Question
How can you speak about Allah when you do not believe in him…? How can someone who believes in several divinities speak about Allah this way…? How can you influence people when you do not know where you are going yourself…? Do not forget that your words can lead someone into sin, whose consequences you will then have to bear… For it is not the weapon that kills, but the hand holding it!!!!
Anonymous
Answer from Master Kosen
Dear friend, I think God is one and expresses himself in everything and everyone, even if humans give him different names and religious fanatics want to kill one another in those names. I am not like that, and it is my own choice. If I must go to hell for it, I humbly accept. “Ach hadou an la illa Allah wa ach anna Muhammadan abdoulou wa rassoulo.” These are the words I spoke in Paris in 1991 and speak again today, live on my website (please excuse the spelling). It was in a small mosque in the 18th arrondissement on the last day of Ramadan, during the first Gulf War, a time of extreme violence. I said this because I am in no way in contradiction or disagreement with these words, and declaring them is not a lie. I received the name Abdallah, servant of Allah, and that poses no problem for me—quite the contrary. Then I was given a date whose pit I have always kept, and the brothers invited me to celebrate the meal ending Ramadan with them. They told me that if I were ever hungry, there would always be a place and something to eat for me in every mosque in the world. I observe a Ramadan fast almost every Monday, about 45 days a year, except when traveling. Yet I have been Buddhist for forty years and am even Christian, since I was baptized at birth. If I am an infidel because I do not properly fulfill Islam’s obligations, I will go to hell, so be it; but I prefer to go to hell having received the shahada than without it.
I also want to clarify that I do not teach Islam on my site, because I have never been authorized to do so. I teach Zen Buddhism because I followed a Zen master for fifteen years, and he asked me to do this work after his death.
Kosen