Most religions extant today have had a
"Reformation-like" experience.
The Jews have had to deal with not having a temple.
The Protestant Reformation came out of the Catholic hegemony.
The Catholics themselves have had Vatican councils that have changed
the church tremendously.
The Orthodox are making changes too in all of their various flavors.
Hinduism has changed as you state below.
Buddhism I don't really know much about, but I don't think that it has
remained static since its foundation.
The exception: Islam. It is basically where Mohamed left it when he
died, if not worse.
David
“There is no difference between communism and socialism, except
in the
means of achieving the same ultimate end: communism pro
“There
is no difference between communism and socialism, except
in the means of achieving the same ultimate end: communism proposes to
enslave
men by force, socialism - by vote. It is merely the difference between
murder
and suicide.”--Ayn
Rand
Dr. Ernie Prabhakar wrote:
Hi Billy,
On May 21, 2009, at 6:09 PM, [email protected] wrote:
We could go round and round about this
forever.
But let me simply say that my argument follows
Ibn Warraq's scholarship in his 1995 book,
"Why I Am Not a Muslim."
Fair enough, though even his book seems to make one of the same
arguments I'm making -- at least from the review I read:
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/ibn_al-rawandi/review.html
The fanatic who thinks that all unbelievers
should be killed has just as much authority as the Sufi who thinks that
all religions are true and that even atheists go to heaven. Both
parties could adduce Quranic texts and hadith to support their
positions, and both would be drawing, in their own minds, upon the
immutable word of God. As Ibn Warraq observes: `Even if we concede that
Muslim conservatives have interpreted the sharia in their own way, what
gives us the right to say that their interpretation is the inauthentic
one and that of the liberal Muslims, authentic? Who is going to decide
what is authentic Islam?'
Doesn't that argument also work in reverse: who is to say that the
fundamentalist interpretation is correct, and the liberal
interpretation inauthentic?
If Islam is really so self-contradictory, then it seems that exogenous
cultural factors and tradition may play a huge role in how it is
interpreted in practice -- and those are amenable to manipulation even
if the Quran itself is not.
I completely agree that Islam is not "self-redemptive". Unlike you,
though, I see traditional Hindusm as having been equally static and
corrupt (albeit in different ways). I realize that widow burning, child
prostitution, and casteism may not seem like real "Hindusim" to you,
but the brutal truth is that Hinduism condoned and reinforced such
practices until Christianity came to Britain. It is only after conquest
and exposure to Christianity that Hinduism experienced major social
work and reformers like Gandhi.
Maybe Islam is more deeply corrupt that Hinduism was, but that doesn't
mean it is impossible for some level of redemption.
To be sure, it may well be true that the time and effort involved may
be prohibitive. But then again -- given my Mafia analogy -- it is
hardly obvious that your propposal is a guaranteed success, so it seems
at least worthwhile to ask the question.
-- Ernie P.
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