The Golden Rule is also sometimes referred to as the Rule of Reciprocity –the simple maxim that the best way to conduct your own life is to treat others as you would prefer to be treated yourself. The rule is nice, simple, easy to understand and fairly easy to follow — notwithstanding smart-alec sophistry by George Bernard Shaw and quibbles from the likes of Kant and Nietzsche. It is also ancient.
An Egyptian text from around 590 BC instructs “That which you hate to be done to you, do not do to another.” A whole string of Greek philosophers (many of whom were also variously rulers and soldiers) from Pittacos of Mytilene to Socrates espoused similar views.
In the 5th Century BC, Confucius was apparently asked if a simple one word could be a practical guide to a moral life; he responded “Is not reciprocity such a word?” Later on, in the Analects, he elaborated with “Never impose on others what you would not choose for yourself.” The great sage Laozi took things a few steps further, and enjoined everyone to do no harm at all if they could avoid it.
A Hindu text (the Anusana Parva) points out that “One should never do that to another which one regards as injurious to one’s own self. This, in brief, is the rule of dharma. Other behaviour is due to selfish desires.” Buddha’s Tipitaka is full of similar sayings and the concept of reciprocity is central to his teachings on how people should conduct themselves.
Thus from Egypt to Greece to India to China, by the 5th Century BC, the ideal code of behaviour for all people had been clearly enunciated. Of course, being who we are, the ideal is seldom realized, but for those who want to live a moral life the signpost is clear.
The Golden Rule probably took its clearest description some 500 years later. Two of the four Gospels that cite Jesus in his famous Sermon on the Mount which contains the injunction that (as brought forward in English in the 17th Century) “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”
Several earlier injunctions on this line can be found in Leviticus, but it takes the later Jewish commentator Tobas to sum it up as: “Do to no one what you yourself dislike.” Rabbi Hillel, an Alexandrian sage more or less contemporary to Jesus, wrote in the Talmud “That which is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow. That is the whole Torah; the rest is the explanation; go and learn.”
Variations on the Golden Rule also pop up in the writings of the Sikh Gurus, in Taoism, the Baha’is preach it and Jainism is built around it. The Golden Rule is in secular humanism, and in Wicca. It is well-nigh universal. In fact of all the major religions and philosophies of the world, it only seems to be missing in one.
“Learn that every Muslim is a brother to every Muslim and that the Muslims constitute one brotherhood. Nothing shall be legitimate to a Muslim which belongs to a fellow Muslim unless it was given freely and willingly. Do not, therefore, do injustice to yourselves.”
— Ahmad Ibn Hanbal’s Hadith – attributed to a farewell sermon from Mohammed that is not found in the Quran. Hanbal was writing some 200 years after Mohammed’s Death in 632 AD.
In reading the Quran it soon becomes clear that many of the best practices espoused by Mohammed in his Mecca days before he fled to Medina seem to have been borrowed from Judaism and Christianity. But it does not seem that he borrowed the Golden Rule.
For 14 Centuries, Christians and Jews have been told that they have nothing to fear from Islam… except that when ruled by Muslims they must live as Dhimmi – second-class citizens in every respect and subjected to a slow gradual cultural genocide. Followers of other religions get a different choice – convert, or face either enslavement or death. As the Hadith makes clear, true equality is for Muslims alone.
In contrast to Buddhism, Christianity, Confucianism, Hinduism, Judaism, Sikhism, and Taoism, Islam does have an aggressive reflex. Since Mohammed’s time, Islam has usually divided the world between Dar al Islam and Dar al Harb. The first is the House of Peace, where Islam rules, the second is the House of Chaos, of War, where Islam does not rule. This is an interesting construct very much along the old Soviet concept of Peace a few people might remember from the Cold War: What was controlled by the Soviets would be at peace, what wasn’t, could not be. Another way of looking it might be “What’s mine is mine, what’s yours is negotiable.”
We are often told that Islam is a religion of peace. The Soviets used to say similar things. As always, one should ask how peace is defined. Subscribing to the Golden Rule in the way most of humanity understands it seems like a fair start.
