Dear Hippie,

<<Yuyutsu, you would make a terrible lawyer.>>

Thank you, that's one of the best compliments I received lately.

<<Please verify the above... that statement flies in the face of accepted history.>>

This is my hypothesis, based only on circumstantial evidence and I'd be happy to hear other possible explanations.

The evidence I have is:

When seeing and talking with ordinary Muslims, I notice that they are gaining some excellent spiritual progress from the everyday teachings of Islam.

Islamic practices have been praised by several Hindu gurus - some even tested them on themselves to verify and quoted the sayings of historical Muslim teachers, especially Sufis, in their spiritual discourses. As you know, Hindus and Muslims live in dense proximity in India and have bloody clashes between them due to this friction, so Hindus have no reason to praise Islam unless they recognised outstanding and undeniable spirituality.

I checked for myself the web-site of the Sufi Sheikh Nuh Keller, browsed around and listened to some recorded materials. While I'm not a Muslim, nor aspiring to be one, nor in agreement about everything there, I was surprised about the numerous commonalities and how many of his words were resonating with my own spiritual experiences.

He is definitely against violence - listen for example to his talk on Jihad: http://untotheone.com/public/this-is-jihad/

Where did this richness and depth of spirit come from?
Could the same person who inspired all this also inspire hatred, murder, rape and enslavement?

- It's inconsistent.

Then I found here on OLO about the way the Koran was written, that Muhammad was illiterate, that the Koran was only assembled two years after his death by this Abu-Bakr guy who had his own political interests, from random pieces of paper found in the drawer of one of Muhammad's wives (which illiterate-Muhammad couldn't verify were indeed his sayings).

So boy, I say, this guy could have done whatever he liked with the text. A woman's word was worth nothing against his (regarding the original contents of that drawer), he had the motive and the means and he was ruthless otherwise.

(continued...)

(...continued)

Recalling that similar hijacking of a spiritual master's teachings by their disciple also happened in our times (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNCJlc7afC8), despite his literacy and all technological advancements, why couldn't it happen then?

Yes, it's all circumstantial, but it deserves a thorough investigation.

<<If what you say is true why hasn't anyone else raised it by now?>>

It requires the insight of someone who is religious but not sectarian.
A Muslim couldn't say that and keep his head.
A sectarian of another religion couldn't acknowledge that the Islamic religion has any value.

<<Dropping the package is blasphemy in Islam>>

Blasphemy of... Muhammad! What if they discovered that the package was blasphemous to begin with?

<<Where does one go to find 'the original teachings of Muhammad' if not the Koran?>>

Underground mainly! The scientific, historical and archaeological forensic tools we have today are better than ever - we should use them to the maximum and not spare any effort or leave a stone unturned in proving to the ordinary Muslims that the atrocities committed by their "brothers" are NOT of Muhammad's will.

<<Isn't that what the Catholics were doing in Nazi Germany?>>

Let's not judge others lest we be judged ourselves. Can you look into my eyes and say confidently without blinking that you would have defied the Nazis in their place and hidden Jews at home, risking your life and your family's? I cannot.

Hi Onjab,

Probably. I'm sorry, I didn't realise that you had any work experience, your views seemed as ill-informed and fantasist as David's, or Daffy Duck's or James O'Neill's or those of the scatty Wounded Goose. I apologise. I guess I was reading the sorts of things I would have said forty and fifty years ago when I was a Maoist and wincing with embarrassment.

The difference between now and then, however, is that we have now had, combined, many hundreds of years of experience of socialism - the various components of the old Soviet Union, China and eastern Europe. The Paris Commune. Vietnam. Pol Pot's Kampuchea. Cuba. Ethiopia and Congo-Brazzaville. Tanzania. Nicaragua and Chile. And so many others.

All have either collapsed or ended up as authoritarian travesties of socialism, ghastly state Mafias. You have that experience to draw on. I hope with all my heart that you don't waste decades pursuing Utopian dreams - Utopias always, always end in fascism, if their principles are pushed to their limits.

What can we do ? Yes, work for the people, but never assume that they can be driven like sheep to allegiance to some single party. Multi-party socialism ? Perhaps a contradiction in terms :)

So what to do ? No. 1: don't harm the people. In today's Australian, my friend Gary Johns has a brilliant article about the 'burka' - I think he means the nikab - in defence of women and against backward cultural practices and male domination. That sort of thing.

No. 2: try to move things forward, clear-eyed and principled, don't play stick-up-the-@rse politics, that's opportunism and it always degenerates into ever more unprincipled activity.

No. 3: read the first few pages of Solzhenitsyn's 'Gulag Archipelago'. That certainly helped me to begin to see the light.

I wish you all the luck in the world. Oh, try to get a hold of a copy of Kenan Malik's 'Search for a Moral Compass', it came out last month. Absolutely brilliant ! You can take the boy out of the left, but .......

Cheers,

Joe

So Yuyutsu you are confirming what I suspected, you just made up all those things about Muhammad and Muslims because its what you hope its all about... you don't have a proof at all but are encouraging everyone to look for it.

Now I suspect you've just done it again, saying "Islamic practices have been praised by several Hindu gurus - some even tested them on themselves to verify and quoted the sayings of historical Muslim teachers, especially Sufis..."

Where's the proof? As a yogi I have studied comparative religion for much of my life and I've never come across Hindu praise for Islam, other than agreement with the odd phrase or two, but there is a lot of respect for the Sufi mystics. Islam is narrow minded and Sufism is embracing.

You do realise the Sufis are persecuted by the other Muslims, and ISIS wouldn't waste any time wiping out every Sufi they can find.

If Muslims practiced the interpretations of Islam as taught in Sufism, the world would be a much better place, but they don't.

Dear Hippie,

I was not aware that Sufis were persecuted: by ISIS perhaps - everything is believable about them, but not before.

The question is, how come that Sufis, who are highly spiritual and acknowledged by other religions (as well as other smaller Islamic sects that seem to be completely sane), still revere Muhammad. Would they if he was a bully murderer and rapist? Which was the true Muhammad?

Perhaps there is no Hindu praise for Islam but there is Hindu praise for Muhammad, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramakrishna#Islam_and_Christianity
And the Islamic response: http://www.onislam.net/english/ask-about-islam/society-and-family/interfaith-issues/466597-sri-ramkrishna.html

I have just ordered this book - perhaps it may shed some more light on the question: http://www.vedanta.com/store/product992.html

Loud Goose,

"....the burka - I think he means the nikab..."

Great stuff....recommends an article...and preemptively explains that the author of it has his references wrong.

"....don't play stick-up-the-@rse politics..."

Which is Loudy's favourite pastime on OLO....not that he's hypocritical or anything.