Page:Khwaja Kamal-ud-Din - The Strength of Islam.djvu/13

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
THE STRENGTH OF ISLAM
9

bring all the nations of the earth under that one beneficent canopy which I cannot help regarding as the protecting wings of the Almighty.

In advancing our Faith we should, I think, only insist upon the essentials in the first instance, for these constitute the spirit of Islam—firm belief in the One God and surrender to His Almighty Will, belief in the messages Divinely sent Through His Holy Prophets, and the carrying into effect of the highest order of beneficence to all our fellow-creatures on this earth—and there is to my mind no reason to force any other belief on people if, by doing so, we run the risk of doing harm to our cause, turning them away from Islam. Win first the essentials, and the minor points will follow almost as a matter of course.

West meets East.

It has always seemed strange to me that my very earliest ideas about religion, crude though they doubtless were, and so utterly at variance with the strictly Christian and evangelical surroundings in which my youth was passed, coincided so nearly with the Muslim Faith as it