Ishwa helper Reged: 03/03/02 Posts: 553

Re: Religion and Majority Pays the price, for the evil [Re: willie] #20645 - 09/19/02 03:22 AM Edit Reply Quote

Willie, if you point to religion being a mere tool for politics, I agree with you. But there are subtle and obvious differences. Some people adhering to two religions in particular have a bad reputation with mixing politics and religion and in destroying other cultures. So one has to be specific in these cases. Hindus have no reputation at all of expansionism and equally not of destroying cultures of others, no matter what Eurocentric (missionary) 'scholars' wanted to let us believe. There is enough evidence of the contrary. Another point is that blindly following the scriptures is also not a feature of Hinduism. We can see a very great amount of fear with some prophetic religious movements: Dreadful, punishing God, thread of the hell, etc. These sentiments are lacking in Hindu movements. Another point is the way in which scriptures and their subjects can be discussed over. That is in some prophetic movements still a very tricky case. What is now the case with Islamic movements, was not much before also the case with (many) Christian movements. Hindu movements have always debated tricky cases, that's why there's so much diversity. (still they realize there common points, and know that the differences are only optional). Note I don't want to defend those people (also Hindus), who have committed grave crimes to humanity.