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Module 1: Quran explains the Quran
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[quote]Hadia I read this story many times. It proves my point that Iblis did not disobey God but, according to him, was confused and led astray by God. God did not contradict it either. This is the question we are facing to day in Pakistan: Should we obey the person of Mush, who is virtually behaving like an almighty, or the law and the Constitution? As a 'jawaab-e-aan ghazal' just read this article appearing in the 'chowk.com': "The 'One God' Religions of Revelation Murad A Baig June 17, 2008 Tags: religion , god , Judaism , Christianity , Islam It is quite amazing that Jehovah, the God of a small band of ancient Jews, who was to later become the model for the God of Christianity and the Allah of Islam, should end up inspiring worship by some 70% of mankind. This `One God’ idea was however so powerful that it quickly supplanted the multiplicity of deities of earlier worship in every land. The earlier animist, pagan or kaffir deities who represented the spirits of the land or the forces of nature were usually benevolent though occasionally malevolent. But they were easily appeased with simple offerings, rituals and sacrifices and seldom had full time priests. These pagans or animists led carefree lives making offerings and sacrifices to the deities they believed affected their lives but having no professional priests to defend their ways of worship quite easily succumbed to the highly committed priests of the Semitic religions especially when they were led by conquering armies. Animist worship in Europe was quickly replaced by a militant Christianity and the rapid spread of Islam later drove animists from North Africa and Asia. The ascendancy of Europe after the 15th century AD saw animism brutally annihilated in the Americas and Australasia. It also quite effortlessly converted many Chinese though it made slow progress in India where there was a strong priestly class to defend indigenous faiths. Until the arrival of Jehovah some 3,000 years ago, people in every land worshipped a multitude of deities that were originally considered to be spirits that inhabited every living and even every inanimate object. Every mountain, rock and river as well as the plants, trees, insects, animals and human beings were thought to have a `Jiva’ or living particle residing within them. The people of almost every land had originally believed that the terrestrial world was owned by these spirits and that Man was an intruder into their realm and had to seek their blessings in order to feed, procreate and prosper. The rapid marginalization of pagan deities is all the more remarkable because Jehovah was not a God that anyone could love. He was a most unpleasant character being jealous, destructive, vindictive, unforgiving, bloodthirsty, petty, capricious, malevolent and only interested in the Jews. On the authority of a few humans like Moses and Abraham, to whom Jehovah was believed to have revealed himself and his vision the Jews were persuaded to believe that he was the only key to their long awaited destiny. The Old Testament shows many human frailties in some including Abraham the founder of all the three Semitic faiths. It records, for instance that when Abraham went to Egypt his wife was so beautiful that he feared for his life. So he claimed she was his sister and prospered by marrying her to the Egyptian Pharaoh. But they were discovered when she was blamed for recurring famines and banished. But believers wanted to have great men as believable conduits for the transmitting the words of god and they were raised to be revered as sacred prophets. This tradition of messianic revelation continued into Christianity and Islam even if the gods of these later faiths were greatly mellowed down. But the God of Jesus or the Allah of Muhammad were all powerful divinities that retained the character of absolute, awesome and intrusive power. This all powerful `One God’ idea was presented as a fearsome cosmic force with the divinely ordained power to control all creation and every little detail of life and behavior and with the ability to miraculously intervene into human affairs. Unlike all the benign earlier deities Jehovah, God and Allah were gods who, their followers believed, had the power to read a worshipper’s innermost thoughts, answer prayers, punish sins and perform miracles like getting the Jews their long awaited `Promised Land’. Thus every childish indiscretion, or even the mere thought of indiscretion, would generate a sense of terrifying guilt. This was used to make followers cower in fear of terrible retribution by the Jewish and Christian priests followed by Muslim clerics who quickly erected high walls of moral laws and rules that promised terrifying consequences for any deviation to `God’s judgment’ in the afterlife. These were to make their followers feel even more guilty, fearful and sinful. Thus the spontaneous joy of pagan worship with music, dance, intoxicants, sex and frivolity was sternly frowned upon and replaced with a dull, somber, hypocritical morality that was paranoid about sin or even the mere thought of sin. But these priests also offered seductive rewards for those who wanted to escape from this menacing web of sin, guilt and fear. Magnificent rituals and religious ceremonies in beautiful places of worship with elevating chanting was a soothing tonic for troubled consciences. Priests offered to alleviate the sins of devotees by prescribing fasts, penances, sacrifices and pilgrimages. This great God was also believed to answer the prayers of the faithful by miraculously banishing sickness, oppression and poverty, assuring victory in battle and fulfilling the personal wishes of the faithful. The pilgrimages and rich donations quickly enriched the priests and their places of worship and religions soon became a very big business with priests claiming to be their God’s sole selling agents on earth. The main reason for the success of the `One God’ idea was its ability to use fear to empower the professional priests enabling them to command the absolute obedience of their followers. The earlier Pagan deities had no full time priests to defend them and those who had worshipped them were mocked and ruthlessly persecuted so that the three Semitic religions with their armies of priests quite effortlessly gained dominance worldwide. But unlike the tolerant pagan faiths the legions of priests in these predominantly male oriented religions could not tolerate the faith of any other. This also suited the rulers who used these new religions as weapons of political dominance with the result that more blood was shed in the name of religion than from any other cause. These priests legitimized their positions with a series of constantly rewritten sacred scriptures. In ancient times the huge difficulties of scripts and writing materials with the need to rewrite them on perishable materials like parchment, bark, palm or papyrus leaves meant that many revisions were inevitable. The result was that each religion had a huge body of such obscure texts that professional priests were also necessary to interpret them. Jesus, whose name was not Christ, had clearly stated that his mission was `but unto the lost sheep of Israel’, meaning the Jews. He had no idea that his vision would later inspire many millions of non Jews. Peter and Paul, who took his message to the `Gentiles’, perpetrated a gigantic heresy to this Jewish tradition by dividing this indivisible God into a Father and Son and later into a Father, Son and Holy Ghost. But the idea of the `all seeing’ One God was now well established. Quite soon the gentle words of Jesus was superseded by virulent revisionists like the authors of the book of Revelations, composed a century after the crucifixion that predicted the Antichrist and Great Beast and a warlike triumph of Christianity that was to make that religion so vengeful and militant. The records of the Crusades clearly show that Islam had been fairly tolerant in its early days. Jews and Christians had lived in security under Muslim rulers in Palestine, Spain and other places in total contrast to the bloody massacres of Jews and Muslims by Christians when they conquered Jerusalem and Spain. Paradoxically the Jezia tax positively helped the spread of Islam because they allowed numerous religious sects to practice their faiths but with the full protection of Islamic law from the local Qazi in exchange for quite a small tax. Till the 7th century AD the `One God’ idea was unknown to Indian religion. The Puranas that had evolved during the thousand years of mainly Buddhist rule from the time of Ashoka to Harshavardhan clearly show that the many tribal people had their own deities without need for Brahmin priests, Brahmin customs and Brahmin prayers that were widely used but there was no Hindu religion. Krishna and Ram had not yet become objects of adoration. Even Buddhism had become encrusted with the numerous local deities and bodhisattvas of Mahayana. Like the Vedic worship of 33 deities it too had now become largely animistic. Many poor Brahmin priests recited a few Vedic hymns at religious ceremonies and a few Brahmin and Buddhist scholars pondered over deeper philosophies that were to later enrich both religions. The `One God’ idea evolved quite recently in India mainly with the new philosophy of Advaitya that overwhelmed many earlier forms of worship and seems to have mainly been the achievement of Shankaracharya (788 – 820 AD). India’s earliest `Sankhya’ philosophy had only believed in two realities of Purush (self) and Prakriti (nature) with the cosmic creator being a very remote entity that would not concern itself with miraculous interventions in the petty affairs of mortal beings. It had believed that Man had an enormous ability to empower himself to achieve his goals by simplicity, discipline, avoiding injury to others and doing good deeds for all living things without any divine miracles. This was also the essential philosophy of Jainism and Buddhism. Although Shankara preached throughout India during his short life so much of his life is encrusted by myth that his true story is difficult to establish. But he had come from Kerala and may have been influenced by the `One God’ idea brought in by the early Jewish and Christian settlers. But this idea was so empowering to the priests that it was very strongly taken up by the Brahmins to make them a huge factor in shaping Hinduism as a religion. A period of vigorous Brahminical revival now followed. Only now was Kulluka’s commentary on the Manusmriti was to reshape and harden the caste system and make it so oppressive. It was only now that the caste of Kshatriyas that had faded out during the long Buddhism period was reinvented to create a proud and powerful cadre of religious soldiers to tame the tribals and enhance Brahmin power. Vedic worship had originally been the simple exchange of sacrifices for miraculous boons through great `Yagnas’ or sacrifices. Though the 33 deities of the Vedas had vanished from popular worship the Brahmin priests continued to chant selected Vedic hymns in the prayers that they presided over. The power of miracles managed by professional priests was now incorporated into a new worship focused on a `One God’ in the form of either Vishnu or Shiv. While their many lesser divine companions like Ganesh, Hanuman, Kuber, Devi or Kali and many local deities were of much less magnitude. It was only now that the masses were enslaved by the new rulers to provide the willing labour needed to build the thousands of magnificent temples that now mushroomed throughout India. These soon became huge revenue earners as the gullible masses heaped their wealth before the deities in transactions with a `One God’ that they believed could miraculously answer their prayers. The new Brahmin power over all other castes is clearly evident from the numerous land grants made to the Brahmins between the 7th and 13th centuries where many huge temples dedicated to Shiv and Vishnu had begun to spread north, east and west modeled on the fine examples from South India. Religion and obedience to the Brahmins now triumphed over the commerce and human creativity that had earlier made India so great. Their power is demonstrated by the paradox that while magnificent temples were raised no great palaces were erected at this time by the very kings who had endowed them. Ritual and orthodoxy now dictated art, literature, mathematics, architecture, the details of sculpture and even military science. Shilpa Shastras codified them into elaborate rituals imbued with almost religious sanctity. Wealth was the poison and arrogant pride the disease that sapped India’s strength. For many generations, the creativity of India had slumbered and then it died. The Turk and Mongol invaders found and easily robbed the mountains of wealth heaped in Hindu temples and it is little wonder that they had so little difficulty in conquering a spiritual country that had lost its material strength.[/quote]
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