Political Crossfire Forums

[Richard Owl Mirror]

According to the Qur'an, the Kaaba was built by the prophet Ibrahim (Abraham) and his son Ismail (Ishmael).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaaba
Significance of the Black Stone
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Stone


~@~

Ibrahim and Abraham are the same person.
How is it the Muslims lay claim to his belonging to their clan?
Quote: Ibrahim (Arabic: ابراهيم), also known as Abraham, is an important prophet in Islam, and the father of the Prophet Ismail (Ishmael), his firstborn son, who is considered the Father of the Arabs.
vs
Quote: Abraham (ca. 1900 BC/BCE אַבְרָהָם "Father/Leader of many", Standard Hebrew Avraham, Tiberian Hebrew ʾAḇrāhām; Arabic ابراهيم Ibrāhīm; Ge'ez አብርሃም ʾAbrəham) is regarded as the founding patriarch of the Israelites whom God chose to bless out of all the families of the earth. He is a critical figure in both Judaism and Christianity, and is a very important prophet in Islam. Accounts of his life are given in the Book of Genesis and also in the Qur'an.

Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are sometimes referred to as the "Abrahamic religions", because of the role Abraham plays in their holy books and beliefs. In the Hebrew Bible and the Qur'an, Abraham is described as a patriarch blessed by God (the Jewish people called him "Father Abraham"), and promised great things. Jews and Christians consider him father of the people of Israel through his son Isaac; Muslims regard him as the father of the Arabs through his son Ishmael. In Christian belief, Abraham is a model of faith, and his intention to obey God by offering up Isaac is seen as a foreshadowing of God's offering of his son, Jesus. In Islam, Abraham obeyed God by offering up Ishmael and is considered to be one of the most important prophets sent by God.


Ishmael
Quote: Ishmael (יִשְׁמָעֵאל "God hears or obeys", Standard Hebrew Yišmaʿel, Tiberian Hebrew Yišmāʿêl, Arabic إسماعيل Ismā'īl) was Abraham's eldest son, born by his wife's handmaiden Hagar.

He is first mentioned in the Hebrew Bible's Book of Genesis as the eldest son of Abraham by Hagar, Sarah's female Egyptian maid-servant or slave. In the Qur'an, Ishmael is considered one of the prophets of Islam.


Why does the rest of Mankind allow the Muslims exclusive control over this particular site when the evidence suggests they are squatters?

[cap'n queasy]

Yeah, how come we can't go see it?

[Plato & Socrates]

cap'n queasy wrote: Yeah, how come we can't go see it?

I agree its a totally sad state of affairs. religious bigotry in any form is reprehensible and cant be defended. Some may argue that it is just discrimination, like Jews were barred from entering certain professions and like the Blacks were prevented from riding at the front of buses and eating in the same restaurants.

Only time can change these things, because at the moment, intolerant religious radicals,in my own opinion, have a foothold on the direction of modern Islam. So until Islam is regained, shaped and moved forward again by the moderates and the progressives. Alas just like you, I will be banned from seeing these glorious wonders of the religious world.

[ToonArmyIsComing]

I always wonder why anyone wants to visit a religious place. These places of filled with intolerant people who want to shove down their moral values down everyone's throat. By going there, you are most likely helping the intolerant people economically.

Now specifically on Mecca and the Kabaa, I would NEVER want to go there EVEN IF I could for the reason I mentioned and besides, the money you spend there is going into the bellies of the Saudi princes who are some of the most reviling creatures on this earth with their vicious oppression of their own people.

So the question is why would you want to go there anyhow?

[Duchifas]

ToonArmyIsComing wrote: I always wonder why anyone wants to visit a religious place. These places of filled with intolerant people who want to shove down their moral values down everyone's throat. By going there, you are most likely helping the intolerant people economically.

Now specifically on Mecca and the Kabaa, I would NEVER want to go there EVEN IF I could for the reason I mentioned and besides, the money you spend there is going into the bellies of the Saudi princes who are some of the most reviling creatures on this earth with their vicious oppression of their own people.

So the question is why would you want to go there anyhow?

Think outside the box, Toon. It can be very liberating. ;)

[Secondary Oak]

ToonArmyIsComing wrote: I always wonder why anyone wants to visit a religious place. These places of filled with intolerant people who want to shove down their moral values down everyone's throat.
This is one of the most intolerant things I've recently read.

[ToonArmyIsComing]

Duchifas wrote: Think outside the box, Toon. It can be very liberating. ;)

It is liberating to think outside the box, Duchifas and that's why I am trying to do here ... what would anyone accomplish by visiting places like Vatican, Mecca, or the Temple Mount that could not be accomplished by let's say something like ... patriotism or nationalism? Religious rituals and nationalistic rituals are essentially of the same essence. They are designed to connect the individual with an imagined being [as in God] or community [as in the nation-state]. :-|

Secondary Oak wrote: ToonArmyIsComing wrote: I always wonder why anyone wants to visit a religious place. These places of filled with intolerant people who want to shove down their moral values down everyone's throat.
This is one of the most intolerant things I've recently read.

Intolerant? Why? I didn't stop anyone practicing their religion. I simply said they are mostly intolerant to begin with. I didn't stop anyone from visiting some of these places:







But I am rather rather amused when people go to these places to get closer to "G-d" ... :-|

[Secondary Oak]

ToonArmyIsComing wrote: Secondary Oak wrote: ToonArmyIsComing wrote: I always wonder why anyone wants to visit a religious place. These places of filled with intolerant people who want to shove down their moral values down everyone's throat.
This is one of the most intolerant things I've recently read.

Intolerant? Why?
Because you're saying that every synagogue, every church, every temple of any kind is filled with intolerant people. In other words, you're saying most religious people are intolerant. Do you really believe that? Most of the religious people I know are tolerant. Maybe you need to get out more*.


* this is just a figure of speech, it's likely you "get out" more than I do

[ToonArmyIsComing]

Secondary Oak wrote: ToonArmyIsComing wrote: Intolerant? Why?
Because you're saying that every synagogue, every church, every temple of any kind is filled with intolerant people. In other words, you're saying most religious people are intolerant. Do you really believe that? Most of the religious people I know are tolerant. Maybe you need to get out more*.


* this is just a figure of speech, it's likely you "get out" more than I do

Ok, I see your point and I agree with it, but usually when I refer to the "religious people", I mean the more conservative people who often see "toleration" as something evil, which could bring the end of society and humanity as a whole!!! :-|

Though I still think even the "tolerant" religious people have been duped and deceived by brilliant con-artists like Moses, Jesus, and Mohammad.

[Duchifas]

Toon wrote: It is liberating to think outside the box, Duchifas and that's why I am trying to do here ... what would anyone accomplish by visiting places like Vatican, Mecca, or the Temple Mount that could not be accomplished by let's say something like ... patriotism or nationalism? Religious rituals and nationalistic rituals are essentially of the same essence. They are designed to connect the individual with an imagined being [as in God] or community [as in the nation-state].

Ok, I will help you think outside your (atheist) box. First, you need to grasp one simple concept. The concept is, that even though you don't think G-d exists, and even if you find the idea silly, a sincere religious person does believe that G-d exists. Such person holds G-d's existence and manifestation as the ultimate truth.

From there, one can easily see, that to a religious mind, nationalism or patriotism can never ever accomplish the same goal as a relationship with G-d.

To rephrase, a reasonable/rational religious (yes, I know that's an oxymoron to you) person does not believe in G-d in order to...feel connected, happy, to get that warm-fuzzy-feeling of belonging (which is really the essense of patriotism). He believes in G-d because G-d exists our own relevance is measured in relation to Him. Not the other way around.

That, in a nutshell, is the difference between a religious belief and nationalism/patriotism. It doesn't hold true in all cases, of course, there are exceptions, and often the lines are muddy. But pretty much that's the principle if you think about it as a religious person.

Now that we are thinking far outside the atheist box, it becomes clear that visiting say the Western Wall in case of Judaism, is clearly not necessary to remain religious. G-d is not limited to that wall, nor to the Holy Land, nor to anywhere else. So on the rational level, there is no need for that. But it is very nice on the emotional level (connecting with your history, your people, atmosphere of the place, etc). So in that way, a visit to the Wall is similar in feeling to nationalism/patriotism features that you described above. But clearly, a religious person cannot substitute patriotism/nationalism for religious rituals/piligrimages because patriorism/nationalism miss the most important and substantive feature of religion - G-d.

Questions?

[Richard Owl Mirror]

ToonArmyIsComing wrote: Secondary Oak wrote: ToonArmyIsComing wrote: Intolerant? Why?
Because you're saying that every synagogue, every church, every temple of any kind is filled with intolerant people. In other words, you're saying most religious people are intolerant. Do you really believe that? Most of the religious people I know are tolerant. Maybe you need to get out more*.


* this is just a figure of speech, it's likely you "get out" more than I do

Ok, I see your point and I agree with it, but usually when I refer to the "religious people", I mean the more conservative people who often see "toleration" as something evil, which could bring the end of society and humanity as a whole!!! :-|

Though I still think even the "tolerant" religious people have been duped and deceived by brilliant con-artists like Moses, Jesus, and Mohammad.


duped and deceived by brilliant con-artists ?
Let us examine who among us may have been duped and deceived.

Quote: To the unbelieving materialist, man is simply an evolutionary accident. His hopes of survival are strung on a figment of mortal imagination; his fears, loves, longings, and beliefs are but the reaction of the incidental juxtaposition of certain lifeless atoms of matter. No display of energy nor expression of trust can carry him beyond the grave. The devotional labors and inspirational genius of the best of men are doomed to be extinguished by death, the long and lonely night of eternal oblivion and soul extinction. Nameless despair is man's only reward for living and toiling under the temporal sun of mortal existence. Each day of life slowly and surely tightens the grasp of a pitiless doom which a hostile and relentless universe of matter has decreed shall be the crowning insult to everything in human desire which is beautiful, noble, lofty, and good.
But such is not man's end and eternal destiny; such a vision is but the cry of despair uttered by some wandering soul who has become lost in spiritual darkness, and who bravely struggles on in the face of the mechanistic sophistries of a material philosophy, blinded by the confusion and distortion of a complex learning. And all this doom of darkness and all this destiny of despair are forever dispelled by one brave stretch of faith on the part of the most humble and unlearned of God's children on earth.

This saving faith has its birth in the human heart when the moral consciousness of man realizes that human values may be translated in mortal experience from the material to the spiritual, from the human to the divine, from time to eternity.
Quote: The very pessimism of the most pessimistic materialist is, in and of itself, sufficient proof that the universe of the pessimist is not wholly material. Both optimism and pessimism are concept reactions in a mind conscious of values as well as of facts. If the universe were truly what the materialist regards it to be, man as a human machine would then be devoid of all conscious recognition of that very fact. Without the consciousness of the concept of values within the spirit-born mind, the fact of universe materialism and the mechanistic phenomena of universe operation would be wholly unrecognized by man. One machine cannot be conscious of the nature or value of another machine.
If the universe were only material and man only a machine, there would be no science to embolden the scientist to postulate this mechanization of the universe. Machines cannot measure, classify, nor evaluate themselves. Such a scientific piece of work could be executed only by some entity of supermachine status.

If universe reality is only one vast machine, then man must be outside of the universe and apart from it in order to recognize such a fact and become conscious of the insight of such an evaluation.

If man is only a machine, by what technique does this man come to believe or claim to know that he is only a machine? The experience of self-conscious evaluation of one's self is never an attribute of a mere machine. A self-conscious and avowed mechanist is the best possible answer to mechanism. If materialism were a fact, there could be no self-conscious mechanist. It is also true that one must first be a moral person before one can perform immoral acts.

The very claim of materialism implies a supermaterial consciousness of the mind which presumes to assert such dogmas. A mechanism might deteriorate, but it could never progress. Machines do not think, create, dream, aspire, idealize, hunger for truth, or thirst for righteousness. They do not motivate their lives with the passion to serve other machines and to choose as their goal of eternal progression the sublime task of finding God and striving to be like him. Machines are never intellectual, emotional, aesthetic, ethical, moral, or spiritual.

[Muslima]

Richard I don't think it will be a pleasant thing to do under the current KSA goverment.

[Arcenius I]

cap'n queasy wrote: Yeah, how come we can't go see it?

No one's stopping you. Convert to be a Muslim and you can. It is quite simple.

Mecca is kinda deep in Muslim land, ya know, so yah. That should explain it. It would not make much sense to allow Christians/Jews to visit it, for safety and security reasons.

A Christian would never survive such visit.

[superskippy]

Neither would a Jew.

[henri]

cap'n queasy wrote: Yeah, how come we can't go see it?

*****

Every religion has it's own laws or regulations.

Non muslims are not allowed to set foot at Mecca/Kaaba is one of those laws of the Islam religion.

Like a woman can not become a priest in the R.Catholic religion.