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Sitaram · Site Admin Joined: 14 Sep 2005 Posts: 1079

I have been blogging lately at http://www.progressiveislam.org, is
founded and run by the daughter of the famous television comedian of the
late 1950s and early 1960s, Phil Silvers.

I should mention that I have no affiliation to any organized religion. My
personal beliefs are a syncretistic bricolage of Hindu and Buddhist beliefs,
with some Plato and Hegel thrown in for good measure.

But for years I have been fascinated by the comparative study of world
religions.

Below is an excerpt from my blog there.

I highly recommend this site for anyone who has some interest in a
Liberal view of Islam.

http://www.progressiveislam.org/suicide_turned_inside_out

Submitted by Sitaram on Tue, 2006-07-25 02:23.

I stumbled across the Bernard Lewis Post page while searching for the
origin and meaning of "tin pot dictator" which occurs in the paragraph:

"In modern times, the power of the ruler has been vastly augmented by
these huge revenues so that he doesn't need public support or public
approval of his taxes. It has also been increased by all kinds of modern
devices for surveillance and repression so that any tin pot dictator today
wields far greater powers than were ever wielded by Suleyman the
Magnificent or Harun al-Rashid or any of the legendary rulers of the
Islamic past."

It is curious how our wanderings in search engines may lead us to topics
and goals very different from the initial question which set us off on our
quest.

An acquaintance of mine recently asked me to see the movie "Farhenheit
9/11" and help with ideas for an essay. I was hesitant to see the movie,
because I thought it would be about the actual collapse of the twin towers,
and I felt I had already seen quite enough. I did not realize that it is a
documentary about the political dynamics allegedly at work in the Bush
administration. Since I am in the midst of writing about "Farhenheit 9/11,"
I would value anyone's comments and observations and constructive
criticism.

For me, the most important statement to be made about Michael Moore's
documentary is that it is an example of freedom of speech in a free
society. A film critical of a dictator's regime would earn its author a prison
sentence or a death sentence.

The when I first heard the name of the documentary, "FAHRENHEIT 9/11,"
I immediately thought of the science fiction novel by Ray Bradbury,
"Fahrenheit 451." Bradbury described a society in which all books are
burned. The temperature of burning paper is 451 degrees Fahrenheit.

Bradbury describes a future in which all books are banned and censored
in an attempt to keep the human race from thinking for themselves. This
frightening world is one in which people are controlled by the government
in every way. A number of restrictions are placed upon the people of this
society. One of which is the prohibition of the possession and/or reading
of literature. The firemen of this time are paid not to protect citizens from
the danger of fires, but to burn all books to ashes.

Recently, I was watching one of the many panel discussions which air
nowadays on public educational television analyzing the current climate in
the Arab world. One speaker cited the curious statistic that each year
more books are translated into Spanish than have been translated into
Arabic in the past THOUSAND years. The point he was trying to make with
this statistic is that the Arab world is rather close-minded to new ideas
and isolated from the intellectual life of the rest of the world.

There is no need to burn books which do not exist.

(Ms. Silvers made the excellent point that, since so many in the Arab
speaking world are polylingual, there is not the same necessity for
translation, and therefor this true statistic is misleading.)

One of the major problems with Islamic ideology and theocracy is that it
attempts to force beliefs and behavior upon society with threats of
violence, with acid in the face of a woman unveiled, with public
beheadings and amputations, with the honor killing of a sister by her own
brother.

I do not believe that one can successfully impose moral codes of behavior
with violence and punishment. Such behavior, so disciplined, simply goes
underground. Even in Bradbury's novel, the desire for literature goes
underground, and people commit books to memory to preserve them
from the fire's flames.

Moral and ethical behavior must start from within, from the subjective and
personal sanctum of each person's heart, and flow outward to embrace
society as a whole. Each individual must come of their own free will to
"hunger and thirst" after righteousness, and become a connoisseur of
justice and mercy. Decency is not a spike to be driven into the heart of
humanity as it were a vampire.

If the non-Islamic world were to decide tomorrow that there was no
possibility EVER of living in peace and coexistence with Islam, and that
only ethnocide could preserve world freedom, then could Islam really
complain about their fate? If it is true that the mujadaheen who dies in
defense of Islam gains instant admission to a paradise flowing with rivers
of wine and milk and honey and populated by seductive houri virgins, why
then the greatest service which the world could render to Islam is to kill
each and every Muslim man, woman and child. They would all enter into
Muhammad's paradise in one great rush. Imagine such an orgy of
blessedness, in one fell swoop! Would such a genocide be sinful, or would
it be a supreme religious gift?

War is never moral. At it's best war can only hope to be necessary,
unavoidable, expedient.

Can we be certain that there would never be a scenario in which genocide
is the lesser of two evils? If we say that genocide could never be
sanctioned as a tactic for survival, then why do we endeavor to develop
and test weapons of mass destruction? In fact, it seems to me that the
United States has been a pioneer in developing the technology of mass
destruction. I am told that one nuclear submarine has MORE destructive
fire power than ALL the weapons of ALL five years of World War II (both
sides) combined. If this is true, than a small crew of men on such a
submarine can unleash the destruction of World War II. And there a
number of such submarines deployed around the world. So many little
World War II's quietly circulating the world in the ocean's cool quiet
depths, awaiting the command to surface.

Were we truly horrified by war and killing then we would prefer invasion,
slavery, and death to the defilement of bloodshed. Genuine, sincere
pacifism, in its purest form would choose enslavement or death over
violence.

If faced with the sin of genocide for a year, and the reign of peace and
harmony for 1000 years, versus a thousand years of terrorism and
guerilla warfare with a clean conscience, then which choice do we make?

Lutheran minister Dietrich Bonhoeffer was hanged in 1945 for his part in
an assassination attempt on Hitler. Peace-loving Jimmy Carter praises
Bonhoeffer highly.

What would happen if the Kaaba in Mecca were destroyed tomorrow with
a surgically precise missile strike? Roman forces destroyed the Temple in
Jerusalem in 70 C.E, led by Titus under Emperor Vespasian. Judaism
survived the destruction of their one and only temple by evolving a
different mode of worship. Islam would survive the destruction of the
Kaaba, I am certain, but the Islam which survived would be a different
Islam from the Islam we have known for centuries. In the "Sayings of
Muhammed," which are preserved by the oral tradition of the Hadith,
there is a prediction that the Kaaba will one day be destroyed. You may
read of this in a paperback entitled "The Sayings of Muhammed" (ISBN
0-88001-641-8), translated by Neil Robinson, (Ecco Press), on page 27, a
saying of "prophet" Muhammed concerning the Kaaba: "The person who
destroys the Kaaba will be "Old Thin Legs", an Abyssinian."

Masada today is one of the Jewish people's greatest symbols. Israeli
soldiers take an oath there: "Masada shall not fall again."

Masada was the scene of a mass suicide of Jews circa 72 C.E. They took
their own lives rather than fall into the hands of the Romans. Was it really
such a bad choice? How many alternative choices were open to them?
Today, Israeli solders swear their oath of allegiance at the side of the
Masada suicide. Is the suicide of Masada really genocide turned inside
out?

Sometimes we make the enemy go away by making ourselves go away.
Sometimes we make the enemy go away by killing every man, woman
and child, so that the enemy becomes a bad and distant memory.
Suicide? Genocide? <b><u>Genocide as suicide turned inside
out?</u></b> Think about it. Imagine two mirrors face to face, reflecting
each other in perfect symmetry. The Romans facing the Jews, the Romans
bent on genocide and the Jews resigned to suicide. Suicide and genocide
are the same thing seen from different angles.

Elazar ben Yair's final speech, as recorded by the historian Josephus, was
a masterful oration:

"Since we long ago resolved," Elazar began, "never to be servants to the
Romans, nor to any other than to God Himself, Who alone is the true and
just Lord of mankind, the time is now come that obliges us to make that
resolution true in practice.... We were the very first that revolted [against
Rome], and we are the last that fight against them; and I cannot but
esteem it as a favor that God has granted us, that it is still in our power to
die bravely, and in a state of freedom. Let our wives die before they are
abused, and our children before they have tasted of slavery, and after we
have slain them, let us bestow that glorious benefit upon one another
mutually." Elazar ordered that all the Jews' possessions except food be
destroyed, for "[the food] will be a testimonial when we are dead that we
were not subdued for want of necessities; but that, according to our
original resolution, we have preferred death before slavery."

And you, dear reader, what is your choice? Do you choose death as a free
man over life as a slave? Or, do you turn the problem inside-out and
choose the evil of genocide, bartering your immortal soul for the hope of
a world free of terrorism for future generations yet unborn?

It is ironic that my two closest Internet friends are a medical student in
Tehran, and a writer in Pakistan. Both of these friends feel ambivalence
toward Islam, and yearn for things , cultural things, that are not readily
available in their own countries. I am reminded of a young Muslim woman
who contacted me about 8 years ago, with religious questions. She was
dying with cancer, and felt plagued with doubts as to the true religion. I
should mention that I myself, raised in the USA with literally with no
religion, have become over the years more Hindu-Buddhist in my own
beliefs. Anyway, I shall find our correspondence and post it. Her screen
name was Yankin. One day, she messaged me to say that things were
getting much worse. Then, I never heard from her again. I am sure she
passed away.

When I was 18, I read Lawrence Durrell's "Alexandrian Quartet". His
many scenes from Islamic life prompted me to purchase Mohammed
Marmaduke Pickthall's "The Meaning of the Glorious Koran" and read it
cover to cover, looking up any unknown word in the dictionary. I still have
that copy. Durrell's scene where the businessmen hire a blind muezzin to
recite Qur'anic passages which brought them to tears was the scene which
made me quite curious what this religion might be all about.

I am sort of rambling here, without aid of a spellchecker, since my time is
limited this morning. I remember watching Huston Smith on PBS
educational television, narrating a documentary on world religions. He
mentioned that he was raised Methodist (I think, or Presbyterian) and that
he would remain with that, but that he had adopted Sufi practices. He
quoted the 5th Surah, verse 48 as being one of the most interfaith
sentiments (paraphrasing from memory) "If I had wanted to create all
peoples as one religion, I could have done so, but for my own reasons, I
created you all as different religions. So if you must compete with one
another, compete in doing good works, and when you return to me, I shall
explain the reasons for the differences in religions." Of course, the very
next verse (52 I think) said "Do not be friends with Christians and Jews.
They have each other to be friends with. He who is friends with them is
one of them and Allah does not help wrongdoers." (again paraphrased
from memory).

I want to post here my correspondence with Yankin, and also my very
first "debate" in Yahoo with a Muslim who approached me in a religion
chat room in 1998. He assumed I was a Hindu in India, and made some
rather strong accusations against me, but I came up with a surprising
rebuttal which theologically, is quite interesting. I am not trying to "throw
something" in anyone's face, though I appreciate how Muslims must feel
in this regard. If some of the things I think and feel are unpleasant, yet I
am certain there are many in the world who hold even more unpleasant
feelings and attitudes, and yet do not, for various reasons, put their
thoughts and feelings into words and publicize them. It is healthy for
everyone to put their "cards on the table" and be honest and open. I
spent much time, from 1998 through 2000, on line, debating both with
Protestant Christian fundamentalists and also with Muslims. I made many
painful criticisms of Protestant Christian theology, yet never once received
a threat. My criticisms of Islam earned me many threats; emails telling
me that I would be tortured, and even one adolescent in AOL who
announced that he would burn my house down. If you search the Internet
for the very earliest artifact of Christianity, you will find that it is a
cartoon, a graffiti, on a catacomb wall, depicting Christ on a cross, with
the head of a donkey, while someone kneels and prays before it.

http://www.religionfacts.com/jesu...llery/200_alexamanos_graffito.htm

The caption of the cartoon is "Alexamanos worships his God." One may
compare that with the recent controversy over the cartoon of Muhammed.
I have a notion to write a piece comparing Salman Rushdie and "The
Satanic Verses" with Kazanzakis "The Last Temptation of Christ." Both
books were considered insulting by devout worshippers. Yet, to my
knowledge, Kazanzakis never feared for his life. Perhaps I am mistaken
on this point. I have also written something which compares Rushdie with
Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens), who was certainly blasphemous in his
religious satire. I must say, I admire the Sufis and the writings of Idres
Shah. I once visited an Islamic bookstore which carried everything Sunni,
Shia, Sufi, even encyclopedia sets of Hadith. In the Sufi section there was
one book which argued that Rumi and Ramakrishna were kindred spirits.
Of course, Hallaj was the first Sufi martyr, and was martyred by orthodox
Muslims for expressing himself in the fashion of Ramakrishna. Thank you
for the tolerance to welcome me here and allowing me to express myself.
I sincerely believe that it is possible to discuss even the most painful and
sensitive of matters in a civil or even eloquent fashion, if one chooses
words carefully enough.

I had my very first "debate" with a Muslim, named Titanium, in a Yahoo
religion chat room, around 1998.

He presumed that I was a Hindu in India, and he flamed/trolled me with
allegations that Hindus rape lower caste women. My rebuttal was to point
out that, in the Hebrew Genesis account, it might be argued that Hagar
had no freewill consent in the matter of Ishmael's conception.

I offer this not to debate these theological points but to illustrate how
tensions began to arise on the Internet in the late nineties between
Muslims and non-Muslims. The more aggressively I was attacked on-line
by such Muslims, the more hostile I became, and the deeper I dug into
the Qur'an and Hadith to find ammunition for rebuttal and counter-attacks.

In those times, I used a similar style of refutation against the aggressive
attacks of Protestant fundamentalists, who would attack in the same
fashion as Titanium, my Muslim interlocutor. I wanted to hold up a mirror
to those Protestants, to show them how ugly they are in their rhetoric, and
how they might equally well be perceived and portrayed as evil in their
doctrines and practices.

This was all in the days before blogging. I may possibly have been one of
the first to post such debates on the Internet in a regular fashion, using
simple html and a free Geocities website. Perhaps I am mistaken and
there was someone to beat me to the punch, but I like to think I was
among the first to engage in such posting activity.

Here is an excerpt from what I wrote, which mentions my correspondence
with the young Muslim woman in Malaysia, who died of cancer. posted

Sunday, November 25, 2001

I have tried to be very honest in my writings over these past three years.
I have spoken often of "equanimity", a balanced and even-keeled spirit
which is able to face fortune and misfortune alike with the same calm.
Now that I am faced with my own mortality, I cannot say that I fully
possess that same calm equanimity which I have praised and
recommended here in these writings. I will also confess that frequently
suicidal thoughts pass through my mind. The only thing which has really
kept me going through difficult times, emptiness, loneliness, a sense of
worthlessness and despair... the only thing which has kept me going and
given me strength is the daily participation in these dialogues and
monologues. When I read and write on the internet in this fashion, I
project my mind and spirit out of this miserable body and its
circumstances and into a world of ideas, of philosophical and theological
drama and suspense. I am WITH Socrates and Gandhi and Ramana
Maharshi and Mother Theresa, and many many others. I am in their
company and I participate in their adventures and pastimes. And, I am
with ALL OF YOU, the readers. I have your association and fellowship.

The writings of Viktor Frankl, "Man's Search For Meaning", also contain
invaluable advice for those who suffer. Frankl speaks of "that which has
been rescued to the past". My early childhood, for example, had many
delightful aspects to it (though their was some slight amount of loneliness
and illness and suffering which seemed so burdensome at the time, but
now seems relatively insignificant). Well, that childhood experience of
mine has now been "rescued to the past", in the sense that nothing can
erase it or take it away from me. Whenever one is confronted with an
inescapable, unavoidable situation, whenever one has to face a fate that
cannot be changed, e.g., an incurable disease, such as an inoperable
cancer, just then is one given a last chance to actualize the highest value,
to fulfill the deepest meaning, the meaning of suffering. For what matters
above all is the attitude we take toward suffering, the attitude in which we
take our suffering upon ourselves. We who lived in concentration camps
can remember the men who walked throughout the huts comforting
others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in
number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken away
from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms -- to choose
one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.
We needed to stop asking ourselves about the meaning of life, and
instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by
life-daily and hourly. . . . Therefore, it was necessary for us to face up to
the full amount of suffering, trying to keep moments of weakness and
furtive tears to a minimum. But there was no need to be ashamed of
tears, for tears bore witness that a man had the greatest of courage, the
courage to suffer. ...I deem it to be a remarkable fact that man, as long
as he regarded himself as a creature, interpreted his existence in the
image of God, his creator; but as soon as he started considering himself
as a creator, began to interpret his existence merely in the image of his
own creation, the machine. Nothing and nobody can deprive us of what we
have rescued into the past. What we have done cannot be undone. This
adds to man's responsibleness. For in the face of the transitoriness of his
life, he is responsible for using the passing opportunities to actualize
potentialities, to realize values, whether creative, experiential, or
attitudinal

I would like to express thankfulness and gratitude for the miracle of the
INTERNET, which has given me this rare opportunity for three years to
stand on a soapbox and address the world, or at least, anyone in the
world who has some interest in these matters and who stumbles across
one of my pages in a search engine. The Internet and free website space
and software has made a GREAT contribution to freedom of speech. It is
also a miracle that for only the past 100 years or so have so many of the
world's ancient writings been translated into popular languages and made
available at a low cost or even free, to a large segment of the worlds
population. Also the miracle that so many people around the world have
HAD THE OPPORTUNITY to receive an education, become literate, and
read those books.

A few years ago, I was sitting in a large bookstore at a table, and a native
African came and sat at the same table. He had a copy of the Qur'an AND
a copy of the Bible. I could not resist the temptation to ask him WHY he
had those two books, and what he was looking for. He explained to me
that he was raised Muslim in Africa, but never learned Arabic and did not
understand what the Qur'an really said. He felt doubts about the truth of
religion, and he wanted to compare the Qur'an and the Bible, and sort
things out for himself. Universal education (literacy) and inexpensive
books and free libraries make such personal inquiries possible.

My thoughts frequently go back three years ago, to a young woman in
Malaysia, in her early twenties, whom I met in a Yahoo religion chat room.
Her screen name was Yankin. She was dying of cancer. She had been
raised Muslim, but was experiencing doubts and uncertainty as to which
might be the "true religion". She wanted to question and explore. At that
time, three years ago, I was not so outspoken in my criticism of Islam. I
did not try to influence her in any one direction. I simply listened. We
corresponded frequently over a period of several months. She finally
wrote to me that she had settled upon Islam, and found some peace of
mind. I respected her choice then, and I still respect it today, despite my
criticisms of Islam. One must respect the choices of the dying which give
them peace. Her last email to me indicated that she was suffering greatly.
She was quite constipated, and could not have a bowel movement for a
week at time. When she did try, she experienced much bleeding.

We should feel gratitude each and every day for the simple humble
miracles of normal kidney and bowel function. We are not always
conscious of and thankful for the "paradise" which such bodily functions
give us, but we certainly become conscious of the HELL AND TORMENT
which we experience when such normal bodily functions fail. Yankin
mentioned that she was traveling to a different city to try some "alternate
medicine", naturopathic, homeopathic. People become desperate at the
end and will try anything. I am quite certain that she died shortly after
that last email. I remember you, Yankin! We never met. All we had were
words on a screen. But we communicated, and shared something of our
souls. This is the miracle of words! With words on a screen, we can share
our souls, and those words may live on, long after our bodies are gone,
sharing our souls with others. This is the miracle of "The Flesh Become
Word".

I was so fascinated by Mr. Hasan's post (though he points out he is not the
author of the idea), namely, that there is room in Islam to forge a
practice of non-violence based on the words of Abel to Cain, as recorded
in the Qur’an.

I love playing around with theology in such a fashion.

I watched a long Bill Moyers documentary on PBS television on the
Hebrew Book of Genesis, with a discussion panel that included a Muslim
woman, as well as a Roman Catholic, and Episcopalean, a Rabbi, etc.

The first remark of the Muslim woman was, "Well fortunately, I do not
need to deal with any of these issues in Genesis, since my Islamic faith
rejects these scriptures as corrupted." (paraphrased from memory, but
that is the essence of what she said.) So I realize that no devout Muslim
will seriously debate anything from foreign scriptures.

I am close to age 60, and I don't think that anyone is likely to convert me
to Islam, or any other religion, at this stage of the game. I have
personally come to see all organized religion, being a human creation, as
something corrupt and corruptible, though I respect the need that others
feel for such organized religion and authority figures.

I am intrigued by the dilemma between "progressive Islam" which, if I
read between the lines means some attempt at "reform", and the position
of interpreters of the Qur'an that it is set in stone and not subject to
reform or interpretation.

In a sense, I see the Sikh religion as a 16th century attempt by Guru
Nanak to reform Islam as well as Hinduism, and unite them as well, into a
form of monotheism purged of the faults of both religions.

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