Hazrat Maulana Malik Ghulam Faridra MA (1897-1977)
Mr Rudyard Kipling expressed a generally accepted view when he wrote his famous lines:
Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet,
Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God’s great Judgment Seat
Those of the Western people who have seen the East and those of the Eastern people who have been in the West very reluctantly admit the fact that there exists such an irreconcilable disparity between the conditions of the West and the East that it seems futile to expect a union between the two in the near future. They are as if two separate worlds which have nothing in common and hence are divided by a gulf which is unbridgeable.
In their colour and creeds, in their sentiments and susceptibilities, in their ideas and thoughts, in their tastes and predilections, in their civilisations and cultures, in their etiquettes and manners, in their habits and customs, in their angles of vision and modes of thinking, in their ways of living, and in their dress and food, they are quite different from each other.
The Westerner thinks more of this world; the Easterner thinks more of the next. The Westerner is materialistic, sceptic and even atheist; the Easterner is fanatically religious, superstitious and spiritualist. The Westerner is epicurean in his tastes; the Easterner is stoical. The Westerner is practical and worldly-wise; the Easterner is meditative and introspective. The Easterner is fatalistic; the Westerner believes in volition. The Westerner is progressive and modernist; the Easterner is conservative, even reactionary. The Westerner is advanced in science, commerce and polity; the Easterner is backwards; and there are thousands more differences between the people of the West and those of the East, which should better be left undescribed.
In the description of these differences and variations, I am not praising one at the cost of the other. As for myself, I am neither Eastern nor Western. To me, the terms East and West mean nothing. I am describing these disparities and incompatibilities between the conditions of the West and the East as being born and bred in the East and having lived for some time in the West; I can, to some extent, find them out. I am one of those people who believe in the unity of the West and the East notwithstanding the realism of the former and the idealism of the latter; nay, I am a firm believer in the unity of the whole world, despite the fact that labour is up in arms against capital and nation against nation and race against race.
There are apparent and unmistakable signs which speak of a united world and those who God has gifted with insight into the future are foreseeing the creation of a commonwealth composed of all the nations and communities of the world. The very fact that there is a loud clamour in all quarters for unity, goodwill and amity is a happy augury of the coming to being of a world of reconciliation and harmony on the ruins of the old world of discord and dissension. The rise of socialism and the movement of internationalism, the coming to existence of many religious movements which aim at the unification of all faiths and the brotherhood of man, the desire for a common language understandable by all, the gradual disappearance of colour prejudice, the creation of a “league” whose primary object is the equal and impartial representation of all nations, and the everyday inventions which are facilitating the means of communications and interrelations are signs enough to show that humanity, after it has convulsed for centuries in the quagmire of wrangling and quarrelling, is slowly but surely marching towards unity. Dr Fournier d’Albe, the famous scientist, says in “Quo Vadimus” (published by Kegan Paul) that in only a hundred years the human race will be unified; the earth will be under one government, and one language will be understood, or even spoken, all over the world. Our descendants will take advantage of the enormously increased facilities for transportation to take an afternoon visit to Timbuktu. They will, in any case, be able to talk with friends there by the universal radiotelephone and even to see them by television.
It is not without reason that leaders of different religious and political thought are yearning for everlasting peace and a feeling of true brotherhood to prevail in the world. No change takes place here in the world below unless it is decreed in the heavens above. It is decided in the heavens that humanity shall no longer remain disunited. There shall be only one religion and only one nation in the world now. God wills that East should modify its rigidity and West should advance a step forward to meet it.
Notwithstanding our differences, we are the descendants of one ancestor and the members of one family. It does not matter if some members of the family have colours and tastes different from the colours and tastes of the others. Is it not a fact that very often two real brothers have dispositions and leanings diametrically opposed to each other? Nevertheless, they are brothers and the difference in their dispositions and temperaments does not create a difference in their love and affection for each other. Then why is it that we who are the creatures of one Creator Who neither belongs to the West nor to the East, should hate and dislike one another because some of us are of fairer colour than the others, and are more advanced in education and polity than the others? Certainly, a man who sees his brother poorer or less educated than himself, instead of jeering at him, tries to uplift him, educate him, and civilise him.
Whether we are Western or Eastern, whether White or Black, we are the sons of one father and the servants of one God. Our God, our Allah, is the Lord of all the different peoples, the different ages, and the different countries. He is the God of the Muslims, the Jews, the Christians, the Hindus, and the Buddhists alike. He is the Creator of the Europeans, the Asiatics, the Americans, and the Africans. He is equally benevolent and beneficent to all. His kindness and mercy and compassion are as unlimited for one race as for the other. If He created air, fire, water, light, etc., for the White, the Black are also equal partners with them in these things. He is equally bountiful and graceful to all. He is one God, one Creator, and one Providence. As He Himself is one and is very jealous of the association of any other being with Him, He wishes His creatures and servants to become united into one people. As in the provision of the necessary things that support life, He has made no distinction between His creatures. He wishes, therefore, that His creatures should not make any invidious distinction amongst themselves. It is His will, and His will shall be done because He is All-Powerful.
Here arises a question. If unity is to come, and, as signs indicate, it will certainly come, then how will it come? Will it come by means of leagues and congresses, by making committees and holding conferences? The world has had enough of these conferences, leagues, and congresses. After all, what are these leagues made up of? They are composed of heterogeneous elements which lack a common cord to coordinate them, and in which the strongest have their way and say.
The tremendous task of the unification of mankind is not a small task to be achieved by the hands of man unassisted with divine help. This object can see its accomplishment only through a person who, like his Creator, is neither of the West nor of the East, by him whom God has sent with the message of peace and unity. At his hands, the world shall become united. All the messengers and prophets of God, all the great teachers of humanity, and the ancient sages of different nations foretold the advent of a Great Reformer in the present times who was to reconcile the warring communities, countries, and creeds. Unlike the prophets of old, who were raised for their specific communities, this Prophet was to be raised like his Mastersa for the whole world because his mission was for the whole world and his message for the whole of mankind. His appearance was foretold by Krishna, Zoroaster, Buddha, Isaiah, Daniel, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Prophet Muhammad, may God bless them all. Jesus likened his second advent to “lightning that flashes from the East to the West. The Prophet Isaiah said, “Who has raised the Righteous One in the East” (Isaiah, 41:2). The Holy Prophet Muhammad, may the blessings of God be upon him, pointed to the East and said that that was the place for the appearance of the Messenger of the Latter Days. Krishna prophesied about the appearance of a Prophet in the Arya Varta. Zoroaster said that the Prophet of the Latter Days would be of Persian extraction.
The promised reformer to whose advent these prophecies refer has already come and come in the East, as was foretold. God has decreed that the world shall become united at his hands. He has been sent by the Lord of the heavens and earth, by the Creator of the Black and the White, by the God of Asia and Europe. He is not an Easterner, though he was born in the East. Like his Sender, Who is neither of the East nor of the West. He invites the whole world to the love of God, because in the love of God alone the world can and shall unite. He says, “All ye that are desirous of perpetual happiness and eternal salvation, fly to me, for here is the fountain which will purge you of all your impurities and here you will find the salvation which is the fruit of certainty and a strong faith and perfect knowledge.”
The East shall have to bid farewell to its spirit of revenge, and the West shall have to leave exploitation of the East, and both shall unite in the spirit of God and His love. Let those who seek after truth and desire to attain the real, true, and actual communion with God, because only thereby all differences are forgotten, drink of the Divine nectar that God has provided for them and fly to the fold of Ahmadas, because in him speaks the spirit of God.
If those in whose hands are the destinies of nations endeavour to cure the ill from which humanity is suffering without making use of the remedy which God has provided for them, they will, instead of nearing the goal, continue to drift away from it. It is ordained in heaven that God’s Kingdom shall be on earth as it is in heaven. There is only one God in heaven and there shall be only one people on earth, and this shall come to pass when the people of earth shall turn to him who has been especially commissioned by divine hands to bring about peace, goodwill, and unity in the world.
(Transcribed and edited by Al Hakam from the original English, published in the June 1925 issue of The Review of Religions)