Page 104 - Non-violence and peace-building

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Practice What You Preach

any political leaders of our country routinely sing
Mpaeans to the country’s Constitution, but when it
comes to the question of what they practice, they play
a completely different tune. They routinely cite the
Constitution to pontificate on social equality, but you
will not find them behaving in an equitable manner in
their own lives. They will glorify the secular character of
the Constitution, but in practice they hurriedly abandon
their secular pretensions and bare their communal
prejudices. It is as if for them the Constitution is
something to boast about or to take great pride in but
not a guide to action in their own lives.
The same sort of thing applies to Muslims today.
They loudly proclaim the glories and beauties of Islam
in their speeches and writings, but in their personal
lives they are guided by their personal interests and
communal prejudices, not by true Islamic teachings.

Muslims will talk at great length about belief in the
oneness of God. They will stress that in Islam, worship
is due only to the one God and to no one else. But,
in actual practice, the community is immersed in the
‘worship’ of entities other than God. Some members of

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