Sharizal: The Competition for God

The Competition for God
By Sharizal ⋅ April 18, 2008

Apparently violence preaching is not monopolised by one religion

This was a reply to a friend’s reaction on facebook to this cartoon strip by Jack Chick. And since facebook does not allow essay length replies, I thought I’d post it here instead where the limit to writing is till I run out of server space and money.

Ah… the cartoon surfaces again.. It has been around for long while.

To be fair, many Muslims even in Malaysia believe the interpretation that if one is not a Muslim, he or she will not end up in heaven. Although it would be more accurate to say that they believe kafirs will go to hell, and the problem would be the interpretation to what a kafir is.

The key word word here is interpretation and Jack Chick’s interpretation to what Christianity should be is clearly different than Michelle’s.

I am not an academic so I would not know the proper jargon to use but I shall try to explain it in lay man terms.

Let’s take the evangelical movement as a study. Both Christianity and Islam have it. And I dare say both would say that one religion is better than the other, as that is the very nature of preaching; it is competitive. Hence we can say that evangelicals interpret religion quite differently.

Yes, we do over-react too many times. Why is that?

Yes, we do over-react too many times. Why is that?

Now interpretation can be true, false or grey.

Let’s leave out the explanation on true interpretations as I think that is pretty obvious.

A good example of a false interpretation would be the case of the Muslim symbols: the crescent and the star.

The crescent and the star are not Islamic symbols. And yes, they were also pagan symbols as in the cartoons, but the first time that these symbols appear on a Islamic flag was circa 600AD i.e. when the Turks embraced Islam. Some say that the Turks have used these symbols before converting into Islam (some coats of arms in Hungary have crescent and stars) and some say that the Turks took it after the flag of old Constantinople. (Go here for the flag enthusiasts and in depth, independent, academic, historical and as well as a mythical explanation on the origins ;)

So now we get a proper way to interpret the origins of these symbols but most Muslims were also at fault to believe the symbols of the Turks were the de facto symbols of Islam.

The herd mentality is a human trait after all especially if we’re looking up to the biggest Islamic superpower ever known to man.

Now comes the grey interpretation. Yes Aishah was young when she became the Prophets wife. A non controversial explanation is that she was 10 when she became the wife of the prophet but the prophet did not wed her till she was 14 or 15.

Having said that, some might go, oh that’s ok then… while some might still think that is still too young.

It is even greyer when the Muslim world does not standardise their stories as stories like these tend to come from hadiths, and as far as hadiths go the are handed down orally and yes, here it is again, it is open to interpretation; some more straight forward than others. But you get what i mean.

After rambling too much (already too much by 1,300 characters by facebook standards) my point is this, after all it is how we react to the comic, fitna the movie or any other form of misinterpretation that makes us the better person (if we actually give a rat’s ass about being the better person, Christian, Muslim or otherwise)

Apart from bombarding antagonists with polite letters, full of protest and a plea for understanding, laden with facts, figures and a dose of humour (especially after 1910 characters too long by facebook standards), and after trying to make sense of things to yourself, your friends and to those that come to you with questions, the next best thing to do is to ignore them (bastards).

At the end day, whether it is your God, my God, or somebody else’s G*d or Gods, despite the fact that we’re in are world where free speech and freedom of religion are universal rights, the Deity will know best whether to put us in Hell, Heaven or send us back as a Hairdryer.

Taken from http://www.sharizal.net/?p=617