Moderate Moslems

Of course there are moderate moslems. There are Moslems saints and wise men. There are beautiful Moslems and happy Moslems and Moslems who sacrifice their own lives to save the lives of humans who are not Moslems.
I feel badly that I have had to be critical of the misinformation and disinformation of our politicians and media.  Their cupidity about Islamaphobia and political correctness surrounding terrorism forces everyone to ask, “why are they lying?”  To know they are lying follows asking “Is Islam the religion of peace?"
Islam is no more the religion of peace than Christianity is the religion of love.  It has long been said that the founders of all religions would not going the religions named for them if they were alive today.  Further what people say and what people do is one thing.  What there followers do is quite another.  Mohammed was a warrior and a killer.  He did at times preach peace.  By contrast Jesus was a healer and a teacher who did not kill and did preach love.  Buddha was an elite prince who renounced the world and became a monk who encouraged non violence. Abraham and the other founders of Judaism including Moses and David were patriarchs, kings and warriors.  Some were prophets. And all religions have martyrs. Hinduism is a polytheistic mystical religion begun in the times of warriors but carried forward by ascetic monks and sages.   Confucianism which some say is not a religion but more a philosophy was begun by a eurocrat working for a warlord.
History is made for the winners of wars.  We don’t hear much about the Quakers, a particularly non violent group of Christians any more than we hear much about the Sufis a usually non violent group of Muslims.
The fact is violence is the work of men and women who want power.  Having power they want to retain it and use religions of all stripes to maintain it.  They justify their violence and greed with religion. In the case of the atheist communists they don’t say a prophet told them but instead say their guru Marx or prophet Lenin told them to kill everyone who doesn’t agree with them.  Robespierre an anti-Christian deist was behind the French Revolution killing tens of thousands of his enemies.
Triangulation is a psychological defence in which one individual abdicates from responsibility of their actions one to another by attributing their behaviour to a third party. Today if an individual told me he had attacked me because his voices told him to, I’d consider him insane.  However, many a world leader has attributed violence to ‘voices’, “laws’, ‘committees’, “Gods”, ‘the people’, and today maybe Aliens, all as a means to confuse and control.  No one is certain whether or not it’s worse if a world leader actually believes his own shit or is just using this for the benefit of power acquisition and justification for treating others poorly.  A common ‘defence’ is the ‘greater good’ and for the future. Today all manner of shit is being said on behalf of the ‘future’ and for ‘the planet’.
In terms of logic and fallacy it’s always an ‘appeal to authority’.  There are also laws on earth for the rich and the poor.  The judges who would disagree would themselves be killed.  The winners write history.  The losers, lacking tanks and jets, create the best propaganda and makes the best promises.  They usually have maternal sexy babes with lose morals. The appeal for young men is a sort of mixed of sex and authority thing.  This is not to say that the rulers don’t have their share of “honey pots’ but the women of the ruling classes are more likely to say something like “give them cake’ rather than listen ad infinitum to their rambling intellectualism.
To the best of my understanding, Moslem countries are generally conservative.  It is worth remembering that secularism broadly speaking, the separation of ‘state’ and “religion” is condemned by Muslim intellectuals, and further in most Muslim majority states even where there is secularism there is a parallel court system of ‘sharia law’.
(Canada is definitely moving in this direction with their aboriginal or pagan court system parallel to the mainstream secular court system.  There are also some ‘sharia court systems’ in Canada but no Catholic, Christian, or Buddhist court system showing the fundamental break down of equality and freedom in Canada as just one example of devolution of western secularism. In Europe sharia courts are proliferating just as ‘gang’ justice proliferated in former communist countries after the fall. )
The most liberal of the older Moslem countries appears to be Turkey, Tunesia, and  Egypt.  It is worthwhile to note that these states, though Muslim majority, are under attack to Jihadists indicating how costly it is to be a ‘moderate’ Muslim or indeed a secularist Muslim in the world today.  The Jihadists are equally if not more hysterically enraged by their brother Muslim’s who refuse to accept their dictatorship.
(This is not surprising given that the French revolution killed tens of thousands of their own people while the various communist revolutions killed millions of their own people who disagreed with them.  Indeed “either you’re for us or a gin us’ is neither religious or secular but equally revolutionary as the standard revolutionary argument,  ‘if you don’t agree with me, I’ll kill you’.   ‘Ad hominem’ rhetoric or attack on the person in debate  causes  ‘forfeiture’ of the logical argument  because a long long time ago men realized they couldn’t have a decent game of golf without agreeing that anyone who starts hacking the competition with swords or axes might well live but he will never be respected as a golfer.”
When we think of Conservative or Liberal we general think of freedoms that the citizens have.  Iceland is often touted as a very ‘free’ country but it has to be remembered that comparison of countries is difficult without consideration of the countries make up.  Iceland is a white tribe whereas both Turkey and the US are nations of many different racial and political groups.  Mexico its a conglomerate of Indian groups plus the later European immigrants.
So ‘freedom for the people’ in general really took off in the 1800’s  with the American (1776)  and French  Revolution. The British Magna Carta (1215) before it had nothing to do with the peasants but rather challenged the divinity and authority of the king versus the barons.  This is like democracy itself which was developed by the ‘lords’ and ‘landowners’ of ancient Greece.  The Christian Suffragette movement extended the ‘vote’ to women like the American Civil War extended the ‘vote’ to blacks.  A key questions is always ‘who are the people’ and further ‘who can be the leader’.  In aboriginal society it was common for there to be ’slaves’ and for non tribe members to be considered ‘other than human’.  This is going on today in Canada where an immigrant Sihk is the defence minister of Canada but a US presidential candidate born in Canada is being questioned as whether or not he is an American.  Most nations in the world are highly restrictive, incredibly nationalistic, tribalistic and racist in this regard.   Some say that the Desert Spring of the Middleeast was the civil war and political uprising of the common people that was occurring 200 years later.
Moderation has described the way countries deal with dissent.  Some countries behead dissenting individuals while others jail them.  Others have a wide variety of means for individuals to be critical of their own government.  I’d personally be jailed or beheaded, I believe, in any other country but Canada where Justin Trudeau is our Prime Minister.  I don’t doubt either that Mr. Justin Trudeau would wish as Mr. Harper his predecessor might wish that ‘beheading of dissidents’ was a Canadian ‘custom’ given the rude criticism our extraordinary leaders are subjected to.   Canada has freedom of speech like England and like American.  Few Muslem countries are moderate in this way.
But yes there are very moderate individual Muslims. I know some who are outrageously radical.  They are living in the west because they do not believe they would do well in the countries they have left.  They are ‘cultural’ escapees. They have come to Canada for the freedom they didn’t experience in the Moslem culture in their home.  They prefer the freedoms and moderation and liberties in Canadian culture and they surely do not want Sharia Law or for the culture they left to become dominant in Canada or the west.  They are in many ways like the Puritan Christians who left England because of religious persecution by the State Religion of those who questioned the authority of the church leadership and wanted a more democratic religious church.  The authoritarianism of the Catholic church with the Pope gave rise to the religious wars that begat Protestant Christianity with is nationalist churches as well as it’s presbyterian and congregationalist churches.  Today the fastest growing community Christian churches are in many ways the most democratic with ministers selected by the congregation and voted on rather than being appointed top down by the centralized church authority.    Most Muslims I know  came to get away from the authorities and restriction there and love their new home. Commonly immigrants cite ‘corruption’ in their former countries and a desire to make a ‘new start’ in the country they are going to.  This doesn’t mean that there is no corruption here but the corruption is different and consequently there is more ‘opportunity’ here.  Not uncommonly there is movement back and forth with regard to economic refugees and whole classes of individuals like the ‘gypsies’ who reject national boundaries all together to the great consternation of those most invested in national boundaries. Indeed the countless trade agreements these days is a direct consequence of the entrenching corruption associated directly with ‘boundaries’.
My Muslim friends here are more Canadian than I am in that regard to their appreciation of the freedoms we know in Canada. h.
I just regret that we all have had to look at the numbers and the risks that exist because our media so commonly is interested these days in selling war while some of our political leadership are most interested in selling to the lowest common denominator.
The result is lies.
There are a whole lot of radical muslems.  Wahhabism sect of the Sunni Muslem, preached as a central tenet of mainstream Saudi Arabia  are fundamentally anti freedom, anti western, anti secular, jihadist and commonly utterly disrespectful of other religions and cultures. The salafists are jihadist until proven otherwise.    The aim of these Muslems is world domination in the same way that Hitler and the Nazi’s were world domination or Stalin and the Communists.  To them Muslim is a religion of peace means quite simply when all the world is Muslim and "we are in charge” and “we have killed all who won’t convert”,  then we will have peace.
Most moderates believe in a balance of power.  Moderates respect respect  religious freedom. I love that I have Muslim neighbours, Buddhist neighbours, Hindu neighbours, Pagan neighbours, Jewish neightbours,  Christian neighbours and even atheist neighbours.  I like all the colours of the rainbow.  I love the diversity that we know in Canada.  I know there are those who want only to eat cereal for breakfast and insist everyone else eat cereal for breakfast like they do but I like choice.  I really am a big proponent of freedom and choice for individuals and communities.  I am a Canadian.  I like that I can joke with my moderate Muslim friends about ‘all roads leading to Rome’ but that Christians will have the better housing district and Muslims will have to live on the other side of the tracks.  They say they will have the virgins and I say I will have the music and maybe one virgin.  We don’t kill each other any more than I do with my female Buddhist friend who at the same time tells us men that she believes we will not get to heaven in the next life but rather will reincarnate as pigs.  To which my Hindu friend insists that he was a pig in a previous life and that’s where he learned his bad habits.  My Catholic friend loves bacon but doesn’t like this talk of pigs.  She rejects Jews and Moslems because she love her bacon.  And such a conversation among friends can occur in Canada among a group of deeply spiritual and religious individuals who are moderates.  I don’t know any fanatics.  I expect if I did I’d have to kill them before they killed me.  So as a Canadian I prefer peace because I can get on with science, loving, community and art rather than devoting myself to watching my back and killing the fanatics before they kill me.
I am a physician too.  Physicians commonly say ‘moderation in everything.’  So I like my moderate friends and am skeptical of my extremist friends.  I have no fanatic friends but I certainly have friends whose behaviours and thoughts are extreme by my personal rather conservative behaviour and thought. I am however most skeptical of those that lie especially politicians and the media. Lying people in power scare me.  Scaring people pushes them to  extremes.  I therefore wonder why some people in power who lie and deny legitimate concerns and threat are so anti moderation and in favour of war.  That concerns me. I’m less concerned about my moderate Muslim friends than I am about liars in general.   All my Muslim friends are equally concerned about radicals and extremists as I am.  None of my moderate Muslim academic doctor friends favour jihadists.  The moderate muslim psychiatrists I know think they’re psychopaths.  Why are our political leaders and their media not equally concerned?  That’s what concerns me? Indeed as my moderate muslim friends are against the fundamentalist and extremist muslims, those who don’t wish to integrate into Canadian society but rather wish to dominate and subjugate Canadian culture or isolate and plan jihad, then quite simply the enemy of my enemy is my friend.  Hence the Jordan pilot,a muslim, and the Kurdish women brigade, muslims, are my friends.
My concern is whether my leadership or their propaganda media are my friends?  I thank them only so far as their own violence has helped me clarify who are really the enemies of peace and the enemies of Canada and western secularism.

Blue Mosque - Istanbul, Turkey

The Blue Mosque was completed in 1616.  It is the Sultan Ahmed Mosque but known as the Blue Mosque because of the blue tiles that adorn the interior.  The Mosque has 6 minarets.  Not wanting to offend Mecca who at the time had only as many minarets, Sultan Ahmed donated a minaret to Mecca.  Sudefkar Mehmed Aga, the architect was the student of the great architect Sinan.
My guide Mehmet Tetik showed me the model of Mecca in the Blue Mosque which shows the green tomb of Mohammed.  Mehmet  explained that after his death in 632 was succeeded by four Caliphs.  The names of the four Caliphs are often seen in the mosques along with the names of Mohammed and  of Allah.   These Caliphs were ‘elected’ .  The first was Abu Bakr.  Division in the Muslim community occurred with the successions. Umar and Uthman and Ali followed were accepted by the  dominant Sunni but the real controversy that lead to the division of Shia and Sunni occurred with the 5th Caliph.  Caliph is short for Khalifah meaning “messenger of God’. Mehmet explained that at any one time there was only one Caliph.  (There were occasionally two caliphs one in Egypt and one in Bhagdad).
Mehmet explained that the Caliph was like the Pope is in the west, predominantly the religious leader however the most politically powerful empire such as the Ottoman Empire claimed the Ottoman Caliphate.  They claimed the caliphate after Mehmed II’s conquest of Constantinople in 1453.  With Mustafa Kemil (Ataturk) reforms, the caliph position was abolished.
The Four Rashidum (rightfully guided) caliphs expanded Islam beyond Arabia conquering Persia, Syria, Armenia, Egypt, much of North Africa, Spain and Portugal
The fifth Caliph Muawiya appointed his son Caliph and changed the election process to dynastic.   This has been the beginning of the dispute between the Sunni and Shiites.  Turkey is mostly Sunni as Iran is mostly Shiite.
The Ottoman Empire, ruled from Constantinople, at it’s peak covered Anatolia, most of the middle east, North Africa, the Caucasus, and extended deep into Eastern Europe.  The Ottoman Empire lasted over 600 years.  In contrast the British Empire last only a few hundred years though with it’s navy base was far more global.
ISIS or Islamic State (acronym - Islamic State in Iraq and Syria)  has claimed the Caliph self appointing themselves and claiming to represent the Mahdi.  The Mahdi meaning ‘guidedone’ was a prophecy that a descendent of Mohammed would work in concert with Jesus Christ to convert the entire world to Islam. There have been hundreds of splinter groups and Jihadi groups which are naturally as much of a concern to the existing Muslim states as they are to the west since they kill anyone who they believe is not a true moslem by there peculiar fundamentalist and idiosyncratic emotional standards.  They’re principally Sunni and kill Shiites as easily as Christians and Jews.
Mehmet explained that Turkey which was secularized by Ataturk and while the present leadership is more conservative religiously the country of Turkey is very broad based religiously from those who believers but only participate in part of the religious process to those who are adamant and fundamentalist.
 “We have C&E Christians in the West and it sounds like you have the same in Turkey”.
What is a C&E Christian? “ Mehmet asked.
“Christmas and Easter, that’s the only time you see them in church.”
Mehmet laughed , "yes, that is true.”
He said that mostly Muslims were concerned about ISIS and didn’t accept their violence.  From the sounds of ISIS they’re as likely to kill their neighbours as their enemies and it’s no surprise that the Muslim nations themselves are leading the recent attacks against them.
When a pope came to the Blue Mosque with the leader of the Turkish Muslims he prayed for the ‘brotherhood of man’.  Peace seems more at the deepest nature of God.   Being in the Blue Mosque I enjoyed the peacefulness of the place, the sense of serenity and imagined that together all praying the love of God for all could radiate in such a place of beauty.  The Blue Mosque is truly beautiful, an extraordinary work of architecture.  I think Mehmet told me there were more than a million Iztek tiles used to make the mosque.
I believe that God is love and that love joins whereas fear resides within man and fear separates.  That said I tell Mehmet that if I was threatened or my family and friends I would quickly revert to the animal within and defend myself.  Mehmet says, “that’s man’s nature”.  We laugh at this.  It is good to enjoy conversation in good company at peace and yet how difficult it must be for the leaders of the world to find ways to get along with so many competing aims and fractions.

No likeness could appear in a mosque but a scroll in the mosque with fine calligraphy describes the personal likeness of Mohammed. There was also a picture of Mecca and a model of the  tomb of Mohammed. 

God Revisited on Commercial Street

I am sitting on the terrace of the East Van Comedy Club looking at the sun setting in the distance.  Perhaps thats a fitting place to consider God in today's often godless society.
I’ve stopped here because it’s a good place for dogs. They set out dog water dishes at either end of the terrace.  Gilbert is tied to a bicycle post next to me. He loves Commercial Drive.  It’s a dog friendly community with lots of folk walking their dogs.  Now he’s lying in wait to meet and greet passers by.
I’ve been to St. James Anglican this morning. Good to see Father Mark and Father Mathew.  Karen and Matisse were there.  Kevin, AJ, the boys and Kendra were there. I loved that the Women’s Auxilliary had it’s sale after church. I’m stocked up with Christmas Bread, home made marmalade. I got the boys and Kendra hand knitted togues which Kevin sized for me.
(The waitress just brought me a Cafe’ Latte. Now she has brought gumbo.  Looks delicious.  Looking at it I think I’ll take to calling the stews I make ‘gumbo’.  Seems more descriptively true.  I know I started out to Revisit “God” but I’m going to take a break and eat this gumbo while it’s hot. There’s snow on the ground and it’s been quite cold indeed.  My beard helps but this gumbo should really hit the spot, Mmm, the food here is hot and Godly.  In Winter I'll go to a 'hot heaven' before a 'cool' heaven")
Now that I am ‘sated’ with very delicious gumbo and fresh baked bread with herbal butter, I might consider the subject of God differently than one might starving and under siege.  There's always 911 prayers and lot of the preachers speak from fear rather than love.
God is one, i.e. God is all.  Or God is none.  That’s the one and zero conception with the line going through the centre to create the symbol of infinity. I can conceptualize the finite and perhaps even consider infinity though mostly the latter I consider in cartesian mathematical terms.  I don’t know that man can truly conceptualize the infinite certainly not as he does the finite.  I’m ever changing as well with a sense of some kind of unchanginess.  This is even more apparent as I grow older and myself hardly recognize myself as the once young man.  The waitress is very young and no doubt looks at me like I looked at old ladies at her age.  I look at the young as young but not as I do the very old which for me are the 90 year olds.  It’s relative. But not all things are relative and 'it is what it is' is only as true as 'it isn't what it isn't'.
All such concepts weren’t readily available to the ancients.  The world was once pagan or ‘polytheistic’ and our ‘secular’ society is increasingly appearing little different from any ‘polytheistic society’.  In the Roman sense the Gods were named and personalized whereas in the secular society they may well be addictions.  Bachus rules the alcoholic.  In Medieval times the polytheism was limited to ‘demons’.  Today we have Ford and Fararri.  We call our Gods nationalities and corporations but it’s only when we limited the definition of ‘religion’ to a ‘god based faith’ do we exclude the comparative ‘religion’ of ‘communism’.  It claimed to be ‘godless’ but it was nonetheless a cult of personality with Lenin and Che little different than Kennedy and Reagan.  Nationalities are God like to those who are 'secular'.
I appreciate the interconnectedness of everything materially.  I understand as a scientist the significance of fractals, the universality of atoms and DNA.  The ‘atomic’ theory of universal interconnectedness goes back to the Greeks in Pre Christian times. Yet I learned in a theological lecture at a seminary that St. John’s ‘In the beginning was the word”  referred to the notion that we are all made of the ‘god stuff’.  Created in “God’s Image’ is essentially being the dream stuff of God.  Today Holograms give us capacity to understand this universality.  Certainly the movie “Matrix’ taking off from the findings of Hummarabi texts helps one appreciate that ‘to dream is the rub”.  Dr. Carl Jung expressed the idea that we were joined by the “universal unconscious”. This was in essence an idea from the Vedantas and expressed by Buddha.  We are the sound made by the celestial spheres.  Waves and particles.
(there is a young man who has sat down with two young women who have accents and would appear to be travellers. His voice has become louder and more raucous despite the fact that he’s drinking coffee. He’s irritating, nonetheless as he struts his intellect in hope that the girls will want his cock.  It’s not what he is saying that irritates but rather the loudness and the tone as he talks authoritatively about generalities but mostly wants he wants someone to unzipp his fly. I celebrate his youth.  He is with two beautiful women and I am  alone with a computer and a dog. My irritation is likely envy. )
Talking and thinking about God is what one does when lust is not more readily available.  Football players and warriors aren’t known for their intellectualism however Marcus Aurelius’s memoir is as sensitive a writing as one might find. He speaks of the stoics and today we’d call this a treatise on minimalism.
Under every idea - right now it’s the hegemony of Climate Change and politics of the Middle East and China and America - under all these is an issue of God.
I liked that the desire for uniformity went with the idea that those who were ‘contrarian’ somehow lessened the benefits that collective thanks and praise could bring to a community.  So the Christians, the contrarians, for their first 300 years offended the secular or polygamous Roman empire.  Now Christians are offending the secular society again.  Meanwhile my Christian friend demands and gets overtly angry with anyone who doesn't share his 'narrowest' certainty about Christianity.  I have several Christian friends and they're all more 'certain' than each other about Christianity.  The devil is in the details.  Agreement is like herding cats.  It's so hard to agree with these disagreeable certainties.   The tower of babble is such a  very human story.
God, the father, God the son, and God the holy spirit, the 3 in 1 God offended the Jews who believed in the One God, the God of the jews and mostly considered him God the Father.
Now I’ve been encountering more and more Moslems who are in the news because a significant percentage of them are radical and fundamentalist.  When Christian fundamentalists limited themselves to televangelism they were of no concern to the majority. The same was true for the Muslims but when they began beheading everyone who didn’t convert they became like Religious Communists.  The communists, mostly the Russian and Chinese variants of ‘atheism’ have a combined killing of a hundred million in the last hundred years, about a million a year. They make the Nazi’s look like amateurs.  No Christian group, even the witch hunting spanish inquisition, did anything like the Communists when it came to killing. The French Revolution numbers were infinitesimal.  Muslim radicals haven’t killed nearly so many but they’re the Rock Stars of death right now though the communists are still killing in Ukraine and China.
Meanwhile we're aborting babies with a frenzy of killing and the Canadian government is literally orgasming over the idea of Euthansia. The courts cream at the idea of legitimizing suicide.  No wonder the Pope called this a Culture of Death.
But what is life. Is it finite or infinite. Do I end with my death. I don’t know with any certainty. Even Houdini couldn’t get a message back with any certainty. I really don't believe in the infinity of my finitude but figure i'll muddle along waking no doubt in some variation of this life dream.  I suspect I'll be accountable to 'retribution' and 'karma' and that I may come back as a frog or burn in a fiery bath or play harp badly on a cloud.  All outcomes are possible.  Death is significant no matter how the government would reduce all individuals to numbers and accounting as subtraction.
So the Council of Nicea was an attempt to get equal agreement among Christians on the nature of God. Was God the Father equal to God the Son and where did the Holy Spirit fit in.  We have many denominations of protestantism in addition to the Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox and Russian Orthodx.  The Muslims have Sunni and Shiites like the Jews have their Ashkenazi and the other one, the one that’s more eastern.  Buddhist war , actually kill each other, all vegetarians though, over who owns a Buddhist temple.  Hindus have long fought the Siks. Divisiveness is at nature human.
It’s really a bit like soccer fans or hockey fans at the grass roots.
I know God.  I know God is loving.  I have lived this and reasoned this.  I’ve long left atheism behind given the overwhelming scientific evidence that they’re collectively less healthy and well. Yet there are the gays who are less healthy and well in some groups solely because of their marginalization. The rich and mainstream , the ‘winners’, are normally healthiest.
I pray.  I was raised Christian.  I meditate. I have a direct consciousness of something one might call a ‘higher power’.  I don’t ‘feel’ this as polygamous or even as ‘trinitarian’.  I accept the trinitarian nature of God as easily as I accept the make up of DNA.  Does it matter to my ‘faith’ or my function.
But the question arises because the Aetheists , what my friend calls ‘anti-theist’, the Communists, and Radical Muslims, like the Radical Feminists, and the Radical Climate Change Cult, all seem to be looking for a fight.  Mostly people want a bigger slice of the pie and today the pie is money.
I’ve vowed ‘to live and let live’.  I believe in God. I”m a Christian.  I am probably also an evangelist because I ‘advertise’ my Christianity not that differently than I do my Canadianism.  I’m called a Patriot which is like being an Evangelist. I’m not going to knock on your door or consider it a ‘win’ if you convert to my religion. I’m certainly not going to behead you if you don’t agree, put you in a gas chamber or rant at you ad infinitum about the victimship of women or the terrible plight of black people or how the chinese are much maligned or even how Americans are difficult to live beside. I’m not that way inclined.
I rather like my company and the company of my dog and I like to sit alone with my ‘imaginary friend, called God”.   I really don't think God is imaginary though.  Everything but God seems more the imaginary.  Actually I don’t talk to God as ‘God’ but rather call him Lord. I don’t think of God as feminine anymore than I think of the earth as Feminine.  I haven’t this whole issue with ‘gender’ or ‘race’ or football teams. I didn’t know today was the Grey Cup.  I’m personally wondering which hotel I’m going to stay in in Turkey in a few weeks.
Now I’m going to walk the dog.
I think God is more ‘yes’ than ‘no’ too.  I love St. John of the Cross and “nada’.  God is not anything of this world.  God is transcendent and more. God is more ‘mystery’ too, so I’m a big fan of the medieval ‘Cloud of Unknowing’.  I think a lot of Evangelicals spout their ignorance with their certainty over uncertainties.    I am a scientist so I worry when people speak without the basic understanding of ‘thesis’ , antithesis, synthesis, Hegel, Black Boxes and  ideas that beget ideas.  ‘Evolution’ may not be darwinian per-se but it is a process of learning and learning on learning.
(The guy in the next table is saying he’s an ‘artist’.  Actually he’s saying he ’s a contractor. An illustrator.  )
I like that he’s ‘thinking out loud’.  The group is having fun. I remember being in such groups, sharing ideas. Good CAFE SOCIETY.  I forgive him his raucous laugh and loud voice.  I hope they come together too. Really.
Time to walk more with Gilbert

Dogs and Muslim

"The "Qur'an strongly enjoins Muslims to treat animals with compassion and not to abuse them" - Wikipedia

"The Qur'an applies the word "Muslim" not only to humans but also to animals and the inanimate world".

"In verse 6:38, the Qur'an applies the term ummah, generally used to mean "a human religious community", for genera of animals."

"There is not an animal (that lives) on the earth, nor a being that flies on its wings, but (forms part of) communities like you Nothing have we omitted from the Book, and they (all) shall be gathered to their Lord in the end." Qur'an 6:38

However that said, "The majority of both Sunni and Shi'a Muslim jurists consider dogs to be ritually unclean. It is uncommon for practicing Muslims to have dogs as pets. " Wikipedia

However, "dog is not an unclean animal based on the inclusion of a dog among the seven Sleeprs as recorded in the 18th verse of the 18th chapter of the Qur'an."

Myths (as stated by Dr. Ayoub M. Banderker
"It is not haraam to own a dog, though it is not hygienic to keep a dog in the house."
"It is not harram to touch a dog or any other animal."
However, If the saliva of a dog touches you it is necessary to wash the part of the body touched or the clothing touched by the dog's saliva.

"No Animal has been cursed in any way... In Surah Kahf mention is made of the companions of the Cave and their dog (S18:18:22)
-Dr. AyouB. M. Banderker (Veterinary Surgeon) writing on Animal Abuse and Welfare in Islam

Dogs and Islam: The Devil and the Seeing-Eye Dog
Stanley Coren PHD FRSC
- quoting a University Muslim expert "Muslim beliefs about dogs are sometimes confusing and contradictory. The majority of both Sunni and Shi'a Muslim Jurists consider dogs to be ritually unclean but these beliefs are not unanimous. The jurists of the Sunni Malik Schoo disagree with the idea that dogs are unclean, and those of the Sunni Hanafi School are ambiguous, allowing trade and care of dogs without religions consequences. However all these opinions are based, not on the Koran itself, but on the Hadith, which are commentaires, analyses, and interpretations of the Koran. It is these Hadith that suggest that to be touched by a dog is to be defiled and requires an act of purification.....If we look directly at the Koran it turns out that dogs are mentioned five times and are never described as being unclean. In fact the longest group of passages including a dog is quite positive and it relates to the story of the Seven Sleepers.....According to Moslem tradition, the dog Kitmir was admitted to paradise upon his death."

"Certainly an unclean animal would not be admitted to paradise," the professor commented. "

Mohammed ordered "kill all dogs' however "On reflection, however, he mitigated his decree, for two major reasons...The first was religiousL canines constituted a race of Allah's creatures....the second, more prgamatic was that some categoris of dogs, particularly guard dogs, hunting dogs and shepherd dogs, were useful to humans and hence had earned their right to exist.

"Some legends say the prophet himself actually owned one or more salukis that he used for hunting....In fact one passage in the Koran quite specifically says that any prey that is caught by dogs during a hunt can be eaten. No purification other than the mention of Allah's name is required of it."

Mohammed apparently accepted dogs therefore but not 'black dogs because the believed that the Devil often appears masquerading as a black dog."

Politically there is further the Middle East conflict between ancient Zoroastrianism religion which stood in the way of new islam and the Zoroastrians revered the dog. Historically it is common that 'gods of the old religion are converted into the devils of the new religion."

I was interested in this as none of my Muslim patients has objected to my pet therapist, Gilbert. He's also an amazing hunting dog and a guard dog in addition so I'm sure that Mohammed would not want him dead especially if he saw how he caused an old withdrawn man who was suicidal come out of himself, give up his suicidal ideation and return successfully to community. Even as important if anyone saw Gilbert flush and find partridge they'd see his heavenly destination guaranteed. All we have to do is get him to bring the birds back rather than just leading me to them. But he's a young dog and even then his bark is ferocious when he wakes me from sleep because of some stranger coming innappropriately near whereever his master and he are sleeping.

I'm afraid we're both cave dwellers in a sense so he is an 'indoor dog' and no doubt he'd benefit from more grooming. He doesn't shed and personally I do believe his lack of hygiene is no worse than children. I also believe that the whole 'sterile movement' is cause for the decrease in the immunologically protection of so many. Our forefathers immunologically were a tougher group partly because of their exposure to 'dirt'. Thanks to Gilbert there is some 'dirt' in my life no different from that brought in the soles of shoes. Our butts are affected too by sitting on floors and for me by the activities of prayer, meditation and roughhousing. Gilbert is a happy part of all my activities.




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