Islam

Expressions researched:
"Islam" |"Islamic" |"Islamism"

SB Canto 2

SB 2.4.18, Purport:

Pulinda: It is mentioned in the Mahābhārata (Ādi-parva 174.38), viz., the inhabitants of the province of the name Pulinda. This country was conquered by Bhīmasena and Sahadeva. The Greeks are known as Pulindas, and it is mentioned in the Vana-parva of Mahābhārata that the non-Vedic race of this part of the world would rule over the world. This Pulinda province was also one of the provinces of Bhārata, and the inhabitants were classified amongst the kṣatriya kings. But later on, due to their giving up the brahminical culture, they were mentioned as mlecchas (just as those who are not followers of the Islamic culture are called kafirs and those who are not followers of the Christian culture are called heathens).

CC Madhya-lila

CC Madhya 25.121, Purport:

When we are on the material platform, there are different types of religions—Hinduism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism and so on. These are instituted for a particular time, a particular country or a particular person. Consequently there are differences. Christian principles are different from Hindu principles, and Hindu principles are different from Muslim and Buddhist principles. These may be considered on the material platform, but when we come to the platform of transcendental devotional service, there are no such considerations. The transcendental service of the Lord (sādhana-bhakti) is above these principles. The world is anxious for religious unity, and that common platform can be achieved in transcendental devotional service. This is the verdict of Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu. When one becomes a Vaiṣṇava, he becomes transcendental to all these limited considerations.

CC Madhya 25.195, Translation:

When Subuddhi Rāya consulted the learned brāhmaṇas at Vārāṇasī, asking them how his conversion to Islam could be counteracted, they advised him to drink hot ghee and give up his life.

Bhagavad-gita As It Is Lectures

Lecture on BG 15.15 -- August 5, 1976, New Mayapur (French farm):

Prabhupāda: No, Kṛṣṇa will give you, that is intuition. If you are actually sincere, the correct intuition will come. Buddhi-yogaṁ dadāmi taṁ yena mām upayānti, if it is for Kṛṣṇa's purpose, then He'll give you intelligence, "Do like this."

Devotee: There is a question I have wanted to ask for many years now. The Vedic culture and the Islamic culture have many similarities.

Prabhupāda: So take Mus..., Islamic culture. Just finish. If you are interest in Islamic culture, take it to it. Just finish. What is the use of comparing, this and that? Why you waste your time? You like Islamic culture, you take it. There is no question of...

Devotee: There are so many similarities.

Prabhupāda: That's very nice. You take to Islamic culture. That's very nice. But what is the use of comparing?

Devotee: When one's tasted the higher taste, then how it is possible that he'll fall down in material sense gratification.

Srimad-Bhagavatam Lectures

Lecture on SB 2.2.5 -- Los Angeles, December 2, 1968:

Therefore this Kṛṣṇa consciousness movement is postgraduate position of all religions. It is not any sectarian religion. You accept Christianity—very good. You accept Muhammadanism, Islamism—very good. You accept Hinduism—that's all right. We have no quarrel with Hindus and Muslims or Christians or Buddhists. But our objective is that religion means there is connection, relationship with God. Take, for example, Christian religion. They accept God: "God created this," the beginning of Bible. That's a fact. So the God consciousness is there. "God is great," the God consciousness there. Now these Christmas holidays you have begun in your country. Throughout the whole month of December you'll observe nice festivals, festivities. Why? Where it began? God consciousness. Lord Christ he came to give you God consciousness, and in his relationship these festivities are going on. It may be degraded in another form.

Lecture on SB 6.1.39 -- San Francisco, July 20, 1975:

So here, veda-praṇihita, the Veda. The Vedic literature, that is dharma, no manufacturing. Nowadays it has become a fashion. So Vedas, that is beginning. Millions, nobody can give any description, since when the Vedas are coming down by the paramparā system. But after this Vedic period, so many religious system has come out. Up to five thousand years before, the Vedas were accepted all over the world, Vedic civilization. Then later on, gradually, they, the Christianity has come, the Muhammadanism, Islamism has come, Buddhism come, and now there are so many other, this samāja, that samāja, this religion, this religion, this religion. Because that means people are getting out of the touch of the Vedic civilization. So this Kṛṣṇa consciousness movement means we are trying again to bring them to this Vedic civilization. Here it is stated, veda-praṇihito dharmaḥ. If you take to the Vedic principles of life, then you become religious.

1973 Conversations and Morning Walks

Room Conversation -- February 26, 1973, Jakarta:

Guest (2): He is the director of the (indistinct) of Hindu and Buddhist religion, from Department of Religious Affairs. His duty is to maintain and look after the development of (indistinct) expecting that all people of Indonesia that has to follow any kind of religions (indistinct) Christians, because we have also in charge for the Christianity, we have also in charge for the Muslim, or Islam, and we have also in charge for the Catholic and we have also in charge for other...

Prabhupāda: Very good idea. This is very nice.

Guest (2): So because we have so many in the prosecuting of their religions, there might be, the people between many religions (indistinct). So the government have to lead the people how (indistinct), to supply also, in the (indistinct) of their materials for readings, and facilities for their, prosecuting their religions. This is the actual (indistinct) department.

Prabhupāda: So this is the idea which I was explaining that...

1974 Conversations and Morning Walks

Room Conversation with Christian Priest -- June 9, 1974, Paris:

Prabhupāda: But that is not the name. That is... Just like the President and Mr. Nixon. The President may be another person. Not only Nixon, but another person also may be. So President is the general understanding of the post. But still, one who occupies the post, he has got a name.

Priest: Do you know the Sufi?

Prabhupāda: Huh?

Priest: Do you know the Sufis are Muslims (indistinct).

Prabhupāda: No.

Priest: They are the great mystics of Islam, and they always address God as Allah. As we say...

Prabhupāda: Allah means God.

Priest: Yes. It is the name of God for them. "Allah the all-knowing is great." Anybody who knows Islam knows that.

Prabhupāda: Anyway, if one chants Allah or Jesus Christ, we have no objection. We don't say that you stop it. We say that you chant the holy name of God. If that name is of God, you chant.

1975 Conversations and Morning Walks

Room Conversation with Yoga Student -- March 14, 1975, Iran:

Prabhupāda: No. Why? Now, what is the difference, Nitāi-Gaurāṅga and Hare Kṛṣṇa? Nitāi-Gaurāṅga and Hare Kṛṣṇa, there is no difference. Nitāi-Gaurāṅga is also nice. Whatever he finds convenient, let him chant.

Yoga student: This country, which was, once at one time followed the Āryan path of Zoroastrianism, which is now practices primarily Islam although having absorbed many of the original elements in it. Do you have a recommendation as to how people of this country might feel the grace of Kṛṣṇa, perhaps even within the forms of their own traditional practice?

Prabhupāda: What is that traditional practice?

Yoga student: They're in... Apart from Zoroastrianism, the majority of traditional practice now is Islamic of the Shiite sect.

Prabhupāda: What is that philosophy?

Yoga student: That involves the prayer of three to five times a day of the Shiist...

Room Conversation with Yoga Student -- March 14, 1975, Iran:

Yoga student: Well, it's the Islamic prayer five times a day, but the Shiist compress it to three times. It's the same prayer.

Prabhupāda: Why?

Yoga student: Because they are permitted to say two of the prayers at noon and two of the prayers in the evening at one time, rather than spreading them through the afternoon and the...

Prabhupāda: So why they are disobeying the order of Muhammad?

Room Conversation with Yoga Student -- March 14, 1975, Iran:

Prabhupāda: That is very good. That is our philosophy. Sa vai puṁsāṁ paro dharmo yato bhaktir adhokṣaje (SB 1.2.6). Premā pumārtho mahān. This is the highest goal of life, how one has developed his love for God. And Bhāgavata says, "That is first-class religion which trains the followers how to love God and serve Him." That is first-class religion. Then Islam is Vaiṣṇava dharma in a crude form like the Christian. So we can amalgamate them all if they are sane men. I suggested that there are many churches vacant. If they give us these churches we shall install Deity—Gaurasundara, Nitāi-Gaura and Pañca-tattva—and along with them we shall worship Lord Jesus Christ also. Similarly, we can do Muhammad. There is no harm. But they are against this Deity worship, eh? Mohammedans?

Yoga student: Yes, they are. That sort of expression. And yet, amongst the Sufi poets...

Room Conversation with Yoga Student -- March 14, 1975, Iran:

Prabhupāda: No, I am not talking of the Sufis. I am talking of the original Islam.

Yoga student: Well, the Sufis claim to be the original Muslims.

Prabhupāda: Do the all the Muslims accept them? Then?

Parivrājakācārya: There are about 780 different schools of Islam and different ideas.

Prabhupāda: Then? We have to take the original. Otherwise misled.

Yoga student: Well, I think the original path must be found in Sufism because that is the...

Prabhupāda: Then, if the original path is followed, why it is named Sufism?

Yoga student: Because there are those who have fallen away from it, just as in...

Prabhupāda: Who has fallen, the Islam or the Sufist?

Yoga student: I think the formalists have fallen away, like the jñānīs in Hinduism. Just as there's a dispute between the Shaivites and the Vaiṣṇavaites.

Prabhupāda: So who are fallen, the original Islam or the Sufist?

Yoga student: The Sufis are the original Islam.

Prabhupāda: Sufis? What? I do not follow. Sufis?

Room Conversation with Yoga Student -- March 14, 1975, Iran:

Prabhupāda: Therefore in Islam religion the form is rejected because it will come to that. As soon as they think of form, they think of this material form, beautiful face of woman. That is degradation. Therefore we are strict not to conceive material form. That is Vedic conception. Apāni-pādaḥ javano grahītā: "He has no legs and no hands." This is... means denying the form. And next he says, the Vedas say, javano grahītā: "He can accept whatever you offer to Him." That means God has no material form, but He has form; otherwise how He can accept? How He can understand my love? So therefore in the original Islamism the form is not accepted. So that is Vedic description, form and formless. Formless means no material form, and form means spiritual form, simultaneous. Just like I am, you are. I am within the body, but I am not this body. This form not I am.

Room Conversation with Yoga Student -- March 14, 1975, Iran:

Prabhupāda: Kṛṣṇa is the Supreme Being, and He has got many expansion. So Viṣṇu is also expansion.

rāmādi-mūrtiṣu kalā-niyamena tiṣṭhan

nānāvatāram akarod bhuvaneṣu kintu

kṛṣṇaḥ svayaṁ samabhavat paramaḥ pumān yo

govindam ādi-puruṣaṁ tam ahaṁ bhajāmi

(Bs. 5.39)

This is in the Vedas, Brahma-saṁhitā. Kṛṣṇaḥ svayaṁ sama... Kṛṣṇa means the original. And He expands in so many forms, rāmādi-mūrtiṣu: Rāma, Nṛsiṁha, Varāha, Viṣṇu, Saṅkarṣaṇa, Balarāma—so many thousands. But the original person is Kṛṣṇa. (Pause) Therefore I asked, "What is the idea of God?" I suppose you are all Mohammedan.

Young man: We were brought up as Mohammedans.

Prabhupāda: So what is the conception of God in Islam?

Young man: Even as a Mohammedan, I didn't have very good teaching. My teachers didn't know the Koran very well, and therefore they gave me no concept of God when I was a child. I don't know what the Mohammedan concept of God is.

Room Conversation with Yoga Student -- March 14, 1975, Iran:

Prabhupāda: That is the Christian idea.

Young man: Yeah. And the...

Prabhupāda: The Mohammedan, Islam is also same idea?

Young man: Well, since the Old Testament, part of the Old Testament, is very similar to the Koran, I presume the creation of Adam, that bit, is also taken from the Old Testament. But He is projected as a great judge really, a supreme judge.

Room Conversation with Yoga Student -- March 14, 1975, Iran:

Prabhupāda: They have got simply an idea that there is God, but what is that God, they have no clear conception. Just like I asked, "What is the conception of God in Islam?" You could not give us. You simply described some of His activities.

Young man: That's true.

Prabhupāda: Yes.

Young man: All the religions that have been taught to me have not given me a clear view of God, a clear concept. They didn't seem to know it themself.

Prabhupāda: No, concept is there as you told me: "The God has made human being after His own image." Then we can get the idea that God is a person like a human being, He has got two hands, two legs, one head, because after His image we have been... Now, if we study ourself and increase that quality... Just like I am. I can eat. I can eat a certain amount of foodstuff, but God can also eat, but He can eat the whole universe. So eating is there. But the difference of eating is there also.

Room Conversation with Yoga Student -- March 14, 1975, Iran:

Guest: So I think what we have in Islam is... They say that the road, the way towards God, the ways are many, as many as the human beings, that is said. So in the number of human beings you have ways towards God. So everybody, each person, has his own way towards God. And it's really hard for me, difficult for me to believe that there's only one way and there is only one book and one school, one way of teaching.

Prabhupāda: Yes.

Guest: And when Muhammad said that God is great, he simply said God is great, and he adds nothing to it for somebody who is well acquainted with Islam culture and he who knows well about Koran's teachings, it cannot be understood and accepted. It is the same with somebody who is well acquainted with Christianity and the truth spoken through Christianity. It is the same with the Buddhism or other ways which are designed, which are...

Prabhupāda: So your point is that God is understood in different ways. That is not point?

Room Conversation with Yoga Student -- March 14, 1975, Iran:

Prabhupāda: Hold on, then, what is the name of God?

Lady: Right, in Christianity there is write: "In the beginning was the word, the word was with God, and the word was God."

Prabhupāda: That's all right. But what is the name of God?

Lady: In Islamic religion, they say...

Prabhupāda: No, what is the name of God? Islam is the system of religion, but what is the name of God?

Lady: The name of God is something which is always with God, constantly with God...

Prabhupāda: That means you do not know that. You do not know that.

Morning Walk -- March 15, 1975, Tehran:

Prabhupāda: That is our philosophy. sa vai puṁsāṁ paro dharmo yato bhaktir adhokṣaje (SB 1.2.6). Premā pumartho mahān. This is the highest goal of life, how one has developed his love for God. And Bhāgavata says that is first-class religion which trains the followers how to love God and serve Him. That is first-class religion. Then Islam is Vaisnalam in crude form, like the Christians (indistinct) if they are sane man. I suggested that there are many churches vacant, if they give us these churches, we shall install Deity, Gaurasundara, Nitāi-Gaura and Pañca-tattva, and along with them we can worship Jesus Christ. Similarly, we can do Mohammed. But they are against this Deity worship.

Morning Walk -- March 15, 1975, Tehran:

Prabhupāda: Yes, then it must be person. They do not believe in the Personality of Godhead?

Guest: They believe, the Sufis, see the personality of Ali.

Prabhupāda: No, I am not talking of the Sufis, I am talking of the original Islam.

Guest: The Sufis claim to be the original process.

Prabhupāda: Do they, all the Muslims accept them?

Devotee 2: There are about 780 different schools of Islam, different ideas they have.

Prabhupāda: You have to take the original, otherwise mislead.

Morning Walk -- March 15, 1975, Tehran:

Guest: There are those who had fallen away from it. Just as in the Hindu...

Prabhupāda: Who has fallen, Islam or the Sufis?

Guest: I think the formalists have fallen away like the jñānīs in Hinduism. Just as there is a dispute between the Śaivites and the Vaiṣṇavites.

Prabhupāda: Who has fallen? The original Islam or the Sufis?

Guest: The Sufis are the original Muslims.

Morning Walk -- March 15, 1975, Tehran:

Prabhupāda: Face of beautiful woman, then the materialists also find.

Guest: It's a material aspect, actually.

Prabhupāda: Therefore, Islam religion, (indistinct) reject it (indistinct). As soon as they think of form, they think of this material form, beautiful face of woman. That is degradation. Therefore, we are strict not to conceive material form. That is Vedic conception. Apāni-pādo javano grahitā. "He has no legs, no hands." This is denying the form. Next he says, Vedas says, javana grahitā. "He can accept whatever you offer to Him." That means He has, God has, no material form, but He has form, otherwise how He can accept it? How I can understand by love? So, therefore the original Islam the form is not accepted. That is Vedic description, form and formless. Formless means no material form and form means spiritual form, simultaneous. Just like I am, you are, I am within the body, but I am not this body. This form, I am not I am, but what from the form of the body has come into existence? Because I have got form.

Morning Walk -- Durban, October 13, 1975 :

Prabhupāda: No, Britishers. The Muslims interfered. They wanted to propagate Islamism. Not all, some of them. But Britishers, although they were spreading Christianism, still, outwardly they were neutral about religious affairs. So Bhaktivinoda Ṭhākura preferred that "Britishers are good. They do not interfere with our religious affair." So the idea is that India—you may say primitive or whatever you want—they wanted to make progress of the soul. They did not care who is ruling. So "Whatever tax is due we shall pay. Let us do our own business." That was India's attitude. They never thought in terms of nationalism. That was never educated. They were never educated.

Morning Walk -- November 21, 1975, Bombay:

Prabhupāda: ...proposition is not migrating. That is due to increase of population. The civilization means the culture. (aside:) Hare Kṛṣṇa. Jaya.

Dr. Patel: (break) ...really spread toward the east in Indonesia and Indochina, all those places, which were again overtaken by Islam later on.

Prabhupāda: Islam is also...

Dr. Patel: History, it has spread. Even Bali Islands today are practicing Hinduism.

Brahmānanda: Aryan means change in consciousness to God consciousness.

Prabhupāda: Yes.

Brahmānanda: This means all over the world there can be an Aryan culture.

Prabhupāda: Yes, that is right.

1976 Conversations and Morning Walks

Morning Walk -- January 12, 1976, Bombay:

Dr. Patel: You say, sir, "The Bengalis have ruined Hinduism; I am salvaging it." Another Bengali is salvaging the ruined Hinduism. Bengalis ruined the.... Whole Bengal, half of Bengal turned Islamic and this because of these brāhmaṇas.

Prabhupāda: That is everywhere, in Punjab also. Punjab also, the same thing.

Dr. Patel: One man was cast out and he was not taken back, so he converted half of the Bengal into Islam.

Prabhupāda: No. Our Kṛṣṇa consciousness movement is: "Doesn't matter what you are. Now you become trained up. Whatever you are, it doesn't matter."

1976 Correspondence

Letter to Mr. Dhawan -- Vrindaban 2 April, 1976:

Question #5: What has Hasur Mohammed Sahib said about 14th Century and why?

Answer: I have not sufficient information about the instruction of Hazur Mohammed Sahib, but if you mean Mohammed, the inaugurator of Islam religion, I accept him as empowered servant of God because he preached God consciousness in those parts of the world and induced them to accept the authority of God. He is accepted as the servant of God and we have all respect for him. I do not know what he has said about the 14th Century, therefore, I cannot answer this point. You are mentioning the Holy Names of Nanak, Krishna, Kabir, Christ, Mohammed, etc. Out of all of these names we accept Krishna as the Lord and all others representative servant of God, Krishna. In the English dictionary, it is said God is the Supreme Being, and when Krishna appeared on this earth He proved to be the Supreme Being in all respects. We are spreading this Krishna Consciousness Movement all over the world and if all the leaders would accept this philosophy of the Bhagavad-gita As It Is, then I am sure that the world would be fortunate to follow one type of religion, and accept one God without any faulty conviction.