Opinion

Religions Must Develop New Wisdom
By Professor Nazeer Ahmed
CA

L to R: Swami Athmapriyananda, Calcutta; Professor Nazeer Ahmed, California; Cardinal Telesphore Placidus Toppo Archibishop of Roman Catholic Church; Bhai Sahib Mohinder Singh, Chairman of Guru Nanak Nishkam Sewak Jatha, Birmingham, England; Dr. Singh; HE the Dalai Lama; Giani Joginder Singh Vedanti, Jathedar of Sri Akal Takhat (highest Sikh temporal seat; Dr. Jonathan Sacks, Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregation of the Commonwealth; Dr. Alon Goshen, Elijah Interfaith Institute

If humankind is to survive in a world flattened by technology and squeezed together by population pressures, all religions of the world, Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, Jainism and others must reassess their view of one another and evolve new paradigms of dialogue.
Solutions of yesterday do not work today. From the vantage point of Islamic history, there was a time when Muslim rulers divided the world into darul harab and darul Islam. As far as I know, this division is of historical origin and has no basis in theology. It was developed when the Arab empire straddled three continents and was the dominant political force in the world. The total population of the world at the time was less than three hundred million. Cities were few and far between. Today we have more than seven billion souls on earth. More than fifty percent live in urban areas, in close proximity with one another. Muslims constitute only 20 percent of this population. The old compartments have disappeared. Today, we live in Darul Insan (the abode of humankind), not darul harab (the abode of war) or darul Islam (the abode of peace). Every religious faith is a minority in this Darul Insan.
Recently, I was an invited speaker at the World Conference of Religious and Community Leaders in Amritsar, India. The theme of the conference was Wisdom: Forgiveness and Love. It was sponsored by the Elijah Interfaith Institute, hosted by His Eminence the Dalai Lama, attended by Who is Who in the global religious establishment and served with the utmost dedication by the Sikh community at the Golden Temple.
Amid the turbulence and mayhem of the world, where nations and groups are at each other’s throats and the airwaves are saturated with stories of murder, war and destruction, such a gathering of spiritual luminaries was extraordinary. It was animated by a shared concern for a despoiled planet and the interdependence of nations and faiths in a shrinking world.
The search for Wisdom, as the arbitrator of differences between competing groups, brought this group together. The urgency and relevance of this search permeated the entire conference. The modern world is awash with information. But it is short of wisdom. Modern man has more material comforts than at any other time in history. But happiness eludes him. We live in a world rent asunder by violence, ruled by greed, its environment polluted by unbridled exploitation, women and children abused. The nuclear clouds are always lurking on the horizon. Where politics has failed, can religion succeed?
What is wisdom? What are its pre-requisites and its modalities? How is it acquired and transmitted? Can it be shared?
Each tradition provided its own view on what constitutes wisdom. The Dalai Lama, representing a non-deistic faith, stressed a synthesis of body and mind and of the need for rational thought and good sense. The Jewish presentations emphasized the need for justice with recompense. Jewish wisdom is the Torah. The Christian perspective emphasized forgiveness. Jesus (p) is Christian wisdom. The Sikh representatives brought forth the importance of service. The Hindu gurus accentuated the special relationship between a wise teacher and his student. The paths were different, yet it was remarkable how they converged on a shared vision of an interdependent human quest for the ocean of wisdom. The common mantra was, “I need you”.
I had the privilege to present the Islamic vision of wisdom. Wisdom emanates from divine presence. The Qur’anic word for wisdom is hikmah which is an attribute of Al-Hakim, one of the divine names. God is the source, the bestower and modulator of wisdom. He gives wisdom to whom He pleases and withholds it from whom He pleases. It drops like the gentle rain from the heavens on all of His creation. The African and the European, the Pakistani and the American, the rich and the poor, the scientist and the shepherd, none is deprived of His benevolence.
The Prophet was the embodiment of wisdom. When he was a young man, and the Ka'ba was under construction, the tribes of Mecca disagreed among themselves as to who should carry and install the Black Stone in its place. Mohammed (p) laid out a cloth and the Black Stone was placed on it. He asked a representative of each of the tribes to hold the cloth and carry the Stone to its site. He then lifted it with his own hands and placed it in the wall of the Ka’ba. Here was an example of negotiation, compromise and shared endeavor in the application of wisdom.
When Mecca fell to the Muslim forces, those who had tortured and expelled the Muslims trembled at the prospect of retribution from their former victims. But the Prophet forgave them just as Joseph (p) had forgiven his brothers in earlier times. Forgiveness healed the hearts of the oppressor and the oppressed alike and forged a brotherhood that became the foundation of a brilliant global civilization. Here was an example of forgiveness as an application of wisdom.
The acquisition of wisdom requires humility. It is said that Shaikh Sinai, the teacher of Mevlana Rumi, was walking in a dark, narrow alley one evening when he came across a child carrying a candle in his hand. The great Shaikh approached the child, bent down and asked: “Please tell me where this light came from?” The child blew out the candle and asked the Shaikh, “Tell me where it has gone and I will tell you where it came from”. Greatness requires humility and a willingness to learn even if it be from the most humble.
Wisdom is knowledge applied with discretion and insight. Wisdom is judgment, as in the judgment of Solomon. Wisdom is forgiveness as in the forgiveness of Joseph and Jesus and Mohammed (p). Wisdom is patience as in the story of Moses and Khidr (p). Wisdom is humility as in the humility of Shaikh Sinai. Wisdom is knowing the difference between what is beneficial and what is harmful. Wisdom is knowing the limits of knowledge; it avoids the pitfalls of arrogance and unbelief. Wisdom is obedience to God’s laws; it protects one from harm. Wisdom is fear of God as it fosters vigilance.
There is wisdom in history but history is not wisdom. Population explosion and technology have made the world interdependent. Muslims, Christians, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs, Jains, Confuciusists, Taoists, all share a globe wherein each one depends on the other. Either we together create a new life on earth or life will abandon us.
Wisdom is not a fixed point in time and space. It is a process in an expanding universe. At every moment God reveals His signs in His infinite majesty and beauty. Wisdom is to witness these signs, to reflect on them and through them feel the presence of the divine as it envelops us in multiple layers that defy mathematical description.
There are grievances galore in the world today. Some of these grievances are legitimate and some are not. In every case, wisdom demands negotiation, not confrontation; forgiveness, not vengeance; mutuality, not exclusivity; moderation, not extremism; compromise, not rigidity; patience, not haste.
So much of the violence in the world today is committed in the name of religion. In the last one hundred years more Muslims have been victims of massacres than in all of the previous fourteen hundred years. The same is true of Jews, Christians, Hindus and Sikhs. Muslims, like Christians, Jews, Hindus and Sikhs, have been victims as well as victimizers.
It is time this madness stops. Violence begets violence. Hatred begets hatred. The need of the hour is forgiveness, negotiation, compromise, patience, kindness and love.
The religious traditions of man stand on different platforms but provide a glimpse of the same mountain top. Charity, compassion, forgiveness and love are derived as much from Jewish, Christian, Hindu and Buddhist traditions as they are from Islamic traditions. As Muslims we must remain true to our faith and to our own tradition but we must respect others to remain true to theirs.
We have no other home but this planet, a speck of dust floating in the vast expanse of space. There are more than a hundred billion stars in our galaxy and more than a hundred billion galaxies in the known universe. As Muslims we believe there is wisdom in the creation of this vast universe, and of the presence of man on this insignificant speck of dust, the earth. “I was an unknown treasure”, says a Hadith, “I willed to be known. Therefore, I created man”. “I created not the heavens and the earth in jest”, declares the Quran, “I created them not except in Truth (Justice, Wisdom)”.
The need for wisdom was recognized a long time ago by Muslim rulers. Khalifa al Mansur founded a house of translation in Baghdad in 765 CE wherein he brought together scholars from India, Greece, China and Egypt. Significantly, he called it Darul Hikmah (the house of wisdom), not Darul Uloom (the house of learning).
The modern world challenges all religions, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Sikhism and Buddhism to develop new wisdoms to reach out and learn from other faiths. Muslim scholarship must move beyond the rhetoric of darul harab and darul Islam and develop a New Theology of Other Religions that is applicable to Darul Insan. By necessity this theology must also embrace the relationship between science and faith. The foundations of this theology are there in the Qur’an and the Sunnah. What it requires is renewed Ijtihad, a dedicated, focused, rigorous, intellectual struggle.

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