Beware Of Confining Yourself To A Particular Belief.......

By Sumit Paul, New Age Islam 19September 2022 “Beware of confining yourself to a particular belief and denying all else, for much good would elude you- indeed, the knowledge of reality would elude you.” The great scholar, mystic and exegete Ibn Arabi's famous statement is the need of the hour, precisely, the need for the religiously condescending followers (regardless of their faiths; not just Muslims) to imbibe its spirit in toto. Remember, reality is too vast and tremendous to be restricted to one belief rather than another. In Firdausi's ' Shahnama ' one comes across a long couplet in Persian which connotes that sticking to one belief is tantamount to seeing one's own village only. It's like reading just one book and walking on the same path till one dies. Once a 'scholar' of Islam came to meet Rumi. The great mystic asked him how many books and scriptures did he read? “Only Quran, “pat came the answer. Rumi told him, “Your knowledge is limited, vision is impaired, perception is flawed and understanding is skewed. Meet me after reading a few more books and augmenting your mental canvas." Rumi's advice applies to all of us. The monomania of one's belief system, the idiocy in believing that his/her way is the highway, my faith is better than yours, my god is superior to yours, I'm a Sanatani, you're a Muslim and all that fiddlesticks must come to an end. When we browse through a plethora of beliefs, we comprehend the incompleteness and limitations of each belief and realize that the Ultimate Truth comprises a number of partial truths (Poorn Satya Abhipretam Ardha Satyam). It's akin to six blind men perceiving six different parts of an elephant and interpreting them. They're all right from their restricted perspective of reality, known in Logic as Perception of a Fractured Ambit (PFA). But at the same time, they're all wrong in a larger spectrum of the complete truth. This is exactly the problem of Muslims, Christians, Hindus, among others. All these followers possess just a limb of the whole body of the Truth but erroneously think that they've the complete and comprehensive wisdom. Any belief is a sliced piece of the Whole. In fact, a belief is a mere leaf of the entire tree. A tree consists of branches, leaves, trunk and roots. Until we assimilate all its parts, the perception of a tree remains elusive. Holding on to only one belief engenders a truckload of negativity and rancour. This makes us patronising and outright pejorative. If Muslims and Christians understand that their Islam and Christianity are insignificant particles in the cosmos of truth, no Christian will ever dare convert others and no Muslim will try to proselytize a Kafir to ' Allah's Deen. ' ----- A regular columnist for New Age Islam, Sumit Paul is a researcher in comparative religions, with special reference to Islam. He has contributed articles to world's premier publications in several languages including Persian. URL: https://newageislam.com/spiritual-meditations/confining-belief-rumi-ibn-arabi/d/127977 New Age Islam, Islam Online, Islamic Website, African Muslim News, Arab World News, South Asia News, Indian Muslim News, World Muslim News, Women in Islam, Islamic Feminism, Arab Women, Women In Arab, Islamophobia in America, Muslim Women in West, Islam Women and Feminism