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1500-year-old handwritten Gospel found in Turkey

A handwritten Bible, believed to be 1,500 years old and is recently kept in the Ethnography Museum of Turkish capital Ankara, includes a drawing of the Last Supper, The 52-page Bible is written in Aramaic, the language Jesus spoke, and consists the depiction of the Last Supper, which shows Jesus dining with his 12 Apostles, and also a depiction of the crucifixion of Jesus, a symbol of the sun and a cross, according to Turkish newspaper Today’s Zaman. The report added that there is also a depiction of a cave and a large rock which are thought to be the grave of Jesus. Turkish Culture and Tourism Minister Ertugrul Gunay confirmed on Thursday that the 1,500-year-old Bible was discovered by policeman during an anti-smuggling operation in 2000 and is currently being kept in Ankara, according to Today’s Zaman1500-year-old handwritten Bible found in Turkey Continue reading »

The Soul of Islamic Symbols

Most, if not all religions, function in the world of symbolism and communicate their universal messages to their followers through these religious symbols. Rituals, sacraments, prayers, worship services, religious ceremonies and more are nothing but to invite believers to engage with very deep ethical, moral and spiritual teachings through set of symbols and symbolic acts and behaviors. These religious symbols are never meant to be goals as themselves but vehicles and agents to much higher ultimate goals. If one does not get lost in the actual practice of these religious symbolic acts but constantly strives to get connected and feed him or herself with the deep teachings beneath these acts, he or she could develop a healthy spirituality, strong ethical and moral values, righteousness and more. However, it is one of the most common human weaknesses to easily get disconnected from what those religious symbols have been trying to teach us and keep practicing them as a form of habit or regular task that we feel obliged to do. 


Islam, through its foundational texts (Holy Quran and Sunnah), and daily, monthly and annual rituals and practices, offers one of the richest such worlds of pedagogy of symbols to Muslims. Every Islamic ritual and practice is an invitation for the believers to commit themselves to a process of increasing purity, tranquility and peace in their internal and external world. This khutba is an invitation for me and to all to strive to live Islam meaningfully and purposefully by paying attention to the language of those religious symbols. 

Let me discuss several such central Islamic symbols in this regard. What is religiously more central, for believing and practicing Muslims, than five daily prayers in their lives? We stop and pause five times a day, every day through out our adult lives to pray. Wherever we may be, Muslim men and women rush to the water tabs, take our ritual ablution (Wudu), spread our prayer rugs toward the proper direction, and then stand, bow and prostrate before God Almighty five times a day, every day of the year. Every single step of these five daily prayers are nothing but a series of Islamic symbols and in high volumes talks to us about the ethical moral teachings of our beautiful religion. We should not fail to pay attention to their voices as we practice these Islamic rituals. Otherwise they will turn into voiceless, repetitive acts of useless traditionalism. 

Let's start reflecting on our ritual ablution practices that we do before we pray. We wash our hands, wash our mouths, our arms unto our elbows, clean the dust on our heads and wash our ears and feet. The purpose of this symbolic cleansing is not only for our physical hygiene and health but more importantly to engage in a conversation and prayers of thanksgiving and forgiveness with God Almighty and with ourselves. If we pay attention to the meaning of the prayers we say during this ritual bath, the believer in effect says, as she or he washes each and every body part in that process, "Thank you merciful God for this healthy hand, mouth, tongue, eyes, nose, ears and feet. Their health is from you as you are the source of all blessings. Empower and guide me to do good things with them and I ask forgiveness for the wrong things that I have done or might have done with them." These ritualistic symbols are there to make the believers slow down and remember if he/she might have said something hurtful or have done anything ethically, morally questionable with his/her hands, eyes, ears, feet and so on since the last prayer. These Islamic symbols are there to clean and purify and improve us internally, spiritually, ethically and morally if we can constantly engage and pay attention to their symbolic language and voice. 

Our prayer rug is another Islamic symbol. I call our prayer rugs "Portable Muslim Airports." We set up this portable symbolic airport to spiritually take off to the higher realities and meanings, to our five daily appointments with the Beloved, and after our brief reunion with our Maker, we land back to earth to our regular lives. As we pray, we practice symbols such as standing in awe of God, bow and prostrate before God. All these symbols teaches us and reminds us our main identity: Being Human, completely dependent on God. These symbols attacks our arrogance, the idea of self-glory and inflated egos. They humble us before God and fellow human beings. However, these symbolic practices will only have their real affect on us by not just doing them but by allowing their deep meanings to tame our internal demons and shape our souls. 

These Islamic symbols are not exclusively limited to our worship and prayer lives only but could be found in every distinct Islamic ritual related to our personal, professional, family and communal lives. Take Islamic marriage contracts (Nikah) for example. If one pays attention to how these religious contracts are crafted, they will see that every symbolic ritual is there for a purpose of teaching and inspiration. The fact that Islam requires for couples to draft a written contract and sign it in the presence of reliable witnesses, symbolically tells these souls who are committing themselves to this serious business of marriage: "Love, mutual respect and mutual consent is essential for the success of such holy union but simply not enough to sustain happy marriage. Marriage requires a lot of work and investment from all sides to work. All contributing factors need to be discussed and agreed upon with a firm commitment prior to marriage." The symbolic practices of such Nikah contracts invites couples to take this very seriously and built their marriage upon sound foundations. 

These Nikah contracts, the way they have been uniquely done according to Islamic regulations, simultaneously encourage and warn the future husbands and wives to the potential challenges and opportunities, gender dynamics and more. For example, one of the main requirements of Islamic marriage contract is Mahr, where the groom promises to pay a substantial amount of money to bride which functions as a financial insurance and guarantee to women in case if marriage goes wrong. This genius Islamic practice is a lot more than potential problem solving. For a man to agree Mahr before even marriage starts, this Islamic practice symbolically tell this about to be husband guy in high volumes: "There is something in men's soul and psyche, if it is not tamed and disciplined, which can bring so much harm to marriage, cause abuse and destruction." The practice of Mahr is a clear warning for potential male domination and domestic violence. By agreeing to the institution of Mahr, Muslim men symbolically acknowledge this potential danger and promise to constantly work against it. I wish more Muslims would take Nikah contracts and its very many beautiful symbolic teachings more seriously these days. 

Fellow believers, extend the microphone to every single Islamic ritual and symbolic act (as you practice, study and or learn about them) and listen to what they have to say very closely. Those symbols are not just symbols but powerful way of our beautiful religion communicates her moral ideals with her adherents. Let us resist becoming lost and losing sight in the external Dos and Do Nots of these symbolic Islamic rituals and practices. Let us strive to mindfully engage and shape our lives with beautiful messages that they give us. May Almighty guide us and be our source of strength in this process, inshallah. Amin.


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Counter Islamists and Islam: The new religious opposition


“They can do good and they can do bad – but they’re just Muslims. They are not Islam.”
And with that, the man summed up his talk about the different Islamist movements in Egypt. His talk had been intense – perhaps better described as virulent. Such sentiments distinguishing Islamism from Islam is hardly unique – liberal and non-religious forces within predominantly religious conservative societies in the Muslim world have been making that argument for a while now.

But this man was hardly a secularist. He was a graduate of the Al-Azhar University in Egypt, the pre-eminent Islamic educational institution of the world – and he was delivering his talk as the Friday sermon in one of the most prestigious mosques of Cairo. In short, he was a counter-Islamist religious authority.
It was fascinating to listen to the talk for many reasons. For one, the preacher was very clear in his essentially political diatribe – something that could not have been thought of a little over a year ago in Cairo. But more than that – the preacher was evidently representative of a large swathe of the religious establishment in Egypt. That establishment that regards religious interpretation as being the domain of academic specialists, or ‘the learned’ (‘ulama), rather than put into the hands of political activists who would corrupt God’s religion for petty political gain.
“Who are these people that claim to speak on behalf of Islam? They are taxi-drivers and bus drivers – having a long beard is not a substitute for the learning that the learned specialist of religion is obligated to have.”
In post January 25 Egypt, pretty much the entire non-Islamist political establishment is keen for the Azhar University and its scholars to take control of Islamic interpretations. Its not hard to see why – in the absence of a specialist institution, the loudest and most populist voices drown out other voices. In today’s Egypt, those voices belong to the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafis – groups that the non-Islamist political establishment seeks to keep in check.
Much of this tension flared up in recent weeks. Islamists of both the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafis decided to dominate the constitutional assembly that is responsible for drafting Egypt’s new constitution. The Azhar University was bitterly disappointed that the constitutional document it had so painstakingly worked to build consensus around, including Islamists of different stripes and non-Islamists and others from civil society, was not the structure that the constitutional assembly had chosen to use. But it was particularly affronted by the fact that the assembly had decided to reserve one seat for the Azhar University, and one seat for the Coptic Church – as though the two institutions were equal --and equally insignificant.
“I’ve reached a stage in my life that I’m cautious of anyone who claims religion gives them a monopoly on power. The Muslim Brotherhood will soon learn that what they covet, may bring them down.”
The author of the above quote belongs to a Western civil society movement outside of Egypt with its intellectual roots in the Muslim Brotherhood, but many share his sentiment. Others within the broader Islamist movement have become severely disillusioned with the current leadership of the MB in particular – a leadership which has broken several political pledges over the past year with rather poor explanations. Not least of which was the running of a presidential candidate, against numerous promises to the contrary. For Kamal el-Helbawy, the former MB spokesman in Europe, that was the final straw. A committed Islamist, he refused to stay in the MB after that, saying, “I cannot stand in the ranks of people who turned their back on the revolution.”
It is early to tell where all this will lead – but it is significant to watch.
In that Friday sermon mentioned above, the Azhar graduate asked his congregation to pray for the rectification of their inward states. The subtext was clear: The Islamists might call for an ‘Islamic state,’ but the sheik sought for his congregants to reform their inner states to become Islamic. As the leadership of MB in particular, but of the newly political Salafi groups as well, seek to increasingly manifest their Islamism on the level of public policy, they will find opposition from an expected quarter: deeply religious, but non-Islamist, Muslims.
By Dr. H.A. Hellyer  a Cairo-based expert on the MENA region, with experience at Gallup, the Brookings Institution & Warwick University. Twitter: @hahellyer

Church and State

Christianity emerged when the Roman Empire was at the height of its power. To survive, Christianity adopted the policy of submission, obedience and peace. It teachings appealed to the oppressed, powerless and weaker sections of society who by accepting it endured exploitation and suffering with patience. In the early period, the converts belonged to the rural areas but gradually the faith spread and the urban population also embraced it. The belief in religion was so strong and deep that belivers preferred to die rather than to abjure it. They were tortured, thrown before wild animals and burnt at stakes.
However, the number of converts continued to increase and strengthen Christianity’s impact on Roman society.

When Roman Emperor, Augustus Constantine converted to Christianity in 312 CE, and made it the state religion, its character changed from submissive to an aggressive religion. Once the church acquired political power, it made attempts to convert the entire Roman Empire by using all coercive methods. The emperor fully patronised the Church in its efforts and gave it the position of a leading state institution. He allotted landed property to it and donated huge amounts of wealth to its officials. He exempted it from all taxes. Seeing this, the Roman nobility also joined the new faith to gain not only the favour of the emperor but also to protect their property and privileges. This transformed Christianity which, abandoning common people, became protector of the elite classes. When the Church became rich it changed its attitude towards poverty which was a matter of pride in its early days and instead, praised the merits of wealth.

In the fifth century, the Christian world was divided into two. In the east was the Roman Emperor who fused religion into state structure and used it for political motives. In the west, the Pope became the spiritual leader, undermining the power of the European rulers. In both places, Christianity interpreted its ideology from fresh perspectives. It integrated its history with that of the Roman Empire and connected the birth of Christ to the foundation of the Empire by Augustus. A new history was written which, by denying the earlier stance, condemned all other faiths and claimed its monopoly on truth and righteousness. Heresy therefore became a crime. The Church adopted a policy to eliminate all heretic and sedition movements within Christianity and to wipe out the existing religions of the Roman time.

In 453 CE, a law was promulgated whereby the properties of pagans and heretics were confiscated. They were punished if found to have secret meetings; the punishments including crucifixion, burning at the stake or being thrown to wild animals. These were the same punishments which were given to the Christians during the Roman period. As the Church became the inheritor of the Roman Empire, it adopted a harsh policy towards non Christians. This shows how political power changes the mindset and attitude of people. Saint Augustine argued that it was the blessing of God that the Church became strong with the help of the empire. Therefore, it was its right to punish heretics and strengthen the faith. Heretics were also ostracised socially. They were not allowed to attend church services. Christians were prohibited to marry into heretic families. Non Christians were dismissed from government jobs. There was a law which allowed them to be exiled and their property confiscated.

The pagan philosophers were also victims of the Church. One woman philosopher, who was famous for her knowledge and wisdom, was stoned to death in front of a church when a bishop incited the mob against her. The last non Christian philosopher of Alexandria left the city as he was harassed and terrorised by the clergy. Some of the non Christian philosophers went to Harran, an ancient city near modern day Turkey, where they survived up to the 11th century. They were the people who transmitted Greek learning to the Arabs.

There was religious tolerance in the pagan society which ended after the domination of Christianity. Tolerance was replaced by narrow-mindedness; all doors for creativity and innovation were closed. The rise of religion cut off all relations with the past and the knowledge of Greece and Ancient Rome was lost. Its slogan was one empire and one religion.

The American Founding Fathers after studying history learnt the lesson that fusion of religion and state was detrimental to progress. That is why, at the time of drafting the constitution, they separated Church from state. In Europe, the French Revolution ended the domination of the Church and secularised the state.
By Mubarak Ali: http://dawn.com/2012/05/06/past-present-church-and-state/
Comments:
Islam does not have priesthood as institution like Pope and clergy in Christianity. The concept of "Separation of Church & State" does not apply as understood by West & Christianity.