Tag Archives: Islam

Warnings from history

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Religions get interpreted by their followers in many ways. Some have been very positive (such as affirmations of love, compassion and forgiveness), but they have also been used to justify violence and repression. In the past few years Muslim suicide bombers, for instance, have frequently set out to kill innocent people with the words of their prophet on their lips. It is clear, however, that anyone claiming to be a worshipper of Allah, the Compassionate and Merciful, and also claims that such terrorists die in glorious martyrdom is guilty of the clearest blasphemy.

Similar actions have not been uncommon in the Christian world down the ages. For example, a Roman Catholic guidebook published in 1486, the Malleus Maleficarum (literally the Witches Hammer), was used to justify widespread torture and murder of women. It instructed believers on how to spot witches and what to do with them. They have to be rooted out and eliminated.

No religion – old or new – has been exempt from such episodes, and they continue even in this modern age. So we must be vigilant and oppose such actions wherever they occur.

©David Lawrence Preston, 29.1.2017

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How to Books, 2007

 

Religious texts

Posted on by David Lawrence Preston
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There are many wonderful religious writings. Most were written in allegorical style and were never meant to be taken literally (although some people do); others are reasonably accurate records of events as far as we can tell. Some reflect the best information available at the time of writing, but were subsequently proven to be untrue. And others are downright malicious or misleading, making a mockery of truth.

Even so, religious texts can be great sources of wisdom once you know how to read and interpret them. The secret is to look for the meaning behind the words rather than the taking the words literally, and not to be drawn in by someone else’s ideas if they conflict with your own. Learning passages of scripture off by heart can be harmful if taken as a substitute for your own experience.

Many of the most spiritual people I know have never studied a religious text in their lives!

The Bhagavad Gita

The Bhagavad Gita is an excellent example of a religious text that is symbolic and metaphorical. The title means, ‘Song of the Divine One.’ It is an ancient Hindu text, written in Sanskrit between 500-50BC. It tells the story of the warrior Arjuna (who represents the human soul on the battlefield of life) and what he learns in conversation with his divine teacher, Krishna.

It begins with a plea to shed all worry and grief so that one can begin spiritual practice with a calm, clear mind. This frees the individual from the dominance of the ego so he or she can embark on a path leading to enlightenment. Arjuna finally achieves spiritual freedom, inner peace and a state of unconditional love.

The Bhagavad Gita is often described as a concise guide to Hindu philosophy. It explains that true enlightenment comes from growing beyond identification with the ego and instead identifying with the immortal Self, (the Atman). Through detachment from the material sense of Ego, the disciple is able to transcend his illusory mortality and attachment to the material world and enter the realm of the Infinite.

The Bible

The Bible is a collection of writings. They were originally written over a period of ten centuries by people keen to record their notion of G_d. It has been translated, edited and rewritten many times that we no longer know what was said in the original text. Charles Fillmore, a great biblical scholar, wrote:

‘Modern research has thrown such additional light upon the original meaning of the scriptures that it is not safe to assume that a single paragraph of the Bible is understood in our day as it was intended at the time it was written.’

The Bible uses stories and events that are symbols of our own lives to help us in our individual quest for truth. When we interpret it metaphysically, we find it contains deep truths. As we discover them we change and grow, and then the meanings in the Bible evolve too.

The Qu’ran

Muslims believe that G_d’s final message to man was revealed to the Prophet Mohammad and recorded in the Qu’ran. They believe it contains the exact words of God as dictated by the Angel Gabriel. Those who accept the Qu’ran will be rewarded on the Day of Judgement; anyone who turns away from it will have a life of hardship in this world and will have to account for their actions on Judgement Day.

The I Ching

The I Ching, also called ‘Book of Changes’ is the oldest of the classic Chinese texts, dating from around 2,800BC. Its philosophy centres on three ideas:

  • The dynamic balance of opposites;
  • The evolution of events as a process; and
  • Acceptance of the inevitability of change.

The book consists of a series of symbols, rules for manipulating those symbols, plus poems and commentary.

Warnings from history

Religious texts get interpreted by their followers. Some have been used to justify violence and repression. Muslim suicide bombers, for instance, have set out to kill innocent people with the words of their prophet on their lips. It is clear, however, that anyone claiming to be a worshipper of Allah, the Compassionate and Merciful, who also claims that such terrorists die in glorious martyrdom is guilty of the clearest blasphemy.

Similar actions have not been uncommon in the Christian world down the ages. For example, a Roman Catholic guidebook published in 1486, the Malleus Maleficarum (literally the Witches Hammer), was used to justify widespread torture and murder of women.

No religion has been exempt from such episodes. And they continue today, albeit in a different form.

 

©David Lawrence Preston, 29.1.2017

Follow me on Facebook and Twitter @David_L_Preston

How to Books, 2007

Musings in Mostar

Posted on by David Lawrence Preston
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Browsing through old photo albums recently reminded me of a holiday in the Balkans several years ago. We took a day trip to Mostar in Bosnia Herzegovina, the site of vicious fighting a few years earlier. On the way we stopped briefly at a village (the name of which I didn’t note down at the time) perched in a hillside near the Croatian border. Not long before it had been a thriving Muslim settlement, but now was almost in ruins. Half way up the hillside was an abandoned mosque approached by a cobbled track overgrown with weeds. It had no roof, but the walls were more or less intact and covered with superb mosaics and frescos, slightly faded but nonetheless impressive. We wondered how such a beautiful building had been allowed to deteriorate so badly.

We found the answer  400m away, in the part of the village that had escaped the worst of the devastation. In the centre of the square stood a huge wooden cross standing proud. Obviously the mosque was a victim of the consequences of centuries of religious conflict.

When we arrived in Mostar we were even more horrified by what we found; everywhere once beautiful buildings were completely gutted, and, worst of all, a 600 year-old footbridge, one of the wonders of its day, had been completely destroyed. The stones that once formed it were lying in the river far below. Alongside was a temporary structure made of scaffolding which formed the only direct access between the Muslim bank and its Christian (Serbian) equivalent.

We learned from our guide that until the early 1990s Mostar’s Serbs, Muslims and Croatians shared an uneasy coexistence. When civil war broke out, the (mainly Orthodox) Serbs had attempted to expel the Muslims and (Catholic-leaning) Croatians, but were themselves driven out. Then the Muslims and Croatians turned on each other, and one night in an act of sheer spite a gang of Croatian youths blew up the historic bridge. What made this calamity even more pointless was that it had no military function; it was not wide enough to take a jeep, never mind a tank.

Later, I was admiring the stunning view of the river running through the gorge in the centre of town, trying to imagine what the bridge had looked like in its heyday and marvelling at the skills of the medieval civil engineers who built it, when a strong feeling of anger came over me. Not only was I gazing at a symbol of ethnic conflict, but of bitter religious intolerance. No doubt all sides would claim they acted in the name of G_d and that G_d was totally on their side, like in the famous Bob Dylan song from his protest days. Then a small voice in my head said, ‘Go on, write that book you’ve often contemplated. Write from the heart, say what you mean. Rebuild a few bridges of your own.’

Others have had similar experiences and claimed it to be the voice of G_d, but frankly I’m not convinced that G_d, if ‘he’ exists in any form that we can comprehend, has a ‘voice’. I might even have ignored it altogether if it were not for what happened a few minutes later.

C Cross

Having crossed the river from the ancient and narrow streets of the Muslim quarter to the so-called modern sector, we looked up and saw, on top of the highest hill, another enormous cross. It stood triumphant, proclaiming, ‘We won. Our religion is the right one, superior to yours.  Our G_d is better than your G_d.’

I thought of the tragic events that had taken place in Afghanistan shortly before, when two giant Buddhist statues carved into a mountainside were destroyed by Islamic fundamentalists. I thought of the well-meaning, down to earth British folk in a town well-known to me who were up in arms because the Muslim community wanted to build a mosque close to a Sikh temple, the hostile rantings of certain TV preachers in America, and the armed security guards outside an evangelical church I had recently seen on my travels. I reached for my pen…..

Religious intolerance is a primitive, fear-based response to something unfamiliar, that we do not understand, fostered by centuries of cultural and religious programming and conditioning. Spirituality is something else entirely. Being grounded in experience, it transcends beliefs, and can be shared by all with wisdom and goodwill. It is, above all, about peace.  Bring it on!

 

©David Lawrence Preston, 6.4.2016

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There’s no such thing as evil

Posted on by David Lawrence Preston
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If there is only one power working in the universe – as Christians, Jews and Moslems believe – and that power is good, then surely evil has no inherent substance!

Of course there are all manner of undesirable things appear in the world, but these do not create themselves and nor do they define themselves. They are simply a PERCEIVED absence of good things like beauty, peace, kindness and love.

Only our THINKING makes evil appear to be an independent force in our lives. Consider this: there is no such thing as darkness, only absence of light. We can have dim light, ordinary light, bright light…. but darkness is no light. Only light is real.

Similarly, evil is the complete absence of good. It has no substance and cannot create of its own accord. Would an intelligent creator build war, poverty, cruelty and unhappiness into its design? No, these are human-made, the result of stupidity, ignorance and selfishness.

The Universe is neither good nor evil, but neutral. It is as it is. We make of it what we will.

©David Lawrence Preston, 25.3.2016

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