Holland: Hindu temple under attack by Muslims

[Guest guest]

Holland: Hindu temple under attack by Muslims

 

Cid Martel of Dutchdisease.com has kindly sent over this translation of a Dutch-language article.

 

Why is it permissible in the Dutch press to say "Hindu" but not "Muslim," so that we get a story about a "Hindu" temple attacked by "Moroccan" youth? Are we supposed to believe that Moroccans as such have some animus toward Hindus? Are we to assume that this is fallout from some border dispute between Morocco and India? (You didn't know they shared a border? Of course they do. It runs just southwest of Poland China, the famous hog-breeding nation.)

 

A Hindu temple in The Hague, the Ram Mandir, is frequently being attacked by a group of Moroccan youth. Young Hindus are so fed up with the situation they want to take matters into their own hands. Morrocans shove dog faeces through the mailbox and have broken into the temple twice, stolen a statue, urinated inside and stolen money from the moneybox. Mister S. Ramdhani, a Hindu priest, says: “They spit, don’t let visitors pass through, robbed two elderly ladies and then threatened them not to press charges. Our secretary was attacked with a stick.”

 

Ramdhani doesn’t want young Hindus and Moroccans to clash. “If groups start fighting each other we get a very bad situation. We can’t have that here in Holland.” Ramdhani is very embittered about the case. Last year he was given a ribbon by the queen for his contribution to the integration of foreigners in the neighbourhood. Every year thousands of students from The Hague come to the temple to learn more about the Hindu faith; it’s also a haven for troubled teens. Since 9/11 Ramdhani has been trying to reach out to Christians and Muslims.

 

The trouble caused by Moroccan youth has made a dent in Ramdhani’s idealism. He’s thinking about no longer attending the 9/11 meetings. “I feel discriminated against. Why they have to choose our temple? There is a mosque nearby. Why don’t they go over there to cause trouble? They must hate the Hindu faith. Otherwise I don’t know.”

 

Rabin Baldewsingh, a member of the city council for the social-democrats, asked mayor Deetman for help. The police says it’s ‘on the agenda’.

 

Sure it is.

 

 

 

[theist]

for the "Morrocan" punks to get a good old fashion butt whippin'.

[Guest guest]

has probably sent the muslims to teach the hindus a lesson-that stone worship wouldn't make them any more spiritual than the stone they're worshipping. God works in mysterious ways!

[theist]

And would you still had that attitude if a bunch of barbaric thugs approached you and yours as you came from a Mosque and put a knife to your throat and told you to convert to their views?

 

I think not.

 

There is a certain point the sectarianist of all kinds fail to appreciate. The one God has endowed each living being with free will to choose to accept Him or reject Him. The very fact that we have a choice is in itself sacred and must be respected as God Himself saw fit to so construct other living beings in that fashion.

 

A very simple but essential point that is constantly overlooked by fanatics of all stripes.

 

Someone said "A man whose opinion is forced to change against his will is of the same opinion still." Very profound I think.

[Guest guest]

Of course that little black stone in Mecca that millions take pigrimage to worship each year is different.

Worshipping a stone is better than throwing one at someone else. We understand that hypocracy is part of the age we live in.

[Kulapavana]

"The Lord has probably sent the muslims to teach the hindus a lesson-that stone worship wouldn't make them any more spiritual than the stone they're worshipping. God works in mysterious ways!"

 

you Abrahamic religion folks are ALL THE SAME. just keep butchering each other in the name of your "religions" and leave us alone!

 

[sumedh]

I think we should advise them to engage among themselves which hopefully would never end.

[Guest guest]

 

The Lord has probably sent the muslims to teach the hindus a lesson-that stone worship wouldn't make them any more spiritual than the stone they're worshipping. God works in mysterious ways!

 

 

do u worship a dead man ? dead man is dead man no matter what by what name you call him. how can a dead man save anybody ?

[theist]

as a dead man. Some are existing in states that are close to death, like the material world though and we can't save anyone.

 

But one who is spiritually alive surely can.

[Guest guest]

The vedas has comdemned idol worship, and so muslims are doing hindus a favor by smashing their deities. Whats wrong about that? Muslims are helping you folks to evolve.

[Kulapavana]

we appreciate help from all sincere devotees of the Lord. but the envious imposters are actually offending God they claim to worship.

 

because muslims have no concept of personal God, they are forbidden to worship a Deity. you should humbly study your tradition and not bother other devotees of the Lord with your pride.

 

you have no knowledge of the Vedas and only contempt for our tradition, so do not pretend to be someone you are not. a liar is a liar in the eyes of the Lord.

[Kulapavana]

here is a good article on the roots of the "religions of Abraham"

 

"Recent scholarly research, including discoveries by

an archaeological team from the University of Tel Aviv, not only deconstruct

the Biblical Old Testament and Torah stories upon which this claim rests,

but grant previously unthinkable credence to an ancient historian's claim

that the Israelites of Exodus were actually the Hyksos, and therefore of

Asiatic origin.

 

To trace the foundations of this ongoing Biblical bonfire, we must go back

to 1999.

 

All hell broke loose in Israel in November of that year when Prof. Ze'ev

Herzog of Tel Aviv University announced: "the Israelites were never in

Egypt, did not wander the desert, did not conquer the land, and did not pass

it on to the twelve tribes". Moreover, the Jewish God YHWH had a female

consort - the goddess Asherah!

 

His conclusion that the kingdom of David and Solomon was at best a small

tribal monarchy, at worst total myth, has made enemies for him in the camps

of traditional Jewish and Christian belief systems. He asserts: all evidence

demonstrates that the Jews did not adopt monotheism until the 7th Century

BCE - a heresy according to the Biblical tradition dating it to Moses at

Mount Sinai.

 

Tel Aviv University's archaeological investigation at Megiddo and

examination of the six-sided gate there dates it to the 9th Century BCE, not

the 10th Century BCE claimed by the 1960's investigator Yigael Yadin who

attributed it to Solomon. Herzog, moreover, states that Solomon and David

are "entirely absent in the archaeological record".

 

In addition, Herzog's colleague, Israel Finkelstein, claims the Jews were

nothing more than nomadic Canaanites who bartered with the city dwellers.

 

The team's studies concluded that Jerusalem did not have any central status

until 722 BCE with the destruction of its northern rival Samaria.

 

However, the real bombshell is Herzog's discovery of numerous references to

Yahweh having a consort in the form of Asherah. Inscriptions, written in

Hebrew by official Jewish scribes in the 8th century BCE, were found in

numerous sites all over the land. For Yahweh, supposedly the "One God", to

have had a female consort and, of all people, the goddess Asherah, is

dynamite of wide ranging significance.

 

The Secret Identity of Yahweh

 

The use of Yahweh as the name of God has always fuelled speculation and

philosophical argument. YHWH, sometimes pronounced Jehovah, is taken to mean

"I AM" or "I AM WHO I AM". There is also the puzzle of the rule that his

mysterious real name is not to be spoken.

 

The identification of the goddess Asherah (Asherat) as His consort somewhere

within the original Jewish faith leads to some explosive conclusions about

the identity of the Jewish/Christian God of the Cosmos, the one Monotheistic

God with whom we are so familiar from western religion.

 

But before looking at Asherah, and what she means to the identity of Yahweh,

it is worth taking a look at another goddess, Ashteroth. Her significance

will become evident a little later. Referred to as an "abomination" in 2

Kings, Ashteroth was an important deity in the Near East pantheons.

 

To the Sumerians she was IN.ANNA (Anu's beloved) and is an important

character in the Sumerian Epics. To the Assyrians and Babylonians she was

Ishtar; Ashtoreth was her name for the Canaanites; to the Greeks -

Aphrodite; the Romans - Venus. The most important equivalent however is the

Egyptian goddess Hathor, who the Greeks identified with Aphrodite. Hathor

was the wife of Horus, the God of War. Hathor is identified with the symbol

of the cow, and statues of her in the 26th Dynasty (572 - 525 BC) in Egypt

actually depict her as a cow. Asherah, (whose name means "she who walks in

the sea") supposedly consort of the supreme god El, was also referred to as

Elath (the goddess). According to the Ugarit tradition, whose clay tablets

contain the earliest known alphabet, she was consort of El, and mother of

seventy gods. She is also associated with Baal and is supposed to have

interceded to her husband, the supreme god, on Baal's behalf, for the

building of a palace - in order to grant him equal status with other gods.

 

In the cuniform tablets of Ras Shamrah (Circa 1400 BCE) the head of the

Pantheon was El; his wife was Asherat-of-the-sea (Asherah). After El, the

greatest god was Baal, son of El and Asherah. Curiously, Baal's consort is

his mother, Asherah. In the Lebanon traditions Baal is equated with Jupiter.

 

Carvings of Asherah in Syria show her wearing Egyptian head-dress. She was

also referred to later as "the cow" - a reference to her great age.

 

Significantly, Baalat (an important Goddess at Byblos) is depicted in

carvings as having cow's horns, between which is a halo. Baalat is in fact

the form of Asherah when she appears alongside Baal. But what does this say

about the identity of Yahweh? The Bible has always presented a confusing

picture of Yahweh. In the light of Herzog's discoveries and conclusions that

Yahweh's consort was Asherah, it deserves a closer examination.

 

Exodus 6:3 states "And I appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob,

by [the name of] God Almighty (El Shaddai), but by my name "I AM" was I not

known to them." In the King James Version, "I AM" is translated as Jehovah

(Yahweh) but means the same: "I AM". The use of "God Almighty" is a

traditional translation of Shaddai, thought to have meant "Omnipotent", but

arguably it could be linked to the Akkadian root word Shadu, meaning

literally "mountains".

 

And El Shaddai is only one of the versions of God described in Genesis. El

Shaddai literally translated means, "God the one of the mountains", but

there was also El Olam (God the everlasting one) El Elyon (God most high) El

Ro'i (God of vision).

 

The obvious question is, why did YHWH reveal himself to the patriarchs as El

Shaddai? The answer lies in the religious traditions of Canaan, where

Abraham is said to have lived for a time, and which were brought to Canaan

by the Phoenicians. (In turn, the root of Phoenician religious tradition is

Sumer).

 

God-the-one-of-the-mountains has a Sumerian equivalent. ISH.KUR, the

youngest son of Enlil, means God the one of the far mountains. Ishkur was

also known as Adad or Hadad in Hebrew, brother of Nannar/Sin, and was the

pre-eminent God of Canaan - El-Shaddai.

 

According to biblical scholars who focus on the "P Source" for the old

testament, Yahweh as a name is first used with Moses in Exodus, and is

indicative of monolatory (exclusive worship of one of many Gods) rather than

monotheism. The name Yahweh can also be translated as "I am who I am",

literally a way of saying "mind your own business", a way of disguising his

true identity. Yahweh does not appear until Exodus and, strangely, the god

Baal is entirely absent in Genesis. (El Shaddai is still venerated in the

Jewish faith in the form of the Teffilin, one of two small leather

cube-shaped cases containing Torah Texts, traditionally to be worn by males

from the age of 13. The Teffilin are worn in a manner to represent the

letters shin, daleth, and yod, which together form the name Shaddai.)

 

In Exodus 33:2 it states "And I will send an angel before thee; and I will

drive out the Canaanite, the Amorite, and the Hittite, and the Perizzite,

the Hivite, and the Jebusite:

 

33:3 Unto a land flowing with milk and honey: for I will not go up in the

midst of thee; for thou [art] a stiffnecked people: lest I consume thee on

the way."

 

This Yahweh is prone to violence and seems to despise his chosen people. He

is a perfect match for ISH.KUR (Hadad), whose land is occupied by the

Amorites and Hittites, and is a known demonstrator of violence and contempt

for his worshipers.

 

ISH.KUR's image, traits, and symbols match those of Baal. He is also

anti-Babylon and anti-Egypt, as is Yahweh. And like Yahweh's, the real name

of the Canaanite Baal (Hadad) must not be spoken.

 

On the basis of Herzog's discovery, the evidence within the Bible itself,

the Sumerian, Phoenician and Canaanite traditions, the following is a

logical conclusion and solution to the identity of the Jewish God of the Old

Testament: ISH.KUR = Hadad = El Shaddai = Baal = Yahweh. (The Canaanite's

Baal was also known as Moloch, who we will examine later.)

 

This indicates, as does Herzog's work, that the Jewish people evolved from

polytheism to monotheism with the promotion of a god who had been known by a

variety of names, into one supreme God, Yahweh (whose real name must not be

spoken), and that they adopted for this purpose, not the supreme God of the

Pantheons, El, but his son - ISH.KUR, Baal, Hadad, El-Shaddai, an entity who

was in open revolt against his father El, and ultimately aided in this

revolt by his mother and consort, Asherah, (also known as Baalat, Ashteroth,

Elat).

 

This female entity was later merged by Greek and Roman traditions into

Aphrodite and Venus, and known earlier to the Egyptians as Isis. Once we

understand this, the etymology of the name Israel - Is (either Isis or tomb)

Ra (Head of the Egyptian Pantheon) El (Lord - Baal) - makes far more obvious

sense than the convoluted "Yisrael" yarn from the Hebrew faith.

 

But what does all this do to the validity of the "Title Deeds" from God that

Ariel Sharon refers to? Quite apart from the obvious conclusion that the god

assumed to have given the "promised land" to his chosen people was just one

god from a pantheon and not the alleged monotheistic only God of the cosmos,

Herzog's findings corroborate theories that have been "out there" for some

time.

 

The Hyksos

 

Like Herzog, the historian Josephus (c. 37CE - c. 100CE) denied the account

of the Hebrews being held in captivity in Egypt, but he went a drastic step

further about the racial origins of the Jews, whom he identified with the

Hyksos. He further claimed they did not flee from Egypt but were evicted due

to them being leprous.

 

It must be said that Josephus has been vilified over the ages as a Roman

collaborator by both Jewish and Christian scholars who have argued that the

dating of the exodus of the "Hebrews" from Egypt in the Bible positively

rules out their identification as Hyksos. However, Jan Assmann, a prominent

Egyptologist at Heidelberg University, is quite positive in his writings

that the Exodus story is an inversion of the Hyksos expulsion and

furthermore that Moses was an Egyptian.

 

Likewise, Donald P. Redford, of Toronto University, presents striking

evidence that the Expulsion of the Hyksos from Egypt was inverted to

construct the exodus of the Hebrew slaves story in the Torah and Old

Testament. His book, which argued this theory, "Egypt, Canaan, and Israel in

Ancient Times" was Winner of the 1993 Best Scholarly Book in Archaeology

Award of the Biblical Archaeological Society.

 

There is irrefutable evidence that the Hyksos, a mixed Semitic-Asiatic group

who infiltrated the Nile valley, seized power in Lower Egypt in the 17th

Century BCE. They ruled there from c. 1674 BCE until expelled when their

capital, Avaris, fell to Ahmose around 1567 BCE. The Hyksos in Egypt

worshipped Set, who like ISH.KUR they identified as a storm deity.

 

Under the "inversion theory", Jewish scholars in the 7th Century BCE changed

the story from "expelled" to "escaped" and as a further insult to their

enemy, Ahmose, changed and miss-spelt his name to Moses, presenting him as

leader of a Hebrew revolt. But there is also a strong possibility of two

separate origins to the "Moses" character being merged into one, which I

will come to later.

 

Ahmose's success in 1567 BCE led to the establishment of the 18th Dynasty in

Egypt. ThotMoses III overthrew the transvestite Pharaoh Atchepsut, and under

ThotMoses IV Egyptian conquests extended beyond the Sinai into Palestine,

Syria, reaching Babylonia and included Canaan.

 

By the end of this expansion, Amenophis III (1380BCE) ruled an Egyptian

empire whose provinces and colonies bordered what is now known as Turkey.

This empire would have included the regions in which most of the expelled

Hyksos now lived.

 

Amenophis IV succeeded the throne in 1353BCE. He established a new

monotheism cult establishing "Aten" as the one supreme god and he changed

his name to Akhenaton. Married to the mysterious Nefertiti, Akhenaton

declared himself a god on earth, intermediary between the one-god Aten (Ra)

and humanity, with his spouse as partner, effectively displacing Isis and

Osiris in the Egyptian Enead. Declaring all men to be the children of Aten,

historians suspect Akhenaton planned an empire-wide religion. He banned all

idolatry, the use of images to represent god, and banned the idea that there

was more than one supreme god.

 

It is alongside Akhenaten and his father Amenophis III that we find the

second Moses.

 

An important figure during this period was confusingly called Amenophis son

of Hapu. He was First Minister (Vizier) to both kings. He is generally

depicted as a scribe, crouching and holding on his knees a roll of papyrus.

He more than anyone was responsible for authoring the religion in which the

old gods were merged into one living god, Aten, who had been responsible for

the creation of the Earth and of humanity.

 

The symbol of this god, the sun disk, represented Ra, Horus and the other

gods in one. The sun disk, in symbolism, was supported between the horns of

a bull. The Son of Hapu says this about creation: "I have come to you who

reigns over the gods oh Amon, Lord of the Two Lands, for you are Re who

appears in the sky, who illuminates the earth with a brilliantly shining

eye, who came out of the Nou, who appeared above the primitive water, who

created everything, who generated the great Enneade of the gods, who created

his own flesh and gave birth to his own form."

 

The king's overseer of the land of Nubia was a certain Mermose (spelled both

Mermose and Merymose on his sarcophagus in the British Museum). According to

modern historians, in Amenhotep's third year as king, Mermose took his army

far up the Nile, supposedly to quell a minor rebellion, but actually to

secure gold mining territories which would supply his king with the greatest

wealth of any ruler of Egypt. Recent scholarship has indicated Mermose took

his army to the neighbourhood of the confluence of the Nile and Atbara

Rivers and beyond.

 

But who was this Mermose? According to historian Dawn Breasted, the Greek

translation of this name was Moses. Does Jewish tradition support this

identification?

 

According to Jewish history not included in the Bible, Moses led the army of

Pharaoh to the South, into the land of Kush, and reached the vicinity of the

Atbara River. There he attracted the love of the princess of the fortress

city of Saba, later Meroe. She gave up the city in exchange for marriage.

Biblical confirmation of such a marriage is to be found in Numbers 12:1.

"And Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses because of the Ethiopian woman

whom he had married: for he had married an Ethiopian woman."

 

The end of Akhenaten's reign is shrouded in mystery, scholarship about which

is beyond the scope of an article of this length. In summary, however,

theories span from the death of Nefertiti from plague - Akhenaten's own

death from plague or murder - to exile. On clear record, in contrast, is the

return of Egypt to the Enead of the gods and a systematic attempt to erase

all vestiges of Akhenaton and his cult in Egypt.

 

Meanwhile, the expelled Hyksos, according to various historians, have been

living in Canaan.

 

It is here that a solution to the Biblical dating problem of linking the

Israelites to the Hyksos appears.

 

Using the dating of the Biblical Exodus and comparing it to the Egyptian

dating of the Hyksos expulsion throws up a gap of about 400 years. Using the

dating systems of the books of Judges and Samuel, this gap can extend to

between 554 and 612 years.

 

However, there is clear historical record of post Hyksos Egypt extending its

empire into Canaan, the land into which the Hebrews entered and lived,

according to Biblical sources, for 400 years before establishing the kingdom

of Solomon.

 

The Hebrews living in Canaan were therefore under Egyptian rule. It is also

here in Canaan that we can make a comparison between Yahweh and the

Canaanite Moloch (Baal) and extrapolate a polemic inversion of the story of

Pharaoh ordering the death of all the "first born" in Exodus. The

worshippers of Moloch sacrificed their first born children to their deity

through immolation. Worshippers of Yahweh in Canaan were also known to carry

out child sacrifice on occasion, especially in times of hardship, although

immolation (holocaust) was supposedly frowned upon. Slitting the child's

throat, however, was acceptable. The sacrifices were carried out and the

remains interred at sacred sites known at Topheth. Sometimes - although

rarely, judging by the vast predominance of infant human bones found at

Topheth sites by archaeologists - animals were sacrificed as substitutes.

 

The Unification

 

Modern historical disciplines studying the biblical era uniformly conclude

that Exodus could not have been written earlier than the 7th century BCE,

and certainly not by the Biblical Moses who at best is a fictional

combination of Egyptian personalities.

 

In Israel itself, 7th Century BCE is the period in which the archaeological

evidence presented by Herzog suggests the emergence of Jerusalem as a

cultural centre occurs.

 

By all accounts, it is a cultural centre struggling to find an identity and

nationality for itself and, given the discovery of the Jewish texts

displaying Yahweh having a consort in the form of Asherah, it is not

difficult to piece this jigsaw together. In 639BCE, Josiah, king of Judah,

is known to have introduced wide-ranging religious reforms and brought

additional areas of "Israel" under his control.

 

It is during this period that "polemics" against and "inversion" of a wide

variety of religious and cultural sources are brought together to form a

religious and political unity.

 

For Josiah's "inquisitors", where history is unheroic, such as the expulsion

from Egypt in the form of the Hyksos, history is inverted. Where religion is

bereft of moral unity, the cult of Aten is interweaved, satisfying existing

belief systems within the region and bestowing upon the king, Josiah, the

position of divine right through a lineage to Solomon and David - both

replacements for Aten's ancestors and his temple-building reputation. Josiah

also destroys the Topheth Temple said to have been built by Solomon in the

Hinnon valley just outside Jerusalem, to the south.

 

Within this unifying mechanism, there are obfuscations to mitigate existing

belief systems, which require the true name of God to be kept secret, and

for which there is precedence in the cults of Baal and ISH-KUR, all part of

the mish-mash of the region, and all designed to plaster over the holes in

the new Yahweh-based system. An important separation of the identities of

Baal-Moloch-Yahweh is implemented, although the evolution of ISH-KUR to

Hadad to Baal to Yahweh does not remain disguised owing to the later polemic

against Babylon written up as Genesis.

 

Well known in Egypt, including at the time of the Aten cult was the

following passage from the Book of the Dead:

 

I have not robbed.

 

I have not coveted.

 

I have not killed people.

 

I have not told lies.

 

I have not trespassed.

 

I have not committed adultery.

 

I have not cursed a god.

 

Josiah's unification process takes Moses, an Ideogram combining the Ahmose

who expelled the Hyksos, and the Mermose who led the Egyptian army to great

victories, and credits him with receiving the Ten Commandments in tablets of

stone. In reality these laws are an elaboration of the above declaration.

 

Add to this the fact that the obscure Egyptian king's "Hymn to Aten" is

almost "word for word" Psalm 104 in the Bible and we have another compelling

"coincidence".

 

These and other "coincidences" apparently convinced the renowned

Psychologist Sigmund Freud, writing in his 1939 book "Moses and Monotheism",

that the Jewish monotheistic faith had its roots in the Akhenaton cult

religion.

 

Josiah's unification should of course be applauded. It outlawed the Moloch

cult and emphasised the spiritual morality of the Ten Commandments. The

polemics and inversions adding a heroic slant to the history of his people

are understandable and politically astute. But beginning c. 200CE, somewhere

along the line, and unlike the Aten cult, supremacy of race is added to the

Jewish faith.

 

In summary, however, it is Herzog's discovery of Yahweh's consort Asherah in

Jewish texts and his declaration of an archaeological absence of Solomon or

David that is the scalpel with which to slice through all the fictions of

the biblical Exodus and its suggestion of divine right and supremacy. For

that reason, Herzog must not be forgotten."

 

 

[Guest guest]

 

The vedas has comdemned idol worship, and so muslims are doing hindus a favor by smashing their deities. Whats wrong about that? Muslims are helping you folks to evolve.

 

 

If you muslims believe in Vedas then follow Vedas and drop your barbaric religion that recommends rape and pillage. Don't quote something you do not know or understand. We are not fools here, neither are we terrorists like yuo muslims are.

[Guest guest]

Local politicians, police & Muslims should abstain from meat, fish, eggs + not b paid until this animosity is resolved.

Unfortunately in Kaliyuga there r no true xatriyas, only buschitters.

During my stay in Nederland there were rumors both Moroccan & Turkish Nederlanders wanted to take over Holland.

What can b done? Was Mohammed some kind of partial expansion of Lord Siva?

[Tarun]

Remember Srila KRSNa dAs KavirAj Goswami stated eloquence must includes concision.

A man convinced against his will

Is of the same opinion still

Still, hmm. For example, Stephen Stills sang:

"Nobody's right if everybody's wrong."

[theist]

That's it. Thanks Tarunji