Introduction to the Study of The Holy Quran — Page 16
16 consist of those ideas and ideals which grow under the influence of religious or ethical teachings. A religious teaching provides the foundations. Followers of that teaching then build on those foundations. In building on those foundations, the followers may travel far from the original teaching, but they can never completely lose touch with the foundations. A person who executes the plan of a building may deviate as much as he likes from the original plan, yet he cannot ignore the main parts of that plan. In the same way religions and ideologies provide plans of living. What the votaries of those religions and ideologies build on the original plan develops into distinctive patterns of art and morality, so that the observer is bound to put followers of different religions into quite different classes. These differences are differences of culture. Differences of culture have become very important today. To advocate and to claim tolerance and breadth of view is very common today. In spite of this a nominal Christian, otherwise an atheist, will associate far more easily with a bigoted Christian than he will with a nominal Muslim, otherwise an atheist, or with a bigoted Muslim. There is no doubt that in our time political interests also dominate the mutual relations of peoples, and these political interests spring from differences of civilisation. But cultural differences are not less important. A European Muslim is very cordial to an Asiatic Muslim; the cordiality he displays for a fellow Muslim, he never displays for a fellow European. A bigoted European Christian is cordial towards an atheist American. Is this due to strict religious bias? No. If religious bias were the only factor at work, then a Christian would find himself nearer to a Muslim’s heart than to that of an atheist. The truth is that between Christian and Christian, even though one of them be an atheist, there are ties of culture, a Christian culture we may call it. A Christian atheist is no longer Christian in his religious beliefs but his emotions and actions are not free from the influence of Christian culture. Influences which transmit themselves through many generations are not easily obliterated. A Christian artist who may have become an atheist in thought will still display a Christian influence in his paintings and his music. In fact, but for such influence, his art would seem as out of place as thistles in a rose garden. Different Periods of Civilisation and Culture We now wish to point out that periods of civilisation and culture come at times in isolation and at times in combination. They come separately at one time and simultaneously at another. Occasionally a nation attains to a great civilisation but not to a great culture; occasionally to a great culture but not to a great civilisation. Rome in its glory was the bearer of a great civilisation; but it had no culture. Its Art and its Philosophy did not spring from any foundational ideology. Every individual was free to grow in his own way and to interpret life without reference to any large and basic principles. During the first few centuries of its existence Christianity gave no civilisation to the world but it gave culture of a very high order, a culture which sprang from a determinate outlook on life and which accordingly had its own characteristic