What? You think there are dozens of major religions and thousands of sects within them. That may be true when you consider that many people believe in a long list of do’s and don’ts that are peculiar to their particular “religion”. But if you look beyond the creeds and admonitions, you will find that are only two basic belief systems: generosity to others and narrow systems of “we are right and you are wrong”. And all the major religions have many generous believers and far too many hateful believers.
In the third and fourth centuries there were major fights over what the exact natures were of God and Christ. Often these fights were more political than religious, often depending on the belief of the current Roman Emperor. Those who didn’t hold the right belief could be exiled and have their writings burned.
These persecutions of others in the name of Christianity continued through the centuries and into this century.
We have Torquemada, Grand Inquisitor of Spain, who set out to rid Spain of “heretics”, generally meaning Jews and Muslims. He was more merciful than some of his predecessors; he didn’t torture suspects without the testimony of at least two witnesses of “good nature”. John Calvin was instrumental in the burning of Michael Servetus at the stake along with his books. His crime: denying the Holy Trinity. The Ku Klux Klan upheld “Christian morality” by bombing black churches, killing innocent children.
On the other hand, we have many examples of Christian generosity. The Quakers were very active in the anti-slavery movement. Florence Nightingale tended to the wounded and dying in the Crimean War. Mother Theresa cared for the dying in India. Martin Luther King, Jr. called for non-violent resistance to segregation and other maltreatment of blacks and others.
Islam has been called a religion of peace, but human arrogance has subverted it, just as it subverted Christianity. Muhammad had not been dead long before his followers started bickering over who was his rightly heir. If I’m reading the Wikipedia entry on Sunni-Shia correctly, Sunnis believe the leader of Islam is selected by consensus and Shias believe the leadership is inherited by descendants of Muhammad. There are many more differences, many similar to the Protestant-Catholic split in Christianity.
Just like with Christianity, many wars have been fought between these two groups over the centuries. Meddling from “Christian” powers has exacerbated these differences in the last hundred years, opening the old sores of the Crusades. We have Muslim-Muslim violence and Muslim-Christian violence. Shias blow up Sunni mosques and Sunnis blow up Shiite mosques. Sunni Saudi Arabia doesn’t want Shiite Iran to gain to much influence and Iran doesn’t want Saudi Arabia to gain much influence. Into this antagonism is thrown the wild card of Daesh (aka Islamic state). Daesh shows about as much mercy as did the “Christians” mentioned above.
An interesting aspect of the Koran are the injunctions to have proof for your knowledge. This may be why in the Dark Ages of Christianity, Arab mathematics and science were making great strides.
I didn’t have time to check it out thoroughly, but some say that Islam means peace. Google Translate didn’t give me this, but a Wikipedia entry on Islam did say that Islam comes from the trilateral root s-l-m. One of these words is “salaam” for peace. Hm, close to the Hebrew “shalom”.
Charity, especially to the poor, is one of the five pillars of Islam. The word for charity is zakat, which also means purification.
One Islamic charity is the Red Crescent, the equivalent of the Red Cross. I haven’t read much about it recently, but it has been active in disasters.
Two well-known Muslims who come to mind with a more peaceful outlook are Malala Yousafzai and Muhammad Yunis, both Nobel Peace Prize laureates.
Malala is the young Pakistani girl who was shot by terrorists who didn’t think girls should be in school. Fortunately for her and many others, she survived the attack.
Muhammad Yunis is the founder of the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh. The Grameen Bank provides low-interest, small loans to the poor. These loans have allowed many people to start small businesses to support themselves.
We often think of Buddhists as being pacifists. “One’s mind should be free from hurting or harming others” and several other sayings. Unfortunately, down through the centuries, Buddhists have been involved in wars and killing. Think of the “King of Siam”. The news has recently had many stories of Buddhist rioting against Muslims. Of course, the Taliban didn’t help by destroying Buddhas of Bamiyan in Afghanistan.
Unfortunately, this is not a new phenomenon. The first Muslims killed by Burmese were in the 11th Century. In the 17th Century Muslims who fled India after losing a war of succession were killed after a dispute with a Burmese pirate king. Some modern Muslims have fled Burma to Thailand where they have been put in several refugee camps. There are also reports that the Thai military towed boatloads of Muslims out to sea and left them there.
Fortunately, we have Buddhists like the Dalai Lama. A refugee from his own country, he still manages to be cheerful and work to promote peace. He too won a Nobel Peace Prize.
If I put a damper on your Christmas cheer, I’m sorry. But remember that Christmas is a celebration of the birth of the “Prince of Peace”. I hope that the examples I gave of people of different faiths working for peace will give you hope for a brighter future. With our help, the religion of generosity will prevail.
Also in the Reader Weekly, 2015-12-24 at http://duluthreader.com/articles/2015/12/24/6439_there_really_are_only_two_religions
Showing posts with label Buddhism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Buddhism. Show all posts
Thursday, December 24, 2015
Thursday, May 22, 2014
Saints to emulate
“The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones”, Mark Antony, “Julius Caesar”, by William Shakespeare.
Last week I wrote “Criminals hiding behind religion”, those who use religion to justify violence against others, whether physical or mental.
As an antidote I would like to write about a few people who have a view of religion as a way to help others.
What is a saint? Many individuals and institutions have their definitions, exemplary behavior, martyrdom, and performing miracles. I define a saint as one who strives to help others, whether spiritually or physically. It is these saints whose good is not interred with their bones, but lives after them.
Let’s start with the good about Islam in conflict with the bad in “Islam”.
Malala Yousafzai was shot in the head on a school bus by a Talib who didn’t like her promotion of education for girls above the age of 15. She survived the attack and is still promoting education to a much wider audience. Her parents support her. Her view is that Islam is a religion of “peace, humanity and brotherhood.” To her, the Taliban are “misusing the name of Islam” and are afraid of education.
Going back over a thousand years, there is the legendary Rabia. She supposedly ran through town with a torch and a pitcher of water. She wanted to set fire to heaven and quench the fires of hell. She thought people should love Allah without the promise of heaven or the fear of hell.
The Red Crescent Societies in various Muslim countries are part of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. Among recent activities are aid for Syrian refugees.
Jesus may have been a zealot as described by Reza Aslan or the gentle soul of the Beatitudes or some mixture. But we would do well to heed his words about getting along with others instead of harshly judging those who differ with us. He did warn about false religiosity, such as praying in the public square to be seen by others. What would he think of government meetings being opened by prayer? Is that “rendering unto Caesar”?
Erasmus was a sixteenth century cleric and scholar. Although he stayed within the Catholic Church, he was critical of many of its abuses. He was later accused of hatching the Reformation and his books were banned. However, his view was much wider than mere doctrine. For example, “That you are patriotic will be praised by many and easily forgiven by everyone; but in my opinion it is wiser to treat men and things as though we held this world the common fatherland of all.” See Wikipedia for more.
Dorothy Day was many things, a journalist, a socialist, a communist, a labor activist, and a convert to Catholicism. Above all else, she believed in justice and serving others. She was a founding editor of The Catholic Worker from which came a “house of hospitality”, a shelter for the poor where they could also receive clothing and food. These spread into many cities, and many of us know about the Dorothy Day Center in St. Paul.
Mother Theresa is well-known for her “helping the poorest of poor”, but I once read that her hospices had a high death rate. But then I read elsewhere that she was taking in the dying dumped in the street and allowing them to die in dignity.
Quakers and other church groups gave support to the Underground Railroad, a network to move escaped slaves north. What a contrast; slaveowners used the Bible to justify slavery and others used the Bible to justify freeing slaves.
Nelson Mandela, baptized a Methodist, became an activist against apartheid. He was sentenced to life in prison by the apartheid government and served 27 years. Much of his early time was in solitary confinement or at hard labor. Despite this treatment, when he was released and eventually became president of South Africa he didn’t seek revenge but sought reconciliation.
The current Dalai Lama is a man who is easy to like. He is well-known for his wide-ranging generosity on many subjects and his sense of humor. He considers himself a communist and the Chinese Communists as capitalists. That is, he puts workers before profits and would like to see the benefits of enterprises shared and the poor better cared for. On the other hand, he gets along well with all sorts of “capitalists”.
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was born into a Hindu family. In his resistance to British rule in South Africa and India, he practiced non-violence and encouraged others to do likewise. He sought more equity for all – women’s rights, easing poverty, and religious and ethnic tolerance. He helped achieve independence for India, but he could not prevent religious intolerance from splitting his country in two. Sadly, he was assassinated by a Hindu nationalist.
I thought that the Rabbi Hillel gave a two-part statement of basic belief, but I can only find one of these in a quick search. Jesus is quoted as saying the first law is “To love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind”. He was quoting from Deuteronomy. Then “And love thy neighbor as thyself.” Hillel said, “That which is hateful to you do not do to others. All the rest is commentary. Now go and learn.”
Anything in “religious writings” contrary to this last quote is political.
The above was also published in the Reader Weekly of Duluth at http://duluthreader.com/articles/2014/05/22/3416_saints_to_emulate.
Last week I wrote “Criminals hiding behind religion”, those who use religion to justify violence against others, whether physical or mental.
As an antidote I would like to write about a few people who have a view of religion as a way to help others.
What is a saint? Many individuals and institutions have their definitions, exemplary behavior, martyrdom, and performing miracles. I define a saint as one who strives to help others, whether spiritually or physically. It is these saints whose good is not interred with their bones, but lives after them.
Let’s start with the good about Islam in conflict with the bad in “Islam”.
Malala Yousafzai was shot in the head on a school bus by a Talib who didn’t like her promotion of education for girls above the age of 15. She survived the attack and is still promoting education to a much wider audience. Her parents support her. Her view is that Islam is a religion of “peace, humanity and brotherhood.” To her, the Taliban are “misusing the name of Islam” and are afraid of education.
Going back over a thousand years, there is the legendary Rabia. She supposedly ran through town with a torch and a pitcher of water. She wanted to set fire to heaven and quench the fires of hell. She thought people should love Allah without the promise of heaven or the fear of hell.
The Red Crescent Societies in various Muslim countries are part of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. Among recent activities are aid for Syrian refugees.
Jesus may have been a zealot as described by Reza Aslan or the gentle soul of the Beatitudes or some mixture. But we would do well to heed his words about getting along with others instead of harshly judging those who differ with us. He did warn about false religiosity, such as praying in the public square to be seen by others. What would he think of government meetings being opened by prayer? Is that “rendering unto Caesar”?
Erasmus was a sixteenth century cleric and scholar. Although he stayed within the Catholic Church, he was critical of many of its abuses. He was later accused of hatching the Reformation and his books were banned. However, his view was much wider than mere doctrine. For example, “That you are patriotic will be praised by many and easily forgiven by everyone; but in my opinion it is wiser to treat men and things as though we held this world the common fatherland of all.” See Wikipedia for more.
Dorothy Day was many things, a journalist, a socialist, a communist, a labor activist, and a convert to Catholicism. Above all else, she believed in justice and serving others. She was a founding editor of The Catholic Worker from which came a “house of hospitality”, a shelter for the poor where they could also receive clothing and food. These spread into many cities, and many of us know about the Dorothy Day Center in St. Paul.
Mother Theresa is well-known for her “helping the poorest of poor”, but I once read that her hospices had a high death rate. But then I read elsewhere that she was taking in the dying dumped in the street and allowing them to die in dignity.
Quakers and other church groups gave support to the Underground Railroad, a network to move escaped slaves north. What a contrast; slaveowners used the Bible to justify slavery and others used the Bible to justify freeing slaves.
Nelson Mandela, baptized a Methodist, became an activist against apartheid. He was sentenced to life in prison by the apartheid government and served 27 years. Much of his early time was in solitary confinement or at hard labor. Despite this treatment, when he was released and eventually became president of South Africa he didn’t seek revenge but sought reconciliation.
The current Dalai Lama is a man who is easy to like. He is well-known for his wide-ranging generosity on many subjects and his sense of humor. He considers himself a communist and the Chinese Communists as capitalists. That is, he puts workers before profits and would like to see the benefits of enterprises shared and the poor better cared for. On the other hand, he gets along well with all sorts of “capitalists”.
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was born into a Hindu family. In his resistance to British rule in South Africa and India, he practiced non-violence and encouraged others to do likewise. He sought more equity for all – women’s rights, easing poverty, and religious and ethnic tolerance. He helped achieve independence for India, but he could not prevent religious intolerance from splitting his country in two. Sadly, he was assassinated by a Hindu nationalist.
I thought that the Rabbi Hillel gave a two-part statement of basic belief, but I can only find one of these in a quick search. Jesus is quoted as saying the first law is “To love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind”. He was quoting from Deuteronomy. Then “And love thy neighbor as thyself.” Hillel said, “That which is hateful to you do not do to others. All the rest is commentary. Now go and learn.”
Anything in “religious writings” contrary to this last quote is political.
The above was also published in the Reader Weekly of Duluth at http://duluthreader.com/articles/2014/05/22/3416_saints_to_emulate.
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