Nay! You Humans Love The Fleeting, Fighting, Fundamentalist Life
"One can understand why Judaism, Christianity and Islam, all these three religions, became extremely aggressive. In the beginning when they started there was a lot of turmoil, disturbances, and aggression to the point of destruction. As a result, to preserve and protect themselves, they started a religion based on war. They talked of love but revenge became the hidden mainstream of their religions.”— Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi
UN General Assembly — The Religion of Peace
— Killing in the name of God
— Slaughter in the name of God
— Murder in the name of God
— Butchery in the name of God
— Massacre in the name of God
— Bloodshed in the name of God
— Atrocities in the name of God
— Carnage in the name of God
— Extermination in the name of God
"Religious extremism, regardless of whether or not it has a genuinely religious basis, is apparent or latent, adopts, provokes or sustains violence or manifests itself in less spectacular forms of intolerance, constitutes an unacceptable assault on both freedom and religion. No society, religion or faith is immune from extremism. However, when extremism resorts to a frenzy of wanton terrorism and becomes a hideous monster that kills in the name of God and exterminates in the name of religion, when it engages in the most despicable acts of barbarity, and knows no bounds in its cruelty, then silence amounts to complicity and indifference becomes active collusion. Tolerance of extremism is tolerance of the intolerable. States in general, and the international community in particular, are therefore duty-bound to condemn it unequivocally and to combat it relentlessly. The Special Rapporteur reiterates his recommendations, that a study be conducted on religious extremism and that a minimum set of standard rules and principles of conduct and behaviour in respect of religious extremism be defined and adopted by the international community.”- UN General Assembly, 24 August 1998
Surah 75:20-21
1. I do call to witness the Resurrection Day;
2. And I do call to witness the self-reproaching Spirit.
3. Does man think that We cannot assemble his bones?
4. Nay, We are able to put together in perfect order, the very tip of his fingers.
5. But man wishes to do wrong (even) in the time in front of him.
6. He questions: "When is the Day of Resurrection?”
7. At length, when the sight is dazed
8. And the moon is buried in darkness
9. And the sun and moon are joined together that Day will Man say;
10. "Where is the refuge?”
11. By no means! No place of safety!
12. Before the Lord (alone), that Day will be the place of rest.
13. That Day will Man be told (all) that he put forward, and all that he put back.
14. Nay, man will be evidence against himself,
15. Even though he were to make excuses.
16. Move not thy tongue concerning the (Qur'n), to make haste therewith.
17. It is for Us to collect it and to promulgate it:
18. But when We have promulgated it, follow thou its recital:
19. Nay more, it is for Us to explain it:
20. Nay, (ye men!) but ye love the fleeting life,
21. And leave alone the Hereafter.
22. Some faces, that Day, will beam (in brightness and beauty) -
23. Looking towards their Lord;
24. And some faces, that Day, will be sad and dismal,
25. In the thought that some backbreaking calamity was about to be inflicted on them;
26. Yea, when (the soul) reaches to the collarbone (in its exit),
27. And there will be a cry, "Who is a magician (to restore him)?”
28. And he will conclude that it was (the Time) of Parting;
29. And one leg will be joined with another:
30. The Day the Drive will be (all) to thy Lord!
31. So he gave nothing in charity, nor did he pray! -
32. But on the contrary, he rejected Truth and turned away!
33. Then did he stalk to his family in full conceit!
34. Woe to thee, (O man!), yea, woe!
35. Again, woe to thee, (O man!), yea, woe!
36. Does Man think that he will be left uncontrolled, (without purpose)?
37. Was he not a drop of sperm emitted (in lowly form)?
38. Then did he become a clinging clot; then did (Allah) make and fashion (him) in due proportion.
39. And of him He made two sexes, male and female.
40. Has not he, (the same), the power to give life to the dead?
surah 75:1-40 Al Qiyamah (The Resurrection)
Nay, (ye men!) but ye love the fleeting life, [5821]
And leave alone the Hereafter.
surah 75:20-21 Al Qiyamah
Abdullah Yusuf Ali, The Holy Qur'n, Amana Corporation, 1989.
“5821. Cf. 21:37. Man loves haste and things of haste. For that reason he pins his faith on transitory things that come and go, and neglects the things of lasting moment, which come slowly, and whose true import will only be fully seen in the Hereafter.”
Abdullah Yusuf Ali, The Holy Qur'n, Amana Corporation, 1989.
The above interpretation is just a casual scratching of the surface. This verse has much more depth, beauty and prophecy than all the Islamic theologians could dream of. Allah has just finished informing Prophet Muhammad that the day of Qiyamah will be announced, recited and even explained in the future. That would be the beginning of promised Resurrection for all humans, irrespective of race, religion or creed. The True Believers (Al-Mu'minun) were expected to look forward to this Day, comforted and assured that Allah would keep His Promise to provide at the appointed Hour detailed instructions of participating in Al-Qiyamah.
Just the mere thought of Allah returning to announce and explain about Al-Qiyamah would have kept all the True Believers (Al-Mu'minun) strictly and firmly on the Straight Path. Moreover, this promise would have been in harmony with the return of the Shiite Imam Mahdi, the Jewish expectation of a Messiah, the Christian hope for the Comforter, the Hindu anticipation of Shri Kalki and the Buddhists wait for Matreya. They are all one and the same!
Then the present Explosion of Truth by His Announcement (Al-Naba) of Qiyamah would have sent hundreds of millions of the waiting faithful into joyous ecstasy and mass celebration of a Divine Promise fulfilled to the letter by the Holy Qur'n. The entire human family would have begun the Dance of Eternity on Earth itself. The glorious Qur'n would have been acknowledged as the Book of Prophecy par excellence, the living Book of God Almighty!
Alas, the Thieves of Faith not only abandoned the vigil of the future Revelation of Qiyamah, but also completely deformed the very verse that Allah most strongly admonished humans from interference!
But the Almighty Creator knew 1400 years ago that humans would never heed His Warning for they will have their own worldly pride, interpretations, doctrines, dogmas, divisions, ideologies, philosophies, religions, prophets, fanaticism, quarrels, terrorism, wars, arrogance, ignorance, vanity, hatred, falsehoods,..
And Allah was absolutely right. Muslims love the fleeting external life and have forgotten to pursue the internal jihad with all their heart, mind and soul. Instead their warped interpretation of jihad continues the tradition of bloodshed and slaughter in the name of Allah. Contrary to the teachings of Prophet Muhammad and Qur'n, Muslims continue to overwhelmingly support violence, directly and indirectly. Their collective deafening silence to violence bears testimony to this accusations. Entire Muslim nations become enraged by progressive women like Shah Banu and Taslima Nasrin and erupt into violent protests, but are satanically quiet to wholesome slaughter and murder by their fellow-men in the name of Allah. Their collective double standards bears testimony to this hypocrisy. Their"silence amounts to complicity and indifference becomes active collusion. Tolerance of extremism is tolerance of the intolerable.”
"This callousness and this immorality make many a Muslim appear no better than the beasts of the jungle. A Jain or a Buddhist is afraid of and avoids killing even a mosquito or a flea, but, alas! there are many among us Muslims who, while they kill an innocent man or commit wanton murder, are not afraid of the powerful God, who rates human life higher than that of all the animals. What is this callousness and cruelty and want of sympathy due to? It is due to this - that from their very childhood, stories and anecdotes and wrong views of the doctrine of Jihad are dinned into their ears and inculcated into their hearts, the result being that gradually they become morally dead and cease to feel the heinousness of their hateful actions; nay, rather, the man who murders another man unawares and thus brings ruin to the murdered man's family thinks that he has done a meritorious deed; or rather, that he has made the most of an opportunity to win favour with his community. As no lectures or sermons are delivered in our country to stop such evils - and if there are any such lectures they have an element of hypocrisy in them - the common people think approvingly of such misdeeds.”- Jesus in India, Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad
The majority have now reached the point of no return, and will be the rejecters of the Good News of Al-Qiyamah. Yes, even if they see all the Signs of Allah, they will not believe in them!
WA-LAA UQSIM BI-AN-NAFSAL-LAWWAAMAH
I do call to witness the Resurrection Day;
And I do call to witness the self-reproaching Spirit.
Concerning what are they disputing?
Concerning the Great News. [5889]
About which they cannot agree.
Verily, they shall soon (come to) know!
Verily, verily they shall soon (come to) know!
surah 78:1-5 Al Naba' (The Great News)
"5889. Great News: usually understood to mean the News or Message of the Resurrection.”
Abdullah Yusuf Ali, The Holy Qur'n, Amana Corporation, 1989.
Types of Kufr (Disbelief)—Adapted from 'Tafseer ibn Katheer'
1. Kufrul-'Inaad: Disbelief out of stubbornness;
2. Kufrul-Inkaar: Disbelief out of denial;
3. Kufrul-Kibr: Disbelief out of arrogance and pride;
4. Kufrul-Juhood: Disbelief out of rejection;
5. Kufrul-Nifaaq: Disbelief out of hypocrisy;
6. Kufrul-Kurh: Disbelief out of detesting any of Allah's commands;
7. Kufrul-Istihzaha: Disbelief due to mockery and derision;
8. Kufrul-I'raadh: Disbelief due to avoidance;
In Abdullah Yusuf Ali's commentary Kufr, Kafara, Kafir, and
derivative forms of the word imply a deliberate rejection of faith, revelation and truth of the Holy Qur'n:
"The culmination of Allah's Revelation is in the Qur'n, which confirms
previous scriptures, corrects the errors which men introduced into
them, and explains many points in detail for all who seek right
worship and service to Allah-whether they inherit the previous Books
or not. It is a universal Message ... The worst and most hardened
sinner is the man to whom Allah's Signs are actually brought home and
who yet prefers Evil and turns away from the Light of Allah. The
Signs may be in the words and guidance of a great Teacher or in some
sorrow or warning, but from which he deliberately refuses to profit.
The penalty-the Nemesis-must necessary come eventually.”
According to Ibn Taymiyah (1263-1328) "kufr is
the attribute of everyone who rejects something that God has
commanded us to believe in, after news of that has reached him,
whether he rejects it in his heart without uttering it, or he speaks
those words of rejection without believing it in his heart, or he
does both; or he does an action which is described in the texts as
putting one beyond the pale of faith.”
However, this explanation of kufr is most lucid and applicable to the sheer gravity, importance, and dire consequences of this universal Message of Al-Qiyamah (The Resurrection):
"Just as faith for Muslims has to do not with believing but with knowing, so
kufr, rejection, is not a lack of belief, not an intellectual position that holds that something is
otherwise than is the case, and certainly it is not mere ignorance. Rather it, too, like its correlative iman, presupposes knowledge; for it is an active
repudiation of what one knows to be true. This is why it is a sin, and indeed a (the)
monstrous sin. It is the one final, cosmic (or some would say, the one final human) wrong;
the deliberate saying of 'no' to what one knows to be right.” (Wilfred Cantwell Smith, On Understanding Islam: Selected Studies, 1981, page 154)
Therefore most of the Al-Kufr ul Akbar (major disbeliefs) are applicable to
those rejecting or disbelieving Allah's (SWT) Signs and surahs
upholding the collection, promulgation, recital, explanation and
warning of the following:
i) His Call to witness Al-Qiyamah (The Resurrection);
ii) His Call to witness His Ruh (self-reproaching Spirit);
iii) His Call to heed Al Naba (The Great News);
iv) His Call to participate in Al Qadr (The Night of Power and Destiny);
v) His Call to confirm His Revelations, Signs, and Warnings (of i-iv).
Thus kaffir (non-believer) here is applied to all humankind,
both Muslim and non-Muslim, who reject the Call that God has commanded us
to believe in after His Revelations, Signs and Warnings have reached us.
The Qur'n clearly warns that many will disbelief, even mock, the
Great News and Sure Signs of Al-Qiyamah.
So be forewarned, and in the Hereafter never deny deliverance of this clear Warning:
"O ye assembly of Jinns and men! came there not unto you
messengers from amongst you, setting forth unto you My signs, and
warning you of the meeting of this Day of yours?”Qur'n 6.130
And to those still rejecting, hesitant or unable to make up their minds even after hearing the Great News and shown the Signs,
Allah (SWT) questions: "Are they waiting until the Hour comes to them
suddenly? All the Signs thereof have already come. Once the Hour
comes to them, how will they benefit from their message?” "Why do
they not study the Quran carefully? Do they have locks on their
minds?”Qur'n 47:18-24
The last paragraph is yet another warning from Allah (SWT) that
prior to the Wrath of the End (Al Qariah) humans are offered the
Mercy of the Resurrection (Al Qadr). And once the Hour of Al Qariah
comes to them, how will they benefit from their contemporary message of Al Qadr i.e., from the Great News of the messengers from amongst you? How will those reading these lines benefit if they continue to doubt and wait, and the Striking Day comes suddenly?
What use then will be the Mercy and Compassion of Al Qadr (Night of Destiny) if the morn of the Al Qariah (Striking Day) ends His Peace?
Why doesn't the Ummah then not study the Quran with painstaking effort to avoid the errors, mistranslation and ignorance of the ulema that have presently paralyzed their minds from believing the Great News? Why don't they use their own mental faculties and intelligence to understand Al- Qiyamah, the heart and soul of the living, breathing Quran? Living and breathing because God Almighty is now talking directly to you through His Holy Book! After all, it is Allah (SWT) who has now called out to all Believers with this Decree: "I do call to witness the Resurrection Day; And I do call to witness the self-reproaching Spirit.”He is specifically addressing you in particular (and Believers is general) to do so!
Only now in this modern age of universal education, mass media and publishing technology-after 14 centuries and unlike the illiterate past-is it possible to own and be sufficiently
literate to "study the Quran carefully" in languages they understand
best.* And just in case the Believers start studying the entire Qur'n, it
must be stressed that Allah (SWT) is referring specifically to those
eschatological Signs and surahs upholding His Call to bear witness of the
Resurrection! They must thoroughly examine and understand the Signs that have already manifested, and
set forth by messengers from amongst themselves.
Without question, to "study the Quran carefully" means using one's own mental faculties, not those of the ulema (Muslim clergy) who have
for centuries put"locks on their minds"And are the very reason for
the Ummah's present predicament i.e., their unprecedented kaffir-like mindset,
reaction, rejection and mocking of His Call, Signs and Great News of the Resurrection. They must know that during Al Qadr no 'graves are going to open up'
as this is His Night of Compassion and Mercy. So"Peace!... This until the rise of the morn!" (Quran 97:5)
“There is so much blind faith, there is so much of wrong ideas, so much of organizational fortresses they have built. All kinds of nonsensical things are going on in this world, but they'll all be finished.”
The Messiah-Paraclete-Ruh-Devi
Vienna, Austria, 8 June 1988
"We are now in the Blossom Time, as I call it, because many flowers are born and they are to become the fruits. This is the Resurrection Time, which is described in all the scriptures. But it's not like this, the way they had described us. Something wrong with them that all the dead bodies who are in the graves will come out of the graves. I mean, how much is left out of them, God knows. Must be some bones or maybe some skulls there. So they'll come out of the graves and they will get their Resurrection!!!? This is a very wrong idea.
Once I happened to meet a fellow, a Muslim from Bosnia and he told Me," I want to die for my religion, for God's sake.”I said," But why? Who told you to die?”He said," Now, if I die in the name of God, I'll be resurrected.”I said," it's all wrong. That's not the way it is going to work out. Resurrection is going to work out this way that at this time, all these souls will take their birth. All these souls will take their birth and they will be resurrected. As human beings they'll have to come.”
That's why we find all kinds of funny people these days, all kinds of cruel, criminal, all kinds of idiotic, stupid, I mean very queer, weird, funny ideas which find such, such a variety of people and such a tremendous population that we should understand they have to have their chance of Resurrection. But how many will come? That's the point. How many are going to come?”
The Messiah-Paraclete-Ruh-Devi
Philadelphia, USA — October 15, 1993
So Peace to all Believers bearing witness to the Resurrection (Al-Qiyamah)! So Peace to all Believers bearing witness to His self-reproaching Spirit (Ruh)! So Peace to all Believers resurrecting themselves during this blessed Night of Power and Destiny (Al Qadr)! So Peace to all Believers of the Great News (Al Naba)! So Peace until the dreadful morn of the Great Calamity, the Striking Day (Al Qariah) against the Unbelievers (Al-Kafirun)!
Last, but not the least, the Qur'n insists that ample warning of impending calamity must be always delivered by His messengers:
"That is because thy Lord would never destroy the cities unjustly, while their inhabitants were heedless.” (Quran 6.131);
"Never did We destroy a population, but had its warners - By way of reminder; and We never are unjust.” (Quran 26:208-209);
"And never did Thy Lord destroy the townships, till He had raised up in their mother-town a messenger reciting unto them Our revelations.” (Quran 27:59);
This cardinal rule has been expressly complied with and Warning of the impending Great Calamity repeatedly announced and fearlessly upheld by the incarnation of His Ruh for more than three decades until Her retirement in 2008 at the age of 85. (Since Jesus is the mandatory Sign of the Hour [Quran 43:61], and as the Comforter promised and sent by God Almighty in Jesus' name, She has also ceaselessly glorified Christ and His Message of the Last Judgment.)
“I should do something to bring sense to these people (humanity). Something should happen to them otherwise what I see is a
complete disaster. It is going to happen. I do not want to frighten you
like Mrs Thatcher does about the Russians. That might be imaginary. But
this is real. I am warning you that the Disaster is going to come as destruction itself.”
The Messiah-Paraclete-Ruh-Devi
London, UK, 6 June 1983
"The Last Judgment has started. We are facing the Last Judgment today. We are not aware of it. And all the satanic forces have come out like the wolves in sheep's clothes. And they are trying to attract you and you do not judge them. You only sit down and judge the Reality. It has started! It is a fact! It has started!"
The Messiah-Paraclete-Ruh-Devi
Kingston, UK, 6 November 1980
"I have such respect for so many of them (Muslims). I wish they could accept that this is not Jihad time anymore but Qiyamah Time, the Resurrection Time, the Blossom Time. Are they going to miss it?”
The Messiah-Paraclete-Ruh-Devi
*
—"Muslim illiteracy worldwide stands at about 51 percent for all age groups over fifteen. Despite a rapid increase in primary school enrollment, only 45 percent of Muslim children aged six to eleven attend primary school. An even larger gap exists at higher levels of research.”- Martin S. Kramer, Arab awakening and Islamic revival, 1996, page 280;
—"The vast majority of Muslims do not speak Arabic as their native tongue"- Christine Huda Dodge, The everything understanding Islam, 2003, page 21;
—"The degree of knowledge of Arabic determines a person's understanding of the Islamic creed. The Quran, the Hadith and Sira traditions (Prophetic sayings and actions), and the writings of the early Islamic scholars and jurists were in Arabic. Imam Shafei (767- 820), the founder of the Shafei School of Sunni jurisprudence, advocated that every Muslim should learn Arabic, at least to the point of reciting the Quran (Hourani 1991, 68). Most non-Arab Muslims do not understand Arabic.”- Elie Elhadj, The Islamic Shield, 2006, page 22;
—"If your mother tongue is not Arabic, Satan (or his troops) will encourage you to read the Quran in Arabic. Why does he do that? Because he knows that you will not understand enough of it. The majority of those who learn Arabic to study the Quran do not excel enough to understand the implication or interpretation of certain words when used in a special way in the Arabic language. They will have a lot of shortcomings. Many Pakistani and Indian Muslims are forced as children to read the Quran in Arabic and still as adults read the Quran in Arabic but they do not understand a single word of what they read... The Quran is a message, not just another beautiful language book. If you cannot read it in Arabic do not wait until the day you excel in your Arabic language, because this day may never come. Trust God and know that He is the teacher of the Quran. He will teach in any language and to any nationality, He created all things. Read your Quran today, (do not wait any longer,) in any language that you can understand and master and leave the rest to God.”Dr. Rashad Khalifa, Ph.d.
QUOTES OF ALLAH'S (SWT) RUH SHRI MATAJI NIRMALA DEVI
His Ruh Shri Mataji “I met a Russian who asked Me why the U.N. was helping the Muslims in Bosnia... I was shocked at his perception of Muslims. I have such respect for so many of them. I wish they could accept that this is not Jihad time anymore but Qiyamah Time, the Resurrection Time, the Blossom Time. Are they going to miss it?
Both things are wrong; one has to understand that all these religions were born on the same tree of spirituality and that people have plucked the flowers and are fighting with these dead flowers. Of course there are some absurd things which grew with misinterpretation and interference from unholy people, which are common in these religions. For example, Jews, Christian and Muslims believe that when they die their bodies will come out of their graves and they will all be resurrected at the Time of Resurrection, at the Time of Last Judgment, at the Time of Qiyamah. It is illogical to think what will remain inside those graves after five hundred years. Nobody wants to think and understand that it is not the body but the soul that will come out of these bodies, be born again as human beings, and be saved through Qiyamah and Resurrection. Who will tell them? No one can talk to them. As soon as one wants to talk one can be killed. This is the only way they know—how to kill.
The greatest problem with the fundamentalists is that they have no compassion because they do not love Mohammed Sahib, who He was and why He came on this Earth. They do not know the Reality. They just think that they are right type of people and that they can kill as many human beings as they want, and they can create as many problems as they like, and they can destroy the rest of the people who do not follow their fundamentalism. We find the fundamentalists do not know the fundamentals of religion and the people who think that they are very modern also don't know where this modern mind is going to take them. What a shock is awaited for this modern man who has lost faith in God. Both ways they try to do things which are in no way helpful for global peace or for the ascent of human beings by which they will have their own Peace within their heart.
Actually Hazrat Mohammed never made Islam an exclusive religion in the Koran. He very respectfully talked about Moses, Abraham, Christ and His Mother, one after another. Even so Muslims believe they are exclusive. Jews and Muslims also believer theirs are exclusive religions. There is another problem. They believe that Mohammed was the exclusive messenger of God and Christians believe that Christ is the last word, while Jews believe their Saviour has yet to come. If these Incarnations were the last ones why did Mohammed say I will send you the twelfth Mahdi (Caller from a place quite near - Q 50:41)? Also why did Christ say that He wound send the Holy Ghost? We cannot say how long the Jews are going to wait for their Saviour to come. They are wailing and crying before the Wailing Wall wearing the Torah in small amulets, but actually the most important thing for them is to collect the money that they have lent and buy diamonds at any cost.
Muslims who are not educated enough to understand Koran in original believe that they are the soldiers of Jihad which is led by some very clever, ego-oriented, uneducated people... . In this Jihad how many Muslims are going to die? On one side they produce more children to create a Muslim majority and on the other side they are getting killed by the thousands. The Jihad has become imminent and the Muslims are a real threat to peace and progress of every country they live in.
The only way to get over this brutal image is to become a wali or a real Sufi. This is what Muslims need the achievement of peaceful existence through Self-Realization. The same is the case with Jews and Christians. They believe in the same Bible, Muslims believe in the Old Testament as well as the Jews, but they nevertheless kill each other. It is painful and extremely heart wrenching that when in the whole world people have been able to enter the Kingdom of God as promised, all these fundamentalists of different religions are killing each other. May God bless them with sanity and wisdom. They should get their second birth. 'Know thyself' is the beginning of ascent.”
Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi
“The central weakness of these religions today, as we pointed out, lies in their growing irrelevancy for modern life. Once upon a time they exercised absolute dominance, at least for their adherents. They offered explanations which were received as authoritative. They elaborated these explanations into socio-political institutions where possible. Bit by bit, decade by decade, their hold on men's minds and lives is diminishing. We find, on careful scrutiny, that it is fundamentally their explanations which are found wanting. They purpose a way to think and speak about man's world which man cannot accept. He cannot accept it because in some cases it is out of tune with what man knows as certainly as he knows anything; and in other cases and concepts used in the explanations are unintelligible to modern man. If unintelligible, they are inapplicable. They are irrelevant.
This lack of intelligibility and its consequent irrelevance affect not merely peripheral elements of the religions but the very stuff and matter out of which the religions are made. The garments are not merely worn and outmoded. The bodies themselves are effete and aged, beyond apparent hope of recall to youth and vigor ... It must be noted that very often this lack of intelligibility arises, not precisely because the concepts are old, but because they reflect a mentality which has been rejected by modern man, and because they no longer correspond to the realities with which modern man must cope ...
The dominance of each religion, besides being set by common problems outlined above, suffers from particular strains and pains of its own. Judaism and Christianity resemble each other on many points of pain and setback; but Judaism suffers from internal polarization, and Christianity suffers from a prolonged insistence on being what it need not be. Islam is apart. Still trussed and strait-jacketed in outworn ways and inept approaches to the 20th century world, Islam's agony is what Christianity might be between 10th and 12th centuries A.D.: total inability even to grapple with its circumambient world. For while Judaism and Christianity are at grips with their world but losing steadily, Islam has never even started, and is in danger of cultural and civilizational mummification...
To state that a concept or an idea is unintelligible, is not to state that the reality which men have tried to express in that concept has no validity. Our concept of God may be unintelligible. God may, nevertheless, exist.”
Malachi Brendan Martin Ph.d, The Encounter
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1970, 275-76
"The West's focus on Middle East terrorism is much too narrow," writes Milton Viorst in his wise, compassionate and brilliant study of Islam, In the Shadow of the Prophet.”Terrorism is a serious problem, one that requires constant vigilance. But terrorism is a symptom of ailments that the social lens must be widened to include. Terrorism is the cry of a society in disarray, a society which acknowledges that it has lost its bearings.”
Anyone who has spent time in the Middle East or in the broader world of Islam - which stretches continuously from Mauritania on the shores of the Atlantic Ocean to Pakistan, and then discontinuously from Bangladesh through Indonesia to the Philippines Islands, whose Eastern waters are the Pacific Ocean - will probably have noticed societies"In disarray," societies whose bearings, if not lost, are set on a course that can seem at its best utterly alien to Western sensibility, and at its worst more murderously threatening to the continued existence of our civilization than anything else in recorded history.”
Paul William Roberts, The Globe and Mail, July 25, 1998
“Judaism teaches that man has, since the disobedience of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, two inclinations in his heart: one good and one evil. Malevolent dominance is the evil inclination of man's heart. Christianity has developed its essential doctrine of Original Sin: the sin of Adam and Eve entailed for all men a loss of spiritual strengths and qualities by which they could have avoided sin, especially sins of malevolent dominance. Islam adopted more or less the doctrine of Judaism with some slight modifications...
The religions, therefore, installed at the heart of their individual systems the basis for a tension and a contradiction: the absolute perfection demanded of their adherents and the tag of absolute evil pinned to its contrary evoked necessarily a series of revolts out of which sprang new polarizations, each claiming—in imitation of the original—to be the final absolute, the absolute absolute. Jewish, Christian, and Islamic morality thus could father violent excesses of moral passion which, of course, automatically, become excesses of human immorality.”
Malachi Brendan Martin Ph.d, The Encounter
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1970, 267
"When we examine the modern environment of man in which Judaism, Christianity, and Islam find themselves, it is abundantly clear that these three religions are finished as major influences. As predominantly systems of thought, worship, ethical inspiration and of judgement on human affairs, they are excluded forever from human affairs. But they will not perish overnight. They will persist in some parts of the planet with diminishing influence, dwindling numbers, and changing faces. They will undergo periodic petty renaissances and sporadic revivals. They will resist the threat of extinction as dominant mysteries with all the resources at their power and with desperation of all the ancient experienced things at bay and staring at death. Under this threat they may yet render invaluable services to man. They may go protestingly. They may depart with dignity. They will certainly pass with pathos; and their nodding fall into eternal slumbers will needle the human mind with nostalgia. But, as they are, their dominance is finished forever. Their day is done...
All three made fateful and fatal choices at the one priceless moment that history afforded them. And all three are paying the price levied by the logic of that history. For history never forgives and never forgets.
But their decadence, decomposition, and death today are about to be the saddest part of their story. Nothing so unbecomes them as the manner of their going. They are going because they failed to the one thing they promised to do: explains man to man, unwrap the riddle of his need to hate, show him he is brother at one and the same time to tell all men and to the angels. They failed to save him from the evil in him.”
Malachi Brendan Martin Ph.d, The Encounter
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1970, 273
I've studied Islam from its core texts for decades. So I know things that civilized people just can't BEAR to accept as true.
Comments bwana
What the Quran says and Islamic terrorists do are not at all related! The same goes for Christians and the Bible. There are radicals that do things for their own gain in all religions...
Anyone see a similarity between ISIS's philosophy and the Inquisition. A few centuries behind the times but much the same and equally insane!
November 5, 2014 at 6:31 pm | Reply
the german39
I am a Christian . articles like this, from esteemed scholars is what we need much more of. One does not necessarily have to agree with his exact point of view, but in my opinion ( and I know it is just my view :-0!) enlightenment and reasonable, respectful dialogue are the start of a solution in the Middle East.
Bwana . my hat is off to you!
November 5, 2014 at 8:10 pm | Reply
H. B.
If you were referring to anyone other than Muslims, you'd be right. You have not studied Islam, as I have done for two decades. The only way compromise and tolerance can be achieved is by people WILLING to do so. Islam is an absolutist belief system. It compromises with and tolerates NOTHING. No matter what.
Muslims often try to tell us they can compromise and be tolerant, but the words fall flat in the face of the actions taken by Muslims. Their own texts tell them how sinful it is to even think of compromising with infidels, or tolerating them at ALL.
All Muslims belong to what they call the "Ummah.” It collectively includes all Muslims, and patriotism to the Ummah transcends by FAR any owed to the nations they live in. No other loyalty counts to them at ALL. Of course, Muslims always exclude the "other sect" from inclusion in the Ummah, as we've seen, time and again. To Muslims, that "other sect" are false Muslims, which makes them even worse than us infidels. They are to be heavily tortured before being slaughtered. We only deserve to be slaughtered.
WE take that as showing that Muslims kill Muslims often. That is not how THEY view it. They are killing "false Muslims," and never kill those they regard as "true Muslims.” Since we refuse to grasp that, we end up with yet more confusion about Islam. Which benefits Muslims.
I know you are trying to be fair and rational. And you ARE. But by failing to study Islam, you've included Islam and Muslims as though they were also fair and rational. They aren't, because they CAN'T be and remain Muslims.
It seems to me that these things are so far outside of your experience, so totally alien to you, that you have no touchstones with which to comprehend the realities of Islam. Your desire to be fair and rational is admirable. But it is equally admirable to be open to learning of realities that are so heinous, so far removed from civility, that you can't imagine they could ever exist at all. You haven't taken that step yet.
You can only know those realities of Islam by studying its own holy texts. Unless you do, you can remain in denial of them right up to the day when the jihadis are at your door. I would strongly urge you to do that studying. You'd also need to learn how benign sounding texts in the Quran have been rendered dead . they did so on the day when their own prophet violated them for the first time. The texts remain, but hold no meaning for any Muslim any longer.
Muslims have always forced conversions. Remember when the last Pope referred to that? Muslims rioted and killed people because he had "offended" Islam. They quoted the Quran, "There shall be no compulsion in religion.” A nice, benign phrase. But it died after Muhammad forced his own first conversion. That's why Muslims still do it.
I've studied Islam from its core texts for decades. So I know things that civilized people just can't BEAR to accept as true. They remain true, notwithstanding.
Your decision, then, is whether to live in denial, or find the courage to study the reality and then ACCEPT that it IS the reality. When I started studying Islam many years ago, I was seeking reassurance, from Islam itself (its own holy texts) that Islam really was peacefui and tolerant, as I'd always believed. What I learned stood my hair on end, instead. Horrific as the reality was, I had to accept that it WAS the reality of Islam. I can wish it were otherwise until I'm blue, but nothing will change that reality. That's the reality we are facing, and which most people are too fearful to acknowledge.
It will be our own undoing. Worse still, it won't be long in happening.
November 5, 2014 at 9:01 pm
http://thecnnfreedomproject.blogs.cnn.com/2014/11/05/isis-says-islam-justifies-slavery-what-does-islamic-law-say/?iid=article_sidebar
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