Abrahamic Faith

Published on 24th February, 2023, in The Hindu. After the sack of Baghdad in the 13th century, the Islamic world, dominated by Arabs since the 8th century, gave way to the Ottomans in Turkey, the Safavids in Iran, and the Mughals in India. These empires owed their success not to religion, but to gunpowder, a Chinese invention. Their fall by the 18th century was because of another Chinese invention they would ignore to please Islamic calligraphers: the printing press. We tend to believe that the Islamic world was homogeneous and orthodox. However, this homogeneity was more aspirational than ground reality. This becomes most evident by ..

Published on 25th December, 2022, in Mid-day. About 1,900 years ago, documents were compiled in Israel that described the virgin birth, life, death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, who was identified as the Christ, the anointed one, the prophesied messiah of Jewish mythology. These documents were called the Gospel, as they brought the good news of the much awaited saviour. About 1,600 years ago, after the Roman Emperor became Christian, the New Testament was compiled, containing not only the Gospels, but also stories and letters of Jesus’ first disciples, the Apostles. While the Old Testament was for Jewish people only, the New Testament was ..

Published on 27th November, 2022, in Mid-day. A section of American Hindus are trying to turn the phrase “snakes in the Ganga” into a neo-Hindutva metaphor for Hinduphobia. This is highly disrespectful to revered Naga-devata or snake deities of Indian rivers and water bodies, including Ganga. This is another case of American Hindu IT engineer “parents” creatively misinterpreting Hinduism from 5,000 miles away, claiming inspiration from Agamic “parampara”. Clinging to Hindu roots in foreign soil, after your parents abandoned Indian citizenship for money, is difficult. But it is lucrative. It enabled the UK PM to marry an extremely rich Hindu girl, so rich that her ..

Published on 21st May, 2022, in Times of India. The Muslims say that Suleiman (Solomon) came to Kashmir on a flying throne (takht), sat on a hill in Srinagar, and got his djinns to clear the lake, get rid of barbarians and create a land of the true faith. But Islam actually emerged in Arabia 1,400 years ago and came to the Kashmir Valley only 800 years ago. Before being named Takht-i-Suleiman, the hill in Srinagar was linked to Adi Shankaracharya, who visited Kashmir in the eighth century. For a thousand years before that it was a centre of Sanskrit education, where Shaivism, Vaishnavism, Tantra ..

Published on 2nd April, 2022, in Economic Times. Conventional leadership frameworks begin with the notion that there is a problem to be solved, which leads to strategizing, planning, organising, implementing, regulating, motivating, enabling, and reviewing along the way. This model is linear: there is a target at the end. This model is based on Western mythologies, a mixture of Biblical and Greek mythologies. The leader in its purest form has its roots in the Bible. He is chosen by a higher authority, he leads a team, a tribe, an institution to a better place, and does not seek any glory. The leader who seeks glory, ..

Published on 20th February, 2022, in Mid-day. Now-a-days, we do not see the Mediterranean world as a unit. We see the northern shores as European and Christian, and the southern shores as African and Muslim. But for hundreds of years, the entire Mediterranean was a unit controlled by the Roman Empire. Wealth from these regions flowed into the city of Rome. Egypt was called the granary of Rome. About 1,700 years ago, the Roman Empire became Christian and the Emperor decreed that everyone in his land should follow Christianity. This is the first time when religion became a political tool. And all local cults and ..

Published on 21st November, 2021, in Mid-day. The Bible is the holy book of the Christians. It has two parts: the Old Testament and the New Testament. The Old Testament refers to Jewish stories of prophets and kings. The New Testament tells the story of Jesus Christ. The old school values God’s Law, and sees God as someone who demands submission and obedience. The new school sees God as a loving Father. To make sense of the Bible, people must understand the structure of the Bible. The Bible presupposes that God created the world, including all the animals and plants and humans. He expected humans ..

Published on 2nd June, 2019 in Mid-day. In Middle Eastern (aka Islamic) mythology, when god created Adam, he expected all the angels to bow down before Adam. The angel, Iblis, refused to do so. Therefore, Iblis was cast out of paradise. He became the Devil, or Shaitan, who was determined to tempt humankind and make their life miserable on earth. His aim was to prove to god that his creation was faulty and that god’s anger on him was misplaced. Two other angels, known as Harut and Marut, saw the follies of man. They kept asking god how he could place a creature of clay ..

Published on 12th May, 2019, in Mid-day. The right-wing communities around the world have one common feature: they believe there is only one truth and that truth is theirs. Therefore, they have a problem with other mythologies and science. This is true as much of Hindu/Christian/atheist radicals as it is of Islamic radicals. This stems from the assumption that mythology has something to do with falsehood (a 19th-century colonial definition), rather than cultural truths (a 21st-century postmodern definition). A key figure in Islamic mythology popular across the Middle East is King Suleiman (Solomon of Old Testament). Suleiman was the third king of Israel and the ..