Does Islam, in fact, Encourage Paedophilia?

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Re: # 488

Kaal Ji

Thank you dear. I think evolution is not proceeding in a linear fashion but is going in a circle. It reminds me of a film showing the last days of Darwin on a local tv channel in London during early 90's. I was surprised to see Darwin roaming naked in his house among his family, women and children all included. Was not this a reversal to animism?

All the living ultimately die (?) and become a food for other living things and the circle goes on for ever as Ghalib says:

"Shamah har rang mein jalti he saahar hone tak"

Will there be a 'Saahar' (the morning) ever which is not followed by night?

Excuse me this rambling which is prompted by your kind and salutary response.

Regards

Of course not, or at least not necessarily, teshah ji :)

Allow me to recount a real story about a dear white American friend of mine (who has, since I last saw him, risen very rapidly to assume chaired professorship at an Ivy League university).

One day the friend came rushing, huffing and excited, and announced to me that Hindus had always known about Evolution much before everyone had any clue. Why, because he had just come across the successive incarnations of Vishnu - the Preserver of Life. These, he learnt, were -

Matsya (fish)
Kurma (tortoise)
Varaha (boar/wild pig)
Narasimha (half-man, half-lion)
Vamana (dwarf man)
Parashuram (man with an axe)
Ram (moral man)
Krishna (practical cum philosophical man)
Balaram (spiritual ? man)

Was he right? Depends on how prone one is to faith. One can take all this and declare the world's greatest faith and revelation from something called "God" (people have done a lot more with a lot less).

Or one can accept this and everything else in human stride, and go back to having faith in merely oneself.

That's just a choice. Nothing else.

Re: # 477

"Why is Hanuman depicted as having a monkey face and a tail? A simple answer would be because he had these attributes. A 'truer' answer would use no more than a paragraph about a message."


Does it not mean that the Hindus knew as a matter of fact the evolution of homo sapiens which Darwin proved much later on with so much ado.

kaka, God created Hanuman just to make it clear to beleivers that evolution really did occur.:-)

Newsflash: Command from God.

The last line should be explained.

"You will learn about everything except religion."

If you do all that (refer to sura/shloka #484, Revelation: Chowk) with book-based religions, of course you will learn about those religions. But if you bring the same mindset and methodology to non-book-based religions, you will learn nothing about those religions. What you will learn, given a representative enough set of books, definitely, is something about socio-economic conditions prevailing a few thousand years ago, and if you are careful, *some* religious beliefs prevalent THEN.

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Poor God, He has to actually speak the language of clueless academics, these days. :(

As a real Prophet, I can't give up, though. After all, I have it directly from God Himself: He gave wisdom to even those who were/are tricked by the "Punjabi Prophet of Islam."

Here goes:

If you want to have "faith," stay with Islam. Accept its basics - whatever they be, and everything you see will flow directly and logically from those basics. Don't begin with what you personally like (or which woman you would like to personally marry/have sex with) and work backwards. That's not Islam, or any other faith, Punjabi Prophets of Islam, and their strong personal fetishes, notwithstanding.

If you don't have faith, then FORGET "scripture." Forget book-based thinking. Use your own head. You are on your own, your own Prophet.

May be not as good a prophet as me, obviously, but a small-time prophet nevertheless.

Yet, that may not be for you at all. So don't destroy the only good thing you actually have - real Islam. Go read "scripture." You will indeed find commands that you should diligently follow. Believe me, those commands are never as illogical (once you accept them on faith alone) as Ahemdis keep whining about.

Or if you think you have given up faith but can't step outside of book-based religious thinking, feed "scriptural texts" into textual-analysis computer programs. Count words. Decipher patterns. Compare syntax. Look up word meanings. And, most importantly, wonder, whether final finally means anything.

You will learn about everything except religion. :)

Typical Ahemadi talk, sattar bhai.:

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People of beyond faith don't have "scriptures" like you do. That is one thing your Punjabi prophet forgot to teach you. LOL

Actually, he was clueless. I, as a real Prophet, am willing to teach you. But would you listen?

Kaal,

You were quick to abandon the realm of “beyond faith” … in order to defend the scriptures; to make palatable, to yourself and to others, this half-monkey business; to seek reason in reason of others. Apparently there is spiritual slavery, and judging from your posts, traditional slavery as well as ancestral slavery. Needless to say, you have your hands full. You have mercilessly slaughtered your own grandiose ideals … all at the feet of a monkey-god.

You may now stop justifying scriptures, stop coloring them with your preferences. You have done enough damage to your deals … and once again I have to be the one to enlighten you. And don’t worry about what a punjabi prophet accomplished. Start thinking about what your half-monkey accomplished, besides perhaps, eating half a banana!

The unsavory violence bit is aimed by the ummah, at the ummah … more than anything else. They are doing themselves in; I am only trying to talk sense to them. Don’t be so upset.

Your issue with semitic faiths is revealing. I can see how they are getting under your skin, esp. when viewed in the backdrop of central-asian invaders. Dude, your baggage is your problems. As you deal with it, feel free to leave another set of lip imprints on zee’s rear when you so desire. That would be another kind of slavery … the very thought of which grosses me out. Good luck …

By the way, that's another reason why Mirza Sahib was less a prophet than you and I. The man did nothing but a lot of textual analysis, adding just some self-seving demands from a something he called his god.

LOL, that was funny.

Look, kaka, if you leave God behind, we should take this forward. I am sure I can learn much from you. And you will, ultimately, get it too.

There is no use coming to these things with pre-conceived minds (unless you remain a person of faith, which then would be ok).

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Indic texts? What do you want to learn in those?

Conditions thousands of years ago? Sure you will learn some of that from ANY stories, depending upon which and how many books you read, and how well you read them.

Readings books is not the way to gain religious knowledge (is that your interest, anyways?).

Ask clear questions (don't jump from one question to another :)), and you will get your answers. Nobody in India "reads books" to understand these things.

And prophets should be the last ones to spend their lives doing "textual anayses."

Your question until now:

1. Were there half monkeys in real flesh and blood.

Answer: No. And I know all about the monkey being the father of man.

Your answer: reading all those texts and doing textual analysis, there were. (Well, great. so what do you want us to take away from that?).

2. What is their significance?

Answer: These are stories to teach important lessons about life. We respect them as *one* part of our tradition.

Your answer: They tell about socio-economic-political conditions thousands of years ago. (well, fine, every story teaches something about the time it was written in. But there are lots and lots of stories and you will have to read quite a few to get any fair idea. Suppose you have done all that, so?)

Are we talking of two different things? I am focused on religion (my interest). You, on socio-economics and politics (your interest)?

'Aryans pushing down south' is a commendable attempt. Even so, there is no reason to discount that some characters had tails or resembled animals. If animals can look like animals without much effort, how hard could it be for others?

You have to exclude 'God' when you interact with kaka. Apparently, you can't focus and attempt to inject ideas like god, religion, faith and hinduism in response to simple quieries about states of affair a few thousand years ago in certain geographical areas.

A simple textual analysis of Indic texts would yield a whole lot more about the states of affairs in terms of human agencies and power dynamics THAN all the gobblegook of symbolism and religion jargon. For example, you can wax on all the symbolism in the sacrifice of Punjabi/Pathaan Virgins wearing Ninja outfits, ascending to Heavens from a Red Temple at the foothills of the Top of the World, but the actual state of affairs is.. well it is extremely mundane.

Same with 911.. The angels stomped on the roofs of the towers to bring down what, sans angels, could have been just buildings with large holes. Well the number 19 was at work there.. so it could't have been all that mundane.

The point is even with all the waxed on symbolism, there was still a nature of reality which can still be described in a few paragraphs. Too bad you have no clue how to access that..

Hmmmm, Indian (and other ancient non-faith) traditions are of course full of symbolisms. Some I know, some I don't.

There is a version that Hanuman story might reflect the 'push' of 'Aryans' down south, meeting people different from themselves. But that is all speculation, and pretty irrelevant to religion as such.

Overall, the religious mindset is: you can make up your own God. The only faith needed is in oneself. Not to let any God get too big for their boots.

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Ganesha's head, I suppose, symbolizes wisdom, memory, far-sightedness; but these, kaka, are micro-level details, related to specific deities.

We can think affectionately of these deities and obsess about their individual characteristics, knowing full-well in our hearts, there was/is no Ganesha in flesh and blood. :)

Aesop has a 'crow' with a dilemma to drink out of a bottle because a crow cannot lift a bottle like a monkey and guzzle away. Same with the 'vixen and grapes' story because vixens are supposed to be smart.

Orwell has ambitious pigs, 'soldier' dogs, an indifferent cat and a cynical donkey in Animal Farm, conversing with each other to convey a political message. If you ask kaka what was Orwell's message, kaka could do that in a simple paragraph involving words like Russian Revolution and Communism.

Why is Hanuman depicted as having a monkey face and a tail? A simple answer would be because he had these attributes. A 'truer' answer would use no more than a paragraph about a message.

Ganesh's elephant head.. What is the teaching encapsulated in that head?

Again, kaka is faithless and has simple questions.

Again, I hasten to add, faith-based traditions are different, and perfectly ok.

One may fully believe that monkeymen, half lions, flying horses, or punjabi prophets all existed in real-flesh.

What one cannot do is to use *reason* to push the argument that monekymen gods existed in real flesh, while punjabi prophets did not, or vice versa.

Only people who must rely on monkey see-monkey do way of doing things "need" those descriptions.
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There is monkey man, there is wild pig, there is half-man, half lion, there are forms with many heads and many arms ---

Why are those descriptions used if they did not exist?

Those are at best stories to encapsulate teachings and messages. Call them fables if you would.

To read history in monkey men and talking lions is to be stuck in the faith tradition: Since these stories were MADE UP, they MUST be true (to some lesser or greater extent).

No, they were not true.

God is visualized in an infinite number of ways. You and I can make up another set of ways, and there need be no "real" person or people behind our stories.

Again, kaka, there were NO monkeymen, half lions and half men, men with ten heads, or whatever of that sort. We can not understand those things from the framework of faith.