What Really Is A Religious Text?
There are people of the Islamic faith
who will kill you if you burn or deface a book that is the words of the
Koran. That is the sign of an insecure
religion. Killing someone because you
can’t handle freedom of speech means the basis for your belief is weak.
Your belief is something that is
inside of you. What anybody does or says about your religion doesn’t
matter. It only matters what you
believe. Your religion is not some ink arranged a certain way on a piece of
paper. Just as some figurine of a man on
a cross is not Christianity. Symbols
play a very strong part of how one views a religion, that can’t be denied.
Words written on paper can and have
shaped history (see Declaration of Independence, Magna Carta, etc.). When a document or item is mass produced, it
loses that special meaning. The words
can be very important, however, the actual package that contains the words is
just that, only a package. Yes, you
should point out when there are factual misrepresentations of your
religion. But to turn to violence over
it is never acceptable. The big
challenge is the term factual misrepresentation. What is factual with respect to religion is
highly debatable. Did Mohammed actually
write the Koran or is it the interpretation of what people thought they heard
him say? Did Jesus write the Bible or is
it the interpretation of what people thought they heard him say (sometimes
written many years after the fact)?
If you are secure in your beliefs,
someone can do anything to the symbols that represent your religion. If you are
willing to kill someone over the symbols, it means there must be some basis for
the insecurity. Introspection is the
greatest weakness of Islam. What is the
“true” way of Islam? Sunni Muslims kill
Shiite Muslims and vice versa. Each claim
they are the true followers of the faith. But if a follower of that faith would
take a deep look at the tenants that make up the foundation, he/she would see
great contradictions and conflicts. This
is true for Christianity as well.
There is more than enough “factual”
data out there to bring questions to the validity of any faith. However, that is exactly what faith is all
about. To believe in something that does
not have indisputable facts. That is ok,
however, for you to take your beliefs and impose them on someone else is where
conflict comes.
The basic question I would ask anyone
of the Islamic faith would be if he/she would support the first amendment of
the Bill of Rights? That is freedom of
speech and freedom of religion. To be a
citizen of the USA means you will support the Constitution. That also means you
will support the Bill of Rights. That
means you have to accept that people may do things to your religious symbols. Here is the dilemma; you can’t say your
religion takes precedence over the Constitution. Not here, not in the USA. You have to accept freedom of speech and
freedom of religion. You can never justify violence to defend your
religion. If you have to use violence to
defend your religion, it means your religion is not tolerant and you have an
inferiority complex about it.
Islam as a whole needs to have a
massive introspection. You are not the
one “true” religion. No religion
is. You must have freedom to follow it,
however, that also means you must allow others to have different faiths and
views. Others may say and do things that
you may not like; however, someone who is confident in his/her faith can accept
any negative actions.
It all comes back to it is just ink
arranged on paper. That’s all it is.
No comments:
Post a Comment