Church Lures Gujarat Tribals to Christ

Urstruly#114

You sound like tahmeds32 :-)

...But you still are thinking in the Judeo-Christian-Islamic framework which is not applicable to Indic faiths, even though they are inclusive of monotheism.

The Abrahmic faiths all depend upon divine messages through human prophets. This is not the case with Eastern religions - and I think that I could also include Chinese and Japanese religions in this. Eastern religions encompass several philosophies, faiths, rituals and customs. The concept of a timeless entity is, of course, not unknown to Indic faiths. The word is ``Akaal`` and in Sikh religion God is often referred to as Akaal-Purukh.

As far as I know, and people more knowledgeable than me can correct me, Hindu religion does not limit itself to any particular belief and its system encompasses a wide spectrum from atheism to monoism and monotheism. And Buddha, whom many Muslims now give the status of a prophet, did not bring any divine message, and in fact frequently thought of as agnostic as to the existence of God.

To my non-religious minds, religions grew on exisiting belief systems. For some reason, the concept of human prophets took hold in the Middle East and all religions in that area have more in common with one another than with those outside that region. Similarly, the concept of karma, reincarnation, somehow took hold on the subcontinent and all religions that started here incorporate that concept as a basic premise. They have more in common with each other than with the faiths that developed in West Asia.

Dost

The more I think about it and more I read about it, I become even more convinced that the origin or root of all religions is one and the same. The core teaching of all religions is monotheism and all religions direct human beings towards one God. The later additions like addition of smaller dieties, or elevating ordaniry human beings to the level of God, like Christians corrupted their religion to make Jesus (pbuh) as God Himself; or Jews making Ezra (pbuh) as the son of God; or making of kings and other high priests as ``avtars`` i.e. God-incarnates are all man made innovations. The human mind works at two levels here:

1. When it (human mind) cannot ``visualize`` an unseen God it creates its images in the form of idols, pictures as icons first. These icons soon turn into iconoclasty and then the Original Divine is put asside because it is conveniet to orient oneself to a physical object rather than an abstract concept. Of course it all starts with best of intentions but then turns into an unavoidable practice.

2. Human mind in its primitive state cannot visualize an Entity which do not share any human attributes. So they start attributing human attributes to the divinity. For example, human mind is bound by a dimension called time; so in our efforts to understan that Entity we think that that Entity must also be bound by that dimension. We also start thinking that like human beings He must have children, parents or He must decend up on us in human form from time to time. But fact of the matter is that these are all the tricks that our mind plays on us.

It was a pleasure watching more than 2000 page views for my article and a huge number of interactions. But over the last two days, the debate has ventured out from the main theme of the report (yes, it was just a spot report, and I was not making any editorial stand here; this can come later). But lot of you people have had missed the point and digressed from the subject. Suddenly it became a fight between Hindu and Muslim fundamentalists and a squirmish between India haters and Pakistan haters, which is sad. That was not the purpose of the article. And I could also find some people, like Dilip Chitre, whom I know personally, saying it is a one-sided view and some even said that I am a VHP sympathisers, though in not as many words. I am hurt. I am nothing except that, and I am a vociferous critic in my words and deeds against these spineless guys. And so is my stand against Muslim and Christian fundamentalists too. Well, I rest my case...

Re: # 113

Poolani, there are several theories behind Gujarat being open to conversions. The first being of course that Modi himself was subject to pressures from the international fora for the riots there.

The second being that a compromise between the VHP and christian missionaries talked about a few months ago were only being given effect.

Whatever the reason, the blind follow the blind.

China is the best example I can think of as an atheist country which flourished.

If India stopped being religious, it might just stop being poor too.

Re: # 113

Poolani, there are several theories behind Gujarat being open to conversions. The first being of course that Modi himself was subject to pressures from the international fora for the riots there.

The second being that a compromise between the VHP and christian missionaries talked about a few months ago were only being given effect.

Whatever the reason, the blind follow the blind.

China is the best example I can think of as an atheist country which flourished.

If India stopped being religious, it might just stop being poor too.

Urstruly#96:

When thinking of Hindus, Sikhs, Budhhist, Jains or any other Indic religion, it would be helpful not to have Judeo-Christian-Islamic framework. Manusmriti is not comparable to Torah, Bible or Quran. I have never seen Manusmriti in my life and had not even heard of it until I was quite old.

From what I have read, Manusmriti does not talk about apostacy, as the concept did not even exist in Indic relgions. However, it does seem to prescribe brutal punishments for lower caste men who perform rituals they were not supposed to perform or have an affair with an upper caste girl. I wonder if this is the real basis of honour killings. Even to this day, one finds that in rural India, a lower caste boy is beaten or even murdered for daring to have an affair with an upper caste girl. From my understanding of the Pakistani society, a choora/bhangi caught having an affair with a girl of oonchi-zaat would perhaps also meet similar fate.

Romair # 98

The Holy Qura`n discusses in detail both the Jews and Christians and their books etc. As a matter of fact more than half of the book is dedicated on this subject. The Holy Qura`n makes it explicitly clear that it is incumbent on Muslim to believe that the Torah and Bible are true word of God.

A common conception is that by Torah it is meant five original books of Old Testament and by Bible it is meant the four books of New Testament i.e. Mathew, Luke, Marks and John. But it is an agreed fact that all the nine above mentioned books have been altered by Christians and Jews in several ways, and Qura`n attests to this fact as well. So in Qura`n, one of the reason that God mentions why he sent another Prophet (Mohammad pbuh) to them was because of that corruption that had happened in their books.

Briefly, Torah is the collection of all the revelations that were made to Moses during the course of 40 years of his prophethood; it also includes the first ten commandments that he received on mount Sinai in the form of stone tablets. Moses (pbuh) compiled those revelations in the form of a book and made 12 copies; giving each Jewish tribe a copy. The original was given to Levi tribe. These copies remained intact until the first destruction of the Temple Mount. IN that destruction all copies were destroyed while Levis kept the original book hidden from invaders. As the time went by they, forgot about their hidden possession.. A couple of centuries later when Jews again took power, during the reign of Joshua (pbuh) this said copy was re-discovered (Kings, Chapter 22, verse 8-13). However this copy was lost permanently when second destruction of Jerusalem happened. A few decades later God sent Prophet Ezra (pbuh) upon them who compiled the Torah again in 17 volumes. These volumes contained some of the actual edicts from the original Torah, which were taken from the oral tradition of tribal elders along with a detailed history of Israelites. So in short the books of Old testament that we have now, was compiled by Ezra (pbuh) and those books contain, history of Isrealites, biography of Moses i.e. his ahadith and of course some of the text from the original Torah that was revealed to Moses.

Similarly, the New Testament or Christian Bible is actually a collection of four books. Since the Prophethood of Jesus (pbuh) lasted only three years and it is not known whether he was able to compile his revelations in the form of book during his life time. However, a serious effort to compile all the sayings of Prophet Jesus (pbuh) was undertaken approximately 90 years after he departed this world. Same as Torah, these compilations have three components – biography of Jesus (pbuh), his sayings, and some of text that may have been revealed to him. If you look at the bible, at several places it discusses the matters in the terms such as “Jesus said so…” or “then Jesus did that…..” it becomes clear from the context that it is a third person who is writing the biographical note and hence it is not a divine text.

So in either case it is almost impossible to separate what is actually the revelations and what is the altered or additional part. But despite that fact Qura’n explicitly stipulates Muslims to have faith in Torah and Bible. But the question naturally emerges, which Bible or which part of Torah? In order to address this dilemma Qura’n puts forth two criterion of verifying the authenticity of parts of Torah and Bible:

1. It must not contradict Qura’n
2. The judgement lies with Prophet Mohammad (pbuh) to verify the authenticity by his word and action.

These two criterion have been inferred by jurists through the verse 3 of the Chapter The House of Imran 3:3, which stipulates;

“It is He Who sent down to thee (step by step), in truth, the Book, confirming what went before it; and He sent down the Law (of Moses) and the Gospel (of Jesus) before this, as a guide to mankind, and He sent down the criterion (of judgment between right and wrong).”