The best and most convincing defence of Islam is that it does not require to be defended by anybody. Like it or hate it Islam can stand on its own feet and survive and even flourish. It has done so across the globe for more than a millennium.
Prophet Muhammad’s teachings have survived for this long and they have guided innumerable people over the centuries to a good and ethical life. The study and practices of the Holy Koran and the of Islam ore generally speaking have produced many mystics – especially amongst the Sufis. If the teachings of Islam have not been proved false by armies of scholars and over the centuries and if we have the testimony of the Sufi mystics that their practices can help you to attain God then there is really not much that anybody need add to defend Islam.
I got the idea for this article from reading the classic, On Heroes and Hero Worship by Thomas Carlyle. I think that I will end this article by quoting from Carlyle’s defence of Prophet Muhammad:
We have chosen Mahomet not as the most eminent Prophet; but as the one we are freest to speak of. He is by no means the truest of Prophets; but I do esteem him a true one. Farther, as there is no danger of our becoming, any of us, Mahometans, I mean to say all the good of him I justly can. It is the way to get at his secret: let us try to understand what he meant with the world; what the world meant and means with him, will then be a more answerable question. Our current hypothesis about Mahomet, that he was a scheming Impostor, a Falsehood incarnate, that his religion is a mere mass of quackery and fatuity, begins really to be now untenable to any one. The lies, which well-meaning zeal has heaped round this man, are disgraceful to ourselves only. When Pococke inquired of Grotius, Where the proof was of that story of the pigeon, trained to pick peas from Mahomet’s ear, and pass for an angel dictating to him? Grotius answered that there was no proof! It is really time to dismiss all that. The word this man spoke has been the life-guidance now of a hundred and eighty millions of men these twelve hundred years. These hundred and eighty millions were made by God as well as we. A greater number of God’s creatures believe in Mahomet’s word at this hour, than in any other word whatever. Are we to suppose that it was a miserable piece of spiritual legerdemain, this which so many creatures of the Almighty have lived by and died by? I, for my part, cannot form any such supposition. I will believe most things sooner than that. One would be entirely at a loss what to think of this world at all, if quackery so grew and were sanctioned here.
(Sourced from – https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1091/1091-h/1091-h.htm#link2H_4_0003 )
Falsehood cannot survive for as long as Islam has done. I think that we can accept that Islam is a true religion through which one can lead a good ethical life, serve humanity and all sentient beings and even attain God in this lifetime.
I’ll end here. Please comment on the article if you liked it or even if you didn’t. Feedback from my readers keeps me going.
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Unfortunately the Koran, like the Bible, has been interpreted by so many people, that much of it has ended in Chinese whispers.
But this much I believe that it originally set out to give people a set of guidelines on being good and useful citizens, laying great stress on altruism and on peace as a means to prosperity. Unfortunately, as Swami Rangathananda has said, it passed into wrong hands – warlords and power mongers who twisted the words of the Prophet to suit themselves and perpetrated their version upon the people.
https://vivekavani.com/swami-vivekananda-islam-quran/
This will interest you. 👆🏼