What does Islam say about Hindus and Buddhists?

Hindus and Buddhists are the neighbors, classmates, colleagues, and often the families of Muslims across South Asia, Southeast Asia, and the diaspora. Islam teaches Muslims to meet them with respect and humility. The Quran says that Allah sent a warner to every nation, and it names only some of His messengers, so Muslims do not presume that the peoples of India and East Asia were left without guidance. Muslims keep the worship of the One God (tawḥīd) firmly, and the same Quran forbids them to insult what others hold sacred. Kindness and justice toward Hindus and Buddhists are a command of Allah.

Did Allah send prophets to India and Asia?

The Quran answers with a general rule:

وَإِن مِّنۡ أُمَّةٍ إِلَّا خَلَا فِيهَا نَذِيرٞ

“There is no nation among whom a warner has not passed.”

Quran 35:24

Elsewhere it says, “For every people there is a guide” (13:7), and Allah tells the Prophet ﷺ that there are “messengers We have told you about, and messengers We have not told you about” (Quran 4:164). The twenty-five prophets named in the Quran are a small part of a much longer story (Who are the prophets in Islam?).

Muslims affirm as prophets only those whom Allah has named. Some Muslim writers have still wondered whether the Buddha might have been one of the unnamed messengers, and some have identified him with Dhu’l-Kifl, a righteous figure the Quran mentions twice among the patient and the chosen (21:85, 38:48). This remains a reflection and no article of faith. It shows the openness with which Muslims can regard the teachers revered by other peoples.

What does Islam say about idols and many gods?

The heart of Islam is that worship belongs to Allah alone, and Muslims do not pray to images or to any created being (What is shirk?). This conviction does not license contempt. The Quran commands:

وَلَا تَسُبُّواْ ٱلَّذِينَ يَدۡعُونَ مِن دُونِ ٱللَّهِ فَيَسُبُّواْ ٱللَّهَ عَدۡوَۢا بِغَيۡرِ عِلۡمٖ

“Do not insult those they call upon besides Allah, lest they insult Allah in hostility, without knowledge.”

Quran 6:108

The verse continues: “To every community We have made its deeds seem fair; then to their Lord is their return, and He will tell them what they used to do.” Judging the hearts of other peoples belongs to Allah.

The great scholar al-Bīrūnī (d. c. 1050) took this posture centuries ago. He learned Sanskrit, translated Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras into Arabic, and around 1030 completed his study of Indian religion and science, Taḥqīq mā li-l-Hind. The scholar of religion Arthur Jeffery wrote that until modern times it is rare to find so fair and unprejudiced an account of another religion’s views. Al-Bīrūnī argued that the Hindus, like the Greeks, had philosophers who believed in one God, and that the worship of images arose among ordinary people through confusion over time. Buddhism, for its part, is admired by many Muslims for its discipline, its stress on compassion, and its teaching against harming living things, values the Sunnah shares.

How did Muslim law treat Hindus and Buddhists?

The jurists debated whether the protection (dhimma) given to Jews and Christians extended to other faiths. The Hanafi and Maliki schools generally allowed it for all non-Muslims, and Muslim governments in the Indus valley extended it to Hindus and Buddhists from the eighth century onward. According to the thirteenth-century Persian chronicle Chachnāma, Muhammad ibn al-Qāsim, after the conquest of Sindh in 712, gave Hindus and Buddhists the same standing as Christians and Jews. That conquest also brought bloodshed and destroyed temples, and later centuries saw both deep coexistence and real conflict.

The tradition of learning across faiths reached a high point with the Mughal prince Dara Shikoh (d. 1659). In The Confluence of the Two Seas (Majmaʿ al-Baḥrayn, 1654–55) he compared the language of Sufism with that of Hindu Vedanta, and in 1657 he completed a Persian translation of fifty Upanishads.

How should Muslims treat Hindu and Buddhist neighbors?

The Quran’s rule for all peaceful people of other faiths is kindness (birr) and justice (qisṭ) (Quran 60:8). When Asmāʾ bint Abī Bakr’s mother, who still worshipped idols, came to visit her, Asmāʾ asked the Prophet ﷺ whether to receive her. He said:

«نَعَمْ صِلِي أُمَّكِ»

“Yes. Keep the bond with your mother.”

Sahih al-Bukhari 2620

A Muslim with a Hindu grandmother or a Buddhist father owes them the same love and closeness. Muslims can share meals, celebrate with friends at their festivals as guests (Can Muslims visit a Hindu temple or celebrate Diwali?), and learn from practices of stillness and breath while keeping their own prayer at the center (Can Muslims meditate or do yoga?). Whether non-Muslims are saved is answered in Do non-Muslims go to hell?: no one is damned for being born into another faith, and Allah’s mercy outstrips His wrath.

A closing word

Allah made humanity into “peoples and tribes so that you may come to know one another” (49:13). The temple bell and the call to prayer have sounded in the same streets of Delhi and Hyderabad for centuries, and in Kuala Lumpur and Colombo today. Let your knowledge of tawhid make you more gracious toward your neighbors, and pray that Allah guide all of us, together, to what He loves.