HHSM: They just think ... they can destroy the rest of the people who do not follow their fundamentalism.

[Guest guest]

Analysis: Iraq's religious targets

 

 

By Martin AsserBBC News Online (Friday, 9 January, 2004, 17:19 GMT)

 

 

 

 

 

Blood on the streets of Baquba after mosque blast Attacks on mosques or religious figures have the power to immediately bring to the surface the deep-rooted tensions between Sunni and Shia Muslims in post-Saddam Iraq. Enraged members of each community often blame the other when their institutions come under attack, or they accuse Iraq's US-led occupiers of complicity or negligence. Indeed after the latest attack - that cost at least five lives outside a Shia mosque in the town of Baquba - people put all the blame on Israel or, unlikely as it might seem, the US for the bloodshed. Both Sunnis and Shias have been affected by violence with apparent sectarian overtones. For Iraq's majority Shia population, the car bomb which killed leading cleric Muhammad Baqr al-Hakim and dozens of others in the holy city of Najaf in August was an event unsurpassed in its wickedness. Sunnis have had their own losses - on a much smaller scale - reflecting a nasty, slow-burning sectarian conflict that seldom makes its way into the news reports. In just a few days in October, for example, the BBC learned of three separate fatal shootings against Sunnis coming out of mosques in Baghdad's western suburbs - all blamed by local people on Shia gunmen. None of them were widely reported.

 

 

 

 

 

BAGHDAD: OCTOBER 2003

 

 

Simmering religious tensions

The mosque is an obvious target for sectarian revenge or for anyone who wants to stir up religious tensions in Iraq. Mosques are exclusively Sunni or Shia, therefore attackers run little risk of hurting people from their own denomination. They are tempting targets for anyone wanting to stir up religious strife in the potential tinder-box that is post-Baathist Iraq. Attacks on coalition forces, the civilian .....continue: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3383839.stm

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi

 

 

 

 

 

"The greatest problem with the fundamentalists is that they have no compassion because they do not love Mohammed Sahib, who He was and why He came on this Earth. They do not know the Reality. They just think that they are right type of people and that they can kill as many human beings as they want, and they can create as many problems as they like, and they can destroy the rest of the people who do not follow their fundamentalism. We find the fundamentalists do not know the fundamentals of religion and the people who think that they are very modern also don’t know where this modern mind is going to take them. What a shock is awaited for this modern man who has lost faith in God. Both ways they try to do things which are in no way helpful for global Peace or for the ascent of human beings by which they will have their own Peace within their

heart.Actually Hazrat Mohammed never made Islam an exclusive religion in the Koran. He very respectfully talked about Moses, Abraham, Christ and His Mother, one after another. Even so Muslims believe they are exclusive. Jews and Muslims also believer theirs are exclusive religions. They is another problem — they believe that Mohammed was the exclusive messenger of God and Christians believe that Christ is the last word, while Jews believe their Saviour has yet to come. If these Incarnations were the last ones why did Mohammed say I will send you the twelfth Mahdi? Also why did Christ say that He would send the Holy Ghost? We cannot say how long the Jews are going to wait for their Saviour to come. They are wailing and crying before the Wailing Wall wearing the Torah in small amulets, but actually the most important thing for them is to collect the money that they have lent and buy diamonds at any cost.Muslims who are not educated enough to understand Koran in

original believe that they are the soldiers of Jihad which is led by some very clever ego-oriented educate people. . . . In this Jihad how many Muslims are going to die? On one side they produce more children to create a Muslim majority and on the other side they are getting killed by the thousands. The Jihad has become imminent and the Muslims are a real threat to peace and progress of every country they live in.The only way to get over this brutal image is to become a wali or a real Sufi. This is what Muslims need the achievement of peaceful existence through Self-Realization. The same is the case with Jews and Christians. They believe in the same Bible, Muslims believe in the Old Testament as well as the Jews, but they nevertheless kill each other. It is painful and extremely heart wrenching that when in the whole world people have been able to enter the Kingdom of God as promised, all these fundamentalists of different religions are killing each other. May God bless them

with sanity and wisdom. They should get their second birth. ‘Know thyself’ is the beginning of ascent”Shri Ajnana-dhvanta-dipika DeviAjnana-dhvanta-dipika (90th): Known only by constant practice of devotion and meditation.

 

 

 

 

"In its most outward sense jihad came to mean the defence of dar al-islam, that is, the Islamic world, from invasion and intrusion by non-Islamic forces. The earliest wars of Islamic history which threatened the very existence of the young community came to be known as jihad par excellence in this outward sense of 'holy war'. But it was upon returning from one of these early wars, which was of paramount importance in the survival of the newly established religious community and therefore of cosmic significance, that the Prophet nevertheless said to his companions that they had returned from the lesser holy war to the greater holy war, the greater jihad being the inner battle against all the forces which would prevent man from living according to the theomorphic norm which is his primordial and God given nature. Throughout Islamic history, the lesser holy war has echoed in the Islamic world when parts or the whole of that world have been

threatened by forces from without or within. This call has been especially persistent since the nineteenth century with the advent of colonialism and the threat to the very existence of the Islamic world. It must be remembered, however, that even in such cases when the idea of jihad has been evoked in certain parts of the Islamic world, it has not usually been a question of religion simply sanctioning war but of the attempt of a society in which religion remains of central concern to protect itself from being conquered either by military and economic forces or by ideas of an alien nature. This does not mean, however, that in some cases especially in recent times, religious sentiments have not been used or misused to intensify or legitimize a conflict. But to say the least, the Islamic world does not have a monopoly on this abuse as the history of other civilizations including even the secularized West demonstrates so amply. Moreover, human nature being what it is, once religion

ceases to be of central significance to a particular human collectivity, then men fight and kill each other for much less exalted issues than their heavenly faith. By including the question of war in its sacred legislation, Islam did not condone but limited war and its consequences as the history of the traditional Islamic world bears out. In any case the idea of total war and the actual practice of the extermination of whole civilian populations did not grow out of a civilization whose dominant religion saw jihad in a positive light. On the more external level, the lesser jihad also includes the socio-economic domain. It means the reassertion of justice in the external environment of human existence starting with man himself. To defend one's rights and reputation, to defend the honour of oneself and one's family is itself a jihad and a religious duty. So is the strengthening of all those social bonds from the family to the whole of the Muslim people (al-ummah) which the Shari'ah

emphasizes. To seek social justice in accordance with the tenets of the Quran and of course not in the modern secularist sense is a way of re-establishing equilibrium in human society, that is, of performing jihad, as are constructive economic enterprises provided the well-being of the whole person is kept in mind and material welfare does not become an end in itself; provided one does not lose sight of the Quranic verse, 'The other world is better for you than this one'. To forget the proper relation between the two worlds would itself be instrumental in bringing about disequilibrium and would be a kind of jihad in reverse. All of those external forms of jihad would remain incomplete and in fact contribute to an excessive externalization of human being, if they were not complemented by the greater or inner jihad which man must carry out continuously within himself for the nobility of the human state resides in the constant tension between what we appear to be and what

we really are and the need to transcend ourselves throughout this journey of earthly life in order to become what we 'are'. From the spiritual point of view all the 'pillars' of Islam can be seen as being related to jihad. The fundamental witnesses, 'There is no divinity but Allah' and 'Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah', through the utterance of which a person becomes a Muslim are not only statements about the Truth as seen in the Islamic perspective but also weapons for the practice of inner jihad. The very form of the first witness (La ilaha illa' Lla-h in Arabic) when written in Arabic calligraphy is like a bent sword with which all otherness is removed from the Supreme Reality while all that is positive in manifestation is returned to that Reality. The second witness is the blinding assertion of the powerful and majestic descent of all that constitutes in a positive manner the cosmos, man and revelation from that Supreme Reality. To invoke the two witnesses in the

form of the sacred language in which they were revealed is to practice the inner jihad and to bring about awareness of who we are, from whence we come and where is our ultimate abode. . . .The great stations of perfection in the spiritual life can also be seen in the light of the inner jihad. To become detached from the impurities of the world in order to repose in the purity of the Divine Presence requires an intense jihad for our soul has its roots sunk deeply into the transient world which the soul of fallen man mistakes for reality. To overcome the lethargy, passivity and indifference of the soul, qualities which have become second nature to man as a result of his forgetting who he is constitutes likewise a constant jihad. To pull the reigns of the soul from dissipating itself outwardly as a result of its centrifugal tendencies and to bring it back to the centre wherein resides Divine Peace and all the beauty which the soul seeks in vain in the domain of multiplicity is

again an inner jihad. To melt the hardened heart into a flowing stream of love which would embrace the whole of creation in virtue of the love for God is to perform the alchemical process of solve et coagula inwardly through a 'work' which is none other than an inner struggle and battle against what the soul has become in order to transform it into that which it 'is' and has never ceased to be if only it were to become aware of its own nature. Finally, to realize that only the Absolute is absolute and that only the Self can ultimately utter 'I' is to perform the supreme jihad of awakening the soul from the dream of forgetfulness and enabling it to gain the supreme principal knowledge for the sake of which it was created. The inner jihad or warfare seen spiritually and esoterically can be considered therefore as the key for the understanding of the whole spiritual process, and the path for the realization of the One which lies at the heart of the Islamic message seen in its totality.

The Islamic path towards perfection can be conceived in the light of the symbolism of the greater jihad to which the Prophet of Islam, who founded this path on earth, himself referred.

In the same way that with every breath the principle of life which functions in us irrespective of our will and as long as it is willed by Him who created us, exerts itself through jihad to instill life within our whole body, at every moment in our conscious life we should seek to perform jihad in not only establishing equilibrium in the world about us but also in awakening to that Divine Reality which is the very source of our consciousness. For the spiritual man, every breath is a reminder that he should continue the inner jihad until he awakens from all dreaming and until the very rhythm of his heart echoes that primordial sacred Name by which all things were made and through which all things return to their Origin. The Prophet said, 'Man is asleep and when he dies he awakens'. Through inner jihad the spiritual man dies in this life in order to cease all dreaming, in order to awaken to that Reality which is the origin of all realities, in order to behold

that Beauty of which all earthly beauty is but a pale reflection, in order to attain that Peace which all men seek but which can in fact be found only through the inner jihad."http://al-islam.org/al-serat/jihad-nasr.htm

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