Ahmadiyyat or The True Islam — Page 165
165 cannot derive any great benefit from mere inferences but stand in need of detailed exposition, I shall briefly set out the teachings of Islam concerning this object of religion. In dealing with the first object of religion I had pointed out that the fact that all religions agreed in giving some name or other to the attributes of God had no significance at all, and that our attention should rather be directed to the details and explanations fur- nished by each religion concerning such attributes; for it could never be that a religion should openly ascribe some defect or shortcoming to God. Therefore a com- parison between different religions was possible only if we tried to discover the details of their teachings con- cerning the attributes of God. If these details did not correspond with the true attributes of God, a religion could not claim that it acknowledged these attributes, nor could we conclude that that religion shared with other religions a common conception of God. If a man calls water milk, that will not make water milk; nor will any sensible person be deceived by the mere name in the absence of the qualities of milk in water. The same is the case with the moral teachings of different relig- ions. In instituting a comparison between these teach- ings we can pay but little regard to general moral in- junctions, for no religion is likely to teach its followers to try to win the pleasure of God by, for instance, a course of lies, thefts, robberies, oppression, breaches of trust, abuse, vituperation, quarrels, strife, disorder, etc. Nor can we imagine that a religion would exhort its followers not to speak the truth, or not to act with