Jesus / Isa – alahi salam

On occasions, I feel Muslims ‘lose’ something when it comes to religion. I am speaking about the second last prophet Jesus or Isa (E-sa) peace be upon him.

Muslims believe that Christianity, as we know it today, and its history, has suffered a corruption of Jesus’ (pbuh) message. They believe this is one reason why the had the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) whose recitation of Divine revelation is encoded in the Qur’an, whose message today is the same as what it was almost 1400 years ago, and is protected so by God.

Why ‘bother’ with what is said of Jesus (pbuh) then when a particular issue may contain distortiortions and errors?

Indeed, I was never able to really understand why what I’ve always thought were Christians discussing the New Testament, identified the books of the apostles as having been written some 50,60,70,80,90 or so years after the ‘death’ of Jesus (pbuh) yet they never seemed concerned with that to me seemed like that very time sequence suggesting that in there weren’t actually written by the apostles. I can’t understand how an apostle who was x+50, x+60, x+70… years old (where x=their age while at the last day of of Jesus) could himself have written it, or even if he did write it, how could such writings be accurate. I know this issue isn’t ‘new’ and OK, the Grace of God could have made these things happen, but I don’t think there is any evidence or indeed, any claim that that is indeed the case. For some time now, I’ve held the assumption that the books of the apostles were ‘ghost’ written on behalf  of the words/techings of the apostles, but again, I’ve never seen any claim of this by the Church.

In addition to the above oddities, that the Church – a still generally beneficial force in society, despite various corruptions – then allowed usury,causing Christians to thereafter adopt, is something unless I am mistaken, which Jesus (pbuh) abhored [Note: Some Muslims also practice usury, is a part of which is in something they call Riba, a sin of such seriousness that it invites Gods War against you]. The acceptance/normalisation of usury struck a severe blow to Christianity from which it argueably has never recovered, and doubtless, has aided the huge fall from grace as a faith in the eyes of some Muslims.

And in recent times we the Judeo-Christian allaince when for millenia, generally Christians viewed Jews in similiar, yet milder way, from how Jews viewed Christains.

All of which have contributed to Muslims distancing themselves from the Christian faith.

In recent years, I have come across people who call themselves Christians but don’t seem to cede to the Church, instead, believing in Christianity according to their own analysis and understanding, and of the significance of Jesus. [These people could always have existed, perhaps it’s just my age, exposure and social cirles that is makeing them more visible to me]. Personally, what they are doing appeals to me [As it is increasingly doing so in the disorganised ‘organised religion stricture’ of Islam. I think these Christians are able to ‘see’ some fictions propagates by the Church. However, they still seem likely to adopt other distortions about Jesus – like some indulging the usurers [Muslims too remember!] and not following Jewish custom e.g. Sabbath, circumcision, eating Kosher and so on. But I don’t think in this say any age that anyone is pure – that goes for Muslims too.

My general opinion of Muslims is that they tend to take on a facile view of Christianity and don’t see those ‘independent’  Christians mentioned just above, and from my experience of these people, they are very amicable and  have significant overlap with Muslim perspectives and teachings [Not really surprisin]. Thin thoughts of Muslims about their Christian counterparts – most significantly in Muslim dominated populations – unnecessarily widens the gap between them, and that’s a shame.

A similar thing – primarily form distortions embedded in their religions – exists with (real) Jewish-Christian and Jewish-Muslim relations, but I’d say the philosophical gap between Jews and Christians as well as Jews and Muslims is greater than that of Christians and Muslims.

Jesus (pbuh) does appear in the Qur’an and in the saying of the last Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him). Despite the possible explanations as to why above, it’s a pity and wonder why Muslims gove so little attention to Jesus’ story (pbuh), but other Prophets like Ismail (so called ‘Father of the Arabs’) and Moses and Abraham are given more (IMO) significance.

I get the feeling that this may be because: If an increase in discussions by Muslims of Jesus (pbuh) were to take place, it would be percieved as “being Christian”. To me, that’s a real shame, especially when one thinks about Jesus (pbuh) and his influence on the world today [I can’t here reference Paul / Saul of Tarsus, regarded as being the one to ‘establish/grow’ the religion of Christianity, being beyond the scope of this post]. After (possibly) Muhammad, the next most Influential man influencing the world today is Jesus (peace and blessings be to both of them), yet Muslims largely ‘whitewash’ him.

Frankly, it’s hard to accept the Church’s distortions and corruptions are a good enough reason for any ‘whitewashing’ of Jesus, and actually I don’t think Muslims have ever spent much thought at all as to how to weigh-up/assess Jesus’s role in their lives. That the religion of Islam was deemed to be completed very shortly before the death of Muhammad (saw) seems to make some think that Islam is all the need at the cost of looking for overlap with their Christian brothers.

To me, the influence of Jesus across the world (even when one factors in a corrupt Church) is testament that what this man did and said is of the most extraordinary power and significance. It’s amazing that the corruptions and distortions piled upon Jesus are incapable of destroying the way he is revered, and I don’t think he is revered because of those distortions.

Jesus performed miracles. As far as I know, Muhammad (saw) didn’t – although he did go on a miraculous journey – Al-Isra and Al-Miraj. I think Jesus was able to perform miracles so that people had no excuse not to fast-track themselves to belief in God, perhaps a sign that Jesus’ task was much more of a challenge than what Muhammad (saw) faced [It must be noted that Muhammad (saw) did have a very rough time himself in his duty as a Prophet; It wasn’t easy by any means]. The miracle worker was clearly special and should be listened to.

Why is it said that Allah(SWT) commands that the Muslims do not make judgements as to the fate of the people of the book? Some, in an attempt to shy away from this, many ask ‘which book?’ to which I propose, the bible at the time of Muhammads Divine revelations had not changed significantly from that time onwards. It makes more sense to think God was referring to the Divine scriptures, the ‘books’, at the time of revelation onwards which I’d say, works its way down to the Christians and Indeed Jews of  today. It also seems straightforward to think it’s the uncorrupted elements of those scriptures which still maintain a tie of Christians and Jews to God. Yet, some Muslims seem ‘quite edgy’ about all this.

When Muslims were being persecuted, the Prophet Muhammad (saw) sent some Muslims into Christian lands (Abyssinia) for refuge. They were protected. Isn’t this simple aspect of the history of Islam in itself a strong indication of the natural affinity of Christians and Muslims [And that Jews were given refuge in Muslim Arab lands also indicative of something?]

As I begin to end this post, hopefully my Muslim readers will not succumb to such instant dismissal from what’s said above and will consider these questions:-

1) Why is it Jesus/Isa (peace be upon him) that will return to ultimately re-establish mans solid relationship to God in the hearts of ALL mankind?

2) Why is it said that Muhammad (saw) is calimed to have said that of all the prophets, Jesus had a special place in the Prophets heart ? (I’m paraphrasing)

3) Aren’t many Muslims themselves already following distortions/corrutions in disorganised Islam? – Remember about the ‘sects’ within Isla, yet on the whole, we don’ really reject other Muslims, so why (when it happens) do we reject Christians?

4) Even some atheists brought up in Christian environments, and hence take some ‘Christian stuff’ on board, can be a fine example of a free and moral upstanding people. For some reason, Rodney Shakespeare comes to mind.

5) When Jesus (pbuh) dies, who will be be buried next to?

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To some Muslims, they will instigate a mind-block about what is written here. They will dismiss it, believing it may ‘rock their Islamic’ faith, when actually I am trying to show them on the contrary, their faith can be strengthened. They may think it’s an attempt to ‘convert them the Christianity’. It most certainly isn’t, and if you thought as much, I suspect you ave a significant flaw in your understanding of Islam [I don’t pretend amateur ‘Muslim me’ is immune].

I believe that what I have written here is important and should be thought about and if what I say is wrong, then only by undertaking honest and thoughtful analysis of what I say will show that to be wrong.

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Touched by Satan

I’ve just had a rare and weird feeling.

You’ve probably read descriptions about this feeling from a number of sources, I have, and generally the descriptions are described quite well, but its quite another thing to actually have the feeling yourself, for when you have the feeling, then it becomes real. I believe people who have what’s called near death experiences could relate to that.

Anyway, some time last year I was in the cinema. I don’t know why or how, but I just kinds ‘dropped out’ from the act of watching and enjoying the movie. To call it a spiritual feeling wouldn’t be too wrong.  I kind of looked around and saw that everything was ‘fake’ an illusion almost as though it staged – or even a trap if you will. I kind of interpret it as a mercy from God – in a way, a gentle wake up call, or perhaps little reminder.

I hate it when people draw upon the movies to describe life, so I’m going to do a bit of self-hating right now because in a way, it was a bit like ‘The Truman Show’. The world wasn’t real – or rather how I was fillting and using the world wasn’t real – that is I wasn’t making use of the world as I should have been. I knew the seconds of my life were ticking by and here I was in a cinema watching a movie – wasting time. I was very aware that really I was just waiting ‘life force’ and that indeed I could and should be doing something much better. Were those EXIT signs independent of this feeling or playing a subtle kind of role?

I like to think of myself as a Muslim. As such I know the purpose of life is to worship Allah. There’s a number of ways in which one can ‘get on with life’ in worship of Allah, but watching a fantasy movie wasn’t one of them. More self-hatred coming up: In that episode of ‘The Simpsons’ where Homor has 24 hours to live (he ate a blowfish) and after surviving, he vows to change the way he lives his life only to be pictured the next day doing exactly the same as what he’s always done prior to the vow. I think he was pictured asleep at the TV with a football game blaring away in the background, and the sad thing is, that’s kind of the result of my experience.

Why am I writing this? Well, about an hour and a half agom I had that feeling again, but it was preceeded – perhaps triggered – by a bit of a shock relating to some people I know (see below) and I’m wondering if once more I’ll let it pass or will I act upon it this time?

When I think about it logically, I’m pretty certain God will throw me some tests, and I must never assume I am free of the whispers of the Iblis (the devil) – that’s a mistake I’m sure most people make. They believe they are immune to the suggestions of Iblis, or that Iblis is ‘busy’ on someone else – like iblis has the same kind of physical limitations as ourself. Oh how desparetly wrong!

Thanks be to God, my life is very comfortble. I currently know of no personal hardhsips. Right now I’m appreciating my good health; I’m pain, strain, cough and sniffle free. I’m in the comfort zone in all ways not just health, and with the reoccurance of this feeling, I’m thinking again “perhaps this is my test. Will I squander my remaining life force (again)”?

I also waste a lot of time playing two very old computer strategy games. Pure time wastage. I know that. I think from tonight I will make another effort never to play them again, but what of my other hobbies? Reading politics, history, some economics, about secret societies and so on. Where does time wasteage begin and legitimiate knowledge acquisition begin? Does it ever ‘begin’?

Blogging? almost definately a waste of time. I’ve blogged to voice out objection to horrific injustices happening in this world today, and to hear from others on the subject, but it’s achieved nothing. Either has my reading of politics and just about everything else. This is true of e-mail and just about all other modernisms. It seems like it’s all a pointless waste. I think I’m in danger of failing the test. I often want to shed this stuff off and get back to real living, even though I’m not 100% sure what real living actually is.

Now and again I feel I should ALT-F4 everything and get my heart back in spiritual tune with my Creator but again I really don’t think I’m one of those 100% religion types – if you know what I mean (I lack the words with which to describe them and I don’t mean to be derogatory)

Getting back to the Satan thing. I feel it’s important to ask “What is satan trying to make me do now”? Has that beautiful girl I just saw been thrown my way to try and tempt me into trying to get close to her etc etc? {Thankfully my resolve in that department as improved over the years, but a womans beauty is very potent indeed!} Is there a new computer game pushing it’s way into my attention so that I’ll spend weeks and weeks and weeks of my free time playing it? etc.

What of the people around me? – and this is a major contrbuting factor as to why I’m writing this post.

The study of the Dajjal and end times is something that fascinates me. It’s said 999 out of 1000 are set for the fires of hell. Islam will be split into many sects. The touch of Satan will evidently be very difficult to shake off. Islam and Muslims have been and will experience this touch. It’s ridiculous to think Freemasonry/Cabbalism hasn’t infiltrated Islam, pulling Muslims from God. Zionism/Black Pope Jesuits/Black Magic, possession by Jinn, sex, money, power etc, all ways that iblis can impart his touch and what a prize a Muslims/monotheist would be. Will/do I fall foul and become one of them? Will my friends and those I respect?

Some of those friends have today given me reason to start wondering whether this statanic corruption of Islam has actually uncovered itseld. Are some of the great Muslims, (not my friends, but about one or two steps outside my ‘friend circle’),  of who I also have a lot of respect for, actually fifth columnists? Possibilities were raisd today of links to these satanic deviations specifically freemasonry/Cabbalism (but all these secret groups lead to the same end anyway – ‘whatever it takes’ – right Iblis? I know it’s your modus operandi). Thing is, some of the these people are in my estimation, at the leading edge of Islamic resurgence. And to those spooks that read this blog, no you idiots – it’s not the phoey phantom militant Islamic resurgence, the synthetic terror you guys dreampt up, but real Islamic resurgence (come to think of it, real Islamic resurgence is exactly what your ‘upper djinn possessed bosses’ are trying to prevent ergo that synthetic terror manefestation’ – Oh well – screw you too!).

I’m quite sure all things that have happened in my life have some kind of meaning. All the people I’ve met, all the things I’ve read all the knowledge I’m accumulated, so how should I apply this to the possibilities. Is this part of my test?

I don’t know. Can I do anything about it? I don’t think so. Should I spend time on it? Maybe not – it could be yet another distraction, the ‘greater mirage’. Is it time to become more insular and just let all these time wasting things pass by and power-up my personal standing with God? I think so but perhaps I owe it to myself to check out.

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I’m not sure why I wanted to publish this. What’s it going to achieve? I think I’ve just wasted more time :(

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Stolen! – From Craig Murray

http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2009/05/dont_shoot_sama.html#comments

This sums it up pretty much perfectly methinks…

nobody’s site: http://churchofnobody.blogspot.com/

 

The greatest terrorists are the state sponsored terrorists.

Without so much as a crumb of doubt.

 

On Religion/Alcoholism, some EXCELLENT writings by KevinB: http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2009/05/the_alcoholism.html

Craig

AA do not religiously indoctrinate in the usual sense of imposing a doctrine of fixed ideas (on people who are indeed very vulnerable). They offer a method for the alcoholic to gain control back over their selves and their lives.

I’m no expert but I believe this starts with admitting that they have no control over their problem and then handing over this problem to a ‘higher power’ (i.e. trusting ‘God’, whatever God is, to help them back to wholeness)

If you do not believe in the existence of a higher power then this approach will always look like a load of rubbish to you.

…..but all this religious language (and even faith itself) is just myriad ways that people have found of accessing and describing their own deepest nature.

If you want to understand the nature of any material substance you must put it under stress of every kind. Heat it, cool it, stretch it squash it, bombard it, break it etc. Then you know what a material is.

For humans too, it seems that the deepest self-revelations almost always occurs at times of greatest stress……when people come to ‘the end of the line’, in near-death experiences etc.

Bill Wilson had his encounter at the absolute nadir of his life. I, and millions like me, have had similar experiences. I felt the ecstasy, the saving grace, the absolute approval, the total acceptance, the wordless understanding. I don’t know what it was that came to me. Let me call it a brief experience of God’s presence. I am not experiencing this thing now, but I know this……It is ALL I want. Near-death experiencers often describe similar feelings and awareness. They are also usually transformed by the experience……in a good way.

Anyone who has been there can tell you that this was the most real experience a person can have…..and if it was real for me it is real for others and is therefore a revelation about our universal human nature….it is there just below the surface in everyone. When you are in this place the feeling of complete connectedness, that in some sense I AM you, the total absence of fear, the fabulous sense of empowerment change a person in a profound way. One gains the strength to accept oneself and deal constructively with one’s life.

Believers like me say there is a God and to offer this idea to our fellows is to offer liberation, self-empowerment and contentment…..not to trap them in a sinister destructive ‘cult’. (I don’t personally do any of this stuff by the way. I just try to defend ‘religious’ people against the Richard Dawkins of this world)

To imagine that people who go out into the world trying to propagate their faith are necessarily some kind of mind-controllers is a gross distortion and, perhaps, wishful thinking…….though it is true that religious nuts and some religious organisations have often abused true loving spirituality under the cover of religious ideas that they (presumably) profoundly misunderstand.

Christianity is under severe attack in this country.

This should not be surprising as the sublime teaching and demands of Christ represent the most serious threat there is to the mind-controlling social-engineering nexus that is feverishly busy trying to occupy (and corrupt)our hearts and minds.

It delivers its subtle tyranny via cod-rationalism, atheistic humanism, extreme permissiveness, legally enforced tolerance, compulsory procedures that are all about inputs not about the justifier ‘outputs’ that are mere pretexts put in place to conceal the real agenda……..that is to render society witless, faithless and helpless in the face of whatever the oligarchical powers that rule us want to deliver……or, more accurately, demand of us.

Only faith and the love of God can defeat these fiends.

Therefore we should rejoice because the battle has already been won in heaven. When humans stop listening to the propaganda and hear the music that sings in their hearts the battle will be won here on earth also.

Posted by: KevinB at May 9, 2009 7:49 PM

 

folluow up:

 

Craig,

When we talk of such things we must admit that in a literal sense we do not understand what we are talking about. We are trying to relate our sense of an extra-dimensional reality.

Talk of ‘God’ likewise…..

…….but even when we describe physics through mathematical language we are really dealing with mental models and ‘metaphors’. There really is no other kind of expressed reality when we try to describe our experience (i.e. something that really happened) because even if you state what is literally true (‘the car hit the wall’) this statement merely generates an image of the event in the consciousness of another. Everything is metaphor.

I have been hit by a car. Nothing too serious. My subjective experience of this incident remains in my consciousness. If I say that the ‘spiritual’ experience I tried to describe above is much more real and powerful in my consciousness then how should I talk about it?

I can admit that I don’t know what it was really. I know it was not merely psychological. Nor the subjective impression of an electro-chemical event……though it was these things too.

I believe that there is a loving affirming reality that exists within and beyond all things. I believe that the power of anything that opposes it is feeble by comparison. I know my own experience but can I claim to ‘know’ what I deduce from my own experience?

We are spiritual beings having a human experience. Our souls survive physical death. I reasonably hope be enveloped in the source of this ecstasy again after death as many people who have ‘died’ and returned claim to have done.

What kind of words must I use?

God?

Heaven?

They’ll have to do.

We are here to get as close to this reality as we can and to bring it to others and to direct our descendants towards it.

Truth, Love, Justice, Beauty?

Will that do?

Are these not the same thing?

Unfortunately, not for everyone….

…….so we surely must look for guidance, for context.

For me, Jesus Christ will have to do. He talked the talk and walked the walk. He identified the perils that threaten us all.

His spiritual guidance was delivered in parables.

Metaphorical enough?

His warnings about the world were timely then and they remain so now.

Do not tolerate the activities of the moneylenders, nor trust the scribes, nor Lawyers, nor Pharisees, those Luciferian priests, creators of the Talmud, who made themselves Gods and invented their own other-hating hegemonic ‘Law’.

If Christ came back he would surely return to preach universalism and save his same people from these same fiends.

We must pray for all who are deliberately wicked…..and love them….

….they can’t stand that….such treatment does not affirm their reality to them.

So mock all you like but,

literally true?

No…..what is?….almost nothing.

But absolutely true. Yes. A million times yes. The light will break through. We will see ourselves as we really are. The hearts of men will turn and make the world anew.

….and as you will surely understand, Craig, the more we believe it the more it is likely to happen.

Literally.

Posted by: KevinB at May 9, 2009 10:44 PM

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