kman

Submitted by Peter Jackson (Egypt), Nov 18, 2008 at 17:12

You've made a large number of interesting and valid points, sometimes religion is not moderate and sometimes man can be cruel. The major religions are flooded with hypocricies and mistakes, paradoxices and dark sins burried in their closets, infact people have been bickering and fighting ever since man decided that he was 'holier than thou and must reform thee to enter heaven'. Some would say that love leads to such violence, i.e the love of God leads people to hate those who don't honour and worship him and some other would say that it is the truly pathological members of society that embrace such an extreme view of things in the first place.

Do I condemn militant islam and terrorists-------absolutely, Do I condemn radical religuous movements of ALL faiths-------certainly. For some reason it is only the muslims who have a tendency of exhibiting this violent tendancy these days, but a quick history check will prove that all teh major religions had their turns killing and spreading violence in the name of God. The question is, does religion bring out the worst in people? yes. Does religion bring out the best in people? Also yes. Do some religious people deviate towards resenting the sinners to the degree of hate? yes. Does religion make people compasionate for the poor and needy? yes. It's a paradox, one that exists in all relgions.

After 9/11 I decided to learn more about Islam and found that the things I were reading were about a violent group of anarchists who worship a violent God, until I got the chance to visit egypt a couple of years ago and had a chance to enter into long discussions, read different books and learn from their preachers aka imams directly. I found the two versions presented quite different and quite paradoxical. This brings me to my point, I believe that both forms exist according to their respective followers, the majority being moderate and the minority being amazingly hard line in their hatred and word domination views. Perhaps teh clash of religions is meant to go on forever. Perhaps God created us so imperfect that judgement day will be of our own making. Perhaps we are all doomed to go to hell. Either way its a scary place to be.

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