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Today, 3rd day in the Islamic calendar
I came online at 8am this morning with a specific intention to jot down my thoughts about the talk I attended last night by Dr Abdullah Quick at NTUC Auditorium, the talk was on the common message of peace through prophet Jesus & Muhammad. I was invited by a very dear friend of mine, who’s a Muslim and I thought it wouldn’t hurt to go and listen what the Muslims have to say. After all, I’ve always been fascinated by the differences in religions and the function of a religion.
To be honest and no offense intended, half way through the drawling opening prayer, I thought I was going to fall asleep unintentionally for the first time in my life. It is not so much what was read than how it was read that makes me feel that way. Anyway, the Qur’an prayers were written in Abrabic by ancient Muslims who had a flair for rhythmic poetry, that’s why I felt a little like my senses were shutting down on me.
But 5mins into Dr Abdullah’s speech I sat right up, listening in rapture. Thankfully, he didn’t go on much with evidences in the Qur’an. I felt yesterday’s talk was more about how we can bring back peace in general if we do corrective actions now through treating others well, sharing what we have with the less fortunate, living within our physical means (not monetary) and I can’t remember what the forth one was.
By living within our physical means he meant we should really cut down on things we are over consuming and revert back to simplistic lifestyle. And he is right, it doesn’t take a genius to know that we are over consuming and we are not even caring about what the world is going to be like 3 generations down. We eat fast food cos it taste good and its fast. We drive because it’s convenient. We cut down forest because we need space. It really doesn’t take a religious leader, someone great or super smart to know (cos it is all in the newspaper) that we are going to be the cause of our own destruction because we want what we want, NOW.
Ok, I’m not going to jot down every salient point Dr Abdullah mentioned, but rather I’d jot down things that he talked about which matters to me and my thoughts on it.
He mentioned that our faith in our religion should be reflected by our actions and our relationship with other beings. It made sense to me, as it occurred to me recently that I often pray (and wish) I were a better person yet it is just that, prayers (and wishes). I never really practice to be a better person, never made an effort until recently. I realised that all the prayers (and wishes) in the world is not going make things happen magically if we do not personally put in effort to make those things happen. It made sense to me and it is precisely the reason why I choose not to have a religion because I feel that mostly we do and work for things through our own effort and desire for things we want, and we pray (or rather hope & wish in my case since there no one I pray to) just to leave our extreme emotions/desire somewhere else. That somewhere else, I feel, is not God but our conscience, a reassurance to ourselves that we have done what we can and we can now only leave everything else to situational circumstances.
He mentioned that Prophets were sent to the world hence the similarities amongst most major religions like the Islam, Christianity, and Judaism. I like the idea of that, but if it is true that all the prophets were sent by God with a common message yet it resulted in divided faiths and religions then perhaps all these religions are divided not by disloyalty but the culture/upbringing/etc of the prophets themselves.
He also mentioned that religions should not be made or interpreted to suit us. In a way, I totally agree with him because unity amongst fellow human beings is important for harmony and peace, except that I do not believe in blind faith – believing everything that is fed to you. That is much more dangerous than speaking without thinking because such absolute faith borders on fanaticism and close-mindedness towards reason which doesn’t coincide with a person’s faith, which may result in extreme behaviours.
But it has been done, hence the result is religious denominations. The most well known example would be Christianity and its denominations like the Catholics, Orthodox, Protestants and Methodist to name a few. Despite having differing practises, such denominations share a fundament essence of Christianity. Since the essence is the same, only the practise is different which resulted in the division, then the true difference would be how the same religion is being adapted to the different societies/cultural so that people would be able to accept it as a religion for them. So in a way, it still serves the purpose of uniting people. Except that these people are divided not because of their differing believes but because of their different background, society and culture, which are being encouraged and further enforced by the practise of each denomination.
If we try to disassemble and compare Islam, Christianity and Judaism, there are so many similarities that I cannot help but question if perhaps they, too, are the result of religious denomination.
So I think if the believers can all just take a step back and accept that they all fundamentally believe in the same thing (love for the gracious God and treating others with kindness and fairness) and ignore the differing practises, perhaps there will be acceptance and peace amongst the believers.
Also, an interesting question was brought up during the Q and A session. Someone questioned what if everything that is happening now is predestined and would god give us a miracle by resolving and restoring the global warming situation to an acceptable level.
I love the answer which was given. Dr Abdullah said that, despite the fact the God is all that is gracious and merciful, we have a choice in our own actions and we are to bear the consequence of our own actions, and unfortunately so would the rest of the people who are innocent of any wrong doing.
It is a balance of the graciousness and mercy of God who provide for us, and our own actions. And we, the lot of us, have chosen to make use of all the resources available right now and thereby depriving our future generations of what is rightfully theirs. Therefore we should try to live within our physical means, don’t over eat or over use or over waste.
