Silhouette
Gold Member
- Jul 15, 2013
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Ok, so the title says it all. I am trying to understand Jihad.
Whenever there is a fight between neighbors, its best to try to get into the head of your opponent to discover what it is that makes him tick; and where he may be coming from in his complaints.
The attack in France was terrible. And there surely will be more to come. Why is that? Let's explore the fundamental differences between the Muslim radical and Western minds.
I'm going to play devil's advocate here. What would possess someone to become so enraged, so furious, so blind with revenge as to walk into a political publicataion office and mow a bunch of people he's never met down like grass? There is something in the mind of a Muslim that has turned into a monster of larger proportions. We all know how a herd reacts. Humans are nothing more than this when a concept whips into a certain "tipping point".
What has whipped into that in this instance into an attack? Well, for starters, the publication depicted Muhammed the Prophet as a figure. That is expressly forbidden in Islam. An individual doing such a thing might be less enraging because who is going to read something an individual did, someone that nobody really knows? Nobody. But when a major publication prints a comic of the Prophet Muhammed, it is assumed that a large portion of Muslims will see it. After all, there are a billion of them.
Let's try to look at the offense from their perspective. The equivalent would be if the New York Times released a satirical cartoon of the Virgin Mary being raped by a donkey. This is how offensive it is to them.
Let me tell you why I believe them when they say it is offensive. I'll try to be brief here. From what I understand of Islam, which is very little, the Prophet Muhammed didn't want to be worshipped. I think he came to correct what the Roman Catholic Church got wrong with the Prophet Jesus. Instead of making the religion about Jesus's words, Rome thought it would be a cool idea to ignore Jesus' own warning not to worship him but to "Hear the words of my Father in Heaven" instead. So Rome thought it would be politically expedient to entice the pagans into the new faith by appealing to their penchant for worshipping idols. So they plaster churches with images of Jesus on the cross, the Virgin Mary...and so it becomes a psuedo cult with all the ritual trappings of the pagan days...yadda yadda yadda.
For all we know, the Hindus may be right. Jesus may have incarnated in Muhammed to set old wrongs to right? Can't be sure.
The offense of depicting any prophet is to dilute his or her message. Humans have this funny genetic mandate to worship an alpha, to set aside common sense even to placate a dominant figure. So this interferes with the proper purpose of religion, which is to inspire a direct connection within each man to the Source of All There Is. The minute you put an image of Muhammed up, there becomes an association in the mind of the faithful. The next thing you know, they are building mosques with the image of Muhammed all over the place and the focus leaves what the man said, and turns instead to "what he looks like"....and "daily rituals" that instead of inspiring deep faith and connection, begin to take on a wooden, unreflective gesture of stoic obedience.
I'm pretty sure this isn't what The Source of All There Is wanted. That Source, from what I've read in the Bible at least, wants people to be free individuals who are immersed in a sea of temptation but who find their inner strength to resist the earthly temptations on their own. I also feel that different cultures are vital in that we do reincarnate and that different souls are in different stages of this hardening. I think this is how we can urge all religions to see that they are all vital in different forms and serve their different stages of learning, like different class levels in school. As I recall, the purpose of life is because God got lonely and wants company. But He wants to make sure that the company he is with is worthy of Himself. Someone he can trust implicitly. Someone who has been so thrust into the fires so many times that there isn't anything left in that soul but pure wisdom. You have to admit, Earth is an ingenius Plan if this really is His true goal.
That's how I see it. But I welcome other perspectives. The main focus of this thread isn't to "bow to terrorists". It is instead to try to understand their perspective. There is motivation behind every madness and we'd do well to understand it. Like I said, from their perspective, the entire hinge of their religion relies upon their Prophet being anonymous. That's where it begins for them. So since Christianity's entire hinge is the Virgin Birth (when you trace it back) that signifies Christ's Words as synonymous with God's words, the equivalent of what the Charlie Hebdoe publication did was for the New York Times to have published a picture of the Virgin Mary being raped by a donkey.
I can see the comparison and the level of disrespect a Muslim might feel. That's called "putting yourself in your opponent's shoes"..
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