Respect for Other Religions

The Promised Messiah^as & Imam Mahdi (Guided One)

In other words, do not even abuse the idols of the non-believers lest they abuse your God out of ignorance.^[1]

Now consider that this is the Qur’anic teaching despite the fact that it treats idols as of no significance. Yet God teaches the Muslims to abstain from insulting even the idols and admonishes them instead to adopt a course of gentle persuasion lest they [the idolaters] should be provoked, in turn, to abuse God. The Muslims would then be responsible for such abuses. What manner of people are they who revile the name of this great Prophet of Islam^sa and speak of him with utter disrespect, brutally assailing his honour and tarnishing his spotless character. He is the highly revered Prophet whose name is held in such awe as when uttered the great Muslim kings vacate their thrones and bow their heads to his commands. They consider it an honour to be counted among the humblest of his servants. Is this respect not a bounty of God? Those who dare insult the recipient of such honour do, in fact, quarrel with God Himself. The Holy Prophet Muhammad^sa holds such a high station with God that to prove his truth He has shown the world great miracles. Is this not the work of His Mighty hand, which has bowed the heads of 200 million people before Muhammad’s^sa threshold? Granted that every Prophet had many a heavenly signs in his support, but the peerless signs shown in Muhammad’s^sa support outnumber them all. They continue to appear even today as they were manifested in the past.^[2]

Endnotes

1. Holy Qur’an, Surah Al-An’am, Verse 109.
2. Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad^as, A Message of Peace (Tilford, Surrey: Islam International Publications Ltd., 2007), 32.