>>4957699 lb

If you want me to launch into a lambasting of Islam, then that is a different issue I have been down quite a few times. Years ago.

Islam is just a rather basic and obvious example by comparison, and most of us are on the same page.

Islam began as a unification of the tribal Arab beliefs.

Much like everywhere else, the Arab tribes had a pantheistic belief system. Each tribe associated itself with following a certain deity within that pantheon, usually credited as being the sponsor or progenitor of that specific tribe.

Traditionally, the Arabs revered the city of Petra and built many of their temples facing Petra. This changed when a series of wars to consolidate the religions under a single deity took place and the religion shifted to revere Mecca. Some temples were destroyed and rebuilt to face Mecca.

The koran's scriptures refer to "The Prophet" - the name Mohammed was something appended later, and much of the identity of this individual was established centuries after the events he was supposedly a part of.

The whole religion is built around subservience to a religious state with goals of manifest destiny. It reveres the act of warfare in the cause of expanding control and has quite literally no room for reform into a set of spiritual values reflecting true religious tolerance.

The arab religions before it have largely been destroyed and purged by it. Persia was destroyed by Islam and much of its history along with it, although the cultural conversion wasn't complete - hence the Shiite vs Sunni divide, the Sunni being arab and the Shiites being Persian (generally).

I don't consider it a spiritual religion as much as a political one, as most of its goals are set on conquest and most of its stories are all related to wars, battles, or political affairs. It doesn't really deal much with spiritual events, creation, etc - other than to quote the torah and call the Jews horrible.

Eyes open? Who bought the Ottoman empire at a discount once their empire fell into decline? Why were the British feeding the Barbary States protection money, rather than crushing them?

>>4957898 lb

What you believe has necessarily expanded beyond the bounds of what your religion allows. This is like the muslims who believe their religion represents peace. They've had to rationalize on thin margins their own morality OVER the scriptural and dogmatic depictions of their god.

The question is "what bounds define your god?" The logical consequence of this is that you have created god. Because your focus is on monotheism, you were looking for a "god of gods" - a god which even "other gods" can't destroy or mute. Omnipotence and omnipresence - a raw and true concept of divinity that goes beyond understood personification.

The problem is that this is not what the religion, scripture, and dogma define. What you have created is necessarily far larger than the constraints of a book.

Whether you realize it or not, this is not a new understanding. It has been explored in depth with a number of ancient systems - of which the asians have a better preserved record of it. Although the same idea can be found all over the world.

The 'problem' is that this becomes a very personal understanding that doesn't lend itself to organized religions, campaigns of conquest in the name of a god, etc.