30. Hem Raj Prabhakar

I am replying to the issues raised by your brochure.

The doctrine of Islam is Unity. The Koran say that Allah is one and alone, without a second. In Christianity, Jesus is the Son of God, which means he is second to God. Thus other men cannot be sons of God and will go to Heaven or Hell for ever, not according to their actions but on the recommendations of Jesus. Muhammad will sit near Allah and similarly recommend Heaven for Muslims and Hell for Kafirs. He destroyed the idols in the Kaaba, and killed all persons who persisted in the pre-Islamic creed. It shows that there is no room for other gods in Islam and Christianity. Nor can Jesus and Muhammad be accommodated in the Hindu pantheon.
Hindu preachers proclaim quite frequently that all religions including Islam and Christianity lead to God. They quote the Gita in their support. But this is quite contrary to the commands of Allah as conveyed by Muhammad. A person may be very good, even godly, and engaged in the service of mankind. But if he does not accept Muhammad as the last prophet and the Koran as the only true revelation, he is a Kafir according to Islam. Maulana Muhammad Ali’s statement that even an immoral Muslim is better than Mahatma Gandhi, supports my argument. Many verses of the Koran give graphic descriptions of Heaven and Hell. The merits which lead to Heaven include mass murder of people belonging to other religions, and abducting of other people’s women. Christianity says the same.
Dr. Godbole has stated the truth very well. I should like to add that if Muslims are freed from Islam they may cease to be Muslims but will certainly become good human beings such as they were before conversion to Islam. If copper etc. are compounded with gold in more than the prescribed quantities, gold loses not only its malleability but also its luster; it becomes a hard metal. But if the proportion of mixture remains proper, it becomes better gold. The Arabs before the emergence of Muhammad were civilized people with knowledge of and devotion to God. It is no more than a fiction that the pre-Islamic Arabs were ignorant and debauched.
Telling to Muslims that their ancestors were the same as those of the Hindus, does not get us anywhere. I know it from personal experience, after having held a dialogue with my Muslim neighbours on this subject. They told me in so many words that the Koran and the Hadis do not permit them to join the national mainstream with Hindus. Islam, they told me, teaches that if an Islamic country attacks India, Muslims in India must help the invader. Muslims, they said, have to strive always to convert every Dar al-Harb into a Dar al-Islam with the help of Muslims from other lands.
The vote-hungry parties like the Congress, the Janata Dal and others, are always ready to please the Muslims. And the Muslims are not only fooling these parties for political gains but are also augmenting their power in India. They view this country as Dar al-Harb.
Adherence to Sufism does not inspire tolerance. Sufis, by and large, were not tolerant. It is only a few Sufis who exhibited a different spirit because they came in contact with some outstanding Hindu saint.
The Islamic view of God is really responsible for the ghetto mentality of Muslims. Muslim leaders have no opinions of their own. They mouth only what they have learnt from the Koran. The Koran contains no universal Dharma. That is why its follower committed massacres of people belonging to other faiths, and made converts by force.
I cannot speak on this subject with knowledge, that is, whether Namaz offered on disputed places is acceptable to Allah or not.

II

Coming to the Sarva Panth Samadar Manch, the only comment I can offer is that we should learn from the results of Secularism or Sarva Dharma Samabhava as practised by the Congress. The policy has failed to change the mentality of Muslims. It is my considered opinion that we will do well by scrapping the Samadar Manch.

Footnotes:

Translated from a letter in Hindi. The writer lives in Phagwara in the Kapurthala District of Punjab.