Basically this is the sequel to my last pissing off patriotism post. I'm sorry i have been off for a while...was a bit busy.
Anyways, lets get started
Amoon On Religion:
Religion is a funny thing. Some people believe that religion is (or was always) just a means of mental adaptation and survival for human beings. Throughout time, human beings made up different religions (i.e Greek Mythology, South Asian forms of religion, Holy Religions...etc) to have some sort of explanation of what was going on around them.
As a born Muslim, i believe in about 30% of what my parents taught me -- just saying, not proud of it..haha. Unlike many other Muslims, i do not only respect the "Holy Religions" (Islam, Judaism, Christianity), but also other religions such as Buddhism, Hinduism, Zoroastrianism...etc. Look, i am not saying i BELIEVE in everything in these different religions -- actually i don't believe in many things in my own religion -- but what i believe in is that a human being is made to seek knowledge from everywhere, no matter how this knowledge may conflict with one's own; and somehow i have constantly found that (although my knowledge is very limited), religions are more similar than different. They kind of complete each other in many ways but only have some differences depending on the cultures, countries, regimes...etc they were interpreted in.
I believe that human beings are self-interested, and because of that self interest, religions are not only interpreted differently, but also somehow cut up into different sects in order to fulfill those self interested needs (then, of course, come the blind followers who share those same needs)...
The previous is just a summary of what i think of religion; but how i see religion is a completely different thing. Being that i know a bit more about the monotheistic religions, i am mostly going to talk about my views on those, and in order not to offend anyone i will try to generalize this as much as possible.
One of the things that always confused me was: if we believe in a God who is Omnipotent, All-Seeing, All-Knowing, Perfect in every way...etc, why do we also tend to think that, with all of this omnipotence, comes the pettiness of judging us on small differences.
- I don't think God cares about whether i pray in the Maalki, Shaafe'i, Hanbali, or Hanafi way (these are different sects of Sunni Muslims).
- I don't think God will judge us on how many mistakes we make, but rather how much we learn from them.
- I think God just cares about how we preserve and take care of ourselves in order to preserve take care of others; how we, his creations, cooperate....WITHOUT the need for any form of authority other than Him, our conscious and subconscious.
- I think that as long as we are good to ourselves, and good to other people, then i guess we're fine. By good, i mean NOT backstabbing, betraying, maligning, abusing, hurting, bullying, disrespecting, degrading and most importantly JUDGING other humans.
- I think the worst thing a mere human can do is to judge other people because of religion, beliefs, sexual orientation, race, nationality, job, wealth...etc. (Although we all enjoy the racist jokes every once in a while, I think God would understand if we're actually being serious or just trying to make a connection through humor).
I see religion as more of a phenomenon which is built throughout life and experience, rather than something fixed since one is born.
When i call myself not religious, it is not because i am detached from my religion; it is only because i want to show what i actually think of my religion...meaning: i am not religious in your typical everyday way.
When i say i am not a believer, it does not mean that i do not believe in God.
I am just not a believer, if being a believer means:
- i believe in any "divine" crap, which is fed to me by people who are seeking power rather than spreading knowledge.
- i blindly believe something in my religion, without asking more questions about how or why i believe in it.
- i do not respect other religions and strive to learn from them as much as i strive to learn more about my own religion
- i pray everyday, while hurting people right after prayers. I would rather not pray, but help my fellow human beings and in turn helping myself becoming more spiritual. To me, i think doing what God asked us to do (be good, build Earth, seek knowledge) is more of thanks to Him than just praying all the time and not being productive.
- i do not take every single moment, emotion, experience, mistake, movement, event, as a way of God loving us rather than 'judging' us.
- i judge other people, thinking that i have the right to do that.
- i do not listen to and respect other people's opinions, views and beliefs if they completely clash with mine.
- i believe in war with WMDs rather than competitive knowledge.
- i believe in jihad as a means of killing innocent people, rather than a struggle between me, myself and society.
- i respect martyrs who die at war more than people who die on their beds with their children, grandchildren and family around them.
When i said in my last post (Part 1) that my views of religion were getting more and more fixed by the day, i meant that the more knowledge i gained, the more i understood how great God really is and how we have degraded the actual meaning of God.
Of course these are only some of the points on religion i have, but still...i want to know how people have become so arrogant and selfish (as opposed to self interested and cooperative), that they actually complicate what God has asked from us, when it is so simple -- basically being a good human being and investing in ourselves, other living things and Earth -- and then these people actually have the balls to threaten us with God's punishment in hell.
Religion is supposed to be a different experience for each and everyone of us, that's what makes us so complete. With these different interpretations we generate ideas, knowledge and diversity. One must complete a fellow human's ideas and thoughts, not attack them. If one's thoughts were actually wrong, then God would not have allowed them in our heads in the first place...because He does not create anything which is less than perfect.
I apologize if this was pissing off, i tried to articulate it as much as possible because i understand this is a pretty sensitive topic...especially in this part of the world.
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