Modern Possibilities
We shall show them Our signs in the universe and within themselves, until it becomes clear to them that this is the Truth. Is it not enough that your Lord is the witness of all things?
—The Quran, 41:53
Bradley (1846-1929) observed: ‘The world is in need of a new religion. We want a creed to recognize and justify in due proportion all human interests, and at the same time to supply the intellect/consciousness with that to which man may hold on with confidence.’ (Essays on Truth and Reality, p. 446)
The need for that new religion was expressed by the English philosopher in the first quarter of the twentieth century, and thereafter, a French scientist, Du Nouy’s (1883-1947) renounced atheism, announced his return to religion, and published his famous book, entitled Human Destiny. These were indications of the fact that the process of man’s return to religion had started. Now at the beginning of the twenty-first century, this state of affairs has gained greater prominence.
After materialistic theories have been embraced and experiments have been carried out with the materialistic way of life, the impetus towards a return to religion is becoming stranger. After the failure of man-made laws and worldly strategies for social reform, the mentality of antagonism towards religion has perforce softened.
Today, all over the world, a kind of religious reaction has set in. The young generation of America, whose parents found their creed in the theories of Darwin and Freud, are trying to find solace in the Jesus Revolution and in Krishna consciousness. After having reached the pinnacle of material progress, the Japanese have begun to miss spiritual values and say that theirs is a merchant culture which gives them nothing but merchant values. Religion is raising its head even among the new generation of the U.S.S.R., even although they have been brought up in a totally atheistic society. At a meeting in Moscow of the anti-religion department of the Soviet Union, one of its officers commented on the slowness of their endeavours to stamp out religion. ‘Our movement against religion is going along at the speed of a steam engine. A colleague capped this with: ‘Steam engine? Even the wheel hasn’t been discovered yet!’
All the theories advanced against religion in the nineteenth century have become suspect in the light of later discoveries. The theory of evolution, which at one time had come to be regarded as an alternative to the theory of creation, appears to have lost the support of logic. For instance, procedures have been discovered by which the earth’s age can be accurately calculated. But its age, reckoned by this method, falls incredibly short of what it would have to be, for the life forms at present extant to have taken their present shape through evolution. Two eminent micro-biologists have presented a startling theory which runs counter to the supposition of evolutionary existence. Nobel prize winners, Francis Crick and Leslie Orgel, have in their joint research pointed out causes which rule out taking life as an evolved form of earthly matter. One of these is the particular role of molybdenum, which is found in all organisms and on which most enzyme systems are necessarily dependent for their activity. Even though molybdenum is extraordinarily important, it represents only 0.02% (i.e. two in ten thousand) of the metals found on earth. Other metals like chromium and nickel are very similar to molybdenum in their properties and likewise make up 0.02% of the metals found on earth, yet they have no importance in the biological system. According to Crick and Orgel, the chemical formation of the earth should have been reflected in the life-forms taking shape on earth, but since this is patently not so, they suppose that life was sent to the earth by some more advanced civilization from outer space. This study has offered a new scientific base for the panspermia concept of the Swedish chemist, Arrhenius.
Innumerable discoveries of a similar nature in modern times have brought science (or modern thought) very close to religion. These discoveries have done 99% of the tasks, now there remains only 1%.
Such discoveries have been made today in all branches of knowledge as provide astonishing proof of the veracity of Islamic beliefs. They are such as to have thoroughly shaken the human mind. The ancient Arab opponents of the Islamic creed of monotheism so tortured the believers that they could not even sit straight. They even forced them to say, “Lat and Uzza are gods besides God!” Today the progress of knowledge has itself proved the baselessness of such a concept. Modern science finds it meaningless to admit of many gods in the universe. There is simply no room for polytheism in scientific realms. To those with unbiased minds and a thorough knowledge of our times, religion can be proved right on such an elevated plane that all contemporary thought systems would appear dwarfish in comparison.
- The most important scientific discovery of modern times from the Islamic point of view is that of methodology. Up to the beginning of the 20th century, for an argument to be considered valid, it was thought necessary to have the same kind of link between a claim and the thing about which that claim was being made as exists between an electric lamp and its switch. That is to say, for a theory to become established, it had to be demonstrable. But now this concept is no longer subscribed to. The latest academic stand in this regard is that if such facts exist as may enable a scientist to infer a theory therefrom, the theory thus inferred will be accepted as a scientifically established fact. According to this same modern criterion, evolution has been claimed to be an established fact for, even if it cannot be demonstrated, biologists hold that such facts have been discovered as prove evolution through scientific inference.
This method of reasoning being validated by modern scientific discoveries is highly significant from the Islamic viewpoint. Fifty years ago, it was not possible to prove religious beliefs on the basis of scientific criteria, for science at that time accepted only demonstrable truths. It gave no credence to inferred truths.
But now the Quranic method of reasoning, explaining the unseen world with reference to the seen world has become, in principle, an argument which is scientific in nature. Half a century ago, no one was willing to accept this argument as scientific.
Now with this new development, we can formulate an effective theology (al-Kalam) in favour of Islam.
The intellectual framework of the time of Averroes (1126-1198) was based on the Aristotleian system of logic (syllogism). When Averroes saw the universe within the framework of hypothetical logic, he did not know how to reject the eternity of matter. He thus accepted matter as being primordial and based his divine philosophy thereon. If matter is taken as eternal, i.e. never having had a beginning, then there remains no real basis for divinity. To accept matter as having existed for all time is to openly reject God as the Creator of all things. Then God, at best, is equated with the ‘First Cause.’ In modern times, however, such discoveries as the second law of thermodynamics have quite finally rejected the notion of matter being eternal. Innumerable truths of a similar nature have provided us with very firm grounds for presenting Islamic beliefs on a strong rational basis.
This had been a great, unsolved problem which engaged the human mind for thousands of years! Intellectuals and philosophers had done their utmost to unravel the mysteries of the universe through reason, but had ultimately been forced to admit defeat. That is why philosophy, until now, has not led men to any positive creed, but has rather plunged them into scepticism. As the Quran has put it, “Little indeed is the knowledge vouchsafed to you.” (17:85) It has been conceded that man’s intellect on its own can take him only part of the way along the path to truth; it cannot take him right to the ultimate reality. Whenever man attempts to go beyond his limits, he will certainly fail. His approach would be more realistic if he were to rely upon that knowledge which has been given to man through revelation. In the past, both these viewpoints had been dealt with only by speculation. But now, in modern times, science has—astonishingly—given its judgement in favour of the Quran. Science has discovered that through reason man can achieve only partial knowledge. A scientific illustration of this is the black hole theory, which tells us that only three percent of matter is physically observable, the other 97 percent remaining beyond the limits of human observation. Modern scientific discoveries have enabled us to establish revealed knowledge as authentic by adhering to modern scientific standards.
It would take a whole encyclopaedia to do justice to all of the facts now accepted by modern science. For our immediate purposes, we list below just a few of the more salient points:
- The process of general research into an investigation of nature has uncovered secrets of nature which give amazing proof of there being a Mind behind it, which created it, and which continues to control it. The universe discovered by science is so extraordinarily meaningful and organised that there can be no explanation for it but the existence of a Creator and Master of the universe.
- Islam has had the greatest difference with other religions over the question of polytheism versus monotheism. People in general have favoured polytheism because they found it difficult to believe that the multifaceted world could have only one God. But this scientific discovery has given its final verdict in favour of Islam’s concept of monotheism, it being in complete consonance with the oneness of the universe as postulated by science. It has been established as a valid concept, not just because the universe functions under one universal law, but because matter itself demonstrates that sameness in its being analysable into a single basic unit, the atom, or unobservable electronic waves.
- Science, in the last analysis, has finally established that the means of acquiring knowledge at our disposal gives us only partial knowledge of the universe. It can never fully encompass the whole truth. This is true, not only on account of our inadequate means of observation, but also because the nature of reality is such, that with our limited natural capabilities we could never observe the truth in toto. This makes it understandable that in order to understand the universe of fact, which is unlimited, man needs some source of knowledge other than mere sensory perception, which is limited. Due to this discrepancy, we are permanently incapable of reaching the final reality.
- Science has discovered that reality, in its final form, is unobservable. We can only infer it from its manifestations. We cannot directly see it. This reinforces the Islamic standpoint that man’s inability to see either God or the world Hereafter in his present life does not disprove the existence of either, and that if he will but ponder over the signs of nature, he will certainly find proof therein of God and the Afterlife.
- To ancient philosophers the most cogent basis for rejecting religion was the concept of the eternal quality of matter. That is to say, the belief that the universe had always existed; that, in fact, it had never had a beginning. Where then was the need to believe in a Creator? But modern science has proved that the life of the world is limited, and this settled the problem once and for all. But then the theory of evolution—as opposed to creation—was advanced. Even here, however, it has been scientifically proved that man could not have evolved to the biological level he is at today, because the earth itself is not old enough for such a lengthy, complex process to have taken place.
- Science has proved that direct argument is not applicable to the facts of the universe. We can only arrive at the reality by making inferences from our perception of certain appearances. It is only through inference that we can know about any fact. Thus science has proved the validity of the indirect method of reasoning on which the foundation of religious methodology rests.
One thing which has to be fully understood is that the age of science was essentially the age of Islam. The fact that scientific development led to atheism is explainable in terms of incidental mistakes, particularly its clash with Christianity, which has been subjected to human interpolations.
What is science? It is the study of nature. Nature and the religion of Nature (Islam) are two aspects of the same reality. That is why the Quran prophesied that science would not pose any danger to Islam, but would rather be a means of clarifying the Truth.
“We will show them Our signs in all the regions of the earth and in their own souls, until they clearly see that this is the truth.” (41:53)
The age of science started not in Europe, but in Spain and Sicily in the ninth, tenth and eleventh centuries. There is no historical record of any clash at that time between science and religion. During Muslim rule, scientific development and Muslim intellectual development went side by side, without any clash. But when the Turks expelled the Byzantine scholars from Astana and Constantinople in the fifteenth century, they migrated to Italy, then the work of research and investigation into nature shifted from the Muslim world to Europe, thus making the history of science take an entirely new turn. Now science was faced with a world where Christianity was in a dominant position.
In essence, the teachings of Moses and Jesus were similar to those of the Prophet of Islam. But what we know today as Christianity has actually been subjected to human interpolation. It has been reduced to a religion in which the divine teachings are adulterated with human interpolations. In its present form Christianity does not offer a true representation of religion. That is how it came about that science, which had no clash with religion in Baghdad and Cordova, was declared to be the enemy of religion in Italy and France. Muslim experts in astronomy had proposed the theory that, contrary to the Aristotelian hypothesis, there was the greater possibility of the earth going round the sun. But no Muslim of that time regarded this theory as being against religion. On the contrary, when Nicholas Coppernicus (1473-1543) said the same thing, he was prosecuted by the Inquisition, because such a supposition was considered an affront to Jesus, the “son” of God, in that it relegated his birthplace to a position inferior to that of the other heavenly bodies.
Similarly, when Ibn Muskuwayh (d. 1030) supported the Greek theory of biological evolution, religion was not deemed to be threatened; but when Charles Darwin (1809-1882) presented the same theory, there was a great agitation in the Christian world. Both the Quran and the Bible stated that God created the world in “six days.” But this discovery of science, that the birth of the earth had come about over long periods of time was never seen as being in conflict with the Quran. This is because it is clearly mentioned in the Quran that “six days” meant six divine days, not human days.
Contrary to this, the wording of the Bible due to human interpolation was such as denoted six human days lasting from morning to evening. This was why those who believed in scientific discoveries were held to be heretics in the Christian world.
There are innumerable incidents of this kind which prove that the supposed antagonism between science and religion was actually between science and Christianity. If the later development of science, like its initial emergence, had taken place in the Muslim world, it would have had a very different history today.
The Quran and the universe are two aspects of the same reality. The Quran is a statement in words of God’s revelations, while the universe is a practical demonstration of God’s scheme of things—“He ordains all things.” Science is nothing other than a study of the divine manifestation of the universe. Furthermore, since this divine management expresses itself through the laws of nature, which always function in strict uniformity, it is essential to engage in exact thinking of a mathematical kind in order to understand and apply these laws. While, literature and rhetoric tend to exaggerate, science on the contrary produces precision of thought and a realistic approach which are indispensable to an understanding of the workings of the universe. Science comes to the support of Islam in two ways: first, it makes man study the wonders of God—the only direct means of the realization of God in this world; and second, it produces scientific thinking, which is exactly what is desired by the Quran.
It must be conceded that the ‘rebellion’ of science against religion was a matter of chance. That is why, within less than a century, the inner logic of science asserted itself in order to make science revert to its original position.
The first demonstration of this reversion, from the Islamic point of view, took place in the form of a change in orientalism.
After the Crusades (1099-1270), the literature produced by orientalists in Europe poisoned Western literature with anti-Islamic thinking. After the failure in the Crusades, they took their revenge on the Muslims with their old weapon of pious fraud against Islam, the religion of their adversaries. Since they were dominant in the entire Europe they managed to fill the books of history, religion, and literature with anti-Islam views. Even the dramas of Shakespeare and Milton were not immune from this. In the modern age, since all the books were being published in the West, this Western orientalism influenced not only the European mind but also the educated mind of the whole world.
But, according to the Quran, ‘God has power over all things,’ (12:21). By the end of the nineteenth century, objective thinking reigned supreme under the influence of science, all over the world. The first effect of this onslaught on orientalism is distinctly apparent in Carlyle’s (1795-1881) book, Heroes and Hero worship. This effect was to continue for a considerable period of time. Finally, just as the storm of modern democracy replaced kingship as something outdated, similarly the mindset of pious fraud too lost its relevance.
The ancient orientalism, promoting the abuse of the religion of others and intentionally distorting their history and teachings, died a natural death.
Another example of this change is that modern intellectual movement which is wrongly called “anti-science.” In actual fact it is anti-materialism rather than anti-science. However, like orientalism, this thinking has not become a clear, conscious movement.
It is, on the whole, a reactionary rather than a positive movement. For instance, one of the results of industrialisation and women’s liberation has been the disruption of the family. The relationship between husband and wife has been divested of its former religious sacredness and brought down to the level of a mere means of personal satisfaction. This has resulted in divorce, the incidence of which is on the increase, leading to the ruination of family life and the children, deprived of parental guardianship, have tended to become criminals. Even homes that have escaped divorce have undergone a drastic change. With both parents at work, the children are now put into a ‘day care centre.’ Thus, human beings, at this tender age, are deprived of parental affection and are instead entrusted to the care of hired employees who have no personal interest in their guidance or welfare. A recent American report cites this state of affairs as being responsible for a devastating disease which is on the increase among children. The experts call it autism. The children, apparently healthy and free from bodily diseases, are seen to be victims of strange mental disorders. Numerous problems of this kind have created in man such a distrust of industrial civilisation that the slogan, ‘Return to nature’ is now being raised.
Many of today’s happenings in the western world are not indicative of any positive thought; they only point to the fact that man, aghast at the consequences of materialism, is now in pursuit of a more appropriate culture. Even long after the end of the second world war, the west Germans would say, “We have no problems so long as our factory chimneys keep on emitting smoke!” But today, industrial pollution has reached a point where it is considered only next in gravity to the expected outbreak of an atomic war. Dr. Anne Dubes of Rockefeller University, New York, has warned the world that industrial pollution is depriving man of many qualities, and that there is a danger of man being reduced in the future to an inferior form of life (Life, 24th July, 1970)
Such an outcome of the materialistic culture has deprived modern man of happiness and peace of mind—in spite of all his progress. Many books are appearing in the West today which acknowledge this fact. For instance, Walker Kerr of the U.S.A. maintains in his 325-page book, The Decline of Pleasure (1962), that Americans are not happy today, even though the present American generation has leisure, luxury items, long life and all those things that their forefathers could not even dream of having.
The extraordinary progress in the industrial age had led the Americans to think that they would obtain everything that they desired, yet they failed to attain happiness and fulfilment. The resources of technology came to be misued for human destruction instead of human construction. (Time, January 18, 1971)
Having reached the final stage of our machine-age paradise, the growth of such extraordinarily critical problems was not a mere accident. It was quite in accordance with the way (sunnah) of God. He produces in the lives of the unmindful such circumstance as stand out like question marks before them.
God had produced favourable circumstances for the believers to perform their duty and disseminate the divine message to the people. The ground had been fully prepared by God to make the preserved divine religion acceptable to today’s man. But our reformers were blind to this opportunity, and foolishly engaged themselves, on the contrary, in launching themselves on a collision course with the communities whom they should rather have invited to acept Islam.
When the colonisation of Muslim countries by European nations began in modern times, the whole Muslim world had to consider how to grapple with this problem. The need of the hour was to make positive plans in the light of the Quran and precepts of the Prophet, and then to strive to implement them. But, far from doing so, the caravan of our crusaders set off on the obverse path of negative reaction.
There were two mainstreams of this reaction, one of which came into existence more or less as a defence mechanism. The leaders of this group engaged themselves in enthusing Muslims with the spirit of religión according to traditional ways, for instance, in the establishment of schools for religious education, the foundation of religious assemblies for teaching the Islamic creed and forms of worship, and the preservation of special privileges for Muslims, etc. The second group was more revolutionary and planned to launch an offensive. A large number of ulema (religious scholars) and thinkers of the Muslim world of the 18th and 19th centuries made unremitting efforts to enthuse Muslims with religious zeal in order to bring about a new revolution. Some of the most prominent of them were :
Muhammad bin Ismael al-Amir (Yemen) 1688-1768
Shah Waliullah Dehlavi (India) 1703-1762
Muhammed bin Abdul Wahhab Najadi
(Saudi Arabia) 1703-1791
Shah Ismail Shahid (India) 1779-1831
Mohammed bin Ali As-Sanusi (Morocco) 1787-1860
Syed Ahmed Shahid Bareilavi (India) 1786-1831
Amir Abdul Qadir, (Algeria) 1807-1883
Jamaluddin Afghaani (Iran-Afghanistan) 1838-1897
Abdur Rehman Kwakabi 1849-1902
Muftí Mohd. Abduhu (Egypt) 1849-1 905
Rashid Raza (Egypt) 1865-1933
Shakib Asralaan (Syria-Lebanon) 1869-1946
Dr. Muhammed Iqbal (lndian Subcontinent) 1877-1938
Hasan Al Banna (Egypt) 1906-1 948
The writings and speeches of these thinkers ignited the whole world of Islam. The beginning of the 20th century saw such great movements as influenced whole nations and, at certain times, the whole of the Muslim world. The moving spirits behind these movements were, for instance, the Caliphate Committee, India (1914), the Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind (1919), Al-Ikhwanul Muslimin, Egypt (1928), the Jammat Islami, India and Pakistan (1941) and the Majlis Shura Muslimi. Indonesia (1948), and so on.
The common target of these movements was the establishment of an Islamic state. Each of them gained extraordinary popularity, but not even one of them achieved its goal. The single, decisive cause of this failure lay in their having chosen politics as their field of activity. It was not only that it was theoretically divergent from the straight Islamic path and, as such undeserving of divine succour, but it was also, rationally, a wrong course to adopt, for it challenged its opponents in a field in which the latter were in possession of the latest range of military equipment, while the former had only traditional and outmoded weapons to fall back on.
From both the theoretical and rational standpoints, first priority should have been given to Dawah as the chosen field of activity. It was in this field that they were clearly superior to their opponents. But, they failed to rise above their immediate circumstances. Such factors as western colonization on the one hand, and the change in political thinking throughout the world caused by democratic and socialist movements on the other, had the effect of converting Islamic movements into political movements. The reformers of the time saw fit to bolster up Islam with contemporary stimulants, (immediate temptations) instead of being content to travel with it along the straight and eternal path.
A century ago, Syed Jamaluddin Afghani had realised that there were great opportunities for Islamic success in the field of Dawah. He wrote:
“Europeans are willing to accept Islam if it is offered to them in the best way. They have made a comparative study of Islam and other religions and have found a great difference between the simplicity of creed and deed (code of conduct) of the former and the reverse of the latter. The nearest to accepting Islam are the Americans, for there is no hereditary or atavistic enmity and hatred between them and Muslim communities as there is between Muslims and Europeans.” (Jamaluddin Afghani: Talif Mehmood Aburya, Cairo, 1966, p. 213)
Syed Jamaluddin Afghani’s special disciple, Mufti Mohd Abduhu,’ says that when he was in Paris, in 1884 with his master, he proposed to leave politics and propagate religion away from government eyes. Thus he expected result-oriented work within ten years while a political trial of strength was wasting their best powers. The reply of Jamaluddin was: “Yon are a defeatist” (Ibid., p. 50). This shows that perhaps Syed Jamaluddin was not as keen about Dawah work as he was about Jihad.
Two revolutionary occurrences of the nineteenth century are highly significant from the Islamic point of view. One was the correction of the 700-year old orientalism, which in fact amounted to the practical recognition, by the West, of the truth of Islam. The other was the birth of higher criticism, which virtually meant proving all religious books, except for the Quran, historically undependable. Thus the nineteenth century afforded a surprisingly favourable academic ground for Islamic Dawah.
It was at that same period that the movement of freedom of thought began in earnest in Europe. This was to end the ancient religious persecution forever. It now became possible for the first time in history to propagate the true religion in absolutely peaceful conditions. The Islamic call could have been taken up most effectively in this new set of circumstances. But it was during this period, in the 19th century, that all our reformers launched themselves, for no apparent reason, into political battles with the Western nations. They even espoused the cause of nationalism (Jamaluddin Afghani’s slogan was ‘Egypt for Egyptians’) thus erecting a wall of reactionary nationalism between Muslims and other communities. There were, of course, a few who did think of Dawah work, but their resorting to polemical opposition to other communities only aroused greater hatred in the latter’s hearts, and led to a further distancing of Islam from the western world. There were other indications, too, in that age, of there being fresh opportunities to take up the call of Islam. For example, great scholars in the West, like Mohd Asad and Abdul Karim Jarmanus, etc., either accepted Islam or, like George Bernard Shaw (l 856-1 950) openly acknowledged its superiority. There were also enthusiasts like Lord Lothian (1882-1940) who publicly urged Muslims to start the Islamic call, considering that there were greater possibilities of conversion to Islam at that time than there had ever been before in the world. But none of the above mentioned factors served as eye-openers to the Muslims, and they continued to consider sacrifices at the altar of politics to be the peak of Islamic perfection.
In spite of all their oft-repeated errors, there still exist innumerable possibilities for the propagation of God’s religion. The latest such indication is the conversion to Islam of the President of Gabon in 1973, of Bucase, the President of Central Africa, in 1976, and of Watok, the Raja of Sarawak, in 1977. These events show us that at what point and in what measure, we need to recommence our endeavours to change the situation.
It is a historical fact that leadership in thought can be claimed only by one who is prepared to pay for it in material terms. That is why intellectual leadership has always trailed in the wake of material leadership. If world leadership in thought remained in the hands of the Muslims from the 8th to the 16th century, it was because their political supremacy and trading strengths enabled them to pay its price. During that period, knowledge meant Muslim knowledge. Alvaro, the Bishop of Cordova, lamented the fact that Spain’s Christian Muzarabes had forgotten their Christian tongue, Latin, because, generally speaking, the younger generation of Christian intellectuals took no interest in anything beyond Arabic language and literature. Later, when Europe discovered machine-power and, in consequence, acquired industrial superiority, leadership in thought passed from the Muslims to European nations. Intellectual leadership always follows material advancement.
Western Europe, and in particular, Britain, retained this leadership from the seventeenth century till the Second World War (1939-1945). During this period European nations became the academic focal point for all students all over the world. It took the Second World War to shift the material leadership from Europe to America. At present the U.S.A. is the accredited leader in world thought. This can be inferred from the fact that the majority of the books used in research in any field today are written by American scholars.
There is ample evidence to prove, however, that the secret of western leadership had a twofold basis: colonisation and cheap fuel oil, the latter’s sources being astonishingly located in eastern countries. Colonisation ended forever as a result of the conditions that came into being after the Second World War. The foundations of American leadership have likewise been badly shaken by the circumstances of the latter part of the twentieth century. Two happenings in 1973—The American defeat in the 10-year old Vietnam war and the devaluation of the dollar—indicated that the U.S.A. no longer had a monopoly over military and economic affairs.
Another unpleasant fact—indeed, one of the greatest problems of this modern age—has come to cast its shadow across the face of America, namely, modern man’s loss of faith in the industrial culture. This culture has failed to provide man with the real basis of life; it has rather created many such complex problems as would appear to have no solution. War, economic exploitation, pollution, crime, the disruption of family life and other such problems are the product of an industrial culture which fails lo provide solutions in modern civilisation. It is this failure which has driven modern man into scepticism. The general feeling now is that man needs a new system which will give him a sense of purpose in life and which will furnish the answers to his real demands.
This problem is not just confined to America but, because America is the leader of contemporary industrial cultures, it naturally inherits a large share of the problem. This is clearly indicated by the fact that when Swami Vivekanand (1863-1902) travelled to America at the end of the nineteenth century, he could not find a field for his work there, whereas nowadays Indian Sadhus find millions of followers in the U.S.A. It is clear that modern Western man is thoroughly disenchanted with his culture and is desperate for something new. When the preserved Religion is not available to him, he pursues anything that glitters from a distance.
