Excerpts from My Sayyid Shihab Thangal Memorial Lecture on Building Tolerance and Communal Harmony : Challenges and Prospects, last Frida...
Excerpts from My Sayyid Shihab Thangal Memorial Lecture on Building Tolerance and Communal Harmony : Challenges and Prospects, last Friday evening, in Dubai.
Religious Humanism
Our faith in our religion, in spite of the fact that we adhere to it fully with all sincerity, should be free from bigotry and hatred towards any other religious and community groups.
In other words, our faith should be humanistic. Beyond all other identities, there is a very solid identity that we all share, and it is called humanity. Our human identity is perhaps the only stable and pure identity that we all have. For me, born and brought up Italy, deeply trained in classical languages such as Greek and Latin, the very basic human identity has always central to my self-identity.
And, though my faith in my consciously and freely adopted religion, Islam, plays a very crucial and living role in my life and I love my faith to its core, I approach it as an inclusive faith, rooted in human love and compassion, away from all extremist and bigoted readings of Islam.
I call such faith a form of religious humanism, rooted in the beautiful teachings of the Quran and the exemplary life examples of the Prophet (peace be upon him).
At the philosophical level religious humanism seeks to protect human autonomy, freedom and dignity through an open, innovative and constructive reading of the religious sources, without undermining their sacred or divine origins.
Religious humanism, I think, can be an inspiring alternative to religious fundamentalism and anti-religious secularism, as proponents of both often come across as bigoted and extremely intolerant in their views and human interactions.
One of the basic features of religious humanism is that it fully respects religious and various other choices made by different people.
And I think this is the one of the meanings that the Quran implies, when it categorically says: There shall be no compulsion in religion (the Quran Chapter 2, Verse 256).
And religious humanism, in spite of firmly attesting the uniqueness and singularity of a person's religious faith and practices, doesn't see human relations, social and other collective human interactions oppositionally, through the prism of us versus them Manichean dichotomy.
And it does not create the Other, to be shunned, avoided and excluded; rather, it sees the presence of the Other as an opportunity for enriching one’s self experience of faith through mutual dialogue, tolerance and co-existence.
we must realise that Hindus, Jews, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis, Christians, Muslims, Sikhs or followers of any other religions, we all belong to a single humanity. And the one merciful God created all of us.
And we all belong to a single humanity. Our destinies, happiness and welfare are intertwined. We all have our inalienable right to be treated equally, with full human dignity and honour, without any discrimination based on our religious, racial, ethnic and national differences.
We must also take note of the fact that religious identity is part of our human identity. Another important fact is that one form of xenophobia cannot be countered by creating another form of xenophobia.
And finally, violence in the name of religion, whatever its name or form, morally undo the very foundation of religion itself.
