April 11, 2009, 12:10 pm by dc-agape.

Surāh 93 – Al-Duhā: The Brightness of the Day

I will start each post on the Qur’an with a link to M Mohammad Ali’s translation of the Qur’an with his commentaries. 

This surāh brings to mind the Old Testament Psalms 23.  But this surāh goes further than that psalm, where the psalm only offers goodness, love, and plenty follow the person who follows this supernatural being.  No, this surāh includes the requirement of the individual helping the oppressed and those seeking help.  Even more than the similarity to Psalms 23 there is a similarity to Footprints in the Sand.  I, personally, have always had a problem with this concept, even before becoming an Atheist.  As a young Christian, and dealing with being gay and to some extent a budding scientist and certainly liberal, I certainly did not find a supernatural being helping me when I was “an orphan” or when I was “groping”.  Worse was the complete knowledge that both becoming a scientist and coming out as gay would leave me oppressed by the followers of YHWH.  And my experience with liberal concepts and Christians was enough to know that my questions were definitely chided.  Would Islam treat me any differently?  From the scientific point of view, maybe, but from this report it would be doubtful.    My “sexual orientation” would without doubt be a death sentence.

This news story is the worst case situtuation of how the followers of Islam do not follow their Holy Text.  Gay men are orphaned.  Aren’t orphans supposed to not be oppressed?

The concept that humans are imperfect is only an excuse for allowing these types of violence to continue.  Just like in Christianity, until the moderate (middle or liberal) followers of a particular religion are ready to stand up and rebuke such evil, all religions are dangerous to society.  No matter what the religion teaches about doing good, protecting the weak, helping the needy, if a blind eye is turned from such violence the religion that condones these acts is meaningless.

As a gay Atheist I do not see the “Brightness of the Day” when such acts are not persued and punished.  And for that reason, Atheist do not see any proof that a supernatural being exists within that religion or any other religion that allows such evil to take place.

Posted in Holy Qur'an, State of Mind, Readings | Print | 4 Comments »

April 11, 2009, 9:40 am by dc-agape.

Image via Wikipedia

Living in one of the Deep South’s strong holds, Tennessee, I am daily exposed to extreme Christianity, more extreme Christianity, and almost no Catholicism, Judaism, Mormonism, Islamic, Buddhist, or even Unitarian Universalism (even though we have recently made national news with the shotgun murder in a Unitarian Church- UC).  This blog and website are my response to the religious extremism.  The other extreme I encounter daily is the motivation for the shooter in the UC: patriotism.  If you think that being gay was dangerous here, if you thought being an atheist was dangerous here, you have not seen what happens when people think that you are not a patriot. 

In most of these cases I am insolated by the University from these extremisms.  But on occasions they do creep into my field of experience.  This week I not only had the “joy” of feeling one type of extremism, I got to experience two.  One could be loosely linked to patriotism, would you believe me if I told you that public transportation was the source of one of the extremisms I was exposed to?  How was it linked to patriotism?  I will give you more detail in a minute.  The other was from an unexpected source: environmental conservatism.  Which is something I believe in, but this one went “off the deep end”.  Three topics were brought to my attention in Mark Corwin’s talk at UTK that can only be explained as environmental extremism: genetic viability, speciation, and the human uniqueness.

Let me start with the first extremism.  How is patriotism and public transportation related?  How does it become extremism?  Take a look at the map below?  What is missing?

That is right, (h/t to ekuzma.wordpress for the map).  Due to the lack of designated high-speed rail through Tennessee both the hub in Chicago and Texas are isolated from the rest of the eastern seaboard.  We can forgive West Virginia; it is a small state with few cities.  But Tennessee?  We have Memphis, Nashville, Chattanooga, Knoxville and the Great Smoky Mountains.  From one end of the state to the other we have desirable tourist attractions, business locations, and the ability to link the entire eastern half the US to a national public transportation system.  For those not familiar with Tennessee it is over 440 miles from the western border to the eastern border, and we have no public transportation in or out of the state.  How is the lack of public transportation a form of extreme patriotism?  The need for public transportation takes second seat to:

“political leaders tend to view subsidies for railroads as hand-outs to private companies”

And even worse:

“there is no contradiction between patriotism and driving a gas guzzler”

This attitude is in the mind of some Americans.  This type of extremism just really “gets my goat”.  Both the political and the personal “patriotism” end the debate on whether public transportation is viable and necessary.

I will leave the Mark Corwin conservative extremism to another post.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Raymond J. Learsy: HuffingtonPost’s Bullet Train Bull’s Eye (huffingtonpost.com)
• A bit of spring on the first day of spring (gadling.com)
• A Plan for Stimulus Money: National Parks (dailykos.com)
• 7 Things That Make Your Butt (and The Rest of You) Look Fat (treehugger.com)

onclick=”window.open(this.href);return(false);”>

Posted in State of Mind | Print | 2 Comments »