Buddhism, Islam andAlienation of Religion

Ridwan al-Sayyid (1)

Part One:

When International organizations concernedwith the preservation of old archeological siteskept sending one mission after another toAfghanistan, in late 1999 and early 2000, inorder to dissuade the Taliban government fromdestroying the Bamiyan statues of Buddha, Icame to realize that these old Buddhist relicshad not only been a source of admiration towestern archeologists and religious scientists--they had also, historically, won the admirationof Muslims. Yaqut al-Hawami (d. 626/1228)writes of the city of Bamiyan and its relics inhis Muʿjam al-buldan (Encyclopedia ofCountries):

It is a mountain town and village,between Balkh, Herat and Ghazna. Ithas an impenetrable fortress and a veryhigh temple that bears the frescoes of allkinds of birds on earth, as well as twogrand statues carved along the entireheight of the mountain. The first iscalled Surkh Bud [the red Buddha] andthe second Khank Bud [grey Buddha].It is also said that they areunique…”(2).

Yaqut, having seen these statues with his owneyes, is nevertheless unaware that they arestatues of the Buddha. Like other travelers, heconfuses them either with Zoroastrism, orManichaeism (Mani, killed in 274 CE), oreven Hinduism.

He says of the temple that it is therefuge of outlaws. This means that by the timehe went there, Buddhism had desertedBamiyan, it also means that he does not knowthe origin of the word bud, and considers that

it is “Indian” for statue, even though it doesrefer to an “image or statue of the Buddha.”

Ibn al-Nadim (d. 377/987), wrote also ofthe bud (whose plural, in his opinion, wasbadada) 250 years before Yaqut, and he reliedon one written reference, which made himneither entirely right nor entirely wrong.(3)Unlike Yaqut, however, he completelyconfuses geographical locations and fails tospecify the location of the bud (or "badada" ashe calls them). Ibn al-Nadim gives thefollowing explanation for the bud:

Indians’ views on this differ. A group ofthem believe it is the image of GodAlmighty. Another group thinks it is therepresentation of a prophet he sent, whois either an angel or a human. Yetanother group believs that it is the imageof he sage Buddhasuf sent by God. Eachgroup or community has a way to glorifyand worship these statues.(4)

Ibn al-Nadim describes the Bamiyansculptures in the following:

They have two statues, one of which iscalled Jankbud, and the other Inkbud.Their image was taken from the ends ofa great valley, and carved into themountainside. Each one towers up ateighty cubits and can be spotted from adistance. Indians have made of them aplace of pilgrimage and bring with themall sorts of incense to light there.(5)

After these different representations of thebud, the temples in which it had established,and the locations to which it had spread, theimages became, after the sixth/twelfth century,the symbol of a sculpture or a pagan statue thatshaman worshipped. This is what is behind theuse of the term "bud" in the Sufism that wasassociated with the Moroccan sage and sufiAbd al-Haqq b. Sab’in (d. 667/1268 AD) inthe title of his main book on Sufism The

Enlightened’s Bud, meaning the main guide ordirection of worship used by the enlightenedone.(6)

While the scarcity of resources and interactionbetween Muslims, on one hand, and the bud,or Buddha’s followers, on the othe,r havemade it difficult to position the Buddha’sstature in this unusual religious rite, the casewas no different for the other key term:shamans, which was used as a reference toBuddhist monks.

The earliest mention of these monks isfound in the most unexpected of places:Ahmad b. Hanbal’s (d. 241/855) letter entitledA Response to Jahmiyyah and Heretics. IbnHanbal recounts:

We know of Jahm [b. Safwan] that hewas originally from Tirmith. He broughtmany a discord and argument and muchcontroversy. His most attackingarguments were of God Almighty. Hemet those infidels called shamans who

recognized him and told him: we shalldebate with you and if our arguments arestronger then you follow our religion, ifthe opposite were to happen then we willfollow yours.

A part of the conversation went asfollows:Shamans: do you not claim to have aGod?Jahm acquiesced.Shamans: have you seen your God?Jahm: I have not.Shamans: have you smelt him?Jahm: I have not.Shamans: have you felt his presencephysically?Jahm: I have not.(7)

The story ends, according to Ibn Hanbal, withJahm drowning in a state of confusion thatlasted 40 days, after which he found theanswer within himself.

He asked the Shamans: "Do you not claim tohave a soul? It is one which you do not see,hear, nor feel. Such is God." The Shamansthen went on a pilgrimage.

We are unsure of the authenticity andveracity of this account, although it does seemto contain authentic information. It seems thatthere were still some Buddhists in Balkh,Bamiyan and Tirmith during the first half ofthe eighth century CE. It would also seem thatBuddhists still made the journey from the farends of India and Turkmenistan to performpilgrimage in the most important and historicaltemples of these cities. Muslims understoodthat these people believed in the eternity of theworld and would not accept any knowledgeunless it could be physically perceived. Mostof them denied concepts of the hereafter and ofresurrection, and some of them believed inreincarnation.(8)

Ibn al-Nadim tells us, through theinformation he had transmitted from an oldbook on Khurasan, that Shamans had a prophetcalled Buddhasuf, and that the majority of the

population beyond the river in pre-Islamicancient times were followers of this faith.(9)This makes of the name the symbol of thereligion or a cult linked to the Buddha. Theinitial impression we get is that thisinformation is a sound starting place fromwhich to explore Buddhism, although theacceptance or rejection of the concepts of theeternity of the world and the resurrection arenot included in Buddhist thought or belief. Inaddition, it appears that the Muslim sourceshave been generous in their interpretation ofthe Buddhist methods for refuting earthlyexistence.

Ibn al-Nadim transmits from this "old"book on Khurasan’s history that the Shamans’prophet, the Buddha, told them that thegreatest unsolvable issue, which humanity canneither believe nor practice, is saying “no” inall things. They follow his words to the letterand saying “no” to them is thus a devilishact.(10)

This situation of a paucity ofinformation and its poor interpretation, of

which we can only extract that Shamansfollow the Buddha, remains unchanged in thework of al-Biruni (d. 440/1048), the writer ofthe most valuable book on India and Indianculture in medieval times. He justifiesneglecting to talk of the Buddhists by the factthat he had not found a “Buddhist book, andthere is no one of importance from whom I canunderstand their reality. I have mentionedthem following the account of al-Iranshahri[he seems to have mentioned them whenspeaking of religions in Iran], although I donot believe that his story is backed by trueevidence.”(11)

Al-Biruni was right in believing that al-Iranshahri did not have an accurate account ofBuddhism which he thought had spread inIran, Central Asia, the Turkish lands, andAfghanistan, even reaching Iraq, Musil andSyria.

Until Zarathustra came from Azerbaijanand called the people of Balkh to follow

Zoroastrism his message was widelyspread. He built fire temples going fromChina to the Roman lands, andZoroastrism reached all Balkh and itsfollowers remain on the Indian soil tothis day, and are called Hamak.(12)

The historical record does not, however,support the claim that Buddhism had spread inIran before Christianity, nor after it. It wasmainly present in Afghanistan and India, andonly existed in Khurasan, as far as Iran isconcerned.(13)

If al-Iranshahri and al-Biruni after himhad not found information on Zoroastrism, it isnot because of the religion itself but becauseHinduism had supplanted it in the areas wherethey were collecting information. Besides,Zoroastrianism was absent from the regionsfamiliar to Muslims who would then have hadthe opportunity to learn about it. Islamemerged and spread to Afghanistan and Iranafter Buddhism had started to fade. Still, it

would seem that three temples were left, andthe remaining Buddhists gathered aroundthem, just as they were centers of pilgrimage.These temples are as we mentioned above,those of Balkh, Bamiyan and Tirmith, all ofthem extant Afghan cities today.(14)

Muslims admired the greatness of theBuddhist temple, the Nubhar or new temple inBalkh. It was said to hold around a thousandmonks inside of it, and had annexed territoriesfor thousands of leagues. Because of itsproximity to some Zoroastrian temples, someMuslim observers confused the Buddhisttemple with Zoroastrianism and took it to be aZoroastrian fire temple.(15) It might also bethat Zoroastrians had taken the temple beforethis time because Buddhism had started to fadefrom these places.

In his Conquests of Countries al-Baladhuri went further in saying that theMuslims conquerors of the area destroyed theNubhar temple, and that the monks deserted itbecause of both Zoroastrian and Muslimpursuits.(16) This was the original home of the

Barmak family which worked in the Abbasidadministration since the days of the caliph al-Mansur, many members of which wereministers under the caliph al-Rashid. Theirgreat ancestor, Barmak, a Buddhist, wasreported to be the custodian of Nubhar.(17)

It is known that Balkh was ceded, afterthe tenth century CE, to what is now calledMazar-i-Sharif.(18) It may be that Buddhismlingered in Bamiyan because it had a politicalentity in that area. Effectively, the rulingfamily there was a Buddhist one known as the"Shirians," meaning "king" or "chief" but not"lion" as Muslims had understood from thesingular form of the word. The familyconverted to Islam in the ninth century CE andstayed in power for a short time until it wasfinally removed from power by the constantpressure of the Saffarid and Ghaznavidconquests. Yaʿqub b. Layth al-Safar pillaged and destroyed the big Buddhist temple in thearea which is reported to have contained greatriches.(19)

The first source to introduce Muslims toBuddhist culture was, then, a misleading one,represented by the spreading statues andsculptures of the Buddha whether standing intemples or open spaces, or carved in stone.The second source were the Shamans whowere too few to be spotted in Afghanistanduring the seventh and eighth centuries, butmany more of them were seen in later times inTurkistan and along the Silk Road in the ninthand tenth centuries.(20) Shamans were linkedto Buddhist statues early on, which mayaccount for why Ibn Hanbal viewed theShamans as “Mushrikeen”--i.e. those whoassociate other deities with the unique God.

In Josef Van Ess’s report of the sameaccount, however, (where he mentions thetriumph of the Mutakallima and rationaltheology) maintains that the Shamanismmentioned here does not believe in a God.(21)The American Orientalist Richard Frankbelieves that all ideas and concepts said to bethose of Buddhists, in the debate opposingthem to Jahm b. Safwan and in al-Shahristani’s

heresiography are, at best, derived from theideas of Greek natural philosophers andcontradicting what was known of the Buddhistconcept of Nirvana.(22)

Thus, the many Buddha statues, whichMuslims later came to realize were not theobjects of worship, remained a controversialpoint among Shamanist tribes, causing themuncertainty and discomfort. Shamanists were,therefore, considered heretics, the mostprominent of whom in the view of Muslimsbeing the Manicheans. But Muslims could notplace Buddhists in the same category asManicheans because of their differentpractices, even though the Muslims' firstimpression of both Buddhists and Manicheanswas that they were heretics. Many centuriespassed before Muslims finally consideredBuddhists as an entirely independent group,after they had already considered them to besomehow linked with Hindus, Zoroastriansand the star-worshipping Sabians.(23)

There is, yet, a third and more directsource to Muslim knowledge reagrding

Buddhism that could have been found, hadtravelers such as Abu Zayd al-Balkhi and al-Biruni tried to examine the matter moreclosely. This direct source was represented bytwo beautiful texts from texts Muslims alreadyknew. The first text is the chapter in Kalila waDimna translated from Pahlavai (to which ithad been transmitted from Sanskrit in the sixthcentury CE) by Ibn al-Muqaffah (d. 139/756).The chapter in question is entitled “Ilath,Plath, and Irakhit,” an independent wholechapter where a Buddhist monk explains theconcepts of vice and virtue as seen by theBuddha through a lengthy conversationbetween a king and his Buddhist minister. Inthis dialogue, the monk clearly separatesHindu from Buddhist ideas.(24)

The same period that witnessed thetranslation of the astronomical andmathematical book “Sin Hind” from Sanskritalso saw the translation of a second text, adirect transmission of Buddhist ideas. It wasthe Buddha’s biography, as entitled “Balwaharand Bodhisattva.”(25) It concerns the firstborn

deprived of a real father and refusing theearthly pleasures, who attained the supremetruth with self-discipline as his only realpractice.

In the same period, the famous SufiIbrahim b. Adham (d. 161/777) first appeared.His biography is similar to the Buddha’s: aking’s son, or the Prince of Balkh whofollowed an internal call and renounced theprincipality and prestige to lead a life ofwandering and pious poverty, seeking trueknowledge.(26)

If we concede that the Buddhism-tintedchapter of Kalila wa Dimna may have beensomewhat veiled (and projecting an image ofconflict between Buddhism and Hinduismwhich led to the Buddhist retreat from India)--all of which are difficult elements to perceiveeven for the accurate al-Biruni--we must saythat the text on Buddha and the ideas itcontains are crystal clear. Its translator mayhave been a Buddhist, well versed in eloquentArabic.(27) The main reason behind theattitude of mystery and repulsion on the part of

Muslim writers may have been the absence ofdivinity from the Buddha’s life and ideas.They recognized this lack later, as wementioned, and changed their view ofBuddhists from "idolators" to "unbelievers."

The Buddha’s biography was a strangeone compared to the general values of thethen-rising Islamic empire. While the Muslimswere at their peak in prosperity and victory,Buddhism was retracting slowly in presenceand philosophy, which made for less occasionsof either positive or negative encounters.Muslims were in the habit of learning of a newreligion through its sacred texts and writings,whether it be a religion mentioned in theQuran, like the Sabians, or not, like Hinduismand Buddhism. Muslims only sawcontemplation and wandering searches inBuddhism but were not familiar with its texts.All the high temples and big statues wereadded to this impression and were perceivedby the public as signs of paganism.

Part Two:

Muhammad Tahir al-Tannir, from Beirut,published a book on pagan beliefs in otherreligions (1330/1911) which included achapter on "Paganism in Buddhism." Thispublication coincided with a period of new andpositive impressions of Asia and the Asianreligions, replacing the older, mostly obliviousview.(28) At the beginning of the book, al-Tannir mentions his motives in writing it andrevealing the pagan practices in religions otherthan Islam. He lists the names of roughly tenbooks and periodicals which he felt hadattacked Islam. They were all written byProtestant missionaries, from Pfander to Muir.This is an entirely different context, related toMuslim-Christian debates, the new phase ofwhich was inaugurated in the mid-nineteenthcentury, and it has no relation to Buddhism orHinduism. The author, nevertheless, states that“the other reason behind this book is to revealthe truth and to accomplish the humanebrotherly duty which our faith has imposed onus as an obligation. We have to call people to

the right and true and we should invite them toshare our best possession, our faith.”(29)

Real change and interest, among ArabMuslims, in Buddhism did not start withcuriosity about other religions. Rather, it wasinitiated by politics and world affairs. Muslimswere greatly relieved at the Japanese rise in theend of the nineteenth century, up to theRussian defeat in 1905. The fighting elite atthe time, combating European colonialism(including the Russians who battled theOttomans and annexed Muslim territories inCentral Asia and the Caucasus), perceived theJapanese rise as being driven by personaleffort and removed from European aspirationsfor hegemony as a challenge to the West, arevenge of the vulnerable peoples of Asia andAfrica and a hope that they can be inspired byit some time. Articles and poems written byEgyptians and Syrians praise the firmness ofthe Japanese nation and call upon Arabs to dothe same as the Japanese have, either throughstanding up to the colonialists, or throughprogress.(30)

The 1911 Chinese revolution whichabolished the Chinese empire and turnedChina into a republic whose symbol was SunYat Sen was also welcomed in all Arabicwritings, which overlooked the Japaneseincursion in China.(31) We can compare thismysterious hope in the political rise of Asiaduring the first quarter of the twentieth centuryto the general relief toward the political Asianrise in the last quarter of the same century.This second rise, in which China stronglyparticipated along with other countries ofEastern Asia, was used in different formsaccording to social and political groups whoserelation to this rise was linked to the conflictbetween the society and the state’s identities,for internal reasons. Similarly, the Arabicreaction to the first rise was diverse andopposing arguments were formulated.Enthusiasts of nationalism used the first rise asproof that they were right in saying thatcolonialism can be fought and progress can bemade either without it or while facing it. Thosewho were Islamic-oriented promoted, in either

case, extremely close relations between Japanand Islam.(32)

The delight Muslims took in both casesof the rise of Japan and Asian, is linked to thefact that Japan reached this stage through thepreservation of its religious and nationaltraditions. For Arabs, this rise showed thattradition is in no way a hindrance to progress,but rather it can be a motivation and elementof progress.(33) This is the context in whichArab Muslims had renewed interest in ChineseConfucianism and Buddhism, and JapaneseBuddhism and Shintoism, all religions thatwere at the heart of using tradition forliberation and progress. But even thisgeneralized interest in major Asian religions,and Buddhism in particular, on the part ofIslamists too, was still distorted when it wasthe matter of details. Liberals and reformistshighlight the disciplinary ethical side ofBuddhists while noting that Buddhism is notas much a religion as it is a profound ethicaland disciplined belief, just like Confucianism.

In a small handbook on religions of theFar East, Omar Inayat writes that truth toBhudda has four foundations: unsatisfieddesires hurt, desire is the source of pain, toremove pain one should remove desire, and tostop pain one should follow the moderatepath.” He adds: “His teachings say nothing ofGod or giving sacrifices. His only concern wasspreading love. He spoke of ten chains, fiveforbidden things and four desires that he askshis followers to leave because when mancontrols his self and leads it to the righteouspath then he shall reach the high ideal.”(34)

Both Muhammad Abdallah Daraz andMuhammad Abd al-Minhim find it difficult tolive the confused Buddhist identity,somewhere between religion and ethicalphilosophy. They return to the philosophy ofreligion (in Christian tradition), and argue thatthe absence of a divine presence deprives thisethical system of its soul and meaning. Theproof of this lack, according to them, is theemergence of traditions of worship and

divination inside Buddhism itself or amongsome Buddhist schools.(35)

Amidst this confusion concerning therole Buddhism played by in the first Asianrise, Egyptian intellectual and politicianMuhammad Hasanein Haykal reached acompromise that reconciled both parties. Heconsidered the rise of East Asia as a generalone which was on the verge of establishing anew "East." He starts his book, therefore, withthe study of European-Ottoman relations andmoves on to examine the impacts ofmovements of thought in shaping the Arabworld. He then introduces a summary ofBuddhism, transmitted from a German book,itself translated from French, and reachesGhandi and his renewal of Hinduism throughthe path of non-violent action, only to get tothe search of Islam and new Asian culture inhis conclusion, wondering how Buddhistdiscipline could fuse with Islam’s spiritualforce.(36)

In July of 2001, the Dalai Lama, theTibetan Buddhist supreme spiritual authority,

spoke of the Buddhist religious revival, andthe ways in which it differed from otherHindu, Muslim and Christian revivalmovements. He said that the Buddhist revivalis more of a return to one’s self. He did notwish to speak of Hindu revival, which is closerto a national movement than anything. He saidthat the problem is found in Christianity andIslam, since revival in these religionsconsiders salvation to be an exclusive truth,and both of these religions tends to eliminatethe other. That is why a completereconsideration of the real roles these religionsplayed throughout history and the present timeseems necessary.(37)

The Dalai Lama gave this speech a shorttime before September 11th, and a year afterTaliban had destroyed the two historicalBuddhist statues in Afghanistan.Fundamentalism is raging in many religionstoday, including Protestantism, Hinduism,Shintoism, Buddhism and Islam. None of thesereligions attacked the home ground of heUnited States, however, except al-Qaeda

which did it in the name of Islam. The U.S.now leads several countries of the world in awar on Islamic terror, a war which has led tothe occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq, and totightening the grip on millions of Muslims inEurope and the U.S. Arabs and Muslims arehaunted by the thought that they are victimswhile non-Muslims claim that they are thevictims of Islamic racism: Is this violent-turning extremism a natural part of Islam orany other religion? If not, then since it alsoexists in Hinduism, which is independent ofIslam, how can we deal with it, and is there away out of it?

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[1] -Thinker and consulting editor at al-Tasamoh Magazine.

2 - YAQUT, The Encyclopedia of Countries,under Bamiyan.

3 - Ibn al-Nadim mentions in p. 409 of al-Fihrist that he has draw his information onIndia from “Communities and Religions ofIndia”, copied by the philosopher al-Kindi(252/ 863) from an unknown source. In page411, he adds however that he has drawn hisinformation on the Bod from a source “otherthan the copy al-Kindi made”. Ibn al-Nadim’s unknown source first related theinterest in India to Yahya b. Khalid al-Barmaki, Harun al-Rashid’s miniter who“dispatched a man to get him certain drugsfrom India and write of the country’sreligions, thus this book came to be”. TheBaramika family is originally from Balkh.Their ancestor, “Barmak”, is said to havebeen a priest in Nubehar, a Buddhist templewhich was a source of confusion to theenemies of the Bramika, who considered itlater on a Zoroastrian fire temple.

4 - Ibid, p.411.

5 - Ibid, p.410.

6 - IBN SABʾIN, Bud al-aref, compiled andintroduced by Dr. George Kattoura, Dar AlAndalous and Dar al-Kindi, Beirut, first ed,1978.

7 - IBN HANBAL Ahmad, Response toJahmism and Heretics, published byAbdelrahman Omeira, Riyad, 1982, pp. 102-104. Al Jahm Bin Safwan was killed in thewake of his participation in a rebellion inKhurasan, in the last days of the OmayyadEmpire. Other critical and detailed studies ofthis and other accounts on Shamanism can befound Joseph Van Ess’s book. VAN ESSJoseph, Die Erkenntnislehre des AbudaddinAl-Ici, Wiesbade 1966, pp.257-265.

8 - AL SHAHRASTANI (548/1153 AD), al-Milal wa al-nihal, section of Fassel by IbnHazm, V.1 pp. 268-269.

9- IBN AL NADIM, al-Fihrist, p.408.

10 - Ibid, p.408.

11 - Al BIRUNI, A Research on the rationallyaccepted or rejected Indian beliefs, the

Ottoman department of sciences in HaydarAbad, 1958, p.206. look in another criticalstudy of Al Bayrouni’s view on India.OMLIL Ali, Of the Legitimate Difference,Dal Al Aman, 2001, pp. 34-93.

12 - Ibid, p.14; strangely enough, Al Bayrounimentions in the references a letter called “thetalk of Bamiyan’s two statues.”

13 - BARTHOLD, R.W, "Der IranischeBuddhismus und sein Verhaltnis zum Islam,"in Pavry, J.D.C, [ed] Oriental Studies inhonor of Cursetji Erachnji, London, 1933,pp. 112-136.

14 - WINK Arde, Al Hind: The Making of theIndo-Islamic World, Brill 2002, V.1, pp. 42-43, 72-73, 226-228.

15 - AL MASʿUDI, Muruj al-dhahab,published by Charles Bella, LebaneseUniversity, 1964-67, V.1 pp. 227-230. Yaqut,Encyclopedia of Countries, under Nubhar.

16 - AL BALADHURI, The Conquests ofCountries, published by De Guillet, p.318-19.

17 - Islamic Knowledge Base, NewPublication, under Baramika 1033/1.“Barmak” appears to be not a person’s namesbut in fact is Sanskrit for Chief or Custodian.

18 - Ibid, under Mazar Charif.

19 - Ibid, under Bamiyan.

20 - WINK A. Al-Hind, Op. Cit II. pp.334-357.

21 - VAN ESS J. Erkenntlislehre, Op.Citpp.257-58.

22 - FRANK Richard, "Several FundamentalAssumptions of the Mutazila," in StudiaIslamica, 33 [1971] pp.9-13.

23 - AL BAGHDADI, al-Farq bayn al-Farq,p.268. Al SHAHRASTANI, al-Milal wa al-nihal, 227/1. Compare to: MONNOT Guy,Islam et Religions, Maisonneuve et Larose,Paris, p.42-46, 215.

24 - Kalila wa Dimna, published by LuisChikho, pp. 247-259.

25 - Plover and Bodhisattva, published byDaniel Jimaret, Beirut 1986. Check theintroduction by Jimaret pp.11-20.

26 -Al SALMI, The Degrees of Sufism, writtenby SHREIBA Noureddine, Cairo 1964, pp.26-32. The Kushran letter, written byMAHMOUd Abdelhalim and BIN ALSHARIF Mahmoud, Cairo 1967, pp.36-41.

27 - Compare with Plover and Bodhisattva,pp. 39-40/ 70-73. look into the conditionsand specifications of the Islamic vision of theOther in AFFAYA Mohammad Noureddine,The Image of the Other in Medieval Arabicthought, Arab Cultural Center, Beirut, 2000pp. 74-99.

28 - Compare to BASHA Muhammad Ali, TheJapanese Trip, 1909 and Kamel, Mustapha’sbook on Japan, two years earlier, as well as areport by Sheikh Ali Ahmad Al Jarjawi on a1908 trip.

29 - Al TANNIR Muhammad Tahir, Paganismin Religions, Beirut, 1330 Hijri/1911 AD pp.8-10.

30 - HOURANI Albert, Arab Thought duringthe Nahda, Beirut, 1972, translated by KarimAzkoul, pp. 178-190. and JEDEAN Fahmi,The Bases of Progress to Modern DayMuslim Thinkers, Al Dar al Arabiya forresearch and publication, Beirut, 1979 pp.311-319.

31 - LASHIN, Muhammad Tahir, New Chinaand president Sun Yat-sen, Cairo, 1916. ALRAFII, Abdil Rahman , The 1919 Revolution,Dar Anahda Al Masriyya, 1946, pp.38-9.

32 - SINNO Abdel Rauf, "Calling theJapanese to Islam in the early twentiethcentury," in al-Ijtihad magazine, 1987 V.36,pp. 158-186.

33 - Abdel Fadil Mahmoud, Japan and theAsian Experiences, Dar Al Shourouk, 2001,pp.186-211. and DAHER Massoud, TheArabic Rise and the Japanese Rise, Center

for Arab Unity Studies, Beirut, 2000, pp.211-214.

34 - INAYAT Omar, Al Akaed, andintroduction- Religions of the Far East, aspecial author edition, Cairo, 1928, p.43-44.

35 - DARRAZ Muhammad Abdallah,Religion, Ethics and the Great Event, Cairo1957, pp.115-122. AYSH Muhammad AbdelMinhim, Religious and Ethical Schools ofThought, the Anglo-Egyptian Library, 1969,pp. 46-52. Since the nineteen sixties, certainArabic and Islamic universities like al-Azharhave given classes in religions. Many schooltextbooks were written on this subject, themost famous of which is the one by AhmadChalabi. One book which was widelydistributed is Karl Jasper’s HumanistPhilosophers: Socrates, Buddha, Confuciusand Jesus, translated by Adel Awa, 1975.Ahmad Al Shantashawi had issued under theIqraa collection, issued by Dar al Maarif alMasriya his book, The Three Sages:Zarathustra, Buddha and Confucius, 1958

36 - HAIKAL Muhammad Hasanein, The NewEast, Al NAhda al Masriya Bookshop, 1962.This direction, especially pursued byEgyptians, can be also checked in ABDELMALAK Anwar, Eastern Winds, Cairo, DarAl Nahda, 1984.

37- Appeared in: The International HeraldTribune, July 18th, 2001.