Muhammad was dubbed the prophet of Allah, the only god. He was considered last in line of prophets they went from Abraham to Jesus. Islam spread fairly fast, it went from Spain in the west to India in the east only a century after Muhammad’s death. Muslims believe that Muhammad was visited by Jibreel (the angel Gabriel) and given the duty of converting his countrymen from their pagan ways. There are two mains texts that used Qur’an and Hadith. The Qur’an are the words of god and the Hadith are the words of Muhammad. The Muslims have five duties known as the Five Pillars of Islam. The first is to recite the shahadah at least once during their lifetime. Most Muslims say it everyday. The second is to perform the salat, which is prayer, five times a day. It’s done during the morning, noon, mid-afternoon, after sunset and just before sleeping. The third is to donate through the zakat, which is a 2.5 percent charity tax. The fourth is to fast during the month of Ramadan. The fifth and final is if physically and financially able, to make one pilgrimage to Mecca. The Muslim’s are strictly monotheistic, there is one true God that is merciful. They believe that Satan drives people to sin and they also believe that Jesus was only a prophet, nothing more. They also believe that Jesus was not executed on the cross and the Christian concept of Jesus is blasphemous. There are three main types of Muslims. The Sunni Muslims are 90 percent of the Muslim believers and main stream traditionalists. The Shi’ite Muslims split from the Sunnis over a quarrel over Muhammad. They have their own translation of the Qur’an which they enforce. The final group is Sufism they took ideas from Christianity and Buddhism but they are more of a different style rather than a different school. The Muslim religion represents about 22 percent of the world’s population and are the second largest religion. The largest concentrations of Muslims are in Africa and Asia.
Today s Muslims are branded as terrorists or fundamentalists. But their religion is a gentle religion. On the Arabian Peninsula, home of the Arabs, was isolated and they were able to develop their civilization without outside influences. It is about 1 million miles square that is located between the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf. There are two distinctive regions. The first has well-watered valleys between mountains and the second is arid plains and desert. Grass grows quickly during the showers of the rainy season. In ancient times the Arabs were nomads that herded sheep, goats, and camels and lived in tents made of felt from camel or goat hair. They ate fresh or dried dates and drank milk from their herds. On special occasions they ate mutton. Their tribes were made of related families. They valued family ties because they ensured protection and survival. They had a chief (sheikh). The sheikh ruled as long as the tribe allowed him. They had a council of elders. There was warfare over waterholes and pastures. They believed in an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth as means for punishment. To improve warrior skills they had camels and horses. They had story telling in front of the campfire. They had poetry about battles, desert, camels, horses, and love. In 500 AD they started a town called Makkah, which was fifty miles inland of the Red Sea. Trade was mostly of animal products for weapons dates grains, spices, jewels ivory, silk, and perfumes. They had caravans travel there from as for china. Arabs had and worshipped many deities business ties were replacing family ties, and old tribal laws were not adequate. Byzantine and the Persian armies were threatening to conquer them. The tribes had the some language but they had no central government, or sense of unity, The Arabs searched for new beliefs.
TAOISM
The founder of Taoism is Lao-Tse, which lived between 604-531 BCE. Taoism began as a combination of philosophy and psychology but was later turned into a state religion in 440 CE. Lao-Tse was later established as a deity. In 1911, support for Taoism had disappeared and with the communist victory in 1949 there was very little room for religious freedom. Taoism has many sects and groups that have been influenced by Buddhism and Confucianism. Taoism is still practiced in China, Taiwan and Hong Kong although the current government has made attempts to suppress it. The Taoist beliefs are that there is no god and that Tao is a force that flows. There are no personified beliefs in Taoism and they do not pray to a god. They seek out life’s problems through meditation and observation. Much like Hinduism, time is cyclical. There are five organs of the earth water, fire, wood, metal and earth. Lao-Tse developed “Yin” and “Yang” which are two competing energies found in all things which must be “balanced.” There is not a specific number of Taoists in the world. It’s hard to find the exact number of Taoists because at one time a person in China could be a Buddhist, a Taoist and a Confucian. The main concentration of Taoists is in China and Taiwan.
In order to go into Taoism at all, we must begin by being in the frame of mind in which it can understood. You cannot force yourself into this frame of mind, anymore than you can smooth rippled waters. But let’s say that our starting point is that we forget what we know, or think we know, and that we suspend judgment about practically everything, returning to what we were when we were babies when we had not yet learned the names or the language. And in this state, although we have extremely sensitive bodies and very alive senses, we have no means of expressing what is going on around us. You are just plain ignorant, but still very much alive, and in this state you just feel what is without calling it anything at all. You know nothing at all about anything called an external world in relation to an internal world. You don’t know who you are, you haven’t even the idea of the word you or me. It is before all that. Nobody has taught you self-control, so you don’t know the difference between the noise of a car outside and a wandering thought that enters your mind- they are both something that happens. You don’t identify the presence of a thought that may be just an image of a passing cloud in your mind’s eye or the passing automobile; they happen. Your breath happens. Light, all around you, happens. Your response to it by blinking happens. So, on one hand you are simply unable to do anything, and on the other there is nothing you are supposed to do. That’s what is called Tao, in Chinese. That’s where we begin. Tao means basically “way”, and so “course”; the course of nature. The Tao is a certain kind of order, and this kind of order is not quite what we call order when we arrange everything geometrically in boxes, or in rows. That is a very crude kind of order, but when you look at a plant it is perfectly obvious that the plant has order. We recognize at once that is not a mess, but it is not symmetrical and it is not geometrical looking. The plant looks like a Chinese drawing, because they appreciated this kind of non-symmetrical order so much that it became an integral aspect of their painting. In the Chinese language this is called li, and the character for li means the markings in jade. It also means the grain in wood and the fiber in muscle. We could say, too, that clouds have li, marble has li, and the human body has li. We all recognize it, and the artist copies it whether he is a landscape painter, a portrait painter, an abstract painter, or a non-objective painter. They all are trying to express the essence of li. The interesting thing is that although we all know what it is, there is no way of defining it. Because Tao is the course, we can also call li the watercourse, and the patterns of li are also the patterns of flowing water. We see those patterns of flow memorialized, as it were, as sculpture in the grain in wood, which is the flow of sap, in marble, in bones, in muscles. All these things are patterned according to the basic principles of flow. In the patterns of flowing water you will all kind of motifs from Chinese art, immediately recognizable, including the S-curve in the circle of yang-yin. So li means then the order of flow, the wonderful dancing pattern of liquid, because Lao-tzu likens Tao to water: The great Tao flows everywhere, to the left and to the right, It loves and nourishes all things, but does not lord it over them. For as he comments elsewhere, water always seeks the lowest level, which men abhor, because we are always trying to play games of one-upmanship, and be on top of each other. But Lao-tzu explains that the top position is the most insecure. Everybody wants to get to the top of the tree, but then if they do the tree will collapse. That is the fallacy of American society. Lao-tzu says the basic position is the most powerful. So, therefore, the watercourse way is the way of Tao. Now, that seems to some Protestants, lazy, spineless, and altogether passive. I think it would be wonderful to be that carefree and relaxed, but nearly an impossible goal for anyone raised in the fear of God. From a superficial point of view I would suggest that a certain amount of passivity would be an excellent corrective for our kind of culture because we are always creating trouble by doing good to other people. We wage wars for other peoples benefit, and attempt to help those living in “underdeveloped” countries, not realizing that in the process we may destroy their way of life. Economies and cultures that have coexisted in ecological balance for thousands of years have been disrupted all around the world, with often-disastrous results.
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