I was reading an article in Foreign Policy magazine titled "A World Without Islam". Graham Fuller, who used to work for the CIA, describes how the Middle East would have turned out to be if Islam have never existed, if no Prophet Muhammad was born, if Quran have not been there, and if more than one billion people who are Muslims now would have been followers of other religions.
Fuller does a good job in trying to figure out how history would have been shaped. After a few pages of interesting and thought-provocative read, he comes up with a conclusion: the world would have witnessed, more or less, the same conflicts that are present this day. Middle Easterns, whether Muslims or not, would have resisted the crusades and the invasions by the Western civilisation. I will not write in details how he reached this conclusion, but he gave plenty of examples of how many conflicts this day could have occured, and might have even been worse even if Islam was not present. He described how most major tragedies were not caused by Muslims.
Yesterday George Habash died. I may not agree with all what he have done in his life, but I'm pretty sure a time will come when I will miss him. Arabs will miss him, Palestinians will miss him. He dedicated his life to fighting the Israeli occupation and resisting the injustice that have encouraged by the West. Another George is the biggest supporter of this kind of injustice. He lead a war that killed more than 100,000 people and yet kneels on his knees every Sunday and claims Jesus tells him what to do.
I hope we can reach a moment of maturity where we realize that it's not your religion that makes you good or evil. I really hope people will start believing in this fact just like they believe in God. Religion is a powerful tool that can make anything you do or say, whether "good" or "evil", more powerful.
I hope you'll believe.
2 hours ago
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11 comments:
hey,
this is really nice post :)
i do believe too that its not religion what makes us good or bad :)
yea! could not agree more man!
7abbait 7abbait what you wrote. Unfortunately people forget that we share "Humanity" and look for points of conflicts :(
totally true! People just use religion to their own benefits. It has always been a tool
excellent post doc
It sounds like a great book, and I plan to read it... but, I disagree that things would have turned out the same.
You can't really blame Bush for the 100,000 dead because that had more to with Muslim-on-Muslim violence (Sunni, Shia -- car bombings, Al Qaeda, and such) which, goes to show that Islam does play a part in the mayhem.
Totally true, enjoyed reading
anonymoyus, I don't think and I hope you agree that the fight in Iraq is not caused by Sunnis and Shiites who relazied after centuries that they have different faiths and know they want to get rid of each other. The US invasion have triggered this fight, and the militant groups inside are being supported by a few rich people, countries or groups. Yes there are quite a few stupid crazy violent Muslims but there are also quitea few violent crazy followers of other religions as well.
I love the last paragraph, well put!
"Religion is a powerful tool that can make anything you do or say, whether "good" or "evil", more powerful."
A powerful, valid statement in deed!
The US invasion have triggered this fight, and the militant groups inside are being supported by a few rich people, countries or groups.
But there wouldn't be a fight to trigger if the Sunnis and Shiites hadn't be at each other's throats over the centuries.
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