From: Amara Graps (amara@amara.com)
Date: Tue Sep 02 2003 - 03:11:24 MDT
On Monday 01 September 2003 22:06, Terry Donaghe wrote:
>> Isn't Islam a good bit younger than Hinduism, Christianity and Buddhism?
>> Islam is like the teenager of world religions. It took an awful long time
>> for Christianity to "simmer down." Perhaps, as religions mature, their
>> followers get a bit more laid back. Now, obviously some Hindus and
>> Christians can still get rabble roused and incited to violence, but in
> general their followers seem to be less raucous.
Samantha:
>I have heard this metaphorical theory before. I don't believe it is valid.
>Mormonism is *much* younger than Islam but not at all violent. Many of the
>world's religions were much more mellow in their beginning than later on.
>Besides, can the world afford to have a violent teenager over 1.3 billion
>strong loose?
I don't have an opinion regarding the 'age' of a religion, but I do
think that religions evolve in time, and the violent aspects do check
themselves.
Christianity had its Reformation.. Islam has not had its own
'reformation' yet. Extremists at the edge of every religion will
always exist, but I think that Islam is ripe for an upheaval of some
of its core elements. Some Moslem scholars have observed and written
about Islam needing a 'reformation', unfortunately their ideas have
not been accepted well in their societies yet.
One example of such a person is Nasr Hamid Abu Zeid. He is an
Egyptian teacher, and was a professor of Arabic Literature at Cairo
University, who has written some works that interpret the Koran in
the context of life at the time that the Koran was written. In his
book: _Criticism of Religious Discourse_, he writes,
"Since language develops with the development of society and
culture, providing new ideas and developing its terminology to
express more developed relations, then it is necessary and only
natural to re-interpret texts in their original historical and
social context, replacing them with more contemporary
interpretations that are more humanistic and developed, while
keeping the content of the verses stable."
On 5 August 1996, Dr Nasr Hamed Abu-Zeid was ordered to divorce
from his wife after being branded an apostate by the Court of
Cassation. The court confirmed a decision by the Cairo Court
of Appeals in June 1995 where the verdict stated:
"The court announces the separation of the first defendant [Dr
Abu-Zeid] from his wife, the second defendant, because of the
former's apostasy and because she is a Muslim. And the court calls
on the first defendant to repent to God Almighty and to return to
the Islamic religion which was brought as a light to the people to
being them happiness in this world and the hereafter."
He is now living in exile with his wife in The Netherlands.
Amara
-- ******************************************************************** Amara Graps, PhD email: amara@amara.com Computational Physics vita: ftp://ftp.amara.com/pub/resume.txt Multiplex Answers URL: http://www.amara.com/ ******************************************************************** "That would be a good idea." -- Gandhi [when asked what he thought of western civilisation]
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