Hinduism and Islam...

"My grandfather [Hazrat Inayat Khan of the Chishti
Sufi order] presented the Sufi message as an essential
awareness that could be discovered in the essence of
all of the major world religions.

It is the common
thread of mystical realization that units all
prophetic dispensations.

"This has been acknowledged in the history of Sufism.

The prince Dara Shaku, who was the heir apparent of
his father Shah Jihan, the great mogul king, wrote a
book called MAJ HAMU AL BAHRAIN, which means "the
merging of the two oceans" --

one ocean being Islam,
the other being Hinduism. He made a cross-study and
comparison and concluded that, in essence, the common
realization was the unity of being [Sanskrit _sat
ekam_/parabrahman_; Arabic _tawhid/wahdat-al-wujud_].

They had different terminologies, different systems of
practice, but there was an essential unity.

"I believe that essential unity can be discovered in
all religious traditions. It is the common thread of
the depth of human experience on this planet, which is
universal, absolutely universal.

It transcends all of
the differences of acculturation, of ideology. There
is something essential about the human condition in
its fullness, and at the essence of the human
condition is a relationship with the divine."

Pir Zia Khan
_Religion and Ethics Newsweekly_ (PBS)
November 8, 2002 Episode no. 610