Religion Islam

The Moslem fanatics could be gotten to through their religion. Islam s roost holy place is the Kaaba in Mecca. A secret agent in a private plane could simply swoop down and drop a pig on the Kaaba. To Moslims and Jews, the noble pig, food of Vikings, is unclean. 

Like many religions, Islam has established dietary rules for believers to follow. The Quran (Surah 5 3-4) provides the canonical basis for these dietary laws that were explained by the Prophet Mohanuned and codified by the various schools of Islanflc law [ 12], The rule is that all foods are halal that are not haram (prohibited). The imposition of these laws was to promote good hygiene, prevent intoxication and make believers ntindful of their debt to God for His sustenance [12]. Prohibited foods include ... 

Ronca, Italo. "Religious Symbolism in Medieval Islamic and Christian Alchemy." In Western esotericism and the science of religion, eds. Antoine Faivre and Wouter J. Hanegraaff Leuven Peeters, 1998. 

Topics are Female alchemists Aelia Laelia Crispis Practical alchemy Historical alchemy related sites in the Czech Republic Image and Will in alchemy Gender in alchemy David Hudson - the White Powder Gold The use of blood in Alchemy The Symbolism of the Rose in Alchemy The Caduceus and Religion Relevance of Alchemy Islamic alchemy Armand Barbault The Golem Abraham the Jew and Flamel Alchemical fiction Animal alchemy Differences between Alchemy and Magic ... 

The esoteric books of Judaism speak of the Lamed-Vav, the thirty-six Just Ones on whose shoulders the world rests, and of the Seven Pillars of wisdom and righteousness, seven saints whose successive lives extend over the entire history of humanity. Tradition lists these seven as Adam, Methuselah, Shem, Jacob, Serah (the daughter of Asher), Ahijah of Shiloh (who was the Maggid, or Inner Teacher, of the Ba al Shem Tov), and the prophet Elijah himself. In fact, all three Religions of the Book, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, teach the resurrection of the dead, when all humanity, at the end of days, will rise in incorruptible physical bodies and reap the everlasting harvest of what they have sown. 

In exoteric religion, there is an ideological conflict between religions like Judaism, Christianity, and Islam that portray God as a being and religions like Buddhism and Taoism which are God-free, and conceive of... 

During this period, sometime between 2000 and 1825 b.c.e., the patriarch of the Hebrew people, Abraham, left the Babylonian city of Ur and brought his people to the other end of the Fertile Crescent, to what is now Israel. There they founded a religion that focused on their one tribal god to the exclusion of all others. This was the beginning of the monotheistic biblical tradition that led to the creation of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. 

The years 640 to 720 were an era of Muslim conquests. At the end of the period, the Islamic empire stretched from Spain to Egypt and from North Africa to Persia. The Muslims engaged in wars of expansion, not in religious war. They didn t seek to convert the peoples they conquered. Although non-Muslims were taxed, they were permitted to exercise their religions freely. 

Belief in an omniscient God and the promise of heaven are important ideas to adherents of great monotheistic religions such as Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. These beliefs pervade much of Western culture and are clearly evident in the U.S. Recent surveys indicate ... 

The growing ethnie nationalism of the Toba Batak, in other words, was emphatically not shared by the Mandailing of this period, who made religion the decisive criterion of identification , as Castles puts it, and unlike the Muslims of Angkola and Sipirok, let Islam rob them of their ancestors (Castles 1972 280). Besides religion, the emotive power of anti-imperial nationalism also played a role in defining Batak identity, less in competition with ethnie nationalism than in a layered merging with it. 

Malay and English in radio broadcasts was forbidden from 1974. Islam was declared the state religion in 1973, in defiance of one of the major points of the original Malaysia agreement, and state authority was used in a variety of ways to encourage Sabahans to become Muslim. In 1970-2 the majority of foreign priests and missionary workers were expelled (forty-one in 1970 alone), and the first Malaysian Catholic Bishop of Kota Kinabalu, a Sarawak Chinese, was refused a residence permit (Rooney 1981 213-19 Loh 1992 228-31 Luping 1994 199-274). 

The best example of this lack of an overview is the Moslem terrorist. Islam is actually a peaceful religion. But this dope has never really read the Koran and pondered its concepts. He gets his religion from power-mad, hypocritical mullahs and so tries to bomb the world back to the seventh century. If every sand monkey would read the Koran from cover to cover, learning what it says, rather than what others say it says, there would be no Islamic terrorism. 

Although the original leaders of the movement were orthodox in their religious principles, their successors and the new members who were drawn to the movement adopted a more mystical approach toward religion which was contrary to Islamic orthodoxy. Furthermore, since most of the new devotees came from the lower and middle classes, the socio-political attitudes of this new sect were increasingly regarded with distrust and suspicion by the upper classes and by the authorities. 

The religion of Islam which Mohammed founded was based on the recognition of the one god, Allah, and his prophet Mohammed. When Mohammed died in A.D. 632, the new religion faced the difficult problem of choosing a successor (caliph). Among those nominated was Ali, cousin to the prophet and one of his first converts. Also in Ali s favor was the fact that he was the husband of Fatima, Mohammed s only surviving daughter. 

Since the Sunnis far outnumbered the Shiites, they exerted the dominant influence in Islam. The Shiites, however, refused to accept the caliphs chosen by the Sunnis, and instead pledged their allegiance to the family of the Prophet. These descendants were treated as divinely inspired and divinely appointed interpreters of the faith. Obedience to their commands, whatever these might be, was regarded as an integral part of the religion of Islam. 

The region is not homogeneous. Individual countries differ significantly in government, economics, per capita income, size, population and religion. For example, Saudi Arabia is the largest country with 2 million km2, cf. Bahrain with only 711 km2. Yet Bahrain is the most densely populated country (917 people/km2) with Oman at the other extreme (9 people/km2). Absolute monarchy is found in Kuwait and complete democracy in Lebanon. The distribution of Islam, Christianity and Judaism will be familiar, with some countries almost totally one or other, whereas others are more mixed (e.g. 40% of the Lebanese population is Christian). 

Biotechnology and bioengineering techniques have started to reshape the food supply picture, and questions are being raised about the permissibility of foods produced using these techniques. Islam is a viable religion for all times, and such issues are being reviewed on a case-by-case basis by the Muslim scholars. [64-65]... 

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