jihad Jihad and voilence

[dattaswami]

If all the universal religions understand that the original God is unimaginable, the conflict between religions disappears. If the religions take the absolute God as imaginable and understood, there will be multiplicity in the concepts. The reason for this multiplicity is that this imaginable creation is constituted by several imaginable items. Each religion selects a specific imaginable item as the absolute God and this results in the multiplicity and conflict of religions. Therefore, the way of silence indicates the awareness through realization of the unimaginable ultimate God, thereby leading to the end of inter-religious wars resulting in the world peace. You may argue that Shankara said that God is the result of deep sleep (Sushuptyeka siddhah).

But, here, you should understand that the word Sushupti here is limited to the unawareness relating to absolute God only. If you argue that Sushupti is the original deep sleep, you cannot conclude that God is the result of deep sleep since you are in total unawareness. The point that you are passing on this statement indicates that you are in the awareness of the concept relating to God.

Here, the word awareness should be taken as the process of knowing God or world and should not be taken as the form of energy as an item. By this the word awareness need not be taken as God as per the Advaita philosophers. The process or work is never accepted as God by the Advaita philosopher. In fact, the awareness itself is only a specific work and this is the main reason to deny that awareness is God. Hence, the awareness taken as an item or substratum is only an illusion based on which you are trying to establish awareness is God.

On this day, you are not speaking any word indicating that God cannot be described by any word (Yato Vachah… Veda) due to His actual unimaginable nature. Shankara also defined that the absolute God can be explained only through silence (Mouna Vyakhya…). Your mind and intelligence must be silent indicating that God cannot be thought by mind and that God cannot be discussed by any logic of any intelligence. You should be aware of such unimaginable God, so that this day of silence becomes fruitful.

If you think about the worldly issues or sleeping without thinking anything, this day is useless. Even though you talk and if your talks are concentrated on this concept, still, you are participating on the day of silence. Therefore, you should realize the significance of anything through the analysis and arriving at the right conclusions of knowledge to be followed by the practice that gives the fruit.

Q’ran says that a Muslim should protect even the enemy belonging to other religion. It says that a Muslim can speak about the preaching of Allah to the enemy and then leave the enemy in protected place. It never says that the religion should be spread by violence. It speaks about the war for justice, which is not the war for propagation of religion. For that matter, Gita arose only from the state of war, which was fought for establishing justice.

Even Bible says that the rigid fools who do not realize should be thrown to the liquid fire, which is violence. Therefore, violence is not wrong. But the cause of violence should be perfectly justified. When Mohammad came, there were three hundred religions, which were quarelling among themselves with lot of violence. He tried His best by preaching the concept of one God. There was no alternative way to subside the violence between them.

Actually after Jesus, the concept of human incarnation was fully realized but this concept was exploited by cheaters. Every fellow became a prophet and declared himself as the human incarnation. The followers started preaching that particular form is only the one God. You can imagine easily the situation at the time. When violence is justified, it is called as punishment given by God. If the violence is not justified, it becomes Chaos due to egoism of a demon, which can be subsided only by divine punishment. Actually at the end, Hinduism speaks about the incarnation of Kalki and Christianity speaks about the final punishment given by God. Both these situations are of terrible violence only.

The last sort of God is only punishment, which can alone bring peace at least temporally for some time when the world is filled with brutal conservative fools, who are the wild beasts in the human form. The Lord says in Bible “Revenge is mine” which means the Lord punishes the unjust people.

The Lord said in Gita that He will destroy the evil person (Vinasaya cha….). God is double-edged knife. Not only He protects the justice but also He punishes the injustice. A rich weak human being may protect the justice but may not be able to punish the injustice. A poor strong fellow may punish the injustice but not protect the justice by giving compensation. Thus, the human beings have limitations but the Lord is strong as well as rich and therefore is capable in both sides.

This is the meaning when Jesus mentioned about the divine kingdom on the earth. He means that one may escape the king on this earth but can never escape God. When you are affected by injustice, pray for compensation only (“Ask that shall be given”-Bible) and not for the punishment of enemy. You will be compensated. When you do not pray for the punishment of enemy, you will see the punishment of your enemy soon from God. You may react to your enemy with equal or double force.

But God will react with million times of force. Draupadi was pestering Krishna for the destruction of her enemies. The Lord fulfilled her wish but all her sons were killed by enemies and Lord did not protect them. Some times God punishes your enemy through your self. Arjuna killed the enemies, forced by the Lord. But Arjuna was not having the intention to kill the enemies and was against the war. Since he was forced by the Lord, he fought the war for justice.

When Muslims followed Mohammad in His war for unifying the religions, it was justified because there was clear divine instruction. Since Mohammad was the last divine preacher, now the war for justice need not be carried on because in the absence of divine preacher there is every possibility of misunderstanding of every situation as requirement for war of justice. Therefore, the instruction of Mohammad was limited to that time because He was capable of deciding the correct requirement for war for justice.

Mohammad removed the concept of human incarnation because the effects of exploitation were severe in that time. Muslims should realize that human incarnation means that God entered in the human body and not that God modified as human body. Mohammad objected only modification of God in to human body. This is not condemning the concept of human incarnation. God only enters the human body and Mohammad himself was the human incarnation because God entered in to Mohammad and gave Q’ran. Gita clearly says that God entered the human body (Manusheem Tanu Asritam..) and that God is not modified in to human body(Avyaktam Vyakti Mapannam…). Bible also says that God is in flesh and does not say that God has become flesh. Thus, there is no difference between three religions.

Regarding Jihad or the fight against injustice, it was also confined to the context of external atmosphere present in His time. There were several religions having their own individual gods resulting in the multiplicity of single God. He established the concept of single God called as Allah without any medium (the unimaginable God).

Of course, He agreed to the mediation of unimaginable God by formless light, in which human form leading to the danger of crucifixion is totally negated. In His time, the multiplicity of all these ignorant religions resulted in mutual fights ending with mutual killings. He wanted to stop these fights with the help of a fight called as Jihad or fight against the injustice of killing each other. The clue in this is that a thorn can be removed only by another thorn.

Real followers of Mohammed understand this and use Jihad for stopping killing each other, which is not to be used to kill each other! Prophet Mohammed said that one should reveal the message of Allah to every human being and leave it safely in its house after protecting it from every external damage. His real concept is not understood by some followers because original preacher is always a shining diamond and the followers are always black charcoals twisting the meaning always with misinterpretation.

All of us should appreciate Prophet Mohammed for sacrificing the honor of human incarnation even though He is human incarnation! This sacrifice is for the sake of the emotional humanity present in that time so that it will not commit the greatest sin of killing human incarnation to fall forever in hell. His theory shows His kindness towards humanity preventing it from such greatest sin!

Even a terrorist has some logic by which only he is practically behaving in that particular way. By your sharp analysis, you have to change that logic and then only reformation and realization comes even in terrorist. You must enlighten the misinterpretation of the scripture like Jihad, which is the fight for justice in the context of killing each other due to difference in the religions existing in the time of Prophet Mohammad. The situation of killing each other can be controlled by fight and sometimes in extreme conditions by removing some limbs like hands, legs etc. Killing can be stopped by fights or such severe punishments. Today when such context of killing is not there, you cannot bring the concept of Jihad to the context of today.

Today, only oral arguments and oral fights are going on between religions. In this context, only perfect rational analysis is sufficient to rectify the situation. Like this, we must understand the word of the Prophet with reference to the then existing context. You should not generalize a specific context to all the times and all the regions. Then only harmony between religions and world peace is possible. You must also remember that the Prophet told to teach about Allah to a human being after helping it and the final decision is left to the free will of the human being.

There is no trace of difference between the Jesus of Christianity and Prophet Mohammad of Islam since both are Sons of God. Both are Human Incarnations of God and were in a state of monism with God. Both Christianity and Islam also have Human Incarnations, who are actually separate from God but are treated to be Incarnations in the sense of special monism. The term Holy Spirit indicates such cases. Remember that Holy Spirit also refers to God appearing as formless light. It (Holy Spirit) is the unimaginable God (Unimaginable Awareness), who has entered and merged into a medium of formless light having its own soul. God enters such an unusual medium only for the sake of those devotees, who do not like the concept of God being present in a medium having an angelic (energetic) or human form. The unimaginable God is the non-mediated Absolute Reality. There is no difference between (i) the non-mediated Jehovah, Allah and Parabrahman and (ii) The mediated Son of God, Īśvara and any other Incarnation, which is in a state of monism between Īśvara and the soul.

 

       Since Jesus, the preceding Incarnation, was crucified by devotees having the climax of ignorance, ego and selfishness, Prophet Mohammad eradicated the very concept of incarnation. He claimed that He was just a Messenger of God (dualism) to avoid such horrible sins. He avoided claiming that He was in the states of monism or special monism with God. He took a simple wall as representative model for God, which refers to the limit or the boundary of this creation. The wall-model was necessary since a totally abstract unimaginable God is very difficult to worship. Swami Dayananda of the Arya Samaj sect of Hinduism also opposed the concept of Incarnation since the concept had been exploited by several false incarnations.

 

Prophet Mohammad opposed the same concept to avoid the sinful violence of false devotees. Mohammad had to fight wars to unite the violent devotees, who would frequently fight with each other as a result of the multiplicity of their Gods. Their constant fighting was causing a serious disturbance to society. The wars fought by Him to supress that constant violence and achieve long-term peace and unity through the concept of the oneness of God, cannot be taken to be sinful violence. It was justified violence. But at present, since the oneness of God as Allah has already been established, there is no meaning in continuing such violence any more.

 

 

Violence and non-violence

The final decision of the conclusion is based on the end of debate on any topic. The point of non-violence is stressed in the Gita. All the ethical scriptures say that non-violence is the highest justice (ahimsa paramodharmah). Hence, the main concept of the Gita should be also non-violence. If it is not so, do you mean to say that the Gita opposes all the ethical scriptures in giving the main point? Non-violence means avoiding violence against good and innocent living beings (paritraanaaya…). It does not mean keeping silent against evil living beings (vinaashaayacha…). Even other religions express the hell with liquid fire for punishments of sinners. Gandhiji chose the path of non-violence against British rulers since we cannot fight with them through weapons.

He tried to kindle kindness and spiritual thoughts in their minds so that freedom can be obtained without violence from our side, which, of course, is inevitable since we are not equipped with modern weapons. In such circumstances, that way alone is leftover, which is praying God to help the justice through the inevitable non-violence. Of course, Subhash Chandraji tried through method of violence. But, Gandhiji’s method is to be tried first (saama upaaya), which has another benefit that loss of life from our side is totally avoided. The Prophet Mohammed went to the path of violence to control the violent inter-religious fights, which could not be pacified by His preaching of single God called Allah.

Jesus also tried through the non-violence to change the hearts of people. But, He also supported the liquid fire of hell in the case of irreparable sinners. Krishna also took the war (Danda upaaya) as the final step only. Buddha preached the preliminary path of non-violence like Jesus. The methods change from context to context. There is also a tradition in Hinduism to stress on any point praising it as total absolute. If you take the name of Ganga river, all your sins are destroyed (Gange gangeti...)! This is only stress on the required point called as artha vaada.

 

www.universal-spirituality[.]org

 

Universal Spirituality for World Peace