Re: [mukto-mona] How to follow religions correctly

1. A religious fundamentalist is one who takes every thing literally. A religious literature is so vast and since it is absolutely impossible for one person to read and understand every thing in it, he has to use the teachings of a specific school. One example is the Taliban school. 

 

2. We may see "fundamentalists" among the critics of a religion also. A critic of Hinduism may say to me, "Man, you have caste-ism in your religion." If I say to him,"Read Vedanta, read Ramakrishna, read Vaisnavism, you will withdraw your statement." If he is a sensible man, he will say,"Oops." He may again say,"You Hindus hate women so much. You used to burn women alive. I have read Manusanhita." I will say, "Read the sloka from the Ramayana which declares a mother to be superior to the paradise." Probably being a sensible man, he will again say,"Oops!" I can continue with more examples. A "fundamentalist" critic of a religion will always pick some thing from a religion with the sole objective of putting it down. He will hardly care about what is actually going on. Are they still burning women? Do they still believe in caste-ism? In one sense, this person is ignorant or at best a half-literate, or he is incapable of synthesis.

 

3. In order to judge a people, our objective should be to study the general religious pattern prevailing in a society. 

 

4. Even if I am interested in comparative study of religions, I should be able to see every positive and negative aspect of a religion critically and without any bias, and also from historical perspectives.

 

5. One more thing: there are people who love to stun others by stunning information although the information may be irrelevant or of very little importance contextually. Example, some one says, "What are you talking about? Rabindranath was modern! Do you know he gave dowry in his daughter's wedding?" That's it. No analysis! And if you are naive, you may have the impression: Oh my God, is that Rabindranath whom everybody calls a great man! 

From: Kamal Das <kamalctgu@gmail.com>
To: mukto-mona@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Thursday, February 9, 2012 2:04 AM
Subject: Re: [mukto-mona] How to follow religions correctly

 

According to Laurence Galian's article, "The Centrality of the Divine Feminine in Sufism", Allah was the Goddess Ila before (s)he became male.  The article was published in the Proceedings of the 2nd Annual Hawaii International Conference on Arts and Humanities in 2004.  It is available on the net.  Whoever believes, "Every religion teaches tolerance"  must be absolutely ignorant of the history of religion.

May I point out that Christianity, being based on Graeco-Roman traditions, is historically non-iconoclastic.

On Thu, Feb 9, 2012 at 7:26 AM, Sukhamaya Bain <subain1@yahoo.com> wrote:

 

I would like to comment on the following two comments:

 

S. Chakrabarty: "Every religion teaches tolerance about other religions."

 

J. Roy: "Most people believe in Allah in their own way."

 

S. Bain: Mr. Chakrabarty is very wrong here. I like Dr. Roy's statement. Please see below for some elaborations of these two comments.

 

None of the Abrahamic religions tolerate idolatry, which is a Hindu religious practice. People who identify themselves in terms of an Abrahamic religion, yet tolerate idolatry, do it in spite of their religion, not because of it. For example, many Christian communities in the USA allow Durga Puja in the churches because they have advanced enough to ignore some of the aspects of their religion, not because Christianity is not against idolatry. Enough reading and honest interpretations of the fundamentals of religions would show that many religions consider the following of other religions to be inappropriate, wrong, sinful and even punishable. I am personally reluctant to dig deeper into that. But I am sure Mr. Chakrabarty would find the example of idolatry that I noted here to be a valid one.

 

While almost all Muslims use the Arabic word Allah for the English word God, the word Allah was in use long before Islam came into being. Thus, Muslims really do not have a proprietary right on the word Allah. When a Christian or a Hindu prays to God, he is praying to Allah. In fact the Arab Christians do call God Allah. A Hindu should be able to use the Arabic word Allah as much as he uses the English word God to do his way of praying, including what would be clearly un-Islamic. A Bangalee Muslim should have no problem using the word "Ishwar" instead of the word "Allah." That should not cause anyone to lose his Islam.

 

Well, that's all for now.

 

Sukhamaya Bain

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"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it".                -Beatrice Hall [pseudonym: S.G. Tallentyre], 190

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