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Sep. 29th, 2011 01:12 amMy mom showed me this link, { http://e-activist.com/ea-action/action?ea.campaign.id=12209&ea.client.id=88 } and asked if I would write a letter, because she doesn't like to write. And I thought about it, and here's what I got:
I'm sending this to an ambassador in a country not my own because my own country poisoned its relations with Iran long ago.
I don't think anything I say does a bit of good.
But for Muslims and Christians to kill each other only serves the pagan god of war. You kill a Christian for being Christian, and Christians and Jews in my country turn more against Muslims, and things get more hostile, and we get even more noxious behavior from governments.
Can we hang up the old wars of the Crusade finally?
Sunni, Shi'i, Sufi, Ahmadi, and so forth; Baha'i, Zoroastrian, Christian, Mandaean, Jew, Sikh--should these traditions be at war with each other? Could they instead be cooperating to diminish lawlessness and godlessness?
There was an English scholar who once said that two men who believe in God but disagree on religion are closer together than a theist and an atheist. All of us have imperfect knowledge of the divine. The lines between sects are as the lines between opinions in the same congregation.
Would you kill a fellow Muslim, who prays next to you, because he imagines Paradise differently, or skips prayers once in a while? Is your own knowledge so perfect? Is even an Ayatollah's?
So why kill People of the Book? However rude, however misguided, they are merely your brothers in the worship of one true God, but in imperfection--as we all are imperfect.
I'm sending this to an ambassador in a country not my own because my own country poisoned its relations with Iran long ago.
I don't think anything I say does a bit of good.
But for Muslims and Christians to kill each other only serves the pagan god of war. You kill a Christian for being Christian, and Christians and Jews in my country turn more against Muslims, and things get more hostile, and we get even more noxious behavior from governments.
Can we hang up the old wars of the Crusade finally?
Sunni, Shi'i, Sufi, Ahmadi, and so forth; Baha'i, Zoroastrian, Christian, Mandaean, Jew, Sikh--should these traditions be at war with each other? Could they instead be cooperating to diminish lawlessness and godlessness?
There was an English scholar who once said that two men who believe in God but disagree on religion are closer together than a theist and an atheist. All of us have imperfect knowledge of the divine. The lines between sects are as the lines between opinions in the same congregation.
Would you kill a fellow Muslim, who prays next to you, because he imagines Paradise differently, or skips prayers once in a while? Is your own knowledge so perfect? Is even an Ayatollah's?
So why kill People of the Book? However rude, however misguided, they are merely your brothers in the worship of one true God, but in imperfection--as we all are imperfect.
