Faramarz's Latest Rambling

www.islam-awareness.net I

www.islam-awareness.net

I support all your iranian bullcrap..but this anti islam thing is just stupid.. i swear.. are you trying to Say Islam did not help freedom at all? If not you are wrong..i dont think i would bother arguing..not because its a lost cause..just click on the website thanks =)

-peace be upon you all

oh yeah and if nothing else is..Life is sacred..

Babak

Lighten up. And it would also help if you practice what you say you believe in.

Dear Jamshid

Please don't quit your day job. You are no Bill Mahr.
But thanks for trying.

I choose to believe God in terms and context taught by a certain faith. That's my right. I also have the right to express my opinion. Some, like you, will choose to reject it; which is by all means your right.

Some may go and read/research/meditate and decide to join me (and probably 4 billion other earth inhabitants)in my belief; that there is a God.

My point was and is the following: Love God and his creatures (and I certainly don't mean this in the manner the 1960s hippies practiced "love") and ALL else will take care of itself.

If you have a problem with this statement, I really do wish you luck in life.

Babak

First, I apologize to Fateh for changing the subject, but I can't resist saying the following to Babak:

Babak, it seems you know God up close. Did you have tea with him too? Please invite me next time. Don't forget!

Aside from the joke (I know I am not good at them), how do you know so much about God? How in the world do you know with such certainty that God sends a prophet every X years? Or about his plans?

Did you have a one to one talk with him? Or is it all in your imagination? I think the latter is the case.

There is no proof that there is or that there isn't a god. Furthermore, even if god exists, there is no proof what kind of god he is.

You have "created" a god and even created his attributes in your mind and worship it too. I find it amuzing how God, if there is one, is so similar to human beings. He gets angry for example, or he becomes pleased, he "likes" somethings and "dislikes" other things. 

Just like humans do. And just as bot parasts gave human shapes to their god statues, khoda parasts give human shapes to god's character.

When I read any holly book, it points to only one thing. That the kind of God they describe is only a creation of human mind.

Now, I am not saying there is no God, as I confess I don't know this. But if there is a God, the probability for God being as described in Abrahamic religions, including Bahai, is quite negligeable.

Dear Babak,

I agree with you, the core message of most religions is simple. It is about love and respect. But, imagine for a minute, if this was ALL a prophet said, nothing else. Then we would all have to act according to our own conscience and be responsible for the consequences of anything we did. As long as religious dogmas are as prescriptive as they are, in my opinion that leaves a lot of room for abuse, as evidenced throughout history.

You wonder “why we don't have any issues when poets like Rumi or Saadi talk about love, unity and equality. But when someone talks about these things in the context of religion, we all reject it.”  My guess is because Rumi and Saadi had enough respect for our intelligence to believe that we understand their massage of love and equality without the involvement of a third party.  Rumi speaks to us as individuals who carry God WITHIN us, not as a community who seeks God somewhere in heaven. In my opinion that is the fundamental difference.

The issue is the presumptuousness of the prophets who claim to be interpreting the word of God while in the process they make a simple message convoluted. With all due respect, what makes you think that God needs to send us a person every once in a while to remind us of his message? Is it THAT difficult for him to connect to us individually?

You see, my problem with religion starts at the point when it becomes about a community’s relationship with God rather than that of the individual; when we start organising ourselves in the name of God, and relinquishing personal responsibility following His prophets.

My point is that an omnipotent, omnipresent, and merciful God would have foreseen this for potential abuse and had come up with a much better way of communicating his message. I hope I have addressed all the points you raised. Thanks for your post. Best wishes.

Dear Princess, God's message

Dear Princess,
God's message has remained constant throughout the ages, since recorded history has accounted for the first prophet. God's plan for human beings is "to know and love him" according to Bahai teachings which I happened to be most familiar with.
If a human being truly loves its maker, there is no way that being could not love the rest of the maker's creatures.
As an example, in a normal loving family where parents love and nurture their children, all children love each other. This is human nature.
Every 1,000 years or so, God sends a new messenger to remind his creatures of his message because as religions get old, they become corrupted by men who profit from it. Every new prophet also brings new teachings which are more applicable to the times.
Its amazing that we don't have any issues when poets like Rumi or Saadi talk about love, unity and equality. But when someone talks about these things in the context of religion, we all reject it.
A large percentage of Iranians inside and outside Iran have fallen in love with the book "secret" and its message. But the same message was brought to us by a prophet of God 168 years ago in Iran of all places and we are still opposing it.

Dear Mr. Fateh

I agree with Irandokht, I think Muhammad was very smart to claim that he was the last prophet. I further think that he was very calculated and strategic to claim that the Qur'an is the word of God and as such would ALWAYS remain un-manipulated as long as all Muslims pray in Arabic, regardless of their native language.

My own question about religion concerns not only Islam, but all institutional religions.  If God is omnipresent and omnipotent, etc, etc. as most institutional religions claim, why would He/She need a Go-in-Between to translate His/Her "rules" for the rest of us. And even if He/She needed to communicate with us through a third party, how difficult would it have been for Him/Her to send a message that would never age? I mean, how come we have ancient literature written by mere mortals which remain timeless today, yet most of these so called wholly scriptures have lost their relevance to our modern lives?

Please don’t get me wrong, I have no problem with religion, as long as it remains within the private domain and concerns the individual’s spiritual relationship with a higher being. What I have a problem with, is when religion is used as a tool for self-righteousness. That seems to be what your friends were doing on Friday night. I leave you with a quote I use all the time: “I have no problem with God. It’s His fan club, I can’t stand.”

Thanks for bringing up this topic.

Islamists are quiet

Normally the Islamist would attack posts like this faster than a Lamborghini on a German autobahn. I wonder how come they are quiet.

A Good Look at the meaning of the famous verse: Khatam...

For anyone interested in the logic behind why Bahais believe that Spiritual Guidance did not end with Muhammad; that indeed Mankind is forever in need of Guidance and Spiritual Nourishment.

One reason why so many are sick to their stomach with "religion" and dogma is because they see the failure and irrelevance of codes of conduct that were given by God for another age and time. Physical, material and Spiritual evolution have been progressive. So is Religion and the Quran is actually full of references to the coming of another after Prophet Muhammad; unfortunately those whose "job" has been to enlighten people have selfishly turned a blind eye to these verses in Islam's most Holy Book. 

Faryarm

To bar the competition

Dear FF: In Arabia, before and at the time of Mohammad, there were a number of prophets who claimed to have come from god. There was even a woman among them. All claimed to have been directed by god to convey some holy message or the other.

 As Mohammad was also only claiming prophecy, without any specific miracles or other clear signs of divine intervention, the competition had a fair chance at stealing some of the crowd, especially after his passing. 

 To prevent that deluge of claims, a Koranic verse was proclaimed to stop them and pronounce Mohammad as the last prophet.

Arash M-K

Dear Faramarz

This is just a personal observation ,I am not writing it to offend

or disrespect anyone's belief.

God, comes with some charactristics, such as he knows everything, he is omnipresent and omnipotent, etc.Based on those charactristics

God does not make mistake and what he says ,stays the same from the beginning to the end.

Thus Torah,Bible,Quran and others cannot be of him , books  share some basics but  are not the same.Based on what  I just explained , the God's equation has no  variables ,  time ,color and nothing else effects it .Since human are not like him , therefore  they cannot add or subtract  any of their own understanding to God's revelation. Then the answer is obvious, there is no first or the last prophet,period .The Prophets  as we know came to reveal God's Law in different time and  brought changes  that contradicts God's knowledge .This simply means , God  didn't know everythig at the time ,he was revealing Torah to Moses,Bible to Jesus and he /she had to change it to rectify the mistakes by sending another prophet.

God  per his charactristics does not favor ones over the others,he does
not give land to one expels the other.He is not in business of giving
70  virgins to Muslims.Street of gold and honey toChristian and
favoring Jews over all other creeds     and a big mess of all kind of god's in India.

I have not yet seen , a religion that is not for monopolizing its followers ,if they can succeed  then turn into a killing machine  and quick to play victims when they  fail.

The truth , for me is  that I have fought with this 

feeling of God's and religion,  depending on rate of my success and

failure,lonliness,events ,war , misfortunes of others , deathof my dear ones .I ,finally decided long time ago  to make this a very personal thing and avoid to take side, but not to tolerate it when

it becomes abusive and intrusive.

 Faramarz, God did send

 Faramarz, God did send another prophet.  Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism.  I think after Mohammed, God took a mulligan and said why not and let's try this again.  Speaking of Joseph Smith, Big Love's new season starts on HBO this January.  Can't wait.  

Doesn't it seem like historically, every 1 thousand years (give or take) God deems it necessary to send yet another prophet.  I'm not sure when Mohammed's revelation happened.  Not up on my Islamic calendar but aren't we due for a new one soon?  And how we do we know he isn't all ready here.  He very well could be walking amongst us.  Provided we haven't diagnosed him with paranoid schizophrenia and locked him up in county medical.  Just a thought.

Mr Fateh

Very good post.

I hope our dear religious( Muslem,Bahai,Jewish ,Christian &.... ),as well as our non-religious friends on the site take part in a constructive,unbiased & unprejudiced discussion & talk about this subject .

best wishes

speaking of nonsense

millions and millions of innocent people around the world are dying very day by those who "worship Muhammad, and follow his teaching verbatim. Jews, Christians, Hindus, and yes Muslims too are paying the price.

WOW! 

all religious debates aside, both of you are speaking nonsense.

Muslims do not "worship" Muhammad and millions and millions of people are not dying every day in the hands of muslims.

try to stay reasonable please

IRANdokht

To Ali

I don't think he is writing nonsense and I do feel much the same ad Faramarz. If you don't like his reason, then stop reading it and believe in anything you want.

speaking of nonsense

Ali wrote:

You should stop writing this nonsense. close to 2 Billion people worship Muhammad (SAV).

I beg your pardon. worshiping an illiterate and known caravan robber, and outright murderer is the real nonsense.

Again, walk up mister. millions and millions of innocent people around the world are dying very day by those who "worship Muhammad, and follow his teaching verbatim. Jews, Christians, Hindus, and yes Muslims too are paying the price. All because "2 (actually 1.2) Million gullible Muslims are forced to warship this man, and follow his barbaric teaching to this day.

I guess the horrible terror in Momby where more then 350 unarmed civilians were murdered by cold blood Islamists did not teach you a lesson.

Basse' diggeh. Tamoom shod. It is time for Muslims to separate this man from his message. Not everything he did, or taught meet the standards of today. 

You should stop writing nonsense

Faramarz or whatever is your name,
You should stop writing this nonsense. close to 2 Billion people worship Muhammad (SAV). Many are world class scholars who know infinitely more than an ignorant person like you.
So don't waste our time with your nonsense.

Why was Muhammad the last?

Because, Arabs couldn,t count ....still don,t ..& Shia are worse , they,re still waiting .::))

Q. How do Ommatis practice safe sex?
A. They mark the camels that kick.

Immigration control:

Name?
-Seyd Abdul Ghomi.
Sex?
-Four times a week.
No, no - male, female?
-Male, female, sometimes camel.

Ommati , heard one of his wives was leaving him, so he rushed home. She was on the carpet in front of the tent with her belongings; he sat beside her and said, “I heard you were planing to leave me?” She said, “Yes, I heard your other wives saying you were a pedophile” so Ommati thinks for a minute or so and then he responds “that's a mighty big word for a 6 year old."

What do you call 1 Mullah on the moon?
A Problem
What do you call 1000 Mullahs on the moon?
A Big Problem
What do you call  all Mullahs on the moon?
Problem solved

heh

Jerusalem Syndrom

Faramarz_Fateh

To understand the whole concept of prophet (let alone the LAST prophet) one has to watch video about Jerusalem Syndrome. After which it will become clear how "prophets are born. (be sure to watch the entire 6 1/2 minuets. because it does end with one modern day"prophet" who went to make good on his conviction, and take with him the lives of 85 innocent followers in 1993 in Waco Texas.

The lesson is, human race had become somewhat wiser and better educated about human psychology and the so-called prophets who hear voices. They were found to be no less then hallucination and mental cases. after which they are treated and let go home to their daily lives.

According to Israeli authorities who treat those pilgrim visiting Jerusalem each year, there are 40 to 50 of them, who have had " sudden revelations" from god, conveyed to them through an angle or sort. 

why Muhammad was the absolute last prophet?

One needs to put rise of the prophet in perspective of his time.

The prophet of islam says explicitly that he brought his religion to people of Mecca. People of Mecca were pagans with many gods ('bot' in persian), praying to carved stones. Prophet's intention was to civilize people of Mecca and discourage them from going back to their ways of praying to carved up stones, or following later prophets who would be more permissive of acts like live-burial of infant girls. That was one reason why he wanted to put the nail in the coffin of "bot-parasti" by declaring himself as the last prophet. Furthermore prophet had no ambitions of making his religion universal as he had plenty of time (23 years) to at least try to spread his religion beyond the arab peninsula had he wished for, in the same way that he spread his religion there, by the sword. He never did that!

As for your religious friends, they are harmlessly misguided in the following sense. According to shia islam, shiaism is nothing but for what ayatollahs define. That is, as much as we may not like it, likes of Khomeini, Rafsanjani, and Khamenei "truly" define and represent the religion that your friends try to conform to. Escape of your friends from iran while staying committed to a religion that is either brutal (if they are shia and follow ayatollahs) or a religion that does not exist (if they are shia but do not follow ayatollahs) is only a sign of perhaps unconscious hypocrisy or mindless Stockholm syndrome.

No insult to your friends, but they should think about what they are doing and what it is that they are believing in.

Dear FF

First you have to decide if you believe in God or not, then decide if you believe that God would send people to spread his word or not, then accept that the same God sent Moses, Jesus and Mohammad, and only then you can complain about Mohammad's claim to be the last prophet.

as far as I am concerned Mohammad was the smart one who decided it was too easy to convince people of "God"s will, so he closed the door to others who would come after him, making it more challenging to recruit his followers into a new religion. 

IRANdokht