(no subject)

[owl]

Has anyone heard anything more about the man in Afganistan who was to be executed? It was all over the BBC news yesterday, but I haven't heard anything today. The thing that bothered me was the Muslims on the news saying things like 'Muslim law does not require the death penalty for converting to another religion, but if he were to cause problems, such as trying to convert others, that would be a very serious matter.'
Because telling other people about your religion is a terrible crime. *eyeroll* These regimes act as though they think their people just have to hear about another religion to abandom Islam. Is Allah so unable to look after his own?

Comments

[owl]

I always put up red flags when a person talks all about 'religion' and never mentions God. I suppse that's sort of what you're talking about.

[aquarius-1977.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure...

When I speak of spirituality, I don't necessarily have the Christian God in mind.

As far as talking about "religion" without mentioning God, I'm not sure because again, when discussing religion, one is not necessarily discussing the Christian God.

What I'm saying is that any religion, be it Judeo-Christian or not, is infuenced by the interpretations of the people recording it and preaching it, and historically it can be shown how those interpretations have been used to control groups of people.

With this in mind, I'm saying that a person can get so caught up in "religion" that they don't really think about what's "right." A spritual person probably wouldn't think it's right to kill someone else just for not believing the same way--as long as the other person's beliefs don't hurt someone else, they'd be cool with it. But a fundamentalist religious fanatic can be convinced that "God" *wants* them to kill people who don't agree, even that they'll go to Heaven (or that religion's equivalent) if they do it. And it's not just these fundamentalist Muslims who've done this; even the Christian religion has imposed itself the same way (Crusades, anyone?). In these situations, the "spirit" of what whichever "Higher Power" intendend has been blurred and twisted by man to get a desired result and justify doing some pretty horrible things.

This is not to say that I am trying to vilify all religions or anything; part of being spiritual is doing what you think is right and following a system of beliefs that match that, which requires *thinking* about what you're doing and why you're doing it. Too many times, though, being religious involves blindly following without thinking about it, and that's where you get things like suicide bombers.

[owl]

What I meant was that people get so caught up in the mechanics of the religion that they lose what—or whom—it's about.