An Interfaith Editorial Review
One Humanity, Many Paths:
What the World’s Great Scriptures Teach Us
About How to Treat Every Human Being
An Editorial Reflection by Dr Ko Ko Gyi @ Abdul Rahman Zafrudin March 2026
In an age fractured by suspicion, walls, and the fear of the ‘other,’ one of the most urgent questions of our time is not theological — it is deeply human: How should we treat those who are not like us? The stranger at the gate. The neighbour who prays differently. The refugee who speaks another tongue. The enemy across the border. The poor person we step around on the way to work.
The answer, remarkably, is not found in silence. Across five of the world’s great spiritual traditions — the Bible, the Torah, the Quran, the Buddhist Dhamma, and the Hindu scriptures — the voice is not merely similar. It is, in its essential humanity, the same voice.
This editorial does not flatten differences between faiths, nor does it pretend that history has always honoured these teachings. It does something simpler and more pressing: it listens to the best of what each tradition says, and invites us to live up to it.
I. The Stranger, the Foreigner, and the Migrant
Perhaps no ethical test is older than the test of the stranger. Long before nation-states and border controls, the great traditions already had a word for the person who arrives at your door from elsewhere — and that word was almost always accompanied by a command: welcome them.
The Torah and the Hebrew Bible
The Hebrew Bible — foundational to both Judaism and Christianity — is breathtakingly specific on this point, commanding the protection of foreigners not once, but repeatedly:
[Torah / Hebrew Bible] Leviticus 19:33–34 “When a foreigner resides among you in your land, do not mistreat them. The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt.”
[Torah / Hebrew Bible] Deuteronomy 10:18–19 “He defends the cause of the fatherless and the widow, and loves the foreigner residing among you, giving them food and clothing. And you are to love those who are foreigners, for you yourselves were foreigners in Egypt.”
The reason given is powerful: empathy born from shared experience. The memory of suffering is meant to generate compassion, not walls.
The New Testament
[Bible (New Testament)] Matthew 25:35 “For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me.”
In this famous passage, Jesus identifies himself with the stranger — making hospitality to the outsider nothing less than an encounter with the divine.
The Quran
[Quran] Al-Baqarah 2:177 “Righteousness is not that you turn your faces toward the east or the west, but [true] righteousness is in one who believes in God… and gives wealth, in spite of love for it, to relatives, orphans, the needy, the traveller, those who ask [for help], and for freeing slaves.”
The traveller — the ibn al-sabil, the ‘son of the road’ — has a recognised right in Islamic ethics. Caring for the one in transit is not charity; it is justice.
Buddhist Teachings
[Buddhism] Dhammapada 129 “All living beings fear being harmed, just as you do. Knowing this, you should neither hurt nor kill.”
[Buddhism] Sutta Pitaka – Digha Nikaya “Treating all beings with metta — loving-kindness — without exception, just as a mother protects her only child with her own life, let one cultivate a boundless heart toward all beings.”
The Buddhist tradition places no condition of citizenship, creed, or origin on who deserves loving-kindness. The Metta Sutta is explicit: all beings, without exception.
Hindu Scriptures
[Hinduism] Taittiriya Upanishad 1.11.2 “Treat your guest as God — Atithi Devo Bhava.”
[Hinduism] Mahabharata 3.313.116 “Do not do unto others what you would not have them do unto you.”
Atithi Devo Bhava — ‘the guest is God’ — is not a courtesy maxim. It is a theological statement: the divine is present in the face of the one who arrives at your door, unannounced, from far away.
“The stranger is not a threat to be managed. In every tradition, the stranger is a test of our humanity.”
II. The Neighbour — Including the One Who Believes Differently
Neighbourliness might seem a modest virtue, but the great traditions make it an exacting one — especially when the neighbour holds different beliefs.
[Bible (New Testament)] Luke 10:27–37 “Love your neighbour as yourself.” When asked “Who is my neighbour?” Jesus answered with the Parable of the Good Samaritan — in which a despised foreigner, a religious and ethnic outsider, models compassion that the religious insiders failed to show.
The Samaritan in Jesus’ parable was not merely from another village. He was from a people that orthodox Jews of the time considered heretical. The point is unmistakable: your neighbour is precisely the one you might be most tempted to ignore.
[Quran] Al-Mumtahanah 60:8 “God does not forbid you from being good and just to those who have not fought you in religion and have not driven you out of your homes. Indeed, God loves those who act justly.”
This verse directly addresses relationships with non-Muslims who are at peace — and the Quran’s guidance is clear: goodness and fairness, not suspicion.
[Torah] Leviticus 19:18 “You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall love your neighbour as yourself: I am the Lord.”
[Buddhism] Dhammapada 5 “Hatred is never appeased by hatred in this world. By non-hatred alone is hatred appeased. This is a law eternal.”
[Hinduism] Bhagavad Gita 6:32 “One who sees the equality of everything, in the image of one’s own Self, whether in happiness or distress — that person is considered the highest yogi.”
Seeing one’s own self in the other — this is the Hindu concept of Atmavat sarva bhutesu, the recognition that the same consciousness animates all beings. Difference of religion or race does not alter this fundamental equality.
III. The Poor, the Hungry, and the Dispossessed
On few subjects are the world’s scriptures more insistent, or more impatient, than on the obligation to the poor. This is not a peripheral theme in any tradition — it is central.
[Bible (New Testament)] James 2:14–17 “What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace, be warmed and filled,’ without giving them the things needed for the body — what good is that?”
[Torah / Hebrew Bible] Proverbs 19:17 “Whoever is generous to the poor lends to the Lord, and he will repay him for his deed.”
[Quran] Al-Baqarah 2:83 “Worship none but God; be good to parents, to relatives, orphans, and the very poor; speak kindly to all people.”
[Buddhism] Itivuttaka 26 “If beings knew, as I know, the results of giving and sharing, they would not eat without having given, nor would the taint of miserliness overcome their minds.”
[Hinduism] Rig Veda 10.117.1 “The gods have not ordained hunger to be our death; even to the well-fed man comes death in various shapes. The riches of the generous person never waste away, but the miser finds none to comfort him.”
The accumulation of wealth in the face of poverty is not treated as a neutral act in any of these traditions. Each, in its own way, insists that our abundance carries an obligation.
“Generosity is not a spiritual bonus — it is the baseline of a just life.”
IV. The Enemy — The Most Radical Teaching
Here the traditions reach their most demanding — and perhaps most countercultural — teaching: the treatment of the enemy. Not tolerance of the enemy. Not mere non-violence. In many cases: active goodwill.
[Bible (New Testament)] Matthew 5:44 “But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven.”
[Torah / Hebrew Bible] Proverbs 25:21 “If your enemy is hungry, give him bread to eat; if he is thirsty, give him water to drink.”
[Quran] Fussilat 41:34 “Good and evil are not equal. Repel evil with what is better, and your enemy will become as though he were a devoted friend.”
[Buddhism] Dhammapada 223 “Conquer anger by non-anger, conquer evil by good, conquer the miser by generosity, conquer the liar by truth.”
[Hinduism] Yoga Vasishtha “The greatest conqueror is not the one who defeats enemies in battle, but the one who conquers hatred within himself.”
These are not naive texts. They were written by people who knew violence, exile, persecution, and war. The instruction to treat the enemy with justice — or even kindness — was not ignorance of cruelty. It was a conscious, hard-won ethical choice.
V. The Unbeliever and the Person of a Different Faith
This is perhaps the most contested area, where history has seen the greatest betrayal of scriptural ideals. Yet the core teachings, read in their full context, offer a foundation for genuine pluralism.
[Quran] Al-Kafirun 109:6 “To you be your religion, and to me my religion.”
[Quran] Al-Baqarah 2:256 “There is no compulsion in religion. The right course has become clear from the wrong.”
[Bible (New Testament)] Romans 12:18 “If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all.”
[Torah] Talmud, Sanhedrin 37a “Whoever saves a single life, it is as if he has saved an entire world. And whoever destroys a single life, it is as if he has destroyed an entire world.”
The Talmud makes no qualifier here. A single life — any life. The word used is nefesh, a soul. Not a Jewish soul. A soul.
[Buddhism] Kalama Sutta (Anguttara Nikaya 3.65) “Do not go by oral tradition, by lineage of teaching, by hearsay, by a collection of scriptures… When you know for yourself: ‘These things are wholesome, blameless, praised by the wise; when undertaken they lead to welfare and happiness’ — then you should practice them.”
The Buddha’s instruction to the Kalamas — essentially, think for yourself and judge by the fruit — is one of the most tolerant passages in world religious literature. It extends respect to the sincere seeker regardless of their tradition.
[Hinduism] Bhagavad Gita 4:11 “In whatever way people surrender unto Me, I reward them accordingly. Everyone follows My path in all respects, O Arjuna.”
[Hinduism] Rig Veda 1.164.46 “Ekam sat vipra bahudha vadanti — Truth is One; the wise call it by many names.”
Perhaps no single line in world scripture has done more for inter-religious humility than this verse from the Rig Veda — one of the oldest religious texts in human history. ‘Truth is One; the wise call it by many names.’ This was not written as a concession. It was written as a conviction.
“The diversity of belief is not an obstacle to be overcome. It is the condition in which compassion must be practised.”
The Common Obligation
Reading these passages together, what strikes the careful reader is not their theological differences — vast and real as those are — but the extraordinary convergence of their ethical demands.
Every tradition considered here calls its followers to see the humanity of the other person — the stranger, the poor, the foreigner, the enemy, the unbeliever — before they see the category. Every tradition insists that genuine faith is measured not in ritual correctness alone, but in the quality of our treatment of those who are most vulnerable, most different, and most easily dismissed.
We live in an era in which the word ‘religion’ is too often associated in the public mind with division, hostility, and the justification of cruelty. That association is not invented — it has been earned, in too many places, by too many who claimed to speak in the name of God or Dharma or the Dharma.
But these scriptures were not written to justify division. They were written — at least in the passages gathered here — to demand something harder: the daily, unglamorous, costly work of treating every human being as a being who matters. Not because they are like us. But precisely because they are not — and because our traditions insist that this makes them no less sacred.
The question is not what your scripture says. You have just read what it says. The question is what you will do on the way home.
Scripture references are drawn from standard translations: NIV/ESV (Bible), JPS (Torah/Hebrew Bible),
Sahih International (Quran), Bhikkhu Bodhi / Narada (Buddhist Pali Canon), and standard Sanskrit editions for Hindu texts.
All quotations used for educational and editorial reflection.
