Archbishop Of Canterbury Joins Jewish And Muslim Faith Leaders To Declare #WeAreAllHuman
Source: Huffington Post UK
The Archbishop of Canterbury has joined senior Christian, Jewish and Muslim religious leaders from across the country for an inter-faith vigil to "stand together" in support of all minorities suffering in Iraq.
Justin Welby, along with senior faith leaders including Imam Ibrahim Mogra, Ayatollah Dr Sayed Fazel Milani and Rabbi Laura Janner-Klausner, held aloft a banner outside Westminster Abbey with parliamentarians like Baroness Sayeeda Warsi, declaring #WeAreAllHuman for the vigil, which was co-ordinated by World Jewish Relief, Islamic Relief and Christian Aid.
"We show our solidarity with all minorities who are suffering because of ISIS. They are against humanity," Ayatollah Milani said to the assembled crowd.
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“The Qur’an says that if you save one life it is as if you have saved the whole of mankind,” said Zia Salik, Islamic Relief’s National Community Fundraising Manager, saying the charity was working with vulnerable people across the region "regardless of race or religion.”
Read more: http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014/09/03/archbishop-of-canterbury-joins-jewish-and-muslim-faith-leaders-to-declare-weareallhuman_n_5758568.html?utm_hp_ref=uk&ir=UK&utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter
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GliderGuider
(21,088 posts)When your only tool is religion, you see all problems as sectarian.
ISIS is about raw, naked, political power, backed up by irresistible force and a complete lack of empathy.
This is not a religious problem, any more than the Israel/Gaza conflict is religious. It's all about power. Religion is just a convenient rallying-point for the supporters of both sides. As it has always been.
candelista
(1,986 posts)ISIS is about creating an Islamic theocracy. A theocracy is not just "raw, naked political power." It is a religious dictatorship. In an ISIS style Islamic caliphate, "idolators" will be killed, and "people of the book" (Jews and Christians) will have to pay a special tax, leave their gates open in case Muslim travelers need a place to stay, send their kids to Islamic schools, refrain from repairing their churches and temples, and, if struck by a Muslim, refrain from striking back.
That's not about religion?
GliderGuider
(21,088 posts)The envelope is addressed in religious language, but the message inside is one of pure power. Now, the majority of ISIS followers may think it's about religion, but that's not my view. IMO the real point is the effective and irresistible exercise of power. In the USA it's exercised by corporations, in the ME it's religions. Peel back the surface and you find the same power principles at work.
You may hold a different view, I'm not going to object.
candelista
(1,986 posts)Corporations in the US do not seek political power for its own sake. They do it to make money. Similarly, ISIS and other religious crazies do not seek political power for its own sake. They do it to establish their religion. All the evidence points at this. What is your evidence to the contrary?
GliderGuider
(21,088 posts)The principle is closely related to natural selection, and is one of the foundations of life. The rest of it is just the stories we tell ourselves about the reasons for the behaviour.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maximum_power_principle
I view human organizations of all kinds as ecosystem components, where the ecosystem is the broader society or civilization within which they operate. The use of religion by ISIS simply maximizes their ability to acquire and project power. I see this in exactly the same terms as an American corporation using the quasi-religious justification of "free enterprise" as their cover for buying politicians to craft favourable laws that increase their own economic power.
Politics is a story, religion is a story, economics is a story. The underlying motivation is the same - to prevail over competitors. ISIS is just a little more brazen and open about it.
candelista
(1,986 posts)That's a kind of philosophical illness. I'm not here to do philosophical therapy. See ya! 
GliderGuider
(21,088 posts)Excellent diagnosis, BTW! 
cosmicone
(11,014 posts)However, we'll need more than just photo ops.
When will every Mosque have mullahs who will shun violence and preach tolerance instead of the widely held view in the followers that Islam and Q'uraan are so great that everyone who learns about them would automatically convert?
Why not preach that Islam is just one of the ways to practice faith and it is no better nor worse than any other faith?
Turborama
(22,109 posts)cosmicone
(11,014 posts)one of the ancient sayings in Hinduism is "just as water falling from the sky finds multiple routes back to the ocean, prayers directed at any god reach a single destination."
This is why you'll see that Hindus have no problem with having a crucifix amongst their gods and can worship it just as passionately as others. However, they won't worship any deity exclusively and shun the others.
candelista
(1,986 posts)Not a problem for Hindus?
Just another 'stream going to the ocean"?
cosmicone
(11,014 posts)is what I was saying.
candelista
(1,986 posts)cosmicone
(11,014 posts)Visit India and see Hindus and Muslims coexisting well.
The few isolated instances of violence usually get all the publicity but in a country with 900 million Hindus, 190 million Muslims mostly live happily.
candelista
(1,986 posts)I have not personally observed friction between people in the two communities. But the whole history of the place shows an deep underlying friction between them, which has exploded many times in violence. That was the main reason for the partition of the country. It is the main reason for the cold war between India and Pakistan. It's the main reason for the rise of the BJP. If you don't know this, you don't know anything about India.
cosmicone
(11,014 posts)The friction is there between the communities in certain places but not everywhere.
There was no need for a partition. It was a nefarious idea of the Brits to inflict pain on a population that had defeated them and gained independence. The Brits chose the borders -- not Hindus or Muslims and like every other border in the world, the Brits left a legacy of perpetual war.
The "two state" system (one Hindu, one Muslim) is what drives Pakistan to commit atrocious acts because any defeat of Pakistan is seen as a defeat of Islam. This is a fundamental problem and thus balkanizing Pakistan removes religion from the equation and shall improve the lives of people.
India's secular democracy has seen Muslims do well and prosper. Muslims fight in the Indian military, side by side Hindus, Christians, Parsis, Sikhs and Jains - even against Pakistan. Two of India's presidents have been Muslim (Dr. Zakir Hussain and Prof. Abdul Kalam, the latter being the father of India's missile and space vehicle programs.)
The issues of where a thousand year old Hindu shrines were demolished to build mosques will always be touchy such as the Babri Masjid which was built on Rama's birthplace. Muslims were offered a move of the mosque to a nearby land at government expense but the hardliners refused because they want the mosque over a former Hindu shrine. Most peaceful Muslims are on the side of give and take and once the hardliners die off or are no longer supported by Pakistan, things will be much more peaceful in India.
Most of the misconceptions are fueled by Western media and Pakistani propaganda. e.g. Narendra Modi who was supported by a majority of the Muslims in the recent elections and even carried Muslim majority constituencies. However, our Pakistanophilic State department had denied him a visa despite being cleared of any wrongdoing by three separate inquiries.
Turborama
(22,109 posts)That's not how faiths that believe in there being only one god work.
cosmicone
(11,014 posts)However, a slight evolution is sorely warranted.
FarrenH
(768 posts)but since the majority of faiths teach, *as an article of their faith* that theirs is the one true way, your calling out of Muslims, specifically. seems to be rooted in prejudice, even if it's not conscious.
cosmicone
(11,014 posts)However, the faith (I mean some members of it - not all) that is taking the most violent and intolerant actions currently is what my post was directed at.
Next time, when Buddhists form an ISIS-like organization and start killing, raping and forcibly converting, I'll write a post about them.
FarrenH
(768 posts)I say this because I'm reading between the lines and inferring that you may be under the misconception that there's no such thing as a violent Buddhist extremist, as so many in the west do. While in fact there are many examples of said. In WWII Zen monks were swept up in the spirit of nationalism and enthusiastically participated in suicidal actions like crashing planes into ships. In modern Thailand and Myanmar, Buddhist mobs have perpetrated violence against Muslims, while there is a rich history of Buddhists in Sri Lanka violently persecuting Tamils.
In Israel, many Jewish nationalists motivated by both secular and religious motives (although only the latter has bearing here) have lapsed into a virulent and now openly racist nationalism responsible for countless innocent deaths. And I'm sure I don't have to describe how much violence and hatred fundamentalist Christians have and still do perpetrate in various places. The Lord's Resistance Army is responsible for terrible atrocities in Uganda (as well as kidnapping and indoctrinating children to commit those atrocities). Female genital mutilation is also common in some Christian communities in East Africa, but we somehow see this as a Muslim problem, coming out of Muslim articles of faith (it doesn't). And don't get me started on numerous American domestic terrorists - almost all Christian fundamentalists - who are time and again portrayed as lone madmen rather than Christian terrorists, which many of them are.
Hence my inference. When talking about Buddhist or Christian or Jewish or Hindu extremists, I never hear sweeping demands for their faith brethren elsewhere to make their distaste for religious violence known, yet somehow that always follows hot on the heels of any Muslim violence anywhere.
cosmicone
(11,014 posts)i.e. Buddhists in Thailand, Myanmar, Sri Lanka or Jews in Israel can be construed as self defense and reactionary. (You may disagree)
I know from history of India under Muslim rule, starting with Mohammad Gaznavi to Babur to Aurangzeb interspersed with Shaheen, Ahmad Shah Abdali, Nadir Shah, Malik Kafur and the various Nizams has been of extreme violence against Hindus and Buddhists with rapes, murder and forced conversions spanning over 500 years. So what ISIS is doing today has already been done in India for 500 years. There was no Wahabbism back then - it was plain, non-denominational Islam with a fervor. Thousands of Hindu shrines were desecrated and idols mutilated which remain testament to that period today.
Fortunately, the Hindus and Buddhists survived and were not swept up like in Malaysia or Indonesia but when I see ISIS doing what it is doing, I know for sure that it must be stopped at all costs or millions of people will eventually suffer.
This is why I welcome the opposition to ISIS by moderate and liberal Muslims everywhere because ISIS's existence will end up affecting them far more negatively than anyone else. I saw a rally by moderate Muslims in Norway in opposition to ISIS and it was extremely refreshing indeed. I have been seeing the same thing from my Muslim brothers in India who oppose Pakistani terrorism. Mullahs in Mumbai actually refused to provide funeral services to the 26/11 terrorists saying they engaged in un-Islamic acts. Coexistence is going to be key to the future and we all need to accept it, keep our religion restricted to our homes and places of worship and not bring it in politics, governance, labor and any other place where it doesn't belong.
candelista
(1,986 posts)The Wahhabists (Al Qaeda, the Sauds, ISIS, et al.) have been attacking Islamic shrines and mosques for at least 300 years. It is in no way surprising or novel that mainstream Islamic clerics oppose them.
Earth_First
(14,910 posts)candelista
(1,986 posts)
kwassa
(23,340 posts)in England?
I guess gays are not quite human enough for him.
