FROM MAULANA’S DESK
Maulana Wahiduddin Khan, born in 1925, in Azamgarh, Uttar Pradesh, is an Islamic spiritual scholar who is well-versed in both classical Islamic learning and modern disciplines. The mission of his life has been the establishment of worldwide peace. He has received the Padma Bhushan, the Demiurgus Peace International Award and Sayyidina Imam Al Hassan Peace award for promoting peace in Muslim societies. He has been called ’Islam’s spiritual ambassador to the world’ and is recognized as one of its most influential Muslims . His books have been translated into sixteen languages and are part of university curricula in six countries. He is the founder of the Centre for Peace and Spirituality based in New Delhi.
MARVELS OF MAN
AS I STOOD in front of India Gate in New Delhi, I thought what a beautiful specimen of architecture and sculpture it was. It is a structure which bears witness to man’s unique creative faculties. For man to conceive of a thing like ‘India Gate’, he must think creatively before it can come into existence. He must make plans and then give them a concrete shape.
On observing this, the thought came to my mind that even if all the stars, planets, trees and animals were told to build an India Gate, they would fail to do so, even if all of them put their heads together. This is the case with all other human matters too. All of man’s extraordinary and exemplary feats are unique, and are his exclusive prerogative. No other being in the known universe is able to do the things which man is capable of doing by exercising his physical and mental faculties, be it the construction of India Gate or the operating of a complex industrial machine.
God desires that man should realize Him on the level of consciousness, that he should recognize Him through his intellect. That is why God created man with such distinctive faculties. Just as man is superior to all the creation of the universe, so is God a superior being as compared to man.
If man were to reflect on the difference between him and the rest of the universe, he would be able to comprehend the difference between God and himself. God is the ultimate form of this superiority which man experiences over the rest of the universe. To understand God is as simple a matter as understanding oneself.
The truth is that to believe in God is to believe in something in which we already believe. To see God is to see something which is already there for us to see. An intensification of what man is experiencing every moment is belief in God. The human being is not the ’full-stop‘ in this universe. When a higher state of existence is present in the form of man, then why should the existence of another higher state in the form of God not be a possibility?
Maulana Wahiduddin Khan
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