A Present to His Royal Highness - The Prince of Wales — Page 29
29 and not to leave the other undone. …Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell. ” ∗ Again he describes the common people as “this wicked and adulterous generation. ” Then, are the Muslims of the present day more iniquitous than the Israelites, that the Messiah should not be born among them? However iniquitous they may be, their iniquity cannot detract from the teachings of Islam, just as the wickedness of the Jews in the time of Jesus could not detract from the teachings of Moses. He who disobeys the injunctions of his religion is alone responsible for the breach and digs his own grave: his doings do not affect the word of God. Similarly, he who fashions a new doctrine owing to his ignorance or misconstruction of the scriptures, is alone responsible for his heresies, and these do not pollute the scriptures. Is it not written that the Sadducees professed to derive their denial of the judgment-day from the Old Testament and that their divines once appeared before Jesus to convince him of the truth of this heresy, but that he silenced them? Islam and the Holy Quran, therefore, are not responsible for the doings and beliefs of the Muslims. Islam is a light before which the lights of all other faiths fade into darkness; it is a sun before which no lamp can give light, but woe unto these people, that they have ∗ Matthew xxiii: 13 —15, 23, 33.