Islam Makes Happy

Life's Purpose and the Truth About Existence

Beginning the Search

· What is the purpose of your life?
· Does it have a purpose?
· Do you want it to have a purpose?
· Can you imagine not existing?
· Do you accept the popular belief that all this just happened?

The world provides more questions than good answers. Anyone who says they have the answer is wrong and this is a very, very popular belief. Yet ultimately there is truth, there is an answer. A good question might be will we ever find it?

I must say I do not believe that all this just happened. The only way to justify our existence is to say that life has been billions of years in the making. The universe is so large; it is so far beyond our comprehension that something amazing could have happened in this vast maybe endless expanse. That something was life. Yet why does anything exist, any matter even the smallest spec of dust or atomic particle? Well existence occurred out of nothing. There was this big bang, but what banged, apparently nothing. If there was ever a desperate theory this is it. Here is the one truth I am certain of, "no one has a scientific explanation for existence." There are actually some very strong reasons to believe we will never find the answers in science. Of course, that does not mean we should not try.

Going from existence of nothing to something is just leap one. The next leap is to go from inanimate matter to life. The odds I am told for life occurring, i.e. some protein (the building block of DNA) by chance are so large to make this essential step virtually impossible. The odds would be greater than winning the lottery one billion consecutive times. Next, you go from some life, like a cell to a living being. Now the final leap is even more significant. You need to go from life to intelligent life.

Therefore, except for one thing, it would be a good conclusion that we do not exist. The one thing is that we do exist! The dreaded alternative is that there is a creator and thus we teach our children that indeed all this just happened. Many dread a creator because that could place limitations on their life. In addition, the most likely scenario would have God being the God of the bible and if true that would mean we were spiritual beings and will never die.

I would like to know the truth. I especially want to know the truth if it matters in some way.

Religion's part in the confusion

Is there a logical path to the truth? Religionists have made a mess of the truth to the point of serious confusion. I conclude religious people would be difficult to believe. In any case, which one would you believe?

Let me try some logic to get to the answer.

If God exists, I will assume He would communicate that to man. Some possible ways would be:

· He could communicate to us in the creation itself, especially if it were spectacular and really beyond our comprehension. In the creation, we could see a creator but that is all we would know. We might decide God was the Sun, or one of the constellations or that there were alien beings behind the creation. We could never know, "which god."

· If God wanted us to know more or if it was important for us to know for some reason, He would have to tell us more, somehow.

One question I asked myself was, "is there one religion that makes more sense than others" or that can potentially be validated. I considered the most logical path would be to eliminate any religion that made no claim to be from God. If it is a religion just created by some men for perhaps the betterment of humankind that would be fine but I am looking for communication from the creator. Well much to my surprise, many religions of the world make no connection to God. Buddhism and Hinduism are good examples. They represent fine ideas, traditions and attract hundreds of millions of people but have no message from God.

The Christmas Humbug

Every day there are new and increasingly depressing stories emanating from the UK about local council PC inspired (political correctness) edicts designed to bring society into line with modern regulations concerning race, religious tolerance and the general clap trap which is thought to promote racial peace and harmony.

The latest and most intrusive of these rubbishy edicts are the council embargoes on the use of a nativity crib during the Christmas plays in schools and kindergartens throughout the land. This ban is supposed to send a message of tolerance to all religious groups that Britain will not offend Islam or any other religious group by the placing of the nativity crib, the traditional symbol of Christ's arrival on earth, at the centre of our children's Christmas programme of activities.

What a load of absolute garbage. I have lived in many countries where Christians are in the minority and have never felt the need to shroud my religion for fear of giving offence. Those who belong to other religions do not generally require that Christians dispose of the symbols of their faith to demonstrate a tolerance for other denominations. On the contrary, the devout of just about any religion, with one or two fanatical exceptions, respect the beliefs of others providing they do not intrude on their own methods of worship.

What we have here, and in sickening quantities, is a mealy mouthed attempt to bind and gag any demonstration of passion and ritual by a small, unintelligent group of civil servants who are by no means representative of the UK in terms of actual public opinion.

Schools should be teaching religious tolerance, not encouraging teachers to crush the traditions of the Christian faith by instructing their pupils that it is unacceptable to depict a nativity scene, or dress a child as a Christmas angel, or to sing carols.

The rituals of any religion should be respected, provided they do not cause harm or unacceptably intrude upon the day to day lives of others in the community.

Jan Gamm writes reflections on life with an emphasis on world travel. She has lived in many countries and traveled extensively in the Far East, the Middle East, America, South America and throughout the South Pacific. She writes for fun and for money whenever she can manage it.

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Europe's New Jews

They inhabit self-imposed ghettoes, subject to derision and worse, the perennial targets of far-right thugs and populist politicians of all persuasions. They are mostly confined to menial jobs. They are accused of spreading crime, terrorism and disease, of being backward and violent, of refusing to fit in.

Their religion, atavistic and rigid, insists on ritual slaughter and male circumcision. They rarely mingle socially or inter-marry. Most of them - though born in European countries - are not allowed to vote. Brown-skinned and with a marked foreign accent, they are subject to police profiling and harassment and all manner of racial discrimination.

They are the new Jews of Europe - its Muslim minorities.

Muslims - especially Arab youths from North Africa - are, indeed, disproportionately represented in crime, including hate crime, mainly against the Jews. Exclusively Muslim al-Qaida cells have been discovered in many West European countries. But this can be safely attributed to ubiquitous and trenchant long-term unemployment and to stunted upward mobility, both social and economic due largely to latent or expressed racism.

Moreover, the stereotype is wrong. The incidence of higher education and skills is greater among Muslim immigrants than in the general population - a phenomenon known as "brain drain". Europe attracts the best and the brightest - students, scholars, scientists, engineers and intellectuals - away from their destitute, politically dysfunctional and backward homelands.

The Economist surveys the landscape of friction and withdrawal:

"Indifference to Islam has turned first to disdain, then to suspicion and more recently to hostility ... (due to images of) petro-powered sheikhs, Palestinian terrorists, Iranian ayatollahs, mass immigration and then the attacks of September 11th, executed if not planned by western-based Muslims and succored by an odious regime in Afghanistan ... Muslims tend to come from poor, rural areas; most are ill-educated, many are brown. They often encounter xenophobia and discrimination, sometimes made worse by racist politicians. They speak the language of the wider society either poorly or not at all, so they find it hard to get jobs. Their children struggle at school. They huddle in poor districts, often in state-supplied housing ... They tend to withdraw into their own world, (forming a) self-sufficient, self-contained community."

This self-imposed segregation has multiple dimensions. Clannish behavior persists for decades. Marriages are still arranged - reluctant brides and grooms are imported from the motherland to wed immigrants from the same region or village. The "parallel society", in the words of a British government report following the Oldham riots two years ago, extends to cultural habits, religious practices and social norms.

Assimilation and integration has many enemies.

Remittances from abroad are an important part of the gross national product and budgetary revenues of countries such as Bangladesh and Pakistan. Hence their frantic efforts to maintain the cohesive national and cultural identity of the expats. DITIB is an arm of the Turkish government's office for religious affairs. It discourages the assimilation or social integration of Turks in Germany. Turkish businesses - newspapers, satellite TV, foods, clothing, travel agents, publishers - thrive on ghettoization.

There is a tacit confluence of interests between national governments, exporters and Islamic organizations. All three want Turks in Germany to remain as Turkish as possible. The more nostalgic and homebound the expatriate - the larger and more frequent his remittances, the higher his consumption of Turkish goods and services and the more prone he is to resort to religion as a determinant of his besieged and fracturing identity.

Muslim numbers are not negligible. Two European countries have Muslim majorities - Bosnia-Herzegovina and Albania. Others - in both Old Europe and its post-communist east - harbor sizable and growing Islamic minorities. Waves of immigration and birth rates three times as high as the indigenous population increase their share of the population in virtually every European polity - from Russia to Macedonia and from Bulgaria to Britain. One in seven Russians is Muslim - over 20 million people.

According to the March-April issue of Foreign Policy, the non-Muslim part of Europe will shrink by 3.5 percent by 2015 while the Muslim populace will likely double. There are 3 million Turks in Germany and another 12 million Muslims - Algerians, Moroccans, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, Egyptians, Senegalese, Malis, or Tunisians - in the rest of the European Union.

This is two and one half times the number of Muslims in the United States. Even assuming - wrongly - that all of them occupy the lowest decile of income, their combined annual purchasing power would amount to a whopping $150 billion. Furthermore, recent retroactive changes to German law have naturalized over a million immigrants and automatically granted its much-coveted citizenship to the 160,000 Muslims born in Germany every year.

Between 2-3 million Muslims in France - half their number - are eligible to vote. Another million - one out of two - cast ballots in Britain. These numbers count at the polls and are not offset by the concerted efforts of a potent Jewish lobby - there are barely a million Jews in Western Europe.

Muslims are becoming a well-courted swing vote. They may have decided the last election in Germany, for instance. Recognizing their growing centrality, France established - though not without vote-rigging - a French Council of the Islamic Faith, the equivalent of Napoleon's Jewish Consistory. Two French cabinet members are Muslims. Britain has a Muslim Council.

Both Vladimir Putin, Russia's president and Yuri Luzhkov, Moscow's mayor, now take the trouble to greet the capital's one million Muslims on the occasion of their Feast of Sacrifice. They also actively solicit the votes of the nationalist and elitist Muslims of the industrialized Volga - mainly the Tatars, Bashkirs and Chuvash. Even the impoverished, much-detested and powerless Muslims of the northern Caucasus - Chechens, Circassians and Dagestanis - have benefited from this newfound awareness of their electoral power.

Though divided by their common creed - Shiites vs. Sunnites vs. Wahabbites and so on - the Muslims of Europe are united in supporting the Palestinian cause and in opposing the Iraq war. This - and post-colonial guilt feelings, especially manifest in France and Britain - go a long way toward explaining Germany's re-discovered pacifistic spine and France's anti-Israeli (not to say anti-Semitic) tilt.

Moreover, the Muslims have been playing an important economic role in the continent since the early 1960s. Europe's postwar miracle was founded on these cheap, plentiful and oft-replenished Gastarbeiter - "guest workers". Objective studies have consistently shown that immigrants contribute more to their host economies - as consumers, investors and workers - than they ever claw back in social services and public goods. This is especially true in Europe, where an ageing population of early retirees has been relying on the uninterrupted flow of pension contributions by younger laborers, many of them immigrants.

Business has been paying attention to this emerging market. British financial intermediaries - such as the West Bromwich Building Society - have recently introduced "Islamic" (interest-free) mortgages. According to market research firm, Datamonitor, gross advances in the UK alone could reach $7 billion in 2006 - up from $60 million today. The Bank of England is in the throes of preparing regulations to accommodate the pent-up demand.

Yet, their very integration, however hesitant and gradual, renders the Muslims in Europe vulnerable to the kind of treatment the old continent meted out to its Jews before the holocaust. Growing Muslim presence in stagnating job markets within recessionary economies inevitably generated a backlash, often cloaked in terms of Samuel Huntington's 1993 essay in Foreign Affairs, "Clash of Civilizations".

Even tolerant Italy was affected. Last year, the Bologna archbishop, Cardinal Giacomo Biffi, cast Islam as incompatible with Italian culture. The country's prime minister suggested, in a visit to Berlin two years ago, that Islam is an inherently inferior civilization.

Oriana Fallaci, a prominent journalist, published last year an inane and foul-mouthed diatribe titled "The Rage and the Pride" in which she accused Muslims of "breeding like rats", "shitting and pissing" (sic!) everywhere and supporting Osama bin-Laden indiscriminately.

Young Muslims reacted - by further radicalizing and by refusing to assimilate - to both escalating anti-Islamic rhetoric in Europe and the "triumphs" of Islam elsewhere, such as the revolution in Iran in 1979. Tutored by preachers trained in the most militant Islamist climates in Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan and Iran, praying in mosques financed by shady Islamic charities - these youngsters are amenable to recruiters from every fanatical grouping.

The United Kingdom suffered some of the worst race riots in half a century in the past two years. France is terrorized by an unprecedented crime wave emanating from the banlieux - the decrepit, predominantly Muslim, housing estates in suburbia. September 11 only accelerated the inevitable conflict between an alienated minority and hostile authorities throughout the continent. Recent changes in European - notably British - legislation openly profile and target Muslims.

This is a remarkable turnaround. Europe supported the Muslim Bosnian cause against the Serbs, Islamic Chechnya against Russia, the Palestinians against the Israelis and Muslim Albanian insurgents against both Serbs and Macedonians. Nor was this consistent pro-Islamic orientation a novelty.

Britain's Commission for Racial Equality which caters mainly to the needs of Muslims, was formed 37 years ago. Its Foreign Office has never wavered from its pro-Arab bias. Germany established a Central Council for Muslims. Both anti-Americanism and the more veteran anti-Israeli streak helped sustain Europe's empathy with Muslim refugees and "freedom fighters" throughout the 1960s, 70s and 80s.

September 11 put paid to this amity. The danger is that the brand of "Euro-Islam" that has begun to emerge lately may be decimated by this pervasive and sudden mistrust. Time Magazine described this blend as "the traditional Koran-based religion with its prohibitions against alcohol and interest-bearing loans now indelibly marked by the 'Western' values of tolerance, democracy and civil liberties."

Such "enlightened" Muslims can serve as an invaluable bridge between Europe and Russia, the Middle East, Asia, including China and other places with massive Muslim majorities or minorities. As most world conflicts today involve Islamist militants, global peace and a functioning "new order" critically depend on the goodwill and communication skills of Muslims.

Such a benign amalgam is the only realistic hope for reconciliation. Europe is ageing and stagnating and can be reinvigorated only by embracing youthful, dynamic, driven immigrants, most of whom are bound to be Muslim. Co-existence is possible and the clash of civilization not an inevitability unless Huntington's dystopic vision becomes the basic policy document of the West.

Sam Vaknin is the author of Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited and After the Rain - How the West Lost the East. He is a columnist for Central Europe Review, PopMatters, and eBookWeb , a United Press International (UPI) Senior Business Correspondent, and the editor of mental health and Central East Europe categories in The Open Directory Bellaonline, and Suite101.

Until recently, he served as the Economic Advisor to the Government of Macedonia.

Visit Sam's Web site at http://samvak.tripod.com

palma@unet.com.mk

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Religious Intolerance - Is It Necessary?

I've often asked myself why people insist on trying to convince other individuals that their religious views are the right ones. For starters, I would think that anyone who is that certain about holding the ultimate truth would know better than to try to shove it down someone else's throat. Because part of knowing the truth is grasping the understanding that not everyone is ready to accept it. So, the question remains-by repeating the same old broken record, are they trying to convince themselves?

Have you ever wondered why you hold on to your beliefs? Was it something you learned from your parents? Was it something you found during a long journey in search for answers? Chances are it's a little bit of both. But many people find their religious path once they reach a fork on the road, or worst-a dead end. Religion often offers a pillar of faith and a support system to hold on to that faith for good.

From Mormonism to Catholicism, people have found answers to their prayers. And if it has worked for the individual, who are we to judge if their path is righteous or not?

Every belief-system seems to preach tolerance, love for other human beings, humility, and patience. Yet, believers (and non-believers) keep butting heads trying to prove the other one wrong. A man who claims to hold true knowledge of God is not only arrogant but intolerant towards others. He's also forgetting that God did not write any sacred books himself. Although inspired by God, these manuscripts were written by men, and it doesn't take a rocket scientist to know that human beings are incapable of witnessing without judging-this is especially true for men that lived in a place and time filled with violence and injustices. It makes me question much of God's message was affected by human interpretation. And by having such blind faith on what these men prophesized, are we taking the spotlight off the true Creator?

There are gray areas and fine lines when interpreting these sacred books. But I think God would want us to emphasize on the message we all agree on, and try to build a better world from that perspective.

Whether Mary was a virgin, or Jesus was married is beside the point. The message is one of love for one another, respect for creation, tolerance, and kindness. And if the Christians are correct, and there is a second coming of Christ, I don't think we'll be judged based on whether we knelt in front of an image, baptized at birth or in the ocean as grown men and women. I don't think it would really matter to him how many times you've confessed your sins to a priest or how frequently you attended church. If anything, he might ask whether you showed compassion to a homeless person, lent your ear to an alcoholic without judging him, and honored those whose intellectual level do not match yours. And he will want to know how tolerant you've been throughout your life, because it was that lack of tolerance that led to his crucifixion.

If you would like to read more articles written by Klara Wieck, go to HubPages.

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Afraid Of Anything That Is Not Our Own

The New York Times carried an interesting article about religion and difference in today's politics: Mormon Candidate Braces for Religion as Issue. The article deals with the "the argument that [Mitt Romney's] faith [ -- Mormonism -- ] would require him to be loyal to his church before his country. And this criticism of Mitt Romney's viability as a Republican Presidential candidate is coming from -- of all camps --that of Christian conservatives!

I'm not here to support or defend Romney's candidacy, or Mormonism, but to speak to that most human of qualities, that we, as a species, love to segregate our selves.

Yes. Segregate.

The human animal, as a whole, has honed the skill of establishing differences between our selves and the "other," whatever that other may be. The differences we create are grand. There is the Judeo-Christian Old Testament separation of our selves from nature. There are racial divides. There are cultural divides. There are socio-economic divides. There are religious divides. There are religious divides within religions.

In every aspect of a society there are opportunities for people to find differences, and to play upon their differences. This Time article is just another example. We're seeing conservative Christians calling into question the ability of a person from a different sect of Christianity to separate his religious self from his political self.

Senator Oren Hatch of Utah commented in the article "there are still many people around the country who consider the Mormon faith a cult."

What we're talking about is tolerance: tolerance towards others' beliefs; tolerance that seems to dissipate when a pundit or social commentator is able to hide behind the mantle of one zealous group or another.

Having a view on an issue is important. Taking a stand is important. Being able to listen to, understand, and tolerate the view of an "other" is beyond important, and, quiet possibly, the foundation of our creating a TRULY peaceful society.

But where and how does the kernel of intolerance get seeded? Like anything, we develop our intolerance through learned behaviors: watching our parents, watching our friends, taking in the world around us. What's on our TVs and the front pages of our newspapers today? War. Intolerance. An inability to accept others. A break down of discourse.

And what do all of these things feed? Fear. Fear, which is the root of all intolerance. Fear of the unknown. Fear of the unfamiliar. Fear of the "other."

So if so many of these issues of intolerance stem from differences in faith (everything from intra-Christian to Islamic-Christian conflicts), then why don't we show some faith in our selves, show some faith in the God of Abraham (which is the same god of Judaism, Christianity, AND Islam), and why don't we show some faith that the person on the "other" side is just as anxious as we are, and wants the same things we do: health, and the pursuit of happiness.

Let's make some room for the "other."

RJ Lavallee is a freelance writer in Northern California with a background in things ranging from flipping burgers to teaching windsurfing. He makes his living as a communications consultant to Fortune 500 companies.

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Islamic Veil and Democracy

Europe has been frequently confronting the controversy regarding the Muslim hijab (head-scarf or veil) and niqab, one of the essential practices in Islam. As the Muslim population are widespread across the European states, they have been frequently facing hassles regarding the headscarf worn by the Muslim female employees. In Germany, in several states, female teachers have been banned from wearing the head scarves. Two years ago, in France, students attending state-run schools were forbidden to wear the hijab.

In Italy, in accordance with the anti-terrorist law passed last year, it was made illegal to conceal one's features in public, including the wearing of the burka. Britain is yet to resolve the dispute over the head scarves issue. And Turkey, a candidate for European Union membership, which has imposed a "strict law of secularism," vehemently prohibited any women from wearing the veil to the presidential reception during the 83rd anniversary of its foundation on Oct. 29. Turkey, which has made "secularization" the law of the land, is also facing a hullabaloo regarding the ban imposed upon the Muslim veil by the president of the republic.

Accept it or not, though we have left behind many eras of hardships born by human ignorance, many Islamic religious norms, even today, often ascribe to what other people see as a kind of "conservatism." There are also significant examples of moderate Muslim population who have opted for change by coming out of such inflexible customs and blending themselves in with the modern concepts of thinking and living.

We can still see various societies and regimes carrying the values which they say "are taught by the religious aspect of Islam" that portray unfair restrictions and comparatively many more obligations to the people under the sway of Islam. Extremely vicious methods such as honor killings, which are still profound in some Muslim societies, as in Afghanistan, are another cruel truth, often being imposed in the name of Islamic religious or cultural doctrine. Such an extreme form of radicalism, though rare, has rather helped to earn negative judgment towards Islam. However, the efforts taken by the large moderate and sane population of Islam, who are against such barbaric crimes, deserve praise at the same time.

From the viewpoint of the comparatively liberal and democratic societies, it's easy to accept that wearing a veil does discriminate against the female population among their male counterparts, and it could also socially differentiate or somehow isolate the Muslim women from the people of other cultures. A woman behind a veil certainly has to bear discomfort, and her obscurity from the outside world; it limits her interaction with her surroundings. Naturally, it distinguishes herself among her own counterparts, and any onlooker who doesn't have knowledge about the custom would take it as astonishing.

But, beside arguing against such unfair religious norms of Islam, let's also speculate how fair is it to impose "restriction" over one of the "radical aspects of Islam; i.e. the veil or head scarves? The authorities that have imposed such a "ban" would come up with a genuine reasoning that no one has the right to assert their religious privileges that emasculates the democratic rights of other people and secular beliefs. Here, when we seem to favor the democratic and secular freedoms of others, we also need to understand that obligatory methods imposed upon someone not to follow certain religious or cultural aspects is yet another violation of democratic rights. A similar bargain could be for both sides, as it's unjust to force someone to put on a veil, and it may also be unjust to force that person not to wear it.

The Muslim critics who have emerged against the ban on head scarves carry the sentiment that social transformation can't be attained through force. They also refute the saying that heads scarves could "hinder the integration" of the Muslim population into Western or European societies. However, the Muslim critics have blamed the "prejudices" made against them by their non-Muslim counterparts as an obstacle for integration.

It could be a noble attempt to interlace the radical Muslim population into the secular and more open-minded societies. But at the same time, it's worth speculating that it would do more harm than good to force someone to change their religious norms or perspectives. Such forceful tactics would however invite backlash from stern followers, including the radical entities inside them, who could interpret it as humiliation towards their religious and cultural values. As many Muslims already feel less privileged among their European counterparts, a feeling could also emerge as this being another attempt to prove their religious doctrine inferior or as a disrespect posed towards the whole Muslim community.

Toxic and radical norms of any religious doctrine, be it Christian, Hindu, or Muslim, need to be changed so as to abide by the basic principle of human rights. But forceful interference would create just another hassle, and the example is the hostile reaction caused by the Muslim population over the "ban." What would be effective is to educate and encourage the communities influenced by such religious fundamentalism. After all, time itself would eventually change any attitude or behavior that goes against the popular belief of the society they live in.

Besides, we also cannot refrain from criticizing the very radical stand of some people in the Muslim community, be it in imposing the seemingly inhumane cultural and religious norms or reacting harshly or violently to any measures which they oppose. The very radicalism and false interpretation of Islamic norms is seen only to earn the community more negative evaluation from their non-Muslim counterparts. Prospects such as tolerance, sanity, and co-existence need to be equally respected by every religious entity, including the Muslims. The example of the significant number of rational Muslims is what these radical groups of Islam should follow, which would indeed respect the value of multi-religious, multi-cultural, and secularism of the modern democratic world.

Religion and Fanaticism

26/11 Mumbai was under siege, some 20 odd young men brandishing AK 47 rifles went on a killing spree at a busy railway station, and five stars hotels killing hundreds. This incident brings back memories of the now infamous 9/11 where a handful of highly motivated, misguided souls took controls of aircraft and banged into the World Trade Center destroying it completely and killing thousands. These incidents again make us realize how susceptible we are in the face of such terror activities, where a group of highly trained and motivated people inflict so much pain and agony to the innocents. The very fact that the actors who perpetrate these acts are ready to die makes them more dangerous, because the very fear of death, the ultimate fear, itself is absent from their psyche and hence they can go to any extent to inflict terror in the minds of people, or they can go to any extent to get the authorities to bend on their knees. The very pertinent example would be the Hijack of Indian Airlines Flight IC 864 to Afghanistan. Their ( Of the hijackers, who were mainly terrorist from Pakistan owing allegiance to Taliban ) demand from the then Indian Government was to get their 20 operatives released from various jails that they were put in and Indian Government had to give in to their pressures as lives of 265 innocent Indians were at stake. The Pilots of the United Airlines aircraft very well knew that their lives will be snuffed in seconds when they saw the world trade center getting larger and larger in front of their wind screens. Their psychology was so strong that with the knowledge of their death in seconds they kept flying straight into World Trade Center.

Unfortunately majority of such terrorist activities are perpetrated by the religious fanatics of Islam. Such tendencies are not limited to Islam alone but it is seen mostly in the abhramic religion ie Islam Christianity and Judaism. I urge my readers not to misunderstand me as I revere all religion as no religion in the world tells its followers to go and kill in the name of religion. In its essence and origin, Islam is a religion of mercy and peace, of kindness and tolerance, and of knowledge and enlightenment; it is not a religion of violence, fanaticism and ignorance.

What happens is that because of a minuscule group of misguided souls the entire religion and the followers of it suffers. The pain that a innocent Muslim goes through when their religion becomes the center stage of any terrorist activity is very evident in the following article written by a Muslim devout in Khalij Times. I reproduce that letter verbatim for my readers.

"Khaleej Times: No Time to Hide for Muslims by Aijaz Zaka Syed (View from Dubai )

Every time innocents are targeted in the name of Islam around the world, one can't face one's non-Muslim friends and colleagues. I feel like burying myself in the ground. Growing up in a religious family, one never thought one would see the day when being a Muslim could be a source of shame. A distraught friend who has devoted her life to speaking and fighting on behalf of Arabs and Muslims wrote in yesterday saying "I've had it with the Arabs and Muslims and Islamic militancy. Forgive me but I am throwing in the towel."

I couldn't write back to her but understood her pain... She grew up in Mumbai and is understandably upset. My friend went on to say: "The Muslims and Islam have a problem and only they can solve it. If they do not, the whole world will turn against them." Can you blame the world if it's turning against Muslims? What do you expect when not a single day passes without the name of our faith being dragged through the mud by fellow believers around the world? Is this what Islam and the noble Prophet teach and stand for?

It's all very well for us to say Islam has nothing to do with extremism and terrorism. We can go on deluding ourselves these psychopaths do not represent us. However, the world finds it hard to accept this line of argument because it sees the extremists increasingly assert themselves and take the centre-stage while the mainstream Islam remains silent."

Religion seems to offer a particularly fertile matrix, in which fanaticism can grow, is religious belief itself the cause of fanaticism? Or is religion simply one of many catalysts that can transform desperation into extremism? We might find the answers in the teachings of the Founders of the world's major religious systems. What do they say about fanaticism and religious zeal? Did they espouse it or promote it? And if not, where does it come from?

Some particularly sharp insights may be found in the Bahá'í Writings. Bahá'u'lláh clearly condemned fanaticism of all kinds. In a statement that seems to foreshadow our times, He wrote: Religious fanaticism and hatred are a world-devouring fire, whose violence none can quench. The Hand of Divine power can, alone, deliver mankind from this desolating affliction. (Epistle to the Son of the Wolf, p. 13)

Religion itself breeds fanatics. If the teachings of the Manifestations of God had been followed, fanaticism would never have taken root within the religions they established. We can say this because fanaticism and hatred are so clearly contrary to their explicit teachings. It uses religion as a tool to further aims that have nothing to do with true religion. If we use a hammer to open a jar, we're going to destroy the jar. Hammers are not meant for opening jars, and they are powerful enough tools to do considerable damage when misused. Religion is one of the most potent forces known to humanity. Misused, it is capable of doing correspondingly great damage.

Why do the fanatics succeed? The answer lies in a short story. A man whose family was German aristocracy prior to World War II, Owned a number of large industries and estates. When asked how many German people were true Nazis, the answer he gave can guide our attitude toward fanaticism. 'Very few people were true Nazis,' he said, 'but many enjoyed the return of German pride, and many more were too busy to care. I was one of those who just thought the Nazis were a bunch of fools. So, the majority just sat back and let it all happen. Then, before we knew it, they owned us, and we had lost control, and the end of the world had come. My family lost everything. I ended up in a concentration camp and the Allies destroyed my factories. The essence of this story is simple. The terrorists are very small in number but they are very cohesive. Their negative attitude is cohesive as well. Therefore they can inflict so much pain. The good and peace loving people are much much larger in number but are not cohesive at all and hence their positivity and goodness does not percolate down the society. The fanatics are so cohesive that the fanatics rule Islam at this moment in history. It is the fanatics who march. It is the fanatics who wage any one of 50 shooting wars worldwide. It is the fanatics who systematically slaughter Christian or tribal groups throughout Africa and are gradually taking over the entire continent in an Islamic wave. It is the fanatics who bomb, behead, murder, or honor-kill. It is the fanatics who take over mosque after mosque. It is the fanatics who zealously spread the stoning and hanging of rape victims and homosexuals. It is the fanatics who teach their young to kill and to become suicide bombers. Peace-loving Germans, Japanese, Chinese, Russians , Rwandans, Serbs, Afghans, Iraqis, Palestinians, Somalis, Nigerians, Algerians, Indians including Sikhs, Hindus, Muslims and many others have died because the peaceful majority did not speak up until it was too late.

Each religion brings out its own doctrines and insists upon them as being the only true ones. And not only does it do that, but also it thinks that he who does not believe in them must go to some horrible place. Some will even draw the sword to compel others to believe as they do. This is not through wickedness, but through a particular disease of human brain called fanaticism. They are very sincere, these fanatics, the most sincere of human beings; but they are quite as irresponsible as other lunatics in the world. This disease of fanaticism is one of the most dangerous of all diseases. All the wickedness of human nature is roused by it. Anger is stirred up, nerves are high strung, and human being becomes like tigers."

Thus faith turns into fanaticism. The communal frenzy erupts and religious wars are fought with ensuing mass destruction and chaos. There is no doubt that more blood is shed on religious wars and persecution than on any other cause. But this is no fault of an individual. It is the evolutionary weakness. It is not a crafty design of one individual, or one particular religion. Our inability to convert faith into the knowledge of direct perception (of the truths as preached by the religious seers) is responsible for this. The mammal in us is still strong; we have as yet failed to evolve as complete human beings.

When a person embodies values like spiritual wisdom, purity of heart, qualities of universal love and altruism, we call him a saint or a sage. Sometimes such a person contributes to the welfare of humanity in such a great measure that he is referred to as God -the founder of a religion. Such examples are Sri Krishna, Jesus Christ, Lord Buddha, Mahavir, Guru Nanak, Sri Ramakrishna, Sri Aurobindo, and many more. The list is unending; we encounter such great souls in every religion of every continent and in every era. These great souls have intuitive knowledge of oneness of human race. Their intuition is based on their experience or realization and conforms to rationality and reason. They speak from the experience of realization of Divinity acquired after transcending the limitations of body-mind complex. They have the direct knowledge of Reality. Millions of followers of these saints intellectually and emotionally grasp their message of love and compassion; but cannot claim to have experienced these values as direct knowledge. They believe in what the saints say. None of the saints or their religion preaches hatred and killing. Every religion preach that humankind is a single family and the earth its common homeland. There is no place for fanaticism or the fanatics.

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