Russia and Islam Working Together, a Basic “How-To” (REPOST)

Dear friends,

Considering the reactions to my recent post “Russia’s civilizational choice” and, especially, some of the negative ones which, sadly, completely misunderstood my views, I am reposting an article originally written in 2013. This ‘repost’ was first re-posted on the Unz Review where I have also taken the accompanying image. I hope that this post will help clarify my position on the issue (even if I am under no illusion that this repost will have much of an impact on those who deliberately misrepresented my views).

The Saker
——-
Today I am going to look into the topic of Orthodox and Muslim cooperation, suggest one possible approach to this issue and give a practical example where this could be done immediately and with great benefit for all the parties involved. I consider this post today as the eighth installment of my “Russia and Islam” series and I suggest that those who have not read it take a look at it before proceeding (click here for parts one, two, three, four, five, six and seven). For reasons obvious to anybody who has read these series, I will limit my scope to the topic of cooperation between Orthodox Christians and non-Wahabi Muslims. As an Orthodox Christian myself I do not believe that any cooperation is possible between the Orthodox Church and the Papacy or the Reformed/Protestant denominations, nor do I believe that there is anything to discuss with Wahabis. So when I will speak of ‘Christian’ below this will strictly refer to Orthodox Christians and ‘Muslim’ will refer to any Muslim except Wahabis.

The fundamentally misguided yet typical approach:

Having had many opportunities to exchange views with Muslims from different countries and having also heard Christian and Muslim religious figures engaged in various debates, dialogs and discussions, I can describe the typical scenario by which such dialogs are conducted.

Typically, both sides try to establish a list of all the issues Islam and Christianity agree upon. These include that God is love, that the Mother of Jesus was a virgin, that the anti-Christ will come before the end of time, that Moses was a great prophet, that angels are the messengers of God any many other things. Added to this list of topics of agreement are usually statements about how Christians and Muslims have lived in peace side by side and how this should continue today. This is a well meaning and polite way to engage in a dialog, but this is also a fundamentally misguided one for the simple reason that it overlooks absolutely fundamental theological and historical problems. Let’s take these one by one.

Irreconcilable theological differences between Christianity and Islam

The highest most sacred dogmatic formulation of Christianity is the so-called “Credo” or “Symbol of Faith” (full text here; more info here). Literally every letterdown to the smallest ‘i‘ of this text is, from the Christian point of view, the most sacred and perfect dogmatic formulation, backed by the full authority of the two Ecumenical Councils which proclaimed it and all the subsequent Councils which upheld it. In simple terms – the Symbol of Faith is absolutely non-negotiable, non-re-definable, non-re-interpretable, you cannot take anything away from it, and you cannot add anything to it. You can either accept it as is, in toto, or reject it.

The fact is that Muslim would have many problems with this text, but one part in particular is absolutely unacceptable to any Muslim:

And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Only-begotten, Begotten of the Father before all ages, Light of Light, Very God of Very God, Begotten, not made; of one essence with the Father, by whom all things were made

This part clearly and unambiguously affirms that Jesus-Christ was not only the Son of God but actually God Himself. This is expressed by the English formulation “of one essence with the Father” (ὁμοούσιον τῷ Πατρί in Greek with the key term homousios meaning “consubstantial”). This is *THE* core belief of Christianity: that Jesus was the theanthropos, the God-Man or God incarnate. This belief is categorically unacceptable to Islam which says that Christ was a prophet and by essence a ‘normal’ human being.

For Islam, the very definition of what it is to be a Muslim is found in the so-called “Shahada” or testimony/witness. This is the famous statement by which a Muslim attests and proclaims that “There is no god but God, Muhammad is the messenger of God”. One can often also hear this phrased as “There is no god but Allah, Muhammad is His prophet”.

Now without even going into the issue of whether Christians can agree or not that “Allah” is the appropriate name for God (some do, some don’t – this is really irrelevant here), it’s the second part which is crucial here: Christianity does not recognize Muhammad as a prophet at all. In fact, technically speaking, Christianity would most likely classify Muhammad as a heretic (if only because of his rejection of the “Symbol of Faith”). Saint John of Damascus even called him a ‘false prophet’. Simply put: there is no way a Christian can accept the “Shahada” without giving up his Christianity just as there is no way for a Muslim to accept the “Symbol of Faith” without giving up his Islam.

So why bother?

Would it not make much more sense to accept that there are fundamental and irreconcilable differences between Christianity and Islam and simply give up all that useless quest for points of theological agreement? Who cares if we agree on the secondary if we categorically disagree on the primary? I am all in favor of Christians studying Islam and for Muslims studying Christianity (in fact, I urge them both to do so!), and I think that it is important that the faithful of these religions talk to each other and explain their points of view as long as this is not presented as some kind of quest for a common theological stance. Differences should be studied and explained, not obfuscated, minimized or overlooked.

The next divisive issue is the historical record.

Christians and Muslims – friends or foes? What does history show?

Another well-meaning and fundamentally mistaken approach often seen in dialogs between Christians and Muslims is the attempt to present the history of relations between these two faiths as a long uninterrupted love-fest. This is factually wrong and naive to the extreme.

First, both Muslims and Christians are human beings, imperfect and sinful human beings (both religions agree on that). Second, and just to make things worse, both Islam and Christianity have, at times, been official state religions, meaning that states acted in the name of their religion. As a result, there have been plenty of moments in history where Christians and Muslims fought each other. Yes, it is true that Muslims and Christians often did live in peace side by side, but unless one is a total bigot and ignoramus, it is simply impossible to ignore the fact that Christians and Muslims also waged war, persecuted and mistreated each other, sometimes viciously.

So what?

What needs to be established not whether Christians and Muslims did wrong each other in the past, but whether they can live in peace. And the answer to that is a resounding “yes!”. I know, some naysayer will immediately object that both Christianity and Islam have an mixed record of interpretation of whether converting the other to your religion is a religious duty or not. The point here is not whether some Christians or Muslims do (or did) believe that they have to convert each other at all cost, but whether there are those who do not believe so. As long as this is a possibility compatible with one’s faith this is sufficient.

I think that history, and plenty of statements from religious figures on both sides, prove that this is possible – and that there is a preponderance of evidence to show that – that both Christians and Muslims can accept that the decision to be a Muslim or a Christian should be freely taken inside each person’s heart without compulsion or even interference. The fact that it is possible to interpret Christianity and Islam differently is irrelevant as long as it is also possible to accept such a basic stance on religious choices.

Yes, I know that in Islam apostasy is a capital crime, but I also know that over the centuries Muslims have also chosen to not enforce this. It is not for me as an Orthodox Christian to dictate what Muslim leaders decide, but it is also clear to me that there are enough wise and pragmatic Muslim leaders out there to fully comprehend the consequences of a decision on their part to enforce the death penalty on somebody choosing to abandon Islam.

So where do we go from here?

It is very simple to get Christians and Muslims to feel hostility towards each other. First, make a few theological statements which are unacceptable to the other party, call the other a heretic or unbeliever, then mention a few bloody and contentious episodes in history and soon you will have a very nasty situation on your hands. This is as easy as it is sterile as nothing at all can come from that.

Thankfully, it is just as easy to accept that there are irreconcilable differences between the core beliefs of both religions and that each person should have the means to freely make a choice between these two faiths according to his conscience. As for history, it is a no-brainer to accept that both parties have, at times, done wrong to each other and that we are not responsible for what happened in the past, but only for what we make of our present and future.

Still, having dealt with our differences, we still should ask ourselves whether we have something in common, a common interest, or common values, which we might want to jointly defend. And we most definitely do: our ethics.

The common ground – ethics:

Any religion has two primarily components: what it believes in, what it proclaims, and then the rules of life, the “how to” of daily existence which it mandates. In Christian terms there is the doxa (what you proclaim or glorify) and the praxis (how you live your spiritual life on a daily basis). These are the basic rules common to most religions: not to kill, not to steal, to live a life of modesty, to protect the weak, etc. When comparing Islam and Christianity one can find both differences and similarities between their praxis and ethics. The differences in praxis are not that important because they mostly affect the private lives of the faithful: Muslims will fast during the month of Ramadan, Christians during the four major fasts of the year and on Wednesdays and Fridays. So let them, who cares? They really do not bother each other and, in fact, they are typically respectful of each other’s traditions. On ethics, however, the two religions mostly agree both on a social/corporate and individual level and, with one notable exception which I will discuss below, Christianity and Islam have very similar ideas of what is right and wrong and what society should stand for or pro-actively reject. Rather than making a long list of what Islam and Christianity agree on, I will simply introduce a new actor for comparison’s sake: the “post-Christian secular West”.

What does the post-Christian and secular West stand for today?

First and foremost, the post-Christian and secular West stands for the freedom of each person to chose his/her own system of belief, code of behavior, system of morals, lifestyles, etc. In other words, the post-Christian and secular West categorically rejects the notion that something called “The Truth” exists. From that it is logically inevitable to conclude that there really is no “right” or “wrong” at all. In fact, a core belief of the post-Christian and secular West is that “your freedom stops were mine begins” (originally expressed as “The right to swing my fist ends where the other man’s nose begins“). Ergo – as long as others are not affected by it, you can do whatever you want. Each person has his/her ‘truth’ and what you consider right another person might consider wrong and vice-versa.

Second, and as a direct consequence of the first point, the post-Christian and secular West places the well-being of the individual above the well-being of the community. This is perfectly expressed by the famous “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” phrase of the US Declaration of Independence which states that these are the inalienable right of each individual. The contrast with both Christianity and Islam could not have been greater since these religions consider that the real life is the Eternal Life, that the human being is called to be in obedience to God and that true happiness is spiritual and not earthly. In fact, while the West considers life as the highest value, Christianity and Islam welcome death and consider that dying in the name of God is a most desirable act of witness of God (martis in Greek has exactly the same meaning as shahid in Arabic: witness).

Finally, and as a direct consequence of the two points above, the only common value to all people in the post-Christian and secular West is, of course, money. Money is, literally, the only “common currency” of a society without any supreme values in which each person is free to define right and wrong as he/she wishes. This results in an inevitable monetization of everything, including the life of a human being.

This is really a very minimal system of values, but it is plenty enough to make it the “anti-religion” par excellence. In comparison to that, the differences between Orthodoxy and Islam suddenly appear tiny, almost irrelevant. Today, this is best exemplified in Russia where both Orthodox Christianity and Islam are under a direct multi-level attack by the determined efforts of the post-Christian and secular West which spares no effort to subvert and destroy the vales of these religions and replace them by Western “values” promoted in multi-billion dollar propaganda campaigns, including music, movies, books, fashion, TV, talk shows, stores, politicians, famous personalities, etc.

The recent and famous cases of Pussy-Riot and the supposed “right” of Russian homosexuals to organize “pride” parades in Moscow are the perfect examples of the kind of agenda the post-Christian and secular West is pushing nowadays. And although this is not reported in the Western corporate media, I can attest to the fact that Muslim leaders in Russia all perfectly understand that they are also under attack and that this is not just an “Orthodox problem”.

So what could they do about it?

A perfect opportunity – the Russian Constitution

Russian politicians are not blind to what is going on and with the exception of a few pathologically naive or dishonest “liberals”, they all understand that what is happening now is a clash of civilizations between the post-Christian and secular West and post-Soviet Russia. The fact that this clash of civilizations is not only ideological, but also political and even military (as the examples of the Euromaidan in the Ukraine and the deployment of the US anti-missile system in Eastern Europe shows) only makes these matters more urgent.

It just so happened that the Russian Constitution is celebrating its 20th anniversary and that possible changes to that Constitution are being discussed in many part of Russian society. One of the most bizarre features of the current Russian Constitution is that it forbids the state from having any ideology. Article 13.2 of the current Constitution states that “No ideology may be established as state or obligatory one“. The roots of this rather strange paragraph can be traced to a mix of the general rejection of the old Soviet official Marxist-Leninist Communist ideology and a transparent attempt of the foreign “advisers” to the Yeltsin regime in 1993 to make darn sure that nothing “Russian” would find its place in the new Russian Constitution.

Some Russian Orthodox politicians have suggested that this paragraph 13.2 should be expunged and that some formulation would have to be found to express the notion that Orthodoxy played a key historical role in the culture and system of values of modern Russia, that Orthodox values are the basis of the modern ideology of Russia. So far, no exact formulation has been suggested and there is even a debate whether such a phrase should be included in the Constitution itself or in its preamble.

Needless to say, even raising such a notion has resulted in an outraged reaction by the small but very vocal minority of pro-Western “liberal” politicians. More importantly, a lot of Russian Orthodox Christians also have deep reservations about the wisdom of such an amendment because it might alienate all the non-Orthodox people in Russia, which include not only Muslims or Buddhists, but a probably majority of agnostics. Muslim leaders have also expressed concern that this would officially place Islam in a 2nd-category religion status (even though that is exactly the status of Christian dhimmis under Sharia law) and given Orthodoxy a senior, leading role.

I strongly believe that this is the perfect example when Christians and Muslims can easily find a common ground and unite forces: why not simply recognize the special role of Orthodoxy and Islam in the historical formulation of the Russian culture, society and system of values?

First, this happens to be historically correct. Not only were there a lot of Muslims among the Mongols who occupied Russia, in particular in the late period of occupation, but the expansion of the Russian state included many areas with a majority Muslim population who became citizens of the Russian Empire. Muslims have fought in defense of the Russian state and nation in many wars from the times of Saint Alexander Nevsky, to WWII to the 08.08.08 war against Georgia. Last but most definitely not least, Akhmad Kadyrov and his son Ramzan Kadyrov have played an absolutely crucial role in kicking the Wahabis out of Chechnya and thereby they not only saved the Chechen nation from what would have been an absolutely devastating Russian assault, but they also probably saved Russia from a very dangerous and bloody war in the Caucasus. The same can be said of the Dagestani men who for several days single-handedly fought the invading “Islamic International Brigade” of Shamil Basaev and Khattab from Chechnia in 1999 until the main Federal forces got involved. Modern Russia is, beyond any possible doubt, a multi-ethnic and multi-religious state whose well-being and prosperity depends in great part from the kind of Islam Russian Muslims will chose: the Islam of Ramzan Kadyrov or the “Islam” of Doku Umarov (the shaitan who fancies himself the “President of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria and Emir of the Caucasus Emirate”).

Second, by acknowledging the role of both Orthodox Christianity and Islam the proponents of this constitutional amendment would gain the support of what is by far the largest segment of the religions population: there are Buddhists, Papists, Protestants, Jews and other religious denominations in Russia, but they are tiny compared to the big two. Personally, I would also include Buddhists in this list of “culture forming” religious whose values are shaping Russian society if only because (unlike the other small(er) religions) they are truly indigenous to Russia whereas the other denominations are “foreign imports” which, of course, have the right to exist in Russia, but which have had exactly zero influence on the formation of the Russian national identity or system of values.

As for the nominally religious and mostly agnostic people, the mere fact that two (or three) religions are recognized in a special role should assuage their concerns about any one system of values or ideology becoming official at the expense of everybody else. After all, most people in Russia would agree that the ethics of Islam and Christianity have a lot in common. The only major societal and moral issue in which Orthodox Christianity and Islam really disagree on is the issue of capital punishment. But that is irrelevant since Russia has pledged a total moratorium on executions anyway (of all things, to join – what else? – the Council of Europe); besides a majority of Russians still remain in favor of the death penalty to the point that it might even be re-introduced in the future.

Conclusion

Contrary to what a lot of people seem to think, cooperation between Orthodox Christianity and Islam is actually very easy to achieve. Both sides have to accept the fact of irreconcilable theological disagreements, both sides have to accept that they did wrong each other in the past, and both sides have to affirm the right of each person to freely chose his/her religion, including the right to switch from one to another. So far that should be a no-brainer.

Next, Christian and Muslims need to define a set of civilizational issues that they fully agree on. Also a no-brainer.

Finally, both sides should systematically defend their cultural, social and civilizational values together, side by side. In fact, as long as their cultural, social and civilizational values are not in conflict with each other, Orthodox Christians and Muslims should defend the values of the other side on principle, as being *Russian* formative/foundational values. For example, Russian Orthodox Christians should defend the right of Muslim girls to wear a scarf in school and elsewhere. Not only because that is beautiful or because before Peter I all Russian woman always war the exact same scarfs not only in church, but all day long – but because the so-called “Islamic veil” is in no way a threat to Christianity: just look at an icon of the Mother of God.

Recently, an Orthodox church was burned down at night in Tatarstan by some Wahabi thugs. The local Muslim community got together and donated all the money needed for a full reconstruction. Likewise, in Chechnia, Ramzan Kadyrov has personally overseen the reconstruction of many Russian churches destroyed in combat or by the Wahabis and the local government has now allocated money for the construction of an Orthodox cathedral in the center of Grozny. In the meantime, the city authorities of Stavropol have ordered the destruction of two “illegal” mosques. That is in a city which has only one mosque – currently used as a museum, it’s tiny anyway – and a Muslim population of anywhere 60,000 and 500,000 people (depends on who you ask and how you measure). The city authorities did promise to build a full Islamic Center (with mosque, school, hotel, etc.) which is great, but nothing has been done so far. Granted, the situation in Stavropol is particularly bad and it is complicated by many other factors such as the existence of nominally “Muslim” gangs of thugs and the hostility of the local popularization to what they perceive as the “Islamization” of their city and region. This is the exact type of case where the Federal authorities need to energetically intervene, as Putin has often done in such cases, and deal with this problem in what is referred to as “manual regime” (in contrast to the bureaucratic autopilot). Overall, so far, the record of Orthodox-Muslim cooperation is checkered.

If Orthodox Christians and Muslims could get together and jointly push for a change in the Russian Constitution this would not only get the job done, but it would herald a new era for Russia because it would send a strong signal to the local level in Russia (such as Stavropol) and abroad (Iran, Syria, Lebanon) that Russia has taken the fundamental decision to work with any Muslim party willing to do so on the basis of a few clearly defined, mutually accepted and simple principles.

A special words to any naysayers

I personally find all of the above really basic and self-evident. But having met the naysayers from both sides, I know that some of you will not be convinced. You “know” that Christians are imperialists never to be trusted or the Muslims are out to establish a “world Caliphate” on our dead bodies. Okay. Now let me ask you the question Americans kids like to challenge each other with: “and what are you gonna do about it?!“. Expel all Muslims out of Russia and cut-off the Caucasus? Kill all of kufars and organize an Islamic Caliphate in Russia? Fight the righteous struggle against everybody and all fronts at the same time all on your own? Convince everybody to convert?

I don’t think so.

In fact, by doing any of that all your are going to do is to do exactly what the Western political elites really want you to do! You do that any nobody will be more happy than the Tamir Pardo, Zbigniew Brzezinski and Hillary Clinton. Politics is the art of the possible and to aim at the impossible is simply one form of political suicide. Those who desperately want to pit Christians against Muslims will never achieve anything but delivering yet another blow against the very religion they claim to defend. In my experience, these people have a very poor and superficial religious education and typically no historical education at all. They mistake their hatred for the “other” for a God-pleasing religious zeal, and they act not so much out of love for their own religion, as out of hate for the religion of the other. These are the folks who simply cannot see, in the beautiful words of Alexander Solzhenitsyn that

All attempts to find a way out of the plight of today’s world are fruitless unless we redirect our consciousness, in repentance, to the Creator of all: without this, no exit will be illumined, and we shall seek it in vain. The resources we have set aside for ourselves are too impoverished for the task. We must first recognize the horror perpetrated not by some outside force, not by class or national enemies, but within each of us individually, and within every society. This is especially true of a free and highly developed society, for here in particular we have surely brought everything upon ourselves, of our own free will. We ourselves, in our daily unthinking selfishness, are pulling tight that noose…

God-fearing and pious Muslims and Christians alike must realize and accept that humility and sincere repentance for our own sins is what God calls us to do and that seeking an external enemy to fear and hate is not profitable for our souls. Our diversity of beliefs has no other cause than our own sinfulness, which itself is a direct consequence of our common humanity, a humanity which we all share regardless of our beliefs. Having found and espoused the True faith does not necessarily make us better people at all, it only makes us more fortunate and privileged ones, and that privilege places a special burden upon us to show forgiveness and compassion towards our erring fellow human being. Finally, if our goal is really to convert the other one, the best way to do that is by our individual example of true piety, purity and love and not by “winning” a political struggle.

Anonymous on October 07, 2015 · at 5:34 am EST/EDT

There appear to be only three major documentable fundamental ways for
humans to function both as individuals and collectively-socially:—1)
the way of the “kingdom of heaven” both within and among humans, being
through creativity in liberty and peace within oneself and with
others, this being the fundamental way taught and exemplified by Lord
Jesus the Anointed (Christ);—2) the way of disciplined furor and/or
disciplined fear;—3) the way of idolatry, the sacrifice of oneself
and others for the sake of something given greater value that concrete
human well-being, be that a concept of God, or nation, or race, or
money, or whatever else for which humans go so far as to kill and/or
die. Note:—the humans are the only species on the planet that will
even kill or die for the sake of something that they have constructed
purely from their imagination.—These things I say are based on life
experience and on studies of the thoughts, words and example of Lord
Jesus of Nazareth through the Gospels of Mark, Luke, Matthew and John
and other texts of the Holy Bible, the so-called canonical books
thereof. Douay-Rheims English translation and King James English
translation were used. No special so-called supernatural revelation,
angelic visitation and the like are being claimed here, only personal
thinking and conclusions, and let others simply judge whether this
makes sense or no sense.

More specifically, the way of human functioning, the universal kingdom
of heaven within and among persons is a kind of divine grace-energy,
notably including multiplication of one’s given talents [Matthew
25:14-30]; the leaven of development [Matthew 12:33];
arising of itself without coercion, freely and spontaneously [Mark
4:26-29]; in reconciliation between human and God, human and human,
and within each human [Matthew 18:21-35];
the conciliating motive underlying [Luke 17:3-4]; worldwide and often
operating unawares, even to a degree within unbelieving Pharisees for
instance [Luke 17:20-21].—And the best definition of God would be as
pronounced by Apostle Paul, God is in whom we live and move and have
our being, our continuity [Acts 17:27-28].

Monasticism and asceticism took over the spiritual leadership within Christianity
very early, and this has been the first great deviation from the actual example
of Lord Jesus and His overall lifestyle as recorded.
In the Roman Church we have a popular summation of this so-called supremely
virtuous Christian life in the book “Imitation of Christ” by Thomas A Kempis,
where the virtuous Christian life is to live in imitation of Jesus suffering on the cross,
and through denial of all pleasures and the embrace of all forms of suffering,
including self-abasement, mortification of the flesh, hatred of the body, etc.,
and I suspect that Christian Orthodoxy is based on similar monastic-ascetcal teachings
as the supposedly supreme superior spiritual and virtuous life and ethics.
But these teachings actually have little if anything to do with the
kingdom of heaven within and among humans as taught and shown by Lord
Jesus Himself. Monasticism and asceticism seem to essentially belong
to the way of functioning through disciplined fury and/or disciplined
fear, only the fury and fear are directed primarily against oneself,
and because of that they are made to appear like spiritual and
virtuous and superior to the so-called “decadent” ways. That is why
monasticism and asceticism are a deviation from the ways of the
kingdom of heaven as shown through the sayings, thoughts and example
of Lord Jesus Himself, as for instance cited above.

According to Lord Jesus, peace be upon Him, two fundamental systems of
human government flow out of the given ways of human functioning
described below. One system of government [we can also use the clearer
term “leadership in society”] flows from the way of the kingdom of
heaven. According to the way of the kingdom of heaven, leaders serve
the followers whom they lead rather than lord it over the followers
[see Matthew 23:11-12; Mark 9:34, 10:42-44; Luke 22:25-26], and under
such a system of rulership the average human will have the best
environment to function through that divine grace-energy of creativity
in liberty and inner-outer reconciliation and peace, as per the
kingdom of heaven both within and among humans, preached by Lord
Jesus.

The distribution of wealth, material riches, generally follows the
distribution of social and political power of leadership. The
dictators will always be also rich, and their subjects will always
also be poor by comparison. There cannot be any true “redistribution
of wealth” unless there is also a true redistribution of social and
political power. Leadership as lording it over is the foundation for
dictatorship.—Right now, on the global scale, international scale, or
even country-level scale, there seems to be no leadership as service,
only leadership as lording it over. Leadership as lording it over
flows from functioning primarily by rage energies and fear energies,
predatory, sadistic, and I think that its basis is spiritual, not
really so much greed for material possessions and profit, but rather
getting high on rage like getting high on a drug, and this is an evil
type of spirituality, the feelings of spiritual and moral
accomplishment in attacking, terrorizing, torturing and slaughtering,
like a true predator, like lions tearing down Cape buffaloes so to
speak. Therefore, for significant numbers of the elite persons,
knowing that there are people out there rummaging homeless through
garbage dumpsters as a contrast actually makes the caviar all the more
savory. They like to think that they are robbing others by force and
getting away with it. They are simply like the ferocious bullies at
school, only now using financial methods to bully others rather than
bullying by punching and kicking in a back alley. Yet I suspect that
these wicked elite persons are merely a secretive minority, very small
in numbers, like the 1% of the proverbial 1%, but very superenergized.

I very strongly suspect that the ultimate true objective of the
so-called “great game” in human history with its perpetual warfare on
all sorts of levels is to the simply generate the maximal amounts of
rage energies and fear energies,—and I suspect this is for the
nourishment of certain emotional organisms that influence and even
possess humans, so that humans become like the gladiators in the
arena, fighting for the enhancement of Romans, in this case,
“invisible Romans”.
Therefore, no side ever wins, no peace ever prevails,—Only strong
human will-power driving a flexible analytical intellect can serve to
defuse the ferocious emotionalistic currents, and the way of the
kingdom of heaven within and among humans, which is the way of Lord
Jesus, provides as the one and only path to the most ultimate
imaginable well-being, which is “salvation”.—Monasticism and
asceticism would have little if any value, which is why the
monastically-led churches too often sided with the elites of torturers
and oppressors. Note, here we mean “Jesus” as the way of functioning,
including thinking, feeling and acting, within and among humans is the
“one and only way to salvation”. This is not any particular group of
people or institution or cultural thing, it is not necessarily
Catholicism or Orthodox Christianity or Protestantism or Judaism or
Islam or any so-called “denomination”. But the collective of all the
humans who predominantly function through the grace-energies of the
kingdom of heaven as described by Lord Jesus is the true spiritual
worldwide church.

There is another kind of morality which influences human behavior and
human societies.
1) There is the peculiar “satan’s morality” based on concepts of
“pure” versus “impure” and the concept of “cleansing” meaning
attacking and obliterating the source of “impurity”, which often means
murder, even mass murder and genocide when applied on ethnic, racial,
and other grand scale. This type of morality also focuses on human sexuality
and is recorded as the first effect of the “fall” in the story of Adam and Eve
in the Book of Genesis, that as man and woman, though legitimately husband
and wife, their eyes opened to a new perspective and they felt shame and
disgust toward their bodies and toward sexual feelings and attraction
unlike in the prefallen state. This system of morals is based on deep strong
feelings of disgust and anger at sexual attraction, and this system of morals
dominates the current overall dealings between adult men and adult women.
Sharia law and Muslim values seem to be possessed by these fundamental
feelings of shame, disgust and rage at sexual attraction between adult men
and adult women, so that modern Muslim morality seems obsessed
with keeping men and women basically apart as much as possible and feasible.
The most extreme forms of this obsession are of course amidst the so-called
wahhabi or salafi or Taliban or “Da’esh Islamic State” movements, where humans
are essentially called to become like demons, functioning exclusively through
the energies of righteous rage and perpetual holy warfare, and any type of love
is totally ferociously rejected as no doubt decadent and obscene. It would be
no surprise that the wahhabis, salafis, Taliban, the Da’esh and similar consider
their extreme implementation of this evil and satanic emotionalistic “purity morals”
in family relations and in men-women relations in general as the foundation for feeling
morally and spiritually superior to everyone else on the planet. These movements
seem to want to generate the ultimate perpetual conflict among humans not
along divisions of race, or nationality, or class, but along the genders
of men versus women. In the older traditional West of the 19th century
this would sometimes also be expressed in notions of “God, the men and the Aryans”
versus “Satan, the women and the Jews”.—2) There is the peculiar “non-morality”
or “amorality” which I have heard articulated here or there, by adherents
to certain “mystical paths”, and supposed “eastern philosophies and
paths” where the concept is that there is something called the Higher
Self which regulates and determines everything, and therefore
everything is good, as it should be, and there is no right or wrong,
good or evil, virtue or vice, lawfulness or crime, not really.
Everything is relative, and dependent on the degree of energy and
often physical force exerted by so and so.—Though I note that most
teachers of this system and believers in this system seem to be people
who advocate love, even all-encompassing unconditional love,
and are not haters of anyone or anything; however, this system would
surely be the sociopath’s and psychopath’s religion, in that you
really do not judge anything and just do whatever gives you the best
emotional gratification and that you can get away with it.
This would simply be up to whatever comes out of your gut feelings,
your instincts, your “heart”, and if you have a bright-natured
“heart”, that’s fine, but if you have a wickedly destructive “heart” then that is
also fine, just whatever you can get away with. This is the system
which discards all moral, spiritual, ethical and any other judgments.

I suspect that “money” which is largely a “smoke & mirrors” human
concept for convenience is really not such a strong factor or influence.
Money is just a convenient tool related to social-political-spiritual power as versus
social-political-spiritual weakness.

One other thing, in commentary about the criticism of the “post-Christian
secular West” and the concept of “life, liberty and pursuit of happiness”
for each individual human person,—as supposedly against “community”.
But “community” is not really some entity that goes around greeting people.
“Community” really means select elite persons functioning as “spokespersons”
and authority on behalf of what they define as “community”.
Community is made up of individuals, and if most individuals on individual basis
function through the kingdom of heaven, in creativity in liberty and peace,
then this community shall also function that way as a whole and shall be healthy
and thriving, creative, free and peaceful. When you talk about sacrificing the
individual’s life, liberty and happiness for the sake of “community” you really
mean sacrificing a given individual for the sake of an elite group of other individuals
who establish their own selves as spokespersons and leaders of the community.

One might think, what if there never were a United States of America?
What if the American Revolution failed? Well, there would be no Bill of Rights
or its concepts. There would likely simply be a set of clashing empires over the
planet,—the British, the Japanese, the French, the Chinese, the Russian, the German.
Typical leadership would likely be by warlord types either claiming a “divine right”
to lord it over and do to their followers whatever they please, or claiming some mystical
mind-meld with the “soul” of their followers, in the sense of a given nation, race or class,
so that they stand as the unchallengeable “leader” or “vozhd” or “führer” and can simply
do to their followers whatever they please and lead their followers anywhere they please.
All societies would likely be essentially rigidly class-based, caste-based, feudalistic,
veering eventually into the technologically advanced feudal societies like we now
see implemented in North Korea. There would likely be “god kings” with powers to,
—on mere personal whim,—decide who lives, who dies, who eats, who starves.
who has the privilege to walk around unchained and who gets sent to prison.
Slavery and serfdom would likely abound everywhere, without even any concepts
or arguments against it, about natural freedoms and rights, as voiced by American abolitionists.
And of course there would still be ferocious wars and atrocities, waged by warlord-elites.
Maybe ultimately “private capitalism” would not dominate, but there would arise
as mentioned before, the modern technologically-backed feudalism and a kind
of absolute monarchism as now exemplified in North Korea with its ruling dynasty.
Not a very good alternative, I would say!—This is something to consider, by all those
who tend to rush to judgment that the USA has been the source of evil in the world.

The ultimate adversary is not the USA or any given government or nation-state, but rather
secretive cults of persons being manipulated, influenced and/or possessed by predatory
emotional organisms, thereby generating religious-like evil spiritual cults dedicated to produce
maximal rage energies and fear energies, through perpetual warfare and ongoing human sacrifices, including ritual sacrifices, with, for example, suicidal bombers being a modern
technologically-adapted variant of effective ritual human sacrifice.—Only human will-power
implementing flexibly detached analytical intellect, probing the truth which is in the details,
can seem to defuse the emotionalistic currents underlying these cults.

71 Comments

Peter on October 06, 2015 · at 4:27 am EST/EDT

After Jeffs recent article on racism and also this one – something that I see in Putin and current day Russia was best expressed by an aboriginal bloke working for me when I was in the Kimberlies.

He simply said – you treat me like a man, not a blackfella.

Something I will never forget.
Sunni Muslim on October 06, 2015 · at 4:33 am EST/EDT

Thank you the saker for this article, it is important to focus on what unites christians and muslims and NOT what divides them. Thanks for mentioning ”wahabi” so readers will make the difference.

In holy Quran, it clearly states ”there is no compulsion in religion”.
Babushka in Oz on October 06, 2015 · at 5:33 am EST/EDT

Thanks for the repost Saker… much food for thought here.

This article will no doubt stir the pot like Jeff’s recent article on race.

I think “Grieved on October 02, 2015 · at 6:33 am UTC” summed it up so well…

“People argue over race and nation, when there doesn’t actually have to be that kind of difference between us at all. When we argue, the dividers win – and they are dividing us for a reason.”

I will add the word ‘religion’ to the above quote from Grieved.
David George on October 06, 2015 · at 5:57 am EST/EDT

Dear Saker, Thank you for an interesting essary. Having taken a course in constitutional law a long time ago I got hung up on the problem of the “no ideology” clause. The first point that comes to mind is that the laws of the state can themselves be considered as an ideology; so obviously what is not meant is any generalized definition of “ideology”, neither religious nor any other set of relations between us and “reality”. What is meant is an ideology of government. And the prohibition means that there can be no aspect of governmental administration that cannot be changed. Which, to an anarchist like me, simply reinforces the principle that no state is intrinsically legitimate, but every state that presumes to govern must prove by its virtuous behavior that it deserves to govern. A government that refuses to change will over time cease to be legitimate. So in keeping with the nature of change, which is an unavoidable feature of the universe, a government must be capable of changing, over time, how it operates. This does not mean however that a government cannot establish relatively fixed or even permanent moral principles such as prohibition of murder, etc. These “universal” principles are the foundation for the laws of the state, and the “no state ideology” clause obviously was not intended to prohibit them. And further, there is a role here for the church to play, and given the historical experience of the two major churches (with due respect to the minorities which you have given) there is no doubt that their authority can be an important structural support (WORD SALAD ALERT) — in other words, the respect that people have for their church as guardians of their faith and traditions, and the moral code embodied by their church, can guide the state in establishing the supreme moral code embodied in its laws. And what really is the state, in any country, but the sum of its people and their religions and churches? As for the problem of embedding the two primary churches in some way in the constitution, I hope you have a supreme court that interprets the constitution, and if they do, it is fairly simple to affirm the “no state ideology” clause as expressing the intention of its writers that there should be no government ideology i.e. communism or any other; and in that opinion, by way of distinguishing government ideology from moral ideology and as a guide for the president in his role as guardian of the constitution, the decision can stress the historical role of the two major churches in establishing the moral principles by which the people expect their state to govern. In following that judgement, the president becomes the guarantor of the churches and of their moral principles but is also a final arbiter and therefore a harmonizer; and as long as the people expect that activity from any president, the moral principles will remain.
I have to admit that the Christian credo above is too confusing for me and I’m sure I would also be confused by the Muslim code. The “golden rule” for good neighborly relations is the simplest social code in my book, and dealing with god, our relations with our god are probably unique for each of us, even though we all go the same way when we go — which is, believe it or not, to the future (and, believe it or not, the creation moment is not in a past ‘Big Bang’, but in the future as well); and guess where God resides?
After all that, the last two paragraphs in your essay, the quote of Solzhenitsyn and your summation, are worth reading to get to them! They are just excellent. Thank you again.
- Mohamed on October 06, 2015 · at 8:07 pm EST/EDT
  
  Salam David George,
  
  ” — which is, believe it or not, to the future (and, believe it or not, the creation moment is not in a past ‘Big Bang’, but in the future as well); and guess where God resides?”
  
  The new “Big Bang” theory is according to the religion. According to Penrose, there is NOT one Big Bang by a chance, but series of specialized Big Bangs. The specialized Big Bang keeps of expanding, and before it disappears it triggers another specialized Big Bang. Thus, an ever Expanding Universe.
  
  As per Penrose, there are 11 Elements and the Two Controlling Elements are Space and Time. He said, as we go deeper and deeper, both Space and Time do not exists.
  
  According, to Ayatollah Khomeini we are not real, we are illusion and shadow.
  
  Best regards,
  
  Mohamed
  - David George on October 06, 2015 · at 11:09 pm EST/EDT
    
    Aloha Mohamed,
    I have spent quite a lot of time — years of my life, in fact — studying the Big Bang question, and the question of time and space as they relate to energy. I have studied Penrose’s book “The Road to Reality”, and find it leads to the doorway of a deeper understanding of creation but does not enter it. I will not attempt to relay everything I have found, I will only give you my view of the universe as it can be understood as a sensing system. A sensing system requires three components: a sender, a sensor, and what is sent (a sense). In the universe, the sender and the sensor is a material shell, which is generally an electron. The signal, what is sent, is a photon of electromagnetic radiation (which can be understood as a “peeled” electron shell) — a transient immaterial entity, a spirit if you like. Everything in the universal sensing system grows from this simple foundation — everything.
    The “product” of the sensing system I have described is an image. The power to create an image is the power of imagination. The creative power of the universe is the power of imagination.
    Here is what I have found about the sensing, or signalling, or imagination system: every signal is sent to the future, and every signal is received from the future, in every frame of reference. (If you have read Einstein you will be familiar with a frame of reference. From our point of view, we could say our eyes are our most important frame of reference.) It is not difficult to see how this can be. Simply ask, when a ray of light enters your eye, does it come from the past or from the future? Well, ten minutes before the ray of light arrives, it is in your future, is it not? So it is clear that the ray of light arrives from the future. Then imagine a light source sending out a ray of light to a mirror. Later the reflected light returns to the source — from the future.
    The important thing about this is that the ray of light, the photon, is a small quantity of energy — a quantum. In other words, when energy is transferred, it is transferred through the electromagnetic field, which we can reasonably call the “future field”.
    In my work, which in fact resulted in several equations that are consistent with known physics and which give the masses of the proton and electron (a great mystery for physicists), I have found that energy in the form of matter (an electron or a proton) is not something that is held over time. Rather, the body of matter is a sphere of rotating space, continually supplied with energy. In other words, the universe is continually powered. And where does the energy for the rotating sphere come from, but the future? And if we trace the evolution of the universe, where does the original energy come from? It comes from the future. The creation moment of the universe is in the future, not in the past. The past does not exist in physical reality.
    The Big Bang, in this scenario, is rather a Big Whoosh. Matter, in this scenario, did not exist in the early universe, but was created by pressure within an expanding field of energy (a field expanding at the speed of light). Rotation absorbs the energy of the expanding field. Matter is created in cycles. These are the cycles pointed out by Penrose.
    This is very important for our understanding of God, the creator of the universe. And there is much more to understand than what I have written here.
hestroy on October 06, 2015 · at 8:20 am EST/EDT

Saker, and what about atheists? Is there any place left for them in Russia? Thanks god, there is a majority of atheists here in Czech republic. :)
- The Saker on October 06, 2015 · at 1:44 pm EST/EDT
  
  LOL, Of course there is! As long as they don’t have a problem living in a society which was shaped primarily by Orthodox Christianity and which now includes a large number of Muslims. There have always been atheist Russians and there still are plenty left, no worries here. As long as their atheism does not turn into a militant struggle against religion I believe that they can live quite happily in a religious society. Don’t you?
  Cheers!
  - Grits on October 07, 2015 · at 10:31 am EST/EDT
    
    I wonder if it is “shaped primarily” by Orthodox Christianity, or even by Christianity.
    
    Not only were there a lot of Muslims among the Mongols, and among newly conquered Citizens; but also a rich stew other traditions. Each preserving millenia of human research and wisdom, how to live in every region of the vast Eurasian continent, and how to live with other humans.
    
    Indeed, Vladimir did little to convert his people beyond destroying the old Slavic Icons and installing new Greek Icons in their places. The new Icons had no more relevance to putting bread in bellies than the old. Neither Christ nor Mohammed say much about seasons, or crops, or herds.
    
    Then as now, the authorities secular and spiritual did not much care what the majority peasants did or thought, except to manufacture convenient excuses for arbitrary abuse.
    
    Much Orthodox ritual, and more intimate daily practice, is Pagan, with new costumes and new names scribbled over the old on sticky tags.
    
    Catholic (including Protestant) ritual is likewise Old Pagan thinly disguised … witness Communion and Maryolatry. The Western Church has, however, progressed much further in bleeding ancient rituals of their meanings. What meanings can seasons and crops and herds have in modern cities? Western people have responded to lack of purpose by neglecting to show up, except for Weddings and Funerals.
  - Grits on October 07, 2015 · at 10:41 am EST/EDT
    
    PS – You quoted “The right to swing my fist ends where the other man’s nose begins“. You forgot the corollary “But only if I can see it”.
    
    Ergo – as long as others are not affected by it – or you can pretend they are not affected – you can do whatever you want. Furthermore, and more important, the state can order you to do whatever it wants.
Ewan on October 06, 2015 · at 9:27 am EST/EDT

The most obvious weakness in this is the characterisation of the “post-Christian and secular West”. The secular are said to think there is no “Truth”. Truth is a property of propositions. They think some true, some false, and some unknowable. Atheists think there is no warrant for “God exists”; agnostics that there is not sufficient warrant. It follows that ethics can’t be founded on the assertion that God exists and God says do this and not that. Ethics must be founded on something else. The three propositions put forward here as the ethics of the “post-Christian and secular West” may represent the beliefs of some. The second is said to be consequent on the first, and the third on the second. There is no relation of logical consequence between the propositions as stated. They are not representative. Many possible versions of ethics can be shown to follow from atheism or agnosticism.
- Mohamed on October 06, 2015 · at 8:33 pm EST/EDT
  
  Salam Ewan,
  
  According to the Shia Muslims, ethics and morals are hard wired into all creation.
  
  According to the rest of Muslims and other religions, it is a learned behavior. And, it is God and Religion which teaches good ethics and morals. I say BS.
  
  Best regards,
  
  Mohamed
- TooLegit2Quit on October 06, 2015 · at 9:56 pm EST/EDT
  
  @ Ewan:
  
  “[..] Ethics must be founded on something else [..]”
  
  You’re damn right that ethics must be based on something other than religion. As with the building of anything, you should start with a corner-stone. Here, in ethics, it’s pretty basic and simple; do not inflict any type of suffering [physical or physiological] on anybody. Of course the dark-ones and/or skeptical ones will ask… how about if a doctor must inflict some physical suffering in order to save the patient, or… how about in cases of self-defense?
  Well… you take it from there, you branch out from the corner-stone while at the same time you follow the basic ethical principle as close as humanly possible.
  
  Trouble is, that right off the bat: “causing no suffering to others” goes against the so-called “society” [by society read: hierarchy/class-system] we have today.
  ‘Causing no suffering’ …where will that leave the rentier class, the neo-feudalists, or the warmongers attacking countries for no other reason than they want their stuff?
  
  Humanity is being held down by a small but very powerful (“powerful” in terms of wealth and therefore access to resources) cabal of the sickest of the sick psychopaths.
  
  -TL2Q
Jack on October 06, 2015 · at 10:44 am EST/EDT

From Vox Populi Evo…..19 mins

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8jqwZrmOh8

A 52 year old fighter in the Donbas,speaking french with eng subs.

This shows the depth of understanding,a very interesting interview.
SunLion on October 06, 2015 · at 11:26 am EST/EDT

Thank you Saker for this very useful presentation. Given the intense propaganda hitting us at every corner, it is vital to stick to a few key principles and avoid the intellectual traps that only create confusion.

I am not an intellectual, but I always remember this simple statement from Rumi:

I belong to no religion
My religion is love
Every heart is my temple

People of good faith will always ignore the divisive and focus on the essentials. It all depends on your purpose.
Sunni Sufi Muslim on October 06, 2015 · at 11:36 am EST/EDT

Dear Saker,
I believe a approachment is not only possible but in the making. Russia needs to support the traditional Sufi Sunni Muslims in Sunni countries. In fact it needs to support traditional Sunni Islam in Syria and elsewhere.
Traditional Sufi Sunni muslims who make up the majority in Syria have genuine greviences against the Assad regime. These grievances of the silent non-wahhabi majority is what the wahhabis use to make their existence seem legitimate.
The reverse is also true. The existence of these fanatic wahhabis is used by the Assad regime to continue with it’s suppression of traditional non- wahhabI Sunnis who make up the silent majority. Iran falls in the same category.
Russia needs to understand that everything is not black and white.There are shades of grey also. A blanket support of the Assad regime will be interpreted as Russia’s hatred of mainstream traditional Sunni Islam in the majority of the Muslim world and nothing can be more helpful to the wahhabi cause than Russia’s blunt approach in this regard.
The Christian Muslim reapprochement that we are talking about depends on Russia’s understanding of the subtle but important appreciation of what traditional mainstream Islam is. A blunt approach would be suicidal to the historic opportunity that stands right in our view. Is Russia ready to understand. If yes, we traditional sunni muslims stand for that Russia.
- Mohamed on October 06, 2015 · at 1:45 pm EST/EDT
  
  Salam Sunni Sufi Muslim,
  
  Both Ayatollah Khomeini and Khamenei are Sufi. Can you please tell me the main core belief of Sunni Sufi Muslim and how it differs from Shia Sufi Muslim?
  
  I seriously doubt that Assad used the Wahhabis against the Sufi of Syria. The Mufti of Syria, who is a Sunni Sufi Muslim is with Assad. The Wahhabis of Syria are the worst Wahhabis and this Pseudo House of Abu Sufyan was created in Syria by Ibn Taymiyyah in 12th century and six hundred years later Abdul Wahhab of Arabia (now Saudi Arabia) adopted this cancer.
  
  And, BTW what is traditional Sunni too? What do you mean by this?
  
  Best regards,
  
  Mohamed
- The Saker on October 06, 2015 · at 1:46 pm EST/EDT
  
  Russia needs to support the traditional Sufi Sunni Muslims in Sunni countries. In fact it needs to support traditional Sunni Islam in Syria and elsewhere.
  
  I totally agree and I think that Russia is doing exactly that right now.
- Mohamed on October 06, 2015 · at 2:35 pm EST/EDT
  
  Salam Sunni Sufi Muslim,
  
  The reason I asked you to please tell me the main core belief of Sunni Sufi Muslim and how it differs from Shia Sufi Muslim, is because all the Alawites are Shia Sufi Muslim and there is no way that Assad will discriminate against the Sunni Sufi Muslim.
  
  Why?
  
  The word (term) Alawite is a give away!
  
  Best regards,
  
  Mohamed
Mohamed on October 06, 2015 · at 1:25 pm EST/EDT

Salam brother Saker,

Excellent article, very well written and thought provoking!

Two issues, needs to be further discussed:

1. Dhawa (invitation) which is disguised in the BS of Freedom of Religion. The invitation is practiced by the Wahhabis, Qadiyani, Ahmadi and their Christians counterparts, which is disguised under the Freedom of Religion BS.

We have true Freedom of Religion in Oman, where as no one is allowed to knock on your doors and invite you to his/her religion/sect. When someone knocks at the door, they tell the owner of the house that the religion they practice is wrong. So, the owner of the house, let me invite you to the right religion/sect.

This is allowed in the USA, and usually the answer is given, the owner of the house can tell them “no”. What rights these Dhawa (invitation) people have knocking on peoples’ doors and tell them what they practice is wrong.

Oman has real Freedom of Religion as no one is allowed to knock on doors for Dhawa. They want to invite people they can leave ads and messages, in newspapers, social media and so forth.

This now takes us to the second issue which is Apostasy and Abdul Rahman of Afghanistan.

2. Apostasy was introduced by the First Caliph Abu Bakr against the Muslims of Yemen en-masses, who as a country refused to pay the Zakat to Abu Bakr, as he was not considered the rightful heir of Prophet Mohammad (saws) and they considered that he upsurged the rights of Imam Ali (as).

During the times of Prophet (saws), the Prophet did away with the term called, “excommunicate”. He considered this power with the laypersons such as Rabbis and Priests to be a very powerful tool to be used against the followers. There was only one condition to join Islam (The Community), it was to recite the Shahada. The Prophet gave the capital punishment to those just few, who joined The Community for spying and were caught red handed.

However, Abu Bakr considered the whole country of Yemen as apostate as they refused to consider him the Caliph and pay Zakat to him. He sent the Muslim Forces against Yemen, who looted, killed and raped the Yemenis. According to Abu Bakr, the Commander of Muslim Forces by rapping made a simple error in judgement. Go figure!

The problem with Muslims is that they don’t know the history of Islam. They don’t know that the first three Caliphs changed the religion. They say, why Shia are still bitter because Imam Ali got his right and became the forth Caliph.

The Dhawa (invitation) is the problem. After Afghanistan was bombed back to stone age by The Empire, The Bible Trumpeters were there to convert en-masses. The Afghani Muslims saw this as a threat and thus they made the case of Abdul Rahman converting to Christianity as apostasy. They made sure that the Bible Trumpeters to leave the country. This happens in all the Muslims’ countries, when they are bombed back to stone age.

Best regards,

Mohamed
- Anonymous on October 06, 2015 · at 3:08 pm EST/EDT
  
  So now someone bring sectarianism among muslims here.
  - Mohamed on October 06, 2015 · at 7:42 pm EST/EDT
    
    Salam Anonymous,
    
    I am ashamed to say that you consider, Truth to be Sectarianism. Allah is Truth.
    
    Both the Holy Quran and Imam Ali (as) say that, “don’t inherit your religion, learn it”.
    
    BTW, how many Muslims learn their religion?
    
    Best regards,
    
    Mohamed
    - Anonymous on October 06, 2015 · at 8:31 pm EST/EDT
      
      This article is meant to bring people together and not divide them, your input is all about dividing.. here is a link for you:
      
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7LGodQ_Kgw
      - Mohamed on October 06, 2015 · at 9:10 pm EST/EDT
        
        Salam Anonymous,
        
        I bring no division. As far as Sheikh Imran Hosein is concerned, I have no respect for him. I believe that he is a Wahhabi disguised as Sufi Sunni Muslim. He likes to talk what people like to hear.
        
        The video you linked starts with “Durood”, but with half the Durood, leaving out the Ahl of Mohammad (saws). Only Wahhabis will do that.
        
        Also, I have watched earlier with anticipation, his Sunni/Shia unity video. As happens in those videos he eventually blames the disunity on Shia. Go figure!
        
        Also, in that video he insults the Ahl of Mohammad (saws), a sure sign of Wahhabi and Worshiper of House of abu Sufyan. He claims that Imam Hosein (as) fought the war against Yazid (la), due to objecting to Yazid about making the Caliphate as dynasty, not that Yazid was utterly corrupt.
        
        And, he claims that the Shia believe in The Dynasty of Mohammad (saws), in the Ahl of Mohammad (saws). Here is couple of verses from Holy Quran for our Sheikh Imran Hosein:
        
        3.33 إِنَّ اللَّهَ اصْطَفَى آدَمَ وَنُوحًا وَآلَ إِبْرَاهِيمَ وَآلَ عِمْرَانَ عَلَى الْعَالَمِينَ
        Allah did choose Adam and Noah, the family of Abraham, and the family of ‘Imran above all people,-
        
        3.34 ذُرِّيَّةً بَعْضُهَا مِنْ بَعْضٍ وَاللَّهُ سَمِيعٌ عَلِيمٌ
        Offspring, one of the other: And Allah heareth and knoweth all things.
        
        (Aal-E-Imran [The Family of Imran])
        
        BTW, The Family of Imran of Imran is the Family of Bibi Mary (as)
        
        Best regards,
        
        Mohamed
Mohamed on October 06, 2015 · at 1:33 pm EST/EDT

Salam eimar,

I have replied to your question in the following thread:

/russian-bear-in-syria/

@ Daniel Rich and @ Ann,

Salam, my answer in the above thread is also applicable to our discussion.

Best regards,

Mohamed
teranam13 on October 06, 2015 · at 2:38 pm EST/EDT

attn: moderator. don’t know where this goes but it needs saying.

What really disturbs me about the deliberate bombing of the Kunduz hospital is the idea in Western secular culture that there is nothing sacred, inviolable. This means anything can be done anywhere to anyone because “might makes right” or because cover story (plausible deniability) is concocted as an evil brew.

The concept that you are answerable to something higher ( either a higher self or deity or a code of ethics) is crucial for a society to function. Constantly changing commercial fads and a diet of vapid ideas or junk food will not create a strong populace. I can see how physically grey looking the kids are who eat a diet of junk food—and the US army provides these outlets in their military bases abroad. The legal drugs everyone seems to use for everything changes people into non people.–at least it separates heart from head. If you are depressed …mostly that is a form of soul sickness and drugs are just a temporary solution.

Truly if their brains are not functioning physically like the usual human being they really do become a different species and that is scary. Thus the perverted fascination with zombies in the West—the powers of darkness really do want to de-humanize people at least until they get enough robots. This is real –there was a recent issue of the Atlantic on this topic. The discussion was replete with intellectualisms and misapplied statistics but shallow in deep analysis.

Russia needs to beware: for the dark forces running the West nothing is unthinkable as long as they keep everyone else not thinking. One can take some comfort in the fact that Napoleon and Hitler both learned that Russia has no problem with that.
- Mulga Mumblebrain on October 07, 2015 · at 9:36 am EST/EDT
  
  teranam 13, there was an interesting blog once, called Rigorous Intuition, where the author did a number of posts on the efforts by various elements in Western elites, over many generations, to make contact with diabolical forces, that they were convinced existed, and use these powers to their advantage. They were very interested in the ‘researches’ into this field by the Nazi SS amongst others. He also had a good deal of intriguing information regarding high-level paedophile activities in the USA, and much else besides. I’ve been long convinced that Western elites contain many truly evil, even Satanic figures, but I put it all down to simple human psychopathy. While agnostic as to whether a transcendental dimension exists in which forces of Good and Evil battle over the destiny of the cosmos, I think it quite conceivable that many evil individuals doing evil things, over and over again, might create a sort of ‘field of evil’ that would influence events in the manner of Rupert Sheldrake’s ‘morphic fields’. As Hugo Chavez noted, he could smell the stench of sulphur after GW Bush spoke at the UN.
Ewan on October 06, 2015 · at 2:45 pm EST/EDT

Some further oddities:

The Orthodox assert “x”; the Muslims “not-x”. From a contradiction, anything follows.

For the Orthodox, what the Muslims say has no authority as the Word of God, and vice versa. So even where they each make the same assertion, they have no grounds in divinity to agree with the other. (The Orthodox say “God says “x”, therefore x”; the Muslims say “Allah says “x”, therefore x”. Neither argument is sound for the other.)

To take just one example, a favourite here: For each, if the other asserts that God says to be gay is to sin, the assertion has no divine authority, because they each worship a different God. That they agree has the status simply of one of those curious coincidences.

So, in practice, what is proposed is that a majority decide what a minority is permitted, despite the fact that each party to that majority thinks the others’ reasons false. This is an odd way for any community to arrive at its rules of conduct.

Not only does the “post-Christian secular West” presented here play the part of Straw Man in the argument, but the grounds proposed for cooperation between the Orthodox and Muslims are not coherent in excluding anyone else from a role in determining the rules, unless it is simply asserted that the majority lay down the rules and the rest disobey at their peril. Most societies arrive at a more nuanced concept of the rule of law. Perhaps the argument here is that authoritarian societies should play by different rules and will be the better for it.

Or perhaps it’s back to the drawing board.
- David George on October 06, 2015 · at 6:16 pm EST/EDT
  
  I agree it is futile to seek or attempt to identify any ideological or even intellectual foundation for what is being called the “post-Christian and secular West”, since the west is ruled by money, “the false god”, and every activity becomes a way to make money. Intellectual occupations themselves are ways to make money. Then the purpose of life itself is to make money! However, in spite of the western moral wasteland that has been created in which any rationalization can be put forward and its internal contradictions conveniently ignored, there does exist a natural basis for morality, and that is harmony, which has both moral and physical aspects. Nature favors harmony over chaos; if it did not, nothing would grow; yet we see growth, of which we ourselves are the most complex example. While not necessarily logical, it is reasonable to follow nature (and not engage in unnatural acts that create chaos). Then the purpose of life is to grow — in every sense. The Chinese culture seems to recognize the importance of harmony implicitly, but the west is hooked onto the Abrahamic “ten commandments direct from God” and can’t shake that historical experience. When the moral wasteland’s contradictions create chaos, only the ten commandments remain as a fallback position to be exploited by free enterprise preacher-men. It appears that in Russia, the historical experience remains so strong that the divine instruction is treated as a valid foundation for morality. Until the west (and Russia) can grow out of the need for a set of rules “direct from God”, the historical experience must be guarded and respected.
- Mohamed on October 06, 2015 · at 8:49 pm EST/EDT
  
  Salam Ewan,
  
  “To take just one example, a favourite here: For each, if the other asserts that God says to be gay is to sin, the assertion has no divine authority, because they each worship a different God. That they agree has the status simply of one of those curious coincidences.”
  
  As I mentioned above that both ethics and morals are hard wired into all creation. Ethics and morals being learned behavior from religion is BS.
  
  Where did you get this idea that Christians and Muslims worship a different God? God is One and He is The Creator of all Creations.
  
  In all Semitic languages God is eloh/iloh and it a Feminine noun and not proper noun. God doesn’t have a name, if He did, then He will become the property of that Religion/People.
  
  eloh can be made into plural elohim and then it can lead to Trinity. However, al ilah (allah) meaning, “The God” can NOT be made into a plural.
  
  Best regards,
  
  Mohamed
Hamis on October 06, 2015 · at 4:07 pm EST/EDT

Salam brother Muhammed.

Thank you very much for your educative comments.
WizOz on October 06, 2015 · at 4:34 pm EST/EDT

What about Sura 9.30? 4.171? About the injunction of the Prophet to the Christians to desist from their belief in the Son of God and that Allah will destroy those who believe that? These are fundamental tenets of Islam, no matter how some might try to circumvent them with circonlocutions, and not “whabist- takfirist” perversions. They will flare back at any time, if Muslims take seriously their book.
- RudyM on October 06, 2015 · at 4:57 pm EST/EDT
  
  This is the danger in preserving a liberalized or moderate version of religions which were, in some form other, extreme at their core (which is virtually all of them). I saw this with my sister. We both were raised as theologically liberal Methodists, but later became a Calvinist, since she found (and I agree) that Calvinism does a better job of making order out of the Bible’s contradictory claims than the Christianity in which we were both raised. Such a reversion back to a more conservative theology doesn’t necessarily have political consequences in this case, but it is a reminder of the way in which a moderated version of a religion can keeps the seeds of extreme beliefs alive.
  
  (For me, becoming convinced that Calvinism made the most sense as an interpretation of the Bible (with an understanding that the Bible was God’s revealed Word) hastened my exodus from Christian belief itself.)
- Uncle Bob 1 on October 06, 2015 · at 5:28 pm EST/EDT
  
  If we take “literally” every passage in the Christian,Muslim,and Jewish Holy books we would ban them all for hate speech and racism.As I said on another subject,it is a “huge” error,to compare thinking of people in the past with that today.People just didn’t think the same way as we do today. In the past,their thinking was probably “right” for their times,or at least understandable to them.But wouldn’t be for our times.People today make that error all the time (as you did above).An interesting example is the Old Testament in the Christian Bible.Christians (and Muslims too,I believe ) accept the Old Testament.And yet it is replete throughout with what today would be called “War Crimes” in our day.And after the establishment of Christianity as the “State” Religion in today’s “Christendom”,history is full of atrocities done against anyone that wasn’t Christian.And later,against even Christians of differing beliefs of Christianity.The Crusaders in the past,slaughtered “Pagans”,Jews,Muslims,differing Christians.And that age considered that “just”.The stories of the taking of Jerusalem from the Muslims reads like a Nuremberg Trial report on the SS,”the Crusaders wadded in blood up to their ankles.As they slaughtered any Muslim or Jew they came across,man,woman,or child,young or old.”And that wasn’t the exception,it was the norm in that Crusade.Muslims returned the barbarity in some of their conquests as well,history easily shows that.But the point is “no one side was innocent of guilt by today’s standards”.Condemning today’s Muslims for the deeds of the past.Is no more valid than Muslims condemning today’s Christians for their past deeds.The jihadis,and on the other side,the Israelis,and Americans/West,are committing horrible crimes today we need to condemn them for. Condemning people for 1000 year old crimes is pointless.Some might argue that passages like you quoted above are still in the Holy Books of Islam.And I would reply,so is the Old Testament in the Christian Bible. I know for a fact Christian ministers still preach on it as examples of God’s word.But while they do that,they also “don’t” (as far as I know) preach that we today should emulate those deeds.
  - Mohamed on October 06, 2015 · at 7:02 pm EST/EDT
    
    Salam Dear Brother Uncle Bob 1,
    
    “If we take “literally” every passage in the Christian,Muslim,and Jewish Holy books we would ban them all for hate speech and racism.As I said on another subject,it is a “huge” error,to compare thinking of people in the past with that today.People just didn’t think the same way as we do today. In the past,their thinking was probably “right” for their times,or at least understandable to them.But wouldn’t be for our times.People today make that error all the time (as you did above).An interesting example is the Old Testament in the Christian Bible.Christians (and Muslims too,I believe ) accept the Old Testament.And yet it is replete throughout with what today would be called “War Crimes” in our day.”
    
    I fully agree and that Muslims don’t believe in both the Old and New Testaments in their present form, as they consider both books to be corrupted. The Old Testament is full of Genocide against its own people.
    
    But I don’t agree that the Scripture shouldn’t meet the test of time. Muslim believe that God is the author of the Quran and not the Prophet Mohammad. There is No Hate Speech and/or Racism in Quran.
    
    When the Quran was reveled the Semite language was very primitive. Prophet introduce the Proper Quranic Arabic with full Grammar and Structure. This Quranic Arabic is also called the Classical Arabic, which is taught in all Colleges and Universities to Semite Linguists Students.
    
    The Modern Arabic still remains the same, as Old Arabic prior to revelation of Quran, which is written in short hand without woveels
  - Mohamed on October 06, 2015 · at 7:38 pm EST/EDT
    
    Salam Dear Brother Uncle Bob 1,
    
    Oops something happened and the my above incomplete post got posted.
    
    So….
    
    The Modern Arabic still remains the same, as Old Arabic prior to revelation of Quran, which is written in short hand without vowels and other grammatical rules.
    
    Conclusion:
    
    Therefore, a translated Quran is not a Quran, it is basically a transliteration of the author who translates the Quran. His discrimination, his racial, his agenda, his prejudices and so forth become part of that translated Quran. Not a Real McCoy.
    
    The Quran should be taken in its fullest as a complete message and in the original Quranic (Classical) Arabic.
    
    Best regards,
    
    Mohamed
    - Uncle Bob 1 on October 06, 2015 · at 8:03 pm EST/EDT
      
      Thank you my friend.
  - WizOz on October 07, 2015 · at 7:49 am EST/EDT
    
    It is a pity that people swallow hook, line and sinker the Jewish-Muslim BS of the “blood up to the ankles” when the Crusaders “taking” of Jerusalem (actually liberating it from islamic oppression).
    - Uncle Bob 1 on October 07, 2015 · at 9:04 am EST/EDT
      
      I think that was written by a Crusader that was there.It comes from a history book on the Crusades.And since at that time most of the people living there were Muslim,how could they be liberated from “themselves”.Like I keep saying,its a horrible idea to view the past through modern thinking.People living then didn’t think or act like we do in most parts of their lives.Don’t put your thinking on them,it doesn’t fit.
      - WizOz on October 07, 2015 · at 10:16 am EST/EDT
        
        It happened only on the floor of the “Solomons Temple”. The level of blood raised from chronicler to chronicler: from ankle high to knee high, to the briddle of the horses! It was clearly sensationalist reporting. In any case there were not “rivers of blood” flowing down the streets of Jerusalem, as modern “historians” assert, in an attempt to emulate the “Holocaust”! And not the entire population was massacred, as it is taken for granted nowadays, to point the finger at the “bloodthirstyness” of the Christians. Arab sources talk about three thousands. They would not have enough blood betweenthemselves to fill a pool ankle high, no matter that it would have congeled quickly! It would have required the blood of 92,000 people, twice the population of Jerusalem at the time! And to fill the streets one would have to have 3 million people! It is actually evocative of the highly fantastic rivers of blood reported by the Talmud for the slaughter of the Bar Kochba men by the Romans!
- Mohamed on October 06, 2015 · at 6:41 pm EST/EDT
  
  WizOz,
  
  “What about Sura 9.30? 4.171? About the injunction of the Prophet to the Christians to desist from their belief in the Son of God and that Allah will destroy those who believe that?”
  
  Please bring forth the above two verse and substantiate your above claim, “Allah will destroy those who believe that?”
  
  According to Imam Ali, “A liar’s biggest punishment in this world is that even his truth is rejected.”
  
  Thus, bring the Proof. However, Islam don’t believe in Trinity. Neither does Islam believes Jesus to be “son of God”. This is covered by Saker in his above article. To Islam, A Creator cannot be a creation, so there is no man in the sky.
  
  Also, the Jews don’t believe in Trinity too and that Jesus being “son of God”. The Old Testament is Jewish Scripture, and they resent the fact that their Scripture is being taken over by the Christians and misrepresented. They even resent the fact that their Scripture being called, “Old Testament”. To the Jews, there is no such thingy as “Old” and “New” Testaments.
  
  We have been through this many a times on the Old Saker blog.
  
  Mohamed
- Mohamed on October 06, 2015 · at 7:17 pm EST/EDT
  
  WizOz,
  
  As I mentioned above, the Jews don’t believe in Trinity. In Semitic Language the word for “One” is “Wahid”, But you will see that both in Shema Ya’Israel and in Holy Quran a special word is used, “Ahud in TaNaKh” and “Ahad in Holy Quran”.
  
  What does this word, “Ahad” means?
  
  It doesn’t mean One, it means A Unit, which can NOT be Divided nor Multiplied. Therefore, one cannot make Trinity out of it. The Old Testament you have is a transliteration of Jewish Scripture called, “TaNaKh”.
  
  Best regards,
  
  Mohamed
- Anonymous on October 06, 2015 · at 9:51 pm EST/EDT
  
  The saker, this is what you expected after re posting this, there is always going to be arguments no matter what.
  
  In response to this comment, lets not get into what divides us rather whats unite us, let me quote verse from Ch 5 verse 82 and this verse is related to this time, to the end times, thats where we are today:
  
  Thou wilt find the most vehement of mankind in hostility to those who believe (to be) the Jews and the idolaters. And thou wilt find the nearest of them in affection to those who believe (to be) those who say: Lo! We are Christians. That is because there are among them priests and monks, and because they are not proud. (82)
The Wend on October 06, 2015 · at 6:12 pm EST/EDT

I stand for the rights of Slavic neo-pagans in Russia, who also count in hundreds of thousands. They also have right to exist, furthermore they are the only religious group in Russia who can claim that they represent the original faith of the Russian people and also the Russian state.

But nevermind that, for the moment.(That will be the big issue in the future, but not immediately.)

I found one sentence in Saker’s analyses very important. It is this one :

” Personally, I would also include Buddhists in this list of “culture forming” religious whose values are shaping Russian society if only because (unlike the other small(er) religions) they are truly indigenous to Russia.”

That would be very, very wise!

Buddhism is historically a sect of Hinduism, just like Christianity and Islam are the sects of Judaism. To include Buddhists, as Saker is suggesting, would make Russia not exclusively Abrahamic country (which in my view would be a tragedy and a disaster).
- Mohamed on October 06, 2015 · at 7:29 pm EST/EDT
  
  Salam The Wend,
  
  “Buddhism is historically a sect of Hinduism, just like Christianity and Islam are the sects of Judaism. To include Buddhists, as Saker is suggesting, would make Russia not exclusively Abrahamic country (which in my view would be a tragedy and a disaster).”
  
  As a Muslim I believe that all religions are sects of Islam (submit). God kept sending, “One Religion”, Monotheism over and over, and when people moved away from Monotheism, than He sent another Prophet to bring them back to Monotheism.
  
  To me both terms, the Judeo/Christians and the Abrahamic Religions are derogatory terms. It leaves about 1/2 of the mankind behind.
  
  Please see my post in this blog: /russian-bear-in-syria/
  
  The Zoroastrians, The Hindus, The Buddhists are as much Monotheist as Jews, Christians and Muslims.
  
  Best regards,
  
  Mohamed
  - Ewan on October 06, 2015 · at 7:52 pm EST/EDT
    
    Point of fact (for The Wend and Mohamed): Buddhism is not a sect of Hinduism, and nor is it theistic (either mono- or poly-).
    - Mohamed on October 06, 2015 · at 8:15 pm EST/EDT
      
      Salam Ewan,
      
      I fully agree, what I was trying to get to that we should be “all inclusive” in this world, which is being torn apart with divisions and hatred.
      
      Spreading Hatred is doing the bidding of The Tribe.
      
      Best regards,
      
      Mohamed
      - The Wend on October 06, 2015 · at 9:17 pm EST/EDT
        
        Slava bogam Mohamed,
        
        most of the Hindus are not monotheistic. You know what they say about India : ” it is a land of 33 million gods. ” Some Hindus are monotheistic (particularly Vaishnava sect in Hinduism, based on Bhagavad Gita, they also produced a modern phenomenon known as “Hare Krishna” movement), but most are not. Hinduism is the most difficult of the great religions to be defined, but most experts agree that it is a henotheistic religion (which means: I believe in one of the gods, but I don’t deny the existence of the others.)
        
        Ewan,
        
        Buddhism absolutely originated as a sect of Hinduism. Virtually all terminology used by Buddhists already existed in Hindu religion. Even “nirvana”.
        
        In the same way, both Christianity and Islam arose from Judaism. “Abrahamic religions” is (to me) a fair description of these two faiths. (Especially knowing the fact that the very name Abraham originated from the much, much older Hindu religion’s famous god Brahma).
        
        Kind regards
        
        p.s. While I absolutely disagree with you Mohamed on monotheism, I agree with you totally on “all inclusive” approach towards all the religions of the world! I find precious things even in “Abrahamic faiths”, Sufism for example is a precious pearl of Islam.
        
        Mohamed on October 07, 2015 · at 8:48 am EST/EDT
        
        Salam Sister The Wend,
        
        You are absolutely correct. I wasn’t taking about the umpteen sects in Zoroastrianism, Hinduism (including Buddhism), Judaism, Christianity and Islam and various other religions.
        
        What I am talking about The Core initial Beliefs of all these religions is Monotheism. I also realize and agree that most of the sects in all these religions have moved away from Monotheism.
        
        For example, to Muslims the Christians belief of Trinity (Trimurti) is Polytheist, but ask any Christian and he/she will tell you their belief is simply Monotheist. It is the perception of each other that creates all the problems in the world.
        
        Best regards,
        
        Mohamed
        
        Mohamed on October 07, 2015 · at 8:59 am EST/EDT
        
        Salam Sister The Wend,
        
        A great religion like Hinduism, the followers of this great religion were called, Pagan. A derogatory term and used as recently 50 years ago.
        
        We all believe that we own God, rather that God who owns us. Therefore, we go on saying that my God is better than your God. We don’t realize that The Creator is One and same, but we approach The Creator differently.
        
        Best regards,
        
        Mohamed
        
        The Wend on October 07, 2015 · at 9:48 am EST/EDT
        
        “Sister Wend” ?! You are “the funny one”, Mohamed, right? :)
        
        So,
        
        Slava bogam Sister Mohamed,
        
        you are very wrong about monotheism. In China such concept doesn’t exist at all. Monotheism is completely alien to Taoists. When Christians first came to China, they tried to convert those who were following the tradition of Taoism, but they couldn’t even translate their doctrines into Chinese, because Taoists didn’t have any concept of “god”, or “creator” at all.
        
        Buddhists also don’t have any concept of “the eternal god the creator”. In Tibetan Buddhism, all gods are described as mortal.
        
        The main problem with monotheistic dogma is that it is incompatible with the freedom of the will of every individual. All great philosophers noticed this huge problem. If you are totally creation of somebody else, how can you be responsible for what you do ? Monotheism hasn’t been able to produce any reasonable answer to this simple question, nor it will ever be. (Hence, we have fatalism as a characteristic of Islam.)
        
        Btw, Hindus were always called “pagans” by the followers of the Abrahamic monotheistic creeds, because they simply believe in many gods. What is the name of “the main god” in Hinduism ? Vishnu? Shiva? Brahma? Indra? Varuna? Kali? You see, it doesn’t really work for them.
        
        Kind regards
        
        Ewan on October 07, 2015 · at 9:57 am EST/EDT
        
        Sorry, I think you’ve got it wrong on Buddhism. Some, like Prof. Gombrich, see it as a reaction against the old Vedic religion, or against Brahmanism (which is possibly later). This is based on evidence from several hundred years after the fact. Others argue that it is a reaction against Zoroastrianism, which at least has the merit of near contemporaneous evidence. Whatever the case, and we’ll probably never know, Buddhism is not an offshoot of Hinduism in the way that Christianity is of Judaism, and Islam of both.
        
        The Wend on October 07, 2015 · at 12:46 pm EST/EDT
        
        Ewan,
        
        Buddhism was in no way more a reaction against Vedic religion than Christianity was against Judaism.
        
        Both Buddhism and Christianity are offshoots (Buddhism of Vedic religion, Christianity of Judaism). Jung and Schopenhauer are clear on this one.
        
        The only difference I see is the reaction of the parental religions towards their sects ; while the followers of Judaism absolutely and categorically rejected Christ and his reform, the followers of Hinduism (Vedic religion) were much more prudent and they incorporated Buddha into Hinduism (according to Vaishanavas, Buddha was the ninth incarnation of god Vishnu).
        
        But that is because India has always possessed much higher level of tolerance and respect for philosophy and religion than the Middle East, Israel in particular.
        
        Kind regards.
        
        Ewan on October 07, 2015 · at 4:18 pm EST/EDT
        
        Hinduism is not the same as the earlier Vedic religion. If Buddhism is a reaction, it is perhaps to Vedic emphasis on ritual. Early Buddhism said that it is not right ritual that counts but right intention; also that there is no atman. Atman, as I understand, features in Vedic thought. Anatman is one of the foundations of Buddhist thought. As I mentioned before, contemporaneous evidence suggests that anatman, anitya and dukkha may be a reaction more directly against Zoroastrianism. Jung and Schopenhauer are not experts on early Indic religions (but then nor am I!).
        
        The Wend on October 07, 2015 · at 5:33 pm EST/EDT
        
        Ewan,
        
        Eliade was probably the greatest expert on history of religion and he shares the views of Jung and Schopenhauer on Buddhism. Schopenhauer was the first European Buddhist, btw. Hindusim is the continuation of the Vedic religion, and Vaishnava Hindus worship Buddha as a god (I explained how in my previous post). That simply wouldn’t be possible if Buddhism was not rooted in the ancient Brahmanism.
        
        I am not going to go into details, I am just observing how certain religions were formed.
        
        Christ completely changed the ethics of Judaism, he turned it upside down, but still, Christianity would be impossible as we know it without its Judaic roots. Did you know that almost all the heretic sects of Christianity whcih were destroyed in the Middle Ages had one thing in common: they didn’t recognize The Old Testament! Which means that all versions of Christianity that we have today are literarily the sects of Judaism.(Islam is also nothing more then a sect of Judaism.)
        
        Kind regards
        
        Ewan on October 08, 2015 · at 11:46 am EST/EDT
        
        I suspect you would find it worthwhile to look at some of the more recent research.
        
        It also would be an idea not to say things like, “Islam is nothing more than a sect of Judaism.” Without clarification it might be taken as simply false (it is not “nothing more than…”). It might also be considered unnecessarily dismissive
James on October 06, 2015 · at 8:15 pm EST/EDT

The goarch.org link to the Nicene creed is broken. Here is the right one:

http://www.goarch.org/chapel/liturgical_texts/creed
grrr on October 06, 2015 · at 8:26 pm EST/EDT

If I understand it correctly you advocate to place a religion in the constitution…..
Ewan on October 06, 2015 · at 9:49 pm EST/EDT

Mohamed,
I’ve no idea what you mean when you say that morals are hard-wired into all creation..

Likewise, that Christians of various sorts and Muslims of various sorts all believe in the same God because God is One. You seem to assume that it is possible to step outside our beliefs to determine that there is in fact a God that our beliefs correctly refer to.

I also doubt that cosmology can tell you anything about any God. One thing we have learned from the progress of science in the last three hundred odd years and the last three thousand odd years of theology is that it is not possible to infer with any confidence from anything within the universe anything about anything outside the universe. As you indicate, if there is a God, God is outside the universe (it is His creation).

I am simply saying that I don’t understand what you are saying – nothing more aggressive than that.
- Mohamed on October 07, 2015 · at 8:35 am EST/EDT
  
  Salam brother Ewan,
  
  Let us say, that lying is bad. According to Shia Islam, it is not the religion which teaches us that lying is bad. We are born with instincts, which we are hard wired in us to know between good and bad. Therefore, one sees everyday, that atheists just like their religious counter parts have good ethics and morals.
  
  Rest of Muslims and other religions believe, it is religion which teaches a person that lying is bad. Thus, all those ethics and morals are learned behavior from Good Book. They say, if God will tell us tomorrow that lying is good, then it is OK to lie. Shia Islam says no, we are born knowing lying is bad.
  
  Yes, I believe that there is a God, and there is Only One Creator. Thus, we all worship the same Creator, and what we call Him is immaterial.
  
  Here again, the Shia Islam believes different than the rest of the Muslims and other religions. What the Shia say, it is existence versus non-existence. Nothing exists but God, everything else is Creation. Time, Space, Emotions, Quran, …….. Everything. And, God is not bound by His Creation, neither the Creator can be creation.
  
  For example, God created Space and Emotions, therefore God is not bound by Space nor Emotions. Also, God cannot occupy Space and neither He can Hate. Thus, saying that, “God is outside the universe (it is His creation)” implies that God is bound by Space, therefore God occupies Space and is bound by Space.
  
  The rest of the Muslims and other religions believe between Creation and Non-Creation. For example, the rest of Muslims believe that Quran is not Created. Also, the Jews and Christians believe that in the beginning Word was with God. According to Christians, Jesus is the Word. Some also believe that God’s Throne (literally) was with God. They say both the Quran and His Throne are not Created. To these religions, God is bound by His Creation, and Creator can be creation, just like Jesus, who is God.
  
  They also believe that God occupies Space. The Hindus believe that Evil was already there, and God is not the Creator of Evil. To some extent, the Christians believe as such, and that Lucifer is the Creator of Evil. The Shia believe that those who scribes to Creation and Non-Creation, move away from True Monotheism.
  
  I hope that I made sense this time.
  
  Best regards,
  
  Mohamed
  - Ewan on October 07, 2015 · at 11:03 am EST/EDT
    
    Mohamed,
    This response is far too long. A reflection of the confusion your words cause me.
    
    Plato has Socrates present the “Euthyphro dilemma” (after the dialogue where it’s to be found): “Do the gods love what is holy because it is holy, or is it holy because the gods love it?”. There is doctrinal disputation in all religions. I can’t think of one where it is established dogma that the second horn of the dilemma is the one to choose.
    
    When you say that humans are born with an instinct for morality, I do not know what you mean.
    
    Are instincts not things like fight or flight, hunger, thirst, sex – things an organism needs to be programmed to do to survive long enough to pass on the genes? These hardwired instincts are the product of a couple of billion years of continuous evolution, understood in molecular detail by biologists.
    
    Primatologists and evolutionary psychologists say that hominids may have evolved an instinct for a lasting bond between mother and child which may form the neural substrate for relations with kith and kin; and evolved the capability to learn how to negotiate the social complexity of life in the troop – which over hundreds of thousands of years evolved into ever more complex ethical codes (particularly when culture took over from biology).
    
    I take it you don’t intend a naturalistic explanation such as this. But then, what?
    
    Christians teach that we’re all born in original sin. I never could understand how a baby could be born with any responsibility for the disobedience of anyone a thousand generations before. Or when the first man and woman arose – which hominid was sufficiently intelligent to disobey?
    
    Are you suggesting an alternative, that God created homo sapiens sapiens with an innate faculty or instinct for discriminating between right and wrong? There are a very few precepts common to most ethical codes that have to do with how to treat others. (In most other respects there is a bizarre range of ethical practice across cultures.) These precepts appear designed to negotiate relations within the in-crowd and between the in-crowd and outlanders. Such precepts tend to seem natural to those brought up with their practice. Is this taught? Is it innate (like fear and lust)? Is it a consequence of millions of years of hominid development. Is it planted in the brain by God?
    
    And you’re still left with the problem of what makes the precepts good or moral, rather than merely practical.
    
    You say you believe in One God. The question is, Why? What is it you think sufficient warrant for your belief? And what is it allows you to say with such confidence what He is like?
    
    If through time, since human kind first began to think of supernatural forces, we have all worshipped the same One God, His manifestations have been bizarrely varied and contradictory.
    
    So, the question is simply, How can you be so confident that you are right? If you have good reasons, what are they? If you say you don’t need reasons because you have faith, is this not good practice only if your faith is well-founded, which brings us back to reasons?
    
    As a footnote: those who believe God sempiternal believe He must also be outside time and space which are subject to change. This at least seems coherent to me.
TooLegit2Quit on October 06, 2015 · at 10:10 pm EST/EDT

If this clip doesn’t tear you up, nothing will. (And I’m not the kind that cries easily, but this boy gives me hope in whatever is left of humankind…)

Brilliant 12 Year Old Egyptian Boy Shocks Reporter
(Published on Jul 18, 2013) – A 12-year-old Egyptian boy flabbergasts a reporter. They weren’t expecting a political genius.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1uTpncr8knk

-TL2Q
- Anonymous on October 06, 2015 · at 10:48 pm EST/EDT
  
  I like this comment:
  
  Hey Egypt ,,,, Can we borrowe this young man , he is badly needed in Afghanistans parliament,, bromise we return him back..in few years..
- eimar on October 07, 2015 · at 8:31 am EST/EDT
  
  What a find!
  
  Brilliant kid. How many Western kids could articulate and argue from first principles like this? Egypt is in very good hands for the future as long as its education system produces such fine young minds.
  
  Thanks for this TLTQ.
- JJ on October 07, 2015 · at 10:24 am EST/EDT
  
  amazing
Anonymous on October 07, 2015 · at 5:34 am EST/EDT

There appear to be only three major documentable fundamental ways for
humans to function both as individuals and collectively-socially:—1)
the way of the “kingdom of heaven” both within and among humans, being
through creativity in liberty and peace within oneself and with
others, this being the fundamental way taught and exemplified by Lord
Jesus the Anointed (Christ);—2) the way of disciplined furor and/or
disciplined fear;—3) the way of idolatry, the sacrifice of oneself
and others for the sake of something given greater value that concrete
human well-being, be that a concept of God, or nation, or race, or
money, or whatever else for which humans go so far as to kill and/or
die. Note:—the humans are the only species on the planet that will
even kill or die for the sake of something that they have constructed
purely from their imagination.—These things I say are based on life
experience and on studies of the thoughts, words and example of Lord
Jesus of Nazareth through the Gospels of Mark, Luke, Matthew and John
and other texts of the Holy Bible, the so-called canonical books
thereof. Douay-Rheims English translation and King James English
translation were used. No special so-called supernatural revelation,
angelic visitation and the like are being claimed here, only personal
thinking and conclusions, and let others simply judge whether this
makes sense or no sense.

More specifically, the way of human functioning, the universal kingdom
of heaven within and among persons is a kind of divine grace-energy,
notably including multiplication of one’s given talents [Matthew
25:14-30]; the leaven of development [Matthew 12:33];
arising of itself without coercion, freely and spontaneously [Mark
4:26-29]; in reconciliation between human and God, human and human,
and within each human [Matthew 18:21-35];
the conciliating motive underlying [Luke 17:3-4]; worldwide and often
operating unawares, even to a degree within unbelieving Pharisees for
instance [Luke 17:20-21].—And the best definition of God would be as
pronounced by Apostle Paul, God is in whom we live and move and have
our being, our continuity [Acts 17:27-28].

Monasticism and asceticism took over the spiritual leadership within Christianity
very early, and this has been the first great deviation from the actual example
of Lord Jesus and His overall lifestyle as recorded.
In the Roman Church we have a popular summation of this so-called supremely
virtuous Christian life in the book “Imitation of Christ” by Thomas A Kempis,
where the virtuous Christian life is to live in imitation of Jesus suffering on the cross,
and through denial of all pleasures and the embrace of all forms of suffering,
including self-abasement, mortification of the flesh, hatred of the body, etc.,
and I suspect that Christian Orthodoxy is based on similar monastic-ascetcal teachings
as the supposedly supreme superior spiritual and virtuous life and ethics.
But these teachings actually have little if anything to do with the
kingdom of heaven within and among humans as taught and shown by Lord
Jesus Himself. Monasticism and asceticism seem to essentially belong
to the way of functioning through disciplined fury and/or disciplined
fear, only the fury and fear are directed primarily against oneself,
and because of that they are made to appear like spiritual and
virtuous and superior to the so-called “decadent” ways. That is why
monasticism and asceticism are a deviation from the ways of the
kingdom of heaven as shown through the sayings, thoughts and example
of Lord Jesus Himself, as for instance cited above.

According to Lord Jesus, peace be upon Him, two fundamental systems of
human government flow out of the given ways of human functioning
described below. One system of government [we can also use the clearer
term “leadership in society”] flows from the way of the kingdom of
heaven. According to the way of the kingdom of heaven, leaders serve
the followers whom they lead rather than lord it over the followers
[see Matthew 23:11-12; Mark 9:34, 10:42-44; Luke 22:25-26], and under
such a system of rulership the average human will have the best
environment to function through that divine grace-energy of creativity
in liberty and inner-outer reconciliation and peace, as per the
kingdom of heaven both within and among humans, preached by Lord
Jesus.

The distribution of wealth, material riches, generally follows the
distribution of social and political power of leadership. The
dictators will always be also rich, and their subjects will always
also be poor by comparison. There cannot be any true “redistribution
of wealth” unless there is also a true redistribution of social and
political power. Leadership as lording it over is the foundation for
dictatorship.—Right now, on the global scale, international scale, or
even country-level scale, there seems to be no leadership as service,
only leadership as lording it over. Leadership as lording it over
flows from functioning primarily by rage energies and fear energies,
predatory, sadistic, and I think that its basis is spiritual, not
really so much greed for material possessions and profit, but rather
getting high on rage like getting high on a drug, and this is an evil
type of spirituality, the feelings of spiritual and moral
accomplishment in attacking, terrorizing, torturing and slaughtering,
like a true predator, like lions tearing down Cape buffaloes so to
speak. Therefore, for significant numbers of the elite persons,
knowing that there are people out there rummaging homeless through
garbage dumpsters as a contrast actually makes the caviar all the more
savory. They like to think that they are robbing others by force and
getting away with it. They are simply like the ferocious bullies at
school, only now using financial methods to bully others rather than
bullying by punching and kicking in a back alley. Yet I suspect that
these wicked elite persons are merely a secretive minority, very small
in numbers, like the 1% of the proverbial 1%, but very superenergized.

I very strongly suspect that the ultimate true objective of the
so-called “great game” in human history with its perpetual warfare on
all sorts of levels is to the simply generate the maximal amounts of
rage energies and fear energies,—and I suspect this is for the
nourishment of certain emotional organisms that influence and even
possess humans, so that humans become like the gladiators in the
arena, fighting for the enhancement of Romans, in this case,
“invisible Romans”.
Therefore, no side ever wins, no peace ever prevails,—Only strong
human will-power driving a flexible analytical intellect can serve to
defuse the ferocious emotionalistic currents, and the way of the
kingdom of heaven within and among humans, which is the way of Lord
Jesus, provides as the one and only path to the most ultimate
imaginable well-being, which is “salvation”.—Monasticism and
asceticism would have little if any value, which is why the
monastically-led churches too often sided with the elites of torturers
and oppressors. Note, here we mean “Jesus” as the way of functioning,
including thinking, feeling and acting, within and among humans is the
“one and only way to salvation”. This is not any particular group of
people or institution or cultural thing, it is not necessarily
Catholicism or Orthodox Christianity or Protestantism or Judaism or
Islam or any so-called “denomination”. But the collective of all the
humans who predominantly function through the grace-energies of the
kingdom of heaven as described by Lord Jesus is the true spiritual
worldwide church.

There is another kind of morality which influences human behavior and
human societies.
1) There is the peculiar “satan’s morality” based on concepts of
“pure” versus “impure” and the concept of “cleansing” meaning
attacking and obliterating the source of “impurity”, which often means
murder, even mass murder and genocide when applied on ethnic, racial,
and other grand scale. This type of morality also focuses on human sexuality
and is recorded as the first effect of the “fall” in the story of Adam and Eve
in the Book of Genesis, that as man and woman, though legitimately husband
and wife, their eyes opened to a new perspective and they felt shame and
disgust toward their bodies and toward sexual feelings and attraction
unlike in the prefallen state. This system of morals is based on deep strong
feelings of disgust and anger at sexual attraction, and this system of morals
dominates the current overall dealings between adult men and adult women.
Sharia law and Muslim values seem to be possessed by these fundamental
feelings of shame, disgust and rage at sexual attraction between adult men
and adult women, so that modern Muslim morality seems obsessed
with keeping men and women basically apart as much as possible and feasible.
The most extreme forms of this obsession are of course amidst the so-called
wahhabi or salafi or Taliban or “Da’esh Islamic State” movements, where humans
are essentially called to become like demons, functioning exclusively through
the energies of righteous rage and perpetual holy warfare, and any type of love
is totally ferociously rejected as no doubt decadent and obscene. It would be
no surprise that the wahhabis, salafis, Taliban, the Da’esh and similar consider
their extreme implementation of this evil and satanic emotionalistic “purity morals”
in family relations and in men-women relations in general as the foundation for feeling
morally and spiritually superior to everyone else on the planet. These movements
seem to want to generate the ultimate perpetual conflict among humans not
along divisions of race, or nationality, or class, but along the genders
of men versus women. In the older traditional West of the 19th century
this would sometimes also be expressed in notions of “God, the men and the Aryans”
versus “Satan, the women and the Jews”.—2) There is the peculiar “non-morality”
or “amorality” which I have heard articulated here or there, by adherents
to certain “mystical paths”, and supposed “eastern philosophies and
paths” where the concept is that there is something called the Higher
Self which regulates and determines everything, and therefore
everything is good, as it should be, and there is no right or wrong,
good or evil, virtue or vice, lawfulness or crime, not really.
Everything is relative, and dependent on the degree of energy and
often physical force exerted by so and so.—Though I note that most
teachers of this system and believers in this system seem to be people
who advocate love, even all-encompassing unconditional love,
and are not haters of anyone or anything; however, this system would
surely be the sociopath’s and psychopath’s religion, in that you
really do not judge anything and just do whatever gives you the best
emotional gratification and that you can get away with it.
This would simply be up to whatever comes out of your gut feelings,
your instincts, your “heart”, and if you have a bright-natured
“heart”, that’s fine, but if you have a wickedly destructive “heart” then that is
also fine, just whatever you can get away with. This is the system
which discards all moral, spiritual, ethical and any other judgments.

I suspect that “money” which is largely a “smoke & mirrors” human
concept for convenience is really not such a strong factor or influence.
Money is just a convenient tool related to social-political-spiritual power as versus
social-political-spiritual weakness.

One other thing, in commentary about the criticism of the “post-Christian
secular West” and the concept of “life, liberty and pursuit of happiness”
for each individual human person,—as supposedly against “community”.
But “community” is not really some entity that goes around greeting people.
“Community” really means select elite persons functioning as “spokespersons”
and authority on behalf of what they define as “community”.
Community is made up of individuals, and if most individuals on individual basis
function through the kingdom of heaven, in creativity in liberty and peace,
then this community shall also function that way as a whole and shall be healthy
and thriving, creative, free and peaceful. When you talk about sacrificing the
individual’s life, liberty and happiness for the sake of “community” you really
mean sacrificing a given individual for the sake of an elite group of other individuals
who establish their own selves as spokespersons and leaders of the community.

One might think, what if there never were a United States of America?
What if the American Revolution failed? Well, there would be no Bill of Rights
or its concepts. There would likely simply be a set of clashing empires over the
planet,—the British, the Japanese, the French, the Chinese, the Russian, the German.
Typical leadership would likely be by warlord types either claiming a “divine right”
to lord it over and do to their followers whatever they please, or claiming some mystical
mind-meld with the “soul” of their followers, in the sense of a given nation, race or class,
so that they stand as the unchallengeable “leader” or “vozhd” or “führer” and can simply
do to their followers whatever they please and lead their followers anywhere they please.
All societies would likely be essentially rigidly class-based, caste-based, feudalistic,
veering eventually into the technologically advanced feudal societies like we now
see implemented in North Korea. There would likely be “god kings” with powers to,
—on mere personal whim,—decide who lives, who dies, who eats, who starves.
who has the privilege to walk around unchained and who gets sent to prison.
Slavery and serfdom would likely abound everywhere, without even any concepts
or arguments against it, about natural freedoms and rights, as voiced by American abolitionists.
And of course there would still be ferocious wars and atrocities, waged by warlord-elites.
Maybe ultimately “private capitalism” would not dominate, but there would arise
as mentioned before, the modern technologically-backed feudalism and a kind
of absolute monarchism as now exemplified in North Korea with its ruling dynasty.
Not a very good alternative, I would say!—This is something to consider, by all those
who tend to rush to judgment that the USA has been the source of evil in the world.

The ultimate adversary is not the USA or any given government or nation-state, but rather
secretive cults of persons being manipulated, influenced and/or possessed by predatory
emotional organisms, thereby generating religious-like evil spiritual cults dedicated to produce
maximal rage energies and fear energies, through perpetual warfare and ongoing human sacrifices, including ritual sacrifices, with, for example, suicidal bombers being a modern
technologically-adapted variant of effective ritual human sacrifice.—Only human will-power
implementing flexibly detached analytical intellect, probing the truth which is in the details,
can seem to defuse the emotionalistic currents underlying these cults.
WizOz on October 07, 2015 · at 8:09 am EST/EDT

What you can see as a net result of the “ecumenistic” approach to the Christian-Islamic relations is an outpouring of denouncements of the supposed crimes perpetrated by the “Crusaders” against innocent Muslims (and Jews) and of praise for the “tolerance”and “respect for the conscience of others” manifested by Muslims.
Now, although one can understand the political reasons of erecting a large mosque in Moscow, one can’t escape to be rankled by the fact that when that happens, churches are forbidden in Saudi Arabia and Christians persecuted all around the Islamic world. Turning a blind eye to that for political expediency won’t make Christian-Islamic relations any easier.
- Mohamed on October 07, 2015 · at 9:28 am EST/EDT
  
  Salam Brother WizOz,
  
  Spreading Hatred is doing the Bidding of The Tribe.
  
  Best regards,
  
  Mohamed
  - WizOz on October 07, 2015 · at 12:25 pm EST/EDT
    
    Severing heads of Christians and asking for the smashing of the Cross is Spreading Peace and Love?
muslim on October 07, 2015 · at 4:26 pm EST/EDT

To the one who trying to incite division between muslims here by saying “abu bakr” this “abu bakr” that “ali” this “ali” that, the problem actually is you, not Muslims that you assume “don’t know the history of Islam.” you know what, “and what are you gonna do about it?!“. as you clearly ignored the points made by The Saker here.

Let me quote The Saker – “Now let me ask you the question Americans kids like to challenge each other with: “and what are you gonna do about it?!“. Expel all Muslims out of Russia and cut-off the Caucasus? Kill all of kufars and organize an Islamic Caliphate in Russia? Fight the righteous struggle against everybody and all fronts at the same time all on your own? Convince everybody to convert?”

Thank you The Saker for the great article.
James on October 08, 2015 · at 5:14 am EST/EDT

Site exhibiting the covenant made by the Prophet of Islam and the Christians, with many articles, videos, etc., and also featuring his new book. Of the greatest interest and importance:

http://johnandrewmorrow.com/
——————

A Must Read: “Six Covenants of the Prophet Muhammad with the Christians of His Time: The Primary Documents”
April 2, 2015 · by drjamorrow

Six Covenants of the Prophet Muhammad with the Christians of His Time: The Primary Documents

John Andrew Morrow’s book The Covenants of the Prophet Muhammad with the Christians of the World is truly one of my favorite books ever. It has inspired me in ways that I never thought that a book could. It’s one of those reads.

Six Covenants of the Prophet Muhammad with the Christians of His Time: The Primary Documents is also a must read for anyone that is studying Islam and the life of Prophet Muhammad. Here’s a description:

It is a blessing, a warning, and a sign that these Six Covenants of the Prophet Muhammad with the Christians of His Time have resurfaced at this particular moment in history. Renewed by caliphs and sultans, supported by scores of fatwas, and accepted as law for nearly 1400 years, these documents were common knowledge to educated Muslims and Christians until the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, after which they virtually disappeared from collective consciousness. Their rediscovery will certainly open a new field in both Islamic Studies and interfaith relations. As the written words of the Prophet Muhammad himself, peace and blessings be upon him, and a central part of the Sunnah, they should sit side by side with the Qur’an in both mosque and home. If Muslims are ever to recover the reality of Islam and undergo a collective awakening, these covenants of hope will play a major part in that restoration. Those wishing to familiarize themselves with Dr. Morrow’s exhaustive arguments supporting the authenticity of these Covenants should refer to The Covenants of the Prophet Muhammad with the Christians of the World (Angelico, 2013).

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