No rebuttals from Sathya Sai Baba: That Sathya Sai Baba has never bothered to deny the authenticity of this demonstrates once again how he thrives on letting rumours spread unabated. On the claim that Sathya Sai Baba represents tolerance of other faiths and diversity of beliefs, one may ask why he has never repudiated the put-down of the vast majority of Muslims! But one can also easily guess the reasons for his liking the prophesies! In his follow-up book, Lowenberg tells how Sathya Sai blessed 'The Heart of Sai' book with the above quote on 15/7/1981.
"Baba came straight up to me and said, 'Books?' I said, 'Yes Swami, for you.' He said, 'Give.' and pointed to the Seva Dal man following Him. So at long last I had his blessing to go ahead and sell the book." (The Grace of Sai by R. Lowenberg. Bombay 1985, p. 31).

Further, when asked if he was the Mehdi by a Muslim devotee, Mrs. Zeba Bashiruddin, Sai Baba let her believe so, though he did not give her asked permission for printing the claim (wise, considering the repercussions it could have involved from fanatical Islamists). However, he virtually claim to be Allah since he pronounced he was God, the Creator of the Universe, the Father who sent Jesus and the Deity of all Deities. After much doubt and a process of fascination with Sai Baba, Bashiruddin eventually accepted that he was the Saviour (Mehdi Mou'd) of Islam. She wrote in the official Sai Baba magazine, Sanathana Sarathi (pp. 298-300 - see below)

Incidentally, inquiries made through a believing Muslim by the author to Sunni mullahs in Oslo only elicited the vague response that the Mehdi was apparently demonic, more like the Christian Anti-Christ who would appear or bring with him catastrophes. Despite this, belief in the coming Mehdi was powerful in the Sunni sects of the Middle East, as known especially well in the case of Sudan. The followers of Mohammed Ahmed, who was recognised as the returning, invincible Mahdi, fought the Egyptian-British armies at the battle of Omduran in 1898, in which Winston Churchill joined in a cavalry charge against them. Believing themselves magically protected against bullets, thousands were mown down by Maxim guns and the Mahdi was executed. (The Sunni tradition's authentication texts are listed at http://www.al-islam.org/encyclopedia/chapter2/2.html).


Sathya Sai Baba's claims of Godhood are a major blasphemy in Islam. The decisive, ultimate problem with the Sathya Sai Baba teaching for Muslims is that it is anchored very firmly in the specific Hindu doctrine of the God-avatar. Allah never takes on any form and only Allah is worthy of worship, according to the Koran. So Sathya Sai Baba's claim is, of course, exclusively a matter of belief and no more to 1.5 billion Muslims. Yet Sai Baba claims that he is the incarnation of the designer, creator and ruler of the entire universe, which is the same was what Muslims mean by Allah.

The Sathya Sai Baba 'package' has a highly doubtful wrapping which, once opened, confronts the recipient with a stark choice: either accept the whole of Sathya Sai Baba claims or you reject them all. If you try to reject any part of it, you thereby reject the basic assumption, that he is God the Father who can speak nothing but the truth. (Obviously, anyhow, avatarhood cannot be proven in any way and, though there is evidence to back up such a claim, there is also very powerful evidence to the contrary). This is like a red rag to a bull for Muslims, and it is not likely to improve Hindu-Muslim relations.

Anyone who has been at the ashrams for an extended period will know that there were but a handful of Muslims throughout the Sai movement (and the Sikh turban is a rare sight there too!). In the light of the slur on them, it is hardly very surprising that the number of Muslim visitors to Sai Baba has always remained disappearingly few. Islam accepts no such thing as a 'Full Incarnation of God', as Sathya Sai Baba was always claiming to be. The only Muslims who would perhaps accept Sathya Sai as an avatar are a few Sufis, a peripheral and struggling minority which shares some of the key mystical claims and beliefs that Sai Baba promotes. Even the free colleges boast less than a handful. The Muslim tradesmen and taxi drivers who live largely from the Sathya Sai Baba environment remain unbelievers. Sathya Sai Baba has managed to find a few apologists on the periphery of mainstream Islam, such as one of the lady teachers at his Anantapur College for Women, the Sufi-inclined Zeba Bashiruddin, who tried in an article unconvincingly to prove that Sathya Sai Baba is the prophesied Mehdi (and who also writes doggerel verse about Sathya Sai Baba). Recently, doubtless due to the political and financial pull Sathya Sai Baba exerts on the Indian government, the new Muslim President of India, formerly the designer of its nuclear delivery vehicles, visited Sathya Sai Baba to pay his respects, though he certainly did not endorse any of Sathya Sai Baba's claims as to his being the avatar or the like, of course.

Sathya Sai Baba's alleged 'former incarnation' Shirdi Sai Baba (whose name and fame he claims are his) tried to reconcile Hindus and Muslims by adopting aspects of both faiths and he did not declare himself as an avatar. While Shirdi Sai was a genuine bridge between Muslims and Hindus and was successful in practice in reconciling these two religious groups, Sathya Sai is overwhelmingly Hindu-biassed in all his discourses and has achieved virtually no respect among Muslims in India or elsewhere. Sathya Sai seems to have no known effect whatever on reducing Hindu-Muslim troubles, which still plague India as ever, both internally with slaughters and bombs and externally from Pakistan. Not being accepted by Muslims is one major difference between Sathya Sai Baba and the former Hindu saint and Muslim fakir, Shirdi Sai Baba, whose name Sathya has appropriated and who was revered by countless Hindus and Moslems alike.