Category Archives: Theology

Religious tolerance in India

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Pew research center survey

A recent Pew Research Center survey of religious identity, nationalism, and tolerance in India presented interesting—and perplexing—findings. Some are heartening: An overwhelming majority of Indians, more than 80 percent, believe respect for all religions lies at the core of their identity as Indians. Most respondents, whatever their religion, said they are free to practice their faiths, that others are free to practice their faiths, and they do not face discrimination.

The above words are from the survey, not our words!

Click the following and pew research link will open,
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/06/29

FBI CONCLUDES 15 YEARS INVESTIGATION OF ISLAM

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FBI CONCLUDES 15 YEARS INVESTIGATION OF ISLAM

Thinkers Forum USA Editors received this info from Firoz Kamal

Washington Post.

After 15 years of broadly targeting the 3.3-million-member community and extensively monitoring its activities, the FBI declared an end Friday to its surveillance of Muslim Americans, saying its exhaustive study of their beautiful culture was finally complete.

Officials confirmed that the program was started in the fall of 2001 when federal agents, captivated by Islam’s complex history and rich spiritual traditions, redirected the full force of the bureau’s intelligence-gathering apparatus toward developing a more thoughtful, nuanced appreciation of the Muslim-American way of life.

“We’d always known Islam was one of the great world religions, but it wasn’t until we recruited a network of 15,000 informants and infiltrated mosques all over the country that we came to understand just how magnificent and fascinating it truly is,” said FBI director James B. Comey, who noted that agents gained a valuable and eye-opening understanding of Islam—while also learning a lot about themselves and their own faith in the process—after entering the Muslim places of worship to collect as much information as they could on the intriguing personal beliefs of the religion’s followers.

“After analyzing the transcripts of thousands of phone calls and intercepting the communications of prominent Muslim-American leaders and academics, we’ve really come to admire their vibrant culture.”

“The considerable amount of intel we’ve gathered and carefully pored over for the past 15 years has shown us that their faith and customs are really quite inspiring,” Comey added.

“If there’s one thing we’ve taken away from all our surveillance, it’s what a glorious and enriching part of our world Islam is.”

According to sources within the bureau, the harvesting of internet data, widespread racial profiling, and the nationwide mapping of Muslim communities have allowed agents to closely observe the followers of Islam on an extremely personal level, thereby allowing them to develop a deep respect for the amazing ethnic and cultural diversity of the faith’s 1.6 billion believers, as well as the striking distinctions between the religion’s various sects, which, they stressed, went far beyond just Sunni and Shiite.

Remarking on all the information they had gathered, FBI officials emphasized that adherents of Islam speak dozens of beautiful languages—Arabic, but also Urdu, Pashto, Farsi, Bengali, Javanese, and many others—and noted that agents came to treasure this linguistic richness after installing recording devices throughout Muslim-American communities and then surreptitiously listening in on Quranic study groups, prayer sessions, and social events.

“Thanks to advances in video surveillance, we’ve been able to look inside Muslims’ homes and view some breathtaking calligraphy prints and handwoven tapestries,” said former agent Casey Hanna, who fondly recalled assignments that allowed him to overhear moving recitations of the Hadith, which he was fascinated to learn come from an oral tradition and are considered to be the direct word of the Prophet Muhammad.

“I went undercover in hundreds of Muslim-owned businesses and residences across the nation and was lucky enough to sample many variations on the aromatic stews and delectable desserts that serve as staples of halal cuisine—Arabian, North African, Indonesian. They were all delicious, and unlike anything I’d ever tasted.”

“I’ll never forget this one instance when I closely trailed a New York shop owner for three straight years—his coffee was just spectacular,” Hanna added. “Muslims were the first people to drink coffee, you know.”

After realizing they could not fully nurture their curiosity by limiting their study to Muslims in the United States, the FBI reportedly enlisted the help of the NSA to find out more about the incredible religion. Between 2002 and 2008, the bureau is known to have monitored 7,485 email addresses around the globe in order to learn answers to their many questions about Muslims’ compelling lives and rituals, from why they don’t eat pork, to what Muslim holidays are like, to why some Muslim women wear garments that cover their heads while others don’t.

Comey told reporters the FBI also received information from the CIA, whose enhanced interrogation techniques and clandestine intelligence-gathering methods yielded many interesting revelations from Muslim sources around the world, such as the fact that Arabs make up only 15 percent of the global Muslim population, and that through most of history, women in Islamic societies actually had more property rights than women in the West.

Saying they thoroughly enjoyed studying “such a lovely people and such a lovely faith,” Comey explained that agents would often remove a Muslim citizen from their community and keep them detained for days, weeks, or even months on end to learn everything they could from them about Islam.

“There’s no way I could remember the names of all the Muslim citizens that our agents brought in to discuss the beauty of Islam with one-on-one, but rest assured that with their help, the FBI has gained a deep and illuminating understanding of Islamic culture,” said Comey, who noted that by combing through thousands upon thousands of citizens’ banking records, agents discovered with astonishment how some observant Muslims set up special loan payment plans to avoid paying interest, as they consider it usury, which is forbidden under Sharia law.

“It’s crazy to think about, but until little more than a decade ago, I had no idea there were Five Pillars of Islam that guided all Muslims’ spiritual lives. I also didn’t know anything about the multitude of Muslim contributions to mathematics and science that have been absolutely vital to the world.

But that’s not to say they don’t value art, though. Poets like Rumi and Hafez drew upon mystical Sufist interpretations of the Quran to write verse that is every bit as sublime as, say, Keats or Coleridge. And don’t even get me started on the architecture.”

“As this program sadly comes to an end, I just want to thank Muslim Americans from the bottom of my heart for teaching us all about your faith and your culture,” he continued.

“We’ve learned so much about you over the years. More than you could possibly imagine.”

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Leaping from Despair into Hope: The Lesson of Rembrandt’s Resurrection for Today’s Troubled World

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Leaping from Despair into Hope: The Lesson of Rembrandt’s Resurrection for Today’s Troubled World

Matthew Ehret
Matthew Ehret is the Editor-in-Chief of the Canadian Patriot Review , a BRI Expert on Tactical talk, and Senior Fellow at the American University in Moscow. He is author of the‘Untold History of Canada’ book series and in 2019 he co-founded the Montreal-based Rising Tide Foundation . Consider helping this process by making a donation to the RTF or becoming a Patreon supporter to the Canadian Patriot Review.

Today, the world finds itself moving through a turbulent transformation between two systems. Collapsing at a faster rate every day are the foundations of a failed imperial world order defined by zero-sum thinking, consumerism and materialism which has defined our existence for decades. The question is now: will the new world system take the form of a new era of global empire, unmitigated war between faiths and a prolonged dark age OR might it take the form of the beautiful multi-polar world order defined by win-win cooperation between all of the nations, faiths and cultures of the world?

Throughout his life, Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669) continuously returned to the axiom-breaking theme of the famous biblical story of the ‘Supper at Emmaus’ in order to convey the powerful transformative “moment” of discovery in between the two states of mind of 1) the belief in the death of Christ and the end to his life’s mission and 2) the state of renewed faith in the immortal hope represented by the image of the resurrection. While this lesson is taken from the Christian matrix, it’s universal characteristic provides a lesson for people of all cultures who seek to bring a better world into being.

Before jumping to an analysis of some beautiful paintings, it would be necessary to summarize ever so briefly the story of the Dinner at Emmaus.

The Dinner at Emmaus and The Importance of Christianity in World History

Featured in the New Testament Gospels of Luke and Mark, Jesus is invited to eat with two of his disciples (Luke and Cleopas) in the town of Emmaus. This wouldn’t be anything exceptional, except for the fact that Jesus had been violently crucified on the cross and entombed days earlier. Neither Luke nor Cleopas recognize their mentor who has been resurrected after being entombed for three days and it is only upon breaking bread with this stranger that they make their discovery just as Christ vanishes miraculously into light.

Whether you are a Christian, Muslim, Jew, Confucian, Hindu, Buddhist or other, the lesson conveyed by this biblical story and especially Rembrandt’s artistic treatment has a universal value for the simple reason that Christ’s life and mission represented a moral power of change which had the unique capacity to undo the foundations of the Roman Empire. This movement accomplished this miraculous feat not through military force, money or any other Hobbesian notion of power, but merely by tuning the hearts and minds of a suppressed people to the power of forgiveness, loving all including one’s enemies, and adhering to one’s conscience before all “political norms of acceptable behaviour” demanded by the Roman oligarchy.

One can imagine how disheartened Christ’s followers were to see that light of hope snuffed out under the suffocating weight of the world’s largest and most evil of empires whose unchallenged power had extended to Asia, Africa and all Europe. One can easily imagine what an existential crisis overwhelmed the hearts of these early followers of Jesus’ Gospel. Were they just naive fools to believe in a better world and a loving Creator when such evil could dominate the world? How powerful and electrifying was the idea that the sacrificed leader of this movement actually succeeded in defeating the one thing which even the most powerful of emperors and kings could not escape? If this were possible, then perhaps the material power of the Empire could be defeated after all and perhaps the ideals of Christ’s life and mission were worth having faith in too.

Over the coming centuries, the Roman oligarchy slowly learned that regardless of how many Christians it burned alive, or threw into the mouths of wild animals for the entertainment of the mob, the movement only grew in numbers. This continued to the point that the Empire was forced to attempt to co-opt the movement by Romanizing it and infusing imperial, pagan practices into its governing structures slowly suffocating the spirit of Christ’s message in favour of the formal structures of the “word” of the book as interpreted by an approved “priesthood” beholden to an oligarchical class.

Amidst this tendency to corruption and decay, Christ’s spirit was periodically re-awakened from time to time in the form of honest souls who broke from formalization to “walk the walk” and live according to their consciences. These courageous souls who “broke from the mould” include such names as St. Augustine of Hippo, Alcuin, Charlemagne, Dante Alighieri, Nicholas of Cusa, Erasmus, Thomas More, and even Rembrandt van Rijn. Were it not for their efforts to renew the spirit of Christianity by enflaming the kindling for new Renaissances, Europe would likely still be living under the conditions of the medieval dark age, or worse.

One can also argue that were it not for this transformative and miraculous story of reincarnation, then Christianity would have merely been just another one of many Jewish sects that tried nobly to bring substance to the darkness of a war-ridden world… but ultimately failed.

Rembrandt’s Renaissance Challenge

It is no coincidence that Rembrandt’s famous 1648 rendition of the theme of the ‘Dinner at Emmaus’ was painted during the year that the great Peace of Westphalia was finalised in Europe. This Treaty not only ended the 30 Years War that destroyed generations of Europeans in an endless revengist bloodbath of Protestantism vs Catholicism, but also created a new basis of international law by establishing the system of modern nation states premised around the principles of forgiveness, and the agapic principle of the “Benefit of the Other”. In the modern age, a correlate to this principle is found beautifully in the policy of “win-win cooperation” expressed in China’s New Silk Road which itself emanates from Confucian principles of “Tianxia”.

1648 rendition of Rembrandt’s ‘Supper at Emmaus;

Rembrandt’s 1628 rendition of ‘Supper at Emmaus’ is featured below with an incredible use of chiaroscuro to convey the divinity of Christ and also the motion from the darkness of ignorance to the light of knowledge. Rembrandt’s choice to place the central focus on the un-named disciple rather than on Christ whom he places in a foreground silhouette is not an accident and neither is the choice to place the maid working in the kitchen covered in shadow and oblivious to the miracle behind her. This central focus on the discovery process occurring in the mind of the disciple creates an opportunity for a cathartic experience with the viewer who is invited to share in the co-discovery occurring before their eyes.

The ethereal divine light emanating from Christ’s figure just before he disappears casts a divine glow upon his surprised associate which is very different from the candle casting artificial light upon the maid in the kitchen. This metaphorical use of light is another device used by all great Platonic humanists to convey the image of different grades of knowledge as outlined in the famous Allegory of the Cave in Plato’s Republic.

Rembrandt’s 1628 rendition of “Supper at Emmaus” 

Another rendition of Rembrandt’s ‘Supper at Emmaus’ was painted in 1648 featuring the artist’s struggle to convey the transformative change. In the version below, Rembrandt placed the light source not in Christ but rather hidden from view covered by one of his disciples. In this rendition, Rembrandt chose to place the event on a theatrical stage (a device he used in several biblical themes). The great master understood painting as a performative principle akin to acting and not as some mere presentation of pretty objects on canvas and as such he wished the audience to imagine reliving the experience fully as good actors should rather than merely admire a show as voyeurs.

Looking through his surviving thumbnail sketches, we see that Rembrandt considered rendering the scene in a very different manner wherein Christ would be depicted a split second later as pure light. It is worth taking the opportunity to think to yourself: Why did the painter decide not to take this route? Why was the path he chose deemed wiser to the master? What idea is missing from the sketch?

Velasquez Tackles the Paradox of Spirit and Matter

A contemporary painter and kindred spirit to Rembrandt was the Spanish painter Diego Velasquez (1599-1660) who also took on the challenge of capturing the important “in between” moment conveyed in the biblical story. Many contemporary art critics who lack the sensitivity to art’s higher power to convey transformative discoveries often miss the principled intention of both Rembrandt and Velasquez’s moral choice to convey this subject matter (and all their works) as they do. Below we can see Velasquez’s 1623 rendition of the “eureka moment” forever unfolding before the eyes of all future generations.

The hand of one disciple strikes back towards the viewer which also has the brilliant technical effect of immersing the audience into the living experience of discovery and further abolishing the false “wall” separating the “subjective” viewer from the “objective” art being viewed.

A few years before this painting, Velasquez tackled the same theme from the unique standpoint of the servant girl fixing a meal in the kitchen and placing the divine transformative scene in the background… not to downplay the importance of the event but to give the viewer a chance to breath, and ponder the co-existence of the divine and the ordinary world in which we all exist which are too often fragmented and divided by an unbridgeable gulf between “abstract” spiritual concepts and “real” material facts.

We hope that during this Easter Sunday and all of the days to follow, you dear reader, take the time to seek the power of creative love and faith in a better world within yourself while sharing the fruits of that search with others. Perhaps, in so doing the lives of such great souls as Velasquez, Rembrandt, Confucius, Socrates, and Christ may come alive once more.

Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section below!

Matthew Ehret is the Editor-in-Chief of the Canadian Patriot Review , a BRI Expert on Tactical talk, and Senior Fellow at the American University in Moscow. He is author of the‘Untold History of Canada’ book series and in 2019 he co-founded the Montreal-based Rising Tide Foundation . Consider helping this process by making a donation to the RTF or becoming a Patreon supporter to the Canadian Patriot Review.

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How Hatred Of Islam Corrupting American Soul.

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Shared by DR. S A Ehtisham

Khaled Abou El Fadl ABC Religion and Ethics Updated 19 Jan 2017 (First posted 18 Jan 2017)

What happens when your enemy is demonized and dehumanized past the point of no return? If Allah, the Qur’an, Muhammad and Islamic history are so vile, what options are left to Muslims? Credit: JEWEL SAMAD / AFP / GettyImages

Khaled Abou El Fadl is the Omar and Azmeralda Alfi Distinguished Professor of Law at the UCLA School of Law. He is the author of Reasoning with God: Reclaiming Shari’ah in the Modern Age.

A bill requiring the U.S. State Department to declare the Muslim Brotherhood a “foreign terrorist organization” is very likely to become law in the coming days.

Senator Ted Cruz, one of the sponsors of the law, stated in a press release that the Brotherhood “espouses a violent Islamist ideology with a mission of destroying the West.”

In the same press release, Cruz cited to what is known as the “civilization jihad” memorandum – a document in which he accuses American Muslim organizations such as the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) and the North American Islamic Trust (NAIT) of being affiliates of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Frank Gaffney, a notorious Islamophobe who is now one of Donald Trump’s key advisers, and the main author of the “civilization jihad” memorandum, had previously pioneered most of the anti-Shari’ah laws passed by many states in the United States.

Gaffney is not shy about proclaiming the United States to be a Christian nation and the Western civilization as rooted in Judaeo-Christian values that are currently under siege by global jihad and Shari’ah. A day after the U.S. election, Gaffney pronounced in a radio interview that Trump’s victory was “a blessing from God” and that declaring the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization would become a key part of Trump’s strategy of “victory over jihad.”

Leo Hohmann, a member of Frank Gaffney’s Center for Security Policy and a contributor to the extremist Frontline Magazine, recently published a curious book entitled Stealth Invasion: Muslim Conquest Through Immigration and Resettlement Jihad. Hohmann outlines a strategy for responding to what he considers to be a purposeful and deliberate conspiracy orchestrated by the Muslim Brotherhood to defeat the West and America through stealth jihad. In his book, Hohmann states: “The Brotherhood is an extreme Islamist organization whose overarching goal is to create a global caliphate governed by Sharia.” He then calls for passing a law declaring the Muslim Brotherhood a foreign terrorist organization and explains that this issue must be “fought not only on the political level but also spiritually.”

In the Muslim world, the bogeyman of the Muslim Brotherhood has been exploited by authoritarian governments to repress their citizens for more than half a century. It is but a pathetic and pitiful irony that now the very same bogeyman will be used to persecute a broad array of Muslim organizations and individuals in the United States.

Current anti-terrorism laws in the United States give virtually limitless powers to the state to monitor, arrest, detain and convict any group or individual who joins, aids, assists, or even supports a foreign terrorist organization. Thus, by designating the Muslim Brotherhood as a foreign terrorist organization, the Trump administration will have unfettered powers to go after any group or person that it suspects or accuses of having so much as pro-Brotherhood sympathies.

Am I overstating the case? Not a bit. The government would have to prove technical legal concepts such as “knowing” assistance as opposed to “unknowing” support of the Brotherhood, and “material support” as opposed to non-material support in order to obtain a felony conviction in a court of law. But if the conduct of the Bush administration is to be taken as any indication, the government does not have to prove a thing to anyone before it can spy on, search, temporarily seize or freeze the assets of, detain for very protracted periods of time and interrogate any one it suspects of anything.

Put simply, as long as a link or nexus is duly alleged, a foreign terrorist designation empowers the government to destroy the life of any family or organization suspected of a limitless set of behaviour and conduct before we even get to what lawyers call “a hearing on the merits.”

Do most Americans know that this is what is about to happen? Most resolutely, no. In the years that I have taught American national security law, I am always intrigued and touched by the naive surprise of my law students when they realize that in the United States, the executive branch can and does hold this level of coercive power. Do most Americans care? I guess the response to this is another question: How can one care about what one does not know or understand?

And most Americans do not know or understand a thing about Islam except what has been steadily fed to them by the obscenely well-financed Islamophobic industry that is behind the very same law at issue. One thing of which I am absolutely certain is that every American who is currently oblivious towards the entire issue of the designation of the Muslim Brotherhood will soon have a very compelling reason to care – and care a great deal – because what is at issue is not the Muslim Brotherhood, Muslims, or even Islam, but the very moral identity and character of the United States and the world in which we live.

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