2 Responses to “An atheist poet and publisher”

• #1

  Omar

  June 11, 2018 at 1:46 pm

  Sad news about Shahzahan Bacchu. My sympathies to his family and friends.

  What if a man you knew began telling people that God was routinely speaking to him and only him – and that the “revelations” he claimed to be receiving were mostly about him and his relative importance to all other people? Say, for example, that this self-proclaimed prophet insisted that God had declared him to be the ‘excellent pattern of conduct’ for mankind (Quran 33:21) and that others were therefore to accord him with special privilege, unwavering obedience (Quran 4:80) , wealth and earthly desires, including all of the slaves and women than his lust could handle.

  Such figures still arise from time to time. Some of the more dynamic manage to develop a small group of followers so taken with their leader’s self-assurance that they willingly offer their own children to him for “marriage” and are prepared to kill on his behalf.

  I have business dealings with Muslims quite often, here in Australia. I get on well with them. I also have a collection of Islamic prayer-mats, mostlty colourful and of high quality, the best of which were made in Saudi Arabia. (One dealer, noticing my interest and possibly assuming I was interested in converting to Islam, showed me how to use one correctly when praying, for which information I thanked him.) But though I loathe and detest that benighted religion, and thus could be defined as ‘Islamophobic’, I get on well with all the Muslims I encounter, though none of them I know well enough to call ‘friends’. But if Pew Research is correct, a mere 25% or so of them sympathise with the Islamists, and presumably would like to see Sharia Law take over in Australia.

  A YouGov survey for the Daily Telegraph,[6] published two weeks after the July 2005 bombings in the London Underground, showed that 88% of British Muslims were opposed to the bombings, while 6% (about 100,000 individuals) fully supported them, and one British Muslim in four expressed some sympathy with the motives of the bombers.

  There are 600,000 Muslims in Australia, so if those rates apply here that means a mere 150,000 of Australian Muslims are sympathetic to Islamism to a greater or lesser degree.

  However, that does not stop from me getting out a prayer-mat from time to time and relaxing into the Muslim prayer position on it. That is actually part of the earlier Indian yogic lore: a sequence of positions called ‘Salute to the Sun.’ Very therapeutic. One could understand just on that basis alone why Muslims might feel inwardly better after prayer. One does not need to invoke God to explain it.

  Links next, to dodge ‘awaiting moderation’.
• #2

  Omar

  June 11, 2018 at 1:48 pm

  https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/dr-chris-allen/islamophobia_b_17214242.html

  http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4641728/Number-Muslims-Australia-soars-Census-2016.html

  https://www.thereligionofpeace.com/pages/muhammad/life-of-muhammad.aspx