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First hour: Charles Upton, renowned Beat poet turned Sufi Muslim interfaith activist, writes in his new essay “Rebuilding Muhammad’s Interfaith Alliance Against the Global Attack on Religion“: “We are all aware of the growing number of attacks on churches, mosques and synagogues around the world, including North America. Whatever attacks are not carried out by (supposedly) lone individuals are usually attributed to, or claimed by, specific known groups: Islamicist terrorists, White Supremacists, etc. But a further question must be asked: are a percentage of these attacks actually false flags, carried out by entities with an agenda of creating conflict between the religions in order to weaken them, destroy the potential solidarity between them, and limit their social influence?”
Charles Upton works with Dr. John Andrew Morrow to publicize the Covenants of the Prophet Muhammad, which order all Muslims to protect Christians, Jews, and other religious communities “until the end of time.” The Covenants Initiative, which has already had a huge impact on the global Muslim community (including on Pakistan’s Supreme Court and Prime Minister Imran Khan) is currently raising funds for a major conferenc e.
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I want freedom FROM religion.
Throne and alter were twins–two vultures from the same egg.
To attack the king was treason; to dispute the priest, blasphemy.
The sword and cross were allies.
Together they attacked the rights of men; they defended each other.
The king owned the bodies of men, the priests the souls.
One lived on taxes collected by force, the other on alms collected by fear.
Both robbers, both beggars.
The king made laws, the priest made creeds.
With bowed backs the people carried the burdens of one, with open-mouthed wonder received the dogmas of the other.
The king said rags and hovels for you, robes and palaces for me.
The priest said God made you ignorant and immoral; He made me holy and wise; you are the sheep, I am the shepherd; your fleeces belong to me.
You must not reason, you must not contradict, you must believe.
Robert G. Ingersoll
Only certain forms of religion deemed incompatible with globalism. Protestants have it particularly hard because they tend to be right wing and resistant to state power, the Protestant unionists in Northern Ireland are far more hated by the media than the Irish Catholics are. Muslims are hated by much of the mainstream media and many on the right because they stand in the way of Greater Israel for the most part.
Catholicism generally has more support in the mainstream media and from the left, largely because the Pope is a globalist, NWO propagandist and Catholics tend to be left wing and very accepting of state authority.
Orthodox Catholics are now under attack from Pope Francis.
So if you’re a serial adulterer, drug abuser or abortionist, you’re good. But failing to recycle, drive cars not sufficiently fuel-efficient and using plastic straws are now mortal sins, which will land you in hell for eternity.
EXCELLENT interview. Clear and rational and informative from start to finish, no mystical metaphysics.
What do you suppose the chances are that many Muslims will pay the slightest attention to these two white guys?
Ingersoll’s fucking magnificent. Between Ingersoll and Mencken, religion ought to already be mouldering in its casket; sadly, no.
The narrator for the audiobook I have of The Lectures of Col R. G. Ingersoll is a fellow called Ted Delorme: he reads them with a level of engagement that makes me forget that he’s not actually the author.
One of my favourite Ingersoll ‘bits’:
Absolutely nailed it.
100% Your question has me wondering if you have ever known or been friends with a Muslim or a Sufi. Have you? Since I live in a mostly Islamic country—I would say the chances are 100%—with that said Christianity and Islam both were infiltrated long ago—especially with the creation of the New Testament using Saul of Tarsus’ letters, which never quote the Messiah—making it a controlled opposition, way off from the Indivisible Obviousness of the original Nazorean Gospel.
The vehemence of anti-religious sentiment in some people still intrigues me. I can perfectly well sympathize with those who criticize the distortions, abuses, superstitions, belligerent tribalism and dumbed-down dogma that have attached themselves to certain expressions of religion, and can also understand why some people are simply not interested either in religion or in any form of spirituality in its broader sense— how is any individual supposed to relate to what isn’t part of their own experience, and why should anyone adopt a particular set of beliefs or practices merely because they’re prevalent in their surrounding cultural environment? Nonetheless, those who engage in wholesale denunciations of religion strike me as protesting a bit too much, as though they feel the need to wall off a dimension of their own being which they are not yet ready to embrace.
While not denying the evils that have asserted themselves through the medium of religion, I still see see the presence and influence of religion within human society as a significant net plus, especially given the barrenness of the alternative. Moreover, a restoration of all major religions (not merely Islam) to the spirit of their original founding inspiration and its expression through one or more human exemplars would only enhance that “net plus”. Bravo to Mr. Upton’s effort.
Muslims are widely and fairly equally distributed among most of the biggest ethnic groups on earth, including Malaysians/Indonesians, South Asians, East Asians, Central Asians and Turkic peoples, Indian Subcontinent peoples, Persians, Russians, Eastern Europeans, North Africans, East Africans, West Africans, and increasingly people of northwestern European descent like Charles and me. “White guys” (including white people from native white Muslim backgrounds like Eddie Redzovic of The Deen Show https://www.veteranstoday.com/2019/09/10/when-will-muslims-demand-9-11-truth/ ) far from being ignored by other Muslims get an unusually warm welcome wherever we go. Convert to Islam and see for yourself!
I agree here. I don’t know if you’ve had a chance to hear about this new project by Br. Peter Sanders who was allowed to photograph people in the Muslim world that usuallly avoid photographs:
I am avidly awaiting his compendium of photographs once it comes out. I believe the work will be a bit on the expensive side, but well worth it. One place you can pre-order is here:
https://www.meccabooks.com/1678-meetings-with-mountains-9780955710612.html
Wa salaam.
> attacks on churches, mosques and synagogues
Abrahamism is under attack by other Abrahamists, an internecine squabble over the mythological middle-eastern nomadic herdsman in the Five Books of Moses.
The earliest known complete Qur’an is the variant recitations that are still in use today. The Qur’an is primarily an oral transmission, not a written one – the written on is just a crutch for the primary method.
If you don’t accept the validity of oral transmission, not our problem.
Peace.
Not so much; the Koran derives from a Syriac Christian lectionary.
No doubt, some things were Lost in Translation. (2003) 🙂
Uh hunh – tell me who exactly takes that work seriously?
The houris being “grapes” or “raisins” in the Qur’an is one of the most ludicrous assertions anyone has made.
But again, I’m totally fine with you believing this guy has the goods on oral transmission. To be honest, I’ve never, ever seen a good critical study or review regarding the soundness of oral transmission from Western scholarship. They are simply dismissive of it, which is fine – it would make a difference if we actually pinned our tradition on being validated by non-Muslims.
Peace.
Who takes it seriously? His work has got the attention of The New York Times, The Guardian, Newsweek, etc., and has attracted the attention, conferences, and reviews by many scholars and journals. And Muslims themselves have taken it quite seriously.
I don’t think your ad hominem attempt to deprecate his work as unnoticed is a valid criticism. Neither does your strawman attack on a small detail of his scholarship invalidate the whole work.
> if we actually pinned our tradition on being validated by non-Muslims
You critique Christianity. What comes around goes around. Is Islam somehow above scholarly study?
The newspapers are simply reporting his findings. I suggest you actually read some of the critical reviews by academics linked to in the page that you referenced. I haven’t found many people convinced or impressed by it. Up to you what you consider sound.
Islam is totally up for scholarly study, when you find a sound critique of the oral tradition; I’d like to see it.
Peace.
If these “Arab friends” were known to be Muslim scholars, there would be more of a point to the mentioning of them.
And I say this as someone who is not unsympathetic to the idea that the Muslim tradition could do with a lot more critical study than it is likely to get in the near future.
By this I don’t mean the sort of purely destructive “work” that Knox burlesqued in The Identity of the Pseudo-Bunyan and Materials for a Boswellian Problem.
I have no idea if Luxenberg is worth reading; he sounds interesting enough.
Okay, so so far he has the credibility I give Max Boot?
Mencken was a Dawkinseque memelord who will convince hardly anybody not already convinced.
Ingersoll was a real intellectual and a good writer but he is a drop in the ocean of real intellectuals and good writers on this subject, most of whom disagree with each other. Clearly to have discovered intellectualism and good writing is not to have discovered a self-sufficient guide to the apprehension of truth.
First you posit that nobody takes him seriously, then you have to admit that newspapers and scholars around the world take him seriously enough to report and review his work. Can you just admit you were wrong? You’ve already lost your credibility in telling falsehoods about his work.
Did you read the reviews? Academics consider his views extreme and way out there. That’s not taking him seriously, that’s warning people about his work.
Peace.