Palestine Action demo 9 August

[Beachtastic]

To my amazement, last night I discovered that some posters on MN think that "radical Islam" means simply "Muslim" 😬

I wonder if this explains why so many are unconcerned about who might be pulling the strings behind the "peace" rallies that were first organised on 7 October? Do they know what radical Islam is, how powerful it is, that it is widely acknowledged as the greatest threat to UK national security, that its intentions are clearly stated, that it is 10000000% different than simply observing Muslim faith?

Palestine Action are planning a rally in central London on Saturday and hope to overwhelm the police presence. Is anyone concerned about this? I'm worried that the seeds of civil unrest are being sown, without it being entirely clear who is sowing them.

www.standard.co.uk/news/london/met-police-palestine-action-protest-b1241347.html

According to Christianity and Judaism! We know their god isn't the same as ours as he doesn't have the same characteristics.

You are incorrect. Islam and Christianity have many more similarities in their belief in God than with Christianity. They both believe in one God, whereas the Christian belief is that Jesus is the son of God and ofcourse there is the concept of the trinity which is not compatible with mainstream Islam or Judaism.

That should say Islam and Judaism have many more similarities*

I'm talking about a lot more than the Trinity/personhood of God.

Guys, you've convinced me... Jesus was a Jew.

(Not the son of God though, just a normal man).

with respect...baaaa humbug

I agree with most of your philosophical points.
I have always been taught that a man called 'Abraham' was patriarch to judaism, christianity and islam and was believed to have originally lived around 2000bc in Ur. You're saying your research contradicts that?

😆 🤣 @gentlesheep I really would give up x

Haha yeah I will do for now at least as I've a visitor arriving shortly!

Notice how many 'genuinely' inquisitive about Judaism, eventually show their true intentions.

Jewish people are absolutely shafted in this country. They have excellent British values, work hard, pay their way, they don’t take enormous religious offence at anything other people do.

And yet 🤷‍♀️

"research" is stretching it a bit 😅I just did a bog standard masters, I am not an academic, I am a lawyer now!

Yes, Abraham is considered a key patriarch in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, and his life is traditionally dated to around 2000 BCE with his birthplace thought to be in Ur Mesopotamia, which is modern Iraq.

In Judaism, Abraham is regarded as the founding father of the Jewish people and his life story is mostly told in Genesis, where he is seen as the first to make a covenant with God. So I suppose, the first "Jew"!

In Christianity, Jesus is described as a descendant of Abraham (and obviously as Genesis is also part of the Christian Bible it includes the same stories). In Islam, Abraham is considered one of the prophets and a model of submission to God. So important to all three but I suppose his significance became less over the iterations.

Whether he existed in real life or not, I don't know. There is no evidence to definitively prove he ever existed as described in religious texts.

There are some (many actually) biblical events and figures who's existence and parts of their story are supported by actual evidence. For example the life of John the Baptist is supported by multiple Gospels, and a respected non-Christian account by a Jewish historian - Flavius Josephus - a Jewish historian born in 37 CE in Jerusalem, who later became an ally of the Romans and wrote important works on Jewish history. Anyway, he describes John The Baptist's ministry and execution by Herod Antipas.

So some of what is in the scriptures is actually corroborated and historians tend to agree they occurred. But most historians view Abraham as a mythical figure, who's stories were passed down over generations. How interesting that he (real or not) ended up being the foundation of so much!

I am waffling away. Opportunity to talk theological history rarely comes up in daily life! A hill I am prepared to die on is that theology is fascinating, even if you're not religious. But you might argue that! It tells us all about how our societies were formed - law, morals, war, culture.

All of this - at least for some of us - were things cooked up in the middle east thousands of years ago!

It is completely fascinating how broadly the Abrahamic faiths have spread and evolved.
I agree with many of your thoughts about how and why that should be. In some alternative universe perhaps the Buddhist faith dominated, or a Pantheonic faith like that of the ancient Romans, Greeks, Norse or Hindus - which may have echoes in the saints of Christianity.
Christianity is a different beast in Europe, Africa and South America, each culture has made it their own, (I note that Ethiopia claims to have the oldest African Christian tradition - not bounced back from Europe).
I can also see some similarities between Jesus teaching and Buddhism and there are certainly some overlaps in their geographic influence, the Bamiyan Buddhas were around circa 600bc in Afghanistan.

I fell into it as a choice of study - I happened to be at a religious school - down to geography rather than choice so we were required to take RE and I just ended up enjoying it because it ties in sociology, history, literature, law, politics, psychology and philosophy but even as a person who I wouldn't describe as at best agnostic, I found a lot of the religious texts I studied really beautiful once you unravel them.

My final year thesis was essentially about how in Judaism and Christianity, the relationships described, particularly marriage, are metaphors for our relationship with God. So in other words, sort of looking at how the expectations put on us in relation to God (such as fidelity, loyalty, honesty and so on) are the same ones we need to integrate successfully with each other. Even thousands of years ago we understood instinctively before songs, movies, or real literature that on some level these basic behavioral choices are what love and things of value are built from.

I feel quite similarly about Greek mythology. Far fetched stories, but when you really listen to them they are so clever too. I find that intellectually just really interesting. human's haven't changed much - we are still here, discussing politics in a way we feel defines our identity or provides us with meaning. People still want to belong to a tribe, still want a hero and a villain and still are just as foolish in many ways as we were in Biblical times.

And as you say, had empires and politics and colonialism not been what they were, perhaps other faiths may have dominated us. What is certainly (and sadly) true is that the two dominant faiths in the world today are the two (Islam and Christianity) which imposed themselves rather forcefully on populations some years ago.

Both religion and politics are fascinating to me because of what they teach us about the human condition, but I am still surprised and sad at anyone who exploits that to violence or oppression.

Thanks, I have actually really enjoyed chatting about this!

@quantumbutterfly ”It is completely fascinating how broadly the Abrahamic faiths have spread and evolved.”

Being an atheist, I cannot comprehend how anyone believes God exists, or follow any religion. In fact most Christians, Muslims, Hindus and Jews only pay lip service to their religions, basically stopping at dietary requirements.

Shoot me down, but I strongly believe that religion was created, certainly used, to control people. With what science has discovered in the last 200 odd years, if someone came up with the concept of God now, in a non-religious world, they would be laughed out of the room.

There is only one faith causing most religious issues in the world today, and it’s not Judaism.

Does Afghanistan have a ‘Mumsnet‘?

au contraire

With what science has discovered in the last 200 odd years, if someone came up with the concept of God now, in a non-religious world, they would be laughed out of the room.
Say hello to scientology.
Even as a scientist I think many people do enjoy or benefit from a 'spiritual' connection to the world. and it has occurred to me that the church service with it's meditation, self reflection and a few belting songs has a certain mindfulness quality to it. Not to mention the sense of belonging to a community and support network.
The monetising, power-mongering and weaponising, maybe not such a positive for the majority.
wrt islam - I mentioned above about cultures making religion their own - islamic practice in eastern europe is different in character to that practised in the middle east and to some extent the far east.

Power, yes.

But also, early humans faced terrifying mysteries like death, disease, weather, natural disasters. They didn’t have science, so they used myths and gods to explain what they couldn’t understand.

Religions also provided rules for living. Early societies didn’t have police or governments, so belief in a God who punishes wrongdoing helped enforce morality. Religion bound people together, told them how to treat each other.

Shared beliefs and rituals helped unite tribes and clans, distinguishing “us” from “them.” That created cohesion, trust, and a shared purpose which was essential because communities needed one another to survive.

But it has been wielded for power too, I agree.

A billion years ago, I did religious studies at A-level and it was fascinating, especially as our teacher was a Marxist who was good at drawing neat parallels! I think I only chose the subject because I was in awe of him somewhat. It was also interesting (languages are my thing really) to look at how, say, St John's Gospel was distorted in translation.

Then, in my mid-40s, I experienced psilocybin mushrooms and it was a real "Ah, OK, so that's where it all began" moment. Complete ego dissolution, acute awareness of a pulsating energy that connects us all, profound emotional insights, you name it. Above all, an overwhelming sense of divine awe.

It changed my life in many positive ways. And I'm not the only one: many experiments, including a recent one using psilocybin among clergy (link below), have reported that participants describe the experience as the most spiritually significant of their lives.

One of the interesting things is how familiar the exquisite abstract closed-eye visuals are: you suddenly realise that this is what has been represented by sacred patterns spanning global cultures over centuries e.g. mandalas, Turkish rugs, Islamic geometry, etc. This abstract mysticism is at the core of all religions, but is probably most noticeable in Buddhism.

Like many people, I felt really evangelical about it for some time and was more or less convinced that if everyone could just neck a load of mushrooms it would solve all the world's problems! I grew out of that idea (I think!), but I'm still convinced that natural psychedelics (the word means "soul-revealing" for good reason) were the original sacrament.

Sharing in the interests of this thread going pretty off topic in a fun way 😂

Any road up, hope things go all right tomorrow.

https://neurosciencenews.com/psilocybin-neurotheology-29240/

How interesting! I'll definitely end up reading about this now and start coming up with mad theories.

😂

Please do!

That website looks like a rabbit hole I'll go down.🙂

Just said to DH in bed, "have you done psychedelics?" And I'm too tired to type the conversation that unfolded but he started on about Aldous Huxleys 'The Doors of Perception' ...

Just said to DH in bed, "have you done psychedelics?" And I'm too tired to type the conversation that unfolded but he started on about Aldous Huxleys 'The Doors of Perception' ...

Haha! Indeed... It's the best-kept secret of some of the world's most amazing people 💗

I'd quite like to have you all over for dinner now 😹