Forum on Public Policy 1 God and Allah in the works of Rudyard Kipling

As a young reporter who returned to India in 1882 while still a teenager, Rudyard Kipling became more and more interested in the native people and their culture and their religious practices and beliefs. In an article entitled ―Ruddy‘s Search for God: the Young Kipling and Religion ‖ Charles Allen writes: the young Kipling ―wrote with growing sensitivity about Islam and Muslims‖,1 and in a letter to his new young editor, Kay Robinson, Kipling reveals: ―I am deeply interested in the queer ways and works of the people of the land. I hunt and rummage among ‗em; knowing Lahore City—that wonderful, dirty, mysterious ant-hill— blind fold and wandering through it like Haroun Al-Raschid in search of strange things. 2 Allen states: ―Kipling in his twenties was a man who has turned his back on Christianity, but who has no time for atheism ‖ (23). While Kipling may not be described as a religious man, he is far from being an atheist; religious beliefs and practices of a wide variety surrounded him in his life and work as a writer and reporter and are extensively included in his work. Islam was brought to life in many of Kipling‘s early stories and poems published in the Civil an