Page 96 - Islam and Buddhism

Islam and Buddhism

Give from what We have provided for you before death comes to

one of you and he says, "My Lord, if only you would give me a lit-
tle more time so that I would give charity and be among the right-
eous!" God will not give anyone more time, once their time has
come. God is aware of what you do. (Qur'an, 63:10-11)

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Buddhism's Misguided Belief About the Afterlife e
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Buddhism's belief in karma leaves no room for belief in the eter-
nal afterlife, Paradise or Hell. This false and perverse position —the
idea that an individual returns into the world after each death, con-
tinually—conflicts with what God has revealed in the Qur'an. In The
Religions of India, Edward Washburn Hopkins, a professor of Sanskrit
and Comparative Philology, explains that Buddhism does not believe
in an afterlife:
. . . The logic of his own system led Buddha into a formal and com-
plete pessimism, which denies an after-life to the man that finds no
happiness in this . . . In his talks with his questioners and disciples,
he uses all means to evade direct inquiry in regard to the fate of man
after death. He believed that Nirvana (extinction of lust) led to ces-
sation of being; he did not believe in an immortal soul... What he
urged repeatedly was that every one accepting the undisputed doc-
trine of karma or re-birth in its full extent (i.e., that for every sin here,
punishment followed in the next existence), should endeavor to es-
cape, if possible, from such an endless course of painful re-births. . . 4
From some Buddhist writings, one can glean the following infor-
mation on the afterlife:
Whether one is reborn in Heaven or in one of the various levels of
Hell, the forms of existence in these places are transitory, as they are
on earth, and are not eternal. As in Hinduism, the period of time
during which . . . individuals remain in these places depends on the
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