RELIGION OF SPIRITUAL DEMOCRAY

(S) RELIGION OF SPIRITUAL DEMOCRAY
In the sphere of worship, Islam stands for the establishment of direct relation between God and human being without the mediation of any priest. Every Muslim man and woman is, therefore, his or her own priest or priestess.

It is wrong to regard the scholars (Ulama) or the leaders (Imams) of congregational prayers in the mosques as priests. Any good Muslim who knows Islam can lead the prayers, while the ‘Ulama’ are simply scholars and experts of Islamic knowledge and merely fulfil a responsibility which rests on the shoulders of the entire Islamic Brotherhood. For, Islam wants every Muslim man and woman to be a scholar of its teachings, unlike, for instance, Hinduism, where those belonging to the caste of Brahmins alone possess this privilege.Rev.W.Wilson Cash, the famous Christian missionary and hostile critic of Islam, had to confess: "Islam endowed its people with a dignity peculiarly its own… Direct access to God makes one of the strong appeals of Islam" (The Expansion of Islam p. 177).