Recently there was a thread on Daniel Pipe's blog where people were arguing about whether Islam could ever be anything but what the Bin Laden's, and Ayatollah Khomeini's have made of it. I actually argued in defense of Islam as a whole there because for all the present evil of the religion, it has been a positive force in the world at times in history, and relative to the darkness of the dark age that spawned it.
The reason is my dawning perspective of what the Lotus Sutra is talking about and what Buddhism is really about. There was a time in the early 20th century when the prevailing view world-wide, even in Buddhist Countries, was that Buddhism was completely irrelevent to the modern times. Indeed, until the Dalai Lama was sent packing from Tibet, and Western Englightenment ran up against Western Darkness, that was a legitimate view. Buddhism as a mere religion is no better (and no worse) than any other religion out there, but certainly does not guarantee world peace. People flock to it because it is new and different, but I don't see much difference between Buddhists and Christians, Buddhists and Islamicists, except in the statistical probability of extreme violence. There is a reason for this. I believe that the Lotus Sutra talks about these things. I believe that Nichiren talked about these reasons 750 years ago.
Because I believe that Buddhism has to transcend religion as dogma, I believe that Buddhist principles can be applied to Buddhism, and to Islam to resurrect them both from irrelevence; and indeed to all the religions. There needs to be a dialogue about what is relevent and what is not.
I'm liable to go off topic here, but I want to keep this focused on Islam. One religion at a time. The dominant source for genuine humbleness is the story of the blind men and the elephant, because that is the story of the religious leaders of our days. What I liked about the History of Islam, the "selling point" was that they eschewed intermediaries and postulated a direct connection to the divine, to "G-d." This was an improvement over priest, caste, and esoteric religions that tended to hide the facts about their stories and parables and treat people as if they should never grow up. Mohammed's take on religion was very superior for his time. The vision of a single unified divine entity is designed to break the hold that superstition and shrines (and those who tend those shrines) try to place over human beings. If we need intermediaries (From God -- Ba-'l in hebrew), then we give up some element of our self, our self-determination to others. And those others always take advantage of that.
All the stuff about him being the "seal" and making his words infallible represents the efforts of clerics and priests to find a way into the "back-door" of control over religions. After all when they speak for Mohammed they are speaking for God, and when they speak for God they are speaking as if they had their eyes more open than the rest of us and as a result for all their professed humbleness they are not humble at all. They make a death penalty out of Criticizing "Mohammed" but they really fear criticism of themselves. Nobody can criticize Mohammed, because nobody directly apprehends the guy. What we have are the representations of him coming from Clerics. They may not be physical Idols, but they are idols, because the Clerics seek to convince people to idolize them as messengers of Allah, of Mohammed, of God. You see this strong in Shiism, but it is also true with Sunnah. Thus when a Cleric claims that his fatwah is about Criticizing Mohammed, his Fatwah is really about criticizing the cleric.
And this succeeds because the clerics turn Islam into a self-referential cult. Moslems talk about Christians and Jews as "Kaffirs" or "kufre", when they should be talking to them. Because their religions tell them everything they need to know to interpret everything that happens, they project onto current times the imaginings of past times and words that were about those times. Islam like Christian Spain has its Don Quixotes, Torquemadas, and Pizarros. These are people who see Islam as a "nation of peace" despite all the internecine wars going on in Islamic countries; and who see the chaos and wildness of Western Cultures as "nations of war" even when those countries are as peaceful as the Netherlands or as Civilized as Britain. They read into the present the words of Koran, Hadith and tradition -- as interpreted by Clerics and their own self-referential world view.
To go into more detail about the dangers of self-referential cults. I have to do Brian's homework. That is for a later post and it doesn't leave my own life and beliefs untouched. But my topic here is "can Islam be saved."
And I think it can, because of the power of the PaRDeS. Interpretation doesn't have to be self-referential, prophesies don't have to be self-fulfilling, and the logic of religion is not opposed to science and philosophy, truth and reality. We should take religious truth as the truth, but not as literal truth (Nirvana Sutra seek the meaning not the words). We should use allegory and allusion with wisdom to guide our approach to reality -- not to create fantasy systems that disregard it. We should use sermons and interpretation to guide people to wisdom and realization of inward truths -- not to befuddle, stoke anger and hatred, or to destroy. And finally, each of us has the capacity to get at inward secrets. The "Esoteric" is only esoteric (Sot) because we humans haven't yet put the effort out to share or the spiritual effort to wake up. Islam has this concept of PaRDeS too. Their clerics can be an agent for good, just as fast, or faster than they've been an agent for bad. And if they aren't, the people, with their direct access to God, should be hearing what "God", the buddha, Allah, etceteras, is saying to them -- and it is not Jihad against the West but Jihad against lies and deceptions, injustice and hatred.
So I think that Islam can be saved, by Moslems who are willing to wake up enough to change the POV from which they see their religion. It's funny how the same words can mean different things to someone who is unenlightened versus someone who is not. Take "love thy neighbor." How many Christians really practice this? How many rationalize it as an excuse for Adultery or philandering?
How many Moslems truly practice the principles of their religion? Does Jihad really mean putting bombs on Airplanes? When cartoonists put a bomb in a man wearing a turbine they aren't insulting Mohammed, they are pointing out the foolishness of contemporary Moslems. Salmon Rushdie pointed out some stories from Moslem scuttlebut and a cleric put a price on his head. A cartoonist was killed for drawing pictures. Long ago a poetess was killed for making fund of the founder... Bad Mojo here, but interpretation of religion means that we seek the wisdom in stories, and that we don't do so by turning any founder into a God. Obviously if God could pick flawed human beings like David, Soloman, or, yes, Mohammed, then he's saying something about our ability to see the entire elephant of the Divine. So cartoonists see the hind-quarters and not the face, does that make them worthy of death? People need to pull up their pants not kill someone for being mooned.
It is dangerous to have a real sense of humor when there is a war going on. But these wars come from ambitious and deceptive human beings. The sooner we all learn that the sooner we can start to make peace. Jews have as much claim on the land of "Israel/Palestine" as Christians and Arabs, and they have as much right to name that land as any other holder of a piece of Real Estate. And they have a right to live in peace. They can call their parts "Israel", eventually they'll have to let others call the rest what they want to call it. It is time to settle with them. Pay those who lost land for what they lost, make sure everyone who lives there has a job, a good education, an honest government and a home -- then what the hell else is there to fight about? But don't make people subject to other people. Don't continue using Palestinians as a foil for a proxy war against Jews. Jews, Christians or non-Moslems, may not be superior to Arabs, but they certainly are not in fact inferior to them either. The distinction between the "lands of peace" and the "lands of war" is an illusion, a self-referential delusion, and is in fact a lie. Everywhere where Moslems dwell with other Moslems or non-Moslems they are in conflict. When Moslems really live in the "land of peace" then they'll have an immigration problem not a diasporah. Judaism (not Islam or Christianity) teaches that Israel has a diasporah because of the failure of Israel to live up to its covenant 100%. That is an almost impossible standard, yet there is no blame there for Moslems among the religious who understand this. Israel fights Moslems because they have no other choice and because they do feel they have a right to live in peace on land their ancestors have lived on.
It is time to settle the ancient feud between Sunnah and Shiism as well. The Catholics could finally admit that Martin Luther was right about something, why can't these folks? Why, because of the weight of years of hate and foolishness. It is okay to laugh at enemies, but to laugh at the foolishness of ones' own actions? Now that takes a real man (or a real woman).
But that is what Moslems are going to have to do. They are the only ones who can stop their brothers from putting bombs on planes or sending a radioactive missile at New York or Tel Aviv. The US can't, even if we bomb the smithereens out of Iran like we tried to do to Iraq. It won't work. We have to talk to them, and they have to really talk to us -- and both sides have to listen.
Chris
Posted by cholte at August 24, 2006 08:56 PM I had to wonder, saved from what? The militant fundamentalists? I don't see that as an outgrowth of Islam but of other socio-political forces. Just as the whole right-wing christian conservative has almost nothing to do with christianity. If you want to end violence you have to deal with real causes not rhetorical ones. To put people in catagories and see them as some foreign "other" is the first step on the road to ruin. It's not Islam that needs to be saved, but people, and one thing that they need to be saved from is the idea that life is cheap and violence is a solution. Islam does not teach those things but neferious leaders have read them in it seems. The enemy is not Islam or even "radical Islam" but hopelessness and the real question is can the human race be saved.
clown hidden
You have a point. We should be arguing with the folks on Daniel Pipes Blog. There I actually was trying to defend the place of Islam as a religion that has been progressive in the past and can be interpreted quite differently from the way Wahabis and others interpret it.
It is the Islamicists who do a pretty good job of convincing me that Islam is an implacible enemy of all that I consider progressive and peaceful. It is they who want to bring down Airplanes and are making life miserable for all of us.
The enemy is not mere "hopelessness" but various illusions and the notion that violence, and brute force are worthwhile means. Hopelessness comes from clinging to illusions about life and unrealistic expectations. If one wishes for impossible things, one cannot hope to attain them. Hopelessness is a result of illusions and delusional belief -- not a cause of it.
And yes the idea that there is an "enemy other" is one of the illusions that we need to fight. As Golda Meir once said, the Day that Arabs put saving their children's lives as more important than killing Jews will be the day that things will start to change. Islam can either be part of the solution or part of the problem. Right now Islamicists are a major part of the problem.
Good will come when a peace treaty can be drawn up between brother and brother, and father and daughter; and when people change the subject from "who started it" to "how can I get more money from tourists?" That is not going to happen as long as folks are bent on revenge and feel humiliated when their rockets don't kill enough people.
I thought one of the things that Hizbollah is doing that is smart is talking about "rebuilding." Unfortunately that seems to mean to them rebuilding rocket launchers so they can start another round of fighting later with more accurate weapons.
"Islam does not teach those things but neferious leaders have read them in it seems."
I wish that were completely true -- maybe its because there are too many of these "nefarious leaders" right now. I've been reading the Hadith and the writings of many Moslems and the more I read them the less confident I am that that there are too many Moslem leaders who are not "nefarious." I know it can be true from reading other Moslems, but I keep catching translations of what some of these same people say when they think the rest of us aren't watching. It is hard to trust people who teach that lies are okay when dealing with "Kafirs."
Rather than teaching the truth the schools teach that Islam is the land of peace and the west a land of conflict and war; that Moslems have had all the troubles they have had because of outside repression, and various other convenient fictions. They are also teaching that fighting Christians and Jews, or at least avoiding their influence, is something that all Moslems have to do in the name of Allah.
I just don't think that any of that is what is actually being taught in the majority of Wahabi schools or Moslem Schools. The first step to stopping violence is to start teaching accurate things and to stop teaching nasty things. Saudi Arabia two years ago promised to stop teaching those nasty things, but reports tell us that they did not do this. It was all PR for us "kafirs."
I know that stopping teaching lies sort of works because it was a good thing when US schoolbooks stopped teaching that Christopher Columbus was an unalloyed benefit to the "New World" and that the West brought nothing but joy and Christianity to the "savages." The revisionism offended our own far right, but that can't be helped. Fools exist in every society. They have to be marginalized and debated with -- or they tend to find a way to dominate things.
"The enemy is not Islam or even "radical Islam" but hopelessness and the real question is can the human race be saved."
I have to disagree with you. One of the enemies of the West Right now is indeed "Radical Islam." That is the "enemy without." The enemy within of course is the resonance that that causes within Christian, and Hindu culture. There is a lot of pain in that relationship.
Currently radical Islam defines itself as an enemy to the West, to Westernizing Moslems, and to people of Jewish, Christian or Buddhist faith, so they are an "enemy" -- at least to their own progress and enlightenment. And they are teaching that in the religious schools all over the world. I'm sure that some teachers teach these things on the premise that the problem is "hopelessness" -- blaming everyone else is supposed to be the cure. It doesn't work. It treats people like children rather than helping them grow up.
The other enemies of course are radical Christianity, our own the quisling, 'razon de Stat' cynical Romano-half-Pagan tradition of the West that would sell out its own mother for a barrel of oil, and of course the unwillingness of teachers, politicians and military leaders to go against the tide and try to stop the waves of anger and hurt that drive conflict.
The idea of dialogue is to turn enemies into rivals or business partners, and maybe find a way to turn them into friends. That approach might work if only it were teamed with a bit of heart. If the waves of anger and hurt can be used to drive turbines of commerce. If people can be taught ways to make better use of existing resources, and if more resources are made available to people instead of being horded by the "haves"; then everybody can do better.
I'm not really worried about whether the human race can be saved. I'd just like to see the human race get through the present times without the kinds of agonies it shouldn't have to deal with.
As you well know, my opinion is that the west can curl up and die. The Islamo-fascists are idiots by they are the enemy of my enemy. I would have to say that any one who fights the U.S. or Isreal is doing a good thing regardless of their motivation. I would never deny that the U.S. is the great Satan. Quite frankly after you have done so much damage I am less for peace and more for revenge. My thirst for justice won't be quenched until millions of american's die horrible deaths, I'm not holding my breath nor am I making bombs, but that's my view of right and wrong.
clown hidden
You are truly a frightening character. But your view of right and wrong, as expressed in this post is wrong. There is nothing right in millions of innocent people dying horrible deaths.
Posted by: Chris at August 28, 2006 12:59 PM