Christmas was around the corner and so my colleague at work asked, “Do you celebrate Christmas?” I said, well we don’t celebrate Christmas like you folks celebrate though we Muslims believe, that Jesus was one of the mightiest messengers of God, that he was the Christ, that he was born miraculously – without any male intervention (which many modern-day Christians do not believe today), that he gave life to the dead by God’s permission, and that he healed those born blind and the lepers by God’s permission in fact no Muslim is a Muslim if he does not believe in Jesus. We believe and follow the teaching of Jesus, Abraham, Moses and Prophet Mohammad (May God’s blessing be on them) while many of you modern Christians have ignored the essence of Christ and instead hung on to the shell of commercial Christmas.
R. V. C. Bodley in his book “"The Messenger: The Life of Mohammed” said “There are more professing Christians in the world than professing Muslims, but there are more practicing Muslims in the world than practicing Christians.”
We Muslims may receive “A+” when it comes to delivering our prayers, pilgrimage, fasting etc. classified under “rights of God” but when it comes to delivering “rights of humanity” we are total failure. You think if we collectively enacted on the “rights of humanity” there would be a secret trial detainees in prison without any charges or “56 years of occupied Palestine, or every Muslim nation being ruled by monarchies and US puppets or illegal occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan?
The best anecdote to describe this hibernation and slumber of our Muslim Ummah is about this stranger with his baggage and a piece of paper with the destination address, stranded on the unknown street inquiring with the people, direction to reach his destination. Most of the passerby he approached, turns him down saying "we don’t know, ask some one else". The stranger is struck on the same spot for more than an hour now without any help to proceed further to his destination and is getting nervous, frustrated and desperate. Suddenly he sees a gentleman approaching towards him with a smile and asking him if he could be of any help. The stranger is amazed to see that this good Samaritan not only provides him the direction to his destination but draws the map on a piece of paper and explain him in detail the direction over and over to ensure that the stranger understood the direction and will reached his destination. The stranger profusely thanked this guide for his time and guidance. While the guide left, the stranger stood on the same spot glorifying this guide for his help which is a befitting acknowledgement but the sad part is that the stranger never moved an inch from his original position where he was before receiving the guidance the only good thing he kept doing is glorifying the guide how great the guide was and how great his map and direction was but he did not reached his destination as he did not follow the path shown by him. Unfortunately, we Muslims are more or less similar to the stranger while we are glorifying our guide (Prophet) but we fail to follow his path, as a result we have failed to advanced and are still on the same spot as before obtaining the guidance.
Our Christian brothers and sisters are also like the stranger that does moves from his position after obtaining the direction from the guide but in the opposite direction, exactly opposite to the teaching of the Christ. Christ taught us “Adam and Eve”, modern Christians are propagating “Adam and Steve”. Christ was circumcised; our Christians brothers have abandoned circumcision. Christ advocated love and peace while Christians are supporting Bush’s war in the name of Christ and sharing his sins. In fact what amazes us Muslims is how most of the Christians have started feeling ashamed and would like to replace the word Christmas with some other commercial word to accommodate the modern fashions, alien customs, bigotry and ignorance.
Our world would be a far better and safer place to live, if we Muslims become true Muslims discharging both rights of God as well as of Humanity, our brothers and sisters in Christianity following the teaching of Christ and our Jewish brothers and sisters following Judaism instead of Zionism.
