A day after Acharya Lokesh Muni, along with a group of other religious leaders stormed off the stage at an event of the Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind expressing objection to its chief Maulana Arshad Madani’s “Om and Allah are the same” statement, the prominent Jain monk on Monday said he could not tolerate the insult of his religion and culture in front of his eyes.
“I would rather accept my martyrdom. I can’t tolerate the insult of my religion and culture in front of my eyes. So I protested and challenged the debate,” Muni tweeted.
The Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind (Arshad Madani faction) chief on Sunday stoked a controversy when he claimed that “Om” and “Allah” were the same God worshipped by ‘Manu’, drawing objections from other religious leaders.
Speaking on the third and final day of the 34th general session of the Jamiat at the Ramlila Maidan in Delhi, Arshad Madani said he asked the “dharma gurus” as to who was worshipped when there was no Shri Ram, Brahma or Shiva.
“Some say Manu worshipped Shiva. Very few have pointed out that there was nothing in the world and Manu worshipped Om. I asked who is Om, many said ‘it is just air, it has no form, it has no colour and it is everywhere, it made the sky and land’. I said this is what we call Allah, you call Ishwar, those speaking Persian call Khuda and those speaking English call God,” Madani said.
“This means that Manu, that is Adam, used to worship one Om, that is one Allah,” he said.
Manu is a term found in religious texts, referring to the first man or the progenitor of humanity.
Arshad Madani made the remarks while referring to the reported statement of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) chief Mohan Bhagwat that Hindus and Muslims of India share the same ancestry, and the contention from certain quarters that Muslims should make ‘ghar wapsi’ -return to the religion of their ancestors.
Allah sent the last prophet, Mohammad, in Arabia and he gave the same message to the Arab land which was given from India and this was not a new message – one ‘Om’, one ‘Allah’ will be worshiped and no one else will be worshiped except him, Arshad Madani said.
“Today they tell us ‘do ghar wapsi’. I say that those who say this are illiterate. They do not know the history of their country, the history of religions,” the Jamiat chief said.
A seemingly angry Muni, who walked off the stage, accusing Madani of digressing from talking about the unity to spinning a story about “Manu and Allah”.
“We only agree with living in harmony, but all these stories regarding Om, Allah, and Manu are all baseless. He (Madani) completely spoiled the environment of the session,” Muni said.
“The stories he narrated, I can narrate even bigger stories than that. I would even request him (Madani) to come for a discussion with me, or even I can come to meet him in Saharanpur,” the monk said.
Leaders of different faiths are often invited to the programmes and sessions of the Jamiat. Acharya Lokesh Muni has been part of several Jamiat-organised programmes in the past as well.
After leaving the stage, Muni told reporters, “We believe that good deeds create good fortune, bad deeds create bad fortune. We follow this philosophy.”
He accused Madani of sowing divisions with his remarks.
(With inputs from PTI)
