Miss Buddha (113 page)

By the use of these methods, a vast and
diverse body of Islamic law was then laid out covering most aspects
of personal and public life.

In addition to laws pertaining to the five
pillars, Islamic law also covers such areas as diet, purity,
marriage and inheritance, commercial transaction, relationships
with non-Muslims, as well as criminal law.

Jews and Christians living under Muslim rule
are by the law itself subject to the laws of Islam; however, such
communities have traditionally been permitted to run their internal
affairs on the basis of their own religious laws and practices.

The Spread of Islam

From its inception, Muslims have seen Islam
as a universal code: truths and laws that (must) apply to all of
humanity (if not the universe).

Therefore, even during Muhammad’s lifetime,
two attempts were made to spread (by military conquest) Islam
northward into the Byzantine domain and its capital in
Constantinople, and within ten years after the death of the
prophet, Muslims had indeed defeated the Sassanids of Persia and
the Byzantines, and had conquered most of Persia, Iraq, Syria, and
Egypt for the good of their souls.

These conquests continued, and the Sassanian
Empire was soon after destroyed and the influence of Byzantium was
largely diminished.

For the next several centuries, continued
conquest grew Islam into a multinational and very influential
civilization.

Islam in the
20
^th
Century

While most of the accepted
Islamic religious and cultural traditions were established between
the 7
^th
and 10
^th
centuries—considered the classical period of
Islamic history—Islamic culture continued to develop as Islam
spread into new regions and mixed with diverse cultures.

The
19
^th
-century occupation of many Muslim lands by European colonial
powers was a turning point in Muslim history since the traditional
Islamic systems of governance, social organization, and education
were undermined by the colonial regimes.

Despite the political and ethnic diversity
of Muslim countries, the core set of Islamic beliefs continues to
provide the basis for a shared identity and affinity among
Muslims.

Still, the radically different political,
economic, and cultural conditions under which today’s Muslim lives
make it difficult to pinpoint what constitutes standard Islamic
practice in the modern world, leading many contemporary Muslims to
draw on the historical legacy of Islam as they confront the
challenges of modern life.

:: Hinduism ::

The word
Hindu
is derived from the river
Sindhu, or Indus. Hindu was primarily a geographical term that
referred to India or to a region of India (near the Sindhu) as long
ago as the 6
^th
century BCE.

The word
Hinduism
is an English
word of more recent origin. Hinduism entered the English language
in the early 19
^th
century to describe the beliefs and practices of
those residents of India who had not converted to Islam or
Christianity and who did not practice Judaism or
Zoroastrianism.

In the case of most religions, beliefs and
practices come first, and those who subscribe to these beliefs and
practices are recognized as followers of that particular
religion.

In the case of the Hindu, however, this
relationship is reversed, and the acknowledgment of being a Hindu
takes precedence, and it is the beliefs and practices of
acknowledged Hindus that constitute the contents of their
religion.

While the West knows them
as Hindus, the Hindus themselves prefer to the Sanskrit term
Sanatana Dharma
to name
their religious tradition.

Sanatana Dharma is often translated into
English as “eternal tradition” or “eternal religion,” but
translating Dharma as “tradition” or “religion” gives a limited,
even mistaken, sense of the word. Dharma has many meanings in
Sanskrit—the sacred language of Hindu scripture—including “moral
order,” “law,” “truth,” “duty,” and “right action.”

Possibly the most important element of the
Hindu tradition is that it encourages Hindus to seek spiritual and
moral truth wherever it might be found, while at the same time
acknowledging that no one creed can harbor such truth in its
fullness and that each individual must realize this truth through
his or her own systematic effort.

Hindu scripture, based on the insights of
Hindu sages and seers down the ages, serves primarily as a
guidebook, for it is our experience, our reason, and our dialogue
with others—especially with enlightened individuals—that provide
the means of testing our understanding of spiritual and moral
truth.

For ultimately, truth comes to us through
direct consciousness of the divine or the ultimate reality. In
other religions, this ultimate reality is usually called God. The
Hindu refers to it by many names, but the most common name is
Brahman.

In most religions, truth is delivered or
revealed by a divine source and enters the world through a single
agent—Abraham in Judaism, Jesus in Christianity, and Muhammad in
Islam. These truths are then wrestled down in scriptures that from
there on serve as the main (if not only) source of knowledge and
divine wisdom: the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament, and the
Qur’an.

For the Hindu, by contrast, there is no
single revelation or orthodoxy (established doctrine) by which
people may achieve knowledge of the divine or lead a life backed by
religious law. The Hindu tradition acknowledges that there are many
paths by which a person (seeker) may seek and experience religious
understanding and direction. Hinduism also knows (and makes known)
that that every individual, whether beggar or king, has the
potential to achieve enlightenment.

Today’s Hindu is found primarily in India
and neighboring Nepal, with a scattering in Bali in the Indonesian
archipelago.

There are also some Hindu communities in Sri
Lanka and Bangladesh, Mauritius, Fiji, the West Indies, East
Africa, and South Africa.

World-wide, Hindus today number nearly 900
million, including about 20 million who live outside India, making
Hinduism the third largest religious community in the world, after
Christians and Muslims.

Ever since its inception, Hindu thought has
transcended geographical boundaries and influenced religious and
philosophical ideas throughout the world. Persian, ancient Greek,
and ancient Roman thought may well have been influenced by
Hinduism.

Three other religions that
originated in India are, in fact, closely related to Hinduism:
Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism, and in the
19
^th
century, German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer read both
Hindu and Buddhist scriptures and based much of his thinking on
them.

Meanwhile, in the United
States, 19
^th
-century writers such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David
Thoreau drew on Hinduism and its scriptures in developing their
philosophy of transcendentalism.

More recently, Martin Luther King, Jr.
studied Hindu leader Mohandas Gandhi’s teachings on nonviolent
protest, while George Harrison embraced Hinduism during the
1960s.

Millions of Westerners today practice
meditation or yoga to achieve relief from stress or physical
fitness (if not enlightenment—though there are some that do, of
course), indicating a growing Western receptiveness to Hindu
practices.

What Is Hinduism

The truth is that Hinduism’s universal
world-view and its willingness to accept and celebrate diverse
philosophies, deities, symbols, and practices makes it very hard to
pin down, define or classify.

In fact, a religion that emphasizes
similarities and shared characteristics (Hinduism) rather than
differences (Islam, Judaism, Christianity) will always have a
difficult time setting itself apart—unless, of course, this very
quality is considered its defining feature.

Of course, there are beliefs and practices
that may be identified as exclusively Hindu; still, over time the
Hindu tradition has concerned itself largely with the human
situation rather than the Hindu situation; and instead of basing
its religious identity on separating Hindu from non-Hindu or
believer from nonbeliever, Hinduism has striven to recognize and
embrace any principles and practices that would lead a person to
become a better human being and to better understand and live in
harmony with Dharma.

Now, there is a crucial distinction between
Hindu Dharma and Western sense of religion. In the West a religion
is understood to be conclusive—that is, it is the one and only true
religion.

Also, a religion—as understood in the
West—is as a rule exclusionary: those who do not follow it place
themselves beyond salvation.

Finally, our Western religions are as a rule
separative—that is, to belong to it, one must not belong to
another.

Dharma, on the other hand, does not imply
(nor abide by) any of these rules.

The Dharmic Tradition

Dharma (Sanskrit—or Dhamma in Pali) is an
all-important Hindu concept. In addition to tradition and moral
order, Dharma also signifies the path of knowledge and correct
action (as well as law and truth).

So, due to Hinduism’s emphasis on living in
accordance with Dharma, anyone who is striving for spiritual
knowledge and seeking the right course of ethical action is—in the
broadest sense—a follower of Sanatana Dharma.

Since Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism share
the concept of Dharma with Hinduism (along with other key
concepts), it could be said that all four of these Indian religions
belong to the Dharmic tradition.

So, on one level Hinduism can indeed refer
to the beliefs or practices of any of the Dharmic traditions, and
the word Hinduism retains this sense in some places of the Indian
Constitution of 1950. When it comes to religious studies, however,
Hinduism is used in a narrower sense to distinguish it from the
other Dharmic religions of Indian origin.

How do we, then, identify a Hindu?

A Hindu is someone who does not subscribe to
a religion of non-Indian origin, and someone who does not claim to
belong exclusively to another religion of Indian origin—Buddhism,
Jainism, or Sikhism.

It must, however, be said that this attempt
at a Hindu definition produces a rather artificial distinction
between Hinduism and other Dharmic traditions, stemming from the
effort to place limits on a system that sees itself as universal in
order to create a strictly religious identity.

In fact, labeling the other Dharmic
traditions as non-Hindu is based more on politics than on
philosophy. Indeed, there are greater differences of belief and
practices within the wide scope of Hinduism than between Hinduism
and the other Dharmic systems.

Indian historian Irfan Habib stresses this
point when he quotes an early Persian (tongue-in-cheek) source
stating that Hindus are those who have been debating with each
other—on common ground—for centuries; for if they recognize one
another as somebody they can either agree with or oppose
intelligibly, then, Habib’s view is that both must be Hindus.

As an example, despite the fact that Jains
reject many Hindu beliefs, Jains and Hindus can still debate and
thus Jains are also Hindus; for such discourse does not (and
cannot) take place between Hindus and Muslims because they do not
share any common ground.

Sanatana Dharma

Evidence from unearthed
inscriptions indicates that Hindus were using the word Dharma to
name their religion as early as the 7
^th
century BCE.

Once other religions of
Indian origin began using this term, too, Hindus then adopted the
expression Sanatana Dharma to distinguish their Dharma from others.
The word
Sanatana
(meaning immemorial as well as eternal) emphasized the
unbroken continuity of the Hindu tradition in contrast to the other
Dharmas; for the Buddhist, Jain, and Sikh Dhammas possess distinct
starting points, whereas Hinduism has no historical
founder.

One could date the
beginning of true Hinduism as the 4
^th
century BCE when the growth
and separation of Buddhism and Jainism provided it with a
distinctive sense of identity as Sanatana Dhamma. However,
(especially Indian) some scholars prefer to date its beginnings at
about 1500 BCE, the estimated origin of its earliest sacred
texts—although recent evidence suggests these texts may be even
older.

In fact, certain beliefs and practices
clearly identifiable as Hindu—such as the worship of sacred trees
and the mother goddess—go back to the Harappan culture, which
flourished around 3000 BCE.

Some Hindu practices are even older. The
deeply held religious meaning of the new and full moon, for one,
today can be traced to the distant proto-Australoid period, before
3000 BCE; so it is on good grounds that Hinduism perceives itself
as a cumulative tradition, originating among the mists of antiquity
and continuing to this day without a break.

A Comprehensive and Universal Tradition

So far as religious beliefs and practices
go, the Hindu tradition aims at universality. For one, it wishes to
make the riches of Hinduism available to not only the Hindu but to
any genuine seeker of truth and knowledge. For two, it does not
limit Hindus to their tradition; rather it encourages them to
explore all avenues that would lead to a realization of the divine,
and it provides a system with many paths for such realization.