The 'One God' Religions of Revelation

re. muradbaig, #915

Amen to most of that, bro!

I don't quite get this, tho: "I pray to it wherever I am to thank it for giving me a full and rewarding life and to empower me to be a active and good person."

Would you then, by the same token, curse it were your personal circumstances not so hunkydory? This is a very real question for me.

Or are your 'thanks' merely an example of doing what makes you, ultimately, feel happier, more relaxed, cheerful, and t that the world makes some sense after all?

Re: # 838

Further to this interact I would like to also say that I also find no innate sanctity in the material things that all religions promote. What is spiritual about not eating pork, beef, shellfish, or drinking or smoking, etc? These were only practical hygienic advice in ancient times.

All the professional priests also dissuaded their followers from music and art and in enjoying themselves instead of spending time at their places of worship. Even Coffee houses were banned in Europe.

I admire the art and architecture of churches, mosques and temples but do not find anything sacred about them as priests want us to believe. They are not the `houses of god' but houses where priests get rich. God is too big to be confined to any house.

I enjoy the charming myths found in the traditions of all religions but do not consider them sacred. Frequently exaggerated myths about the enemies of their religion have led to huge religious bloodshed over the centuries.

I do not also respect most of the priests of all religions who claim to be `the sole selling agents' of their brands of god. But I do endorse all religious traditions or good priests who encourage human understanding and brotherhood.

I do worship that nameless, formless cosmic force that is the source of life but do not believe that it is a wish fulfiling, prayer answering machine that pries into my personal life. I pray to it wherever I am to thank it for giving me a full and rewarding life and to empower me to be a active and good person.

Middle finger to God,

An individual did a crime and getting punishment for it. What does it have to with their ethnicity? Answer this question:

Followers of which religion/dharma/ism/faith have have killed/harmed innocent people of other faith at the place of their worship, in last decade?

Do you see Islam in the mirror?

Muradbhai, Have not heard from you! Take your sweet time. Do not forget to do the readings which Ladduji asked.

Ladduji, I feel one needs to practice an ism for considerable amount of time and talk from personal experience. Dharma is something to be lived and not talked about. There are not Ek Dukka but many who indulge in meaningless circular arguments. It's shear intellectual diarrihea. What do you think? It's the One God Abrahmic religion stupid! Real bane to this beautiful world!

==========Muradbhai==================
"But please note that though I have a Muslim name I am a non practicing Muslim who does not believe in any religion."

We can not see what you practice in your mind or not. What you practice will show up in your action. I googled for your articles on this CMS, DostMitra told that you are married to a Hindu lady practicing or nonpracticing. We would know a lot about you if you answer following:

1. Did you or your wife decide to change her name to a Islamic one? Does she carry your last name? We know you are not carrying her last name.

2. What are the names of your kids? Which schools do they attend to. Do they attend Hindi medium schools where Indian culture is taught? Indian culture means Hindustani Music, Dances such as Bharat Natyam etc. Are they learning Sanskrit? Taken some effort to learn Vedic Maths? Do they regualrly visit Indian temples and historical places, even pilgrimage places suchas Prayag, Nasik (Trayambekeshwar), Rameshwar etc.? Do they participate in local Ganesh Puja, Durga Puja and ShivJayanti? Are they passionate about stopping pollution of Ganga? Can they sing Kabirs dohes?

Answers to these questons will give us an idea about where you come from. We do not want yet another foreigner tell us who we are when his own community is way below us in most of the indices of human development.

No malice intended!



"The same goes for ISLAM. I try to never speak of Islamic architcture, art, scripts, culture or atrocities because these were not the creations of the religion but the good and bad activities of numerous people like the Arabs, Persians, Mongols, Afghans Turks, etc."

Since you claim to be historian, do you know who were the architect of TajMahal (TejoMahal), so called Qutub Minar? Is it realistically possible for taliaban if it ever conquered midwest of USA to build Sears Towers. You will have to find how it was funded by Sears and Roebock company and the chief structural engineer of the architectural firm was a Bengali Muslim. You should also study how these monuments for deads made living peasants and workers poor. Vain Rajputs and Mughals did not see what was happening in europe at that time. May be Mughals still thought that they were foreigners in this land, and had no intention of being protector of culture of this land and well being of all citizens.
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"The same can be said for Divali, Holi, Naoroz, Passover, etc. Many were honest celebrtations of spring and autumn harvests and the religious fairy tales are unnecessary."

On the first day of Diwali Narkasur was killed. When kids get up early at 4 AM and before taking bath (given by the parents) they crush with their feet symbolic Naraksur, once ego, jealosy and other mental traits which can make a family disfunctional. What is harm in such a ritual? It's not stepping on someone else rights and freedom. If you complain about pollution of all kinds due to fire crackers then you have a point. Have you done something about it?
There are similar events (may be mythical to you) with Holy, Dassahara and Muharram.
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"But raking the old ashes in the present time to forment more sectarian strife is deplorable. "

But not raking the old ashes in the present time so that equal-eaual can be done between religions and dharmas to make people rootless and cultureless is a crime against humanity. It is Mao style destruction of culture. Keep it in mind that India is democracy not because of JN or JNU but because of Dharmic mooring of the Indian culture.
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"I also hate the mythification of all the prophets, apostles, saints, sages, sacred dreams, etc., that have distorted the words of the founders in all religions."

What you call myths is Itihaas for us. It wets our hearts so that we can be rooted in culture. Culture is fluid. Dry intellectualization can create monsters such as effery dahmer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Dahmer and culture destroyers and brain eaters such as Romilla. In your own neck of the woods, a Bishop Cotton school graduate, Pandher, turns into a serial murderer because of rootless-ness and cultureless-ness. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moninder_Singh_Pandher

The real meaning of the word will get freshly revealed to you when you become wordless.
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#841 Posted by pappu on June 30, 2008 5:45:02 am
Muradbhai,

"The practitioners of all religions did many violent and evil things in the holy name of their gods. "

All or some! Violent and evil things were done by Abrahmic religions except Judaism. You are right, Dharmas are not religions! Sanatan Dharma, Bouddha Dharma, Jaina Dharma and Sikh Dharma have not done violent and evil things in the holy name of their gods. Except in recent past Bhindranwale gave bad name to Sikh Dharma by his karnames.

Whom you might be calling ugly duckling among the ducklings of religions is actually a Dharma of a swan type.
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#840 Posted by pappu on June 30, 2008 5:34:47 am
Muradbhai,

PM, if you leave your comments here I will read them later (tomorrow, possibly). Goodnight to you and everyone else for now.

Hey PM!! Such a long time! Glad I checked back. And to find you in the company of Cheema bhai! He has been a great addition to Chowk. :)


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nkg, I will have to read that and consider your pov a little more. In general, I have no qualms accepting that brahmins were often good people and did wonderful things. I am also loathe to shift any of the 'blame' to anyone else (Islam or anything else). Nor is comparison of any interest (for instance, caste sytem was not as bad as slavery). The focus is solely on the system of ideas that seems (and in practice, you would agree, was) very discriminatory.

But I haven't carefully read your post - this one or other ones earlier - so may be we can take this up later. Thanks.

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PM, IMHO, that perfection has three basic dimensions: (1) first related to the faith/book's inner structure itself, (2) second related to how it relates to its adherents/believers, (3) third related to how it relates to those who are not its adherents/believers.

Perfection of Inner Structure: in that once one accepts a few fundamentals (on faith alone), Quran (and in genral, Islam) basically grabs you, pulls you in, into its own inner logic. Everything falls in place in a most self-evident, internally consistent manner. To those who really have faith (In Allah, Last Prophet, Quran), it would be the clearest, 'simplest' book to read/religion to follow. The faithful will see no contradictions, face no confusions at all. As such it is beyond any need to ever change anything in it, nothing need be added, or subtracted. Doing so will destroy that inner perfection.

Many can make the very same argument for other faith-based religions. But Quran's perfection is unique in the utter comprehensiveness and naturalness of its human scope, as highlighted below:

(2) Perfection of Relationship to Believers: Quran/Islam does indeed create a 'total' system for human living. Both in this world and for salvation in the next. -

And it does so keeping the very human concerns - politics - at its very core (instead of trying to either excise them from human experience or trying to control them - as many other religions do). By seemlessly combining the material and the divine, in fact, it essentially makes the two one and the same - deprecating any (false?) dichotomy between the political and the spiritual.

In so doing, it explicitly and unabashedly cares for the 'total man.' (I have in mind a comparison with a religion like buddhism - which is a partial religion - since it doesn't meet many very human needs).

None of this, of course, would be remotely true if one did not have full faith. Without faith, there will be utter confusion, and a constant, unsuccessful, desire to separate the political from the spiritual.

(3) Perfection of Relationship with Non-Adherents: I don't know of any other religion that provide a totally comprehensive system for relating with 'others.' May be Judaism does, I don't know that religion at all. Nor is any other religion so conscious of the others and of its own ultimate role and position vis a vis these others. In many ways, it is as irresistable a force to 'others' as it is for its own adherents. For, there seem to be very little outsiders can do to stop its march just as those who are inside it can almost never really fully escape it.


OK, I wrote this almost without a break and it is surely is poorly written, but hopefully the basic thoughts were conveyed. And hey, good to see you back, PM.

replaying #904 Posted by akcheema,

Dear akcheema,
muslims as a group are different only because they follow ideology of Islam. No other difference across such vast geography is more relevant. A highly intelligent muslim will be no different from any other highly intelligent person, because religion can not confine high inteligence. But high-intelligence is rarity, so commoners will be affected by the essence of Islamic thoughts.

Essence of Islam is a political ideology that uses God as its weapon of fear to make people surrender to it, to make its group bigger. It is very lethal, because fear of God is since history a huge fear, it is fear of almighty:-)

Hindus have suffered much more than muslims but you can check the difference between the two easily. It is not that easy to ignore this difference, in future even muslims won't be able to ignore it.

your statement:
How can one make something bad if it was meant to be perfect to start off with??

doesn't make much sense to me. You can not think something is perfect just because you wished. What started as perfect?
Perfect is too good a word, the whole humanity will not be able to define what it means and God doesn't understand it either:-) God doesn't like this word perfect, instead prefers "infinite", perfect needs a specification to compare against. Nobody has that. Nothing can ever start as perfect, if something has to be perfect it has to be the infinity and it as a whole doesn't start or stop or do (things happen inside this perfection not "to this perfection").

replying #779

Eklawya, I can defend Brahmins if you want. They did very well indeed, in all spheres. They let hinduism evolve and it is they, who initiated most reforms.

Also, Murad-Baig is plain wrong, the caste system was not exploited by Brahmins. You don't find anything against Shudra before Manu-Smriti (which as per Murad-Baig is around 200 AD). So in all of Vedic history of hinduism from 1500BC to say 200AD you don't see any discrimination against anybody and if you don't know I can tell you that Brahmins were all this time still making the rules of so called Hinduism. In one earlier post of mine I showed how Alexandar was impressed by Brahmins, you can check how Greeks were impressed by Brahmins even much earlier than Alexandar. They earlier used word Brahmans for Brahmins and then Gymnosophists. You can google and find some information on your own.

Even after Manu Smriti was written it was never considered important text. You can read tons of hindu literature and check what they say about caste system, there is hardly anything discriminatory. What you will find is that caste is decided based on what you do or based on your capability and not based on your birth.

And believe me you can not call yourself CEO of a company even today, if you are not a CEO, not even manager. I have given this example earlier, Shudras of hinduism still never became as bad as slaves of other cultures and the more you go in hostory the more they disappear. The caste system was originally a broad classification of profession and inherent capability. Well, I can give you latest HR/Management theory which says how humans in general have 4 different personality types and it is from those so called westerners, they use more or less same types as hindu caste system. Let me know if you want to talk about it (you can google it using 4 different personality types).

Imagine it like this (but do not believe in what I am saying, keep your own ideas), when more and more history will be known (by any means and we will find new means of finding history eventually), the caste system of hinduism will be known as a good system for much longer time then people believe. It became bad during medieval times. India has not seen much poverty till Islam invaded it.

What you do not know is that it was feudal system of small kingdoms during medieval times that exploited caste system most. And all that happened much after Islam came to India and Islam helped in exploiting the caste system. The Islamic rulers tried to win over Hindus by sword or by whatever means they had. They killed them or made them subservient by marriage (rajput kings's daughters), or by indirect rule/ taxes or by giving high posts. None of the rulers cared for , it may be marriage, it may be patronage or it may be indirect rule.

Did you really read Kuran? What other religious books you have read?

I will answer other question in your post soon.

logging off.

re. #906

cheema sahib, you're being ironic, right??

re. #901 Eklavya

Hiya there Ek! Long time!

Hey, I remember reading your opinion on this very topic YEARS ago. Your views haven't changed since.

You write: "I see in the Quran a most powerful and perfect book. It is perfectly and powerfully good IF its followers have full faith in the core of Islam - One God, Allah; Last Prophet, Muhammad; final and protected Message, the Quran. It is perfectly and powerfully evil IF its followers have wobbly faith.

That's why I tell Muslim friends to have full faith, so they can, as a society, actually benefit from the book's carefully designed/revealed perfection. Or, get the heck out of the way. This stuff is too powerful to leave any sociey that lacks faith in peace."

I wonder if you could dilate a little. What are some manifestations/examples of Islam's perfection-through-perfect-faith? Or is this purely speculative philosophy?

Conversely, are you suggesting that those led or misled by Islam into evil acts are of little faith? I guess you'd have to elaborate on "faith" too here...

Thanks.

Re: # 904

just to clarify, I am merely elaborating on what Eklavya has been saying all along........the problem is NOT with the Muslims but the 'others' understanding of them.....therefore it is the other's problem and not that of the Muslims

(if that sounds confusing, I blame Kaalchakra!)

Re: # 889

pappu ji

This, your sex behavior, which you call 'your strong weakness'is what the Quran terms as a disease in the hearts of the men and so advises women not to speak softly to them( Does it make any difference). But Allah does not prescribe any treatment for the disease though it seems to be very simple; castrate all the males as a ritual 'khatnah' instead of removing some skin of the penis only.

Re: # 903; pinku
[[I am talking to anybody who tries to over simplify things by saying that Islam is good but people are making it bad.]]

How can one make something bad if it was meant to be perfect to start off with??

Like i said before, people are good or bad everywhere; when a certain type of 'bad' comes more often from one kind of people than others, one must look at what differentiates them (as a group)from 'others'(as a group).....and I'd say again; Muslims are NOT the problem here.

replying #852

no tahir,

I am talking to anybody who tries to over simplify things by saying that Islam is good but people are making it bad.

If you or Murad-Baig or anybody else says that then I am talking to all such people.


People will try to hijack whatever they can, but how come it is so easy for anybody to hijack Islam?

Where is the seed of ideas that help this hijacking? It is simply ignoring the root cause and beating around the bush, if you keep on repeating that people are hijacking Islam. Why do you see Islam related problem all over world? Why do they need separate schools, separate state, separate separate nations everywhere. Because they are hijacking Islam???? Or because Islam has hijacked their minds and keep doing this over and over again.

Imagine I give you new set of muslims but the same Islamic thoughts that you have today, the same Kuran, Do you feel that this new set of muslims will not hijack Islam??

What was those earlier cailphate doing? Why do you have so many nations who calls themselves to be Islamic? Why do you think these nations needs to have state religion? Why Arab lands were not secular after Islam took its roots?


You think it is because people are hijacking Islam and Islam is not hijacking people at all.

Well, if you or Murad Baig are really that confident about your idea then you can wait for a little while more, when muslims themselves will tell who hijacks whom.

Do you know why Turkey is trying to change Islamic texts?


Is it so difficult to see that the hard-core fanatics of different religions are still not the same. It is quite easy to say that a hard-core hindu or hard-core muslim are same, but if you do a psychological assesment (which you should try to do), you will get to know a surprizing difference. For intellectuals it doesn't matter because they hardly belong to religions, what matters is how religion affect people with average and low intellect. And there Islam hijacks their intelligence in much dangerous ways than other religions.

Let me know how you liked this pinky baby's or pinky girly's reply... does it make sense or her reply was totally idiotic as per your sober thoughts??

Re: 900

Pappuji, just a minor distraction between your's and ladduji's high flown intellectual dissertation, as just a sample of the high fine upright lives these Indians lead in the west; after perusing this you can go back on to your usual intellectualism.

Indian-American gets life term for murder of son's black wife
29 Jun 2008, 2013 hrs IST,PTI

WASHINGTON: An Indian-origin businessman in the US has been sentenced to life in prison without parole for hiring hit men to murder his son's black wife as he was enraged at the inter-racial marriage.

Prosecution had sought death penalty for Chiman Rai, 69, for paying two men USD 10,000 to kill Sparkle Michelle Rai, an African American, in April 2000 weeks after her marriage to his son Rajeev Rai alias Ricky, with whom she had a daughter.

The 22-year-old was found strangled and stabbed more than a dozen times at the couple's apartment.

Jurors deliberated for less than two hours before delivering the verdict in an Atlanta area courtroom in Georgia this week.

The case had gone cold but grabbed headlines as an "honour killing" after police arrested Chiman Rai and four others following a tip off two years ago.

The jury had found Rai guilty on seven charges, including felony murder and burglary, and was convinced that he believed that the marriage would embarrass his family.

Rai immigrated with his family from India in 1970 and taught Maths at Alcorn State University in Mississippi for a decade before opening a supermarket and a hotel in Kentucky Mississippi where Sparkle was an employee.

Prosecutors claimed that it was a hate crime. "This particular murder, outrageous, wantonly vile...," prosecutor Sheila Ross was quoted as saying by the The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, “...of this young mother not only justifies but demands the death penalty," she told the jury.

Defence lawyer Don Samuel said while there was evidence that Rai believed his son's marriage would cast a stigma on his family in Indian society, he wasn't a racist and had strong support in the African-American community.

tahir, unfortunately, muradbhai chose to not answer that question (it might be an oversight, and he yet might answer.)

I won't spend much time here but it would be wrong to not answer a serious question posed to me. So here goes:

"What do YOU see in the Qur'an if you've read it by any chance?"

I see in the Quran a most powerful and perfect book. It is perfectly and powerfully good IF its followers have full faith in the core of Islam - One God, Allah; Last Prophet, Muhammad; final and protected Message, the Quran. It is perfectly and powerfully evil IF its followers have wobbly faith.

That's why I tell Muslim friends to have full faith, so they can, as a society, actually benefit from the book's carefully designed/revealed perfection. Or, get the heck out of the way. This stuff is too powerful to leave any sociey that lacks faith in peace.

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Sincere apologies if any of this sounds blasphemous or irreverent. It is meant to be neither panegyrical nor blasphemous, but simply a factual statement (of course, as I see it). And I am ALWAYS open to learning from those who know.