Wednesday, October 18, 2006
And Islam's response
38 leading Islamic scholars responded responded to Pope Benedict's recent lecture, in which he contrasts the Christian and Islamic traditions treatment of reason and faith. The scholars correct the Pope on elements of Islamic tradition where he may have been in err and reiterate the principles that Muslims believe. I can only echo Andrew Sullivan in saying that I am stunned to see such a clear statement of tolerant and non-violent principles from such an apparently diverse group of Islamic scholars. In addition these scholars condemn the murder of a Catholic nun in response to the Pope's statements. Would that they go farther and condemn the broader patterns of Islamic violence, such as Al Queda, in the same unequivocal terms. That said this is very interesting reading for anyone interested in understanding the current state of Islamic thought. Hopefully our Christian religious leaders can continue this meaningful dialog.
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1 comment:
Bangert,
Yes i did actually hear about this letter prior to your blog. The worst part is there is such a miss understainding of the islam faith due to the media and there enforcement of there "violent" ways.
Yes they did condem the killing of the nun. Weather they condem Al Queda is another question. The funny thin about a Jihad is that in defined by the quran it is a "holy war" But there are three parts to it:
Man vs. himself
Man vs. God
Man ve. Man
If you know anything about good literature you will see that it has the foundation of what alot of old stories were based upon:
man vs. man
man vs. himself
man vs. nature
Man vs. himself is islams belive that a person can constintaly continue to better them selves and the people around them. One of the flaws as a cathloic or any other modern christian Faith is that we feel like once we accept god were all good. Take a look at Butch Arbin. He is a born again so there for he feels like hes going to go to heaven. And he doesnt try and better the beach patrol, or himslef for this matter. You've seen some of the "illlogical" decisions hes made that were semi faith based?!?
Man vs. god is islams belife that god can help them better themselves by giving themselves up to him.
Man vs. Man is the most intresting one and it is how we have defined our use of the word Jihad in the media. Islam defines it as if they are being oppressed and they are not able to freely express them selves and there religion then they are granted by god to rise up against there oppressors. Im pretty sure that this goes for any religion. Isnt that why the puritans left england? Isnt that why america was founded? We just decided that them practicing there faith near a large amount of oil was a bad place to practice it and they need to go somewhere eles now.
I think the question now is are they being oppressed. Well lets take a look at the stats of not oppressed v.s oppressed:
Taking out the taliban and a faith based government-Oppressed
Taking out Iraq because they had a dictator and trying to instal a government of our own-Oppressed
Telling the gaza strip, after having free elections, that they picked the wrong person there for were going to condone anything that isreal does to you-Oppressed
Ok i think this comment is long enough, and people might actually get the point that we need to be more understanding and come to a mutual respect, rather than trying to force opinions on people that they dont belive in and we do. Besides if you actually go even more indepth with all the religions they all stem from the same area and they all say more or less the same thing. We just take the bad parts and throw them in main stream media in order to tell the people that this is a moraly just war against radicals, when christians have radicals too. Were all radical, lets go catch some gnarly waves. Peace and love
Big Bill
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