This article belongs to Off the Cuff column.
While in college, I studied 'Religions of the world' and was asked during my second semester, to 'student-teach' the class when the professor became hospitalized.
Being raised a Christian, I was fairly well read in the King James version of The Holy Bible, both Old and New Testaments, yet I knew nothing of other religions, such as the Muslims, that had many followers with various Sects. This was in the mid-1970s.
What disturbed me the most was the telephone-book-sized class book mentioned all the major and some minor religions; but yet, not one chapter mentioned Native American religions. Being half-Cheyenne/Irish, I found this appalling, although that is not what I will mention in this article.
I read the English translation of the Koran (Quran in Arabian) twice, from cover to cover, and then I read the most popular biography on Mohammad (Muhammad means "highly praised") I could find. I had no idea that he had first been a noted 'warlord' who took back
It blew me away that the same man who beheaded tens of thousands of human beings could have fallen into God's favor with such a bloody sword.
* A quick note on Mohammad (570 AD - 632 AD) a.k.a. the 'prophet,' who never prophesized a thing: He was on a 'calling' or, a 'sabbatical' to a remote cave where he states that the Angel Gabriel came to him "in a vision," telling him to write the Koran.
Then came his "flight by night," in which a white-steed horse flew him to the
That's the short version, but nevertheless, the truth - in short, admittedly.
The Koran reads like a beautiful collection of poems and prose verses with curious overtones from the Old and New Testaments of the Bible. I paused in reading from time to time.
Within the Mohammad biography, I had read that Mohammad spoke and read Greek and Hebrew and had studied in great detail the Talmud, or the Old Testament as we have come to know it, before, of course, he wrote the Koran. What I found most amazing of all is that the Koran does not teach the killing of innocent peoples. Period.
Ironically enough, in his day, Christians referred to him and his followers as 'infidels.' Nowadays, it is Christians who are the infidels. My, how times have changed.
I wonder what the Angel Gabriel would think about the Koran as read today by the Sects of terrorists who make claims of following the teachings therein. It was in the late 19th and 20th centuries that religions became a 'political' point of philosophic views.
This was also when, and moreover, why religions have become 'political processes' that bear the roots of wars upon wars since the days of Mohammad himself. I cannot fathom a 'God' that would allow or even 'demand,' such cruelties as is believed by these terrorist Sects who base their teachings upon the Koran that not ALL followers of Islam profess to.
Even in the Native American philosophy of their collective religions, God, or 'The Great Mystery' (in
When humans take it upon themselves to 'use' God as the center stone by which their reasoning for wars are fought, God (and His teachings) get betrayed.
Wars are really fought for 'human rights,' whatever the understanding and the reasoning of those 'rights' might be. God is not directing wars. Therefore my children, if you claim to kill the innocent in the name of God you are not fighting a war, or even a 'Holy war' (Jihad) for any other reason but for some capital gain, which is 'a human condition.'
God cares nothing for land, oil, gold, silver, or riches of any kind; if you believe in a God such as the God of over 25,000 religions or more here upon the face of the earth. (Source: World Directory of Religions. According to this book, in 1997, there were 25,000 religions on earth; currently there are about 50,000).
All of them teach that God—is LOVE.
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