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Conclusion
No political thinker can give effective solutions. It is only a monotheist religion based on universal brotherhood of man that can provide this human need.
The problems of our age at present is that in the Western world, technological invention is far outstripping moral elevation. The soul has to soar as well as the rocket. Many without a religion cannot escape from this changes society. It establishes standards of purity and hygiene, provides industry , elevates womanhood , restrains anti-social customs, abolishes cannibalism, human sacrifice and cruelty and organises famine relief.
A Religion belief which readily inclines towards an assumption that magic and miracles was the true explanation of the unusual and unexpected, and even insisted that there must be appropriate phenomena to mark the intrusion of the Divine into human affairs are being rejected by the modern man. Yet, where such patterns of belief are still endorsed by religious conservatism, they are bound to influence interpretation of such a religion. This leads to the conflict between religion and science. Firmer convictions, values and belief s are in the melting pot. They are being challenged and tested to determine their worth and validity. There is a growing unwillingness to take anything for granted, and things once regarded as fixed and settled are now being ruthlessly scrutinized and frequently rejected. Those who are sentient, whether intelligently or instinctively, realize that we have to adjust to every great change and therefore we have to free ourselves from hidebound positions and examine every proposition afresh.
However, the traditionalists are alarmed and denounce the liberties that are being taken with their cherished ideas. Those who throw-off the yokes will come to no good. Defiantly, they cry out against new ways and new thinking and raise the flag of rally to the forces of conservatism and conformity.
This led to a decline of faith, not only in politics but in the teachings and practice of some organized religions. Religion, especially; Christianity, has seemed too much a part of the existing social order, whose policies it has so often supported or come to terms with, that in its traditional formulation, it is now viewed with disenchantment. As a consequence, millions are now in a spiritual vacuum, many have received a fresh impulse towards soul-experiences, including the psychedelic, which they are trying to acquire outside the churches, chapels and temples.
Many people are questioning for an earthly incarnation of the free spirit of man not only in individuals but also in groups. It is higher certainty, the wider comprehension, the fuller self-development and the consciousness of the fundamental oneness of all things at which they aim and by which they are invested with that dignity of which the enslaving spirit that now prevails would seek to deprive them.
In developed parts of the world, there has been a proliferation of community enterprises in the 20th Century because of unnatural character and conditions of modern life, its false conflicts. The community group sees itself not only as a protest, but as a rectification, a return to the grass roots of living, a reassertion of the true basis on which a harmonious and peaceful world order must be erected. It is a condemnation of the states, recognising that there is no possibility of any real world community or even national community, under predominant centralized government control. It stresses that where organization becomes too comprehensive and remote, essential fellowship, the sense of belonging, and self-fulfillment of personal participation is destroyed.
Only religion can bring about world unity of all races and climes. Peoples, tongues and nations will mingle their blood and manifest a common love of humanity. Religious unity rests upon the feelings of each member that they belong together. This is the type of union which exists between friends, and its original focus in human society is the family or the kinship group. Such groups cooperate, of course, but their cooperation is not based on a calculation of interest. It has a sacramental character because it expresses the sense of “fellowship or brotherhood”, the consciousness of inner, emotional unity. Such a group is not unified because it cooperates, it cooperates because it is already unified.
The brotherhood of man might be realizable if all men sincerely believed that they were created by the same One God and acted accordingly.
How can we create an inner spiritual unity that is not exclusive and universal ? Can there be found a comprehensive ideology to unit mankind, which permits and welcomes diversity within the kinship and does not have to act coercively ? In my view, there is no such political idea, only religion can provide the answer. Monotheist religion is designed to foster and forward a universalist outlook by achieving an inner unity and community without which any outward unification cannot long endure. But some monotheist religions have been play9ing obsolete doctrines while our world is aflame. A world that is threatening to disintegrate before our eyes is in need of the hope of a spiritual revolution which only Allah Himself is able to lead. Deep down in man’s hearts we know we have a glorious purpose to fulfill.
There are all kinds of moral detergents but all to no avail. Resolutions, reforms, social adjustment and therapeutic psychology all have failed to produce an improved man.
But, we can eliminate as out of the question that our world is on the brink of some overwhelming catastrophe. Looking back with informed judgment, it is very clear that much that was expected to happen did not materialise. Many of the prognostication were wildly fanatic. Some recognise the need for a religious revival but emphasize summoning Divine intervention to accomplish by supernatural happenings what it was the business of the designed human agency to achieve. This representation provided a self-satisfying excuse for inadequacy of commitment. God could do everything and therefore, he should do it all.
The Muslim and Christians still take comfort in leaving things to God. This is to apathy, complacency and blocks creative initiative. Men inclined to opt out of responsibility, hug the chairs and generally to accept subservience and reconcile to the inevitable.
The great errors of the previous eschatological age was that people were gazing up into the skies or seeking some abnormal leadership instead of enlisting the resources which would illuminate and fortify their own resolve.
It has now dawned on human minds that life is not so simple an affair as it used to be evening the recent past. Its complexities are so perplexing and its intricacies so puzzling, that it may well be described as “a riddle wrapped in mystery inside an enigma”. Economics, politics, ethics and religion are not so many water-tight compartments but are the different facets of a social order. They act, interact and react upon one another and thus evolve a cultural pattern. Any maladjustment anywhere betrays itself in the birth of some evil or other.
The totalitarian doctrine of all hues and colours have been breathless endeavours to create cosmos out of chaos. But the paradise of social peace continues to elude the grasp of the political theorist. Fascism and Nazism offer a hectic career and have been eaten up by mars of their own creation. They possessed great social dynamics. But they lacked the stabilizing force of religion which creates inward earnestness and an instinct of self –mastery and thus ensues a lasting vitality. Communism has no doubt, survived the war crisis with the skin of its teeth. This is only establishes its superiority over the rival social gospels of the Italian and German brand. But its survival value is still highly problematical. Its vengeful denial of supernaturalism and its downright earthrottedness are its fatal handicaps. All this merely shows its central imperfections as a complete and comprehensive programme of life. Godless ideologies carry in them their own nemesis. They miss the inner life of man which is the fountain-head of his social activities. It means that life’s golden tree is denied of its nourishing sap, consequently it decays and dies out.
Thus, the irreligious ideologies accomplish precious little beyond launching a psychic onslaught of frustrated humanity. They are sadly inadequate to actualize human ambition and emotion. They evoke no echo or a resonant not in our soul. They do not, because they cannot transmute a pure intellectual concept into a living vibrant idea. Their sanctions are not sanctities. They envisage just some advance, but no genuine progress. They flog the social instincts seated in human hearts into some convenient form to achieve certain sordid ends.
Therefore, only religions based on the unity of God and the universal brotherhood of man can meet the challenge of the modern age. Islam is such a religion. It does so by giving a working and workable code of conduct, a demonstrable way of thinking and a unique blue-print for the structure and growth of society. It satisfies the soul of saint as well as the spirit of a scholar.
I believe that if Christians return to history and not Jesus of mythology, the Christians can then work in harmony with the Muslims to save mankind from the present chaos.
(ICRA)