Eid Mubarak!

Wishing you and your loved ones a blessed and happy Eid. May the coming time be one of joy in your families and communities as well as in the world. We pray that the days and weeks to come bring peace and security to all of humankind.

As we end this sacred month we also want to remind ourselves of the many lessons of Ramadan that we hope will stay with us throughout the rest of the year. To conclude our series on “First Principles of Religion”, we end appropriately with one of the most important – and most challenging – principles, treating others as we would like to be treated. This was the topic of a recent editorial that we published in Patheos recently, The Golden Rule to Becoming Better People Through Religious Practices. 

All of the previous principles can be summed up in a principle that, though stated in different forms, can be found in all religious (and many non-religious) traditions: the Golden Rule. This principle simply urges people to treat others the way they themselves would like to be treated. As we want others to respect our life and dignity, so we must respect and protect the life and dignity of others; as we want others to respect our freedoms of religion, conscience, thought, and expression, so we must respect and defend these freedoms for others. This ethic of reciprocity, as it is sometimes called, is thus at the very heart of religion.