of these has given birth. Spirituality is much wider than any particular religion, and in the larger ideas of it that are ...
... at the same time as it declared the Void alone to be real; the impregnation of the universe by Tao; the one God apparently distinct from his creation of Judaism and later religions—Christianity and Islam—; the supreme Being, Purushottama, who, in the Gita, is both the immutable Being and the mutable Becoming—all these definitions result of the same vision, which has been for millennia at the root ...
... plurality disabuse itself of the all-important question of priority v. parity? Have multiple religions in Britain or Malaysia, for example, been treated equally at the official level? No. Christianity and Islam are emphatically the priority religions in plural contexts in the respective countries. The clear principle for them has been: 'plurality yes, parity no.' Therefore, the correct philosophical analysis ...
... grandeur. Efforts in the English language were more or less of the nature of exercises and experiments lacking vitality and inspiration, and have therefore not attained success. Shelley's Revolt of Islam, Keats's incomplete Hyperion have something of the epic accent, but they do not go far enough. Hugo's La Légende des Siécles or Browning's The Ring and the Book, Hardy' s Dynasts — all seem ...
... groups such as the Lombards, Venetians, Syrians and Greeks – Christians all. The Vatican itself was known for its sophisticated credit practices.” It may be remembered that Judaism, Christianity and Islam all condemned money lending as a sin. “Some complaints accused Christians of charging higher rates than Jews, for usury was a problem even where no Jews lived.” 600 From that time onwards the complaints ...
... received an excellent private education. “I knew nothing of India and her culture”, he would write later. In the young boy, a precocious poet, a very strong feeling arose when he read Shelley’s Revolt of Islam . “I used to read it again and again – of course without understanding everything. Evidently it appealed to some part of the being … I had a thought that I would dedicate my life to a similar world-change ...
... ad-Din ar-Rumi (1207-1273), the great Sufi poet who, at the time of the Middle Ages in Europe but of a great cultural flowering in the Muslim world, wrote his Spiritual Couplets. Although orthodox Islam is creationist, we find in Rumi the following lines expressing a distinct evolutionary view: I died as inanimate matter and arose a plant, I died as a plant and rose again an animal, I died as ...
... happening: political edifices are being changed because of the inner intenability of certain systems; religions are being changed from within — for instance Christianity by the charismatic movements and Islam by its confrontation with the Western democratic spirit. ‘In the night I am always given a state of the human consciousness which has to be put straight, one after the other. There are millions of them ...
... as described in the Bible, a collection of books holy to the early Hebrew tribes. The Bible was, and still is, a sacred text of three major religions – in historical order: Judaism, Christianity and Islam – although in each religion it has been complemented with additional revelations, doctrines and traditions. The first words of its first book, Genesis , are: “In the beginning God created the heavens ...
... prepared to accept the general facts alleged by you as an abdication or as defeats of the Divine. I am ready to regard them as defeats of Inge and Tagore and Russell and Huxley and Rolland and old-world Islam; but I never expected—outside their special province—any of these people or causes to conquer. As for Biren and Maya,—well, for Biren, I told him practically (it was no doubt a long time ago), that ...
... why hast thou forsaken me?" - an echo of the beginning of Psalm 22. The words, "I, I am God", are, as you yourself said, typical of the Sufis whose doctrine and realisation are a blend of Islam and Vedanta and the Bhakti cult. Their crowning word is identity with God. In Christ's manifold declarations the Sufi element (which in the language current in the New-Testament period would be called ...
... meaning to the diversity of religious modes in India but also a true sense to the variety of religions in the world. One comes to see Buddhism, Jainism, Taoism, Zoroastria-nism, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, in their specific qualities as well as in their combinations, in a way that none of them by itself can see its own attributes. For, here is an all-inclusive harmonising vision instead of an outlook ...
... 4.R.K. Mookerji, Ancient India (Allahabad, 1956), p. 247. 5.R.K. Mookerji, The Gupta Empire (Bombay, 1947), p. 137. Page 86 tribes who had been compelled to embrace Islam, they had gods "linked to the old Indian pantheon". 6 Under the one supreme Creator the local deities - "dewalog" - were several, and one of them was " Varin,... the Indian deity Varuṇa, not only in ...
... the descent of the supramental which is not known to any religion are the sole things which will be the foundation of the work of the future . Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Himself and the Ashram: Islam, Hinduism, and the Integral Yoga The Mother has explained: Jesus is one of the many forms which the Divine has assumed to enter into relationship with the earth. But there are and there ...
... not do—they do it because they are obliged here to look to a higher ideal in which these things have no value. What is kept of Hinduism is Vedanta and Yoga, in which Hinduism is one with Sufism of Islam and with the Christian mystics. But even here it is not Vedanta and Yoga in their traditional limits (their past), but widened and rid of many ideas that are peculiar to the Hindus. If I have used Sanskrit ...
... mechanical comradeship would end in a worldwide fiasco. 323) Vedanta realised is the only practicable basis for a communistic society. It is the kingdom of the saints dreamed of by Christianity, Islam and Puranic Hinduism. Page 465 324) "Freedom, equality, brotherhood," cried the French revolutionists, but in truth freedom only has been practised with a dose of equality; as for brotherhood ...
... surmounted in the one after a scission into two kingdoms which remained a permanent source of weakness to the Jewish nation, overcome only temporarily in the other by the sudden unifying force of Islam. We see the failure of clan life to combine into an organised national existence in the Celtic races, a failure entire in Ireland and Scotland and only surmounted through the crushing out of clan life ...
... of himself? On the contrary, it is a real joy to see greatness that is modest. I shall tell you three stories about the modesty of the Prophet Mohammed. It is said that the Prophet of Islam was always willing to ride on an ass, while prouder men would only be content with a horse. And sometimes he would invite someone to ride behind him. And he would say: Page 258 "I sit at ...
... Mohammed. And he added: "Be kind to animals. Ride them when they are strong enough to carry you. Dismount from them when they are tired. Give them to drink when they are thirsty." In the records of Islam it is said that one day the angels of heaven said to God: "O God, is there anything in the world stronger than rock?" "Yes," God replied, "iron is stronger, for it breaks rock." "Is there anything ...
... and height of his life, his aim at a many-sided perfection; Christianity gave him some vision of divine love and charity; Buddhism has shown him a noble way to be wiser, gentler, purer; Judaism and Islam how to be religiously faithful in action and zealously devoted to God; Hinduism has opened to him the largest and profoundest spiritual possibilities. A great thing would be done if all these God-visions ...
... And this is how Yusuf received from Mahatma Junun the great initiation. Many, many years went by, Yusuf grew in wisdom and mastery. He became one of the greatest and most exceptional saints of Islam. ( Mother speaks to the children. ) So, this is to tell you that you must not be impatient, that you must understand that in order to really possess knowledge, whatever it may be, you must put it ...
... mechanical comradeship would end in a world-wide fiasco. 324—Vedanta realised is the only practicable basis for a communistic society. It is the kingdom of the saints dreamed of by Christianity, Islam and Puranic Hinduism. As Sri Aurobindo tells us so well, individualism is a kind of self-justified jealousy, the reign of each one for himself. But the only true remedy is the exclusive and ...
... Civilisation, see Harappa Culture 'Ionia', 258 'Ionian', 233, 247 Irawatī (Hydraotes, Rāvi), 117 Iśāna-varman (Maukhari), 487, 488, 489, 494 Isfandiyad, 366 Islam, 367 JābālalJobil, 325 Jackson, A. V. W., 281 Jacobi, 545, 563 Jains, 219, 241 Jairazbhoy R. A., 239, 240, 326, 288-90 Jalauka, 48 Jambudvīpa, 57, 58 Janamajaya ...
... passing: it's a vision. One can always present it as something conceived mentally, but it's not that; it's not that, but it was, if you like, a necessity in the development. And that PLACES things. Islam was a return towards sensation, beauty, harmony in the form, and the legitimization of sensations and joy in beauty. From a higher viewpoint, it wasn't of a very superior quality, but from a Page ...
... the Puranas and Tantras. Still later, when the conflict between the various schools of Vedanta became acute, we find in Sri Chaitanya a profound and subtle synthesis. At the same time, the coming of Islam in India provided a ground for the emergence of new trends of synthesis, represented by Guru Nanak, Akbar, and a number of Sufi saints and philosophers. Even today, as we stand at the head of a new ...
... possessed increased that feeling of optimism. A kind of vague humanism appealed to me. Religion, as I saw it practised, and accepted even by thinking minds, whether it was Hinduism or Islam or Buddhism or Christianity, did not attract me. It seemed to be closely associated with superstitious practices and dogmatic beliefs, and behind it lay a method of approach to life's problems which ...
... new life, a new race, a new age. Both Mother and Sri Aurobindo have come down here, into this clay world of ours, with a particular mission. It is not to establish another religion like Buddhism, Islam or Christianity. All these -isms are now back in great numbers. But Sri Aurobindo and the Mother do not want to found a religion; they want to establish a new race, a new race of Supramental beings ...
... happens. Some result will come." SRI AUROBINDO: Yes. The Muslims will call in somebody and the Socialists somebody else. The Muslims may call in Mussolini because he proclaims himself defender of Islam. But he has removed half the Arabs from Tripoli and replaced them by Italians. India must get into the habit of freedom for about twenty or thirty years and then prepare for independence. To my mind ...
... have seen what the Raja of Mahmudabad has said? NIRODBARAN: No. SRI AUROBINDO: He wants to have separate Muslim provinces and to impose Muslim laws on all. He says there are very good laws in Islam. No usury, prohibition, and so on. NIRODBARAN: That shows what they will do if they have their way, and they blame the Congress! SRI AUROBINDO: They will start civil war at once. But I don't see ...
... third is the religious principle. Religion, that is to say, institutional religion has also sought to unify mankind on a larger basis, as large indeed as the world itself. The aim of Christendom, of Islam was frankly a conquest of the whole human race for the one jealous Lord. Buddhism and Hinduism did not overtly or with a set purpose attempt any such worldwide proselytism, but their influence and ...
... that Nirvana is a half-way house. SRI AUROBINDO: What is beyond? SATYENDRA: That I didn't find in Madame David-Neel's book. SRI AUROBINDO: I met a Muslim scholar in Calcutta who said that Islam also has ascending planes of experience of the Divine SATYENDRA: Maybe a Sufi. SRI AUROBINDO: Bhaskarananda of Poona spoke to me of the same ascending planes. (After some time) Germany is ...
... Dean, 341 -Mysticism in Religion, 341n Iraq, 106 Ireland 106, 127, 151 Irish Renaissance, 152 Ishwara, 4 Inquisition, the, 123 Isis, 220 Islam, 55-6, 110 Israel, 219 Italy, 89, 244 JANAKA,396 Japan, 70, 160,209 Jayachand,9O Jeanne d'Arc, 90 Jeans, Sir James, 317-18, 332-3 -Physics ...
... etc. This is the India that should be loved and cherished. Another aspect of Indian culture is "sarva hitaya" work for the benefit of all. Reference from Bhagavadgita, Buddhism, Jainism and Islam, etc., can be told. In this connection, we can tell the story of Sri Rama; for public welfare he sacrificed his personal life; story of Sri Krishna and Arjuna; *** solidarity of people was the ideal ...
... existed in Persia from the earliest times, and as their pantheism is so at variance with the hot and rigid monotheism of the Arab mind, it has been suggested that Sufism must have been inoculated into Islam by Hindu influences. We Christians know little of Sufism, for its secrets are disclosed only to those initiated. To give its existence a certain liveliness in your minds, I shall quote a Moslem document ...
... great spiritual movement of the saints and Bhaktas after the decline of Buddhism and an increasing resort to various paths of yoga. During this stage, there was also the great problem of receiving Islam, and, two great attempts were made to arrive at a new synthesis; one from the side of the Muslims, and the other from the side of the Hindus. The former was exemplified in the attempt of Akbar to create ...
... Philosophers and saints such as Sri Chaitanya (1485-15.33) and others of 15th and 16th centuries belong to this stage. There was also during this period a remarkable attempt to combine Vedanta and Islam or of establishing lasting communal harmony. In particular, the work of Guru Nanak (1469-1538) and of the subsequent Sikh Khalsa movement was astonishingly original and novel. The speciality of this ...
... yogic quest undertaken by Sri Ramakrishna and Swami Vivekananda, as also by Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, has verified the yogic truths of religions like Buddhism and Jainism as also Christianity and Islam and others, and they have been discovered and reconfirmed in their veracity and in their place in the ever-enlarging domain of yogic knowledge. This has opened up a new possibility of heightened un ...
... ''principal liaison'' with militant Islamic organizations, many of which the United States now considers terrorist organizations. Included are the Allah Tigers, al-Umar Mujahideen, Harkat ul-Ansar, Hizb-ul-Islam, Hizb-ul-Mujahideen, Jamaat Hurriyat Conference, and the Muslim mujahideen.30 Joint Intelligence North (JIN), the ISI section Page 204 that supervises Islamic militants in Jammu and Kashmir ...
... Review" (IDR) as follows: "Gentlemen, I have spoken on this subject before, therefore, I will leave out the details. As you know due to our preoccupation in Afghanistan, in the service of Islam, I have not been able to put these before you earlier. Let there be no mistake, however, that our aim remains quite clear and firm - the liberation of the Kashmir Valley -- our Muslim Kashmiri ...
... The author has made a detailed analysis for the failure of these attempts. In the next period, after the Muslim invasion, the problem was the religious conflict between Hinduism and Islam. This again prevented a sound political unity. This was followed by the British conquest. The British played the card of divide and rule with consummate skill and the consequence was the partition of ...
... culture and its decay — the little-known Maya and Aztec civilizations of America — the vast conquests of the Mongols — the Middle Ages in Europe with their i wonderful Gothic cathedrals — the coming of Islam to India and the Moghal Empire — the Renaissance of learning and art in western Europe — the discovery of i America and the sea-routes to the East — the beginnings of Western aggression in the East ...
... have to be highlighted and brought to the forefront and firmed up to establish a lasting unity. At the same time, one will have to note the fact that there are sharp differences between Hinduism and Islam; but these differences exist more on the life plane and in the outer structure of the religion. We shall show that on the deeper level, there are many common points and similarities; it is very important ...
... religions could be studied with the methods of comparative studies. Particularly we may emphasise the study of Hinduism, Confucianism, Taoism, Zoroastrianism, Buddhism, Jainism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam and Sikhism. Along with these religions, there should be a detailed study of the lives of great personalities associated with these religions, or various systems of yoga such as Rama, Krishna, Buddha ...
... also known as the age of Bhakti (Devotion). The greatest among the Saints who belonged to this period was Chaitanya (1485-1533). During this period, there was also a great problem of receiving Islam, and two great attempts were made to arrive at a new synthesis; one from the side of the Muslims, and the other from the side of the Hindus. The former was exemplified in the attempt of Akbar (1542-1605) ...
... life in order to open up the doors of the Divine Power for a triumphant mastery over the world-activities. Page 59 was also during this period a remarkable attempt to combine Vedanta and Islam or of establishing lasting communal harmony. In particular, the work of Guru Nanak (1469-1538) and of the subsequent Sikh Khalsa movement was astonishingly original and novel. The speciality of this ...
... of Buddhism in the emergence of great spiritual movement of the saints and bhaktas and an increasing resort to various paths of yoga. During this stage, there was also a great problem of receiving Islam, and two great attempts were made to arrive at a new synthesis; one from the side of the Muslims, and the other from the side of the Hindus. The former was exemplified in the attempt of Akbar to create ...
... third is the religious principle. Religion, that is to say, institutional religion has also sought to unify mankind on a larger basis, as large indeed as the world itself The aim of Christendom, of Islam was frankly a conquest of the whole human race for the one jealous Lord. Buddhism and Hinduism did not Page 94 overtly or with a set purpose attempt any such world-wide proselytism ...
... socio-religious and educational reforms, and for 85. Ram Mohan was a master of Sanskrit, Persian, Arabic and English, and deeply read in the canonical books of Hinduism, Christianity and Islam. He also knew Hebrew, Greek and Latin. Page 76 weaning many a soul from the influence of Christian missionaries. At this time, in another part of India, arose another man, Swami ...
... grandeur. Efforts in the English language were more or less of the nature of exercises and experiments lacking vitality and inspiration, and have therefore not attained success. Shelley's Revolt of Islam, Keats' incomplete Hyperion have something of the epic accent, but they do not go far enough. Hugo's La Légende des Siècles or Browning's The Ring and the Book, Hardy's Dynasts— all seem to ...
... upon Brompton Cemetery and funerals pass down it every day." This glimpse of Aurobindo's literary interest at about this time comes from something he said long afterwards: " The Revolt of Islam was a great favourite with me even when I was quite young and I used to read it again and again, of course, without understanding everything. But evidently it appealed to some part of the being. There ...
... of the untouchables. But there is a saying, "none so blind as those that will not see." To call Sri Ramakrishna orthodox is also more than an innovation for he practised not only Hinduism but tried Islam and Christianity too. He came to the conclusion that all religions, if followed sincerely as paths for the realisation of God, lead ultimately to the same experience. This is not "Hindu Godami", by ...
... But there were other compensations. Reading poetry, and even writing poetry, and going out of London during the vacations. One of his boyhood enthusiasm seems to have been Shelley's The Revolt of Islam. He read it often "without Page 31 understanding everything"; and perhaps it struck a chord within, and he had a thought that he too would dedicate his life to a similar world change ...
... Madurai and Trichinopoly, and - only a hundred miles from where Auroville is being built - the magnificent Versailles of India - Mahabalipuram. Vedapuri itself fell asleep. The destructive force of Islam came and went; the Portugese came and called the town 'Puducheira' and Dutch 'Pœbser', and the Danes - all trying to get some of the gold the Romans had lost, - and built their trading offices, their ...
... Shakespeare, Shelley, Keats and others. Young that he was he not only read poetry but composed verses for the Fox Family Magazine. Percy B. Shelley was a favorite of Sri Aurobindo's. "The Revolt of Islam was a great favourite with me even when I was quite young, and I used to read it again and again —of course, without understanding everything. Evidently it appealed to some part of the being." ...
... Nationalism. In the event, Lord Curzon, on a tour of East Bengal, confessed that his "object in partitioning was not only to relieve the Bengali administration, but to create a Mohammedan province, where Islam could be predominant and its followers in ascendancy." Sri Aurobindo set out to demolish many delusions held by the British government and shared by a part of the Indian intelligentsia. And, as ...
... poetry, in language of fire, to the thinker in the terms of philosophy and logic, to the Hindu it repeats the name of Kali, the Mahomedan it spurs to Page 308 action for the glory of Islam. It cries to all to come forth, to help in God's work and remake a nation, each with what his creed or his culture, his strength, his manhood or his genius can give to the new nationality. The only ...
... Buddhism, etc. His teacher of Tantrism was a Bhairavi, a Brahmin lady. Not only did Ramakrishna master the intricacies of various lines of Hindu spirituality, but he experienced also the essence of Islam and Christianity ... and found them dry and poor. Ramakrishna summed up in his life the final message of Hinduism. "In the life of Ramakrishna Paramahansa, we see a colossal spiritual capacity ...
... the secret mystical exercises of traditional Islamic alchemists, still practised by the Baktashi sect of dervishes.” 47 In 1902 Glauer was back in Germany, but Turkey remained on his mind, the more so because his marriage and some financial matters did not turn out well. By the end of 1908 he was back in Turkey, where he “continued to study Islamic mysticism, which in his opinion shared a common ...
... interests. Moreover, while it was losing its strategic significance to the United States, Pakistan was coming under the control of an assertive military-religious nexus that promoted anti-American radical Islamic forces at home and abroad. Since September 11, General Musharraf, whose regime had been the main source of diplomatic and military support for the terrorist Taliban that ruled neighbouring Afghanistan... his regime as an ally of Washington in its counter-terrorism campaign. Musharraf, though, headed a military clique that brought an end to his nation's short democratic experience, assisted radical Islamic terrorist groups in Afghanistan and Kashmir, pressed for a war with India, advanced Pakistan's nuclear weapons program, and presided over a corrupt and mismanaged economy. Despite that record, he is ...
... were the natural culminating-point for the mounting flame of the soul's devotion: for it is found wherever that devotion has entered into the most secret shrine of the inner temple. We meet it in Islamic poetry; certain experiences of the Christian mystics repeat the forms and images with which we are familiar in the East, but usually with a certain timorousness foreign to the Eastern temperament. ...
... sudden flooding of Europe with a German barbarism whose temperament in its merits no less than in its defects was the very antitype both of the Christian spirit and the Graeco-Roman intellect. The Islamic invasion of Spain and the southern coast of the Mediterranean—curious as the sole noteworthy example of Asiatic culture using the European method of material and political irruption as opposed to a... been two reactions of Europe upon Asia; first, the invasion of Alexander with his aggressive Hellenism which for a time held Western Asia, created echoes and reactions in India and returned through Islamic culture upon mediaeval Europe; secondly, the modern onslaught of commercial, political, scientific Europe upon the moral, artistic and spiritual cultures of the East. The new features of this mutual ...
... simple and straight sensation anymore, there was no thought Page 8 anymore but democratic and humanitarian slogans, bomb in hand or submachine gun on the hip, Christian or Marxist or Islamic sanctities and invaders everywhere, to the last nook of man's brain—seeming man—and gods galore, of every color, frozen in innumerable statues at every stinking crossroads of our terrifying and terrified... fanatical, have proceeded according to their centuries-old tactics, infiltrating with their harems step by step or in conquering hordes, multiplying like rats, then declaring the place to be their "Islamic nation" from time immemorial and themselves to be persecuted by the nasty local aborigines— and they raze graves, temples, finish off the "infidels" when they cannot convert them. And that is it ...
... spiritual culture cannot be objected to as being sectarian. But, on the other hand, we should be de-nationalising it if we refused to admit whatever ideas or terms in it distinguished it from the Islamic, Christian, Jewish, Zoroastrian, Sikh, Jain or even Buddhist culture. It has, for all its catholicity, characteristics of its own, and these characteristics it must retain in one manner or another... by even a person who though in India does not think and pray with a consciousness in direct tune with the typical Indian spirituality; but if anyone takes objection to them because of their non-Islamic, non-Christian, non-Jewish, non-Zoroastrian, non-Sikh, non-Jain and even non-Buddhist suggestion, then he fails to understand what ultimate India is and he is trying to rob her of all genuine cultural... patterns of the careers of memorable men, the country that had grown a passionate pilgrim of both eternity and time and developed a flexible yet ineradicable individuality numerous centuries before Islam's crescent ever dawned on its farthest horizon. Where in Jana Gana Mana are the recognisable features of cultural Indianness? We have only a blurred beauty, a diffused light which can never serve to ...
... British despotism their chief antagonist. The idea of a free and self-centred Ireland has been reborn and the souls of Fitzgerald and Emmett are reincarnating. The idea of a free Egypt and the Pan-Islamic idea have joined hands in the land of the Pharaohs. The idea of a free and united India has been born and arrived at full stature in the land of the Rishis, and the spiritual force of a great civilisation ...
... there by passive resistance and when he came back to India it became worse than before. September 12, 1923 The Mahomedan or Islamic culture hardly gave anything to the world which may be said to be of fundamental importance and typically its own; Islamic culture was mainly borrowed from others. Their mathematics and astronomy and other subjects were derived from India and Greece. It is true... result of Gnostics who lived in Persia and it is the logical outcome of that school of thought largely touched by Vedanta. I have, however, mentioned [in The Foundations of Indian Culture] that Islamic culture contributed the Indo-Saracenic architecture to Indian culture. I do not think it has done anything more in India of cultural value. It gave some new forms to art and poetry. Its political ...
... colonies. A tendency to large homogeneous aggregations has shown itself recently in political thought, as in the dream of a PanGermanic empire, a great Russian and Pan-Slavic empire or the Pan-Islamic idea of a united Mahomedan world. 1 But these tendencies are usually associated with the control by this homogeneous aggregate over other elements heterogeneous to it under the old principle of... The signs everywhere are the same; the forces everywhere work in the same sense. Neither France nor England has the power—and they are fast or slowly losing the desire—to destroy and replace the Islamic culture in Africa or the Indian in India. All they can do is to give what they have of value to be assimilated according to the needs and the inner spirit of the older nations. It was necessary ...
... or undeveloped mind, for even the most ignorant know that the image is a symbol and support and can throw it away when its use is over. The later religious forms which most felt the impress of the Islamic idea, like Nanak's worship of the timeless One, Akala, and the reforming creeds of today, born under the influence of the West, yet draw away from the limitations of western or Semitic monotheism. ...
... it won't be confined to Kashmir. Sindh will be in the front lines. So, it's certainly in the interest of Sindhis to work with the other forces in Pakistan favouring an end to Pakistani support for Islamic militant incursions into Kashmir," Harrison noted. From the Indian Express Monday Jan 8 2002: Pakistan has a "very narrow social base of the ruling elite. Pakistan is ruled ...
... of Bankim Chandra Chatterjee and Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar, and a close friend of the poet Michael Madhusudan Dutt, Rajnarayan represented in himself the composite culture of his time — Vedantic, Islamic and European. He was also among the first patriots of the country, the organiser of a National Exhibition of swadeshi products, called the Hindu Mela, which roused great enthusiasm. Moreover, because ...
... versed in Bengali, English and Persian. Bepin Chandra Pal, describing the life and thought of Rajnarain, wrote, "He represented the high-water mark of the composite culture of his country — Vedantic, Islamic and European. . . . He also seems to have worked out a synthesis in his own spiritual life between the three dominant world-cultures that have come face to face in modern India." 1 He was an ...
... throngs of orange, crimson, and white-clad people. All the windows and tottering balconies of the beautiful but decrepit city that starves upon its Page 411 past—even the galleries of Islam's crumbling minarets and the roofs of Hindu temples—were crammed with faces. Women peeped through shutters or stood shamelessly beside their children and brothers. Boys and girls thrust their heads through ...
... of certain visions and imaginations of the future in which she began to indulge some time ago—visions of a world war and troops entraining at Baghdad, prophecies of a war between England and the Islamic peoples, etc; she had even fixed the date for next year. She had been told at the beginning that my work had no connection with politics and that I did not approve of the catastrophic and childish ...
... between the passing of Sri Krishna and the advent of Buddha. But traditional India absorbed this new leaven and came out with a renewed and enriched personality. The next major shaking came with the Islamic inundation. This meant or would have meant a great and even catastrophic reversal, but this too in the course of centuries succeeded only in invigorating and enlarging the life and consciousness of ...
... n in their ensigns, but in the crescent and star upon a crimson background and the crescent and star upon a background that is green these countries give adequate though conventional voice to the Islamic spirit. Can we say even this much about India and her flag? No doubt, what we have designed is not without meaning; but it seems constructed rather than created. The three colours of green, white and ...
... which separate them from peoples who have with them no tie of affinity. Mongolian Japan and Mongolian China are sharply divided from each other in sentiment; Arab and Turk and Persian, although one in Islamic religion and culture, would not, if their present sentiments towards each other persisted, make an entirely happy family. Scandinavian Norway and Sweden had everything to draw them together and perpetuate ...
... blaring flamboyantly that he stood first in Latin and Greek in Cambridge; some others dilated on his great sacrifice, courting prison and braving the hangman's noose (one of them quoted Kazi Nazrul Islam's famous poem "phansir manche geye gechejarajibanerjoygan" — those who on the scaffold sang lone paeans to deathless life): some panegyrised his articles in the revolutionary days galvanising his ...
... Secretary-General IWIC, Nehru House 4 Bahadurshah Zafar Marg New Delhi - 110002 Page 732 76.Jafri, S.W.H. Lecturer Department of Islamic Studies Hamdard University New Delhi -110062 77.Jain, A.P. U-10 Green Park Extn. New Delhi-110016 78.Jain, M.G Reader, DEPEFE NCERT Sri Aurobindo Marg... K. Bhattacharya, NCERT, New Delhi. Professor I.N. Choudhuri, Former Secretary, Sahitya Akademi, New Delhi and Director, The Nehru Centre, London. Dr. Ishtiaque Danish, Head, Department of Islamic Studies, Jamia Hamdard, New Delhi. Professor (Ms.) Deepti, Sri Aurobindo International Institute of Educational Research, Auroville. Professor P.L. Dhar, Head, National Resource Centre for ...
... international humanity is certain to be troubled by the claims of just such intermediate powers. To say nothing of commercial interests and combinations, cultural or racial sympathies, movements of Pan-Islamism, PanSlavism, Pan-Germanism, Pan-Anglo-Saxonism, with a possible Pan-Americanism and Pan-Mongolianism looming up in the future, to say nothing of yet other unborn monsters, there will Page 396 ...
... marked by fixity of status through which individual and small communal interests might be brought under the yoke of a sufficient religious, political and economic unity and likeness. It is notable that Islamic civilisation, with its dominant principle of equality and brotherhood in the faith and its curious institution of a slavery which did not prevent the slave from rising even to the throne, was never ...
... well. Theon was friendly with one particular sage, and would speak with him and tell him things (at these times I would see the mischief in Theon's eyes). One day, Theon took me along. (According to Islamic tradition I should have been fully covered, but I always went out in a type of kimono!) Theon addressed the sage in Arabic; I didn't understand what he said, but the sage rose, bowed to me very ce ...
... ultimately to be identical". Exercises to be recommended: Repeated study and contemplation of Chapter XI of the Bhagavad Gita Vow of the Buddha Selected Psalms Islamic prayers Selected portions from Tulsidas Songs of Mirabai, Surdas, Tukaram, Ramprasad, and other saints Prayer of Swami Vivekananda Class X Science and Values Our ...
... light. Sri Aurobindo was an evolutionist and optimist & I hope he may be right, but the possibility of a different outcome looks very real. And so it is foretold in the Bible, the Koran and other Islamic texts, I understand, and in the Mahabharata, most vividly. (19.4.1989) From Kathleen Raine You keep me hard at work. I have now read most of the "Two Loves" and "A Worthier Pen" ... and SANG. I incline to look upon them and others of their kind in all parts of the globe not as desperate fighters for a lost cause in a time which, according to "the Bible, the Koran and other Islamic texts" as welt as the Hindu Mahabharata, is the beginning of the end, a Gotterdammerung, a Pralaya, a universal holocaust. I look upon them as scattered harbingers of the Day Sri Aurobindo has ...
... significance of the past strivings of the race. Indian civilisation in the past has been and must be recognised as the fruit of a great culture, quite as much as the Graeco-Roman, the Christian, the Islamic or the later Renaissance civilisation of Europe. But the essential question remains open; the dispute is only narrowed to its central issue. A more moderate and perspicacious rationalistic critic ...
... Devi, the eldest daughter of Page 2 Rishi Rajnarayan Bose who, to quote the Karmayogin, ¹ "represented the high water-mark of the composite culture of the country - Vedantic, Islamic and European." He was a saintly man of high attainments, synthesising in himself the cultures of both the East and the West, and widely known in Bengal as a leader of the Adi Brahmo Samaj and as ...
... 14 Mysticism of a high order is before us, joining up, as Griffiths 15 remarks, with "that kind of bridal mysticism, which is so well known in Tamil Nadu and which has its parallels in both Islamic and Christian mysticism". But no question arises here of what Sri Aurobindo and the Mother intended by a supramental divinisation of the actual physical substance and shape. The Taoist "immortal body" ...
... ultimately to be identical". III. Exercises to be recommended: -Repeated study and contemplation of Chapter XI of the Bhagavad Gita -Vow of the Buddha -Selected Psalms -Islamic prayers -Selected portions from Tulsidas -Songs of Mirabai, Surdas, Tukaram, Ramprasad, and other saints -Prayer of Swami Vivekananda Class X I. Sciences and Values ...
... the theatre of the absurd. Clarifying the historical aspect of the question, Sri Aurobindo said: In the first four Khalifas there was the reality of the Kilafat. They were the centres of Islamic culture and had some spirituality. After that the Umayad and other dynasties came, and it became more and more religious and external. When it passed into the hands of the Turks, it became a mere political... miracles, Ouspensky, Jacob Boehme, M. Théon, astrology, the interpretation of dreams, Kaya Kalpa, Space and Time, Russian Communism, Tagore, Harindranath Chattopadhyaya's poetry, current literature, Islamic culture, Indo-English poetry. Art, Education, medicine, psychology - all these and the Sadhana of Supramental Yoga as well! Those of us who were not of the elect can still have some taste of those ...
... sudden flooding of Europe with a German barbarism whose temperament in its merits no less than in its defects was the very anti-type of the Christian spirit and the Graeco-Roman intellect. ‘The Islamic invasion of Spain and the southern coast of the Mediterranean — curious as the sole noteworthy example of Asiatic culture using the European method of material and political irruption as opposed to ...
... th of August and the writer points out the absence of Islamic culture in the grand synthesis you have made. I believe the Modern Review also pointed out the same. Page 59 Sri Aurobindo Theadan or Islamic culture hardly gave anything to the world which may be said to be of fundamental importance and typically its own. Islamic culture was mainly borrowed from others. Their mathematics... and what they call Sufism is largely the result ofgnostics who lived in Persia and it is the logical outcome of that school of thought largely touched by Vedanta. I have, however, mentioned that Islamic culture contributed the Indo-saracenic architecture to Indian culture. I do not think it has done anything more in India of cultural value. It gave some new forms to art and poetry. Its political ...
... Aurobindo’s yoga of transformation. In short, all these spiritual paths have helped me to understand Sri Aurobindo’s yoga in greater depth. Buddhism leads to the silent mind, Christianity to devotion, Islamic Sufism to the science of the heart and Hindu Tantra to the effective manifestation of the Divine’s Will upon the earth, i.e. the Shakti. In a symbolic manner, these disciplines also encompass all ...
... are garnered from the whole world, the accumulated memories of the human race. Fable, fiction, history, myth, legend - India, Japan, Arabia, Persia, Jerusalem, Italy, Guyana - Hindu, Jain, Buddhist, Islamic, Jewish, Christian, Zoroastrian all agreeably mingle in this humanistic pot pourri; and the result is an utterly wholesome meal for children, young and old alike. The Mother's concern is obvious ...
... sudden flooding of Europe with a German barbarism whose temperament in its merits no less than in its defects was the very anti-type of the Christian spirit and the Graeco-Roman intellect. “The Islamic invasion of Spain and the southern coast of the Mediterranean – curious as the sole noteworthy example of Asiatic culture using the European method of material and political irruption as opposed to ...
... Heidegger, 442; with Gurdjieff, 442-3; with Teilhard de Chardin, 443ff; Supermind & Omega Point, 444; Sachidananda and Cosmic Christ, 445; Vedanta & Christianity, 445; Vedantic Christianity, 446; Iqbal as Islam's Aurobindo, 446; compared with Zen Buddhism, 446; with Marxism, 4467; epigraphs in, 448,460,463,469,470, 490,514,516,518,550-1,565,647,656, 658,751 Lights on Yoga, 598 LocksleyHall ...
... his eldest son, succeeded him. Today, there are about three million Baha’is in the world. The Baha’i religion has once again been severely persecuted in Iran before and after the foundation of the Islamic Republic there in 1979. The bases of the Baha’i religion are racial and religious harmony and a universal faith consisting of the essence of the great religions. Baha’ism stands for equality of ...
... we are dealing with a many-sided Infinite.... 33 Mystics of ancient, medieval and modem times have made similar affirmations about their encounters with Reality, and Hindu, Christian and Islamic ecstatics have borne almost identical witness to the one blissful Existent. Verily intuitions are universal in essence, although our intellectual formulations and interpretations may be different. ...
... Page 52 deva, gana, upadeva, parsad, siddha, gandharva, vidyadhara, yaksha, raksha, daitya, asura, - all in the Indian tradition; fresta, jin, pari, iblish, saitan, in the Islamic tradition; and in the Christian tradition nine types of angels are grouped in three different classes; e.g., (i) seraphim, cherubim, thrones; (ii) dominions, virtues, powers; (iii) principalities ...
... were the natural culminating point for the mounting flame of the soul's devotion: for it is found wherever that devotion has entered into the most secret shrine of the inner temple. We meet it in Islamic poetry; certain experiences of the Christian mystics repeat the forms and images with which we are familiar in the East, but usually with a certain timorousness foreign to the Eastern temperament. ...
... After many delays the printer of Temenos managed to bring me a box of the first twenty copies the day before I left, so I am able to send you one. Not a great deal from India in this number, Islamic rather, but I hope you will find some things to enjoy. As you know, I'm still hoping you will write on Sri Aurobindo's perceptions of the different levels from which poetry comes. Only two more ...
... into the physical. Evening talk on the Supermind. 20 August. Barin arrived from Calcutta. Talk about the Bhawanipore centre, the Bijoli newspaper and collecting money. 12 September. Talk on Islamic culture. 25 September. A telegram from C. R. Das asking for a message for the Forward; a letter from Sri Aurobindo giving three reasons why he would not give the message: (1) he had to keep silent ...
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