Friday, March 02, 2012
Can Religion Solve the Worlds Problems?
My side of a long thread in an Islamic group -
I don't know much about Ron Paul, or anyone else, but what I DO know is that even if Ron Paul is a political genius who could save America, the majority of Americans are not enthusiastic about voting for Ron Paul. I also know that for every great person in history whether it be Lincoln or Gandhi or Winston Churchill, there are no shortage of critics and detractors who portray such people as incompetent or corrupt, which notion I find incredible. So if we listen to everyone then we must conclude that all of mankind is incompetent and/or corrupt, and that notion I find credible. OK - I am watching this interesting video. Ron Paul and Hillary Clinton are BOTH brilliant people in their own way and have risen to positions of prominence. I don't know anything much about you, Khurram Zaki , about your religious beliefs or your political affiliations. If your sympathies side with Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Egypt, U.A.E. etc. then of course in this video you are going to admire Ron Paul and find Clinton and Obama as questionable "puppets" of some sort, and your feelings are understandable. I am going to say something very blunt which may offend many, but it is how I see things. The very first religious scripture I ever read cover to cover when I was age 19 was a translation of the Qur'an by Mohammad Marmaduke Pickthall and I have reread portions over the years and I find it a very boring and substandard work which to me is obviously the product of one man, Mohammad, which served his agendas in the 7th century and perhaps in various ways improved things for the Arabic speaking tribes of Makka and Yatrib (Medina) . But, over the centuries the agendas and traditions surrounding the Qur'an and Hadith and the various Fitnah struggles for power and a rapid colonial/ideological aggression which lead to the Crusades and later the Spanish Inquisition (we all know these histories) - and ALL of the above named nations have been shaped and fashioned by the 7th century mentality of the Qur'an and Hadith, so that NOW, like a self-fulfilling prophecy, the entire world is divided into two camps, the camp of Satan and the camp of Allah, and both sides are preparing for a cataclysmic Armageddon conflict employing the most hideous weapons of mass destruction and biological warfare available. THEREFORE, it is also understandable if those who feel that they see the handwriting on the wall take a different side in the debate, and as ugly and unfair as war is, and as monstrous as genocide and ethnocide is, people weigh the options of a proactive strike with a view to sheer survival; a view which lays aside notions of ethics, morality, fairness, and yes, humanity.
Suppose you could look into a crystal ball and see two possible futures. One is a thousand years of gradual attrition by terrorism which can never be checked by methods of conventional warfare, defeat, surrender and occupation, until the entire world infrastructure is destroyed and life becomes unlivable for all humanity. The OTHER scenario is one year of genocide and wholesale extermination which is morally troubling but results in a homogeneous world which prospers for a thousand years in peace and tranquility. So, which do you choose, and you cannot have both?
Ah, but Khurram Zaki , you will not HAVE to choose... the choice will be made FOR you by all the dummy puppets of this world which have risen to positions of power and influence. AND you know you must have one or the other. You do not have some magic wand to wave over the multitudes to awaken them from their 7th century slumber of haram and halal, sharia, wudu which washes only the parts that do not smell, and Mullahs who tweeze the hairs of their armpits and imitate the habits and costume and diet of the most noble of all mankind, the illiterate man who produced the miracle of the Qur'an.
I could give you my reasons, but it would be like talking to a brick wall, and those reasons would roll off your back like water off a ducks back. You already have your firm convictions, rooted in the primitive superstitions of the 7th century, which is why words and diplomacy and compromise will bring no peace. The Saudi flag has the correct understanding which is a sword and the Shahada, because as Bukhari said, "Paradise is under the shade of swords" - so you own Islam tells you the same as I do, - war and death is the only way - the choice is between the 1000 years and the one year.
One Saudi engineer, a Wahabi, warned me NEVER to question anything about Islam, saying "we must accept EVERYTHING" without question. So where is there a place for your REASON in all this unquestioning acceptance. http://williambuell.posterous.com/the-lesser-of-two-evils-compendium
Khurram Zaki you simply confirm what I often point out that IF the entire world TOMORROW converted to Islam, there would still be mayhem as all the various 73 sectarian divisions only ONE of which shall be saved (conveniently predicted by your Prophet, NOT in the Qur'an, but in the oral tradition which came to be known as "The Sayings of the Prophet") terrorize each other. Now, in those sayings of the Prophet, it is predicted that the Kaaba will be destroyed one day by someone from Abyssinia (Ethiopia) with the nick-name of "old skinny legs." I imagine that America and Israel will say "better to die a free man than to live as a slave."
So, Khurram Zaki , you make me feel very sad because I can see that YOU, unlike those foolish Clinton/Obama puppets, YOU know the truth and you have the wisdom to lead the entire world to the true interpretation of Islam, and we will all live in a bright future of peace and harmony, and yet it is those dummy puppets who are on television while you have only this little Facebook group as your soap box/pulpit - yes, you make me sad indeed!
So, in your "Brave New Islamic World" will you give the ladies drivers licenses or will you take them away?
Everyone is a heretic in somebody's book, including me.
What are you saying "why not" to? Drivers licenses for women. Islam holds that depictions of human or animal images are haram and a belly full of pus is better than being a poet, and music is haram, but a drum is allowed, so what will you do about all these things in your Brave New World? Some Indonesian Mullahs wrote a fatwah that tobacco is haram which of course everyone ignores, but what will your position on tobacco be? Let's here it, Mr. Answer Man, since you are one of the few gifted with reason and logic and understanding.
Will cameras and photographs be haram or halal?
But what happened to all your rational reason? If Mohammad came back to life tomorrow and watched the music videos in Egypt, would he be pleased or angry? It sound to me like you are making up your own flavor of Islam! So if tobacco is halal then why did those Indonesian Mullahs (who are SUNNI) write a fatwah that tobacco is haram. Is it not obvious that tobacco is MORE harmful than alcohol and that alcohol is haram?
Well, good for you. At least you are sincere. Now suppose your reasoning and argument convinces me to convert to Islam, but after several years I apostatize, then will you have me executed?
Islamic tradition teaches that every time there is a call to prayer, the devil, Shaitan, whispers in each persons ear reasons why they should not go to the Masjid, and then Shaitan turns his back to the Masjid and breaks wind. Do you believe this Khurram Zaki - and yet Allah could not speak even to Mohammad the Seal of the Prophets, but rather Allah spoke to angel Gabreel and it is Gabreel who recited the Surahs to Mohammad. Now wouldn't it make more sense if Allah could speak to everyone, directly, and if Shaitan could speak to no one. Oh, perhaps you will tell me that Allah foreknew and foreordained from before the creation of the world which souls would believe and which souls would go to torment and this life is merely a test to demonstrate to the unbeliever that he truly deserves torment.
Now, Aiyesha was betrothed to Mohammad at age 6 and the marriage was consummated according to Hadith when she was nine, so will you go along with Iran and make the marriage age for girls to be nine, and will you favor arranged marriages over "love marriages?"
What I believe, personally, is that any person of any religion who sees that religion as a model or paradigm for stable world government is either a liar or is suffering from some serious mental disorder. I am not an Atheist, but rather an Agnostic, in that whatever this universe is and divinity, if any divinity exists, it beards no resemblance whatsoever to Allah, or Jesus, or Jehovah, or Krishna, or Shiva or Ahura Mazdah, etc. Furthermore, in the approximately 5000 years of recorded history at our disposal we can vividly see that no government whether secular or a theocracy has succeeded in making lasting peace. If there is a God he/she/it is probably on the other side of the universe creating some successful beings and has abandoned our pathetic Earth long ago as a failure. One general, in the 20th century, said "Humans are technological giants and ethical infants." I think we will all torture and destroy each other in an Armageddon conflict, and once we are gone, the universe will be a better place.
Look at the past 1500 years of Islamic history and explain to me how Islam has created stable, productive, harmonious, lasting order. I do not see it. In the 14th century the genius Ibn Khaldun of Tunisia, the father of sociology, was the first to realize that human history progresses in vast repeating cycles of barbarians, rising to the heights of an empire, only to decay and crumble and the hands of other barbarians who in turn repeat the cycle.
Yes, and when you say "Armageddon may not destroy ALL" you come around to exactly what I said earlier in this thread, that the world is divided into two ideological camps, and the only solution is for one to annihilate the other absolutely, completely, and then hope that the survivors can find some kind of world harmony. Otherwise we will have a thousand years of gradual attrition from terrorism. Those are the only alternatives that I see. I certainly do not see all the sectarian divisions of Islam sorting themselves out into one united Ummah under one unambiguous Sharia.
Ibn Khaldun was living in an enlightened society while Europe was still in the dark ages, and the Arabs gave shelter to the Greek philosophers who fled the Christian tyranny, and then gave the Greek texts to the European Christians. But the Islam of today does not reflect the Islam of Ibn Khaldun's day, or the Islam of Spain before the Inquisition.
Dialectic is words is b.s. which is why the Saudi flag has a sword backed up by words. It is interesting that only Buddhism spread through the world peacefully without the sword or colonial aggression/oppression.
The first Sufi Martyr, Hallaj, was hanged by Orthodox Sunni because he exclaimed that he was "one with Allah" and Sufi mysticism approaches very close to the bhakti devotion of Hinduism. In fact someone wrote a book to show how close Jallaludin Rumi is to Ramakrishna. You people are peddling a mish-mash of cafeteria Islam, a little of this, a little of that, making it up as you go to suit you. I know one American convert to Islam who takes whatever he needs from whatever tradition. He wants to stay with his girl friend so he does a Shi'a Muta contract marriage with her for one year. I know another convert to Islam who is a professor, with no time for proper Wudu, so she has a STONE in her office and touches the stone as she runs down the hall muttering her rakas under her breath, but wudu with stone or sand is only for extreme circumstances in the desert when water is unavailable.
But that is SECULAR HUMANISM - you dont need Mohammad or the Quran for that, you have Henry David Thoreau and the Transcendentalists and the Unitarian Universalists - I watched that movie "Ibrahim" or "The Rose in the Qur'an" with Omar Sharif who converted to Islam BUT because he kissed a Jewish actress in a movie Egypt would not show his films for 10 years. In 10,000 years every culture and religion and political system has failed, and you shall fail also, and the human race will destroy itself in hatred but it will all be done in the name of God and a quest for what is holy and pure. Your word "Pakistan" means a pure society does it not. In Egypt, the bureaucracy exists solely for the benefit of the bureaucrats of the kleptocracy and BAKSHEESH, bribery and tips.
Aha, I think it was Barbra Streisand that Omar Sharif kissed,... my memory is slow at age 63
and don't you know, you are not supposed to say CONVERT you are supposed to say REVERT because Islam is the only true original religion so people REVERT to it even if they were never Muslim. And dont you know, in the Qur'an it says that baby Jesus in his cradle shouted aloud "I am the slave of Allah!"
Most of the world believes that Turkey committed a holocaust killing 1.5 million Armenian Christians in 1917 but Turkey has always denied that. When someone warned Hitler not to kill the Jews, Hitler said "Turkey did it to the Armenians and no one noticed."
I dont like America one single bit. I think they have a lot of karmic payback in store for them for the wrongs they have done over the centuries. But this is not a world of justice or fairness or compassion but rather a dog eat dog world in which only the most ruthless and amoral will survive. America has forgotten how to kill and forgotten how to die. America fights wars at arms length with mercenaries. Rome had an army of mercenaries in its final days.
I could google on a lot of verses in the Qur'an - paraphrasing from memory, "Sometimes things which you do not like are good for you. You do not like war but Allah had ordained war for you" -- and elsewhere, "so therefore take up the sword and destroy all those who oppose Islam" --- don't you remember verses like this? We all know what the book says.
Google on "cobalt bomb" and you will read that it is a bomb which has never actually been built but which in theory could be built and it would destroy all life on the planet. Now suppose some group decided that the most righteous way to paradise is to do exactly that, and win their 72 supernatural houri virgins. All the true believers will become martyrs and go to paradise and the rest will go to torment. Now there is a reasonable religious solution to the world's problems, no? Wouldn't you like to be a martyr and go to paradise?
I am simply pointing out that the Qur'an looks to war and killing and violence as a solution just like all the other cultures and religions.
You dont need true Islamic doctrine to support a cobalt bomb scenario, all you need are heretics with a distorted ideology and cobalt bomb technology, and there are no shortage of heretics in this world, are there?
