Monday, June 30, 2008

Religion: The Real Car

By: Maged Taman

Imagine that a man was touring around the globe with his car. He came across people from a remote village in Africa. He stayed with them for few days and left. After he left, the people in the village decided they need to make a car like the man had. They cut trees and were able to make the wood looks like a body of a car. They were not able to go any further. This car of wood is not a real car but it does not preclude the presence of a real car. Decades went by and the new generations of this village came to see only the wooden car. They believed it is a car since many do not remember the real car and how it looked like.

This is a simple example of religions. The presence of a false religion does not mean there is no real religion. In both of them there is higher being/beings and a lot of belief of the unseen. It may commonly encompass a system of beliefs including God/Gods, praying fasting and even pilgrimage. But one will take you nowhere and the other one will be your ride to the truth. The existence of people who strongly believe in the faith of their parents does not affirm that their parents religion is the truth. The man nature of belief in God, praying, fasting and pilgrimage confirm that we were born with the instinct of the necessity of these things.

There is a good possibility that some religions started by real prophets from God like Buddha. Similarly the Kappa was built by Abraham to worship the one God of the world and then made a place to worship hundreds of idols. Many at first 3 centuries after Christ believed him to be a prophet from God then people worshiped him. As you see a lot of people changed their religions over time.

The amazing thing about Islam is that it is one man religion. Muhammad had received the Quran from God and Muslims were able to keep it like it is to our day. Even at time when Muslims were not sticking well to their religions they never tried to change the Quran or drop any of its verses.

There is a wooden car and there is a real car. With the Internet available to us now it has not been so easy to search for and compare religions. But it has to be done fairly starting at point zero, where everything is equally possible.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwt3BoTySXc&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qIhV_Li5WGI&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y7MakwqmVbU&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gTfzjoyVxoU&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddqANuvIf2A&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XeObMorVqS4&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUjOtogMSZ4&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMztUGw47f0&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfNeVepRYBk&feature=related

2 comments:

M. Elhowety said...

It would have helped tremendously had the real car been fine tuned and safely kept in a clean and tidy grarage , unfortunately; this is not the case , and we have only ourselves - us Muslims - to blame ..

Islam is the only vehicle capable of carrying people to heaven ..no other carrier can come even close , yet on the outside ,to the untrained eye , the real vehicle seems to be old and tired when in fact it is longing for one - just one - real driver that truly knows how to drive it home safely through the storms.

Douha betaa zaman

Maged Taman said...

Well said Douha, that why I missed you all these years.
Maged.