amanitamus wrote:Since Judaism, Islam,and Christianity stem from the same soarce,Abraham.
Really? I think it's a bit simplistic to take Abraham as the source of so-called Abrahamic religions... Surely he didn't 'invent' them from nothing.
They worship the same being dominated by anger and jealousy.
That's a huge generalisation... even within the Bible itself, God 'appears' under very different lights depending on the authors, which are many and span a number of centuries, let us not forget that. Anger and jealousy can only be found in some OT passages, they are nowhere to be found in a literal sense in the NT or in the Qur'an. And even in the OT I assume those passages could very well be interpreted in a metaphorical way.
Karma Dorje wrote:Islam on the other hand worships Ba'al. It's not really all the same being as one can sense from the very different energies of their places of worship.
That statement really can't stand up to the facts. Here's what the Qur'an says:
And Elias was most surely of the messengers. He asked his people: 'Do you not fear Allah? Will ye call upon Baal and forsake the best of creators? Allah is your Lord and the Lord of your fathers, the ancients'.
Reading the works of Kabbalists and Sufis often bears more resemblance to any form of mysticism than they do to their parent religions.
And yet sufism is entirely reliant on the Qur'an and words from Muhammad himself.
Malcolm wrote: The philosophical revolution in Islam happened after Muslims converted Central Asia and came into contact with the [Hellenized] Central Asian Civilizations.
That's very inaccurate. Among the best known sufis is Hassan al-Basri for example, who died long before the conquests of Central Asia. Sufi mysticism has never led to a 'revolution' within islam, there has never been a date 'before' and 'after'. As for the philosophical developments within the islamic empire, they were led by Muslims as well as members of other religions... and they are unrelated to sufism. Acutally, some prominent sufis like al-Ghazali have strongly criticized speculative philosphy as an impediment to direct experience.
No, it is just a fact that Muslim ritual sacrifices every year in the billions of dollars is gyalpo worship,
What you seem to forget is that islam first appeared in a country where the main staple is meat. Arabia is mainly desert, with no possibility of cultivating crops (except in the far South). Back then, slaughtering your own camel for a guest was a huge thing, a tremendous mark of esteem and generosity. Now slaughtering it for the sake of Allah and distributing the meat to the poor who barely have anything to eat was probably one of the most praiseworthy acts that could be performed in such a situation.
Also Kosher slaughter is by definition a religious act. Sorry, but that is also a fact.
In Abrahamic religions just like in buddhism, any act is religious insofar as it is motivated by a specific intention with 'karmic' results.
You can point out all the exceptions and nuances you want. They don't matter. What matters is that in these places that I mentioned, millions of animals a year are ritually sacrificed or killed according to religious rules, and the karmic results are exponentially worse than Tysons and Hormel.
That's a pretty wild association to make. Over half of the African continent does not practice religious slaughters as seen in Abrahamic religions, yet subsaharan Africa is in a much more dire situation than many Muslim countries... As for Israel, aside from being *officially* at war, I hardly see how Israelis have a miserable life in Tel Aviv.
Not to mention the misery that characterizes the lives of so many Americans, Canadians, Asians, Europeans and so on. You don't have 'happy countries' and 'miserable countries'. That can only be individual...
Animal sacrifice is the rule in Islam, not the exception. It is a duty, actually, one many Muslims may find distasteful, but a duty nevertheless.
Again, it is a duty because it is rich people's duty to feed the poor, on those special occasions. If islam had appeared in Asia, maybe it would have consisted in soybeans. The whole idea is that of a sacrifice = renouncing something dear to you. The fact that it's an animal is secondary. Do not forget that in islam, Allah does NOT command Abraham to kill his son... so the animal does not replace a human life. It is simply used as a sacrifice because that's what's available there.
That's how far I've read the thread so far...