Abrahamic Traditions: Anachronism in the Modern Age

Stormer0628 · Dec 4, 2016

Islam

Part 4/4

ABRAHAMIC TRADITIONS vs. WOMEN

Top ten rules in the Quran that oppress and insult women
James M. Arlandson

Conclusion

The nightmare must end for women in Islamic countries.

But the political and legal hierarchies in the Islamic world do not seem ready to reform on women’s rights. Here is a 1998 interview with Shirin Ebadi, one of the first female judges in Iran. She correctly sees abuses in Iranian law, which favors men. However, what has been done about these abuses?

Zohreh Arshadi "was a practising lawyer in Iran prior to her forced exile to Europe. She is currently an advocate in France and is active in human rights and especially of the rights of women. She has been especially active in defence of the rights of women in Iran." She reports on the inequities in Iranian law as it pertains to women:

The Islamic punishments have encouraged a culture of violence against women, especially within the family and has spilled into violence against children. This has been commented upon by many within the country . . . The fact that men receive a lighter punishment if they commit a violence against women undoubtedly encourages such violence. We saw how women could be killed with impunity during alleged adultery. Stoning to death for adultery, although technically admissible for both sexes, has also been carried out mainly against women.

Though these two examples come from Iran, they could multiply throughout the Islamic world. However, the legal hierarchies understand the cost of reform: abandoning many verses in the Quran and many passages in the hadith, and this they cannot do.

A sign of hope? The Iraqi Constitution, so far, says that 25% of the seats in the Parliament are specified for women. So maybe reform can be encouraged in a fledgling democracy.

But if Islamic nations, especially those who follow sharia (Islamic law) closely, refuse to reform, then the second best strategy must be played out. Islam must never be allowed to impose its sharia system of "justice" anywhere in the West and around the world. No sharia courts should be permitted outside of the Islamic world. The Quran—the ultimate source of sharia—oppresses women specifically and people generally.

The Islamic holy book is too patriarchal and culture-bound to be relevant to the new millennium.

Supplemental Material
The readers may go to these three sites for other translations of the Quran: this one has multiple translations; this one has three; and this conservative translation is subsidized by the Saudi royal family.

Here is the website for the online hadith.

A good online resource for the historical context of a sura is here, where Maududi provides excellent background material.

Part One of an article, leading to two other parts, is one of the best and most thorough discussions of women in Islam. It analyzes many Quranic verses, hadith passages, and modern Islamic views, more than this top ten list can cite and analyze. For fair-minded readers, the three-part article is a convincing assessment, leading to one conclusion: Islam dishonors and even abuses women in many areas of life, according to the original source documents of Islam. If Muslim polemicists and missionaries have time on their hands, they should attempt to refute these articles instead of this top ten list, which is only a summary of many other articles and links, like this three-parter.

This webpage has a number of links to women’s issues, as well.

This is a superb overview of the Quran and hadith on women’s inferior status in Islam.

This short booklet has an excellent overview on Islam and women’s role.

This news report states that women in Pakistan have lost the fight to reform rape laws. The report says:

Statutes known as the Hudood ordinances, based on sharia law, currently operate in Pakistan. They require a female rape victim to produce four male witnesses to corroborate her account, or she risks facing a new charge of adultery.

Most women refuse to report a rape for fear they will be treated as a criminal.

Under current laws, a victim risks courting punishment if she reports a rape allegation as the Hudood ordinances criminalise all extra-marital sex.

A woman who fails to prove that she was raped could then be charged with adultery under the same legislation.

According to a 2002 report by the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, a woman is raped every two hours and gang raped every eight hours.

However, because of social taboos, discriminatory laws and victimisation of victims by police, campaigners say that the scale of rape is almost certainly higher.

Why must the (raped) woman bring four witnesses? The Quran in Sura 24:4 says:

And those who accuse chaste women, and produce not four witnesses, flog them with eighty stripes, and reject their testimony forever, they indeed are the Fasiqun (liars, rebellious, disobedient to Allah).

Evidently, if a woman cannot produce four witnesses, then she must be whipped or flogged.

MEMRI TV reports that Saudi TV aired a talk show that discussed this issue. Scrolling three-fourths of the way down the link, the readers can see an Islamic scholar holding up sample rods that husbands may use to hit their wives.

Memri TV has a transcript of an Iraqi cleric who says that certain nations allow husbands to beat their wives and do not protest it. On the other hand, Islamic societies provide guidelines, such as not hitting on the face and not severely.

Memri TV also has a video clip and transcript of Sheik Yusouf al-Qaradhawi who made commotion in London for opposing homosexuals and advocating wife beating. He says that wife beating is not done by the "best" among the Muslims. Reply: But why is it enshrined in the eternal word of Allah? Muslims constantly bring up the beating done with a toothpick. A toothpick in Muhammad's day was something like a thin branch or long twig. Granted, it could not kill, but it could inflict pain. No one should beat his wife, even threaten to beat her. Why cannot Muslims see this? The Quran says it is legitimate. Of course, he blames the "Zionist lobby" for any persecution he believes that he suffered. This is also irrational.

MEMRI TV has a video clip and a transcript of an Egyptian cleric who says that a man may kill his wife if he catches her in the act of adultery (in flagrante delicto), but his murder of her must take place within a short time of catching her. His punishment is reduced to a mere misdemeanor, which carries a light sentence. The wife, on the other hand, if she kills her husband immediately after the act, does not get a reduced sentence. Why not? The other woman in bed with the first woman's husband may be one of his wives.

MEMRI TV has a transcript of a Bahraini cleric outlining the rules for wife-beating. Apparently, it never occurs to these clerics that this practice is wrong for all times and all places. Bluntly said, Muhammad was misguided in Sura 4:34.

MEMRI TV also provides a transcript of a woman reformer in Saudi Arabia who says women should have more rights. Her battle is noble, but she is fighting uphill.

MEMRI TV has a video clip and a transcript showing a Saudi cleric, a member of the Shura Council, arguing for the rights of women to drive cars. The tone of the exchange reveals that the moderate cleric (moderate on this issue at least) is fighting an impossible battle.

However, MEMRI TV has a video clip and a transcript of another Saudi cleric arguing against giving women the right to drive cars.

This present article criticises Amina Wadud's shaky exegesis of Sura 4:34, but this report shows her leading Muslim prayers for men and women in a church. (Muslims were only able to prevent it from happening in a mosque, but object against her leading prayers anywhere in front of a mixed congregation). The report cites other women who have done this, as well. It also reports on Muslim reactions to this new development. Further discussion and links regarding Amina Wadud's move are found in the Index to Islam on this site.

The man designated by Iran’s hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as his Minister of Justice vowed that "improperly-veiled women" will be treated as if they had no Islamic veil at all.

Jamal Karimi-Rad told the local press, "Being improperly veiled and not wearing a veil are no different. When it is clear from the appearance of a woman that she has violated the law, then the crime is obvious and law enforcement agents can take legal measures against her".
"Crimes such as mal-veiling or other prohibited acts, which happen before the eyes of a law enforcement agent, are evident crimes and must be dealt with in accordance with the law", Karimi-Rad said.

Sharia oppresses women because it offers them no freedom of choice. If a Muslim woman volunteers to wear a veil or head covering, then that is her prerogative. However, she should be free not to wear one, without being punished as a criminal.

Following are excerpts from a TV debate on women appearing on Saudi TV, which aired on LBC TV on March 25, 2007.

Interviewer: Does the appearance of Saudi women on TV run counter to Islamic law?

Saudi cleric Nasser Al-Huneini: What we want is for women [to reveal] their culture and intellect. We want women to play a role in the development of society. But a woman who insists upon appearing on TV insists upon showing her body. Why do we act unjustly towards women by saying that we can only benefit from them by presenting them to people this way?

[...]

Interviewer: How did you feel when you read about the debate in the Saudi Shura Council about the appearance of Saudi women in the media?

Saudi newscaster Buthayna Nasser: I felt a sense of injustice and indignation, of course.

Nasser Al-Huneini: On the issue of the hijab, all religious scholars are in agreement that if revealing a woman's face might lead to temptation and other things, it is forbidden. In addition, even when they permitted the revealing of the woman's face, they placed restrictions on this. Even Sheik Al-Albani did so. They stated that only the face and the palms may be exposed. The woman is not allowed to expose her neck or her hair. She is not allowed to appear with make-up or jewelry. The religious scholars have all agreed upon this.

[...]

Buthayna Nasser: Sir, when I appear on TV, and when I claim my right to play a role in this professional field, I demand that my face, which constitutes my identity, be seen. Under no circumstances am I prepared to allow my identity to be obliterated.

[...]

Who are these people who wish to decide for me how I should behave? Why do you treat me as less qualified just because I am a woman? Why is there always a male voice deciding how I should behave? The Lord created me equal to you in my duties, punishment, and reward. When you fast, I fast. When you pray, I pray. When you steal, your hand is cut off, and when I steal, my hand is cut off. This is the greatest evidence that I am not less qualified. I know what I am doing, and I know how to maintain my honor. (Source)

In March 2004, Homa Arjomand, coordinator of the campaign to stop a sharia court in Canada, delivered this speech outlining the abuses that inhere in Islamic law, pertaining to women. Needless to say, sharia favors men’s rights excessively, at the expense of women’s rights. Arjomand tells the story of a sixteen-year-old who was forced to marry a twenty-nine-year-old and suffered physical abuse at his hands. How could this abuse be otherwise, when Allah commanded it in the first place?

Warning! This report has a photo of a Muslim woman in Denmark getting murdered by her brother in an "honor" killing.

Stormer0628 · Dec 12, 2016

Fighting Dangerous Ideologies

From the Individual Level

A University Professor starts talking of student's distaste for "questioning God." This comes even though he only ever questions other people's beliefs about God. He talks of his fear that people will stop debating each other's beliefs, saying that failing to critically discuss and challenge ideas is the start of a slippery slope that can lead to wide conflicts.

“No man is an island, John Donne pointed out, yet we often act as if it were so, and this defense of faith, of the right of the individual to believe without question whatever he or she wants, seems to presuppose it. [...] But perhaps we ought to consider more than just that. For people of faith must still live in the world [...,] this is to say that their beliefs about God do not affect only them. Beliefs have consequences. A belief that has no impact on life, if such a belief exists, is probably not meaningfully held. What we believe about ourselves and the world and people around us influences how we feel and how we behave, how we treat and talk to others, how we judge things, how we vote. [...] We are less like islands and more like pieces in a puzzle, in which the shape of one piece determines the shape of the next. [...]

In America [...] it is the highest offence for you to suggest that you are somehow 'in with God' and that I am not. But what are we to do then? I fear the retreat into faith because of what it might lead to: holy war. If you will not try to justify your ways to me, nor I to you, what recourse do we have, in the end, but the use of power? How long will it be, I wonder, until frustration with the failure of politics to transform the world as you like leads to violence, to God telling your people to kill mine, to a crusade, an inquisition?”

Prof. Richard Reilly (2003)

His progression shows us that we must question beliefs at the starting point - at the level of the individual believer. All beliefs should be questioned - all beliefs should be made subject to a demand that they are backed up with rational argumentation and evidence. Where these are not available or unsuitable, then, we should all fall back by default onto the premise that we're not sure. The surer we are, the more risk there is of ourselves descending unknowingly into a fundamentalist mindset, from which it can be hard to return because we come to defend our position with rigor, and invest in our position elements of our self-esteem. We should learn that our beliefs are not the defining feature of our personality, and that other's beliefs are not the basis of theirs. Our actions are what count.

There is a constant need for us to question our own beliefs and the beliefs of those around us. It creates a healthy atmosphere of skepticism and intelligence, and prevents people from coming to unreasonable conclusions. The way our brains work mean that we frequently misinterpret events and data, and in particular, we always think there is more rationality and evidence for our beliefs than there is. This all matters because when beliefs become unquestioned, a community can become increasingly divorced from reality. This is especially true when individual leaders or belief-based authorities claim to be acting in accord with a divine principle, such as God's will. When it comes to disputes, religionists can come to deny any chance of compromise.

In the adult world of democratic politics, compromise in disputes is what keeps things from breaking down: you give a little in one area, but have to give up in another. However arguments based on differences in religion or belief often contain parties that believe the issue has universal, absolute, and cosmic significance. They will not compromise on their position, and many ordinary believers state that they think that religious beliefs should be somehow beyond question.

Malise Ruthven in his book on fundamentalism warns that this is particularly dangerous. It is how religious cults are formed. In extreme cases, this leads to complete social rejection and the possibility of suicide cults, as has been seen many times in history, for example with Charles Manson's followers and the 900 who died when the People's Temple committed mass suicide. These groups always start out with borderline, but common, beliefs and slowly become more delusional over time. In all cases, followers lacked an instinct to ask questions about the beliefs.

It is religion that gains most when people cease asking deep questions about beliefs, and it is truth that suffers most. Thomas Paine famously remarked that "it is error only, and not truth, that shrinks from inquiry."

In the name of truth and common sense, do not let even trivial-seeming beliefs take hold without double-checking them, because once beliefs are trivialized, a slippery slope can take you down into madness!

Stormer0628 · Dec 16, 2016

Understanding Islam: The Beginning

Islam is a reflection of the harsh living conditions of the Arabian desert
Harsh on men, harder still on women and children
Desert life is neither for women nor children
The vicious desert conditions mean that newborn boys are more valuable than newborn girls
The desert commands both terror and respect
The desert thus impels a fatalistic conception of existence
The unforgiving climate demands rigid rules of survival
Characterized by extreme hunger and thirst
Limited resources means women and children are seen as nothing but extra mouths to feed and an additional strain to the burden of men
When resources are hard to come by, women and children become expendables and the first to go, newborn and young girls often buried alive unless some kin rescues them
Ironically, women and children have also become scarce and valued resource by this mode of existence
The seething and simmering sand dictates the most elaborately conservative garments to guard against the pernicious, suffocating heat; ironically, the men who wrote down the edicts of Islam did not bother to disconnect from this weather-dictated garb even in places and times when this thinking no longer holds

TO know and understand the Muslim, we must study Islam. To know and understand Islam, we must study the Bedouin of Arabia; and to know and understand the Bedouin, we must study the Desert. For the desert environment explains the special mentality of the Bedouin, his conception of existence, his qualities and his defects. Consequently it explains Islam, a secretion of the Arab brain; and finally it explains the Muslim that Islam has run into its rigid mold.

An immense plateau, rocky and sandy, 1,250 miles long with an average breadth of 500 miles, surrounded by a girdle of mountains with peaks rising 6,500 and occasionally 10,000 feet; between this lofty barrier and the sea a fertile strip of country 50 to 60 miles wide. That, in a few strokes, is the general aspect of Arabia.[SUP][1][/SUP]

The plateau is indeed what the Bedouins call it, “the land of terror and of thirst.” Situated for the most part in the tropics, and shut off from the softening influences of the sea by a mountain wall that arrests the moist winds and causes the rain to fall on the coastal strip, it presents every variety of desert nature: the lava desert, or Harra; the stony desert, or Hammada; the desert of sand, or Nefoud, moving dunes, alkaline plains, and sebkas, whose salt crust breaks under one's footsteps.

The whole scene is wild and mournful. Those gentle undulations that rest the eye in countries with a normal climate, where centuries of cultivation have formed the soil, are unknown in the desert. There everything is disjointed, rough, bristling with hostility. In the basaltic and millstone regions the rocks are hewn into sharp edges. The undulations of the surface are abrupt and steep, without any gradual transition.

If one could imagine the chain of the Alps submerged in alluvium up to within 800 to 500 feet of the summit, one would see nothing but a series of domes, peaks, needles, fallen rocks and denuded columns rising abruptly from the ground. That is what the Harra looks like, with its tortured skyline recalling vast cosmic upheavals.

Then there is the Hammada, a barren plain of stones, a vast glittering extent of naked rocks, with all the weariness of one color, where the wind has swept away every particle of vegetable earth, where extremes of heat and cold have split up the soil into slabs and splinters — a monstrous chaos of broken stone, where no living thing can flourish.[SUP][2][/SUP]

Further on is the Nefoud, a sea of sand passing out of sight, from whence emerge high dunes like huge waves petrified, with parallel gullies formed by the wind that keeps them incessantly in motion. Of one uniform tawny tint, this barren plain is of an appalling monotony. It is the domain of death, and either burns or freezes. The porosity of the sand multiplies the surfaces of absorption and of radiation, and the sun by day heats it up to such a degree that one dare not venture across it; at nightfall it loses this heat almost instantaneously, and becomes covered with frost.

Under the effect of the wind which is bottled up in these gullies, possibly also from expansion, the dunes give out strange sounds, which add to the wild horror of the solitude. They literally hum, like a metallic top, and some travelers have compared the noise to that made by a threshing-machine.[SUP][3][/SUP]

Then there are vast stretches of gypsum, of a whiteness that is unbearable under the burning glare of the sun. And again there are the sebkas, once salt lakes, now dried up, on the surface of which the salt mixed with sand forms a crust full of holes over a quagmire.

Throughout the country vegetable soil is very scarce. Reduced to an impalpable powder by the general dryness, it is carried away by the wind, and is precipitated by the action of rain in less dry countries. Being subject within the same period of twenty-four hours to torrid heat and extreme cold (140° to 18° Fahr.), swept by winds either burning or freezing but always dry, the soil, whatever its nature, is stricken with barrenness.

Vegetation is rare in the desert; in the absence of rain, it can only obtain nourishment from water in the subsoil, and so can only thrive in deep basins, where the water-bearing stratum is near the surface. There are a few stunted plants in the ravines and the wadies — long depressions at the bottom of which one may find a little moisture by digging — some Artemisias, Brooms and Halophytic plants. Here and there, in sheltered places, a few puny shrubs of acacia and tamarisk carry on a forlorn struggle against the ever-encroaching sand.

There are no rivers, no springs, a few wells, far apart, constantly being covered by the shifting sand, and having to be cleaned out every time by the thirsty traveler.

Any considerable collection of human beings is impossible amid such hostile natural surroundings; they would be decimated by hunger and thirst. So there are no towns, nor even villages; only starveling families, for ever preoccupied by the anxieties of their existence, wandering in these wastes strewn with ambushes.

But if, leaving these dreary solitudes, one crosses the mountain barrier enclosing them, one descends suddenly into a wonderful country. The coastal region, watered by sea breezes, fertilized by the wadies, which in rainy weather roll in torrents from the heights, is, in comparison with the desert plateau, a land of plenty and delight. Between Medina and Mecca this strip is widened by the granitic plateau of Nedjed, an important mountain mass that catches the rains and feeds numerous springs.[SUP][4][/SUP]

Here are wells that never dry up, and oases where beneath the palms there is a two-storied vegetation of fruit trees, cereals, and perfume plants. Here too are pastures where horses, camels and sheep can thrive.

These are the favored countries of the Hedjaz, of Assir, Nedjed and the Yemen, of Hadramout and Oman, with populous towns such as Medina with Yambo as its port, Mecca with its port of Djeddah, Taif, Sana, Terim, Mirbat and Muscat. And yet the attraction of these fertile regions has not depopulated the desert.

The Bedouin has remained faithful to his desert, and as, by the side of the sedentary, less active tribes of a gentler mode of living, he represents the man of action restless and brutal, it is he who in the end has imposed his manners and mentality upon the whole of Arabia. It is him, therefore, that we have to study. No historical research is needed; immobility being the leading characteristic of the Arab tribes, the Bedouin has not changed. Such as he was when Mohammad drew him from his idol-worship, so we see him exactly described in the book of Genesis, in the passages relating to Ishmael or Joseph, or well represented in the bas-relief of the palace of Nineveh recording scenes from the wars of Ashurbanipal, even so is he at the present day.[SUP][5][/SUP]

The desert condemns the individual to a special sort of life which develops certain faculties, certain qualities and certain defects. It is an existence full of difficulties, with danger everywhere; from the marauder prowling round the tent or round the flock, meditating a sudden dash: from the wind-enemy that dries up the water-hole and smothers the meager vegetation in sand: from the rival who occupies a coveted pasture: from the soil that cracks into chasms.

The desert imposes as a first condition of existence — nomadism. It is not for pleasure that the Bedouin is always travelling, but from stern necessity. Cultivation being impossible on a barren soil deprived of vegetable humus and moisture, man is doomed to the shepherd's trade. But the pasturage, composed of sickly herbs growing in depressions sheltered from the wind, are of short duration and small extent. The flocks eat them down in a few days, when the shepherd must set about finding others; hence the necessity of being always on the move. When a pasture is found, he must make sure of its possession against other rivals, and, on occasion, use violence. It is a life of fever and of fighting, a rough and dangerous life.

But seldom can the Bedouin satisfy his hunger; he has everything to fear from nature and from man. Like a wild beast, he lives in a state of perpetual watchfulness. He relies chiefly upon robbery. Too poor to satisfy his desires, devoid of resources in an ill-favored country, he is always ready to seize any chance that offers — a camel strayed from the herd provides him with a feast of meat: a sudden dash upon a caravan or the douar (camp) of a sedentary tribe furnishes him with dates, spices and women.

The practice of arms and the hard training he has always to live in have developed his warlike faculties; and, as it is these that enable him to triumph over the dangers of his wandering life and to procure the only satisfactions possible in the desert, he has come to consider them as his ideal.

The coward and the cripple are doomed to contempt and death. The respect of his neighbor is in proportion to the fear with which he inspires him. To win the praise of poets and the love of women, he must be a brilliant horseman, skilled in the use of sword and spear.

to be continued...

Stormer0628 · Dec 29, 2016

Understanding Islam: The Beginning (2/2)

Islam is a reflection of the harsh living conditions of the Arabian desert
Harsh on men, harder still on women and children
Desert life is neither for women nor children
The vicious desert conditions mean that newborn boys are more valuable than newborn girls
The desert commands both terror and respect
The desert thus impels a fatalistic conception of existence
The unforgiving climate demands rigid rules of survival
Characterized by extreme hunger and thirst
Limited resources means women and children are seen as nothing but extra mouths to feed and an additional strain to the burden of men
When resources are hard to come by, women and children become expendables and the first to go, newborn and young girls often buried alive unless some kin rescues them
Ironically, women and children have also become scarce and valued resource by this mode of existence
The seething and simmering sand dictates the most elaborately conservative garments to guard against the pernicious, suffocating heat; ironically, the men who wrote down the edicts of Islam did not bother to disconnect from this weather-dictated garb even in places and times when this thinking no longer holds

The women themselves have caught something of the martial spirit of their husbands and brothers: marching in the rear guard, they tend the wounded and encourage their fighting men by reciting verses of a wild energy: "Courage," they chant, "defenders of women. Strike with the edge of your swords. Wear the daughters of the morning star; our feet tread upon soft cushions; our necks are decked with pearls; our hair is perfumed with musk. The brave who face the enemy, we press them in our arms; the base who flee, we cast them off and we deny them our love."[SUP][6][/SUP]

The necessity of providing for his own needs makes the Bedouin an active man; he is patient because of the sufferings he has to endure; he accepts the inevitable without vain recriminations.[SUP][7][/SUP] It is not Islam that has created fatalism, but the desert; Islam has done no more than accept and sanction a state of mind characteristic of the nomad. His adventurous life gives the Bedouin courage, boldness, and if not contempt for death, at any rate a certain familiarity with it. Necessity compels him to be selfish. The available pasturage is too scanty to be shared—he keeps it for himself and his own people; it is the same with the watering place. He kills his infant daughters, who are the source of difficulties, and sometimes even his little boys, when the family is becoming too numerous. Hard on himself, he is hard upon others too; holding his life so cheap, he thinks nothing of his neighbor's. "Never has lord of our race died in his bed," says a poet. "On the blades of swords flows our blood, and our blood flows only over sword-blades. "[SUP][8][/SUP]

"We have risen," says another poet, "and our arrows have flown; the blood which stains our garments scents us more sweetly than the odor of musk."[SUP][9][/SUP]

"I was made of iron," Antal exclaims, "and of a heart more stubborn still; I have drunk the blood of mine enemies in the hollow of their skulls and am not surfeited."

In illustration of this insensibility may be quoted, two incidents in the life of Mohammed: Seven hundred Coraidite Jews who had been taken prisoner, were having their throats cut by the side of long graves, under the eyes of the Prophet; as night was falling, he had torches brought, so as not to put off the mournful business till the morrow.[SUP][10][/SUP] A number of Arab captives, taken at Beder, were being put to death, to one of them who begged for mercy the Prophet said: "I thank the Lord that he has delighted my eyes by thy death"; and when the dying man asked who would take care of his little child, Mohammed replied: "The fire of hell."[SUP][11][/SUP]

The solitary life of the Bedouin has developed his spirit of independence; in the desert the individual is free; he obeys no government; he escapes all laws. There is but one rule—the rule of the strongest.[SUP][12][/SUP]

Sometimes, when their independence was threatened by neighbouring nations, Romans, Persians or Abyssinians, the tribes assembled together to defend their liberty, but as soon as the danger was past they dispersed.

When Abraha-el-Achram invaded the Hedjaz with forty thousand Abyssinians, and after having reduced Tebala and Taief set himself to penetrate the fortress of Mecca, the neighbouring tribes leagued together under the command of Abd-el-Mottaleb; but when once the enemy had been driven back, the tribes resumed their liberty.[SUP][13][/SUP] This spirit of independence, this exaggerated development of individuality appears at every turn in the course of Arab history. The Caliphs had to struggle without ceasing against the turbulence of the tribes, who were hostile to all regular government and incapable of submitting to discipline. It was these tribal rivalries that in the end broke up the unity of the Empire by adding an element of disturbance to the disruptive forces of the conquered nations.

The spirit of anarchy is characteristic of the Semite;[SUP][14][/SUP] wherever he rules, there follows disorder and revolution. Jewish history, and that of Carthage, provide us with numerous examples; and, nearer our own time, the crisis of authority that has overturned Russia, has recruited its most powerful leaders and theorists from the Jewish element.

Any concentration of population is impossible in the desert owing to the lack of resources; at the same time, an isolated individual would be too feeble to contend with the dangers of a wandering life. Hence the Bedouins have been obliged to group themselves in families, and this is the basis of their social organization. The family enlarged has grown into the tribe, but the members of the same tribe do not all live together; they form small family groups united by the solidarity of birth and community of interests.

All the individuals of a tribe recognize the same common ancestor; they call this acabia, congenital solidarity, a rudimentary form of patriotism. In this way the Koreich, to whom Mohammed belonged, trace their descent back to Fihr-Koreich, of traditionally free origin, for he was regarded as the descendant of Ishmael by Adnan, Modher, etc.[SUP][15][/SUP] The members of the same tribe are, literally, brothers; moreover this is the name by which men of the same age address each other. When an old man speaks to a young one, he calls him "Son of my brother."

The Bedouin is ready to make any sacrifice for his tribe; for its glory or its prosperity this egoist will risk his life and property. "Love your tribe," says a poet, "for you are bound to it by ties stronger than any existing between husband and wife."[SUP][16][/SUP]

Throughout the whole course of Muslim history, wherever the Arabs are found, in Syria, in Spain, or in Africa, one notes the devotion of the individual to his tribe, at the same time as the rivalry between the different tribes. The notable upon whom the Caliph has been pleased to confer a high appointment loses no time in devoting himself to the interests of his own tribe, and at once arouses the anger of the others, who intrigue against him until they procure his disgrace, when the game begins over again with somebody else.

The Bedouin lives for himself and his tribe, beyond it he has no friends; his neighbor is the man of his tribe, his relation. Faithfulness to his pledged word, honesty and frankness only concern members of the tribe, the contribules.[SUP][17][/SUP]

Each tribe selects as its chief the most intelligent habits of sobriety and plunged into the worst debauchery. Mohammed declared that he loved three things better than all else: perfumes, women and flowers. This might be the Bedouin’s device; it is at any rate his ideal, and the Prophet did not forget it. His paradise is a place of carnal pleasures and material enjoyments, such as a nomad of the desert pictures to himself.

Ceaselessly absorbed by the cares of his adventurous life, the Bedouin concerns himself only with immediate realities. He fights to live and cares but little for philosophy. He is a realist, and not a theorist; he acts and has no time to think.

His faculties of observation have been developed at the expense of his imagination, and without imagination no progress is possible. It is this that explains the stagnation of the Bedouin over whom centuries pass without in any way changing his mode of life.[SUP][18][/SUP]

The Arab is in fact totally devoid of imagination; a contrary opinion is generally held and must be revised. The impetuosity of his nature, the warmth of his passions, the ardor of his desires have caused him to be credited with a disordered imagination. His language, poor in abstract words, and only able to express an idea exactly by the help of similes and comparisons, has maintained the illusion. Nevertheless, the Arab is the least imaginative of beings; his brain is dry; he is no philosopher; and he has never put forth an original thought, either in religion or in literature.

Before Islam, the Bedouin, just emerged from Totemism, worshipped divinities personifying the heavenly bodies or natural phenomena: the stars, thunder, the sun, etc. But he has never had a mythology. Among the Greeks, the Hindus, the Scandinavians, the gods have a past, a history; man has molded them to his own likeness, he has given them his passions, his virtues, and even his vices. The gods of the Bedouin have no distinctive character; they are mournful divinities, one fears them, but one knows them not. The Arab Pantheon is inhabited by lifeless dolls, of whom, moreover, the greater part were brought in from outside, notably from Syria.[SUP][19][/SUP]

Further, the Bedouin had not much respect for his idols; he was quite ready to cheat them by sacrificing a gazelle when he had promised them a sheep, and to abuse them when they did not respond to his wishes. When Amrolcais set out to avenge the murder of his father, on the Beni-Asad, he stopped at the temple of the idol Dhou-el-Kholosa to consult fate by means of the three arrows, called "command," "prohibition" and "wait." Having drawn" prohibition," which forbade his projected vengeance, he tried again; but" prohibition" came out three times running; he then broke the arrows and throwing the pieces at the idol's head, cried: “Wretch! If it had been your father that had been killed, you would not have forbidden me to avenge him.”[SUP][20][/SUP]

There is the same absence of imagination in the conception of Islam; its very simplicity is a reflection of the Arab brain; while its dogmas are borrowed from other religions. The principle of the unity of God is of Sabean origin; as is also the Muslim prayer and the fast of Ramadhan.[SUP][21][/SUP]

If the mosque is without adornment, that is not from any premeditated design, but simply because the Arab is incapable of adorning it; it is bare like the desert, bare like the Bedouin brain.

The Arab conception of the world was borrowed from the Sabeans and the Hebrews. The religious sects that came into being under the later Caliphs, and whose subtle doctrines exhibit an overflowing imagination, are of Indian and Egyptian inspiration. They represent exactly a reaction on the part of the subject peoples against the barrenness and poverty of the Muslim dogma and the Arab spirit.

In literature there is the same intellectual destitution. The Arab poets describe what they see and what they feel; but they invent nothing; if sometimes they venture on a flight of imagination, their fellow-countrymen treat them as liars. Any aspiration towards the infinite, towards the ideal, is unknown to them; and what they have always considered as of most consequence, even from the remotest times, is not invention but precision and elegance of expression, the technique of their art. Invention is so rare a quality in Arab literature that when one does meet with a poem or a story in which fancy forms any considerable element, it is safe to say at once that the work is not original, but a translation. Thus in the “Arabian Nights” all the fairy-tales are of Persian or Indian origin; in this greatcollection the only stories that are really Arab are those depicting manners and customs, and anecdotes taken from real life.

The oldest monument of pre-Islamic poetry, the Moallakat, are poor rhapsodies copied from one model: when you have read one of them you know the rest. The poet begins by celebrating his forsaken dwelling, the spring where man and beast come to quench their thirst, then the charms of his mistress, and finally his horse and his arms.[SUP][22][/SUP]

“When the Arabs, by virtue of the sword, had established themselves in immense provinces and turned their attention to scientific matters, they displayed the same absence of creative power. They translated and commented upon the works of the ancients; they enriched certain special subjects by patient, exact and minute observation but they invented nothing; we owe to them no great and fruitful idea.”[SUP][23][/SUP]

From what has gone before, we may sum up the characteristics of the Bedouin in a few essential traits: he is a nomad and a fighter, incessantly preoccupied by the anxiety of finding some means of subsistence and of defending his life against man and nature; he leads a rough life full of danger. His faculties of struggle and resistance are highly developed, namely physical strength, endurance and powers of observation. Necessity has made him a robber, a man of prey; he stalks his game when he espies a caravan or the douar (camp) of some sedentary tribe. Like a wild beast, he sees a chance when it arises.

An egoist, his social horizon stops at the tribe, beyond which he knows neither friend nor neighbor. A realist, he has no other ideal than the satisfaction of his material wants—to eat, to drink, and to sleep. Having no time for thought or contemplation, his brain has become atrophied; he acts on the spur of the moment, we might almost say by his reflexes; he is totally devoid of imagination and of the creative faculty.

Finally, a simple creature, not far from primitive animality—a barbarian in our standards. Such is the man who has conceived Islam and who, by the strength of his arm and the sharpness of his sword, has carved out of the world this Muslim Empire.

The Influence of Geographical Environment upon Religious Beliefs
Mind of the Musulman: Islam and the Desert

Stormer0628 · Jan 4, 2017

judaism: the ideology of chosen people revisited

THE HORROR of the Nazi's mass murder of Jews was not just that so many millions of people were sadistically violated, tortured, and murdered.

The human capacity for mass atrocity is as old as humanity itself. History is full of Tamerlanes, Genghis Khans, and Crusaders of every type riding into pillaged villages by ruthless exterminators, entire vistas laid waste in carnage. Tribe, clan, kingdom, and nation have, over the millennia, taken turns in being victim and victimizer.

The REAL horror of the Holocaust in Eastern Europe was that this atrocity was elaborately construed and constructed in modern times by a supposedly "civilized" state, Germany. It was not carried out by a band of head hunters or Neanderthal brutes, but by people who drove cars, went to the grocery store, paid taxes, and lived in familiar-looking homes and apartment buildings.

Strangely, they were people quite like us, like anybody, wrapped in nationalist institutions. That is what is most frightening about it. All the Nazis needed was a national narcissism about themselves, their past, and their destiny which was the precondition necessary to entirely dehumanize, enslave, and exterminate others. Where have we seen these preconditions before?

To the everlasting shame of our sad species, none of this is new. The rudimentary foundation of the Nazi's "Master Race" self-perception and glorification finds a fanatic precursor, among others, in the most ironic of places: the origins of the Judaic faith itself in the Jewish self-conception as the "Chosen People."

What is the essential ideological difference, really, between those who envision themselves to have partnership in a superior racial lineage (in the Nazi case, pure Aryans) and those who traditionally understand themselves to be a likewise hereditary lineage of human beings, in the Jewish case supposedly descended from a single man, Abraham, especially graced and privileged by God (Jews)?

Both rely, traditionally and fundamentally—n origin—upon racist criteria in their respective belief systems. For the Nazis, it is essential to prove pure Germanic lineage to qualify in the Aryan membership. By Nazi standards, if a grandparent was a Jew, a person was considered racially tainted, and Jewish. For Jews, as legally established in today's secular state of Israel, the racial lineage is matrilineal: a Jew is defined as someone who has a Jewish natural mother.

If the father was Jewish and the mother not, the child is tainted and is not, by Orthodox standards, Jewish.

Dr. Joseph Mengele, the horrible Nazi medical experimenter and "Angel of Death" at Auschwitz, echoed this racial antithesis—at least as he saw i—when he reputedly remarked,

"that the [Nazi's] Final Solution was the ultimate struggle for the control of the world between the only two peoples superior enough to vie for it, the Jews and the Germans.
[LESHEM, p. 63]

Or, as Hannah Arendt saw it,

"[The Nazi movements'] claim to chosenness could clash seriously only with the Jewish claim... Leaders [of Nazism] knew quite well that the Jews had divided the world, exactly as they had, into two halves—themselves and all the others."
[ARENDT, p. 240]

In 1937, amidst the rise of German fascism, Charles Clayton Morrison at the liberal Protestant journal, The Christian Century, (which was a well-known crusader against Hitler and anti-Semitism) wrote that,

"[it is] this obsession with the doctrine of a covenant race that now menaces the whole world, and Jews themselves are the chief sufferers from it. [The Jewish idea] of an integral race, with its own exclusive culture, hallowed and kept unified by a racial religion, is itself the prototype of Nazism."
[MORRISON, p. 736]

"Nazi racism," notes Richard L. Rubenstein, "was an attempt to reestablish a basis for community on shared archaic roots. The exclusion of the alien was intrinsic to its very nature."
[RUBENSTEIN, p. 110]

This exclusionism, as we have repeatedly seen, is also integral to traditional Judaism.

The Nazis were indeed conscious of themselves as a counter-Chosen People, based upon their racially Aryan-centered ideology which was antithetical and ultimately violent to the Jewish self-assertion of superiority. Adolf Hitler appropriated for his Aryan Master Race the Jewish notion of being a Chosen People, and then twisted it to his own megalomania, saying:

We [Aryans] are chosen... [and] whoever proclaims his allegiance to me is, by this very proclamation and by the manner in which it is made, one of the chosen.
[Emphasis in original; KATZ, p. 9]

Feminist Merlin Stone even speculates, from a linguistic perspective, that Hitler and the Nazis may have known something about the ancient Hittites and Hebrews, arguing that if her theories about the "warlike Hebrews" are right,

"We must certainly view the... atrocities enacted upon the Hebrew people of the twentieth century by the self-styled Aryans of Nazi Germany not only as tragic but ironic. The researches and excavations of the Hittites culture have been carried on primarily by German archeologists throughout this century. It was sometimes before and directly after the First World War that nasili was slowly beginning to be accepted as the real name of the Hittite language and Nesa, or Nasa, their first capital... One cannot help but wonder how much Adolf Hitler was affected by reports of these finds... Strangely enough one more connection between the Hittites and Hebrews is the Hebrew use of the word nasi for prince."
[STONE, M., 1976, p. 127]

Hitler even had a pseudo religious view about Jews as a satanic kind of nemesis. As Steven Katz puts it:

"[In the Nazi view] the struggle between Aryan and Jew is not only necessary and inevitable but also a clash of world-historical... significance. Though actualized through blood and time, the depth of this homicidal encounter is rooted in eternity."

Yoel Taitelbaum, former leader of the Ultra-Orthodox "Guardians of the City" movement, argued that a kind of cosmic struggle inevitably existed between Jews and non-Jews; the Nazis were one such—particularly brutal—Jewish nemesis.
In this view,

"hatred of Jews is inherent in the nations of the world because the choice of God fell upon Israel."
[FUNKENSTEIN, p. 308]

A more secular allusion to the Jewish Chosen People/German Master Race parallel is reflected in the work of the popular Israeli poet Uri Greenberg who wrote that Jews were "the race of Abraham, which had started on its way to become master." [FUNKENSTEIN, p. 308]

And what of Vladimir Jabotinsky, a seminal Zionist leader, who—imagining the modern Israeli nation—poeticized in 1920 that "with blood and sweat / a race will be born to us / proud, magnanimous, and cruel." [FUNKENSTEIN, p. 308]

The Nazi focus in scientifically proving their own racial superiority had respective precedents even in the European Jewish community who were receptive to such confirmation of their own superiority.

In the late nineteenth century, Jules Caravallo, an official at the Alliance Israelite Universelle (one of the earliest Jewish lobbying organizations) reported the results of a French study that,

"Jews constituted a distinct racial type; [and] that the Jewish cranial dimensions were found 'without exception to be superior to the dimensions of the corresponding Christian cranium; and that it seemed to be reasonable to accept a superiority of the Jewish heads over the Christian heads.'" The Jewish Alliance liked the study so much that they awarded a gold medal to its French author and widely distributed the results of the study. [PATAI] ("Leaders of the Alliance Israelite Universelle,' says Albert Lindemann, "warned its members against 'arrogance' yet still implicitly accepted, often in the social-Darwinian language current at the time, the notion of Jewish superiority.")
[LINDEMANN, p. 69]

Even in the late 1970's a respected Jewish scholar saw fit to excerpt the following text of a German Nazi, Fritz Lenz, to support his own argument.

The new context for this was a discussion by the Jewish author, Raphael Patai, of the possible reasons—as he saw it—for Jewish intellectual superiority over other people:

"Jews and Teutons [Germans] are alike distinguished by great powers of understanding and by remarkable strength of will. Jews and Teutons resemble each other in having a large measure of self-confidence, an enterprising spirit, and a strong desire to get their own way... [They each] are inclined to diffuse themselves as a ruling caste over foreign populations. They, too, prefer whenever they can to have the hard physical toil of life done for them by others..."
[PATAI, p. 328]

"Lenz's attitude to the 'Jewish race,'" declares Patai, "was unsympathetic but correct."
[PATAI, p. 327]

Incredibly, this kind of thinking continues to have currency for some influential Jews in our own day.

In 1994 another Jewish American scholar, Norman Cantor, in one breath discarded the Nazi scientism that claimed Aryan superiority as a Master Race and replaced them with the innate, genetic superiority of Jews:

"... the further we travel from the monstrosity of Nazi misuses of the racial concept and the more genetic applications are investigated, the more does a scientific sanction for viewing the Jews as a distinct genetic group, and furthermore one exhibiting an extraordinary creative behavior pattern, come within the parameters of legitimate discourse."
[CANTOR]

In the realms of Orthodox Judaism, (from which claims of Jewish superiority over others stems), there are Jews today who cite traditional Jewish religious texts to argue profoundly extremist, and shocking, ideas. In the last decade three Hebrew "radical right-wing" anthologies published in Israel, entitled Tzifiya, included recent Jewish writings that were, by any standards, echoes of Nazi ideologues.

Charles Liebman remarks about a rabbi we have heard from earlier:

"In the last issue [1988] a rabbi from Merkaz Harav [David Bar Haim] writes on the differences between Jews and non-Jews... After bringing proof texts he concludes that... 'non-Jews are considered as animals... The status of non-Jews in Jewish law resembles the status of animals and there is generally no distinction between them.' A number of the articles in the anthology are overtly racist, some are written by rabbis of some distinction. The most depressing aspect is not that there are learned rabbis who hold such views but that the religious establishment finds no cause to condemn them."
[LIEBMAN, p. 318]

In 1988 Rabbi Binyamin Tzvielli, the former Director of the Religious Department of Israel TV and Radio, attacked the principle of democracy:

"The democratic psychosis... has taken control of us for no substantial and visible reason... Democracy is part of the culture of the West and together with this culture it goes down and disappears before our eyes."
[SPRINZAK, p. 273]

In 1985, says Ehud Sprinzak,

"Relying on Maimonides and other distinguished Halakhic sources [Rabbi Israel] Ariel maintained that the famous commandment ["Thou Shalt Not Kill"] was never meant to be universal, that only the killing of a Jew qualifies as murder and is punished accordingly. Killing of a non-Jew is not punishable by society."
[SPRINZAK, p. 270]

Rabbi Ariel even wrote that the Jewish Promised Land extends from the Euphrates to the Nile and sooner or later a war would have to be undertaken against Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, and Iraq,

"with the expressed purpose of their elimination."
[SPRINZAK, p. 270]

"Although [Ariel] writes in a scholarly manner and eschews policy recommendations," notes Ehud Sprinzak, "any reader familiar with his very dogmatic fundamentalism is left with no doubt: neither Muslims nor Christians qualify as alien residents [in Israel]; both should be expelled from the Holy Land."

In 1994, Israeli rabbi Yitzhak (Joseph) Ginsburg produced a treatise "glorifying Baruch Goldstein's murder of 29 Muslims in a Hebron mosque," selling 1,000 copies in its first two days of publication.

The author proclaimed that,

"the crowning glory of [Goldstein's] act is the sanctification of God" and that "God looks more fondly on Jewish blood and therefore it is redder and its life has priority."

A second edition of Ginsburg's publication was printed in 1995.

RACE: THE ERROR OF THE AGES

to be continued

Stormer0628 · Jan 17, 2017

judaism: the ideology of chosen people revisited—2/2

A Jewish rabbi, Ido Elba, faced Israeli charges of incitement to violence in his work entitled, "Clarification of Religious Precepts on Killing Gentiles" [ALON, G., HA'ARETZ]—but, as Orit Shochat noted in 1998 in the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz,

Elba expounded on the halacha [Jewish religious law], as many others do. True, he did so at a rather inconvenient time shortly after the massacre of dozens of Palestinians by Jewish settler Baruch Goldstein, but the halacha itself (which is, after all, immune to charges of incitement) contains some racist and sinister statements for which Rabbi Elba is not responsible. Why is there no ban on Sefer Hinuch, which is given as a bar mitzvah gift to Jewish boys throughout the country, although it also contains interpretations of these matters in the very spirit of Rabbi Ido Elba?
[SHOCHAT]

It must be emphasized that all such commentators as those above are not just aberrant Jews who drag up racist and totalitarian dogma out of the blue: such people, often "learned rabbis," are citing Jewish religious sources to today argue their theses.

The crucial questions here, of course, involve how seminal Jewish religious texts can be used to sanction such monstrous material, to what degree it always has been used in this way, and how others—like the Nazis, reacting to Jewish fanaticism and racial claims—have built and expanded upon it for their own purposes. And lastly, of course: how widespread is Jewish interest in such religious sources now?

Overtly racist and fascist-like dogma from Jewish religious texts are finding new receptivity in modern Israel's "religious Zionist" schools. Students are instructed that non-Jews have "inferior biological characteristics."

Charles Liebman and Stephen Cohen note that students,

learn that the first two [Jewish] patriarchs, Abraham and Isaac, each had two sons so that the Jewish son might inherit pure genes whereas the corrupt, impure genes that Abraham inherited from his idolatrous ancestors could be passed on to the non-Jewish son. Only Jacob's son—those of the third generation—inherited pure genes and were worthy of being Jewish... That there is no outcry against [this] being made part of the religious Zionist high school curriculum suggests the level that Jewish ethnocentrism has reached in some quarters.
[LIEBMAN/COHEN, p. 60]

Which is to say: a level it has been for many for most of Jewish history. If such material is given credence in some Jewish circles in our own day, what, one imagines, was the Jewish community thinking in the medieval era and indeed, earlier in history?

There is a strain in Jewish thought," laments London rabbi Mark Solomon, "that says there is a special Godly something or other that is passed down in a certain genetic line which confers a special quality on people and Jewishness is a special quality. I call that metaphysical racism.
[KLEIN, E., p. 58]

It is not difficult to find instances where texts can be mined for religious justification of divinely-sanctioned Jewish chauvinism, racism, and dominance over others. Some Jewish religious texts centered on the Chosen People ethos underscore this attitude of Jewish preeminence and control over non-Jews:

Thus saith the Lord God, Behold, I will lift up mine hand to the Gentiles, and set up my standard to the people: and they shall bring thy sons in their arms and thy daughters shall be carried upon their shoulders. And kings shall be thy nursing fathers and their queens thy nursing mothers; they shall bow down to thee with their face towards the earth, and lick up the dust of thy feet.
ISAIAH, 49:22-23

Kings shall come from you [Israelites] and shall rule wherever the foot of the sons of man has trodden. I [God] shall give to your seed all the earth which is under heaven, and they shall rule over all the nations according to their desire; and afterward they shall draw the whole earth to themselves, and shall inherit it forever.
Book of Jubilees 32:18-19 [MACDONALD]

This kind of thinking even has credibility in some quarters of American Jewish academe.

In 1993, in a book published by SUNY (State University of New York Press), David Novak examined various Jewish religious perspectives, including the idea of Jewish domination over others, and finds that such a notion is irrefutably part of Orthodox Judaism:

If the Torah is only for the sake of Israel's election, then it appears to be [in] the interest of her nationalist self-interest... The practical implications of assuming that the Torah is solely for the sake of affirming the election of Israel [by God] is to see no transcendental standard governing Israel's relationships with the nations [other people] of the world. The only relationship possible, then, is one where Gentiles accept Jewish sovereignty and dominance, be it political or only "religious"—in the usual western sense of that distinction... Such a theology can all too easily lend itself to such a practical program of dominance. Indeed, a consistent proponent of it would have no theological arguments with which to argue against such programs, however much he or she might be morally offended by them.
[NOVAK, Elec of Is, p. 25-26]

Such a dangerous Orthodox attitude has counterparts in the United States, as evidenced by Brooklyn's Rabbi Abraham Hecht's religious sanctioning of the Rabin assassination. [GOLDBERG, JJ, p. 260] (Rabin was purportedly murdered for transgressions against Jewish religious law, particularly in his willingness to relinquish conquered land back to Arabs).

In the first half of the twentieth century, a prominent American rabbi, Mordecai Kaplan, found the implications of traditional Jewish views of themselves as a Chosen People so ominous and out of sync with modern universalistic, egalitarian, and democratic values that he founded an entire movement, Reconstructionism, that rejected many of the tenets of Orthodox Judaism. (Members of Orthodox Judaism in turn of course rejected his views; some groups excommunicated him).

Kaplan had this to say about the Jews as the Chosen People:

We cannot fail to recognize in the claim of Jewish superiority a kinship and resemblance to the similar claims of other national and racial groups which have been used in defense of the imperialist exploitation of the yellow and black man by the whites on the grounds that they were the 'white man's burden.' They are the grounds for the German persecution of Jewry, in accord with the Aryan clause of the Third Reich's fundamental law. They were in the past the grounds in which our own people rationalized their conquest and expropriation of the Canaanites... All such claims to superiority of one race, nation, or caste [are] detrimental to the interests of humanity, and [are] essentially vicious.
[KAPLAN, p. 94-95]

As Jacob Wasserman, a German-Jewish novelist wrote in 1929:

It is clear to me that no people can continue being chosen, nor unceasingly designate itself as such, without upsetting in the eyes of other peoples the normal order of things. The whole idea is plainly absurd and immoral.
[in BARON, J., 1956, p. 209]

This "immoral" and racist "viciousness" is directed by traditional Jewish teachings at any non-Jew. In the particular case of the people of African descent, Jewish racism is well evidenced in the writings of the influential and revered medieval Jewish sage, Moses Maimonides, whose work is so well regarded by orthodox Jews that some of it has become part of Orthodox liturgy.

Maimonides said this about Africans:

The Negroes found in the remote South, and those who resemble them from among them that are with us in these climes ... the status of those is like that of irrational animals. To my mind they have not the rank of men, but have among the beings a rank lower than the rank of man but higher than the rank of apes.
[GUIDE TO THE PERPLEXED]

While pious Jews are supposed to follow 613 commandments in the Torah, Maimonides even "spoke about forcing" Gentiles to follow seven laws that the Talmud deems anyone must follow, if Jews have the power to enforce them. [NOVAK, p. 48, E of I]

In recent years African-American scholars in particular have been speculating on the origins of racism as it affected their ancestors and the resultant moral climate that permitted the dehumanization of Africans for exploitation in the New World slave trade. Many believe that the seminal equation of Blacks and slavery is to be located in Jewish tradition, in the so-called "Hamitic" myth. In the Old Testament, Noah (of "Ark" myth fame) had three sons, each brother the patriarch of different racial and social lines of humanity.

One of them, Ham, had a son who was eventually cursed by Noah (Genesis 9:25) to be a "servant of servants" (i.e., slave). Jewish tradition links Africans as descendants of this grandson of Noah, Canaan:

[Canaan's] children shall be born ugly and black!... Your grandchildren's hair shall be twisted into kinks... they shall go naked, and their male members shamefully elongated. Men of this race are called Negroes; their father Canaan commanded them to love theft and fornication, to be banded together in hatred of their masters and never tell the truth.
[GRAVES, p. 121]

"The association of Ham with the African race," writes Tony Martin, an African-American professor at Wellesley College, "made this myth a major rationalization for the European enslavement of Africans... Christians have customarily borne the brunt of blame for the Hamitic myth and they certainly are not without sin in this regard. Yet, the Hamitic myth (that is, the association of the African with the supposed curse of Noah) was invented by Jewish talmudic scholars over a thousand years before the transatlantic slave trade."
[MARTIN, p. 33]

"Since early times," notes Judah Rosenthal, "Noah's curse of Canaan was utilized by the defenders of slavery.... [Jewish] legend was that some Canaanite tribes left Canaan during Joshua's conquest and settled in Africa... In the Talmud Africans are called Canaanites."
[ROSENTHAL, p. 74]

Some Jewish religious literature (the Midrash) opines that all descendants of Ham were cursed to be slaves.

[ROSENTHAL, p. 76]

This version of the Ham tradition is noted in the Jewish Encyclopedia:

Ham is represented by the Talmudist as one of the three who had intercourse with their wives in the Ark, being punished therefore in that his descendants, the Ethiopians, are black... Ham was punished by having his descendants led into captivity with their buttocks uncovered.
[JEW ENCY, v. VI, p. 186]

The Oxford Dictionary of the Jewish Religion notes:

The Canaanites are believed to have been descended from Canaan, youngest son of Ham... Noah cursed Canaan for the depravity of Ham upon his father, destining him to be subjugated by Shem—thereby foretelling the eventual displacement of the Canaanites by the Israelites (descended from Shem), consistently justified by the Bible as the inevitable outcome of the sexual licentiousness practiced by the Canaanites.
[WERBLOWSKY, p. 149]

Such statements of course finds no support whatever in the current knowledge that we possess through global genetic studies, but it gives us the idea how an appalling concept has existed and persisted for so long, all rooted in pure ignorance.

In modern history, few expressions of Jewish racism towards Blacks were as boldly proclaimed as Norman Podhoretz's infamous article in the 1960's in the American Jewish Congress' magazine Commentary, of which he was editor.

Podhoretz, once self-described as a liberal, readjusted Commentary down an increasingly neoconservative path:

The hatred I feel for Negroes is the hardest of all the old feelings to face or admit, and it is the most hidden and most overloaded... It no longer... has any cause or justification... I know it from insane rage that can stir me at the thought of Negro anti-Semitism, I know it from the disgusting prurience that can stir in me at the sight of a mixed couple.
[LINCOLN, p. 179]

Traditional Jewish racism, based on religious principles, has taken new forms with newer secular Jewish ideologies.

Boas Evron, an Israeli writer, traces traditional Chosen People attitudes into its newly secularized mode: Zionism, through the "Revisionist" Zionist pioneer Vladimir Jabotinsky.

Jabotinsky, says Evron,

poeticized about 'hidden glory,' declaring that every Jew is a potential 'prince'—in other words, that Jews are noble by their very nature (just as the Germans imagined themselves to be innately superior)... Indeed, this belief in innate superiority is the basis of racism and of all the varieties of fascism, which is also a reason for classifying revisionist Zionism within the general category of fascist psychology.
[EVRON, p. 112]

Even in the years leading up to the Holocaust in Germany, Daniel Niewyk recognizes some worldview parallels between German fascism and the growing Zionist movement among German Jewry:

At the heart of the Zionist critique of liberal [Jewish] assimilation [into German society] lay the conviction that Jews constituted a unique race ... That [Jewish marriage to non-Jews] might become a serious problem for the Jews prompted Zionist leaders in the Berlin Jewish community to authorize a report identifying intermarriage as a threat to the 'racial purity of the stock.'
[NIEWYK, p. 129]

Niewyk overlooks what he calls "this [Jewish] racial arrogance" as having roots in the Chosen People ethos; he chooses to frame it as a mirrorlike reaction to German fascism:

[It is] nothing other than the photographic negative of anti-Semitism.
[NIEWYK, p. 131]

But the former head of the Israel Civil Rights Association, Israel Shahak, does see the connection between traditional Orthodox Jewish racism and its capacity nowadays to violently implement such views in nationalist form, via the modern state of Israel.

"Many people," says Shahak, "do not realize where Zionism ... is tending: to a combination of all the old hates of classical Judaism towards Gentiles."
[SHAHAK, p. 72]

"It is true," notes professor Georges Tamarin, an immigrant to Israel, "that the Bible is one of the greatest creations of human cultures. But it is equally true that it is full of inhuman motives and that, as [Jewish author Arthur] Koestler (who surely cannot be accused of being an anti-Semite) stated, all the bases of the [Nazi discriminatory] Nuremberg Laws can be found in it... If the segregatory laws of the Herrenrasse were barbarous, the segregatory laws of the Chosen People are equally barbarous."

In 1973 Rabbi A. Avidan provided the following religious "guidance" for Israeli soldiers. It was published by the Central Regional Command of the Israeli Army. No other rabbi ever challenged its contents.

It was eventually taken out of circulation, presumably because it could undermine military commanders' own orders:

When our forces come across civilians during a war or in hot pursuit or in a raid, so long as there is no certainty that these civilians are incapable of harming our forces, then according to the Halakhah [Jewish religious law] they may and even should be killed... In a war, when our forces storm the enemy, they are allowed and even enjoined by the Halakhah to kill even good civilians, that is, civilians who are ostensibly good.
[SHAHAK, p. 76]

For an outside observer to both groups, traditional Judaism and German Nazism, the original intention of the two belief systems seems similar: each seeks to maintain group privilege and exclusivity through racial lines of its own.

Each anticipates in-group domination over others. And each ideology—in origin—aims to clear their respective land claims of foreign elements. By any means necessary. The Nazi's idea of Aryan supermen stems from a secular, pre-Judaeo-Christian pseudo-pagan revival, tinged with nihilism; the Jews special grace is religiously sanctioned from God, who was originally conceived as a brutal and vengeful Lord of a Kingdom.

Each group envisions a special destiny above all other people.

"The fact remains," says Harold Cruse, "that the European experience shows that when it comes to playing the role of the Chosen People in history, the danger is that two can play this game as well as one. When that happens, woe be to the side that is short on numbers."
[CRUSE, p. 483]

For those who might decry with indignation a comparison of oppressed and oppressor as being ridiculously unwarranted, largely due to Jewish suffering in the Holocaust epoch, we need only turn to history to confirm where the atrocious deeds of the Nazis and Jews, in both action and attitude, merge:

When the Lord your God gives them [the Hittites, the Girgashites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hivites and the Jebusites—all contestant tribes against the Jews for parts of the ancient land of Israel] to you and you defeat them; then you must utterly destroy them; you shall make no covenant with them and show them no mercy...
[Deuteronomy 7:1-6]

This, of course, is from the Jewish Torah, known in Christian tradition as the Old Testament.

This is not just ancient history, or legend about ancient history, but part of the most sacred of Jewish religious texts. It is the origin of Judaic belief per their claims to the land of Israel. Many Jews to this day believe such material to be the infallibly dictatorial Word of God, as do many Christians who accept the Old Testament as part of their own religious foundation.

For anyone who takes the time to wade through the avalanche of esoteric minutia in the Old Testament, examples of religiously sanctioned cruelty and atrocity by the Israelites are found to be core to their dogma of "specialhood" and land conquest.

Now ask yourselves: why are we even taking all such forms of racism and other forms of crap, whether coming from the Jews, Neo Nazis, Islamic terrorists, White Supremacists, Christian and other religious fanatics? When shall people wake up to the barbarism of all these primitive ideas wreaking havoc in their midst? And we wonder why there is still much trouble in the world? No, it is not from modern ills. The trouble stems from ancient out-of-place ideas still managing to sneak in and survive in our times. The lesson? Know your enemies. Know the ideas that are destroying your world.

dranrebn · Feb 11, 2017

I like all your articles in Science and Faith. Keep on sharing.

Stormer0628 · Mar 3, 2017

ISLAM

Rationalism versus mysticism. Averroes versus Ghazali.

Indeed, how many today know that the much-touted Secular Age rests not on the shoulder of a Western philosophical giant but a Muslim thinker? The father of secularism a Muslim—who would have thought that? And yet it is. Ibn Rushd aka Averroes is the father of this rarefied age.

But if the father of secularism is a Muslim, how come the Islamic world itself is languishing in utter mysticism and intolerance? That, people, is why history is a great mentor, even if that phrase has become a tired cliche in our time.

These days, many decent Muslim men and women often wonder why countries with Muslim majority are so backwards technologically, militarily, and politically compared with the nations of the West. What is the reason for this dominance by European and American states and how can the Islamic world hope to lessen if not eliminate this imbalance?

Only a few hundred years ago Muslim and Western societies were more or less at par in the level of development. But where the Muslim world stood still, the West surged ahead and became dominant over the globe.

Around the 14th century started what we call the Renaissance in the West. Literally meaning rebirth, this was a change, among other things, in the political, religious, technological and scientific thought and methods. A change that over the next 300 years transformed the Western world and gave them the ability to launch the Industrial Revolution in the 18th century. Alas, such a rebirth never took place in Muslim societies.

The transformation in the West was preceded by a change in the Western philosophical thought. We can call this a philosophical renaissance.

In conventional Islamic teaching, philosophy is not considered favorably; in fact, it is often openly discouraged. For philosophy itself promotes questioning, arguing and logic, which is potentially in conflict with a belief in an all-knowing and all-powerful deity.

The Western world once had a similar rejectionist attitude to philosophy and logic.

The ascendancy of the West coincided with active study and analysis of the works and methods of Greek philosophers. There is scarcely any doubt that without this, there would not have been any renaissance and the technological and industrial revolution that has propelled nations of the West to be eons ahead of the East would not have taken place.

Yet the West may not have developed an understanding or even a knowledge of Greek philosophy without the help of Arab-Muslim philosophers. Ironically, the man who can be given the greatest credit for kindling the renaissance of the West is a Muslim philosopher named Ibn Rushd, known as Averroes in the West! While he was rejected and marginalized by Muslims, his work was translated and enthusiastically read in universities of Western Europe. This difference in reception to works of Ibn Rushd has played a significant role in the difference we see between the nations of the West and East.

Ibn Rushd's influence catalyzed the reformation of both Christian and Jewish religious thought and brought in the concept of rationalism in religion. In the Islamic world he was sidelined by Al-Ghazali and his theocratic concepts of religion (Sharia). This had already happened to the Muslim world by the 12th century AD and, as a result, while the West started a renaissance in the 14th century, followed by political reformation and finally industrial revolution in the 18th century, the Muslims world merely stood still or regressed.

Ottoman Turkey, the dominant Muslim power of the time when Western renaissance took place (and a major world power till the 18th century) is a prime example of a failure to establish the type of modern political and economic institutions (the former are needed for the later) necessary for industrial revolution and sustained economic growth leading to prosperity.

Philosophy or falsafa came to the Muslim world in the 9th century AD along with other Greek sciences like medicine, astronomy, and mathematics. Tensions between teachings of philosophy and Islam developed more or less immediately. For philosophy not only taught the need for asking questions, even on issues that were thought to be divine commandments and thus not questionable, but also suggested that it can reveal demonstrative truth about the world using scientific methods: something that was thought to be a power possessed by God alone.

The Muslim philosophers studied Greek masters Plato and Aristotle from early 9th Century AD.

Al-Farabi (Alfarabius in the West, 872-950 AD) from Damascus and Ibn Sina (Avicenna 980-1037 AD) from Cairo were the leading lights in not only translating Greek philosophical ideas into Arabic/Persian, but in fact actively added commentaries and development of philosophical ideas based on logic and rationalism.

For a moment the Muslim philosophical thoughts derived from Greek philosophy (Falsafa) were allowed to exist unmolested by Orthodox Islam. This was partly due to the fact that Muslim philosophers presented their ideas in a form that did not openly challenge the ideas of orthodoxy and partly because the Muslim world was rather liberal and tolerant of such ideas in those days. However, with the establishment of the Ash'arite system of Kalam around 1040 AD onward, all this tolerance gradually evaporated.

Falsafa was dealt a stunning blow by Ghazali. In 1095, Ghazali completed his book Tahafut al Falasifa (Incoherence of Philosophers). With this and other writings, Ghazali launched a no-holds-barred attack on not only the ideas expressed by Al-Farabi and Ibn Sina, but on them personally, declaring that such individuals are heretics (kafirs) and not Muslims!

While Ghazali himself was a man of very high intellect and knowledge, his writings derailed the path of Muslim philosophical and scientific development.

Around 1150 AD, Ibn Rushd completed his book Tahafut al Tahafut (Incoherence of Incoherence), which is rebuttal of Ghazali's book. Rushd also wrote other books to counter Ghazali and defend Greek philosophers and their methods.

Ibn Rushd was also the paramount commentator on the works of Aristotle and Plato. His works had a major influence on the ideas developed by Thomas Aquinas and Moises Maimonides who are accepted as the scholars who respectively kindled the renaissance in Christian and Jewish thought process.

So what exactly was the crucial difference in thought between Ghazali and Ibn Rushd that caused such a deviation between East and West?

Both Ibn Rushd and Ghazali acknowledge the importance of the Quran as an essential guide for anyone who wants to live a meaningful, fulfilling, and productive life. Interestingly, they both also agree that some parts of the Quran have literal meanings while some are allegorical. In general, the text that deals with basic principles of a good life and incidents mentioned that are possible in a normal way have literal meanings, while other parts of the text often dealing with supernatural or oblique subjects need interpretation using allegorical and not literal methods. Both Ibn Rushd and Ghazali agree that ordinary Muslims should only concern themselves with the literal part of the Quran and only a selected group of enlightened Muslims should interpret the allegorical parts.

The difference between Ibn Rushd and Ghazali is that while Ghazali believes the enlightenment to this select group is achievable only by Divine intervention, Ibn Rushd suggests that it is the knowledge and expertise in the methods of science and philosophy that empowers individuals to seek and find the hidden treasures of the Quran.

Herein Ibn Rushd lays down the basic principles of science and progress using the Quran as an ideal launch pad . While Ghazali advocates using mystical methods to look for the hidden knowledge and truth, Ibn Rushd believes that this is only possible using objective and demonstrative methods—i.e. logic and science.

In other words, Ghazali believes that through religious mysticism, one can achieve (by the grace of God) a level of understanding different from rational truth, and only this can unveil the allegorical meanings in the Quran, while Ibn Rushd believes that only rational thought can unveil such mysteries.

The importance of this lies in the fact that while both methods are and can be used to search for the ultimate truth, it is only the rational method that produces a desired by-product, namely scientific and human progress.

So what is the importance of this in our present times?

While religious and mystical experiences might have a claim to the development of the inner world to equip people to face the challenges of the real world, only by adopting rationalism can people change the deplorable situation of Muslim nations.

Today, many thinking Muslims recognize the need to rekindle the spirit of Ibn Rushd and start a Renaissance in Islamic thought process. How far could it go? The Muslims themselves will have to decide.

In Depth: Why the Arabic World Turned Away from Science

Ibn Rushd vs Ghazali: Did the Muslim world take a wrong turn?

gerald janua · Mar 10, 2017

ako rin sobrang nagbago ako nung makilala ko ang Diyos in a spiritual sense.
pero hindi talaga ako naniniwala sa bible at sa religion pero naniniwala ako na may diyos.
isipin na lang natin, yung mga sinaunang lahi, nung wala pa ang biblia ng mga kastila, diba anito ang sinasamba ng mga katutubo, which basically is God.
kaya tayo nasakop ng mga kastila dahil sa relihiyon na iyan, di ba.
pero sila mismo, lalo na yung mga pari nila, mga balasubas.

ang pagiggin mabuting mamamayan at responsableng tao ay nagmumula naman talaga sa tahanan lalo na sa komunudad na kinabibiblangan.

sabi nga, likas na mabuti ang tao, nagiging masama lang ito dahil sa kapaligiran.
kung naniniwala ka naman kasi sa Diyos, alam mo ang tama ata mali, depende na lang sa kung sino ang Diyos na kinikilala mo.

Stormer0628 · Mar 10, 2017

gerald janua said:
ako rin sobrang nagbago ako nung makilala ko ang Diyos in a spiritual sense.
pero hindi talaga ako naniniwala sa bible at sa religion pero naniniwala ako na may diyos.
isipin na lang natin, yung mga sinaunang lahi, nung wala pa ang biblia ng mga kastila, diba anito ang sinasamba ng mga katutubo, which basically is God.
kaya tayo nasakop ng mga kastila dahil sa relihiyon na iyan, di ba.
pero sila mismo, lalo na yung mga pari nila, mga balasubas.

ang pagiggin mabuting mamamayan at responsableng tao ay nagmumula naman talaga sa tahanan lalo na sa komunudad na kinabibiblangan.

sabi nga, likas na mabuti ang tao, nagiging masama lang ito dahil sa kapaligiran.
kung naniniwala ka naman kasi sa Diyos, alam mo ang tama ata mali, depende na lang sa kung sino ang Diyos na kinikilala mo.

Great thoughts!

I know di lang ikaw ang nakarating sa ganyang konklusyon. All over the world now, people are abandoning these Abrahamic religions—Judaism, Christianity, or Islam—and going back to the beliefs and religions of their ancestors before the Romans and their Christian propagators, Spain and other European countries, rampaged all over the world and supplanted local beliefs using all methods available to them.

In essence, religion is just like any tool invented by man, like guns or knives: pwede mong gamitin sa mabuti or masama. Religion, for example, can be used to foster a solid sense of community and brotherhood, belonging. It could inspire one to great callings and actions. At the same time, it also lends to the most depraved interpretation and intentions—motives. Sadly for much of its history, religion has been used as the latter: to control large masses of people to serve the interest of a vested few intent on holding power and amassing wealth to ensure they remain above the general population and shed not one sweat to labor for their food and other needs like the rest.

Let's hope more good people find their way to the original good foundations of religions as a base to achieve higher spirituality, self-knowledge, and aspire for higher things on earth, not the vision of weaklings, damaged goods, and insufferable sinners as the prevailing modes of religions try to paint them.

Even the most primitive religions recognize that the path to enlightenment is to achieve perfect balance by finding the harmony of opposites: through such ideas as Yin-Yang, third eye, and yes, even the much-reviled swastika, which actually started as the root of all good things before it came to be identified with Hitler and his gang of Nazis. Sabi nga ng sinaunang pananaw na to: "Know that you are gods in this cover called flesh. Find your way to discover your true nature." Or something like that.

Stormer0628 · Mar 18, 2017

Belief Paradigms: Before the Advent of Abrahamic Religions

Godself, Triptych Symbols, and a Higher Valuation of Man:
Universal Belief System Before the Advent of Abrahamic Religions

Apart from supplanting belief systems that espouse a noble view of humankind with a sniveling, lowly life form, Abrahamic religions have hidden a global paradigm, a universal religion that spanned all the ancient world and its golden civilizations. Can we recover it now?

During the course of one study and travels to visit the ruins and artifacts of Antiquity, researcher Richard Cassaro repeatedly found variations of the same mysterious “icon” worldwide. The “GodSelf Icon”—the term he uses to name his discovery—is a prominent feature in most ancient cultures, as the collage above shows.

Richard Cassaro first set forth his initial discovery of the GodSelf Icon in his 2011 book, Written in Stone. Since then, he has found even more powerful reasons to focus attention on this remarkable pattern. His new e-book, The Missing Link: Powerful New Evidence of an Advanced “Golden Age” Mother Culture in Remote Prehistory, provides a more in-depth analysis of his GodSelf Icon discovery.

The GodSelf Icon is a depiction of a central figure, a forward-facing man or woman who holds in his/her hands outward from the body either a pair of animals or a pair of staffs symmetrically. These twin objects stand for opposing principles, and the central figure represents the hero or sage who combines those two opposing principles to create a spiritual balance that opens new doors of perception and creates centeredness of being.

Students of the occult will immediately recognize in this description the age-old coincidentia oppositorum (“coincidence of opposites”) concept. This is one of the central meanings of the GodSelf Icon, as we’ll see below.

The GodSelf Icon is a central feature of art and artifacts found in ancient Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Peru, Mexico, Columbia, Costa Rica, Africa, China, Cambodia, Mesopotamia, India, Crete and many other places. In almost every one of these civilizations, the GodSelf Icon can be traced back to a very ancient and formative era. The further back in time we look, the more we see the GodSelf Icon.

A clear example of this is in Peru, where the Incas were merely the latest and final culture to use the GodSelf Icon. If we look to a much deeper antiquity, we see multiple versions of the GodSelf Icon, from one side of the country to the other:

All of the pre-Inca civilizations that once flourished in Peru not only used the GodSelf Icon, but regarded this symbol as the pinnacle of their culture. These cultures include the Chachapoyas, Chancay, Chavin, Chimu, Moche, Nazca, Paracas, Sican-Lambayeque, Tiahanaco (Bolivia) and the Wari. Scholars of the New World have noted the importance of this symbol and they call this symbol the “staff god.” We find the following explanation for the “staff god” in Wikipedia:

“The Staff God is a major deity in Andean cultures. Usually pictured holding a staff in each hand…his other characteristics are unknown, although he is often pictured with snakes in his headdress or clothes. The oldest known depiction of the Staff God was found on some broken gourd fragments in a burial site in the Pativilca River Valley…and carbon dated to 2250 BC. This makes it the oldest image of a god to be found in the Americas.”
—Wikipedia

This very same Icon with the very same “pose” was widespread among the Old World cultures of the Eastern Hemisphere. Scholars of the Old World call the GodSelf Icon “the Master of Animals.” Here is the Wikipedia entry for “Master of Animals”:

“The Master of (the) Animals or Lord of the Animals is a motif in ancient art showing a human between and grasping two confronted animals. It is very widespread in the art of the Ancient Near East and Egypt…They sometimes also have female equivalents, the so-called Mistress of the Animals…They may all have a Stone Age precursor…”
—Wikipedia

Here are several representations of the GodSelf Icon—called Master of Animals in the Old World—from the Old World civilization of Jiroft, which is dated to Persia (late 3rd millennium BC):

Despite recognizing the icon in their respective disciplines, scholars of Old World cultures and scholars of New World cultures have:

(a) failed to recognize the icon’s presence worldwide

(b) failed to understand the icon holds the same meaning worldwide

(c) failed to connect (a) and (b), and thus remain unaware that THE “GODSELF ICON” IS THE LOST SYMBOL OF AN ANCIENT UNIVERSAL RELIGION once known worldwide.

Cassaro's book presents multiple comparative analyses of GodSelf Icons that stem from cultures that have long been considered alien from each other by heritage or through lack of trade possibilities.

Here is an example:

The similarity between the images above is truly striking. Not only is the overall shape a perfect match, but even the small details are a perfect match—the parallel hands, elbows, squat body, and elongated “staffs” in each hand symmetrically.

Here is a closer look:

Stylistic differences aside, the ancient Egyptian master masons (in North Africa) who created this GodSelf Icon, named Bes, and the ancient Tiahuanacan master masons (in South America) who created the GodSelf image in Bolivia, named Viracocha, seem to have been working off the same basic blueprint. Each would have recognized the other’s GodSelf icon as such.

The visual similarity of these GodSelf Icons is only the tip of the iceberg. Scholars tell us that the Egyptians and the ancient Andean cultures followed the same “balance-of-duality-to-find-the-center” religion—which is precisely the teaching conveyed by, and encoded in the pose of, the GodSelf Icon:

By extending both arms and hands outward from the body, the GodSelf Icon conveys the concept of duality—an idea expressed by the twin objects depicted “symmetrically” in each hand (twin serpents, twin staffs, twin animals, etc.). Standing between the representations of duality, the hero figure marks the “center” or “balance” point, thus giving us the central message of the GodSelf Icon—to find the center between the opposites.

The GodSelf Icon has been preserved through the ages in the occult tradition, which has also retained its “balance-of-duality-to-find-the-center” meaning. HIS found that there exists a modern “memory” of this ancient global icon, called the Rebis, which has been linked symbolically to Freemasonry:

Rebis from Theoria Philosophiae Hermetica (1617) by Heinrich Nollius. Sun (and Masonic compass) in the
right hand, Moon (and Masonic square) in the left hand. The icon has two heads. Male right, female left.

In an article subtitled Secrecy and Symbolic Power in American Freemasonry, which appeared in the Journal of Religion & Society (Volume 3, 2001), comparative religion scholar Hugh B. Urban of Ohio State University describes this figure:

“…the “Mystery of Balance” or coincidence of opposites…This is…the secret of universal equilibrium between good and evil, light and darkness…Male and female, sun and moon, light and dark—symbolized by the Masonic compass and square…all come from the same source…”

In Written in Stone, Cassaro proposed an alternative history of religion, one that views ancient spirituality as a process of overcoming opposite forces within the physical (bodily) self to discover spiritual balance and inner strength. To support this idea, he pointed out how ancient cultures worldwide—and especially the pyramid cultures—all built “Triptych Temples” (a term he coined) to express this “balance-of-opposites-to-find-the-center” wisdom:

The true secret about God is that there never was an outward God in the biblical sense. The only god is you, the inner you (your spiritual “soul”) as opposed to the outer physical you (your material “body”); but you have amnesia of who you really are. Noted American Theosophist Alvin Boyd Kuhn once wrote, “Man is a god in the body of an animal according to the pronouncement of ancient philosophy…” The truth of that statement was known in ancient times and has been preserved up to the present, in defiance of religious orthodoxy and superstition, in large measure thanks to the careful safeguarding of ancient spiritual truths by Freemasons and other members of Secret Societies, which conveyed this idea using the same GodSelf Icons.

The following GodSelf Icons from modern esoteric manuscripts share the same posture. In each case the centered deity, mimicking the pose of the Rebis above, holds a solar staff in his/her right hand and a lunar staff in his/her left hand:

Left: The alchemical Mercury, from Tripus aureus (The Golden Tripod) by Michael Maier, c. 1618. Middle: From a mysterious alchemical treatise titled “The Hermetic and Alchemical Figures of Claudius de Dominico Celentano Vallis Novi From A Manuscript Written
And Illuminated At Naples A.D. 1606” Right: From a 16th-century alchemical treatise called “The Rosary of the Philosophers.”

The Rebis is important because it is a modern version of the ancient GodSelf Icon motif. Cassaro saw the link about the Rebis´ significance in esoteric manuscripts, which described the sun and moon in the Rebis´ hands as emblems signifying duality. When this key is applied to ancient cultures, their GodSelf Icons began to come to life.

...to be continued

Stormer0628 · Mar 25, 2017

Belief Paradigms: Before the Advent of Abrahamic Religions—part 2/2

Godself, Triptych Symbols, and a Higher Valuation of Man:
Universal Belief System Before the Advent of Abrahamic Religions

The similarity of their GodSelf Icons suggests ancient cultures across different continents were somehow related, even though these areas are geographically distant, so distant that any direct relationship seems impossible. Scholars who study these areas believe that these civilizations developed independently, but side-by-side comparison of artefacts and monuments from cultural centers throughout the world seem to support the idea that we are looking at two peas from the same pod. The existence of pyramids, corbeled vault architecture and mummification on different continents is just beyond coincidence:

In Written in Stone, Cassaro presents evidence supporting the idea that an earlier “Golden Age” mother culture now lost to time—Graham Hancock’s “lost civilization”—may have been the common thread that united these cultures....

In The Missing Link, he puts forth the idea that the GodSelf Icon is a [recognition] of this divine nature in man—a way to [awaken] the divinity within the body.

In ancient Greece, the story of Demeter and Persephone, one of the foundational myths of Greece, is closely related to this idea. The Greek gods descended in large part from Demeter, goddess of the harvest, who preceded most of the Olympians, and whose oldest images are represented by GodSelf icons.

Demeter, Goddess of Harvest, depicted as a GodSelf Icon, Roman, Augustan period.

Demeter’s young daughter Persphone strayed one day from her home in Arcadia (heaven) while picking flowers in the green fields. Suddenly, Persephone “fell” into the Underworld; Hades below had made the ground open to swallow her. Overcome with sorrow, Demeter searched for her daughter ceaselessly, preoccupied with her loss and her grief. The seasons halted; living things ceased their growth, then began to die. A desperate Demeter pleaded with the Supreme God, Zeus, to free her. Zeus concluded that if Persephone had not eaten of the fruit of the lower world, she could return to Arcadia. But if she had, she would have to live a part of each year in the Underworld with Hades. Persephone had indeed eaten a pomegranate while in the Underworld, condemning her to return below for a fraction of each year. Persephone’s time spent in the underworld is thus linked to Fall and Winter, and her return to the upper world with Spring and Summer.

To interpret this myth correctly, it’s necessary first and foremost to understand that the myth does not describe anyone or anything external to you. The myth is all about you. It simultaneously describes the dichotomy of your immortal spiritual condition and your mortal human condition. Demeter symbolizes your soul (the divine element in you, as Plato would say) while Persephone symbolizes your body (the human trait, according to Plato). Demeter, your soul, is eternal, powerful, wise and divine. Persephone, your body (who is the offspring or “child” of Demeter just as much as your body is the offspring or “child” of your soul), is naïve, unwise, playful and blissfully ignorant; as such, Persephone is subjected to, and indeed becomes a victim of, the pull and passions of material earthly existence.

As evidence of this Demeter/Soul vs. Persephone/Body interpretation, the myth clearly compares and contrasts the higher world of heaven where Demeter resides with the “underworld” or lower world of earth, where Persephone eventually resides.

The myth teaches that we’ve fallen from Heaven down to the Underworld (earth), just like Persephone. We have eaten – and we continue to eat – the fruit of this lower world, with its myriad seeds. When we die, we leave this place and ascend back to the source. But, having eaten of the fruit, the soul will necessarily gravitate back down again because, in the words of Socrates, “it is always full of body when it departs, so that it soon falls back into another body and grows with it as if it had been sewn into it.” This is the cycle of reincarnation, a central teaching of the Mysteries. It is an almost endless cycle that will continue until, after learning “the lessons of material/earthly life” we cease to identify with the material bodies we acquire during incarnation and begin to find our true inner Self – the soul.

According to Plato, Socrates said that the key “lesson of material/earthly life” is to recognize that earthly existence is made up of “pairs of opposites,” which imprison the soul in the body by preventing it from knowing itself. To elucidate this idea, Socrates uses a certain “pair” of opposites, namely, “pleasure” and “pain”:

“Every pleasure and every pain provides, as it were, another nail to rivet the soul to the body and to weld them together. It makes the soul corporeal, so that it believes that truth is what the body says it is. As it shares the beliefs and delights of the body, I think it inevitably comes to share its ways and manner of life and is unable to reach…a pure state; it is always full of body when it departs, so that it soon falls back to another body and grows with it as if it had been sewn into it. Because of this, it can have no part in the company of the divine, the pure and uniform.”

There is a parallel to this in the ancient Zoroastrian religion, founded by the prophet Zarathustra (Zoroaster), which sees the world as an arena for the struggle of the two fundamentals of being, Light/Good and Darkness/Evil, represented in two antagonistic divine figures: Ahura Mazda on the side of good against Ahriman on the side of evil.

“The phenomenal world exists of a pair of conflicting opposites: light/dark, truth/falsehood, health/sickness, rain/drought…life/death, heaven/hell.

—Karigoudar Ishwaran, Ascetic Culture: Renunciation and Worldly Engagementedited

This duality was personified in the primeval “Creator” deity of the Persian religion, an “androgynous” figure named Zurvan, depicted in the center below:

The androgynous figure of Zurvan, Luristan, Persia, c. 7th BC

The so-called “god of time and eternity,” Zurvan, is described by scholars as the “neutral father” of the “good” god Ahura Mazda and the “evil” god Ahriman. These twins are born and emanate from either side of him, as shown in this image from an ancient silver plaque. With his children representing the two opposites, Zurvan is “centered” between them, facing forward.

Zurvan’s neutrality between opposites is personified here by his striking the GodSelf pose. He appears to share an arm with both Ahura Mazda (good) and Ahriman (evil), and he is said to be passing along one flame in his “good” hand and one in his “evil” hand.

But Zurvan is neither good nor evil; he is the eternal being between these two temporal opposites. He is neutral. Zurvan is for this reason referred to as the god of light and darkness, good and evil, right and wrong, and so on. In fact, those aren’t his arms, though they appear to be. They are the arms of his two lower halves—his left and right sides, good (Ahura Mazda) and evil (Ahriman), that appear to be emanating from him, like the twin male and female faces that emanate from the Buddha.

Zoroastrianism emphasizes high moral standards, with salvation achieved by he who strikes the balance and realizes that he is neither good nor evil; rather, he is the eternal being temporarily experiencing these terrestrial apparitions here in the material realm. Ahura Mazda is not a personal god like the God of the Bible, but more of a template that encodes wisdom pertaining to the physical and spiritual constitutions of every man and woman. Zurvan is also a model that the masses should strive to follow. Worship is centered on this idea, not on a personal relationship with God.

The GodSelf icon was an important part of the vocabulary of religious and political expression in ancient times. Artists who depicted Alexander used the GodSelf Icon pose, perhaps as a message for posterity, telling us exactly how he became so powerful:

Images of Alexander the Great striking the GodSelf Icon pose.

Religion for the ancients was not a homogenizing force as it is for most believers today. Your purpose as a spiritual being is not to obey the dictates of an age-old set of rules, nor to pray in prescribed sentences at certain times of the day, nor to sit with a massive group of other like-minded people nodding heads at the time-worn platitudes of a priest. Instead, the GodSelf Icon calls upon us to develop our talents to the fullest, to meditate about and act upon our individual purposes (our Will), and to become the greatest exemplars of our highest purposes. We are not sheep to be herded by priests; rather, we are independent self-sufficient spiritual beings who have a purpose that transcends our bodily functions and social needs.

The Missing Link builds on the case Cassaro made in Written in Stone, to show that one of the most important symbols in human history has been overlooked and misunderstood. What’s more, that symbol, properly appreciated, is as powerful for people today as it was for our Stone Age ancestors. In fact, one of the spurs to his interest in ancient civilizations was his chance acquaintance with the Freemason movement. Freemasons consciously imitated past symbols in a way that stressed spiritual concepts. We must be immensely grateful that they did so in a manner that preserved something of the past that would otherwise have been completely forgotten.

The Missing Link—Evidence of a Lost Civilization?

Stormer0628 · May 2, 2017

I think it’s perfectly possible to explain how the universe came about without bringing God into it, but I don’t know everything, and there may well be a God somewhere, hiding away. Actually, if he is keeping out of sight, it is because he is ashamed of his followers and all the cruelty and ignorance they are responsible for promoting in his name. If I were him, I’d want nothing to do with them.
― Philip Pullman

Introduction
Charles Dickens starts his novel, The Tale of Two Cities, saying, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness…in short, the period was so far like the present period.”

Although penned over one and a half centuries ago, these words seem to ring so true even in the twenty-first century in which we live. We now live in the best of times, thanks to the amazing advancements in the fields of science and technology. At the very same time, we are living through the worst of times of mind-numbing bestiality reminiscent of the dark and diabolic Medieval Ages. On the one hand, the emphasis of our times is on a scientific temperament. On the other hand, rising levels of religious obscurantism seems to be dragging us back into the primitive days of the barbarians.

Every religion essentially preaches peace and tolerance. However, the reality we encounter today is that no religion remains peaceful or tolerates views even remotely critical of the fundamentalist versions of its dogmas. The history of religions is drenched in blood. It is replete with instances of wars waged by the faithful on earth on the command of their god residing in heaven. Religious fanaticism has been killing millions of innocent men, women, children, infants and animals. Religions founded on the principles of love, compassion and goodwill have turned on its head to emerge as instruments of death, desolation and destruction. This infernal madness in the name of faith seems to be increasingly gathering strength despite all the cultural and scientific advancements with which we credit ourselves.

We learn from history that three religious faiths that together cover more than half the population of today’s world have been in the forefront of using the alibi of divine will to commit atrocities against humanity. These religions have come to be called "Abrahamic Religions" in view of the claim of all three to the ancestry of the Biblical patriarch, Abraham. This post seeks to present a brief review of the history of these three religions with focus on understanding how violence became integral to the fundamental nature of Abrahamic religions preaching a loving God.

As we all realize, religion is a highly sensitive subject today. Our religious sensibilities seem to have turned exceedingly brittle and aggressive in spite of the masks of modernity we sport. Consequently, any discussion on religions is a risky venture. It is, therefore, essential for me to make it clear here that this is not an attempt to evaluate the merits or otherwise of any faith or to pass judgments. This is only a humble attempt to share information that I have gleaned from various sources so that readers not conversant with the matter would be in a better position to appreciate the history behind some of the faith related conflicts we have been witnessing today. It is my commitment to be objective in what I write. I shall be obliged if readers would kindly let me know of any errors, aberrations or objections to any part of the content of this post so as to enable me make appropriate amends.

It would be foolish for me to attempt to condense the eventful histories of Abrahamic Religions spanning over 4000 years into a single blog post. My limited goal here is to present a brief overview of some of the critical events in the history of these religions in order to enable the reader obtain an insight into the circumstances that led to these religions turning, what is often termed, ‘Religions of the Sword’. Even this limited examination would need an estimated fifteen thousand odd words, which would be tedious for the average reader if presented as a single post. I have, therefore, discussed the topic in FOUR parts. This part (Part-I) carries a brief general introduction to Abrahamic religions. Parts II, II and IV carry short reviews of the history of Judaism, Christianity and Islam respectively.

The Abrahamic Religions
Judaism, Christianity and Islam trace their roots to Abraham, the first of the three so-called Biblical patriarchs (his son Isaac and grandson Jacob are the other two). But Abrahamic ancestry is not the only common characteristic of these three religions. For instance, all these are monotheistic religions (religions believing in a single God). All three, starting with Judaism, originated in the Middle East. Christianity and Islam are considerably influenced by the Jewish history and scripture (Old Testament Bible). The Old Testament is part of the Christian Bible. The people, places and incidents in the Bible find mention in the Islamic Scripture (The Holy Koran). The Islamic scripture accommodates and respects all the prominent patriarchs and prophets of the Bible. The Holy Koran accepts Jesus too, although not as the ‘Son of God’ as believed by Christians, but as a Prophet and the son of Joseph and Mary. Jerusalem is a holy land for all three religions. All these three religions have a firm apocalyptic theme i.e. a belief that at the end of times God will finally impose His kingdom upon the earth. All three religions have developed what can be called socialistic ideologies. As exiles in the Roman Empire, the Jews had developed what could be described as first social welfare system. The kibbutz that came up in modern Israel is a way of community living through the sharing of resources and responsibilities by the whole community operating as an integrated unit. Jesus Christ and Prophet Mohammed stood resolutely on the side of the poor and the oppressed and fought the corrupt and unjust establishment. Both were, therefore, revolutionaries in their own distinct ways. Thus, all three Abrahamic religions possess what may be described as a revolutionary streak. And, of course, the histories of all these three religions are drenched in blood.

The Jewish scripture (The Old Testament Bible) is replete with divine exhortations to go, kill and burn the enemies of Israel (Hebrew/Jew). For instance, God commanded Saul, the first king of the Hebrew people, “Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass” (1 Samuel 15:3).The tendency of the other Abrahamic religions to kill in the name of the divine seems to be a legacy of its Judaic ancestry. Eventually each Abrahamic religion started slaughtering not only the enemies of their common ‘Abrahamic God’ but also one another. The massacres did not even end with that. When sectarian divisions emerged within these religions, they started killing people within its own fold. For example, in Christianity the Catholics and Protestants killed each other. In Islam, the Sunnis and Shiites killed each other. And the killing continues. Such bloody campaigns among the Abrahamic religions have turned Jerusalem, their common holy city, the most blood splattered piece of real estate on the face of earth.

The reality is that none of the three faiths had started as ‘Religions of the Sword.' None had supported or promoted violence. This is particularly so in the case of Christianity and Islam. The wars on the command of god in heaven started with Judaism. Eventually, other two faiths that emerged out of the Judaic legacy seem to have fallen inescapably into the rut of unmitigated violence of its classic Judaic traditions.

It appears that the inherent inclination of all three religions to reach for the sword in the name of the divine has been largely influenced by its monotheistic faith. Historical monotheism apparently entered the world in an unequivocal way through Abraham. And it emerged in the midst of people who worshiped pantheons mostly represented in idols. For a population that lived on the produce of the land, fertility and nature deities were critical. The agrarian population, therefore, conceived, created and worshiped a plethora of fertility deities. The term Baal was used during the Old Testament period as common term for these deities. There was also as assortment of other gods. The idea of monotheism seemed to have given its proponents some kind of an air of supremacy over those worshiping a myriad of gods. And the devotees of Abrahamic God believed that they were different and their God was the only true God. While all other gods were conceived and created as idols by the hands of men, the God of the Hebrews strictly prohibited the making or worshiping of images. One of the Ten Commandments given by God to Moses at the Biblical Mount of Sinai said, “You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them…” (Exodus 20: 4-5).

The God of Moses and Abraham wanted unqualified submission of His people to His commands. Regarding the consequence of disobedience, God had told His people, “But if you will not listen to me and will not do all these commandments, if you spurn my statutes, and if your soul abhors my rules, so that you will not do all my commandments, but break my covenant, then I will do this to you: I will visit you with panic, with wasting disease and fever that consume the eyes and make the heart ache. And you shall sow your seed in vain, for your enemies shall eat it. I will set my face against you, and you shall be struck down before your enemies. Those who hate you shall rule over you, and you shall flee when none pursues you” (Leviticus 26: 14-17).

Monotheism brought in its wake a great divide among the population of the Old Testament times. On the one side of the divide were the descendants of Abraham who claimed to be the chosen people of their true God. On the other side were the rest of the population that worshiped Baal and an assortment of other deities. These people were bracketed together by the Hebrews under the umbrella term ‘Gentiles’. For the Jews, the Gentiles were Infidels. And they suddenly started looking down upon the whole non-Jew population as an inferior lot. The Jews condemned Baal and all other gods and goddesses as false gods. All other gods and its worshipers became the enemies of the God of their Patriarchs. This led to the belief among the Hebrews that their God willed that they exterminate His enemies. Thus, for the Jews, campaigns to annihilate non-Jews became wars ordered by the divine and hence ‘Holy Wars’.

The Old Testament Bible says that God had told Abraham, “I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing” (Genesis 12:2). This promise made the descendants of Abraham (starting with the Hebrews) to consider themselves as the chosen people of their God. The term ‘nation’ as used in the promise of God to Abraham encompassed both the spiritual and the temporal. On the spiritual plane, the descendants of Abraham were an exclusive body of worshipers of their monotheistic God. They would have no god other than the God of Abraham. And they were covenanted to be wholly submissive to his commandments. Their God spoke to His people through His prophets. At the temporal level, the term ‘nation’ denoted an earthly nation ruled in accordance with the commandments of God. In monotheism, there is only one God. Thus, the universe and everything in it belonged to that one God who in the case of all these three religions is the Abrahamic God.

God said to Abraham, “Lift up now your eyes, and look from the place where you are, northward and southward and eastward and westward; for all the land which you see, to you I will give it, and to your ancestry for ever. And I will make your ancestry as the dust of the earth; so that if a man can number the dust of the earth, then shall your ancestry also be numbered. Arise and walk through the land in the length of it and in the breadth of it; for to you I will give it” (Genesis 13: 14-16). Thus, God had given all the lands to Abraham and his ancestry. Therefore, the descendants of Abraham took the view that those not belonging to the ancestry of Abraham had no legitimate claims on any land. The descendants of Abraham, therefore, assumed it to be their God given right to slaughter the ‘infidels’ and take over their lands. The killings for control over the lands thus started with the Israelites. The same view was later adopted by Christians and Muslims. Thus, ‘Holy Wars’ gained legitimacy in all Abrahamic Religions.

One of the Ten Commandments that God gave to Moses at Mount Sinai said, “You shall not murder” (Genesis 20:13). Yet the history of Judaism is full of instances of wanton bloodshed. The butchery started in earnest after God promised to give Abraham and his descendants a territory named in the Jewish scriptures as ‘Canaan’. The Israelites started slaughtering the occupants of the ‘Promised Land’ for securing control over it. Incidentally, history would repeat itself more than once to culminate in the 20th century formation of the modern nation of Israel roughly in the Biblical ‘Promised Land’ of Canaan.

Then some two thousand years ago, Christianity took birth from the roots of Judaism. Jesus belonged to the bloodline of Abraham and King David. But at the core of the Gospel preached by Jesus was love, forgiveness and sacrifice. And the Gospel went far beyond the Old Testament Commandment of “Thou shalt not kill.” Jesus had taught, “….Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Mathew 5:44). He told, “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal.” Yet, the war over land and earthly treasures continued more viciously with the Christians. The Christians campaigns for land were not restricted to the conquest of any specific territory. The Christian wars for occupation were all out global wars. Thus, the colonial Britain had come to occupy an empire were, so to say, the sun never set.

Islam had evolved as a religion of Peace. (The word “Islam” is derived from the Arabic root “Salema” meaning peace, purity, submission and obedience). But during the lifetime of the Prophet itself, the Islamic temperaments had shifted from that of peace to one of war and bloodshed. A few centuries later, the world witnessed the wars of conquest unleashed by Islamic invaders. They conquered territories, founded great empires and carried out religious conversions in massive scales.

By the latter half of the twentieth century, massacres in the name of faith seemed to have mostly disappeared from the global scene except for the Palestinian animosities between the Arabs and Israelites. But killings in the name of faith have returned with redoubled vigor and viciousness in many parts of the world. The 1992-95 war in Bosnia, pitting Christian Orthodox Serbs against Bosnian Muslims and Croatian Catholics, left more than 100,000 people dead and millions homeless. Twenty years ago in July 1995, Serb troops overran the Muslim enclave of Srebrenica under the protection of the UN troops, killing some 8,000 Muslims in a single campaign. Today, the Islamic State (IS) has become a nightmare for the world. IS extremists are going on a rampage in and around Syria and Iraq brutally assassinating hundreds of Syrian Orthodox Christians among others. It appears that violence in the name of faith, as a classic solution to capture power, would never loosen its grip over the Abrahamic religions…

Let me stop here. I hope that the discussions so far have provided some basic insights into Abrahamic religions for readers not conversant with the topic. In the forthcoming parts, we would take up the examination on how violence became integral to the nature of each Abrahamic religion.

to be continued....

kayolskie · May 12, 2017

Global elites families were Jews and they control the World Bank. All nations' bank were controlled by those global elites. But Germany was not. Hitler knows who control their banking system and he kick them butts out of his country. The result Germany exponentially grew their economy to top. They now had advance technology during that time because all the money they've made were on their own and not by those elites. The elites hates it and want to control again the Germany under Adolf Hitler. And world war 2 was born. Just read and watch Hitler's biography. Sorry sa english

Stormer0628 · Aug 20, 2017

As this series has become a bit of a stretch too much to continue in my current busy schedule, those interested may instead find the continuations here:

The Killer Instinct of Abrahamic Religions (Part: II – Judaism)

The Killer Instinct of Abrahamic Religions (Part: III – Christianity)

The Killer Instinct of Abrahamic Religions (Part: IV – Islam)

Stormer0628 · Oct 21, 2017

The nature of Islam and its role in modern society is the subject of widespread confusion, misinformation and wilful denial. Never in history has an issue, of such critical importance been the subject of such confusion, by so many, for so long. An overstatement? I contend not, as I will elaborate.

Firstly, however, I would like to address a comment to Muslims. I do not bear any malice towards you. I sympathise with you in many ways. I recognise that you have been, and are, the victims of injustice and prejudice. I regret that.

However, I am an atheist and will of course criticise what you believe, as I have a right to do. I recognise that your beliefs may be a part of your culture and your identity and may be deeply held and felt. But these beliefs are your choice. “There is no compulsion in religion” – perhaps. But no-one can control what you think in your own mind. It is your choice.

When you identify yourself as a Muslim, you are expressing your allegiance to the religion, and to some extent, the ideology it represents. You cannot escape that, whether or not you entirely subscribe to it. Of course everything is subject to interpretation. But you are either a Muslim or you are not. Hence I hope you will be able to consider what I have to say as a legitimate point of view, although one you might not agree with.

I make these remarks because it is clear that while many people are devoted to their beliefs, a devotion that may consume their whole life, they may be rather less devoted to considerations of why they believe what they do, and whether those beliefs are actually true. This is an important consideration in itself, surely, but in addition I see it a crucial starting point towards resolution of a deeply troubling situation.

We need to gain insight into the nature of religion. Only then will all communities be able to make clear and unbiased decisions about the desirable nature and status of religion in society, and Islam in particular. Only then will Muslims be able to consider clearly possible alternative interpretations of the Koran, and the possible reform of Islam.

On the issue of deradicalisation of Islamic extremists, I cannot see how these epistemic considerations can not be considered relevant. Yet from what I understand of commonly prevalent deradicalisation programmes, they are not. Deradicalisation programmes that only work on aspects of community involvement and alienation reduction will not be sufficient.

We need to engage, to some extent, in the process of Socratic questioning. By asking questions, we help clarify thinking. Doubt is not an obstacle to be feared. Doubt is a pathway on the route to knowledge. We need to engage in “street epistemology”. As Peter Boghossian[1] has said most pertinently: “Those who have more doubt about their beliefs are less likely to act on them.”

Islam and its consequences

Concerning the nature and role of Islam, and particularly its association with violence, I would like to return to my opening remark about the importance of this issue and the obfuscation and confusion surrounding it. I have taken a big interest in this issue, starting from September 11. My concern is a humanitarian one.

The dominance of a religion in a society affects its institutions, which in turn affect its economic and social outcomes. More than a decade ago, United Nations Human Development Reports indicated that Arab countries were under-performing on a whole range of indicators. The causes of the under-performance were all associated with Islam. Things are immeasurably worse now.

Consider these favourable trends. Over recent decades, even in the poorest countries, life expectancy has increased and infant mortality has decreased. The United Nations Millennium Development Goal on poverty, to reduce by half the number of people living on less than $2/day, was achieved. There are more people, less poor, more healthy and living longer, than ever before.

But at the same time, the level of conflict has increased. Many countries, ravaged by conflict, have disintegrated into failed states, all Islamic: Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, and before that, Somalia. Millions of children have not been in school and their lives have been traumatised by homelessness and violence. There are now more refugees than at any time since the Second World War. These outcomes are a direct consequence of the type of societies that Islamic ideology creates and the types of behaviours it fosters. The basic problem is the elevation of Islamic law above all else. Islam is a humanitarian disaster, for this and many other reasons, including subjugation of women, which I could elaborate on. Those who suffer most from the consequences of Islam are the Muslims. Those who disagree should perhaps study the situation a little more carefully.

Earthquakes, hurricanes and floods all cause human suffering. But earthquakes last for seconds or minutes, hurricanes may last for hours, floods may last for days. After that, rebuilding and recovery may begin. But the suffering caused by Islam-inspired conflicts lasts for years, with no end in sight and no rebuilding possible. This is far worse than any natural disaster. Islam is the greatest cause of human suffering in the world today.

Despite the reasoned basis of my argument, I have been ridiculed, and libelled even, for making that observation. It is at the very least a seriously important issue, hence the basis for my opening remark. How can this have escaped people’s attention?

As a critic of Islam, despite explaining my humanitarian concern, and my particular care to be critical of Islamic beliefs, but not to denigrate Muslims as people, I have been accused of bigotry, hate mongering, racism and prejudice. But not so much by Muslims. Almost entirely by fellow freethinkers.

As a Secular Party official, I am consistently self-constrained by what I may say, lest potential supporters be offended. It is a phenomenon that Maajid Nawaz calls the “regressive left”. Christianity may be criticised, but Islam may not be.

The perception is that Muslims in Australia are a minority and need to be protected. We need social harmony. I can understand that. But this must not be at the expense of recognition of the true nature of the problem. Otherwise we are doomed to fail. The rise of right-wing parties and loony populists is a direct result of the mainstream failure to address this issue.

Hence my reference to confusion in my opening remark. But that is not the most significant source of confusion: the most significant source of confusion concerns the basic nature of Islam itself. This confusion applies to Muslims and non-Muslims alike.

According to its own doctrines and its own history, Islam is a jihadist religion. The prophet Muhammad himself was a jihadist. This is the single most relevant thing about it. How can this have escaped people’s attention? Note: I am not saying all Muslim are jihadists.

Surely these issues are important. What I will cover for most of the rest of this article is not my opinion, but is the considered opinion of many experts who have devoted their lives to the reasoned study of Islam. I should briefly mention these people.

Accounts of Islam’s origins

Research in the 19th century by the Austrian scholar Aloys Sprenger (1813-1893) uncovered the biography of Muhammad[2]. Hungarian Ignaz Goldziher (1850-1921) and German Joseph Schacht (1902-1969) uncovered the unreliability of the Hadith. John Wansborough (1928-2002) identified Islam as a product of the Arab empire. Patricia Crone established that there were no historical records that showed Mecca as a centre of trade.

More recent scholars include Volker Popp, Karl Heinz Ohlieg, Ibn Waraq and Christoph Luxenberg. The latter two are assumed names adopted for their own safety and protection. All of these people have meticulously researched scholarly works, based on their reading and interpretations of the ancient Arabic texts. Volker Popp is a numismatist, who is able to infer much about the power relations in early Islam from his interpretation of the coins and inscriptions.

The above scholars are termed “revisionists” due to their rejection of the traditional Islamic account, which until then had been widely accepted. Volker Popp in particular rejects the historicity of the “prophet of the Arabs”. No-one knows for sure what happened, but in my view, the evidence is on the side of the revisionists.

For an accessible introduction to the subject, a good starting point is the BBC4 documentary produced by Tom Holland: “Islam: the Untold Story”[3]. Holland’s book “In the Shadow of the Sword” is a vivid and entertaining account of the history. Holland accepts the historicity of the Muhammad legend, and does not reference Popp in his book. However, I do not think Popp can be ignored.

Much of what follows is a summary of the arguments in, or a direct extraction from, Robert Spencer’s book, “Did Muhammad Exist?”. This book is a carefully compiled synthesis of much of the other “revisionist” work. His conclusion, in particular, provides a concise summary of the evidence.

Sources

A thorough review of the historical record shows that much, if not all, of what we know about Muhammad is legend, not historical fact. The Koran is not a revelation from the one true god, but was actually constructed from already existing material, mostly from the Jewish and Christian traditions.

Both Judaism and Christianity have been the subject of widespread scholarly investigation for more than two centuries. Islam has not received the same scrutiny. Can Islam survive this challenge?

The main Islamic sources are the Koran itself, the Hadith and the Sira. The Hadith, literally “reports”, are the collections of Muhammad’s purported words and deeds that form the foundation of Islamic law and practice. The Hadith are hugely voluminous, and date from a period considerably after Muhammad’s reported death in 632. The Sira, the biography of the prophet of Islam, was written by Ibn Ishaq (died 773), at least 125 years after the death of his protagonist.

There is little doubt that the political unification of Arabia took place around the time Muhammad is assumed to have lived. Scholars generally agree that the Arabian warriors swept out of Arabia beginning in the second quarter of the 7th century, and within 100 years had subdued much of the Middle East, North Africa and Persia, and had entered India and Spain.

The most heretical assertion, even to many non-Muslim historians, is the contention by Popp, supported by Spencer, that in its earliest use, the term “Muhammad” is an honorific, meaning “the praised one” or “chosen one”, and originally referred to Jesus.

The name Muhammad appears in the Koran only four times, and in three of those instances, according to Spencer, it is used as a title, rather than as a proper name. By contrast, Moses is mentioned by name 136 times and Abraham 79 times. Even Pharaoh is mentioned 74 times. Meanwhile the messenger of Allah appears in various forms 300 times and prophet 43 times[4],[5].

The Koran also refers to Jesus as a messenger (5:75). It is possible that when it refers to Muhammad, meaning “praised one”, it could be referring to Jesus. Spencer notes instances in the Koran where Muhammad, the messenger, is referred to in identical terms to Jesus, the messenger.

The canonical story

What follows is an account of what happened, according to the traditional and accepted Islamic narrative, again summarising Spencer’s account.

There was an Arabian of the Quraysh tribe of Mecca known to the world as Muhammad, a name that means praised one. In the year 610, when he was 40, he was praying in a cave on Mount Hira about two miles from Mecca, when he was suddenly confronted by the angel Gabriel, who commanded him to recite.

For the next 23 years until his death in 632, Muhammad recited the messages of Gabriel, presenting them to his followers as the word of God. After his death, the memorised revelations received were collected together into the Koran, (meaning “recitation”).

Muhammad’s preachings were unpopular with the polytheistic Quraysh, and threatened their trade arising from the annual pilgrimage to the Kaaba in Mecca.

In 622 Muhammad left Mecca with his followers, the Muslims, and settled in the city of Yatrib. This emigration was the Hijra, and the date marks the beginning of the Islamic calendar. Yatrib became known as the city of the prophet, Medina.

Muhammad then called on his followers to take up arms in defence of the community, and subsequently to fight offensive wars against non-believers. Muhammad himself led the Muslims into battle against the Quraysh and other pagan tribes.

These battles illustrate the core of Islamic salvation theology: that obedience to Allah brings success, and disobedience brings punishment.

After Muhammad’s death, his Muslim warriors were energised by the prophet’s exhortations to jihad, and embarked on conquests unprecedented in their breadth and swiftness: Syria and the Holy Land by 637, Armenia and Egypt in 639, Cypress in 654, North Africa in the 650s and 660s. By 674 the Muslims were threatening Constantinople, the capital of the Byzantine Empire. A century after the death of the warrior prophet, they controlled a vast Empire stretching across the Middle East and North Africa.

This account is largely taken for granted by Muslims and non-Muslims alike. However it is clear that apart from the Arab conquests, virtually none of the standard account could have happened as stated.

A revisionist scenario

Here is what we know, using Spencer’s summary account:

No record of Muhammad’s reported death in 632 appears until more than a century after that date.
A Christian account, apparently dating from the mid 630s, speaks of an Arab prophet, armed with a sword, but who is still alive.
The early accounts, written by the people the Arabs conquered, never mention Islam, Muhammad or the Koran. The conquerors are called Ishmaelites, Saracens, Muhjirun and Hagarians, but never Muslims.
The conquerors, in their coins and inscriptions, don’t mention Islam, or the Koran, for the first six decades of their conquests. Mentions of Muhammad are non-specific and could refer to the “praised one”, an honorific. On at least two occasions, inscriptions are accompanied by a cross.
The Koran, even by the canonical account, was not distributed in its present form until the 650s. Contradicting this, however, neither Arabs, Christians nor Jews mention the Koran until the early 8th century.
During the reign of the caliph Muawiyah, 661-680, at least one public building was constructed with an inscription headed by a cross.
We begin hearing about Muhammad the prophet of Islam, and about Islam itself, in the 690s during the reign of caliph Abd al-Malik.
Abd al-Malik claimed to have collected the Koran.
At this time, the governor of Iraq, Hajjaj ibn Yusuf, distributes copies of the Koran to the provinces, something that Uthman is supposed to have done decades earlier.
In the middle of the 8th century the Abbasid Dynasty supplanted the Umayyad line of Abd Al-Malik. The Abbasids charged the Umayyads with impiety on a large scale. In the Abbasid period, biographical material about Muhammad began to proliferate. The first biography appeared 125 years after Muhammad’s reported death.
The biographical material that emerged places Muhammad in an area of Arabia that was never the centre for trade and pilgrimage that the canonical account depends on it to be.

Volker Popp refers to inscriptions that refer to dates “in the year of the Arabs”. He ascribes the start date of the Arab calendar not to a “Hijra”, which is never mentioned in early sources, but to a date in 622, when the Arabs first gained their independence from the Byzantine Empire. At this time, the Byzantines had a decisive victory over the Persians, but then withdrew, leaving their allies, the Arabs, in charge.

There is little room for the prophetic legend in this scenario. The lack of confirming historical detail, and the delayed development of the biography, suggest that whatever Muhammad figure may have existed, he was quite different from what the legend portrays.

to be continued....

- - - Updated - - -

kayolskie said:
Global elites families were Jews and they control the World Bank. All nations' bank were controlled by those global elites. But Germany was not. Hitler knows who control their banking system and he kick them butts out of his country. The result Germany exponentially grew their economy to top. They now had advance technology during that time because all the money they've made were on their own and not by those elites. The elites hates it and want to control again the Germany under Adolf Hitler. And world war 2 was born. Just read and watch Hitler's biography. Sorry sa english

There are many who would support this view. Another thing that is lost to many is that Hitler was just riding a popular sentiment during this time. In fact, the national perception in Germany against the Jews during this period in their history was widespread, coming from many sectors of German society. It is not to place the blame squarely on the Jews themselves, but more on the elite Jews who made this widespread anger possible while they themselves were first to fly to safety when the social conflagration started in that part of the world, leaving the mass of Jews in Germany to suffer their fate.

Stormer0628 · Nov 3, 2017

2/2

What really happened?

According to Spencer, what happened was this: the Arabs built a mighty empire; every empire of the day was anchored in a political theology; the Christological controversies of the early church threatened to tear the Byzantine Empire asunder; after four ecumenical councils, Christian groups that were regarded as heretical left the Empire.

The earliest Arab rulers appear to be have been adherents of Hagarism, a monotheistic religion centred around Abraham and Ishmael. Hagar was Abraham’s concubine, and the mother of Ishmael, according to legend. (We should note, of course, that Abraham et al. are not historical figures.)

The Arab rulers frowned on the Christian doctrines of the Trinity and the divinity of Christ. Hence Muawiyah’s letter to the Byzantine Emperor Constantine calling on him to renounce Jesus (as a god) and serve the god of Abraham.

They regarded Christ as the servant of Allah and his messenger. They embraced Jesus as a prophet, and thus had crosses on coins and inscriptions. They saw themselves as encompassing both Judaism and Christianity.

The elevation of Muhammad
Abd al-Malik’s 691 inscription on the Dome of the Rock is an anti-Trinitarian treatise in which the word Muhammad likely refers to Jesus as the “praised one”, Spencer argues, following Popp.

As the religion of Islam developed, the inscription on the Dome of the Rock lent itself well to the adoption of a new Arab figure, distinct from Jesus, and became identified with what were, by then, just rumours of an early Arab prophet.

The concept of a legendary hero would be politically useful for the new Arab Empire. The new prophet needed to be an Arab, living deep within Arabia. He had to be a warrior prophet, for the new empire was aggressively expansionist. This prophet would have needed a sacred scripture to lend him authority.

Much of the Koran shows signs of being borrowed from Jewish and Christian traditions, indicating that the founders of Islam fashioned its scripture from existing material.

An Arabic prophet and revelation were needed, but Abd al-Malik and his fellow Umayyad caliphs were centred not in Arabia, but in Damascus. Hence it is not surprising that the Koran has many Syriac and non-Arabic influences (see Luxenberg).

The Koran has furious warnings of judgement and jihadist exhortations and holds Muhammad as an excellent example for all Muslims to follow, but has little detail on what the prophet actually said or did. Hence there was a great need for such material.

The great canonical hadith collections were all compiled in the 8th century after the Abbasids replaced the Umayyads. The minting of hadith then proliferated. The Umayyads, Abbasids and Shiites all issued hadiths criticising the other factions and supporting their own positions.

They also needed to convince the people that the stories of the prophet of Islam and his new religion were not actually new. The Abbasids blamed the Umayyads for not obeying the prophet and not being religious. The Abbasids then claimed the credit for revealing the true nature of the Arab prophet.

This reconstruction explains the curious silence of the Arab conquerors about Muhammad and the Koran. It explains why Islam arrived on the scene long after the Arab conquests.

Islam, by its nature, is a political faith. Unlike its Abrahamic forerunners, it considers its adherents as the instruments of divine justice on earth (as Spencer puts it). The Koran prescribes agonising punishments for disbelieving infidels, and exhorts Muslims to wage war against those infidels, apostates and polytheists.

The political, military and imperial components are intrinsic to the Islamic faith, and they are evident from the earliest records. This alternative scenario explains the unique political nature of Islam. The theology was created to justify and perpetuate the Arab Empire.

Did Muhammad exist?
There may have been a prophet of the Arabs, but not one who received the perfect eternal book from the supreme god. The details of Muhammad’s life, his alliances, his wives, are a creation of political ferment dating from long after the time when he was supposed to have lived. Records indicate strongly that the Koran, as such, did not exist until long after it was supposed to have been delivered.

The brave scholars who have sought answers to the questions described here have been relatively few in number. A serious quest for the historical Muhammad is long overdue. Islamic forces have clashed with empires for centuries. Islamists are now terrorising unbelievers and seeking subversion through the implementation of Sharia law.

Despite the differences between Islamic, Jewish and Christian theology, few have bothered to investigate how the Islamic tradition, and what it might tell us about the clash of civilisations that has continued for more than a millennium.

Islam was not born in the full light of history, as claimed, but now is the time to usher it into the light. The truth matters. We need to be aware of it now, more than ever.

The example of the prophet Muhammad that derives from his biography, including his insurgency against the Meccans, his exile and beheading of Jewish tribes, his six-year-old wife, and his use of captured women as sex slaves, is not commonly acknowledged by most Muslims. However, it certainly inspires violence and terrorism by those who are motivated to take it, and the violent injunctions of the Koran, literally.

This literalism, in the form of Islamism, is having a diabolical and destabilising effect globally, causing immense suffering. Yet the role model on which it is based is very likely to be almost entirely fictitious. Incredibly, the fictitious nature of the theology is not generally considered to be important, relevant or mentionable. I return to my opening assertion: Never before in history has humanity generally been so wilfully blind. A new phase of enlightenment must surely dawn soon.

End notes

[1] Street Epistemology: The Basics | StreetEpistemology.com
https://streetepistemology.com/publications/street_epistemology_the_basics

[2] The biography of the prophet was not well known in the Arab world until 1927 when it began to be widely copied in Cairo. This may well have given impetus to the Muslim Brotherhood, and triggered the wider radicalisation of Islam that has since continued, increasing significantly in the last couple of decades. This has occurred because of both the example it sets, and the more radical interpretation of the Koran it motivates.

[3] The documentary caused considerable controversy, predictably perhaps, on the grounds that it was “anti-Islam”. This is despite the fact that Holland, and his interviewee Patricia Crone, argued their case very cautiously. Holland allowed another interviewee, Professor of Islamic Studies Seyeed Hossain Nasr, ample opportunity to comment on their propositions. However his attitude appeared to be one of indignation that non-Muslims should even comment on Islam’s origins.

[4] Fred Bonner, (not a Popp-style revisionist) notes that the word “believer” occurs in the Koran nearly 1000 times. He refers to the early period as a “believers’ movement”, encompassing Jews and Christians, with the anti-Trinitarian Arabs midway in between. See for example Qur’ânicization of Religio-Political Discourse in the Umayyad Period, https://remmm.revues.org/7085?lang=en

[5] Mingana points out that all the proper names of biblical personages are used in their Syriac form in the Koran. Almost all the religious terms in the Koran are derived from Syriac. See Alphonse Mingana, “The Syriac Influence on the Style of the Koran”, in Ibn Waraq ed., What the Koran Really Says.

References

Crone, Patricia, and Martin Hinds, God’s Caliph, Religious authority in the fist centuries of Islam, CUP, 2003.
Gabriel, Richard, Muhammad: Islam’s First Great General, UOP, 2007
Holland, Tom, In the Shadow of the Sword: the Birth of Islam and the Rise of the Global Arab Empire, Anchor Books, 2012.
Ohlig, Karl-Heinz, and Gerd-R Puin, (ed.), The Hidden Origins of Islam: New Research into its Early History, Prometheus Books, 2010.
Ohlig, Karl-Heinz, (ed), Early Islam: a Critical Reconstruction based on Contemporary Sources, Prometheus Books, 2013.
Spencer, Robert, Did Muhammad Exist?: An Inquiry into Islam’s Obscure Origins, ISI Books, 2012.
Warraq, Ibn, (ed.), What the Koran Really Says: Language, Text & Commentary, Prometheus Books, 2002.
Warraq, Ibn, Why I am not a Muslim, Prometheus Books, 2003.
Warraq, Ibn (ed.), Christmas in the Koran: Luxenberg, Syriac, and the Near Eastern Judeo-Christian Background of Islam, Prometheus Books, 2014.

Dr. John L. Perkins is an economist, mathematical modeller and software developer. He works on issues of world trade, resource depletion and global warming. He has qualifications from universities in Melbourne and London, and is a member of the Humanist Society of Victoria, the Rationalist Society of Australia, the Australian Skeptics, is a Public Relations team member of the Atheist Foundation of Australia, and is the founding President of the Secular Party of Australia.

SOURCE

cryptomaniac · Jul 27, 2018

Hitler killed the Jews because it's a prophesy in the Bible

Lucius Crassus said:
Yeah, by choice na binibigay ng mga psychopath elites sa mga tao. Human(Us) should know that choice is illusion. Choice is main tool ng mga psychopath elites to divide us. Bawat religion na mapipili natin ay sa slaughterhouse pa rin ang bagsak dahil mula sa pagkapanganak natin ay prepackage na yung religion. Hehehehe

Bawat head ng mga Abrahamic religions ay inassign ng mga psychopath elites para continuously na idivide tayo at magpatayan dahil sa ipinaglalaban magkakaibang doctrine ng religions.

Since malaki ang population ng mga Moslems, malaki ang magiging papel nila sa padating na WW3. If you check history nung WW2 naging ally ni Hitler ang mga Moslem sa Southeastern part ng Europe dahil ang common enemy nila ay Jews.

Ang malaking katanungan sa akin anu kaya nagpush kay Hitler para i-persecute niya ang mga Jews?

--------------------------------------------------
Update

Eto isa sa mga dahilan kung bakit di malayong magkalabu-labo ang mga tao sa bawat religions ay dahil sa doctrine.
Kung titingnan natin ang doctrine bawat Abrahamic Religion meron salitang "Chosen".

Kung sa Judaism ay Jews ang mga Chosen.
Kung sa Islam ay Moslem ang mga Chosen
Kung sa Christ Church naman ay mga Christian ang mga Chosen.

Di tayo magtataka kung bakit naglalaban-laban ang mga tao para sa religion nila.

Abrahamic Traditions: Anachronism in the Modern Age

Symbianize Angel

Attachments

Symbianize Angel

Attachments

Symbianize Angel

Attachments

Symbianize Angel

Attachments

Symbianize Angel

Attachments

Symbianize Angel

Attachments

Proficient

Symbianize Angel

Attachments

The Patriot

Symbianize Angel

Symbianize Angel

Attachments

Symbianize Angel

Attachments

Symbianize Angel

Attachments

Novice

Symbianize Angel

Symbianize Angel

Attachments

Symbianize Angel

Attachments

Apprentice

Similar threads