All religion is politics. All religion is local.

Judaism, Christianity, Islam are not religions so much as political parties. Their founders - Moses, Constantine and Mohammed were all generals.  Politics and war came first in the founding of these ideologies.


If an outer space alien could communicate with me in English, a language I am a master of, and ask the 64 trillion dollar question about what is all this religious strife on planet Earth about, well here goes.


Do Jews, Christians and Muslims worship the same abstract idol and or God? NO!


Definitely not!


A Muslim’s mother’s beef stew is not the same as a Christian’s mother’s beef stew.  


Only momma knew how to cook beef stew. 


For you to compare my mother’s beef stew to your mother’s beef stew is an insult to my mother and to me. 


And there you have modern religion; same as ancient religion.


All religion is local – just like politics.  All belief in God is local as well.


That’s the point with ancient paganism when it went up against the corrupted form of Judaism aka as Christianity.  They were going up against the abstract of One God in One Temple in Jerusalem.  There were no annex temples in the ancient holy land.  God had no vacation homes.


The Jews had one God and he along with his consort Asherah were worshipped in the great temple of Solomon until the Babylonian captivity. 


When the Jews did come back from Babylon, along with their Babylonian concubines, they rebuilt the mud hut, the great temple of Solomon.  They discarded Asherah.  The feminine side of their god disappeared.  God evolved, he then had a male side only.  Christianity is based on Judaism and Islam is framed on these two previous male only gods/politick/religions.  


Of course the Jewish god only talks Hebrew.  The Christian god only talks Aramaic, Greek and Latin.  And the Muslim god only understands Arabic.  One idea.  Three different gods.  E Pluribus Unum?  Hardly.


So when the Roman Nazis come along and could not impose Roman politics onto Jerusalem, they destroyed the Temple.  The genie was out of the bottle.  Because once you remove the geography of the abstract Jewish god, anybody including the Christians or the Muslims can add on their mom’s recipe for beef stew to the traveling ghost of a concept of one God in that god’s diaspora.


Yahweh was destroyed in 70 A.D./C.E..  All the kings horses and all the kings men could not put Yahweh back together again or at least serve the same beef stew ever again.


While the Jews, as the object of their inspirations and prayers, point back to a temple god of two thousand years ago, the Christians point back to general Constantine’s mom’s beef stew recipe, the Nicenian  heresy, and the Muslims look to the Kaaba.
 
Hinduism, which absorbed all local gods as it evolved as a political entity, let the local deities stand and evolve too along side the poltical “religion” etc..  Ironically, here is a quote from what appears to be a polytheistic culture about the weird unrealistic concept of a one god – a one size fits all deity.  


Why are there so many Gods in Hinduism?

God is one. There is only one Real and True God who does not have any form or a name. It can neither be described, thought of or conceived through human faculties. But since we are so many, each one of us conceives God according to our attitude, view points and state of life -- just as a woman can be looked upon differently by different people: mother, by her children; wife, by her husband; sister, by her sisters; daughter, by her parents; granddaughter, by her grandparents; sister-in-law, by her husband's brother, etc. The woman is one and the same, but she is viewed differently by each one of her relatives. Similarly, we look upon the same God in many ways.

I believe most Hindu’s are vegetarians.  I therefore probably cannot compare their politics/religion with my mom’s one true authentic recipe for beef stew.

 

Whatever. 

In most ancient cultures, the heart was the center of intellect and intuition.  In their hearts, Jews, Christians and Muslims perhaps understand and commune with the same God. But using a scientific metaphor – language, words, geography  – in other words, a form of gravity is introduced into the equation  – which confuses the perfection of the human heart with the questions and imperfections of the human brain with its tags and labels.

If man is both part beast and part angel, the question of - do Muslims and Christians worship the same God? – who is asking the question - why - and in what force of gravity present? 

Mosque - Definition

From the free on-line dictionary a definition for mosque and its origin.

A Muslim house of worship.

[French mosquée, from Old French mousquaie, from Old Italian moschea, from moscheta, from Old Spanish mezquita, from Arabic masjid; see masjid.]

Mosque is quite a European word and seems to have been in the language forever. Little strange wonder how the idea of a Muslim house of worship anywhere is an idea that offends people.

With empty churches for sale and the like, and a large immigration influx, the nation turns from Christian to multi ethnic and multi cultural and global.

FYI

Cordoba House - WTC - Columbia College - NYC

College and University is a place to broaden one’s knowledge of the diversity of the world in all its aspects.

Some American universities such as Harvard started out as places to study theology. While a degree in Theology at Harvard is a noteworthy thing, it does not say much about the individual that holds the degree.

Life is about Experience. The experience many had on 911 at the World Trade Center effected all of American culture including its thinking. While the theme behind 911 was anti-American, it was also anti- western Christian Culture. 911 began as a domestic American day. It ended as a day of global reflection.

The Cordoba House/Mosque complex in New York City to be built in an office tower structure of 13-15 stories sits exactly on part of the foundation stones of part of the original King’s College building – later to become Columbia University uptown. Literally, this is true.

It is rather fitting that a place, a Muslim culture place, be part of the world and or global culture and that it is to sit on a place dedicated to learning that goes back almost two hundred and fifty years. The beginnings of a Global Culture, of a new human race, I believe starts at the New World Trade Center rising from the ashes of the old.

So like the secular colleges of today, the Cordoba House/Mosque center will be a place of learning and broadening outlooks from the very narrow focus that began the day of 911. The end of that day sent us looking for many answers.

Sometimes the answers are right there in our midst. A mosque in downtown NYC is as natural as the wind as a place to be. And a place for cultural growth.

Tolerance. Learning. Diversity. Just a few global words to throw out there today.

Cordoba House - NYC - Mosque - Columbia College

Recalling memory of perhaps forty years past, I have to say one of the best basic cookbooks of all times on basic American cooking is the Settlement Cook Book. It’s recipes are derived from a cultural secular phenomenon called Settlement Houses that existed in the heyday of mass immigration into American culture in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Reading the various things being put out there, I go back to the concept of Cordoba House as a community center. I am reminded of the settlement movement, a secular movement in the 19th century both in England and the United States.

Having done some research on Islam, the Mosque as the center of a community is more secular a building than the west would treat a church as sacred. A church might have a community center but rarely do you see children in churches doing homework or reading, memorizing the bible.

The Mosque as community center and as planned in Cordoba House sounds more like an old-fashioned settlement house where someone like Eleanor Roosevelt did her Christian charity and taught some classes to the poor in a secular settlement house in the slums of NYC.

As the name suggests, in the American model, a settlement house that taught English, civics, hygiene, cooking and provided a gymnasium in the midst of crowded tenements, it, as a community center was also like an assimilation center for immigrants to ease into the American culture.

Cordoba house, especially for a fundamentalist or a Sufi specialty branch of study is perhaps a settlement house of sorts. The difference is that Islam is the center of community, secular like, structure?

Settlement houses went out of existence with the social safety net of government established and expanded over the decades. I have often thought that as in the case of influx of Mexican immigrants, legal and illegal, that an old-fashioned concept of a settlement house teaching English and American customs might be an old idea that would ease some tensions between the existing culture and the influx of a foreign culture(s).

There is now some credible evidence surfacing that the Proposed so-called World Trade Center mosque, Cordoba House will sit on approximately forty percent of the original land that was under the original Columbia College Building, now Columbia University, when it started in colonial times on what is now the street called Park Place in downtown Manhattan.

Columbia College Building 1857

Cordoba House being proposed on this historic American spot is perhaps a good marriage of the old native culture blending into the new secular global cultural still forming.

Jihad - Nazi - Anti-Semitic -- Banned Hate Words

It is time to remove little bits, words, of auxiliary verbal HATE from our language. To Ban then!

I am writing this off the cuff. I removed the Jihad from my earlier article about Cordoba House / Mosque in lower Manhattan.

There is a great FOX NEWS monitored or sponsored visual rally against the mosque this coming Sunday, a so-called Christian day of rest.

I have seen what amounts to hate literature regarding the building of this porposed mosque.

JIHAD is a Muslim Hate Word.

NAZI is an antichrist or derived from Western Christian culture Hate Word – hate word when used to describe anybody other than Nazis in the Press, Radio, or TV.

Anti-Semitic is used to throw at any non-Jew or real Jews (Self Hating supposedly) who disagree with the Military Junta that runs Israel.

ANTI-SEMITIC is the most abused phrase in the English language in it double usage – it’s original meaning and now its permanent political “shut up” meaning. Used to silence the protestors against the Military Junta running Israel and its despicable and inhumane foreign polity – it is used as a HATE WORD the majority of the time these sad days in human history.

These three hate words related to the three monotheistic religions must be banned for a few decades in order to move forward to a civilized global future of all the human race.

Amen. Amen. I say to you. Roadblocks to World Peace and roadblocks to genuine communications amongst the brothers and sisters of humanity will no longer be tolerated.

Faisal Shahzad – human drone terrorist fails (this time)

The act of desperation in the middle east to is convince people that God or Allah is on your side and have those stupid souls commit a suicide bombing to die for a political/religious cause. This is part of the equation of ignorance and poverty we are fighting in the midst of the mess over there.

In a global sense we cannot walk away from a global situation that has manifested itself since 911.

Jimmy Carter started to tell us to stop our dependence on foreign oil in the late seventies. Congress, corrupt from oil money, has not followed through on a plausible energy policy since.

The growing oil slick and cancer on the environment in the Gulf of Mexico is coming home to haunt our inactions for decades. As a result, we are drawn into the corrupt Saudi and Muslim world politics of unknown places on the other side of the planet.

These acts of so called martyrdom or heroics that we see elsewhere are coming closer to us.

Except for the jihadist US Army officer shrink Nidal Hasan, the U.S. has been very lucky since 911 in terms of avoiding direct terrorist attacks on U.S. soil.

I see a long distance pattern to these so called sleeper cells in the U.S.. While a Shahzad or a Hasan are already here, they in essence have to turn on the hand that feeds them here in the United States and try to connect to some native roots elsewhere for encouragement in their acts of mass murder or attempted mass murder.

The Christian west long ago made suicide a taboo for individuals while directly and indirectly blessing wholesale warfare in it place.

At latest news, the economy going south may have contributed to Shahzad souring on his piece of the American Dream.

Long distance is someone or some group trying to pull off a complicated bomb construction and bomb detonation here in America. The people such as the underwear bomber at Christmas or the Times Square attempted bomber - they did not succeed in that long distance connection from some ancient culture and religious hate thing overseas.

People that blow themselves up in Iraq and Afghanistan are poor and certain that their reward is in Paradise with the Prophet.

Foreign born people who live here, are educated here and have opportunities here are perhaps contaminated by our secular culture that chooses life over death.

That to drive into Times Square, perhaps playing some Timothy McVeigh like tape in your head, and walking away from a half assed built bomb and to save your half assed half American life is a flaw in the present evolving equation of hate, terror and mass murder.

To be young and stupid like this Times Square suspect is to be ideal and zealous in your hate against the U.S. even while you want your cake (life) and eat it too like an American.

This is really a screwed up equation of modern proportions on the domestic and international global world stage. I hope this is a temporary scenario in the ongoing long term march to the future.

Franklin Graham still Hates Muslims

Big Government parasite Franklin Graham is in the News. He was been asked to pray at the National Prayer Day at the Pentagon. With a question of constitutionality of the national mandated prayers by citizens, there is a question if Graham will speak at the Pentagon.

Of course, Graham anti-Islam beliefs and rhetoric are just the thing we need to continue this new eternal cold war against Islam (good for business and pentagon pensions etc.) .

The National Prayer Day was campaigned for heavily by Billy Graham and signed into law by Harry S Truman in 1952. Nothing like the government to created a privileged meal ticket niche for Bill Graham and his cronies, not to mention his Muslim hating son Franklin.

A Christian must love all his neighbors including Muslims. Franklin Graham is some sort of tax free business man posing as a Christian. He is not a Christian by my standards or definition of such.

Group wants evangelist's Pentagon event canceled

Fighting to Pray in Cordoba

Here is a real odd one that challenges all the phony PR press releases from the RC church about interfaith dialogue.

Two arrested after fight in Cordoba's former mosque

Trouble broke out when the visitors knelt to pray in the building, a former mosque turned into a Christian cathedral in the 13th century, where a local bishop, Demetrio Fernández, recently insisted that a ban on Muslim prayers must remain.

Half a dozen members of a group of more than 100 Muslims from Austria had started praying among the marble columns and coloured arches of the vast building when security guards ordered them to stop.

"They provoked in a pre-planned fashion what was a deplorable episode of violence," the bishop's office said in a statement.

Bishop Demetrio Fernandez Gonzalez of Cordoba is a new hard ass bishop installed in February and is not allowing Muslims to do a prayer thing in the museum attached to his cathedral.

If you look at the picture above the ancient Mosque of Cordoba once occupied all the interior space of a flat roofed mosque. No airy space but good solid bones of beautiful architecture. The cathedral got plopped down in the middle of the Mosque. The mosque as an indoor space is not part of the cathedral. In fact, the former kings used the mosque space as office space and part of the royal court for conducting business.

Like most RC houses of worship with historic importance in Europe, you have to pay a fee to see the architecture of belief in God in another age. Is there belief in God these days by the owners of this once sacred Real Estate? I have to wonder.

The conflict arises these days when tourists, Muslims in particular do not want to wander through church property labeled as museum space when a growing Muslim population would like access to a part of their religious heritage.

Escudero said a space for Muslim prayers would not inconvenience visitors or disturb the cathedral and would promote dialogue and understanding between the two religions. He said there were frequent incidents of Muslims being prevented from praying.

"They argue that canon law does not allow Muslims to pray there, though they have been happy to permit visiting Saudi princes and other dignitaries, including Saddam Hussein, to pray," he said.

"A new bishop was appointed recently and one of his first public statements was to say that Muslim prayers would not be allowed as this would create confusion," he said. "It seems the guards have instructions to prevent prayers with violence, if necessary."

Cathedral authorities reiterated their ban on prayers. "The shared use of the cathedral by Catholics and Muslims would not contribute to the peaceful coexistence of the two beliefs," the statement from the bishop's office said.

There’s that “Confused” word being used again by the Catholics. They used it in Father’ Breslin’s parish in Boulder Colorado where two children of gay parents would be “confused” by church teachings on homosexuality and the entitlement to salvation only to heterosexuals.

Now mere belief in one God would no doubt “confuse” catholics if they see that a world, a whole universe is saved within the Muslim part of the spectrum and without the use of Roman clergy.

Get a life. Get tolerance. Get sincere belief in your own belief system and stop issuing PR reports about interfaith dialogue when you lock the house of God off to believers in God.

...my house shall be called a house of prayer for all nations. ISAIAH 56:7

Words do not count in faith. Actions do!

excellent conversation - - Christian and Muslim

An Excellent conversation and video dudes, between a Christian and a Muslim.

We could both be wrong about God: Jesus

Perverted Corporate Culture of Vatican

The name Jesus was quite common in first century Judea. So too the name of Mary was quite common. So common in fact that in recent light of the corporate culture of the Vatican and the hierarchy it selects and appoints as bishops makes me wonder.

I have to wonder which Jesus founded the church of Rome? Was it Jesus the moneychanger? Was it Jesus the Pharisee? Jesus the high priest? Or was it Jesus the poor country preacher?

On an aside, I look at somebody like the Dalai Lama, the head of a religious sect, he imitates the founder which would be Buddha. The various Muslim sects and their Imams would seem to at least look like and act like the seventh century political and religious founder. Who does the pope imitate except maybe a crony high priest of the secret Personality Cult of Constantine?

The crowd at the Vatican in terms of corporate culture are more like the U.S. Congress, totally out of touch with the common voting constituent or in the Vatican’s case, out of touch with the common faithful. This, as in the case of the current clergy sex abuse scandal rocking the European RC church structure.

There is enough being said in the Press about this current scandal that reaches right into the CEO’s office. I am not as eloquent or as precise as some British Articles I have read in the past few days. I believe British interest has to do with the proximity to Ireland. The truly shameful breakdown of humanity amidst the closeted confused sexuality of clergy and hierarchy breaks my heart.

It no doubt is true that the Brits were insulted by this little pope, who once swore allegiance to Adolph Hitler, and threatened a hostile take over of the Church of England in recent months. Such is the nature of corporate cultures and so too the nature of a still free press to react.

The Brit Press is doing a bang up job that I cannot remember the American Press doing in decades – not since Watergate I think. As I said, I do not want to write much more on this subject except to say that as I started life in the ranks of the common faithful of that church, I feel for the people on the ground who have kept faith with the message of Jesus in spite of the queer aspects of their hierarchy.

The RC church will survive. Though I would say that even if they lifted celibacy today, it would take fifty years for the institution to recover any legitimate claim to moral authority, with reference to these recent and ongoing scandals.

We are witnessing something historic in these current scandals in each European country. We are witnessing the implosion of a corporate culture that took over Christianity after the fall of the Mother Church in Constantinople in 1453 when it fell to the Muslim Turks. This is a corporate culture that has existed these past five hundred years through wars, corruption, reformations, counter-reformations, and an aversion to common sense and or science.

Like the aftermath of Watergate, many, many books will now be written and this period dissected in post mortem of the situation.

As such I have to make a statement here. I have partially defended Pius XII in my blog saying not positive things but things in partial defense of his actions towards some Jews, real or imagined, during World War II and the Holocaust.

I withdraw all statements regarding that pontiff. I have come to the conclusion that considering the preset corporate culture of the Vatican, the corporate culture of the Vatican 1939-1945 was no different than it is today.

Pius XII or his Vatican cronies could not have saved one Jew in World War II intentionally. By default maybe but not intentionally. It is not in the nature of the corporate medieval beast of the Vatican to do so.

I say this knowing that thousands of Jews were saved by the simple humanity, some of simple faith in the RC church, and of people on the ground of all faiths and creeds simply because it was the human thing to do. It was the right thing to do. It had nothing to do with Canon Law.

The Vatican in WWII could not save a single Jew. This, in the same light that the buggered hierarchy of the RC church exists only for its own pleasure and prestige - a real institution uncovered and exposed in this current round of scandal.

An institution that could not save a single catholic child from perversion and buggery could in no logical sense have saved any outsiders, past or present, including Jews.

Follow-up on Malaysia Situation

This is follow-up to religionist tensions in Malaysia. I ran into an Associated Press article being run in the New York Times.

Malaysia Minorities Fear Islamization in Allah Row

The dispute has spawned attacks on 10 churches and has hardened a long-standing sense of alienation among the non-Muslim minority, threatening 40 years of ethnic peace and stability that underpins Malaysia's economic success.

Tensions rose further Thursday after lawyers representing Christians in their legal fight for the right to use ''Allah'' discovered their office had been ransacked and a laptop was missing. Also Thursday, a church in the southern state of Johor was found to have been vandalized with red paint…

The nation's current policies on race stem from violent riots in May 1969 in which Malays attacked the generally more prosperous Chinese. The government responded in part with an affirmative action program for Malays in jobs, housing and other areas. There are exclusive schools and colleges for Malays, while minorities fight for limited university places under the program.

I recommend you read the article to gain some insight into that present sitution.

In my opinon, I think the present breakdown in civility between cultural and religious parties in Malaysia has to do with three basic things.

One, is that the economy is bad. Marginal economic parties always lash out at what are perceived to be competing groups for jobs, food, shelter.

Two, the local Islamic culture of Asia is swept in the global awaking of Islam. This awakening is a two edged sword. The ugly edge part is international jihad in the form of a political movement called al-Qaeda. The other side of the sword is one of cultural awareness and bringing new meaning to an ancient belief system.

Third, when Malaysia formed in 1957 as a multi-cultural country, it along the timeline gave native Malays preferential treatment in education and government jobs and other things. The remaining minorities of Chinese and Hindu have had to go overseas for higher education feeling slighted in that area.

The bottom line is that the temporary vision, the pragmatic social contract of the making of a post-colonial modern Malay State is unraveling. Chinese, Hindu and the Indigenous populations wants more equality in Malay Society.

On the Indigenous side and in two provinces on the northern side of the Island of Borneo, five hundred miles from the Malay Peninsula, is where Christianity is taking hold. The RC church and it's request to legally use “Allah” as acceptable usage under Malay law for G-D in a local indigenous regional catholic newspaper is the tip of the iceberg - and what recently sparked ethnic religious hate crimes.

Part of the original social contract of 1957 makes it mandatory that all majority Malay citizens be Muslim without exception. If you become privileged in this social equation you give up freedom of religion which is perhaps an alien western to them concept but not unlike Medieval Europe where the Church was the only official religion in town.

Bridging the gap to a future global society means having to ask how to build that bridge in an acceptable fashion with sacred/secular fused, mixed and secular societies.

The Republic of Singapore had been briefly opted into the Malay state around 1963 and then opted out in 1965. From my own research I know that Singapore which has a majority population of Chinese ancestry people did not feel comfortable as part of the Malay nation equation.

I doubt that the Malay majority population will give up any constitutional privilege very easily. The future on Malaysia I think is that majority population not be introduced to the concept of religious freedom as much as allow freedom of thought and religion to be a factor in binding the nation up into a more civil, tolerant and better glued together society.

Suicide Virgin Humper Tries to Blow up Plane in Detroit

Some fool Arab wanted to blow up a passenger plane over Detroit. You say he isn’t Arab. The money for this Al-Qaeda bullshit is from Arabia – that is all I have to know.

Christ! You blow up a plane over Detroit, who would notice – it’s Detroit!

And to kill two hundred and eighty odd strangers plus crew for some weird religion – bizarre. Human sacrifice is obsolete - it is the sign of a very primitive superstitious idol worshipping religion. And I thought American Fundamentalists were weird. Religious weirdoes of the world – get your heads out of your asses!

There are an awful lot of lonely Muslim guys in desperate need of virgins in Paradise out there that want to blow up other people in order to get at the real good out of this world stuff.

I am sick and tired of foreigners who come into a country, eat our food, use our institutions of higher education and then leave with a bad attitude or chip on their shoulder and want to blame us for their failings and inadequacies as a people or as part of a culture.

Apparently the worshipers of the Prophet guy who think they are superior and just don’t get western civilization had better sit down and think twice if they want to live on my planet.

Freud or some other lunatic said it best when you can peg these guys as transferring all their hostilities they have for their parents, their native culture, their native land or native religion and do not have the courage to challenge what is wrong there and come over here to punish us for their inferior local culture.

You don’t see us running over there to eat their food, use their institutions of higher learning etc. What is wrong with that formula? Am I the pig or are you? Oink. Oink.

Until the Muslims look into the mirror darkly in terms of a spiritual sense, their staged pretense at being a religion as a key into a spiritual realm is quite iffy if you ask me. Well you did ask me. You are reading this.

Stay in the forest, desert, jungle – eat your own shit and leave my precious western civilization alone. We have been building this civilization for at least ten thousand years.

We have enough problems trying to cope with the good and bad of modern day life without having to look over our shoulders for losers from Islam that think suicide is a good thing – FECK OFF!

If you cannot act like human beings, then try to pretend to be part of the brotherhood, sisterhood of mankind. If you do not have love in your heart for your fellow human beings – who needs you? I don’t!

There are enough losers in the west without putting out a welcome mat for the likes of your suicide virgin humpers.

We have to live on the same planet. We have to share many of the same resources on this planet. It is simply bad manners to keep acting like the worst thing around and still think your religion is the end all in belief systems. Well it ain’t!

Your shit stinks just like mine. Get a life. Get a belief system that is not a fantasy and an excuse to hate, maim or kill!

Have a nice and not a bloody day you ugly fanatic so-called Islamists.

Happy Human Light Holiday - 2009

The so-called War on Christmas did not have much energy this year. Everybody is recycling lights and decorations, those lucky enough to still have their own home. The economy and the massive PR efforts on politics in Health Care legislation has exhausted any patience or tolerance for additional nonsense about the right way to celebrate Christmas – the right talk and the right walk etc. this year.

Indeed Senator Coburn’s recent Prayer on the United States Senate floor to pray for God to strike down Senator Byrd, 92, in a wheelchair, to not make it for a rare One A.M. Senate vote on Healthcare says it all to me about the mean spirited Grinch like love of GOP "Christ-Inane-ity".

The War on Christianity is a self inflicted wound like flagellation. The more you beat yourself, the holier you and your cause becomes? Yeah right.

The War on Christmas is largely I think a time killer on entertainment news which in the Bush years would not dare investigate or report misconduct in government.

Make an artificial enemy out there and blame them for America not being as white or as Christian as it used to be.

Ran into an interesting article about how many foreign born or non-Christians deal with “the December Dilemma” because they do not celebrate their cultural or religious holidays in December.

For many, December's a dilemma

"We definitely had a little bit of anxiety in childhood," Tarin said. But that changed as he grew up and refined his American Muslim persona amid the American atmosphere of diversity and tolerance.

Now, where he and his family live in northern Virginia, "we don't celebrate Christmas. We celebrate our holidays" -- pointing, for example, to Eid al-Fitr after Ramadan and Eid al-Adha after the hajj pilgrimage. But he welcomes the goodwill of the season -- the gift-exchanges with non-Muslim neighbors and the requests from schoolteachers to talk about Muslim holidays.

And

Interfaith couples celebrate their diversity during the Christmas season. Jeff Silver, a certified public accountant who is Jewish, and Shweta Gupta, a dentist who is Hindu, are planning their marriage next year. They will have an interfaith household and said they hope to raise children to understand both of their traditions. At their home in Atlanta, they've set up a holiday tree decorated with Hindu and Jewish ornaments.

And

Non-religious Americans embrace a December "secular holiday" called HumanLight.

Patrick Colucci, vice chair of the HumanLight Committee and member of the New Jersey Humanist Network, said the holiday can uplift "atheist, humanist and nonreligious" people who feel left out and isolated during Christmas.

Which brings me to the Human Light holiday celebrated today December 23. Never heard of it before today. It is a man made holiday by Humanists to make – I won’t say non-believers but perhaps non-conformists – have a day of celebration and gathering in the midst of all the other pagan year end celebrating.

HumanLight

The energy of the diversity of America is sometimes a surprise and delightful.

Happy Human Light Holiday to you all !

(– and that includes Bill O’Reilly and Bill Donahue too. XOXO)

Franklin Graham - Christian Demagogue

We used to have a good tolerance level in this country regarding religious beliefs. Franklin Graham is exhibiting vulgar hate filled demagoguery that was not the hallmark of his Dad, Billy Graham, as I remember him.

Son of Billy now runs the $400 million dollar a year BILLY GRAHAM INC preaching and charity empire. Son wants to measure up??? Is being a bit spastic in his hate filled remarks against Islam. He is not a screaming demagogue but he is a demagogue never the less.

American Muslim leaders want a conference with him to sit down and talk. That ain't going to happen.

Delivering rice in jets to natives in Alaska combined with photo-ops with Alaskan governor S. Palin is about all I know or see of this very well heeled Christian. That and the occasional hate speech.

The taxes not paid by Franklin could feed cities somewhere and not villages elsewhere. I can only imagine that fear is the factor behind his hate laced words and not the true spirit of Jesus. Are the Muslims muscling in on the charity rackets share of the economic pie in these tough economics times?

America seems of late to be turning into one big gangster racket from Wall Street to main street. With tax free religions and tax abated non-profit "charities" as well as the non tax paying new royalty on Wall Street - it all seems to be turning into one big turf war - over power and money - in this country.

The main stream media are bought and paid for by the money changers like Graham. He goes about spewing hate in the name of Jeebu$ unchallenged.

Evil wicked religion: Franklin Graham's attack on Islam

In 2001, Graham stood by remarks he made about Islam at the dedication of a chapel in North Carolina. At that event, he said: "We're not attacking Islam but Islam has attacked us. The God of Islam is not the same God. He's not the son of God of the Christian or Judeo-Christian faith. It's a different God, and I believe it is a very evil and wicked religion."

Graham's ignorance is astonishing. The God of Islam is identical to the God of the Judeo Christian faith. Anyone with the slightest knowledge of comparative religion knows that both traditions worship the God of Abraham.

Whatever happened to the occasional turning of the Christian cheek - Franklin?

He is sweet as honey in this video below - some of his best friends are Muslims - but it is a violent religion? He talks about one small slice of the global Islam.

Any comments from any of you violent Muslims out there?

Minarets Here There Everywhere

I waited for the Swiss plebiscite on the banning of Minarets at Mosques to go off the front page of the news before writing this.

In short, the Swiss, a country with three languages and cultures, German, French and Italian decided that it would be okay to ban Minarets, the Islamic Tower attached to a Mosque, from all future construction in the country. Traditionally the Minaret is a place where Muslims are called to prayer by human voice, Mohammed did not like bells.

There are already four minarets in Switzerland. I don’t know how many Mosques or Islamic Centers there are but out of a population of approximately eight million Swiss, three to four hundred thousand are Muslim. From the news I have read, most of these Muslims are Albanian and many of them refugees more than likely escaped from the Kosovo conflict in the breakup of Yugoslavia of a decade ago.

From what I have read, these Muslims are quite secular, not fanatical. In appearance and dress they are like everybody else.

So what’s the problem? I would have to imagine it stems from the fact that Switzerland has over twenty percent of its permanent and temporary population as non-Swiss born foreigners. The Swiss in a global world are having to deal with cultural shocks that Americans takes mostly in stride with it diverse history and population.

Perhaps a minaret painted or decorated in bright middle-eastern colors conflicts with the dull gray tones of traditional Swiss architecture. In any case, this ban is symbolic of a resistance or a grass roots feeling that change is not a good thing in Switzerland.

Even if Islam is not overtly threatening to the average Swiss citizen, there must be overflow of media from Germany and France where tensions with Muslims exist. The Germans have a large foreign based worker population and in particular from Islamic countries. The French are obsessed with Muslim women wearing traditional headdress in every day society. With the French I have wonder if their attitudes would change if Muslim women wore designer Hermes scarves – oh just a thought.

In all fairness to the Swiss there is no reciprocity in Saudi Arabia where only a few churches are allowed, without bell towers for diplomats and foreign workers only. Even then these plain church buildings are usually out of sight and reached down low traffic streets and alley ways. But the Saudis are not really the issue here.

Europe is changing. The world is changing. Even in the Muslim world, westernization continues in some degree, if only in the use of western style technology and the Internet, even if there is not outward signs of change. East meets West. West meets East and frictions exist.

The picture of a mosque above is of the local one here in Staten Island, not the only one in New York City. The building you see is a recycled factory. The Minaret is non functioning. It is decoration and a recycled chimney from that old factory. Albanian Muslims also escaped here to America from Kosovo. They are European in outward appearance and they have revitalized a dying neighborhood, saving it from urban blight.

I remember after 911, Police cars were parked in front of the gates of this complex 24/7 for a few weeks. The Police were there is insure the freedom of worship clause not directly mentioned but inherently implied in our Constitution. Other than that I do not think many people notice or care that the building is there. It blends in with the rest of a mini-global culture of everyday America.

Day by day and year by year we are all becoming more alike in a Global sense. The ride from here to the future can at times be bumpy. In the future the road gets paved and local customs and habits will still exist but more or more people will be thinking globally and still acting locally. That may seem to be a strange paradigm and dynamic. But that is the likely energy flow of things going forward to a global culture and future.

Mosque of Miriam Paris?

America used to be called the dumping ground of Europe. Europe, now with so many immigrants, will be twenty percent Muslim by 2050 by stats I have seen lately. Nothing outwardly wrong with that unless you fear Islam. (And the GOP vehemently complains about the many Catholics coming north from Meso-America.)

Is it possible to envision the sale of an unused obsolete house of worship like Notre Dame in Paris around 2075 with the plaza outside to accommodate daily Muslim prayers? Anything is possible. Whatever.

Anti-science campaigns by fundamentalists in this country have brought forth a kind of false science with the resurrection of dinosaurs to stand along side Jesus in popular local belief and myth as creationism.

Creationism, by default, would seem to be slipping into Islamic common beliefs or lack of them. It is not that I am campaigning for or against Charles Darwin, patron saint of modern science, but only three or so of twenty-two Muslim majority population countries even touch upon the topic of evolution in their education systems.

Creationism would seem to happen by default by either believing in the literal myth of creation in Genesis or by the lack of any Genesis like text in Islam.

As such, educated scientific minds of all persuasions, Muslim or not, gathered in Cairo this week to discuss the western, European concept of evolution.

Egypt’s Darwin debates

She (Dr. Eugenie Scott) objected to science being viewed through a religious filter and said the two should not be confused. "A biologist who studies enzymes that cause cell division does not bring the Qur'an or Bible into it. It does a great violence to science to run your explanation through a religious filter for this understanding to be accepted."

Lots of uncharted grounds here in the merging of cultures, religions, sciences, myths and human nature.

Islam as a culture carried on basic science while Europe wallowed in the ignorance of the Dark Ages. It would appear that there is at present no real dividing line, concepts set in stone by words, by culture, or in thought about the idea of science or evolution or even the strictest sense of creationism across the Islamic world.

Creationism Gains Ground in Europe

Prof Reiss will tell the gathering that many European nations are yielding to pressure exerted from both East and West in the growth of creationist beliefs, with Muslim immigrants on one side and the importation of Christian fundamentalism on the other…

“What the Turks believe today is what the Germans and British believe tomorrow. It is because of the mass movement of people between countries,” he told The Guardian newspaper yesterday. “These things can no longer be thought of as occurring in other countries.

In London ... there are increasingly quite large numbers of highly intelligent 16, 17 and 18-year-olds doing advanced-level biology who do not accept evolution. That’s either because they come from a fundamentalist Christian background or from Muslim backgrounds.”…

But Prof Reiss said although Islam does not suggest that the world was very young – a tenet of Christian creationism – its texts say different organisms had separate origins.

The world continues to merge in thoughts and deeds. The future global society is one of a mix of many things both of scientific and religious myth.

The future is full of possibilities real, imagined and unimagined. The tidal wave of humanity and mixed ideas are already washing over the landscape in the growing Global Culture. Many perspectives are too close to focus on at present. I do not care whether Darwin or Jesus’ pet dinosaur wins in the end. I will not likely be alive in any case to see that future cultural landscape.

Food for thought.

The 80% Christian

I had mentioned something in one of my previous posts about being of a same mind with some early nineteenth Unitarian beliefs. Not claiming to be any expert on that dogma, here is a quote from John Adams:

"The substance and essence of Christianity, as I understand it, is eternal and unchangeable, and will bear examination forever, but it has been mixed with extraneous ingredients, which I think will not bear examination, and they ought to be separated.” -- John Adams, letter to Thomas Jefferson (January 23, 1825).

I have read somewhere that Unitarians like Adams at that time did not think much of Concept of the Trinity with Jesus being less than a full third - or not being the sharpest point on that triangle. In other words, people then thought that Jesus was definitely more human than divine but that his words and teachings were worth examining and holding onto in a religion context.

So too, I often wonder if the Greco-Roman concept of Jesus as the Son of God, how can he be equal to or just one third at the same time? Thirty three and one third percent does not add up to one hundred percent in my math book. A son is just a son and a father is just a father? Just shut up and label it mystery. Right?

I guess in the strictest sense of Christianity I might be labeled an 80% Christian. I am not going anywhere and have done more research on the subject than the average Joe. I am who I am. I am what I am. And God’s grace in me I do not believe fruitless.

An Episcopalian priest has just been defrocked for trying to believe in two major monotheistic faiths – Christianity and Islam.

This is not an April Fool's joke --- Episcopal Priest defrocked

The Seattle priest first became aware of the Islamic tradition in 2005 when St. Mark's Cathedral invited a Muslim leader as an interfaith guest. Redding was impressed with his prayer which sparked her interest in Islam and eventually lead to her making her Shahada -- Islamic profession of faith - in 2006. This eventually cost her the Episcopal priesthood and forced Bishop Wolf's decisive actions. Basically, the Shahada asks the Muslim to affirm: "There is no god but God and that Muhammad is the Messenger of God."

For almost two years, Bishop Wolf has patiently worked with Dr. Redding to help clarify her mixed religious beliefs and practices as well as her commitment to Jesus Christ through the Christian sacerdotal priesthood as an Episcopalian.

In July 2007, the bishop originally issued a Pastoral Direction to Dr. Redding inhibiting her from all priestly and diaconal duties. In a letter to her priests, the diocesan council and standing committee, the Rhode Island bishop explained why she disciplined the theologically straying Seattle priest...

April 1, 2009 ...Bishop Wolf believes that a priest of the Church cannot be both a Christian and a Muslim. Consequently, as a result of the abandonment of the Communion of the Episcopal Church, Bishop Wolf imposed a sentence of deposition in accordance with the Canons of the Church.

The priest is/was the Rev. Dr. Ann Redding. Her bishop in Rhode Island took the bold step to establish some discipline about something, anything and not focus on the other ugly, ignorant things within the decaying crumbling Episcopal church - like the still current and enthusiastic witch hunt against gays. Anybody got a match?

Perhaps Dr. Redding was at one point a 50% Christian and a 50% Muslim. Perhaps she is right. Perhaps she in wrong in accepting that there is no God but God and Mohammed is one of his prophets/messengers. Or –let me try this. There is no God but God and Jesus is one of his prophets/messengers. She can’t call Jesus a prophet? Can she? He got elevated to godhood in a Greco-Roman cultural context as in Hercules, son of Zeus cultural context. Right?

The more I study about Jesus the more I know he is real and his true message is hidden amidst the baggage and fears imposed on him by the God Emperor Constantine who adopted Jesus as his political arm and son and inducted him into his newly invented Pagan Catholicism.

Constantine was 50% Roman God and 50% Pagan Catholic. Other than that I think a better percentage to describe him was something like 5% Christian in that he may or may not have even bothered to join his own new religion - not even on his deathbed.

Reminds me of the grade school myth told us every year by the nuns about how George Washington went to heaven because he knew that as a Protestant he would go straight to hell. So on this deathbed and delirious as he was he sent for a Jesuit to save himself by conversion to the one truth faith. Believe that? Yeah. Hey I got shares in the Brooklyn Bridge – very valuable in that they are going to start charging tolls there soon.

There is a line in the movie Gandhi (1982) when the great soul (mahatma) talks of religious services when he was a young boy and the person conducting the religious service was quoting from both Hindu sacred texts (Vedas) and the Muslim’s Quran side by side.

From the movie:

Gandhi: “I am a Muslim and a Hindu and a Christian and a Jew and so are all of you.”

Just a movie script but powerful words not unlike the dynamic words of Jesus who if you seek him out – he cuts through all the religious bullshit and cuts the mustard in my book of life. The movie is secular but the message seems sacred. In this presently spinning overloaded technical world, where does the sacred stop and the secular begin? Or is the modern age a centrifuge pulling all similar ideas and things together into one item.

I don’t know where to stand on Dr. Redding’s embrace of another perhaps legitimate faith in the concept of God. I think she is ahead of the curve and the merging of the best aspects of Christianity and Islam and Buddhism is upon us in this 21st century of this magnificent dawning common era of humankind.

I don’t know what is in Dr. Redding’s heart. I do say good luck and good labor opening up a new pathway to heaven for those of us trailing far behind you.

Semantics may temporarily serve the old dying churches in Rome or Canterbury.

Others with true faith and love of God do not care what you call or label him/her/it – There is no God but God.

The thing about spirituality and faith and getting through life on crutches of belief/faith or is it floating on air with wings of prayer – these things are perhaps only perception awakenings (light) and not perception problems (blindness).

A House of Prayer

From a journal – May 2003


...Rushing to my express bus on Fifth Avenue I glanced up the steps into an unused entrance to Saint Thomas Episcopal Church, a structure I have mentioned before in this journal – (a place where I have gone to pray and mediate and admire the unique massive stone altar piece and stained glass)...

I saw a Muslim engaged in his 4th (?) prayer of the day. He was shoeless – white socks on gray stone – I had seen something like this before, at this same spot, on a cold dark winter night at 5:30 P.M. last winter or one winter ago – one loses track of time here in New York –

...glanced before, at that time, and did not pay much attention to that scene – (did not wish to stare or to intrude on prayer which can be both a public or a private thing). (I was also in a hurry to catch my bus). Later I tried to recollect the scene, reconstruct the scene – but the memory did not fit. Was not reminded of it again until today.

I thought that there were stone saint icons on the side of that locked wooden door area. Today, in less darkness, I noticed the angle of the pray-er’s focus. That focus was not in the direction of the stone statues but on stone support columns – round pillars rising up to typical gothic angle – an arabic angle? – a muslim angle? Which came first, the gothic or the...-

Does not matter. I am reminded of this pray-er and Isaiah’s words. “My house shall be called a house of prayer for all nations” Those words more than ever are needed today in this world.

God be praised!...
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