Outgoing and friendly to all, the common man is busy enjoying his or her affluence, leisure and opportunities for both growth and entertainment. What is, perhaps, most significant for persons like myself is the air of tolerance and the spirit of live and let live in society. Enlightened circles have turned to the idea that religion or faith is a matter of existential choice, not reasoning. Diana Eck, Bernard Lewis, Chomsky, Karen Armstrong, Annemarie Schimmel, the Dalai Lama, Nelson Mandela, Mother Teresa, Pope John Paul, Gandhiji and last, but not least, Abul Kalam Azad, all, in their own way, have taught modern man that different organized religions are different roads to a basically common destination. The fundamentalist religious approach, on the other hand, holds that religion is a total code of conduct and only one code ought to prevail.

The US was the first and the foremost leader of spiritual pluralism and the separation of church and state. The founding fathers of the American constitution were as good; perhaps, better Christians than the vast majority of those who opposed the principled separation of church and sate. This is the great lesson that Muslims have yet to appropriate inwardly as Muslims. At present the very idea of separating the church and state creates in numerous Muslims feelings of guilt that this amounts to deserting their faith or becoming indifferent to faith.

The present confrontation between American Realpolitik and the 'jehadi' version of Islam has produced a blinding haze that has made it difficult for both Muslims and others to see matters in the clear light of reason and the evidence of history. It is a fact that, barring the approximately 80 year period of the Crusades in the medieval era, Christians, Muslims and Jews in West Asia and Africa lived together fairly amicably for a thousand years as 'people of the Book' under Muslim hegemony. Their quarrels began, generally speaking, with the advent of the modern age, which ushered in the ideas of secular democracy, nationalism, sovereignty and human rights along with technology and industrialization in the Western world. The Zionist movement and the eventual birth of Israel in 1948 led to the blood and tears of innumerable innocent victims of alternate Arab and Jewish revenge terrorism.

To the above tragedies have now been added the wars against Afghanistan and Iraq. The religious fundamentalists honestly think that this is a battle between the party of God and the party of the Devil. But the fight is not between good and evil as such but rather between different ideas of what is good and what is bad. Human ideas about God or about good or bad come into conflict because different individuals and groups occupy different positions and are at different stages of growth and development and therefore, have different viewpoints and material interests. The battle of ideas is, therefore, not a battle between good people and bad people but between good people who have different ideas of what good is. And the right way of discovering the truth is not murder or suicide but dialogue.

Western scholars who genuinely stress the need for intellectual honesty and empathy in the field of comparative cultural studies are steadily paving the way for fruitful inter-cultural and inter-faith dialogue on a global scale. Unfortunately, Muslim scholars are still in the grip of religious apologetics as the Christian missionaries once were in the 19th century. The vast majority of Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, and others today more or less accept that different religions are different paths to God, but Muslims are very resistant to the idea of religious pluralism. I submit, Islam can be no exception to the principles of tolerance, equal human rights, inner freedom and ceaseless inner growth. This approach to Islam must, however, rise from the depths of the Muslim psyche; it must not be an imposition or imitation due to fear or material gain. No religion today can survive unless it genuinely accommodates spiritual pluralism and humanist democracy implying the corollary of the separation of religion and state.

Is the above view of the nature and purpose of religion too intellectual or philosophical for popular acceptance? Well, the simple fact is that sages and saints of all religions have preached and practised universal love and compassion rather than fear and hatred of the other. To my mind, the basic approach of the saints and sages will, eventually, overcome the approach of religious fanatics or power seekers. The present political, economic, and social pressures will eventually give way to the deeper wisdom of the spirit. The road to this happy consummation, however, will be long and bumpy and also require a sound road map.

Who will supply the road map? Well, not the Capitol Hill or the corridors of power in Westminster. The most appropriate place was the UNESCO, but the tragic blunder of the US government in the Iraq matter seems to have ruined this possibility. However, it is still my hope and trust that the great centers of learning and research in the US and Europe will engage themselves in impartial free and critical study of all religions and cultures of the human family. May each one of us cultivate the ability to hear, in the silence of the spirit, one's innermost whisper of his or her soul and find peace and salvation in one's freely chosen way.