A serious question: religion?

[elina]

I believe that within a person's capacity, that person should never stop asking questions and never stop thinking critically,

I totally agree with you.

True things are not always beautiful and beautiful things are not always true.

Again i agree with you. That's said in Dao De Jing:

信 言 不 美 ， 美 言 不 信 。

Sincere words are not fine; fine words are not sincere.

i have alread begun my reading on Buddhism a little a week, i will think carefully, and will not let my explanation on Pure Land in Buddhism come out before next year. Because when i begun to read, i know it IS NOT an easy thing to truly understand it, but it is pretty interesting.

Recently, i saw a setence: 差异是学习的资源 / the difference is the resource of studying, i like it, i will continue my studying in this small thread on discussing the difference between Christianity and Buddhism, also in next year.

[tanklao]

God helps only those who help themselves.

It's stupid to think that God helps those who believe in him. Yeah I have to admit that sometimes it works if you believe in God. But this is due to psychology rather than to the God. As far as I know, Budha works as well as Juses.

[rezaf]

Well I think that the God of Abrahamic religions is a very powerful God. Praying to him has miraculously helped me at difficult stages of my life. However Abrahamic religions are very anti-wisdom and promote believing without experiencing. Now I am reading and practicing stuff about Daoism and Buddhism and I think that combining my birth religion Islam with teachings of more practical religions like Daoism and Buddhism works very well:D

[shazan]

Hi all, I saw some misconception about Islam being talked here, and I wanted to clearify them. And ofcourse, my appologies in advance if I offended anybody.

In Islam, God is considered to be the essence, the first being, the first intellect, the creater etc. He doesnt have to come down to manifest himself, because as he says, he is nearer to man than his jugler vein. And also, he doesnt beget a son. The word Allah comes from Al & Ilah, meaning the diety. It has the same root as the hebrew El, pronounced as El, Ella, Eloh, Elohim & Eloi in the bible. He is the God of Abraham, Moses, Jesus & Muhammad. Arabs had known him as the god who talked to their father Abraham. Moon God theory is a recent invention, by a Christian missionary known as Robert Morey, who has been refuted.

Now Allah says that he sends a guide to every nation. By name only 25 are mentioned in the Quran, but there is a saying of Prophet Muhammad that 124000 prophets were send before him. Islam sees itself as the culmination point of the convent that God made with Abraham, that God will send a guide to all mankind from his offsprings. A guide that will give people the good news, warn them of an afterlife, & purify them.

The Abrahamic tradition through Issac continued till Jesus. Out of all the jewish prophes, nobody ever said anything about God begeting a son, or coming down to earth, not even Jesus. After Jesus, under the influence of Greek opression & philosophy, the teachings of Jewish Jesus were slowly transformed into very greekified teachings/theology of a mythical Christ. A man-god character, likes of which were predominant in that part of the world. Under the influence of Constantine, trinity was made the "official creed", & "other christianities" slowly went extinct. The NT books were also written under varying influence of greek culture. Thats why we see a stark difference between Mathew's human Jesus & John's God Jesus. The authors wrote about the Christ character in such a way that it fits in the rather ambigious verses from the OT. The NT cannon was set much later, & there wasent much logic behind the inclusion or exclusion of books that got included or excluded. Thanks to this, there are thousands of errors & contradictions in it.

The Abrahamic tradition through Ishmael ended at Muhammad, this time the convent was between God & humanity.

The word Jihad means struggle. From Islam's point of view, its a struggle against injustice, inside one's self or outside it.

"There are no provisions for women, no hope for women" is another misconception. Islam sees women as equal to men, but not identical.

Muslims dont consider reading bible a sin. Its just that bible more or less has only a historical significance for them.

Walid Shoebat is a charltan. I am amazed that a palestenian would side with Zionist occupants & turn a blind eye towards the suffering of his own people, who were murdered/terrorised & thrown out of their land. They included both Christians & Muslims. And the struggleof Palestine is a political one, not religious. Its about a piece of land that was invaded & occupied by Europeans.

There are many reachable Muslim scholars who converted from Christianity. If you are interested, you can read Gai Eaton, Martin Lings, Nuh Keller, Hamza Yusuf, Yusuf Estes etc.

To see some comparative study between Chinese philosophy & Islam read the following links.

http://www.ibnarabisociety.org/articles/islamicneoconfucianism.html

{An article about Lin Chih's Islamic neoconfucianism by Sachiko Murata.)

http://abuzuhri.blogspot.com/2007/05/reflowering-of-islam-in-china.html

http://www.islamicity.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=9198

BY Abu Zhulixin al-Hakkawi

Other books written on this subjest include The Black Pearl: Spiritual Illumination in Sufism and East Asian Philosophies by Henry Bayman , Chinese Gleams of Sufi Light by Sachiko Murata, & The Dao of Muhammad by Zvi Ben-Dor Benite

I will be delighted to answer if anybody has any questions.

Take care...peace !

[shazan]

Sorry, that last link got accidentally added, there is nothing much to read there.

[rezaf]

Very good information. I don't want to criticize you because most of things you said are just documented information. But you make it look like too western style civilized and having seen that I want to add some of my personal views. There is a whole bigger dark side of Islam which gives humans extra reasons to kill each other and has caused so much bloodshed amongst Muslims and other people so far. It is an old way of thinking which was very advanced for it's own time but belongs to the time that all one nation wanted was to suppress other nations, to take booties from them and to make their people slaves. Regardless of the parts that are compatible to today's civilized manners, the basic theory in Islam is: "Islam makes people free from tyranny. Those who are not Muslim are automatically living under tyranny, so Muslims should occupy their lands and help them get their freedom. They either become Muslims or they have to pay Muslims for their lives and under pressure they eventually become Muslims."

Islam has interesting insights in human ethics and law but a lot of things are just in theory however the more apparent side of Islam is how it easily allows violence and we see how Muslims divided after the prophet died and have been killing each other and others from then on, and each group can easily find enough excuses to kill other groups. Islam doesn't talk about justice and brotherhood for mankind but talks about justice and brotherhood only for Muslims(and thats why Muslims have been so kind to force others to convert to Islam), but in practice even this one has never had much success, Muslims still lie to each other and cheat as before.

And do you really believe that the conflict in Palestine is just political?????? Maybe you should tell it to Hamas and Hezbollah and see how they react. The political side of this conflict is lost in piles of religious stuff. When it comes to Muslims and Jews everything is religious.

[tooironic]

I'll let someone else do the debating for me.

"The word god is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weakness, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish." - albert einstein

[shazan]

Very good information. I don't want to criticize you because most of things you said are just documented information.

Thank you very much

But you make it look like too western style civilized and having seen that I want to add some of my personal views.

Islam is Islam, its not eastern or western. It is the Eastern or Western culture that gets admixed with Islam to create things like Persian Islam, Indian Islam, Euro-Islam etc. As far as "western styled civilized" Islam is concerned, you'll have to realize that the western civilization is nothing more than an of-shoot of Islamic civilization. Muslims took from the biggest civilizations of the world, like Persia, Rome, China etc, integrated it into a big global civilization format, & then saved everything in the universities of Spain, especially in Toledo. West only had to attack, & take all that pre-digested civilization away. The founders of biggest western universities like Oxford were educated at Toledo. Muslims told them how to count in numbers (rather than Roman Alphabets), how to treat diseases & how to construct machines. And the used this knowledge to colonize the Muslim world.

There is a whole bigger dark side of Islam which gives humans extra reasons to kill each other and has caused so much bloodshed amongst Muslims and other people so far

As before, there is no dark side of Islam, its dark side of people's morality. People are always in search of a reason to kill. Its all because of Politics, more exactly dirty politics. Muslims arnt immune to it. All the wars of the previous century… there was no religion in it, no Islam there….& yet people killed each other. The new millennium started with the war on terror, which is nothing more than war for oil & Israel, & against Islam, China & Russia.

It is an old way of thinking which was very advanced for it's own time but belongs to the time that all one nation wanted was to suppress other nations, to take booties from them and to make their people slaves.

Islam doesn’t tell to attack or suppress anybody. The verses that exist in Quran have a particular context, i.e. The Meccans & The Byzantines.

Regardless of the parts that are compatible to today's civilized manners,

Even with today's civilized manners, the militarily & economically advanced nations practice the same savagery that existed in pre-Islamic times. A practice that Islam strictly forbids.

the basic theory in Islam is: "Islam makes people free from tyranny. Those who are not Muslim are automatically living under tyranny, so Muslims should occupy their lands and help them get their freedom. They either become Muslims or they have to pay Muslims for their lives and under pressure they eventually become Muslims."

This is another misinformation. Islam never says,"non-muslims are automatically living under tyranny" or "muslims should occupy their lands". Although there have been many Instances in the history where oppressed people under tyrants actually invited muslim rulers to attack & liberate them, as was the case with Syria & Egypt.

The payment (Jizya) is actually a protection (from invaders) tax. Unlike Zakat (which is a tax obligatory upon all muslims) its not levied to women, hermits etc. If you work for Muslim Army (i.e. you work for your own protection) then you wont have to pay anything (Unlike muslims who will always pay Zakat).And finally the tariff of Jizya was much lower than Zakat.

And there was never a pressure on people to convert. There are still Christians in Syria & Hindus in India, after a thousand year of Islamic rule.

the more apparent side of Islam is how it easily allows violence and we see how Muslims divided after the prophet died and have been killing each other and others from then on, and each group can easily find enough excuses to kill other groups.

The division was not on or because of Islam. It was because of politics, aka the leadership of a vast empire.

Islam doesn't talk about justice and brotherhood for mankind but talks about justice and brotherhood only for Muslims(and that's why Muslims have been so kind to force others to convert to Islam),

Islam talks about justice for everybody. As far as brotherhood is concerned, any philosophy of life is interested in creating a just society for the people who follow it. Confucius never said anything about the Arab-Chinese brother hood, nor did Jesus say anything about Jew-Indian brotherhood. Similarly Islam is more interested in Inter-muslims brotherhood. But then, Islam never said that muslims & non-muslims arnt brothers-in-humanity.

but in practice even this one has never had much success, Muslims still lie to each other and cheat as before.

Then they aren't good muslims.

And do you really believe that the conflict in Palestine is just political?????? Maybe you should tell it to Hamas and Hezbollah and see how they react. The political side of this conflict is lost in piles of religious stuff. When it comes to Muslims and Jews everything is religious.

Zionism is a Judaic heresy. There is nothing Jewish about it other than the fact that it goes totally against the Jewish law. There were Jews living in that region for a long time, peacefully with Muslims & Christians. Ashkenazi people invaded Palestine because of this ideology, & looted, raped & massacred natives. Hezbollah & Hamas were created much much later, as a resistance to this invasion & ethnic cleansing. There war is for land, not for religion.

I don't want to sound rude or insulting (& my apologies in advance if I do), but I really think you need to read Islam from proper scholars. To put things in the right perspective, there is a nice little book available here http://www.scribd.com/people/documents/1069820-sadif, Islam & the destiny of Man by Gai Eaton. It will be a good start. William Chittick has also written a very nice book called vision of islam. The western media isn't interested in factual accuracy; they are only interested in their ratings. Controversy sells, that's why the promote a "spicy Islam", since the real Islam wont make people watch their channels.

Take care...peace!

[rezaf]

Thank you so much! I have studied Islam for many years in a very religious school from the so called moderates but sorry all this dressing up Islam as the religion of moderation and peace for all human beings is just some kind of denial of many Quranic verses and legitimate Hadiths. The peace in Islam means peace with God after becoming a Muslim and in practice has not happened for Muslims in their own society. In the end it is always Muslims who blow up themselves more than anyone else and kill those who have other ideologies just because of their ideas more than anyone else. It is Muslims who go ballistic over some cartoons and it is Muslims preaching hatred more than anyone else.

I know the whole justification from the so called moderates about different interpretations but different interpretations don't result in so many self explosions and bloodshed in other religions and ideologies. As you can see I am not talking whether Islam is true or not. It might be true. Who knows?

BTW there are many incidents of slaughter and intolerance towards other religions including the Jews in the Islamic countries and Muslims accepting other religions under their authority in some parts doesn't overshadow that.