“You know I’m not much into reading but love seems to have other ideas,” he said picking up his pack of books as the waiter brought the balance amount.
“Don’t they say love is god, let’s see if it’s true,” she said getting up.
Having agreed upon a hiatus till she had a grasp of Islam, he dropped her near her Ladies’ Hostel.
Over the next two months, reading those books she made notes, and having made up her mind in the end, she called up Syed for a meet. When she set out to the coffee shop, even as she was conscious that she may not be as excited at seeing him as before, nevertheless, she was eager to see how he would react upon seeing her. As they met, both found each other in a reflective mood, and as they settled down at a corner table, she thought it fit not to beat around the bush.
“Being a Muslim, you tend to take Islam for granted but it’s natural for me to weigh it on merits,” she said pulling out her notes from her valet. “You may know Hinduism was in existence much before Allah revealed the straight path to Muhammad but nowhere in the Quran is there a reference to Hindus. That is, even as He exhorts Muslims to be wary of the Jews, the Christians (peoples of the Book fallen afoul of Him) and the idolaters; don’t tell me the idolaters Allah meant in the Quran were Hindus for in the context of Muhammad’s life and times, they were Meccans who worshiped idols at Kaba. It’s evident that what Allah had revealed to your prophet was meant for the idolatrous Arabs of that time, more or less on the same lines of the Torah and the Gospel that He earlier gave to the Jews and the Christians. And that too was in the nearby land. If you gaze at Islam through the Hindu prism, it would not seem a universal religion but something like a Shaivism or a Vaishnavism, both cults of Hinduism. Surely, Quran’s sectarianism precludes Islam to be labeled a world religion (she read from her notes)
“O ye who believe! Take not the Jews and Christians for friends. They are friends one to another. He among you who taketh them for friends is (one) of them. Lo! Allah guideth not wrongdoing folk.”
“They long that ye should disbelieve even as they disbelieve, that ye may be upon a level (with them). So choose not friends from them till they forsake their homes in the way of Allah; if they turn back (to enmity) then take them and kill them wherever ye find them, and choose no friend nor helper from among them.”