Insight Editions · No. 108
Common Ground Between Islam and Buddhism
Reza Shah-Kazemi · With an essay by Shaykh Hamza Yusuf
Reza Shah-Kazemi compares Islamic and Buddhist teachings on ultimate reality, spiritual practice, detachment, compassion, and sanctity while distinguishing their irreducible doctrinal differences.
A study guide to Common Ground Between Islam and Buddhism by Reza Shah-Kazemi, with an essay by Shaykh Hamza Yusuf. Shared free for personal reading; not for sale and not endorsed by the authors or publishers. Please read and buy the original.
Overview
Common Ground Between Islam and Buddhism is a short treatise by Reza Shah-Kazemi, commissioned by the Royal Aal al-Bayt Institute in Jordan and published in 2010 as a sequel to the 2007 "A Common Word" letter to Christians. It asks one question with care: can a Muslim, on the basis of the Qur'an and the Prophet's sayings, recognize Buddhism as a true religion, and can a Buddhist recognize Islam as an authentic dharma?
Introduced by: the Fourteenth Dalai Lama (foreword, January 21, 2010), Prince Ghazi bin Muhammad (introduction, March 2010) and Professor Mohammad Hashim Kamali (preface, March 2010).
Method: compare Buddhist doctrine not with Islamic creed ('aqida) but with Islamic spiritual wisdom (ma'rifa), drawing heavily on al-Ghazali [2 to 3].
Three parts: setting the scene; oneness as "the highest common denominator"; ethics of detachment and compassion; then an epilogue on sanctity.
Tone: respectful, scriptural, metaphysical, and frank about "irreducible" differences [1].
The Book in Brief
- Differences stay. On dogma, ritual and "spiritual 'style'" the two faiths differ, and the differences "should be unabashedly asserted" [1]. The common ground lies at the level of the spirit.
- Non-theism is not atheism. The Buddha affirmed an "unborn, not become, not made, uncompounded" [29]. He was silent about a Creator, but "What he was silent about, however, he did not deny" [36].
- The Buddhist Absolute matches the divine Essence. Dharma, Nirvana and the Void correspond to the Essence of God (al-Dhat) beyond all Names, and Dharma is closest to the Name al-Haqq, "the Real" and "the True" [5].
- The Shahada and the Void say the same thing twice. The negation "no divinity" matches Buddhist emptiness. The affirmation "but God" matches the one Reality that cannot be negated [40].
- Worship meets in remembrance. The Pure Land invocation of Amida and Islamic dhikr share one logic: reliance on the Other, not on oneself [64 to 69].
- Ethics grow from the Absolute. Buddhist tanha (thirst) and Qur'anic hawa (caprice) are the same idol. Karuna and rahma are human echoes of an absolute compassion [89, 92].
- The saint is the common ground made flesh. The wali and the Arahat or Bodhisattva unite knowledge of the One with compassion for all [112].
Argument map. The case moves from method to history and scripture, then to the Absolute, then to ethics, and ends with the saint, in whom both traditions reach their goal.
Chapter Map
| Section | Pages | Core move |
|---|---|---|
| Forewords | ix to xxii | Why the book was commissioned; seven points of common ground; who counts as "People of the Book" |
| I. Setting the Scene | 1 to 28 | Spirit, not letter; the Sind precedent of 711; the Buddha as a Messenger; the Dalai Lama on dialogue |
| II. Oneness (a) | 29 to 48 | The Unborn; why the Buddha kept silent; Shunya and Shahada; al-Samad; the Face of God |
| II. Oneness (b) | 49 to 78 | Fana' and baqa'; the three bodies; remembrance; tariki and tawakkul; images and blessings |
| III. Ethics | 79 to 109 | Impermanence and detachment; the parable of the two gardens; karuna and rahma; mercy as Creator |
| Epilogue and essay | 110 to 136 | Sanctity; al-Shahrastani's Buddha as al-Khadir; a shared and uneven history; the stranger in the tent |
Numbers in square brackets refer to the printed pages of the 2010 Fons Vitae edition; roman numerals are the front matter.
The Three Introductions
Before Shah-Kazemi speaks, three sponsors explain why the book exists: a Buddhist leader, the Jordanian prince who commissioned it, and a jurist who tests its legal footing. Together they set its tone. It is to be friendly without blurring differences, and to rest on scripture rather than sentiment.
The Dalai Lama: Compassion as the Shared Centre
The Dalai Lama begins from Buddha nature: every being has a mind "essentially pure," so "all negative aspects can ultimately be removed from it" [ix]. Muslim friends told him that submission to a God who is "compassionate and merciful" amounts to submission "to the ideal of universal compassion." His conclusion is the most quoted line in the book: "from a Buddhist point of view, the practice of Islam is evidently a spiritual path of salvation" [ix]. He thanks Prince Ghazi, whose conversations with him in Jordan started the project.
Prince Ghazi: Why Common Ground, and Why God
Ghazi opens with numbers. In 2010, "at least 80% of the world's population of 6.7 billion" belonged to four religions: Christian 32%, Muslim 23%, Hindu 14% and Buddhist 12% [xi]. Peace between religions therefore matters for world peace. The model is "A Common Word," the open letter that 138 Muslim scholars sent to Christian leaders on October 13, 2007 [xi].
Diagram. Ghazi's four religions, together "at least 80%" of 6.7 billion in 2010 [xi].
Why not just "love thy neighbour"? Ghazi argues that the Second Commandment alone "risks descending into a superficial sentimentalism," a mood "requiring nothing from the soul, risking nothing, changing nothing, deceiving all" [xiii]. Muslims, he says, "will never be able to be whole-heartedly enthusiastic about any ethic that does not even mention God" [xii]. So the common ground must reach up to the Absolute.
Diagram. Why Ghazi grounds common ground in God [xiii].
The irony he wants to cure. Love of one's own religion often makes believers "less lovingly merciful to other people." Yet in every traditional school of Islamic law, "a person's choice of religion is not grounds for hostility against them" unless they are first hostile [xiii].
| # | Ghazi's seven points of common ground [xiii] |
|---|---|
| 1 | An Ultimate Truth (al-Haqq), absolutely One, source of grace and guidance |
| 2 | Accountability to a principle of justice in the Hereafter |
| 3 | The duty of compassion and mercy to all |
| 4 | Human capacity for supra-rational knowledge |
| 5 | A possible state of sanctity to which all should aspire |
| 6 | The need for spiritual practice: prayer, meditation, invocation |
| 7 | Detachment from the world, the ego and its desires |
Table. The prince's summary of what the book shows. He grants that the Buddha's silence on God as Creator is "definitely an absolute difference" [xiii].
The Buddha as Messenger. Since every nation has had a warner (35:24) and some messengers go unnamed (40:78), Ghazi concludes the Buddha was "in all likelihood ... one of God's great Messengers" [xiv]. He judges the Umayyads and Abbasids "entirely correct" to treat Buddhists as if they were Ahl al-Kitab [xiv].
Professor Kamali: Who Counts as "People of the Book"
Kamali tests the legal category. Some jurists limit Ahl al-Kitab to Jews and Christians. The Hanafi and Shafi'i schools extend it to "all who have followed a prophet and a revealed scripture", and many add Zoroastrians and Sabaeans [xix]. Al-Shafi'i (d. 820 CE) relied on a ruling of 'Ali b. Abi Talib (d. 661 CE) for the Zoroastrians [xix].
Diagram. Who counts as People of the Book [xix].
His textual case rests on the Qur'an's references to earlier scriptures (87:19, 26:196, 35:25). The verse often used to restrict the category, 6:156, in context "questions rather than endorses the spirit of such a limitation" [xx]. He closes with mutual recognition (ta'aruf, 49:13) against "talk of 'clash of civilizations'" [xxi].
Part One. Setting the Scene
Part One (pp. 1 to 28) lays the ground rules. Shah-Kazemi will compare Buddhism with the spiritual heart of Islam, not with its creed. He shows that early Muslim rulers already treated Buddhists as a revealed community, builds a Qur'anic case for the Buddha as a Messenger, and closes with the Dalai Lama's idea of "constructive competition."
Chapter 1. Beyond the Letter to the Spirit
Affinities, not identity. The author states his premise plainly: the differences between the two faiths "should be unabashedly asserted as expressions of the uniqueness of each religion" and respected, "rather than wished away out of ecumenical politesse" [1]. His interest is in what is not self-evident: "spiritual affinities, conceptual resonances and common aspirations" [1].
Creed versus wisdom. The key move is a distinction inside Islam. 'Aqida is the doctrinal creed, the beliefs that ground salvation. Ma'rifa is spiritual wisdom: "the subtleties of the heart," "inward contemplative states," "mystical experience" [2]. "Most, if not all, of the Buddha's teachings should in fact be situated on the level of what is called ma'rifa in Islam, and not on that of 'aqida" [2]. Because ma'rifa is a commentary on the Qur'an and Sunna, common ground found there is common ground with Islam as such, not only with its mystics.
Diagram. The two levels inside Islam; the book compares Buddhism with ma'rifa [2].
Al-Ghazali as warrant. Is it legitimate to set theology aside? The author answers with al-Ghazali (d. 1111), the "renewer" of his age. Theology (kalam), he says, covers only the outward creed and cannot reach "spiritual knowledge (ma'rifa) of God, His qualities and His acts"; it is "more like 'a veil'" [3]. In his autobiography al-Ghazali says he "learnt with certainty that it is above all the mystics who walk on the road of God" [4].
Dharma and al-Haqq. The Arabic haqq means truth and reality, but also "right," that which is "due." Duty, law and propriety are all in it, which is why the author proposes al-Haqq as the divine Name closest to Dharma [5 to 6].
Diagram. Why al-Haqq is the Name closest to Dharma [5 to 6].
Who speaks for each side. Islamic orthodoxy is defined by the Qur'an, Sunna and the consensus of scholars; the Amman fatwa of July 2005 recognized eight schools of law [6]. Buddhism has no such centre. It is "more a network of spiritual schools," though all share the Pali canon [6].
| Buddhist school | Founder or setting, as given [6 to 7] |
|---|---|
| Theravada, "Way of the Elders" | The Pali canon tradition |
| Madhyamaka, "Middle Path" (Mahayana) | Nagarjuna, ca. 2nd century CE |
| Yogacara (Mahayana) | The brothers Asanga and Vasubandhu, ca. 4/5th century CE |
| Chan, later Zen | Bodhidharma, who went from India to China in the late 5th century CE |
| Pure Land (Ching-t'u, Jodo Shin) | Indian Mahayana texts, shaped in China and Japan |
| Vajrayana, "Adamantine Way" | Tantric Buddhism, flowering in Tibet; Shingon in Japan |
Table. The schools the book draws on. A note tells the Zen origin story: the Buddha's wordless "flower sermon," understood only by Mahakasyapa [7].
Chapter 2. A Glance at History
The Sind precedent. In 711 the young Umayyad general Muhammad b. Qasim conquered Sind, a mainly Buddhist province. Buddhists and Hindus of Brahmanabad asked to restore their temples. Via the governor Hajjaj b. Yusuf and his scholars, the answer became the "Brahmanabad settlement": "Because they have become dhimmis we have no right whatsoever to interfere in their lives and property. Do permit them to follow their own religion. No one should prevent them." [8].
Diagram. The Sind precedent [8].
At Alor, Muhammad b. Qasim declared that the temples "shall be treated by us as if they were the churches of the Christians, the synagogues of the Jews, and the fire temples of the Magians" [8]. When he died, "The people of India wept" and made an image of him [9]. A note admits exceptions, such as the destruction of the monastery at Valabhi in 782, but calls them "political exceptions which prove the religious rule" [9].
Pragmatism and principle. Was this just Realpolitik? The author grants that pragmatism played a part, but says the scholars "did not (and still do not)" see the policy as violating any principle: "Pragmatism and principle went hand in hand" [9 to 10]. If Buddhists were rightly given protected status, their faith must be authentic. Otherwise Muslims "would be guilty of according religious legitimacy to a false religion" [10]. The goal is to make explicit what was implicit, so that Buddhists fall under 2:62: whoever "believes in God and the Last Day and performs virtuous acts" [10].
Chapter 3. Qur'anic Premises of Dialogue
The author grounds dialogue in a cluster of verses: "nations and tribes that you may know one another" (49:13); the "differences of your languages and colours" as signs (30:22); and discourse "in that which is finest" (29:46) [12]. Difference becomes "a stimulus to knowledge" of the other and of oneself.
Diagram. The Qur'anic premises of dialogue [12 to 13].
Revelation is universal. "For every community there is a Messenger" (10:47). "For each of you We have established a Law and a Way ... So vie with one another in good works" (5:48). Messengers speak "the language of his people" (14:4), and some are unnamed (4:164) [13]. Since over ten percent of humanity follows the Buddha, "it would appear logical to conclude that the Buddha is the Messenger for this vast community of believers" [13 to 14].
Chapter 4. The Buddha as Messenger
Tathagata. The Buddha called himself Tathagata, "thus come" and "thus gone": the one who brings "the message of deathlessness to which he has gone by his own practice of the path" [14]. Nibbana is described as a series of escapes: "unborn supreme security from bondage," and likewise unageing, unailing, deathless, sorrowless, undefiled [14].
What can be said. The Dhamma itself is "unattainable by mere reasoning, subtle, to be experienced by the wise" [15]. Only the way can be taught. Its declaration at the first sermon, to five monks in the Deer Park at Isipatana, Benares, set "the wheel of the Dharma" turning. It is summed up in the Four Noble Truths: suffering, its origin in craving, its cessation, and the Eightfold Path [15 to 16].
Diagram. What the Buddha could teach [15].
Accountability in both. The Buddha's enlightenment included seeing, "with the divine eye," beings reborn "according to their actions" [16 to 17]. A divine saying in Islam agrees: "it is but your deeds that I reckon up for you and then recompense you for" [17]. The operation differs: a Personal Judge in Islam, impersonal karma in Buddhism. But the Qur'an also has the impersonal mode: "your own soul suffices as reckoner against yourself this day" (17:13 to 14) [18].
| 2:62 requires | Buddhism, on the author's reading |
|---|---|
| Belief in the Absolute | Argued in Part Two: the "unborn," Dharma, Nirvana |
| Accountability (the Last Day) | Karma; heavenly and hellish rebirths [16 to 17] |
| Virtuous conduct | The Noble Eightfold Path |
Table. The three conditions of salvation in 2:62 and where the author finds them in the Buddha's teaching [19].
Chapter 5. Revelation from on High or Within?
The objection. Prophecy in Islam comes down to chosen men; enlightenment in Buddhism springs up from within and is open to all. The Buddha even said: "be ye lamps unto yourselves ... Betake yourselves to no external refuge" [20]. The Qur'an censures any claim to independence: "man is rebellious, in that he deems himself independent" (96:1 to 8) [20].
Two answers. First, the Buddha's enlightenment has two sides. One is unique to him, his message, which matches the Islamic risala. The other is open to all followers, which matches walaya, sanctity [21]. Second, the doctrine of no-self (anatta) cuts the objection off. If there is no abiding self, Gautama cannot have drawn the truth from his own self:
Diagram. The two sides of the Buddha's enlightenment [21].
Diagram. One source, two channels. The Prophet was both Messenger and saint; the Buddha's enlightenment has both a founding message and a state others may reach [20 to 21].
Skilful means. The Lotus Sutra says the Buddhas use "means adapted to their temperaments and prejudices." The author sets beside it 14:4, messengers in "the language of his people" [23]. Some Buddhists return the favour: according to Suzuki, "Mahayanists recognized a Buddha in Socrates, Mohammad, Jesus, Francis of Assisi, Confucius, Laotze, and many others" [23].
Chapter 6. The Dalai Lama and the Dynamics of Dialogue
The verse 5:48 calls for a "healthy competition" in good works (khayrat), and goodness "is immediately recognizable" whatever its source [24]. The Dalai Lama says the same: "in terms of training the mind, all major religions are the same" [24]. At the Gethsemani Encounter of July 1996 he urged "one kind of constructive competition": each side should "implement what we believe in daily life" [25].
Diagram. The Dalai Lama's dynamics of dialogue [24 to 27].
Against attachment to one's own theory. The Dalai Lama warns: "if we put too much emphasis on our own philosophy, religion or theory, becoming too attached to it, and try to impose it on other people, the result will be trouble." The great teachers, "including Gautama Buddha, Jesus Christ, Muhammad and Moses, were motivated by a desire to help their fellow beings" [25]. His chain of peace runs outward from kindness to community to nations, and ends: "Each one of us is responsible for mankind" [26].
The author pairs his saying "first we must change ourselves" with 13:11: God "will not change the condition of a people until they change the condition of their own souls" [26].
2. The 711 Sind settlement set a precedent of treating Buddhists as a protected, revealed community.
3. The Qur'an's "For every community there is a Messenger" makes room for the Buddha.
4. No-self implies an objective, absolute source of enlightenment.
5. Dialogue works best as competition in practice and goodness.
Part Two. Oneness: The Highest Common Denominator
Part Two (pp. 29 to 78) is the heart of the book. It argues that the Absolute the Buddha points to is what Islam calls the Essence of God. This first half (pp. 29 to 48) moves from the "unborn" through the reasons for the Buddha's silence to the Void, the Name al-Samad and the Face of God.
Chapter 7. Conceiving of the One
The part opens by setting two texts side by side. Surah 112: "Say: He, God, is One God, the Self-Sufficient Besought of all, He begets not, nor is begotten, And there is none like unto Him." And the Udana: "There is, monks, an unborn, not become, not made, uncompounded"; were it not, "no escape could be shown" for what is born and compounded [29].
The Shahada read metaphysically. "No divinity but the one and only Divinity" can mean "No reality but the one and only Reality" [30]. False gods are then "so many erroneous views of reality." The Dhammapada says the same: "Those who think the unreal is, and think the Real is not, they shall never reach the Truth" [30].
Diagram. The two texts set side by side [29 to 31].
Chapter 8. The Unborn
Silence versus denial. The "unborn" echoes "He begets not, nor is begotten" (112:3) and the Names "the First" and "the Originator" [31]. Many divine Names, such as Creator or Judge, are alien to Buddhism, and here lies "a major, and perhaps unbridgeable, divide" in theology [31]. But on the plane of metaphysics the Buddha's silences can be read positively, as "methodically ignoring" the Personal God "for the sake of an exclusive focus on the supra-Personal Essence" [31].
Diagram. A distinction the author insists on [31 to 32].
Escape, not description. Nirvana is framed as escape from bondage. The Buddha's concern was not to list the Absolute's attributes "but rather with stressing the imperative need of escaping to the Absolute" [32]. The Qur'an speaks the same way: "there is no refuge from God except in Him" (9:118); "so escape unto God" (51:50). "In a situation of dire urgency, we do not ask for subtle definitions of what it is that will save us" [32].
Chapter 9. Buddhist Dialectics
The setting. The Buddha spoke "the language of his people" (14:4) in a "largely pharisaical and formalistic Brahmanical culture" [33]. "Eternalists" confused the soul's immortality with the eternity of the Absolute: "Immanence had trumped transcendence." "Annihilationists" said nothing survives death [33 to 34]. The Buddha sought the middle: "'Everything exists'—this, Kaccayana, is one extreme. 'Everything does not exist'—this, Kaccayana, is the second extreme" [35].
Two truths. Nagarjuna: "The teaching of the doctrine by the Buddhas is based upon two truths: truth relating to worldly convention and truth in terms of ultimate fruit" [34]. On the conventional level the soul and suffering are real enough. On the level of ultimate fruit (paramartha) only the permanent is real [34 to 35].
Diagram. Nagarjuna's two truths [34].
Diagram. The parable of the poisoned arrow [35].
Why the Creator went unmentioned. In the Buddha's India, Brahma the Creator had become "reified as a concept," one god among many held to be eternal. To break the bond between a supposedly eternal soul and eternal gods, impermanence had to be taught on every level. "Attention to creation translated into distraction from the eternal" [36]. The Avatamsaka Sutra's verses on birthless things are "mystical pedagogy" rather than "rational theology" [37]: "Never from lack of wisdom / Has wisdom ever been born." [37]. Its image of counting, "Adding one, up to infinity," shows that tracing phenomena back to an origin never leaves phenomena [39].
Diagram. Why the Creator went unmentioned [36].
All our concepts of God are veils: "They measure God not according to His true measure" (6:91); "There is nothing like Him" (42:11) [40].
Chapter 10. Shunya and Shahada
Diagram. The two halves of the Shahada and their Buddhist counterparts. "No dharma/essence but the Dharma/Essence" [40, 45 to 46].
The Void as the Shahada's "no". Buddhist apophatic thought "can thus be read as an elaboration upon the nafy, the negation, of the first testimony of Islam" [40]. The ithbat is "the intuition of an ineffable Reality which arises in the very measure that all false conceptions of reality have been eliminated." Mystical experience mirrors both halves: fana', extinction of the false self, gives way to baqa', subsistence in the true [40].
Purity of the One. The uncompounded (asamskrta) is "purely itself," like ikhlas, which means both purification and sincerity and is a title of Surah 112 [41]. Buddhism speaks of Shunyamurti, "the manifestation of the Void." The author suggests the Name Allah is "just such a manifestation of the Void," a symbol of what is beyond form, which is why Muslims glorify both God "above what they describe" and "the Name of thy Lord" [41 to 42].
Diagram. Purity of the One [41].
Chapter 11. Light of Transcendence
The Prophet said: "God has seventy thousand veils of light and darkness; were He to remove them, the glories of His Countenance would consume all those who looked upon Him" [42]. The Qur'an warns: "God warns you to beware of His Self" (3:28). Hence the saying: "Meditate upon the bounties of God but not on God" [42 to 43]. "That which is conceivable cannot be the ultimate Reality." The initial concept of the One "is but a starting point, not a conclusion" [43].
Chapter 12. Al-Samad and Dharma
Not hollow. The Name al-Samad means self-sufficient and besought by all, and also "that which is not empty or hollow" [43 to 44]. This recalls the Buddhist teaching that only the Dharma is "full," while all particular dharmas are "empty" of self-being (svabhava) [44]. The Void is empty only from the side of the world: "In itself, it is infinite plenitude; in reality, it is the world ... that is empty" [44 to 45].
| Buddhist term | Islamic counterpart proposed | Pages |
|---|---|---|
| Dharma (ultimate) | al-Haqq; the Essence (al-Dhat) | 5, 63 |
| Dharma (teaching, law) | Shari'a and Tariqa | 63 |
| Unborn, uncompounded | "He begets not"; al-Samad; ikhlas | 31, 41, 44 |
| Shunya, emptiness | The nafy, "no divinity" | 40 |
| Suchness (tathata) | The ithbat, "but God" | 45 to 46 |
| Samsara is Nirvana | The Outward and the Inward (57:3) | 46 to 47 |
| Tathagatagarbha, "womb" | al-Rahman, from rahim, womb | 46, 105 |
Table. The author's metaphysical equivalences. He calls them analogies, and keeps the differences in view.
Samsara is Nirvana. Being empty of emptiness, the Dharma "fills" the emptiness of all dharmas, "which are thereby re-endowed with reality." Hence the Mahayana formula, "Samsara is Nirvana; Nirvana is Samsara" [45 to 46]. Applied to the Buddha himself: "no buddha but the Buddhadhatu," the Buddha-nature in all things [46].
Chapter 13. God's Face
"Everywhere you turn, there is the Face of God" (2:115). "Every thing is perishing (halik) except His Face" (28:88) [46]. The pronoun "His" can be read as each thing's own: everything perishes except its true face. Al-Ghazali explains:
Diagram. Al-Ghazali's two faces, read in Buddhist terms [47 to 48].
The author's reading: replace "essence" with "dharma" and "nonexistence" with "emptiness," and al-Ghazali sounds "perfectly Buddhist" [48]. God is "the First and the Last, the Outward and the Inward" (57:3); Milarepa says, "Nirvana and Samsara are not two ... The core of the View lies in non-duality" [47]. His verse on the Matrix of Buddhahood mirrors the Face in all things: "All beings are therefore Buddhas in themselves. / Yet they are veiled by temporal defilements" [48].
Chapter 14. Fana' and Non-duality
Even "the enlightened" are dual. A Perfection of Wisdom text says that where there is "enlightenment and the enlightened, that is duality" [49]. The reason: any consciousness that belongs to someone still has a knower and a known. "This is precisely what is taught in the mystical Islamic doctrine of fana'" [49].
Al-Ghazali on extinction. The sages become so intoxicated that one says "I am the Real!" and another "Glory be to me, how great is my station!" (al-Hallaj and al-Bastami). The state is "extinction from extinction," since the person is conscious "neither of himself in that state, nor of his own unconsciousness of himself." In metaphor it is called "unification"; "according to the language of reality" it is tawhid [49 to 50]. Nirvana means the same image: ni, "out," vana, "blowing," like a flame blown out [50].
Diagram. Al-Ghazali on extinction [49 to 50].
Not blankness. The Sutra of Hui-neng calls the highest wisdom "thoughtlessness" but defines it as seeing "all dharmas with a mind free from attachment." Suppressing all thought, by contrast, "is to be dharma-ridden, and this is an erroneous view" [51].
Chapter 15. Baqa' of the "Enlightened Ones"
Sustained by the Absolute. The Diamond Sutra explains why the holy exist at all: "Because an Absolute exalts the holy persons" [51]. This is the Sufi baqa': after extinction the saint subsists "only by the reality of God," his face being "in reality not 'his' but God's" [52]. So the Buddha can both "know" the Dharma and say it "cannot be grasped," and that his truth is "neither real nor unreal" [52].
Thought-coverings. The Buddha stresses freedom from "thought-coverings," because thought "covers" its own source [53]. Al-Ghazali says that unveiling requires extinction because the ego and its passions pull the heart toward "a world of error and illusion"; in fana' "the senses are pacified" and "the imagination is in repose" [54].
Diagram. Extinction and subsistence in both traditions [51 to 53].
Even "uncompounded" is too much. One text denies that the Buddhas' reality is either "compounded or uncompounded" [55]. The author explains: to call it uncompounded already compounds it with a description. Likewise in Islam, "the very thought of tawhid on the mental plane can itself become an obstacle" to realizing it [56]. Hence: "Those who seek the truth shouldn't seek anything," and "divorcing the concept of things" [56].
Chapter 16. Worship of the One
The Triple Refuge problem. A Muslim hearing "I take refuge in the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha" may hear shirk: a man, a teaching and a community of monks [58]. Metaphysical agreement is not enough. Do Buddhists worship the Absolute? The answer turns on the meaning of Dharma, which the Buddha called "profound, hard to see, hard to understand ... beyond the sphere of thinking" [58].
Diagram. The Buddha below the Dharma, on the author's reading of the Triple Refuge [58 to 59].
The Buddha below the Dharma. A Mahayana sutra has the Buddha say: "From the Dharma one should see the Buddha, for the dharma-bodies are the guides." [59]. The refuge is not the sage Shakyamuni, "who was but the messenger," but the Dharma he bore.
| Buddha body | Level | Islamic parallel offered |
|---|---|---|
| Nirmana-kaya, "transformation-body" | Human | Muhammad b. 'Abd Allah, the man |
| Sambhoga-kaya, "felicity-body" | Celestial | The archetypal Prophetic reality: "I was a Prophet when Adam was [still] between water and clay" |
| Dharma-kaya, "Being-body" | Absolute | The Essence itself; "body" only by metaphor |
Table. The three bodies of the Buddha and the author's parallels [59 to 60]. If the lower bodies are taken for the Absolute, they "become veils obscuring It" [60].
Chapter 17. Buddha in the Light of Dharma
Kill the Buddha. Hui-neng (d. 713): "whatever can be named leads to dualism, and Buddhism is not dualistic" [60]. The Diamond Sutra warns that whoever seeks the Buddha "in form" or "in sound" "cannot see the Tathagata" [61]. Hence the Zen saying: "If you see the Buddha on the road, kill him!" [61]. The image is worshipped, if at all, only as transparent: being "empty of self," it allows "free passage to the only reality which is fully itself" [62].
Mindfulness and taqwa. A note calls "mindfulness" "a perfect translation of the Arabic taqwa," the difference being that taqwa names God as its object; both mean "an awareness of the Absolute which is not interrupted by one's engagement with the relative" [61].
Diagram. "A perfect translation" [62].
Dharma as Haqiqa, Tariqa, Shari'a. Marco Pallis: "If Dharma corresponds, on the one hand, to the absoluteness and infinitude of Essence, the dharmas for their part correspond to the relativity and contingency of the accidents" [63]. The single word Dharma maps onto the Islamic ternary of Essential Reality, Spiritual Path and Religious Law, all gathered in al-Haqq with its sense of a "right" that is "due" [63 to 64].
Chapter 18. Remembrance of God
"Establish the prayer for the sake of My remembrance" (20:14). "Prayer keeps [one] away from lewdness and iniquity, but the remembrance of God is greater" (29:45) [64]. Dhikr means both remembrance and invocation: both the goal and the means [64]. Buddhism has its own way of invocation, inherited in part from Hindu japa-yoga. The closest school is Pure Land, founded in Japan as Jodo-shu by Honen (d. 1212) [64 to 65].
Amida. The Buddha of Infinite Light, Amitabha (Omitofu, Amida), saves by rebirth in the "Pure land," whose descriptions "closely resemble those of the Qur'anic Paradise" [65]. Invoking Amida is "as if the two divine Names, al-Nur ('The Light') and al-Rahim ('The Merciful') were synthesised" [65]. His vow not to enter enlightenment until all beings are saved echoes "Your Lord has written Mercy upon His own Self" (6:12) [66], and the Prophet's words on 93:5: "I shall not be content for as long as a single member of my community (umma) is in the Fire." [67].
Chapter 19. Tariki and Tawakkul
Honen urged followers to "cease not the practice of the Nembutsu even for a moment," whether "walking, standing, sitting or lying" [67]. The Qur'an praises those "who invoke God standing, sitting and reclining on their sides" (3:191). The Prophet called "the perpetual invocation of God" better than giving gold and silver or fighting [68].
Diagram. Why both traditions route the end of egoism through an Other [68 to 69].
The Other Power. Nembutsu rests on tariki, the power of the "absolutely Other," against jiriki, one's own power. "One might argue that tariki is precisely what tawakkul, reliance or trust, means in Islam" [68]. Tawakkul even makes explicit what anatta leaves unsaid: "there must be something radically 'other', utterly beyond the self" [68]. Kanamatsu's image of the lamp that "must give up its oil to the light" describes Shinran's "melting of our self-power (jiriki) in the Other Power (tariki)" [69].
Chapter 20. Key to Salvation
Ibn 'Ata' Allah al-Iskandari (d. 1309) calls the remembrance of God "the key to salvation and the lamp of souls" [69]. Asked whether Om mani padme hum alone could carry a man to Deliverance, the Dalai Lama said "it would indeed suffice for one who had penetrated to the heart of its meaning" [70].
A wide definition. Ibn 'Ata' Allah counts as remembrance the Name, God's attributes, commandments and deeds, and "the remembrance of His Messengers, Prophets, saints" [70]. If the Face of God is everywhere, the saints, "given their effacement in the Face of the Absolute," let that Face shine through [70 to 71]. The divine saying on the saint states it: "I am his hearing by which he hears, his sight by which he sees, his hand by which he grasps, and his foot by which he walks" [71]. "The phenomenon of sanctity thus yields one of the most irrefutable proofs of tawhid" [71].
Chapter 21. Images of the Buddha, Blessings upon the Prophet
Images as remembrance. Contemplating the Buddha's image can be "a legitimate form of remembrance of God" [73]. Tibetan teachers call such images "apparent but empty": they appear, and they are seen through [73].
| Tao-ch'o's four ways Buddhas save [74] | How the Prophet fulfils them [74 to 76] |
|---|---|
| Oral teachings, recorded in books | Hadith, the Qur'an, and the divine sayings |
| Supernatural beauty | His beauty in devotional literature, which aids receptivity |
| Powers, virtues, transformations | "I was sent only for the sake of perfecting the most noble virtues" |
| Their names | 'Abd Allah, Dhikr Allah: names that point back to God |
Table. A Pure Land teacher's list (Tao-ch'o, d. 645) applied to the Prophet.
The mirror. Praising the Prophet is praising God, because he is "empty of himself": "The one who is most empty of his own self or dharma is the one who is most full of the Dharma" [72]. Jami (d. 1492) writes: "God made you the mirror of the Essence" [75]. The author offers a new Shahada: "No praised one (hamid) but the Praised One (al-Hamid)" [76].
Practice above all. Asked why he prayed until his feet swelled, the Prophet said: "Should I not be a grateful slave?" [77]. Milarepa showed his disciple Gambopa a body "covered with lumps and calluses" and said: "The most profound teaching in Buddhism is to practise." [78].
2. The Void matches the Shahada's negation; Suchness its affirmation.
3. Fana' and baqa' match nirvana and the exalted "holy persons."
4. Tariki and tawakkul end egoism by relying on an Other.
Part Three. Ethics of Detachment and Compassion
Part Three (pp. 79 to 109) argues that shared ethics are not merely social. In both faiths, detachment and compassion grow out of a quest for the Absolute. Buddhist insight into impermanence helps Muslims see a hidden idolatry in the Qur'an; Islamic teaching on rahma makes explicit what early Buddhism leaves implicit about compassion.
Ethics with a vertical axis. In Islam "there are no integral ethics that can be separated from one's quest for the 'Face' of God" [79]. The most mindful gives his wealth seeking "only the Face of his Lord most High. And he, indeed, will be content" (92:18 to 21). If Buddhism's goal corresponds to the divine Essence, then Buddhist ethics, too, are "rooted in a quest for the Absolute" [79].
Chapter 22. Detachment: Anicca and Zuhd
Leave aside the Buddhist cosmology of countless universes and rebirths, and focus on anicca, impermanence. Then Buddhism comes "remarkably close" to the Islamic view of "the life of this world," al-hayat al-dunya [80].
Diagram. Detachment in two vocabularies [80, 88].
Chapter 23. Suffering
The second noble truth names the cause of suffering: "thirst" (tanha) for the impermanent. This thirst harms twice: it binds oneself to what must be lost, and it breeds "all the vices that result in the infliction of suffering upon others" [80]. The motive for ending it lies above the ego, in the quest for the Dharma, "what in Islam is called the 'Face of God'" [81].
Diagram. Thirst harms twice [80 to 81].
Mindfulness and taqwa again. The saved feel "no fear or grief" (2:62). The friends of God enjoy this already: "they have no fear nor do they grieve—those who believe and are mindful" (10:62 to 64) [81]. "Mindful" renders yattaqun, from taqwa, which "can equally well be translated as 'mindfulness'" [82]. The Prophet's warning fits: "I do not fear that you will fall into idolatry (shirk), but I do fear that you will fall for this world" [82].
Chapter 24. Worldliness
| Prophetic saying [82 to 83] | Buddhist echo [83 to 85] |
|---|---|
| "Be in this world as if you were a stranger or a wayfarer." | "let not a man stay in his house [i.e., cling to self]" |
| Two valleys of money, he "would desire a third" | The fetter of "passion for gold and for jewels, for sons or for wives" |
| "Remember much that which ends all pleasures ... Death." | "By death is put away even that of which one thinks, 'This is mine own'" |
| "Die before you die." | "Impermanent, alas, are all compounded things" |
Table. Sayings on worldliness set beside the Sutta Nipata, the Digha Nikaya and the Dhammapada. A note explains the "house" as the self, from the Dhammapada's "housebuilder" verse [83].
Death to self and to the world together. These sayings join "dying to the ego and dying to the world": one must "rupture the symbiotic relationship between the inner subjective pole of egotism and the outer objective pole of things" [83]. The Dhammapada's world "as a bubble of froth" meets the Qur'an's foam that "passes away as scum upon the banks" (13:17) [84 to 85].
Chapter 25. Subtle Polytheism
The Qur'an's teaching on detachment has an overt layer (the world as play and passing) and a subtle one, "relating to a complex and calibrated apprehension of the meaning of idolatry and disbelief" [84]. The test case is the parable of the two gardens (18:32 to 42).
A believer's idolatry. The owner believes in his Lord and in a return to Him, yet the Qur'an charges him with shirk and kufr, because he did not see that "his" possessions are impermanent [87]. His boasting is read at its root, "as manifestations of kufr, and not just kibr (pride)" [87].
Diagram. The owner of the two gardens [86 to 87].
Chapter 26. The "god" of Desire
Surah 107 condemns worshippers who "refuse small kindnesses" [87 to 88]. Their miserliness shows that egotism has taken God's place: "Have you seen him who makes his desire (hawa) his god?" (25:43) [88].
Milarepa's two warnings. "He who strives for Liberation with / The thought of 'I' will ne'er attain it" [88]. And: "To give charity without compassion / Is like tying oneself to a pillar / With a strong leather strap" [88]. The Qur'an agrees: "A kind word with forgiveness is better than almsgiving followed by injury" (2:263) [88].
Spiritual materialism. The gardens can also be spiritual fruits of prayer and ascetic effort, whose owner expects a greater Garden. Buddhists call this "spiritual materialism" [90 to 91]. Right after the parable comes 18:44: "In this case is al-walaya only from God." Usually read as "protection," walaya can also mean "sanctity": spiritual gains count only if they lead "to self-effacement and not self-glorification" [91]. In Buddhist terms the opposite is attavadupadana, grasping at an idea of the self [92].
Chapter 27. Loving Compassion: Karuna and Rahma
Compassion is existential. Com-passion means to "suffer with" another. When the illusion of separation ends, "the suffering of the other becomes one's own" [92]. God's gift "can never be confined behind walls" (17:20); "My loving Compassion encompasses all things" (7:156) [93].
Diagram. Com-passion as "suffering with" [92].
Why "loving compassion". At the conquest of Mecca a captive woman searched frantically for her baby, found him and fed him. The Prophet asked whether she would cast her child into the fire, and said: "God is more lovingly compassionate (arham) to His servants than is this woman to her child." [94]. The root r-h-m carries love: Psalm 18 has "Erhamha Adonay—I love thee my Lord," and Ben-Shemesh renders the basmala "In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Beloved" [94].
Diagram. The mother image in both traditions [94 to 95].
The Buddha's mother image. The Metta-sutta uses almost the same picture: "Even as a mother watches over and protects her child, her only child, so with a boundless mind should one cherish all living beings" [95].
Chapter 28. Source of Compassion
A logical problem in early Buddhism. If there is no self, who receives compassion, and from where does it come [95]? Compassion seems to need a will that is personal yet absolute: transcendent enough to save, related enough to reach us [96]. Islam's rahma and the heavenly Buddhas of the Mahayana both express "this combination of absolute transcendence and personal compassion" [96]. Compassion "cannot be exhausted by its purely human manifestation"; it draws its power from "its supra-human, absolute or 'divine' source," a point on which the Buddha "was silent, but which he did not contradict" [97].
An Islamic synthesis. The Essence transcends all Names, yet God takes on personal qualities to save. This synthesis is analogous to the Mahayana-Hinayana polarity. It shows that Mahayana "theism" "in no way compromises" early Buddhism's stress on transcendence [97 to 98].
Chapter 29. Oneness and Compassion
Does non-duality leave room for compassion, which needs a giver and a receiver? The author answers that oneness implies compassion: God is both Ahad (exclusive One) and Wahid (inclusive One), and it is as inclusive that He "encompasses all things" [98]. The angels even put mercy before knowledge: "You encompass all things in Rahma and 'Ilm" (40:7). A note adds that in Tibet the Dalai Lama, representing compassion, has priority over the Panchen Lama, representing the Buddha of Light [98].
Diagram. Transcendent oneness at the centre, compassion as the encompassing ring. Islam holds tanzih and tashbih together; Milarepa holds Void and Bliss together [98 to 108].
Tashbih and tanzih. By likeness (tashbih), God "can metaphorically be said to manifest sympathy for us." By incomparability (tanzih), the divine quality cannot be subject to suffering [99]. Between the human virtue and the divine quality there is "essential continuity and existential discontinuity" [99].
Al-Ghazali on love. Human love is an "inclination" toward what completes us; God lacks nothing, so cannot love that way. Yet when the Qur'an says "He loves them" (5:54), it means that God "loves nothing other than Himself, in the sense that He is the totality [of being]" [100]. The saint learns this by being loved: "until I love him" [100].
Theravada too. The early texts are not only about teaching. "May all beings be at ease, secure" [101]. Followers should keep "minds that are like the earth," like "space which cannot be painted," like "the Ganges which cannot be burned" [102]. The Buddha defined "liberation of the mind" simply as "compassion" [102]. Compassion is both the "soil" in which concentration grows and the permanent "fruit" of enlightenment [102 to 103]. Its Islamic match is "a good opinion" (husn al-zann) toward all [102].
Chapter 30. Rahma as Creator
Mercy at the root of creation. Every surah but one opens with the basmala. Al-Rahman names the creative power of rahma, al-Rahim its saving power [103]. "Call upon Allah or call upon al-Rahman" (17:110) makes the two Names nearly the same. Rahma is "written" on God's own Self (6:12, 6:54): an inner law of the divine nature [104]. Surah 55, "al-Rahman," shows mercy teaching the Qur'an, creating man and filling the cosmos. God creates by, from and for mercy: "for this did He create them" (11:119) [104].
| Count, as given in the book [105] | Number |
|---|---|
| al-Rahman in Surah Maryam (19) | 16, more than any other surah |
| al-Rahman in the whole Qur'an (excluding the basmala) | 57 |
| al-Rahim (excluding the basmala) | 95 |
| Root r-h-m and derivatives (excluding 114 basmalas) | 375 |
Table. The womb (rahim) and mercy share a root, and the surah of the Virgin Mary holds over a quarter of the uses of al-Rahman. The cosmos is held in mercy "as the mother's womb nourishes and encompasses the embryo" [105].
Jodo Shin agrees. "From the Eternal Love do all beings have their birth" [105]. Amida is both Infinite Light and Eternal Life: "The Great Compassion is creator while the Great Wisdom contemplates." [106].
Milarepa's Void is not cold. "Without realizing the unity of Bliss and Void, / Even though on the Void you meditate, / You practice only nihilism" [107]. And: "Try to arouse for all a great compassion, / Be identified with the All-Merciful" [108].
An honest limit. Jodo Shin is not all of Buddhism. The author claims only that a compassionate Creator is "definitive, central and inalienable in Islam; and conceivable, possible, and, at least, not absolutely undeniable in Buddhism" [109].
2. A believer can idolize his possessions or spiritual gains.
3. Rahma is loving compassion, written on God's Self.
4. Compassion is the soil and the fruit of enlightenment.
Epilogue and Essay. Sanctity, Shahrastani and the Stranger
The book ends twice. Shah-Kazemi's epilogue (pp. 110 to 112) names the saint as the place where the two traditions meet. Shaykh Hamza Yusuf's essay, "Buddha in the Qur'an?" (pp. 113 to 136), turns from metaphysics to law and history, and ends with a story about Abraham and an unwelcome guest.
Chapter 31. The Common Ground of Sanctity
The epilogue opens with a Mahayana text, the Prajnopayaviniscayasiddhi. Wisdom is realizing "the non-substantiality of things"; Compassion is passionate devotion "to all beings who have failed to extricate themselves from a whole flood of suffering"; their union is "Wisdom-Means in a union free of duality" [110].
The Islamic definition of the saint matches it. In the divine saying, God becomes the hearing, sight, hand and foot of the one He loves. The saint's action is then "divine love in union with perfect knowledge" [111]. The saint "provides the most dramatic and irrefutable evidence of the most radical tawhid," because only one effaced before God can reflect His Face [111].
Chapter 32. Buddha in the Qur'an? Where Muslims Placed Buddhists
Apples and oranges, and yet. Yusuf grants the comparison can look like "apples and oranges," but both faiths see themselves as reforms of an older tradition, both make universal claims, and both put "kindness, compassion, and mercy" at the core [113].
Six categories. The Qur'an names six groups: "the Muslims, the Jews, the Sabians, the Christians, the Magians, and the polytheists, God will decide among them on the day of resurrection" (22:17). Its "weighty import": "it is theologically prohibited for us to condemn any individual, irrespective of his or her faith, to damnation" [114].
Diagram. The six groups God "will decide among" [113 to 114].
Early scholars were kinder than modern ones. Ibn al-Nadim (d. 998) listed books on the Buddha in his Fihrist, noted that some held him a messenger of God, and described the Bamiyan images and the Nava Vihara monastery [114 to 115]. Al-Shahrastani (d. 1153), a Shafi'i jurist and Ash'ari theologian, classed Buddhists as Sabians, a group the Qur'an counts among the saved [115].
| Scholar (dates as printed) | View relevant to Buddhists |
|---|---|
| Abu Hanifah (d. 767) | Sabians do not worship idols "but rather they exalt the stars, as the Kaaba ... is exalted" [117] |
| Ibn Taymiyyah (d. 1255) | Some Sabians hold a "shared type of submission (islam mushtarak)" and say "There is no deity but God" without book or prophet [116] |
| Al-Ghazzali (d. 1111) | Those who meet "a distorted presentation of Islam" are excused [118] |
| Imam Malik (d. 795) | Protected status allowed for non-Abrahamic religions, "even ones which involve idolatry" [129] |
| Ibn 'Abidin (d. 1836) | Persecuting non-Muslims in an Islamic state is a greater crime than persecution of Muslims by non-Muslims [134] |
Table. The jurists Yusuf calls on. A hadith adds that God forgave a man who had himself cremated, hoping God could not recreate him, despite his doubt about God's power [116].
Chapter 33. The Buddha as al-Khadir
Al-Shahrastani describes Buddhists as holding that the Buddha "does not marry, eat, drink, age, or die," and lists the Bodhisattva's ten sins to avoid and ten virtues to perfect [118 to 119]. Then the "stunning" suggestion: "it would seem that he is none other than al-Khadir" [119]. Yusuf notes in passing that al-Shahrastani dates Shakyamuni "approximately 5000 years" before the Hijrah, and is "off by about four thousand years" [118].
| Al-Khadir, in Muslim sources | The Buddha |
|---|---|
| Given "mercy and experiential knowledge of reality" (18:65); not generally a prophet | An enlightened teacher, not a prophet in the Abrahamic sense |
| "A teacher who wants no students"; teaches what "has to be experienced" | "This is a very Buddhist view" [119 to 120] |
| Sat "upon white herbage under which green foliage sprouted forth" | Often shown on white lotus flowers with green leaves [121] |
| "the Green Man" | Often portrayed as green in statues [121] |
| A king's son who refused the throne and fled; celibate; said to be in India | A prince who left his palace to meditate [121] |
| "people suffer in this world to the degree of their mental attachment to it" | The core of Buddhist teaching [122] |
Table. Yusuf's parallels. Al-Khadir's explanation to Moses, "I was not acting from my own concerns" (18:82), "exemplifies the Arahat's purpose in life" [122].
Archetype, not genealogy. The dates of Moses and the Buddha differ by about 700 years, but many Muslims hold al-Khadir to be living until the end of time. Yusuf suggests seeing the Buddha as "one manifestation of the spiritual archetype" of al-Khadir: guidance "antinomian and enigmatic" [119]. Al-Khadir's direct knowledge ('ilm ladunni) is knowledge "from the divine presence," without an angel or a prophet [120]. Ibrahim b. Adham, the king of Balkh turned ascetic, said Khidr "taught me the Great Name of God" [120].
Chapter 34. A Shared and Uneven History
Yusuf does not tell a tidy story. There were times of "relative peace and security under Muslim rule," times of forced conversion and massacre, and some "Buddhist oppression of Muslims" [122].
| Date (as printed) | Event [123 to 127] |
|---|---|
| around 630 | Hsuan Tsang finds about one hundred monasteries at Balkh |
| 680s | Yijing finds Nava Vihara "flourishing" under Muslim rule (quoting Berzin) |
| early 8th c. | Al-Kermani describes Nava Vihara by analogy with the Kaaba |
| 705, 708 | Tibetans and Turki Shahis push back; Nazaktar Khan beheads the abbot who had converted |
| 717 | A Tibetan envoy at the court of 'Umar b. 'Abd al-'Aziz, who sends a scholar to Tibet |
| al-Ma'mun (d. 833) | The king of Kabul converts; a Buddha statue is displayed in Mecca |
| 871 | Ya'qub b. Layth reaches Kabul and finds its ruler an "idolater" |
| 1246-1248 | Under Kuyuk Khan, an imam is forced to pray before hostile clergy and endures abuse |
| Ilkhanid era | Ghazan Khan, raised Buddhist, converts to Islam |
Table. Episodes Yusuf recounts. The Barmakids, Buddhist shrine-keepers who converted, later "revolutionized Muslim government" in Baghdad [123].
Veneration is not worship. Many Muslims "conflate veneration with worship" [128]. Zen "certainly cannot be termed idolatrous, even by Islam's severe standards" [128]. The harder problem is Buddhists who call themselves atheists. Here Yusuf quotes Shah-Kazemi's line from p. 31 that the Buddha's doctrine is non-theistic but not atheistic [128].
The law of protection. Following Imam Malik and many Hanafis, the Prophet "took jizyah from the Magians," and said: "Treat them as you would the People of the Book." [129]. When 9:5 is quoted against polytheists, the next verse orders that they be granted security and escorted to safety, "because they are people without knowledge" (9:6) [130]. The Prophet warned: "Whoever oppresses a non-Muslim who has a covenant with Muslims ... I will argue against the Muslim on the Day of Judgment" [130].
Chapter 35. Kindness, Kin and the Stranger in the Tent
Kind and kin. "Kindness is engendered by a shared sense of 'kind.'" "Kin" shares a root with a word meaning "womb," which in Arabic is rahim, the root of rahmah [131]. The Qur'an calls all people one family, "Banu Adam" [131].
Diagram. Kindness, kin and the womb [131].
Hope and its hazards. Media now let us see how others live, yet "fear too often wells up" before people unlike us; "xenophobia" means "a fear of the other" [132]. Buddhism "seems to have less of this tendency than other faiths," but is not immune, and Islam, "more often than not a fount of tolerance in a xenophobic world," is now seen by some as intolerant [132]. The Prophet said: "Gentleness is never in a thing except that it embellishes it and is never removed from something except that it blemishes it" [132].
Diagnosis. Many conflicts "are fueled by religious rhetoric that cloaks deeper causes, mostly greed, covetousness, and aggression" [133]. Yusuf's teacher, Shaykh Abdullah Bin Bayyah, told him: "The dignity of humanity precedes the dignity of faith and is subordinate to it." [133]. Islam's "We have dignified all of humankind" (17:70) meets Buddhism's call to "compassion toward all sentient beings" [133]. And the Prophet said: "None of you truly believes until he loves for his fellow man what he loves for himself" [133].
Diagram. Human dignity before faith, in Yusuf's diagnosis [133].
The story, "not necessarily its ending," shows the aim of the whole project: "inviting into our tent the stranger who may not look, worship, or be like us in many ways" [136].
Synthesis
What the book establishes, the tools it offers, where it is strong and where it strains, who its voices are, and how its ideas carry over into technology, architecture and finance.
Key Takeaways
- Difference is the starting point, not the enemy. The book insists that formal differences be "unabashedly asserted" [1].
- Compare like with like. Buddhist doctrine sits on the level of Islamic ma'rifa, not 'aqida [2].
- Ethics alone breed condescension. Without shared truth, the other's goodness is credited "despite the religion's falsity" [5].
- History already decided once. The Brahmanabad settlement of 711 gave Buddhists protected status [8].
- Pragmatism and principle agreed. Scholars did not see that policy as betraying any principle [9 to 10].
- The Qur'an leaves room for an unnamed Messenger. "For every community there is a Messenger" (10:47) [13].
- No-self points beyond the self. "The relative self cannot reveal the relativity of the self" [22].
- Message and sanctity are distinct. Risala is unique; walaya is open to all [21].
- Silence is not denial. The Buddha's quiet about a Creator was method, driven by urgency [32, 36].
- Non-theism is not atheism. He affirmed an "unborn, not become, not made, uncompounded" [29, 31].
- Two truths keep both voices honest. Conventional and ultimate truth explain the paradoxes [34].
- The Void is the Shahada's "no". Emptiness of all dharmas matches "no divinity" [40].
- The concept of God is a door, not a room. "That which is conceivable cannot be the ultimate Reality" [43].
- Al-Samad is the full Dharma. Only the Absolute is "not hollow" [44].
- Everything has two faces. Toward itself it is nothing; toward God it exists [47].
- Fana' is nirvana's twin. Both are extinction that leads to subsistence in the Real [49 to 52].
- Images save only when transparent. "Apparent but empty" [73].
- Reliance on the Other ends egoism. Tariki and tawakkul share one logic [68].
- Remembrance is the key. Dhikr and Nembutsu are invocations for every posture and moment [67].
- Desire is the hidden idol. Tanha and hawa name the same false god [89].
- A believer can be an idolater. The owner of the gardens shows shirk without statues [87].
- Rahma is loving compassion. The mother at Mecca defines it [94].
- Oneness implies compassion. The inclusive One "encompasses all things" in mercy [98].
- Compassion is soil and fruit. It prepares enlightenment and remains after it [102 to 103].
- The saint is the common ground. Knowledge of the One and gift of self to all [112].
- Humanity before creed. "The dignity of humanity precedes the dignity of faith" [133].
Frameworks
| Framework | What it does | Pages |
|---|---|---|
| Letter vs spirit ('aqida vs ma'rifa) | Chooses the right level for comparison | 2 to 4 |
| Three conditions of 2:62 | Absolute, accountability, virtue: a test for "saved" communities | 10, 19 |
| Risala vs walaya | Separates a founder's unique message from shareable sanctity | 20 to 21 |
| Two truths (samvrti / paramartha) | Holds conventional and ultimate statements together | 34, 54 |
| Nafy / ithbat of the Shahada | Maps emptiness and Suchness onto "no god but God" | 40, 46 |
| Fana' / baqa' | Extinction and subsistence: the path's two moments | 40, 49 to 52 |
| Three bodies of the Buddha | Human, celestial, Absolute; with Prophetic parallels | 59 to 60 |
| Dharma as Haqiqa / Tariqa / Shari'a | One word, three levels: reality, path, law | 63 |
| Tariki vs jiriki | Other Power against self-power; parallels tawakkul | 68 to 69 |
| Overt vs subtle shirk | Idolatry as a state of mind, not only a statue | 84 to 90 |
| Tashbih / tanzih | Divine compassion: like ours in essence, unlike in mode | 98 to 99 |
| Ahad / Wahid | Exclusive and inclusive oneness; the second grounds mercy | 98 |
| Wisdom-Means | Wisdom plus compassion as the definition of sanctity | 110 to 112 |
A closer look
Strengths. The book keeps its promise to respect difference. It concedes an "unbridgeable" divide in theology [31] and stops short of equating Jodo Shin with all of Buddhism [109]. Its central argument from no-self to an objective Absolute [22] is tight and original. It grounds every claim in the Qur'an, hadith or al-Ghazali, so a traditional Muslim reader can follow it without leaving home. Hamza Yusuf's essay balances the metaphysics with law and with an honest, two-sided history.
Where it strains. The comparison runs mostly one way. Buddhism is read "in the light of Islamic spirituality" [1], and its texts are chosen where they sound closest to Islam: Mahayana, Pure Land, Milarepa. A Theravada reader might resist having the "unborn" equated with God's Essence, and the author admits Buddhists will resist calling the Buddha a "messenger of God" [23]. The reading of silence as non-denial is plausible but cannot be proved from silence. Some links rest on resemblance more than argument, such as the white herbage and the lotus, which Yusuf himself leaves to conjecture [121]. Al-Shahrastani's dating of the Buddha is, by Yusuf's own note, "off by about four thousand years" [118].
What a reader should hold onto. The method travels well: compare traditions at the level where they do the same work, keep the formal differences visible, and test agreement by its fruit in compassion and practice.
Who's Who
| Person | Role in the book (dates only as printed) |
|---|---|
| Reza Shah-Kazemi | Author; acknowledgements dated Westerham, April 2010 |
| Shaykh Hamza Yusuf | Author of "Buddha in the Qur'an?"; born in Walla Walla, Washington |
| The Fourteenth Dalai Lama | Foreword dated January 21, 2010; voice of "constructive competition" |
| Prince Ghazi bin Muhammad | (b. 1966) Commissioned the book; introduction dated March 2010 |
| Mohammad Hashim Kamali | Jurist; preface dated March 2010 |
| Al-Ghazali | (d. 1111) Main Islamic authority: kalam as veil, the two faces, fana' |
| Muhammad b. Qasim | Umayyad general; Sind campaign launched in 711 |
| Nagarjuna | (ca. 2nd century CE) Founder of Madhyamaka; the two truths |
| Hui-neng | (d. 713) Sixth patriarch of Chan; "thoughtlessness" |
| Honen | (d. 1212) Founder of Jodo-shu; the Nembutsu |
| Shinran | (d. 1262) Honen's successor; naturalness, Other Power |
| Ibn 'Ata' Allah al-Iskandari | (d. 1309) "The Key to Salvation" |
| Milarepa | Tibet's "greatest poet-saint"; "Many-Being-One" |
| Kenryo Kanamatsu | Shin Buddhist author of Naturalness |
| Jami | (d. 1492) "God made you the mirror of the Essence" |
| Tao-ch'o | (d. 645) Four ways the Buddhas save |
| Ibn al-Nadim | (d. 998) Fihrist; notes on the Buddha |
| Al-Shahrastani | (d. 1153) Religions and Sects; Buddha as al-Khadir |
| Ibn Taymiyyah | (d. 1255, as printed) Two kinds of Sabians |
| Shaykh Abdullah Bin Bayyah | Yusuf's teacher; dignity of humanity |
Glossary
| Term | Meaning in the book |
|---|---|
| Ahad / Wahid | Exclusive and inclusive oneness of God [98] |
| Ahl al-Kitab | "People of the Book"; recipients of revealed scripture |
| Anatta | No-self; one of the three marks [21] |
| Anicca | Impermanence [21, 80] |
| 'Aqida | Doctrinal creed of Islam [2] |
| Asamskrta | Uncompounded; the Absolute [41] |
| Baqa' | Subsistence in God after extinction [40, 52] |
| Dharma | Teaching, law, norm, truth, reality; closest to al-Haqq [58, 63] |
| Dhikr | Remembrance and invocation of God [64] |
| Dhimmi | Protected non-Muslim subject [7 to 8] |
| Dukkha | Suffering [21, 80] |
| Fana' | Extinction of the self in God [40, 49] |
| Hawa | Caprice, desire of the lower soul [88 to 89] |
| Ikhlas | Purification and sincerity; title of Surah 112 [41] |
| Jiriki / Tariki | Self-power / Other Power [68] |
| Karuna / Metta | Compassion / love [93] |
| Ma'rifa | Spiritual wisdom, inner knowledge [2] |
| Nafy / Ithbat | Negation and affirmation in the Shahada [40] |
| Nembutsu | Invocation namu Amida Butsu [67] |
| Paramartha / Samvrti | Ultimate fruit / conventional truth [34] |
| Rahma | Loving compassion; root shared with rahim, womb [94, 105] |
| Risala / Walaya | Prophetic message / sanctity [21] |
| Shunya | The Void [40 to 41] |
| Tanha | Thirst, craving [80] |
| Tanzih / Tashbih | Incomparability / similarity [98 to 99] |
| Taqwa | God-consciousness; "mindfulness" [61, 82] |
| Tathagata | "Thus come," "thus gone" [14] |
| Tathata | Suchness [44] |
| Tawakkul | Reliance, trust in God [68] |
| Upaya | Skilful means [23, 35] |
| Zuhd | Detachment from the world [79] |
About this book
Common Ground Between Islam and Buddhism by Reza Shah-Kazemi, 2010. This is a chapter-by-chapter study of the book, with summaries, maps, tables and diagrams; short quotations keep their page references. It is shared free for personal study, is not for sale, and is not endorsed by the author or publisher. Please read and buy the original.
Insight Editions · rajeshrmahapatra.com/insight-editions