subject: 2nd part : Pre-modern pagan Fascisms. Islam is one amongst many [print this page] 2nd part : Pre-modern pagan Fascisms2nd part : Pre-modern pagan Fascisms. Islam is one amongst many
There is something to these criticisms, though the Christian church has literally 1000s of sects including many which join faith to reason. But the criticism is clear. It is not just 'Orientalism's which prey on people and promise to turn 'chaos into order' and reward the great and good who follow the program with benefits in this life, and perhaps in a next incarnation. Early forms of Judaism which birthed Christianity, were akin in some ways to Islamic pagan ritualization. The Jewish church in the time of Christ was hierarchical, corrupt, and more interested in ordering society, than in liberating the person. Expensive and bloody animal sacrifice which had to be done at 'temples' was legion. Christ the Jewish teacher and self-proclaimed 'prophet', railed against the corruption of the Jewish 'church' or temple run by money-hungry Sadducees who demanded sacrifices, offerings and public prayer all paid for with cash. He also declaimed against the academic and teaching class or Pharisees, who manipulated people for their own purposes, and taught them to simply follow their commands, and their wishes as stipulated, [supposedly], by the 'Bible' from God. He wanted a simple faith, one which was humanist and which elevated the person and one in which the person prayed in private, talked to 'God' directly, and followed the Golden Rule and Ten Commandments or Ten words. Christ in other words, wanted to free the individual from the collective cult.
Today some Christian churches which are in the main left-wing constructs, mimic these Near Eastern and Orientalist systems of command and control. They deny in part the right to question, debate, understand and engage in free-will. Hierarchy and rules replace the Book of Matthew and reality. Entire churches preach Globaloney Warming [Mother Earth worship was the default pagan theology]; anti-Semiticism; the benefices of socialism [Christ knew nothing of either economics or political 'isms']; and supernatural fantasy [heaven, hell, the risen, Revelations]. You will even hear church pulpit preachers praising Islam, supporting the Arab wars against Israel, and demanding blockades against the Jewish state. How is all of this in keeping with the Book of Matthew? Such programs are pre-modern and in many ways quite pagan. Many churches reject the forces which created the modern world, and view 'materialism', capital, and the long legacy of Western development as sinful. Return to Mother Earth. Demonize the Jew, the killers of Christ. Follow the word of the Bible.
The church as an institution is becoming a 'pagus' in the very real sense that the world of the 5 senses is being corrupted by a pagan and quite illiterate set of ideas which do not resonant with people who need to marry spirituality with living in the modern world. Islam is of course much worse in this regard. The Koran is truly the apogee of a pagan Fascist screed, surpassing Mein Kampf in its racism, violence and supremacism. The moon idol worship of a Meccan celestial cult, is the most destructive paganism yet formed in man's history. Yet for some reason a theology of mysticisms, rituals, and calls to war and racism, is deemed to be a 'religion'. It is quite bizarre.
Pagan and cult constructs are pre-modern fundamentalisms which precluded the development of the modern world and its complicated sets of systems, institutions, markets and ideas. The Western experience is diametrically opposed to such a pagan-Orientalist view of the world, in which all is anarchy and must be controlled by timeless rules and rituals set down by some divine power. Islam, moon worship, sky-worship, thunder-God worship, or the thousands of Shinto-Hindu 'Gods' have nothing in common with either reality, the creation of the modern world, or the rise of Western civilization.
So why again is Islam a 'religion'? Do people who make this claim even know what a religion is? Unlikely.
