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Cult or Religion?
There is a site in the Internet that talks about cults. I chose one of them to compare it with Islam. I could have chosen any one of them; all the cults are essentially the same. http://www.mayhem.net/Crime/cults1.html SUPREME
TRUTH ISLAM (SUBMISSION) 1400 years ago, Muhammad an illiterate charismatic Arab founded a monotheistic cult called Islam. To promote his religion he prescribed holy wars (jihad). He taught that next to prayers and fasting, waging war against the disbelievers is the most praiseworthy and meritorious act. He was a single-minded man who stopped at nothing to achieve his goal. He burned tree plantations that belonged to the people he wanted to exterminate. He used to get into battlefields before his opponents and destroy the water-wells. He surrounded and cut the water supply to a quarter where a Jewish population used to live. After they surrendered he put to death all the men and boys who had reached puberty. He took the boys pants off to examine if they have grown pubic hair. If they had, this was enough for enough evidence of their guilt and he killed them, 600 to 900 of them in one occasion. Then he sold the women and children as slaves. Muhammad also killed his opponents and critics by assassinating them in the middle of the night. SUPREME TRUTH Asahara justified indiscriminate mass murder through the religious belief of "poa" -- a Tibetan Buddhist term for reincarnation to a higher existence. According to Shoko's twisted doomsday teachings, one can only save their soul through killing. Through the years Asahara developed a mumbo-jumbo collaged religious doctrine that resembled some sort of New Age-Hippie-Bhuddist-Mysticism. He even went on a pilgrimage to see Nostradamus expert Michel Chomarat at Lyon's municipal library to gain new insights into divination. ” ISLAM Muhammad justified indiscriminate mass murder through the religious belief of monotheism; a Middle Eastern dogma that this universe has a creator called Allah whose purpose of creation is to make man know him and worship him. According to Muhammad's twisted doomsday teachings, one can only serve Allah by forcing others into submission to his cult, even if that means killing those who dare to differ. Through the years of withdrawal, and expending days at a time in a secluded cave, Muhammad developed a mumbo-jumbo collaged religious doctrine that was a concoction of Judaism, Christianity and Hanifi a monotheistic religion of the Arabs of Hejaz. He got some insights on other monotheistic religions of the Middle East from Abu Nufel, a Christian monk who was the uncle of his first wife. SUPREME TRUTH “To the New Age cocktail brewing in his head, Asahara added the incentive of world domination through violence that he taught to his followers. According to Shoko a "poa" killing relieved victims from everyday life and the inevitable accumulation of bad karma. Thus what we call cold-blooded murder was regarded "as a beautiful 'poa,' and wise people would see that both the killer and the person killed would benefit” ISLAM To the monotheistic cocktail brewing in his head, Muhammad added the incentive of world domination through violence that he taught to his followers. According to Muhammad, killing the disbelievers in the name of Allah was the source of His pleasure. Thus what we call cold-blooded murder was regarded as Jihad or “holy” war. To entice his followers to participate in these wars he promised them access to paradise whether they kill or are killed in the battle. Well, I could go on comparing Islam with other cults; but I will leave that to you. Go to the site above and learn about other cults and compare their surprising similarity with Islam. The question is, what makes Islam a true religion and these cults diabolic and wrong? Muhammad claimed to be a messenger of God, so did the leaders of these cults. Muhammad dictated a book that makes no sense, so did these cult leaders. Muhammad had a bunch of followers around him who were ready to kill or be killed at his command, so did these people. Muhammad had no proof to his claim except his own word, so did these other cult leaders. Muhammad had a charismatic and convincing personality, so did they! Muhammad’s lie was so big and was said so forcibly and with such conviction that simple minded people of his time were spellbound and believed in him. That is exactly how these cult leaders beguile their foolhardy victims. The studies made on the Bible have shown that Judaism and Christianity were made by people and not revealed to Moses and Jesus. (Read the book Who Wrote The Bible?.) So I cannot speak harshly against Moses and Jesus, for they are almost mythological figures. But Muhammad’s history, despite the outlandish and false miracles attributed to him can be, to some degree of accuracy, traced. This man shared the characteristics of very mentally sick cult leaders. Now let us “suppose” that there is a religion that is the true religion. How we would distinguish it from the false cults? Obviously we cannot accept any charlatan and impostor who claim to be the messenger of God. How are we supposed to differentiate between the false prophets and the true ones? Why we have to accept Islam and reject all those cults that are listed in the above-mentioned site? Muslim’s major proof for the truth of Islam is that over one billion people are Muslims and they argue that “not all these people can be wrong”. They believe in Islam because, as they say, it is the second biggest religion and it is the fastest growing one. That is not true because there are many more Muslims who are leaving Islam than those who enter it. Today Over 50% of Iranians outside Iran do not call themselves Muslims and over 40% of them who still claim to be Muslims do not practice any Islamic rituals like praying and fasting. We cannot have these statistics from inside of Iran but it is very much likely that once the present repressive regime of Iran is removed, most of the Iranians will denounce Islam. I have no doubt that once the present Islamic regime in Iran is toppled, Muslims will be the minority in Iran. However, is this a valid argument to say that because there are over one billion Muslims in the world, it ought to be true? Should we all blindly follow a cult or a religion because others have done so? Can we vote on the truth? Few hundred years ago, every person on this planet thought that the Earth is flat. This was the belief upheld by the philosophers, the prophets, the learned and practically everyone else. A cynic could have asked: "Could all these people be wrong"? This argument, that something must be true if many believe in it holds no water. If we base our faith on the faith of others and others on their turn follow yet others, we would be like a herd of sheep following each other. The truth stands alone and is independent from the number of its believers. Even if we accept revelation as the ultimate source of knowledge and religions as indispensable and the best guidance for human beings, we have to find which one is a religion and which one is a cult. What are the parameters that we should use to separate one from the other? In the final analysis, it is our own logic that should guide us in this uncharted territory. We have to use reason to test the truth. Having faith is not enough. We must put our faith to the test. If a person claims to be the envoy of God he should not be accepted blindly but his claim must be analyzed meticulously, questioned and vigorously studied. The cult leaders, who fear that their false claims would not stand the test of logic, warn their followers not to question God for this is the greatest sin. They say it is not up to humans to test God but it is God who should test his servants. They would rather demand immediate and steadfast devotion without any investigation. They assert that the blind faith is the sign of the purity of heart and assure that God loves those who believe without questioning and they will inherit the eternal life in heaven. Thus we have so many people who fall prey to the to mentally sick narcissist self-acclaimed messiahs that burgeon in ever increasing numbers, year after year. We, as individuals and as the society must question the fundaments of such hypothesis. We have to ask ourselves, would a wise and loving god give us a brain and the faculty to reason and then expect us to forgo its use when it comes to the most important decision of our lives, which is finding him? Which according to these religions is the very purpose of our existence in this world that would determine whether we will have an eternal life in the paradise or would burn forever in the fire of hell? Once you put to the test of reason religious beliefs, you see they all fail. There is no difference between religions and cults. What made the three Semitic religions survive for so many centuries is circumstantial and has nothing to do with their inherent truth and content. Islam is not the fastest growing religion either. Fa Long Gong is. In just a few years it has attracted more that 40 million followers. Islam’s growth is the result of another social problem and that is the population explosion in the poor countries. Muslims, because of their religious fanaticism have been alienated from “western science”. To them the real knowledge is revealed in Quran and that is all they need to know. Early Muslims burned books and considered all sciences demonic. In fact, except for a short period, this mentality dominated the mind of the Muslims everywhere. Even Khomeini was of the opinion that Quran is the only book that must be taught in the universities. Therefore, Islamic countries remained mostly poor (With the exception of those that have been enriched because of the oil). The population in Poor countries grow more rapidly and hence the number of Muslims. The number of westerners turning to Islam is negligible compared to the number of born Muslim intellectuals turning away from it. It is mostly concentrated among the blacks of USA who are basically reacting against the white dominated Christianity of the West and are in the search for their own identity. If they knew that the Islam preached by Muhammad is much distinct from the one propagated now by Muslim apologists, they would not become Muslims either.
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