Just for the record: The most important thing you can do for yourself is discern your own sense of conviction. Religion is a human response to some unseen power moving in the soul. In our Western world, totally lacking in a proper psychology of anything above the intellect, such movements in the soul are spooky and untrustworthy, even when they cannot be ignored.
Because I have learned to be self-conscious about such things, I dismiss the concept of objective reality. I don’t pretend to know what’s true in that sense. All I have is my own story, my own reaction to things. If my reaction sounds familiar to you, maybe we can compare notes in our search for inner peace. Even more often, I’m sure, is that folks will use my story as a negative example, accepting my frame of reference but coming to a different conclusion. It’s all good; this is what God intended, as far as I am concerned.
That said, I wanted to clarify some things because conversations I have indicate some questions.
I’ve written at length about my dissatisfaction with Judaism. Further, I suggest that at least some of my problems with mainstream Christianity arise from the effects of Judaism’s effort to squelch it. In other words, Judaism couldn’t stop Christian religion, so it perverted it to make it subservient. There are plenty of other bad influences that contributed to the wandering of Christian religion from the original track, but Judaism looms large due to its self-conscious effort to destroy the teachings of Christ. Do some research on “Judaizers” and you’ll get the picture. There is sufficient evidence to allege that this broad campaign of subversion has persisted ever since the days of Apostle Paul.
At any rate, I assert that the ideal for human understanding rests in the Ancient Hebrew background, and Jews have abandoned that. Further, they don’t want anyone else to have it. They have been keeping an eye on things to prevent it coming back to life. Then again, it’s not really Judaism per se, but The Cult [PDF]. At this point, I’m forced to admit that standard concepts of evidence don’t help much. This is one of those areas where you can take my word for it; either it strikes you as usefully accurate or you walk away.
But I’m convinced The Cult had something to do with how Islam turned out. What we see today is not how it started. The founder was highly mystical; he didn’t trust human reason very much. He was a genuine Arab intellectual in the sense of the broader Ancient Near Eastern traditions. Of course his background was deeply pagan, and it colored the resulting pronouncements of his contemplations. He also had contact with Jews and Christians. But his grand old Eastern Mysticism produces a grand creativity of thought. In the fading glow of his genius after his passing, the intellectual fervor of his followers produced much to be admired.
What is seldom obvious to people who read about that blossom of early Islamic genius is how it was harshly squelched just a short time later. Not all at once, mind you, but the battle between two branches of the Prophet’s successors signaled a shift away from the fully mystical approach to things. There was a sort of lock-down that descended over the whole thing. The golden age of tolerance and wisdom and great art was already a myth by the time Muslims began to conquer slices of Europe. The alleged glory of Andalusian nirvana in Spain is sheer propaganda; it was brutal and ugly with a nice paint job.
Now we have Islam that is dominated by the form of mysticism with none of the ferment. There are still grand scholars serving in that religion, but your average Muslim is totally lacking in the self-conscious mysticism of ancient times. The rules are taught, but the deeper mystical awareness is quite rare, and even then, it is often somewhat squelched by fearful restrictions.
I’m convinced The Cult was in on that, but evidence is scant. What isn’t so scant is evidence of the aftermath. Today we can trace the worst forms of Islamic terrorism to agents of Zionism, sometimes openly admitted. You can research the Donmeh and the birth of Wahabism and get a partial picture of this. If you understand the way modern espionage — CIA, Mossad, MI6, etc. — is a direct expression of The Cult, then it’s not hard to trace the provocations that created current terrorist organizations like al-Qaeda and ISIS. They are funded, trained and equipped by the Western spy agencies. Yes, our own CIA is murdering US troops out on the battlefield in the most perverse and sickening deception you can imagine.
At the same time, we have a massive domestic push to favor Islam by select propaganda agencies in the West. This whole thing is a mind-boggling mess of manipulation. One wing forces it down our throats while another wing of the same team is demonizing it. And just to make sure there’s something to offend everyone, we have another wing on that team pumping traditional Western Christianity, another wing pumping secularism, and Zionists grabbing all the money and influence they can — all at once. And they are all serving the singular purpose of making sure no one can tell what the hell is going on.
You shouldn’t imagine that I idolize Islam; it’s loaded with trash. But I do want to point out now and then where it gets some things right. Keep in mind that the greatest lie is the one standing next to the truth.
There are the Sufi’s but, they are seriously oppressed in many Islamic countries if I remember correctly.
Quite so; Sufism became a target with the rise of Wahabism and Salafism. Notice that it’s the Donmeh (closet Zionist) influence that targets Islamic mysticism. Through the centuries, it has become highly regulated even where it is tolerated. Practitioners lack much of the lively creativity of early Islam.