SPIRIT OF ISLAM DECEMBER 2018

3 Spirit of Islam Issue 72 December 2018 FROM MAULANA’S DESK 1. The World’s 500 Most Influential Muslims 2018, Royal Islamic Strategic Studies Centre, Jordan. 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 1 . 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. THE AIM OF ISLAM T HERE are some who claim that religion is an individual matter, and others who take the opposite view, zealously putting forward their claim that religion is a complete social order. Outwardly both views appear to be opposed to one another, but they do have one thing in common: both present religion as a system related to individual life, and the second as a system related to society as a whole. In its true essence, however, religion is neither an individual nor a social system; it is a divine path. The aim of the religion of Islam is to discover our Creator. Religion is to believe in what is unseen as if it were before one’s eyes; it is for thoughts of God and the life after death to dominate one’s mind — so much that one is always thinking about them and setting the course of one’s life in accordance with their demands. The aim of the religion of Islam is to discover our Creator.