If you think a little about the basic answers to the big questions of life that each religion offers, its easy to see how the answers shape the character of that religion. By the big questions I mean, what is wrong with the world and how can it be fixed. According to Buddhism, the big problem with the world is the trap of physical existence (the first noble truth of Buddhism is All life is suffering) and so the goal of Buddhism is to escape the world. When Vietnamese die, for example, they hold a ceremony for the dead called Lễ Siêu Thoát which means Escape Ritual. They hope that the soul will escape from trap of physical existence and fly away. That means Buddhists, on the whole, are fairly mellow people. They are just doing their best not to get reincarnated and stuck here for another round of suffering. According to Christianity, the big problem with the world is us. More specifically, sin which is a power at work within each and every individual that makes us corrupt and powerless, guilty and ashamed before our creator. Sin draws along with it the righteous judgement of God. Because the nature of sin is so comprehensive and because we are under the judgement of God for it, only God can solve the problem for us, which he has done in sending Jesus as our saviour, an act which demands the personal response of love, repentance, trust, gratitude and humility from us. That means that Christians, on the whole, are fairly mellow people. They are just doing their best to share the good news around so that other people can also enjoy what they have found in Jesus. According to Islam, the big problem of the world is non-Muslims (the infidels), those who do not submit to Allah and his Prophet, Mohammad. The infidels harass and persecute Muslims and stand in the way of the Islamic agenda - the spread of Shariah law until the whole world is brought into submission to Allah. The solution to this problem is obvious: the infidels must either be converted, killed or placed under forced submission. In short they must become Muslim (submitted). That tends to make Muslims, on the whole, not very mellow. They see the world in us versus you terms, with the underlying tension that is often energised into violence. We should not hate Muslims. We should love them and respect them. We should also speak respectfully of their religion and their prophet. But we must also understand them and the reason that Muslims have such difficulty living harmoniously along side others. Its because the basic world view of the Muslim is a binary conflict: Muslims (the solution) and non-Muslims (the problem). To those facebookers who would hasten to call me a religious extremist and a hater of Muslims, please read the paragraph above one more time then come back here. I am attempting to give an account of why there is so much Muslim violence in the world and so little violence of a religious origin from any other corner. I am not attempting to provoke religious violence but to understand its causes. Of course, there is a lot of other violence, mostly political. but that is not my concern here. If you care to offer a better account for this phenomenon than Im more than willing to hear your care and consider it. If convincing, Ill change the above diagnosis, but for the moment, its the one that best fits the evidence and the reading Ive done on Islam (which includes the Quran).
Posted on: Wed, 17 Dec 2014 10:43:05 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015