“In the Koran there is absolutely no difference between all people who believe in the One Almighty God, all inclusive and powerful, no matter by what name they call themselves. The only difference that is made between human beings is that all those who believe in one God are placed in one group and all those who deny the oneness of God, the Pagans or Idolaters, are placed in another. It is said that God has sent from time to time prophets to bring the people into the path of truth, that all these prophets came with a book within which the immutable principles of truth were clearly enunciated, and that as truth can only be one all the books of the prophets were the same. Therefore, all the followers of these different prophets are called “people of the Book" and they are all brothers to the Muslims. They should be treated as such and only the Pagans and Idolaters should be, if necessary, coerced into recognizing the oneness of God. That this principle was most firmly established is evidenced by the early history of Islam. In the army of the Prophet, the army which conquered Mecca and destroyed the idols of the Temple, Christian and Hebrew soldiers were fighting side by side with their Muslim brothers for the purpose of having the oneness of God recognized by Pagans and the Muslims never fought the Christians until the ignorant people of the mediaeval West, roused by lords and barons in quest of rich spoils and adventure, embarked on the Crusades for the purpose of “liberating” the Holy Sepulchres from the Muslims. That might have been all right for the ignorant people of the Middle Ages, but isn't it now time for the Christian to realize that despite the fact that the Holy Sepulchres have been “liberated" only within the last few years from the Muslims, despite the fact that for more than a thousand years Jerusalem has been under the rule of Islam, the Holy Sepulchres have fared as well under the Muslims as the Cathedral of Saint Peter in Rome has under Christians?
“The Muslims have always guarded the Holy Places in Jerusalem with as much loving care and veneration as they have guarded the Holy Places in Mecca or in Medina. Why shouldn't they? The Koran has taught us to venerate Jesus Christ. We believe in His divine mission as much as we believe in the divine mission of Mohamed. We consider Him as much our prophet as the prophet of the Christians. Our creed is based on this belief and on the recognition of all the past prophets. So there is really no difference between us and the Christians as far as we are concerned. The only differences that exist are dogmatic differences such as those which might exist even between two churches of the same religion and in our eyes a Christian who follows the principles of Christ and who does not deny the prophethood of Mohamed is as much a Muslim as any one of us.
“Of course we do not consider as Christians those who adore images. The Russian who expects an icon to perform a miracle is as much an idolater to our eyes as any one who adores the stone or the paint with which the statue or the picture of a saint is made. There is no difference between them and the pagans of yore.
“We Muslims go even farther than some Christians in our belief in Christ. We are taught that the Virgin Mary, in her religious ardor, was praying the Almighty to give her a son who would bring back into the fold his erring sheep and that the people upon hearing this prayer criticized and shamed her: a virgin praying for a child! 'But how little they knew the ways of God,' says the Koran. 'In answer to the Virgin's prayer the Almighty sent her one of His Angels in the likeness of a human and she begot the Christ,'
“For us, God is not material. He is the All-Inclusive Spirit which permeates all nature and the whole universe. He is the Supreme Conscious Force, endowed with all the attributes, who rules the universe. He is Eternal: He never begot and never was begotten. We believe in Him and He only do we adore. We believe in His Angels, His Holy Books, His Prophets, and in the future life. We believe that He ordains everything, our recompenses as well as our punishments, and that there is no God but He and we believe that Mohamed is His Messenger—who revived on this earth, as all prophets before Him, the true religion as taught by Abraham, and by Moses and by Christ.”
The master was silent for a few minutes. His words which I had been translating sentence by sentence as he delivered them, had impressed us all so much that we kept quiet and awaited patiently for more. He looked out from the window into the blueness of the sky. Then, turning again to me he said with an infinite smile: “How simple it all is, and how foolish humanity is not to understand"!
He passed his hand over his forehead in an effort to concentrate on more material subjects, he sighed and said:
“These are the fundamental principles of Islam. It does not claim to be the religion of one prophet, but the Religion of God and therefore of all prophets. Truth can only be one, and religion is truth. It is the fault of men if they have divided it into different religions, sects and churches. It is the sin of men that they have, in doing so, turned religion from its most useful earthly purpose: that of establishing the oneness of humanity, the brotherhood of all believers.
“The Muslim religion succeeded in doing this during the first centuries of its inception. It formed the first true democracy, the first republic of modern times: the Caliphs, the chief executives of the Muslim world were chosen by election. But it went even further: it created the first League of Nations in the world—all the Muslim states, although keeping their entire independence, became a federation under the administration of a single elected Caliph and extended their borders from the Himalayas to the Atlantic and within their borders all those who believed in one God lived in peace, every one prospered, science, industry and commerce flourished. Freedom of conscience, freedom of creeds, was meticulously observed and Christians and Jews lived and prospered side by side with their Muslim brothers. The millenium would have truly arrived had the western nations only applied these same principles within their own borders. But they were not yet mature, they were not yet ready for liberty, democracy and unity. So gradually they undermined our own institutions. Through centuries of continuous contact and of incessant wars they spread discord within our own ranks. We became divided first into separate Caliphates, then into different nations and finally into different sects. Internal strife having set in, we were condemned to fall sooner or later under the conquering heel of the West. Decadence crept on the Muslim world slowly but surely until Turkey was left alone to face the repeated assault of the different western nations. and the tragedy of the long agony of Turkey which has lasted ever since the sixteenth century is too well known by all of you to make it necessary for me to repeat it
“This agony has culminated with the general war and let us hope that now that the western nations have at last obtained what they wanted—the administration of the Holy Land by a Christian power—they will settle down to work and find out if they have any real difference of principles with the Muslim world. Islam has passed through its darkest days and now it is gradually reawakening, it is becoming again conscious of the basic truth it had reached during its first years and sooner or later the Almighty will find humanity ready to reflect His own oneness. The time is near when all believers, irrespective of denominations, creeds or sects will establish throughout the world a real League of Nations where Christians, Jews and Muslims will live in peace, a real League of all followers of Salvation based on the only possible true democracy: the brotherhood, the unity of men.”