One of the Washington Post blogs has a post on Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf. Not to make light of an issue that is profoundly sensitive to many people but I have to point out this quote from the Imam:
"I belong to this neighborhood. I am a devout Muslim, I pray five times a day...and I am also a proud American citizen. Let no one forget that. I vote in elections, I pay taxes, I pledge allegiance to the flag, and I am a Giants fan."
I'm sure he wasn't disappointed by yesterday's result.
Showing posts with label Islam. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Islam. Show all posts
Monday, September 13, 2010
Wednesday, September 1, 2010
The Onion: Man Already Knows Everything He Needs To Know About Muslims
The scary part is there are probably a ton of people actually like this…
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
Why aren’t more people talking about this article?
Why haven't more people talked about William Dalrymple's op-ed that appeared in Monday’s New York Times? Seeing as how he's a British historian well versed on topics relating to the Middle East and South Asia, he provides a perspective worth reading about the Sufis that are building the community center. A key passage in the piece:
"[The people against the community center] show a dangerously inadequate understanding of the many divisions, complexities and nuances within the Islamic world - a failure that hugely hampers Western efforts to fight violent Islamic extremism and to reconcile Americans with peaceful adherents of the world's second-largest religion.
Most of us are perfectly capable of making distinctions within the Christian world. The fact that someone is a Boston Roman Catholic doesn't mean he's in league with Irish Republican Army bomb makers, just as not all Orthodox Christians have ties to Serbian war criminals or Southern Baptists to the murderers of abortion doctors."
The sad part is most people don't realize that the animosity against the community center in lower Manhattan is identical to radical fundamentalists Muslims decrying the “Descendants of Crusaders occupying their sacred lands” in Saudi Arabia. In fact, History Channel had a great documentary a few years ago about the Crusades. One of the first acts of the Muslim rulers that retook Jerusalem from the Crusaders was to reopen not just the mosques but also the synagogues and Orthodox churches that were shut down or destroyed by the Crusaders. (Oh, and they left the Catholic churches open too.)
It just goes to show that when a tolerant society bends to the whims of intolerance, nothing good can or will come of it. That’s why conservative columnist Kathleen Parker also supports its construction. As Parker states in her column today, “The mosque should be built precisely because we don't like the idea very much.”
"[The people against the community center] show a dangerously inadequate understanding of the many divisions, complexities and nuances within the Islamic world - a failure that hugely hampers Western efforts to fight violent Islamic extremism and to reconcile Americans with peaceful adherents of the world's second-largest religion.
Most of us are perfectly capable of making distinctions within the Christian world. The fact that someone is a Boston Roman Catholic doesn't mean he's in league with Irish Republican Army bomb makers, just as not all Orthodox Christians have ties to Serbian war criminals or Southern Baptists to the murderers of abortion doctors."
The sad part is most people don't realize that the animosity against the community center in lower Manhattan is identical to radical fundamentalists Muslims decrying the “Descendants of Crusaders occupying their sacred lands” in Saudi Arabia. In fact, History Channel had a great documentary a few years ago about the Crusades. One of the first acts of the Muslim rulers that retook Jerusalem from the Crusaders was to reopen not just the mosques but also the synagogues and Orthodox churches that were shut down or destroyed by the Crusaders. (Oh, and they left the Catholic churches open too.)
It just goes to show that when a tolerant society bends to the whims of intolerance, nothing good can or will come of it. That’s why conservative columnist Kathleen Parker also supports its construction. As Parker states in her column today, “The mosque should be built precisely because we don't like the idea very much.”
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
Christianity vs. Buddhism: What Brit Hume Teaches Us About Ignorance Today
When I started writing this blog, I intended it to be about sports and politics but I knew that eventually I would end up writing about religion, as I did with my last post. Religion is a topic I've always been fascinated by both for its ability to generate positive emotions in people and for its all-too-often ability to generate hate and intolerance. Now, thanks to Brit Hume at Fox News, I can converge all three topics into one post.
For those that didn't see Brit Hume's comment on Fox News Sunday, here it is:
Now I can understand Brit Hume's ignorance about Buddhism. Many people vilify Islam for being intolerant and then turn around and often say the same intolerant things except referring to Jesus instead of Allah. Frankly I could never understand Christianity's and Islam's obsession with religious conversions. They often seem like teenagers playing video games trying to score as many points as possible against each other when they should just turn the game off and go do their homework instead.
As far as the Christianity vs. Buddhism argument goes, the striking part is the similarity between the two faiths. As a result, there are many theories about how Jesus visited India and stayed in a Buddhist Monastery in Kashmir during his "missing years" from ages 12 to 29. Some believe Jesus did not travel to India but was influenced by Buddhist missionaries in the Middle East and ancient Greece that came west along the Silk Road. It is recorded that Alexander the Great encountered Buddhist monks and Hindu yoga masters, or Yogis, when he reached India. (The Greeks even had a name for the Yogis, "Gymnosophs", which means "Naked Philosopher" in Ancient Greek.) Emperor Ashoka of the Maurya Dynasty in northern India in the 3rd century BCE sent Buddhist missionaries across the then known world upon his conversion to Buddhism. The bottom line is Buddhist teachers had been in the Middle East and ancient Greece teaching meditation and spirituality for over 200 years before the birth of Christ. Some even theorize that Christianity was really a Middle Eastern adaptation of Buddhism but the message got lost along the way and offer the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas as its proof. On the flip side, if you ask most Buddhists about Jesus, they consider him to be an enlightened being, or a Buddha himself.
Regardless of whether or not you subscribe to any of these theories (remember, just like religion itself, these are just theories that cannot be proven or unproven) the point remains that Brit Hume, like most political commentators on the left and right, spoke from a position of ignorance about the topic on which he was speaking. That is the lesson that we all have to learn from this. You may not like someone else's religion or political ideology or sports team (I'm looking at you Yankee fans; I'm excited about the Mets signing Jason Bay!), but you cannot consider yourself an expert on your position unless you've heard the other positions and given them the consideration they deserve as you would expect them to give to you in hearing your point of view. Brit Hume was not debating someone in the discussion. He was simply giving his point of view based on his own biases and lack of understanding. We can jump off the deep end and criticize him but that misses the point and just leads to more misunderstanding.
My favorite quote (and last point) on this topic comes from Roy Sano, a Buddhist by birth that become a Methodist bishop later in life. "When I converted to Christianity I wondered how I could still be a Buddhist. As time goes by I now wonder how I can be a Christian and not be a Buddhist!" (Jim Willis, The Religion Book: The Encyclopedia of Places, Prophets, Saints, and Seers (Detroit: Visible Ink Press, 2004), p. 82)
On a lighter note, Asif Mandvi captured the Brit Hume incident nicely in this clip from last night's Daily Show:
Thank you for reading my post and watching the clips!
For those that didn't see Brit Hume's comment on Fox News Sunday, here it is:
Now I can understand Brit Hume's ignorance about Buddhism. Many people vilify Islam for being intolerant and then turn around and often say the same intolerant things except referring to Jesus instead of Allah. Frankly I could never understand Christianity's and Islam's obsession with religious conversions. They often seem like teenagers playing video games trying to score as many points as possible against each other when they should just turn the game off and go do their homework instead.
As far as the Christianity vs. Buddhism argument goes, the striking part is the similarity between the two faiths. As a result, there are many theories about how Jesus visited India and stayed in a Buddhist Monastery in Kashmir during his "missing years" from ages 12 to 29. Some believe Jesus did not travel to India but was influenced by Buddhist missionaries in the Middle East and ancient Greece that came west along the Silk Road. It is recorded that Alexander the Great encountered Buddhist monks and Hindu yoga masters, or Yogis, when he reached India. (The Greeks even had a name for the Yogis, "Gymnosophs", which means "Naked Philosopher" in Ancient Greek.) Emperor Ashoka of the Maurya Dynasty in northern India in the 3rd century BCE sent Buddhist missionaries across the then known world upon his conversion to Buddhism. The bottom line is Buddhist teachers had been in the Middle East and ancient Greece teaching meditation and spirituality for over 200 years before the birth of Christ. Some even theorize that Christianity was really a Middle Eastern adaptation of Buddhism but the message got lost along the way and offer the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas as its proof. On the flip side, if you ask most Buddhists about Jesus, they consider him to be an enlightened being, or a Buddha himself.
Regardless of whether or not you subscribe to any of these theories (remember, just like religion itself, these are just theories that cannot be proven or unproven) the point remains that Brit Hume, like most political commentators on the left and right, spoke from a position of ignorance about the topic on which he was speaking. That is the lesson that we all have to learn from this. You may not like someone else's religion or political ideology or sports team (I'm looking at you Yankee fans; I'm excited about the Mets signing Jason Bay!), but you cannot consider yourself an expert on your position unless you've heard the other positions and given them the consideration they deserve as you would expect them to give to you in hearing your point of view. Brit Hume was not debating someone in the discussion. He was simply giving his point of view based on his own biases and lack of understanding. We can jump off the deep end and criticize him but that misses the point and just leads to more misunderstanding.
My favorite quote (and last point) on this topic comes from Roy Sano, a Buddhist by birth that become a Methodist bishop later in life. "When I converted to Christianity I wondered how I could still be a Buddhist. As time goes by I now wonder how I can be a Christian and not be a Buddhist!" (Jim Willis, The Religion Book: The Encyclopedia of Places, Prophets, Saints, and Seers (Detroit: Visible Ink Press, 2004), p. 82)
On a lighter note, Asif Mandvi captured the Brit Hume incident nicely in this clip from last night's Daily Show:
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| The Temple of Hume | ||||
| ||||
Thank you for reading my post and watching the clips!
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
President Obama's Cairo Speech
Here is the full video of President Barack Obama's speech in Cairo on June 3rd:
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