Claims and Teachings - Ahmad The Promised Messiah and Mahdi — Page 382
. 382 tranquility can only be attained if you from the bottom of your hearts accept the Vedas and the risliis as from God; and your Hindu brethren likewise expel all malice from their hearts and accept our Holy Prophet as a true Prophet of God. Re- member and bear in your mind that it is this course alone which can bring about a real union between you and the Hindus. It will act like water and wash away all dross from your hearts. If the time has come for the two long separated people to unite, God will open their hearts to accept this proposal, as He has opened ours. But, besides the above agreement, it will be binding on us to deal sympathetically by our Hindu brethren and invariably treat them with kindness and fellow-feeling, We shall have to abstain from everything that is likely to offend them, provided it is not one of the religious duties that are obligatory on us. So if the Hindus cordially accept our Holy Prophet as a true Apostle of God and believe in him, the gulf which separates us from the Hindus owing to our slaughtering the cows should also be spanned over. It is not obligatory on us to use every thing that we think lawful. There are many things which we think to be lawful but which we never use. To be kind and tolerant to our fellow-beings is an important a religious injunction as to believe in one God, and it is not against the Law of God to abandon an unnecessary thing for a necessary one. Believing a thing to be lawful is quite different from using it. Eeligion consists in abstaining from the forbidden things seeking the pleasure of God, showing kindness and sympathy to the crea- tures of God, believing in all the Prophets that were raised from time to time for the reformation of the world, without making any distinction between them, and dealing kindly by all human beings; that is the gist of Islam. But how is it possible