It's a Holy War to the Jihadis! (satire)

In order to fully comprehend what is happening in Iraq, Syria and other parts of the Middle East, let us begin with the Crusades.

How do we explain the Crusades to post-modern society?

That is when Europeans were asked by the Byzantine Empire to defend Christendom from Arabic Muslims, who were "liberating" the Middle East from oppression of Christian "heretics" by the religious orthodoxy and their state collaborators.

This moment in history is and was a clash between religions: Islam versus Christianity.
Yet the actual result of the First Crusades was the establishment of Christian kingdoms run by minor European nobles who lusted for the glory of an imperial dynasty.

Both sides of this conflict in the Middle East did so for the noble cause called "the Glory of God." For sometimes religion is used to distract us from the fact that both sides were in it for fame and fortune.

Please keep that in mind when you hear about the Islamic State being bombed by the US.

It is a religious war for the jihadis. It is not just a terrorist crisis. Rather, it is a moral crisis, a war between decadent secularism and holy Islamism. The irony is, the jihadis may be viewed as a corrupt people operating outside of mainstream Islam.

These jihadis are not really "good' Muslims, but fervent religious fanatics who may be worse than Westboro Baptists hating gays.

It's a holy war for these Jihadis.

In a way, it is no different from the religious right have been co-opted by the GOP in America, the Christian democrats running Germany, and even Vladimir Putin's ties to the Russian Orthodox Church with his ban on homosexuality in Russia.

Ah, those silly end-of-days fanatics need to rein in ushering in the end of the world!

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Originally posted August 20, 2014 at 4:30 PM PDT

The Restorational Faith of Leo N Tolstoy

Russia's most greatest of authors, Leon Tolstoy’s story is that of a bourgeoisie who has amassed riches but felt worthless to the point of melancholia.

Rather than ending it, all he restored a Christianity that was similar to the practices of the Doukhabors, who were Russian peasants who rejected the Orthodox Church priests, icons, and associated church ritual. As well, they rejected the tyranny and oppression of the Russian Czarist government.

Both Tolstoy and the Quakers helped pay the Doukhobors' passage across the Atlantic Ocean circa 1899. Some of them immigrated to Canada.

Sadly though, the Doukhobors ended up being persecuted by BC Premier W.A.C. Bennett, due to their unwillingness to be assimilated into Canadian culture.

Yet Leon N Tolstoy’s Christianity is also a restored Christianity that is practised without the doctrines and dogma of the Orthodox Church from which he had apostatized.

In 1882, Tolstoy first published his four-part series on his faith under the title of A Confession. Originally titled An Introduction to a Criticism of Dogmatic Theology, this series also consisted of "A Criticism of Dogmatic Theology", "The Four Gospels Harmonized and Translated" — the inspiration for "The Gospel in Brief" — and "What I Believe" which was also published in English as "My Religion" and "My Faith".

Because of the Russian Orthodox Church's censorship, the series was banned from publication, being censored in the Russian journal Russian Thought, No 5. So it was later published in Geneva in 1884, and again in Russia in 1906 in the Russian journal World Bulletin 1.

In 1887 it was translated, published and copyrighted by Thomas Y Crowell & Co.

Tolstoy’s restorational faith is expressed in the Introduction to his book, The Kingdom of God is Within You: Christianity Not as a Mystic Religion But as a New Theory of Life. Being restorational in nature, this book should be studied by intellectuals of restorational churches such as the LDS.

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References:

Doukhobor: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doukhobor

Leo Tolstoy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_Tolstoy

Reputation (satire)

So let me get this straight, in certain cultures, there is a tradition such that a man must not visit a young unmarried woman alone lest the neighbours gossip, her reputation tarnished by the rumors, and a mob forms to cast some stones on the woman but rarely punishes the man.

And somebody mistook this for Islam?

Anyone who looks closely at this tradition can tell it is not Islam. Nor is it Judaism or Christianity, even though both Christians and Jews were known to do the same to their women.

What this is is an ancient tradition that was accepted into a religion to control women under the guise of "family honor" or similar weasel words designed to protect the reputation of men at the expense of the lives of women.

Carrying out such a tradition is not democracy but a devilish form of oppression against women that would offend even Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Jesus, and Muhammed.

If I as a Buddhist know this, then why not a Christian, a Jew or a Muslim?

Yet this is the way I have as a kid: once when invited to a girl's place as a boy of 17, I objected to visiting her, saying, "What if the neighbours assumed the worst?" The girl replied "Nothing would happen anyway, so no one cares about the neighbours."

Because of the way I was raised, it was hard for me to visit her if she was unmarried and under 30. This is because before these post-modern times, society would think something was up if a man visited a young woman. Indeed, her reputation could be "ruined" by devilish gossip.

Today, people think nothing of such gossip and make light of rumors, because such talk is not inspired by any intention to protect both the man and the woman, but rather to make both of them look bad, just so the gossiper can look good.

Therefore, when a rumor is aimed to ruin a woman's reputation, it is hypocrisy to make it seem as though the man is some sex god. Such idle gossip is indeed devilish. As well, I condemn mainstream media when it does the same to celebrities.

FWIW IDC about Selena Gomez's chastity nor do I care about Justin Bieber's slide into the festivities that pass for modern life in Hollywood. Nor do I care about what passes for truth as broadcast by mainstream media. It is all propaganda designed to get people talking, so their own lives don't seem boring and dull.

Likewise, how can a religion be beneficial when it holds on to ancient traditions that oppress women in such a way?

A wise man once said "Let those who are without sin cast the first stone." This excludes men and women over the age of majority. Only children ought to be allow to stone that sinner. Surely this is a laughable suggestion, but is apt.

How does stoning make the participants become without sin? For murder is a sin, even when it is excluded as punishment for a crime concocted by rumors. It is a devilish thing to then make an exception to murder as capital punishment for a sin, when the only sin in most Abrahamic religions is to forget God Almighty.

Once does not forget God when one is stoning, for a representative of God commands his loyal flock to stone. It is thus not a sin to kill someone when God speaks through that representative. So then, could this be why Islamists kill? Could this be why David Koresh formed a cult?

And is this why the Hebrews slew Canaanites?

After careful consideration of the concept of such punishment for a sin, I am convinced that the punishment does not fit the crime since it promotes death and also the oppression of women. Additionally, it makes a man seem to be unable to control himself in the presence of a woman. As a result, I would not trust that man in a crowd of women. He could be the death of them yet.

Even so, I am not going to a young woman's place alone even if invited, because society might misunderstand my intentions.