I recently wound this video on Islam on youtube:
Bjorn Andersen
This is a video of a Norwegian man who simply say openly most of what people think about Islam and will not say it in public. It’s not a racist or right wing populist either. Just some ordinary guy making videos about nature, Vikings etc.
And no. I am not going to answer to his arguments. Any teenager with a migration background from the Middle-East can do this better than me.
But I will still dismantle the Al-Qaida mentality for a starter:
But I am not saying that this Bjorn Hansen is wrong. He is absolutely right about everything he says. There are people who understand Islam exactly the way or even worse than the way he describes it. So how do we solve this problem?
A) I need to say that most of the people’s understanding of Islam in the West are actually based on millennia old church doctrine. Just like in the Jihad issue above, Muslims are still perceived as brown Saracens with crescent shaped swords willing to destroy anything on their way.
Not only is this not true, but The Quran happens to be the newest Abrahamic book actually. Through the centuries, many religious scripture simply get modified or much of the meaning gets changed or distorted during multiple translation works during the centuries. This book is still there exactly the same as it was written some 1400 years ago.
B) We need to talk about how people approach religion as a whole. I’ve never been a Christian so I cannot talk about Christianity. But I can set some basic rules to understand the Quran as it is:
1) You need to be willing to believe. If you believe in the material only, I don’t know how this is going to help you so let it go.
2) You need to be willing to doubt. At one point or another (if you are not a scholar yourself) you will need to trust some academics or mystics who will break down some basic issues for you. But you still need to be critical of these people too. There are all sorts of “Scholars” out there. The Founder of the IRI was also a scholar of some sort. So I think that someone needs to know some of the basic things about mathematics and philosophy before choosing a religious path.
See: If you are too skeptical, you will be an atheist and therefore not be a Muslim. If you are too faithful you will be manipulated by people with the wrong motivations or some fool who think they have got all the answers already. So you need that balance.
3) Only then, you may start researching things for yourself. The best way to do this being to refer to the Quran with no other major guideline for yourself.
And these are my Islam-based ideas or approaches. I choose to explain it because that’s a subject I know about. And I know that very similar approaches are possible in other Western religious and spiritual approaches too.
We can even say (for instance) that Christianity has already abandoned all concepts of “holy war” already.
So all we need to do is to wait and give people time to adapt to the realities of our age. The reason why I say this is that religion is not “evil” in itself. In most cases it is seen as something “good” that you want to teach your children before they get to puberty if you can. When I see, for instance, an adult encouraging some younger kid to come to the Friday prayer if possible, I don’t see an act of evil. I think it’s a good thing if parents do their bests to come to the church etc. especially when they are small children.
But having said this, we need to ensure they this inner peace of inner connection to God is not violated in this or that way. Cult places should be places of peace and security where no one should fear (for instance) to be indoctrinated with this or that nonsense or to be radicalized in this or that completely irrational attitude.
Bjorn Andersen
This is a video of a Norwegian man who simply say openly most of what people think about Islam and will not say it in public. It’s not a racist or right wing populist either. Just some ordinary guy making videos about nature, Vikings etc.
And no. I am not going to answer to his arguments. Any teenager with a migration background from the Middle-East can do this better than me.
But I will still dismantle the Al-Qaida mentality for a starter:
But I am not saying that this Bjorn Hansen is wrong. He is absolutely right about everything he says. There are people who understand Islam exactly the way or even worse than the way he describes it. So how do we solve this problem?
A) I need to say that most of the people’s understanding of Islam in the West are actually based on millennia old church doctrine. Just like in the Jihad issue above, Muslims are still perceived as brown Saracens with crescent shaped swords willing to destroy anything on their way.
Not only is this not true, but The Quran happens to be the newest Abrahamic book actually. Through the centuries, many religious scripture simply get modified or much of the meaning gets changed or distorted during multiple translation works during the centuries. This book is still there exactly the same as it was written some 1400 years ago.
B) We need to talk about how people approach religion as a whole. I’ve never been a Christian so I cannot talk about Christianity. But I can set some basic rules to understand the Quran as it is:
1) You need to be willing to believe. If you believe in the material only, I don’t know how this is going to help you so let it go.
2) You need to be willing to doubt. At one point or another (if you are not a scholar yourself) you will need to trust some academics or mystics who will break down some basic issues for you. But you still need to be critical of these people too. There are all sorts of “Scholars” out there. The Founder of the IRI was also a scholar of some sort. So I think that someone needs to know some of the basic things about mathematics and philosophy before choosing a religious path.
See: If you are too skeptical, you will be an atheist and therefore not be a Muslim. If you are too faithful you will be manipulated by people with the wrong motivations or some fool who think they have got all the answers already. So you need that balance.
3) Only then, you may start researching things for yourself. The best way to do this being to refer to the Quran with no other major guideline for yourself.
And these are my Islam-based ideas or approaches. I choose to explain it because that’s a subject I know about. And I know that very similar approaches are possible in other Western religious and spiritual approaches too.
We can even say (for instance) that Christianity has already abandoned all concepts of “holy war” already.
So all we need to do is to wait and give people time to adapt to the realities of our age. The reason why I say this is that religion is not “evil” in itself. In most cases it is seen as something “good” that you want to teach your children before they get to puberty if you can. When I see, for instance, an adult encouraging some younger kid to come to the Friday prayer if possible, I don’t see an act of evil. I think it’s a good thing if parents do their bests to come to the church etc. especially when they are small children.
But having said this, we need to ensure they this inner peace of inner connection to God is not violated in this or that way. Cult places should be places of peace and security where no one should fear (for instance) to be indoctrinated with this or that nonsense or to be radicalized in this or that completely irrational attitude.
![[Image: 7151bc275de2d3d422106a4008215efe.jpg]](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/71/51/bc/7151bc275de2d3d422106a4008215efe.jpg)
