Religion, Violence and My Murdered Friend

ARIMINDER

You wrote, "Can you be objective? Then hear me out. All "devout" practitioners of beliefs in invisible beings are deluded".

This is merely your opinion and it happens to be false.

Since you put "devout" in quotations marks, I am curious what you mean by that.

You also wrote, " Reason doesn't matter to them, because they've been trained - or trained themselves - to reason without evidence and act without needing reason."

You seem to be confusing faith and reason, as in "faith without evidence" as opposed to "reason without evidence".

Reason happens to be very important to me and there is a reason that we have reason.

I have met God and I have met satan, so the way I see it, is God rewarded my faith by letting me know that He is Real and a Trinity and a Being of Pure Love. He also let me know that satan is real.

Besides satan being a liar and a thief, he is a loser and a sore loser at that.

Actually, you believe that God is not real, you do not know one way or the other, God knew that I needed to know that He is Real not just to believe that.

There is a difference between faith and religion.

God is a searcher of hearts and minds, not of religious affiliations or lack thereof and it is important what one does and why one does it and what one knows.

As I have said before, I do not hold it against Mohammad that he was deceived by satan. God looks at the person, not the label one applies to oneself.

Take care, be ready.

Sincerely, Thomas Paul Moses Baum.

i am comfortable here, RAbbi Teacher. i shall have a medicine soon. thank You.

and also the cloth and attitudes of professors.

the sword, the chapter in Quran, the small paper with a text on, and to reject and disagree. Teacher, can You recollect which was which?

had i told You, Teacher, about Asiyah Zubair Muzzammil, what these words are? i could not find my comment in the room of Mrs Elizabeth the Guest Voice here OnFaith.

we thank to Anatolyevic Medvedev and Viladimir for this contribution.

i think the photos of the priest with his prayer wheel have been sent by Viladimir Putin.

i had cold last night, and i am fallen this morning. i am broken because of a dispute on the phone, the connection between the father of my so called fiancee and me has not been established fully because of teachings and problems in the family. so my voice is FA in stead of LA in the notes and music. let me have a rest before the rehearsal-ly.

newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/faithandhealing/2009/02/a_message_from_a_patient_and_h.html

zen is "goodness", what a scentful lovely word! we thank for this lovely meal the Students of Peter and MAtthias have sent!

essen : to dine

i thank to SAlly Quinn for this bud of virtues (dharma) and Teacher Brad Hirschfield for this room.

ah the violins and the strings.

http://www.milliyet.com.tr/content/galeri/yeni/goster.asp?prm=5,350453E-02&galeriid=5893

this is for the Layperson in the preceeding topic on OnFaith and Peter MAtthiessen, lifting every voice in the chorus and orchestra as has stated JAmes Alexander Forbes the Recent!

newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/guestvoices/2009/02/lifting_every_voice.html

www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/video/2008/04/16/VI2008041602291.html

600 million Muslim women with the exception of a lucky few like the PM of Bangladesh (the female PM of Pakistan was not so lucky) suffer 24/7 under the heels of 400 million Muslim men. This is all done via the guidance of the "worst book ever written" aka the koran. Said book was generated by the hallucinations of one long dead Arab who supposedly got his instructions from a "pretty, wingie, talking, flying, fictional thingie" named Gabriel. It all makes one scream out "THE SIGNIFICANT STUPIDITY OF IT ALL!!!!

Rabbi Hirschfeld, I grieve for the loss of your friend. What a terrible thing to happen to anyone.

For those of you who are condemning religion - domestic violence does not know religious boundaries. It can happen among Muslims, Christians, Jews, atheists, and even Goddess-worshipping Pagans. (I have yet to hear of a case in the Pagan community, but that doesn't mean that it's not there.) It's not religion that gives people the power over someone else, it's the low self-esteem and sickness to believe that violence solves all problems. We had a case here a few years ago where a guy dumped gasoline on his ex-wife and lit her on fire. And they were church-going Christians.

The main thing is for women to GET HELP and GET OUT of the situation. Don't think that a man is going to stop hitting you, no matter how much he apologizes. It's NOT YOUR FAULT that someone is physically or emotionally abusive - it's theirs. Protect yourself and protect your kids. Call the police. Don't take no for an answer. Call a domestic violence hotline.

Goddess bless.

Can you be objective? Then hear me out. All "devout" practitioners of beliefs in invisible beings are deluded. Reason doesn't matter to them, because they've been trained - or trained themselves - to reason without evidence and act without needing reason. All they need is belief, and by definition, their belief trumps everything else. In this case, murder for Allah. Honor killing? No, idiotic, self-centered behavior. We also know Christians who lie, cheat, steal and murder for Jesus.

A pox on all such houses. In our current millenium, we can no longer afford to let "believers" get their hands on Weapons of Mass Destruction. If you don't change yourself, the human race is doomed to experience a bloodbath of unbelievable proportions. All for god, of course.

This says it all. Thank you.

We need religious leaders who are more concerned with the black eyes given to women by members of the faith, than the black eye given to the faith when the faithful beat their wives.

you write:"Could we not use Aasiya's death as a soap box on which to stand but as an opportunity to ask the tough questions which would make deaths like hers less likely?"

If she was your friend, did it ever occur to you or any of her other friends to offer her a safe place to stay?

Many battered women will not say anything about the battering, but will admit the problem if asked...and in this case, the police were notified...but like many abused women, she refused to press charges.

...yet no family or friends bothered to help her stay in a safe house, or give her the address of a women's shelter.

And if there were laws that allow police (rather than the victim) place charges of assault, perhaps her husband would have been stopped. Do you know if NY state has such laws?

All religious people are not crazy. But, let us all face the elephant in the room, that the subject of religion does often attract people who are mentally unstable, neurotic, disordered, even paranoid, even psychotic. The more Fundamentalist the religion, the more difficulty there is with this problem.

That is just a plain fact. and is common knowledge.

First, I want to congratulate Rabbi Hirschfield for addressing the issue. After his last comment on it, I fully expected him to put it on the back burner forever.

Beheading does echo stories of such deaths coming from the Muslim world, so there is a connection to Islam. It should be noted that the Koran has a verse that directly condones violence against wives and while theologians of that faith wrestle with the interpretation of which conditions warrant beating one's wife, there is no debate that the prophet's word allows it. That and the tenet that Mohammad is the last prophet whose words cannot be put aside places true believers on a slippery slope that can lead to the atrocity in Buffalo.

I would love to embrace Islam on an equal footing with all religions but the more I find out about their basic doctrine the more difficult it becomes.