I have tried to engage with experts of cult studies about definition of cult like Alexandra Stein but she ignored that. Many people see my faith as a cult but I think if you are open-minded to dialogue it is intellectually dishonest to describe such a person as a cult member. I think neglect or self-neglect is an issue related to mystic forms of religion and Quran 57:27 criticizes monastic mysticism and encourages social and intellectual participation. Religious people being humans are imperfect like secular humans but western culture condones the imperfections of secularists and disproportionately highlights the imperfections of the religious. However, there are secular intellectuals who empathetically analyze the fundamentalist movements. For example Martin Seligman a psychologist describes fundamentalists as the most optimistic people in the world. I do not know much about the theology or abuses of Aggressive Christianity but your distinction between anti- Semitism and anti-Zionism made me want to talk to you.
Category: Dialogues with secularists/modernists
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How an authentic unitarian paradigm can break ground in Cult Studies to offer tools of religious de-radicalization
To Natacha Tormey a victim of western sex cult: Sociologists classify David Berg as having charismatic authority, but western Scripture apparently lacks intellectual tools to challenge such authority due to history of saint-worship and deification of Christ peace be upon him . For example, a old woman challenged the charismatic authority of the second caliph of Islam on the issue of austerity in dowry, and he acknowledged that she knew Quran more than him. Even in the most revered personality of the divine Ishmaelite Messenger(p), Scripture emphasizes that he is not divine and can sometimes forget or in fact Scripture mentions that the Messenger(p) should have given more attention to truth seeking under-privileged than truth-indifferent elites.Sister Natacha is accurate when she says that one is more at risk when one feels one is safe which echoes Quran that fitna or temptation which attracts you into doing something unethical is more harmful than physical harm. Cults or heresies are called fitna in Islamic heresiology -
Quran 75:2, Dunning Kruger effect and the self-hating self
Why do so many right wingers believe they are geniuses at economics, simply because they hate poor people? The worst part is many right wingers are poor themselves and think that their bourgeoise aspirations make them better than other poor people. The Dunning Krüger effect in operation.This effect was studied for millenia in Abrahamic theosophy. A Sufi scholar Yahya bin Mu’adh said: Who recognizes himself recognizes God. However, this self-insight is focused on recognizing our incompetence rather than competence because Quran glorifies nafs lawwamah or the self-hating self. Like Guy Winch a western psychologist says that guilt is a relationship protector. Dr Ali Shariati was the best Muslim sociologist who studied class conflict in depth. -
Quran, Dunning-Kruger effect and the analogy of a donkey carrying books
Many uninformed atheists suffer from Dunning-Kruger effect while assessing their religious knowledge about Islam. Also, many knowledgeable atheists suffer from Dunning-Kruger effect, while assessing their moral abilities, because an informed person has more moral duties which many fail to fulfill. That’s why Quran 62:5 calls Jews who believe in their intellectual and religious superiority, as donkeys carrying books because ignorant among them are not much informed about the relationship between Torah and Islam, while the smarter ones fail to fulfill their moral duties of following truth with respect to Islam. The same holds true about Christians and atheists who believe in their religious and intellectual superiority, respectively. -
Diophantus’ Arithemtica at the shrine of Imam Ali Al Ridha(as)
In 1968, Sezgin found four previously unknown books of Diophantus’ Arithmetica at the shrine of Imam Rezā in the holy Islamic city of Mashad in northeastern Iran. -
Advice to an American secularist regarding synthesis of civilizations
I think US is comparatively better than Middle East. For example, due to laws made by Bush as known as ideological exclusion act Tariq Ramadan could not enter US. But activists like you helped him enter US and then he had a dialogue with Hitchens. In the Middle East people get executed simply for supporting democratic brotherhood due to Israeli pressure. You once told me that my optimism and activism will not bear fruits until I die but you are my fruit and I am your fruit. Your open mindedness makes me hopeful about synthesis of civilizations through dialogue. They promote clash of civilizations. They cannot kill truthful ideas. Our ideas will inspire future generations and finally the humanity will wake up. We should work on developing intercultural ideas. For example I am working on promoting science and psychology in the traditional world. You can explore Middle eastern ideas which resonate with you and promote them in the modern world. In this way, we overcome xenophobia and war cannot work when xenophobia is gone. When people start to see foreigners as humans like them, imperialist propaganda cannot work anymore. Even if one candle is alive darkness cannot prevail and if that candle lights at least one another candle before dying the cycle will continue. -
Bridges TV, Ali A. Rizvi, musician Zameer, bullying of American extremists and Islam
I was introduced to Bridges TV by a Christian extremist who said Islam motivated the murder of wife by the CEO of Bridges TV. He neither prayed nor fasted. Her wife was more conscious about her identity than him because she was the one who insisted to launch the TV so that her children grow up as self-confident Muslims the self-confidence of American Muslims is shattered by perpetual bullying of Christian and secular extremists because Islam causes existential anxiety to both identities. As far as the music is concerned, once a jurist(qadi) of Madina was asked why do you accept the testimony of musicians/music listeners in religious courts? So he said: May God forgive us and you, which one of us does not sing (ayyuna la yataghanna). -
My perspective on Knietzsche
The most stupid Christians are spiritually more enlightened than the smartest arrogant atheists.Jason Douglas Holford IDK. Nietzsche, whom most people describe as an athiest, seems way more spiritually enlighted than most Christians I’ve met.“The most spiritual men, as the strongest, find their happiness where others would find their destruction: in the labyrinth, in hardness against themselves and others, in experiments. Their joy is self-conquest: asceticism becomes in them nature, need, and instinct. Difficult tasks are a privilege to them; to play with burdens that crush others, a recreation. Knowledge-a form of asceticism. They are the most venerable kind of man: that does not preclude their being the most cheerful and the kindliest.”Friedrich NietzscheIshmael Abraham The problem with secular ideologies and pseudo-religions is that they fail to be consistent. For example, he uses the words happiness and knowledge here, but he advocated nihilism, meaninglessness and hopelessness as well. If by saying that God is deadhe meant Christianity is dead because he was the most familiar with this religion he was truthful because Islam also predicts the fall of all pseudo-religions including the secular ideologies, but if he was certain ( which nihilists are not) that God the Creator doesn’t exist then he was an apostate and spiritually dead from Islamic perspective. But I also know he admired Islam and he criticized Church for keeping West in xenophobic ignorance towards Islam. If he met a Muslim scholar like Imam Al-Ghazali(ra) or Ibn Rushd(ra) who was genetically European like him he could possibly die a Muslim. The idea expressed in this quote is similar to Sufi idea to achieving enlightenment through not doing what you like and doing what you do not like which according to Sufis is achieved through keeping the commandments. The word for that concept is called mujahadah(struggle). God says in Quran: Those who struggle(mujahadah) in Us, We will show them our paths. Sufis prefer righteous actions for true enlightenment to eloquent words and they also adopt intellectual humility in order to reach out to masses and shun the temptation of artificial verbosity. -
The relationship of Muslim scholars and money
Muslim scholars do not receive any taxes. In fact they are the poorest and the most altruistic volunteers in the worldDonna Smith Islam was spread using taxation of non Muslims as a coercion to become Muslim. You did not understand what I said.Ishmael Abraham That freedom and protection tax was nominal and it’s purpose was to exempt non-Muslims from military service. Muslims in West pay taxes to Godless government which are even spent on killing Muslims. So, at least try to know what you hate rather than your blind xenophobic ignorance. That’s why Christians of Spain used to say: Thank heaven for 711 when Muslims conquered it and established peace, justice and freedom of religion. -
A response to Krauss: Quran does not teach that earth is 6000 years old
Transcript — It amazes me that people have pre-existing notions that defy the evidence of reality. But that they hold onto them so dearly. And one of them is the notion of creationism, or. in fact, Senator Marco Rubio, who’s presumably a reasonably intelligent man and maybe even educated, was asked what’s the age of the Earth, and ultimately, either because he actually believed it or he was trying to appeal to some constituency, had to argue that it’s a big mystery, that somehow we should teach kids both ideas, that the Earth is 6,000 years old and that it’s 4.55 billion years old, which is what it is.If you think about that, somehow saying that, well, anything goes, we shouldn’t offend religious beliefs by requiring kids to know – to understand reality; that’s child abuse. And if you think about it, teaching kids – or allowing the notion that the earth is 6,000 years old to be promulgated in schools is like teaching kids that the distance across the United States is 17 feet. That’s how big an error it is.Now you might say, look, a lot of people believe that, so don’t we owe it to them to allow their views to be present in school? Well, as I’ve often said, the purpose of education is not to validate ignorance but to overcome it. Fifty percent of the people in the United States, when we probe them each year with the National Science Foundation, think that the sun goes around the Earth, not that the Earth goes around the sun. When we asked the question – we provide the question: The Earth goes around the sun and takes a year to do it; true or false? Almost every year, 50 percent of the people get that wrong.Now, does that mean in schools we should allow the anti-Galilean and Copernican idea that the sun goes around the Earth to be taught? Absolutely not. If, in fact, the very fact that people don’t know that, and the very fact that enough people are willing to somehow believe that Earth is 6,000 years old, means we have to do a better job of teaching physics and biology, not a worse job.The last thing we want to do is water down the teaching of biology because some people don’t recognize that evolution happened. Evolution is the basis of modern biology and, in fact, if a lot of people don’t believe it, it only means we have to do a better job teaching it. So once again, I repeat, the purpose of education is not to validate ignorance, but to overcome it. And to overcome a situation where a United States Senator can speak such manifest nonsense with impunity is vitally important to the healthy future of our society.Technology and biotechnology will be the basis of our economic future. And if we allow nonsense to be promulgated in the schools, we do a disservice to our students, a disservice to our children, and we’re guaranteeing that they will fall behind in a competitive world that depends upon a skilled workforce able to understand and manipulate technology and science.]The Islamic response: Quran does not teach that. According to Quran, the word yawm means an age or era or epoch, which means universe underwent different phases during its creation. For example, Quran says a day can be 1000 years long or 50,000 years long so it is a relative concept which varies according to the context. For example the word ayyam is translated as vicissitudes in Quran 3:140 {Tafsir Ibn Abbas: (These are (only) the vicissitudes) the days of the life of this world (which We cause to follow one another for mankind) sometimes the believers have the upper hand over the unbelievers and sometimes it is the unbelievers who have the upper hand over the believers} altafsir.comThe idea that abandoning religion will lead to economic prosperity is also wrong and spiritually self-destructive and is called istidraj(imperceptible destruction) in Quran. Quran 6:44 { Tafsir Ibn Abbas (Then, when they forgot that whereof they had been reminded) when they turned their backs on that which they had been commanded with in the Scripture, (We opened unto them the gates of all things) (till, even as they were rejoicing in that which they were given) (We seized them unawares) with punishment, (and lo! they were dumbfounded) despairing of any good. }
A spiritual Ishmaelite 