I have to say, researching for a book that I write has really grown my knowledge and changed my personal perspective on a multitude of subjects. It really makes you grow as a person when you feel accountable for conveying accurate and legitimate information. I’ve grown bolder in my harsh critique, I had thought I would be less so during the course of researching and writing, but I’m pleasantly surprised how my approach has been harsher instead of . . . well, . . . lacking in substance for a respectful tone to all.
Some of the opinions that I’ve radically shifted on, which I brought up before, is the entire academic department of Indology in the West. It’s just so striking to me. I use to believe Indology was just another legitimate academic discipline until I researched it. However, in the course of my research, and subsequently why so many of my views have changed . . . I thought certain religions possibly had more… sane answers than what they actually do believe in. I very nearly scrapped this entire project and left it ignored for months until listening to the panels by Ex-Muslims of North America because I was afraid any censure would create more discrimination in the era of Trump. Thanks to the brave Ex-Muslim panelists, I now know better.
During the Obama years, I realized that I overshot the intelligence of both the elites of the US, the US mainstream media, and the general public of the US. There can be no finding common ground with the Right-Wing or arguing that Progressive Politics is in their best interests when their reactions are always reflexive emotional outbursts of hate as a result of their own anecdotes and intuition. It would be better off if Progressives instead found a “middle-ground” of providing only those Progressive policies for the Left-wing and let the Right-wing pull themselves up by their bootstraps. They’ve spoken to us several times; they don’t give a shit about making a better world. They see the destruction of the environment and the first thing in their minds is a mass world genocide so their Zombie, Jesus Christ, can come back. It’s the entire foundation and basis of the Christian faith. I’m tired of the false-equivalences perpetuated by people who complain that Black activists should shut up while saying Neo-Nazis have a right to speak. The Right-wing Christian literalists of the US are just crazy.
With respect to my research on Islam, I keep thinking to myself, I cannot be any more disgusted by Islam than I am now, but the more I research, the more the gift keeps on giving. My contempt for this religion has reached even greater peaks of revulsion.
The Sharia is an abomination to humanity and the religion is nothing more than a warring desert tribe:
Diya in Islam; inequality towards non-Muslims lives
Qisas, explicit violent obligation in Islamic Jurisprudence
For more evidence, consider the Mujahideen of Afghanistan and what they did to the majority Muslim women there. Just read this excerpt from “The 1980s mujahideen, the Taliban and the shifting idea of jihad” by Afghan culture critic and journalist, Nushin Arbabzadah:
“Crucially, in a traditional jihad, the victorious party has an unspoken right to pillage, rape and loot the conquered population. This is because militia fighters are not paid soldiers in a regular army and hence looting is the material reward they receive for fighting. The original mujahideen followed this traditional pattern of jihad upon coming to power in 1992. Since competition over resources rather than ideology is key to traditional jihad, the mujahideen’s war focused on Kabul where the nation’s wealth and the foreign embassies, another potential source of funding, were to be found.
Judging by a historical account from the 1920s, back then the women and girls of the conquered populations also belonged to the pillage package offered to militia jihadis. Hence, in the diaries of court chronicler Katib Hazara on the siege of Kabul in 1929, we read that the victorious mujahideen of the time had demanded to see the list of girls registered at a Kabul school so as to allocate female students to militia fighters.
Katib’s account might be exaggerated, but the story still reveals that there was an unspoken rule that women and girls were part of the conquest package. As such, the mujahideen’s struggle over Kabul was a continuation of traditional jihad complete with internal rivalries, pillage and looting. The mujahideen were part of the realm of traditional politics in which a conquered region is a turf that can be exploited by strongmen, who call themselves mujahideen so as to appear respectable.”
That is absolutely disgusting and obviously indefensible. As is the Islamic-fascist garbage spewed in a patronizing manner by popular televised imams in the Arab Spring. A “Thank You” shout out to Ex-Muslims of North America for sharing this on Twitter:
Looking at the godawful Abrahamic faiths; I am so damn happy I was born a Hindu and remain a Hindu. At this point, I feel like being born from an Eastern Faith is itself a horrible discriminatory privilege over others because the Abrahamic faiths are utterly psychotic.
The difference between Eastern and Western faiths is that Eastern faiths are genuinely more open and accepting to other people’s beliefs. As crazy stupid as Christian and Islamic theologians try to argue the Eastern religions are, they refuse to acknowledge that theirs is just complete crazy from beginning to end. Even more so since the historicity of the Bible has been debunked. There’s no evidence that either the so-called prophets of Abraham and Moses ever existed. So how could there have been a burning bush and a covenant with Yahweh? And since there’s no proof that either of them even existed; Jesus Christ and Muhammad were both charlatans. The so-called “Transfiguration” (Matthew 17:1-13) could never even have happened nor any fulfillment of a Mosiac prophecy since the prophecy is part of a fictional story that also never happened.
Think of what that means. For just about 1400 years, Islam and Christianity were killing each other and “dying” as proof of their religious convictions . . . and it all meant nothing. They could follow strict devotional ideals or prove their “faith” by dying for it and it meant nothing. If that comes off as depressing or nihilistic, it shouldn’t. If you simply compare and contrast religions, its easy to recognize that this has to be the case if any specific religion is true. If for instance Judaism is found to be the “one true faith” then all the persecution, mass murder, and horrible suffering of Muslims and Christians throughout centuries meant absolutely nothing. This is basic logic for me, I concluded this in the middle of frickin’ high school when I was 14. Yet, people are shocked by using basic logic on the Abrahamic religions.
I think the main reason I picked-up on these flaws early as an outsider is partly because I had my own religious beliefs to contrast it to at the time, but mainly because Hinduism doesn’t technically have any blasphemy laws in terms of thought crimes. The Caste system is oppressive and atrocious, remaining an awful reminder of a bygone era that Hindus of India need to walk away from but that’s it. Hinduism’s religious texts support Transgenders (albeit as a “third gender” category based on divine combinations of Shiva and Parvati as Ardhanarishvara and Vishnu and Lakshmi’s form of Vaikuntha-Kamalaja) and homosexuals. The supposed crazy right-wing the West likes to bash and compare to Islamic fascists so much was found to support same-sex equality by 70% in twitter when prompted by the question. This was a sample size of around 5000 people.
Try getting responses like that from Right-wing Christian and Muslim groups outside the West. Good luck finding opinions that aren’t anti-LGBT. If you want further proof, compare the targeted killings of Transgender people in the US to the non-existent targeted killings of Transgenders in India. If not for sexism and the Caste system, Hinduism would be considered far less backwards and problematic than the Abrahamic faiths. Hindus should be protecting minorities, not simply complaining or shouting down grievances that other religions in India have. Otherwise, they’re behaving like the Abrahamics who hate transgenders and homosexuals due to their religious beliefs.