The Holy Quran with Five Volume Commentary (Vol 1) — Page xliii
GENERAL INTRODUCTION advanced country, in dress, housing and furnishing and in other accessories to comfortable living. The industrially backward country will not be able to provide cloth enough for its inhabitants. The question as to what variety of cut the cloth might be shaped into will not even arise. The people of that country will not even know what a coat is, let alone different kinds of coats appropriate for different occasions. Even a shirt will be a luxury for them. Shoes made of kidskin will be beyond their conception. To insist on footwear made of untanned hide will be something of a luxury. The very idea of footwear will be something uncommon. The inhabitants will usually go barefooted, or they will be quite content with a piece of untanned and unshaped leather tied on their feet. We refer to these matters only incidentally. We cannot go into all the details, but very little detail is needed to prove that such differences in the external pattern of our lives are the result of difference in the degree of advancement which different peoples attain in agriculture, industry, science and education. The differences are so large that those who are used to one kind of living will have no desire to associate with those used to another kind of living. It is these differences which, according to us, constitute differences of civilization and it is these differences on which the issues of peace and war to a very large extent depend. It is these differences which in the long run give rise to imperialistic designs and lust for power. Culture is different from civilization. Culture, in our view, is related to civilization precisely as the soul of man is related to his body. Differences of civilization are ultimately differences of material advance; but differences of culture spring from differences of spiritual advance. The culture of a people may be said to 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 xvii