1. The answer is a clear no. No, Hinduism is not the same as Islam. That is the entire point of the quote of Shri Ram Swarup Ji here. This does not mean that there is no overlap between Islam and Hinduism. Many aspects are common as Islam does masquerade as a religious theology.
2. What Shri Ram Swarup Ji means to say is that Islam stops at just being a political theology and does not graduate to a deep religious or spiritual praxis like Sanātana dharma does and many other pagan systems with sadhana and meditation at their core do too.
3. There is no moksha in Islam. The highest point is Jannat and what goes on there is just the description of a Las Vegas night club. There is no theory of Jnana, karma, prarabdha and punarjanma and there is no praxis of mantra, yantra and sadhana.
4. What is common is the outer paraphernalia – the pilgrimage, the rule books, the rituals. But even here the differences are galore. Their pilgrimages are the result of only historical circumstances related to the personality cult under discussion.
5. Our pilgrimages are centres of great sadhana, where with mantra, japa and sadhana, thousands and lakhs of great sadhakas have made the place really conducive for the dwelling of the deity.
6. Their (Islamic) only and highest book is a rule book, where all rules are dependent upon the wahi (revelation) of one person and are tailor made for his needs and idiosyncracies, unlike Sanātana dharma.
7. In Sanātana dharma, rule books are recommendatory and take their sanction from the highest texts of knowledge – the Vedas, or the Apaurusheya Shruti.
8. Their (Islamic) rituals are historical and arbitrary, dependent upon the whims of a single person’s idiosyncrasies and preferences.
9. Our Smritis are created by Jnanis, Jivanmuktas and Rishis of the highest order, who completely take their own personalities out of their creations and let Śakti flow in their works like it does in the shvaansa (breath) of a Jnani.
10. Islam is a product of time and place, of history and yet its claims are universal. Islam has no means for its followers to travel inside and reach the higher levels of consciousness and yet it intrudes into the most private of personal affairs like ‘how to have sex’.
11. When Muslim theologians say Islam is a complete religion they do not mean to say it has the means for self-realization, to achieve absolute truth, what it means to say is that it knows what to do in your bedroom, what to do in your kitchen, down to the very last detail.
12. Just listen to a Shariat Q&A session on any Pakistani channel. They discuss how to climb steps in Ramadan, what to do if they have saliva in their mouth.
13. Where to spit, and what to do if the spitting side (allowed by a theologian) has a wall – meaning the dilemma is whether to spit on the wall as the direction is right, or to spit on the other side, where there is no wall but the direction is wrong.
14. You get the gist. Islam presumes to claim that its followers do not even need to think even for the smallest of things and whatever happened in the life of the Prophet, every single step that we do, literally, can be derived from that.
15. And humans need not think at all. Nobody who has read the Smritis and is in his right mind would say Smritis do that.
16. We are different, very different. That does not mean there is no overlap. But the overlap doesn’t mean we are just the same. It is not a binary you know. We are different but some things are similar.
17. But the things which are the same are mostly peripheral, mostly what Prophetic Monotheistic sects mimicked to masquerade as a religion. What they miss is the spiritual theory and praxis that Sanātana dharma has.
18. I know there is a neo-Trad tendency to prove that Islam = Hinduism, essentially bringing back the faulty idea of sarva dharma samabhava of Gandhi under the garb of ‘both have rituals’.
19. But that comparison as shown above is meaningless, as even millennial woketards have rituals for birthdays, anniversaries and even sex. Does that mean they are equal to Hinduism?
20. Shatru has to be identified as Shatru. We should of course learn what is good in them, but at the same time know that they are different and our enemies.
---END---
---END---
Loading suggestions...