Chaitanya Jyothi Museum Opening, 2000

RAMANAM
In the Name of The Father, and of The Son and of The Holy Spirit, Amen.

Countrymen,

ORBIS NON SUFFICIT
SOLUS DEUS SUFFICIT

The a-and anti-religious press around the world is making a fuss over treatment of the Koran by United States military personnel guarding Islamist prisoners at detention/prison facilities controlled by the United States.

As if they really cared, about religion or the Koran! They care about disparaging President Bush and un-electing representatives of the Republican Party.

Nonetheless, an important issue is raised by this fuss. It is the issue of idolatry.

Idolatry is the taking of anything less than ultimate as ultimate. The words “demonic” and “demon possessed” have the same meaning. The demonic is anything finite which claims to be infinite, anything temporal which claims to be eternal, anything spatial which claims to be universal, any *thing*, any aspect of existence, which claims to be of ultimate concern.

The object of idolatry can be any aspect of existence, from a plant to an idea, from a relationship to an organization, from an experience to a book. Any thing that exists can become the object of idolatry. Anything less than ultimate can become the basis for a claim of ultimate concern.  Whatever exists is not ultimate because it can not exist.

Claiming ultimacy for the non-ultimate is a demonic act. It is the definition of the demonic aspect in life. It is epistemological error of the most egregious kind. And of all errors to which man is prone, it is the most difficult to correct — because it is the most subtle and therefore the least detectable.

Even the correction of demonic epistemology, of idolatry, is prone to demonic distortion: I conquered the delusion! and I am free of delusion! … are delusional statements.

Idolatry is an egregious epistemological act. Man possesses neither structure nor power sufficient to conquer his proneness to idolatry. Man does not control the conditions of existence. Within a narrow range of potentiality he creates conditions of existence but he neither controls the conditions he creates nor establishes the basis, the ground, of existence itself — nor systematically anticipates much less exhaustively controls the cascades of unintended consequences attending his creative activity.

Man is not all-knowing. Yet, man participates in existence and in the essence from which existence is created and fulfilled.

Since he participates in existence, man experiences estrangement from his essence and yearns for return to his essence. His embodiment in existence causes man to experience all of the grandeurs and tragedies of the inorganic, organic, psychic, spiritual and historical dimensions of life which occur on account of his freedom and destiny.

Since he participates in the ground of being, in essence, in, from and for which his existence is created and fulfilled, man experiences — though only through revelation and salvation — the Abyssal, the Logistical and the Spiritual nature of himself, of his life, including his life alone and in community, and of the universe.

It is a peculiar failing of Semitic religions that, for religious discussions, they eschew images of natural objects as idols, yet they make of such things as letters, words, geometrics and books such idols as to keep masons, carvers, scribes, painters and other artisans busy indefinitely.

And then there is Mohammad Omar, the ex-Taliban Chieftain, with erotic-pastoral frescoes at his residence in Kandahar … and Arab and Zionist clergy and potentates slipping Wahhabi and Hassidic leashes for orgies in European spas and private residences, mainly with boys.

Hebrew and Arabic alphabetical letters are said to deserve veneration, even to possess innate powers. The Torah and the Koran are said to be unconditional, ultimate words and laws of the unconditioned and ultimate, of God, with unconditioned obedience to them incumbent on mankind individually and as a group. Judaism and Islam as religions are said to be perfect, unique, final and only-valid religions for mankind. The cultural, moral, religious and political forms enunciated by the Torah and the Koran — as if they are clearly much less consistently enunciated — are said to be valid for all times and places and must be established in all times and places without hindrance or delay. Judaism and Islam, separately, by the partisans of each, are said to be superior to other religions and therefore to deserve preferred status in all aspects of society, guaranteed by law.

Now, it is easy to conclude from these observations that Semitic religions are essentially hegemonistic, unpleasant and dangerous. Christianity, which is an Indo-European, not a Semitic, religion, also could be regarded as hegemonistic, etc., especially when accepting an influence from Semitic religions, as it does today in both the protestant and catholic churches.

The conclusion, however, is inaccurate and therefore unfair. Semitic religion, its finest example being Islam and Islam’s least illegitimate representative today being Sufism, opposes idolatry of any object, concept or group and therefore, on principle, of hegemony as a way of organizing life. God is Love, Islam means Peace, Jihad is by and for individuals and groups against demonic impulses in the their own hearts and communities and nothing in this world, nothing existing, can be an object of ultimate concern.

In any religion and par excellence in Semitic religion, because of its iconoclasm, idolatry of sacred scripture is a pernicious and recurring problem, nay, dis-ease. The demonic elevation of sacred scripture and especially of a book that is claimed to comprise sacred scripture is a horrendous, terrifying development and all too common occurrence in all times and climes.

Theologians and religious leaders, responsible for identifying and condemning the idolatry of sacred scripture, and especially of a mere book, are themselves prone to producing just this idolatry.

Taking the non-ultimate for ultimate is a delusion so easily adopted that it can happen in an instant without one’s being aware that it has. This power of the demonic, called maya in Sanskrit, can overthrow the greatest sage, from within himself, in the blink of an eye.

Sacred scripture points to and participates in the truth, the ultimate, which, as personalized by itself, is symbolized by the word God. Sacred Scripture does not point to itself. It points beyond itself, to that which is its basis, to the ultimate, to God.

Sacred scripture itself is not ultimate and it makes no claim to be ultimate. It claims to point to that which is beyond it and which alone is ultimate.

The book that contains sacred scripture is a medium on which are written the words of sacred scripture that point beyond themselves to that which alone is ultimate. No medium is worth more than being a medium for content which points beyond itself (pace McLuhan, who was wrong).

The content that is sacred scripture does not depend on the medium of a book. It transcends all media.

Sacred scripture is any record of revelatory and salvic experience and also any act or artistic expression which becomes the medium of a revelatory and salvic experience by pointing beyond itself to the ultimate.

The ultimate — and its self-expression — is unhindered by and unaccountable to any thing in existence, any thing at all. No *thing* can restrict, measure, compel or predict the ground of being.

Furthermore, sacred scripture — and also any act or artistic expression which becomes the medium of a revelatory and salvic experience — becomes sacred and scripture only when it participates in a constellation of mystery and ecstasy, giving and receiving, which is revelatory and salvic.

In and of itself, sacred scripture is words on paper, nothing more, no more important than a newspaper and just as superficially and transiently an object of man’s attention.

Only in an actual revelatory and salvic experience, having the characteristics of mystery and ecstasy, is sacred scripture sacred and scripture. It must have the religious existential component to be regarded as venerable. And even then, it is not the text of sacred scripture, the ink on the page or even the words of the language, but only the revelatory and salvic experience in which the text, ink and words participate as a medium that is holy and creative.

Sacred scripture points beyond itself to the ultimate, to the mystery of being which remains mystery and mysterious even after it is received in ecstasy through an experience of revelation and salvation.

Starting early in the 18th Century, Christian Scripture, the Old and New Testaments, began to receive critical examination by scholars. For three hundred years this process not only continued, it also elaborated. Eventually, several distinct types of criticism were developed and applied to the Old and New Testaments. These types are known as textual, literary, historical and formal criticism.

At first such activities were resisted by clerical hierarchies both protestant and catholic. Early on, civil authorities also resisted these activities, often but not always at the request of clerical hierarchies. Eventually, all types of critical examination of Old and New Testaments were accepted by most protestant clerical hierarchies and unsuccessfully co-opted by most catholic clerical hierarchies. By the middle of the 19th Century, except in catholic areas such as France, civil authorities were unavailable to clerical instigation in the suppression of biblical criticism.

A reaction to biblical criticism grew into what is now called fundamentalism or biblical literalism, of which there are several varieties but all sharing the common themes of supernaturalism and rejection of critical examination of the Old and News Testaments.

The churches that accepted biblical critcism rejected Logos Theology, which formed the churches and the New Testament, as well as the vertical component of life, the aspect of transcendence. These churches devolved into the legalisms of popular psychology. They became technical and rabbinical. Harvey Cox of Harvard Divinity School speaks for this degeneration, which calls itself post-modernism or deconstructionism.

Only recently, in the last decade, is effort being made to keep Christian biblical criticism without losing the Christian message, or, in other words, to clean up the churches and thereby restore the Church, the Spiritual Community.

Paul Tillich, during the 1950s/60s, pointed to the need for this cleaning and restoration and, for his efforts, was pronounced a dangerous man by clerical hierarchies of the day. Harvey Cox, a youngster then, was especially embittered by ambition to calumniate Tillich.

Cleaning the churches and thereby restoring the Church involves a reacquisition of Logos Theology and a re-experience, through revelation and salvation, of the non-dualistic (adwaithin) depth and structure of reason. This revelation and salvation is occurring and will succeed in restoring the Christian message and the Church.

With respect to critical examination of its sacred scripture, Islam is now where Christianity was in the early 18th Century. Resistance to this examination is fierce and will get fiercer before it dies out. But die out it must. Idolatry has no defense and no staying power. The Islamist programs, of both Wahhabist and Shiite varieties, are rear guards to protect idolatries, especially idolatry of the Koran.

None can say what course the critical examination of the Koran and reaction to that examination will take. It will be dangerous, often lethal, to pursue that examination, including for non-Islamic scholars. However, the work will go ahead because critical examination — scrutiny — is in the nature of nature and because any idolatry, and especially an idolatry of sacred scripture, is a tempting target. Islamist idolatry of the Koran, being falsehood itself, is being attacked by critical examination of the Koran and cannot be maintained therefore.

Islamists thought to use technology to destroy the basis of technology, namely, the philosophical disposition to take no thing as ultimate. However, the technology they use was designed to articulate destruction of just such idolatries as support their aims, including idolatry of the Koran. By throwing the Koran — and their savagery — on the Internet, they create subjection of the Koran — and themselves — to critical examination. Islamists cannot survive critical examination.

Idolatry, as the prophets of Israel and Christianity have pointed out consistently, is not a good idea. It can be neither defended nor maintained. It must succumb to the inevitable attack that its colossal stupidity invites.

On the other side of critical examination of the Koran, with corresponding loss of respect for Islam inside and outside of Islam, is a restoration of Islam comparable to the developing restoration of Christianity. Let us pray God the restoration of Islam is sooner than later coming.

A restoration of Judaism as an independent religion will never occur because it is bound, irrevocably, to Christianity as a child is bound to the parent to whom destiny assigned it. By itself, Judaism is an array of attitudes, not a religion.

Update 1: An American Evangelical Pastor, Jeff Sanders, writing at PJMedia has made an excellent start comparing Bible and Koran:

Startling Similarities (and Contrasts) Between the Bible and the Quran

Six Startling Contrasts Between the Bible and the Quran

I commented twice:

Jeff, with this work you tread the specific path blazed by Reimarus in his posthumously published Fragments.  Parallel and even wider paths — in text criticism of sacred literature — were trod by Jesus, Paul, Jerome, Augustine, Francis, Luther and Tillich.

As you must know, Muslim scholars disallow text criticism of the Koran on pain of death.  Always have, especially after they rewrote Mohammed (mostly the second part of the Koran).  In this way they made idols of both the book and the man.  Thus their intemperance with respect to the same.

However, by pushing into civilization and countries developed by the Latin Church, said Muslim scholars have driven into the world’s most efficient and successful idol shredder.  Did they but know it.  Part of their angry posture now is conjured by their frustration at having realized their mistake … of walking into their nemesis thinking they were spreading the glory of Allah.

and:

Excellent, thanks!!!  For even more extensive examinations in the same direction, by an Anglican Vicar, Linguist and Theologian, see The Rev. Dr. Mark Durie.

My own contributions to the subject is here.

Update 2: The biggest roll up of them all, if true, and I suspect it is: MBS has ordered text criticism of the Haditha.  I learned of this from a commenter, James Dill, at a post by Steven Hayward at Power Line.  Hayward has been following the Saudi internal cleansing for Team PL.  Here are comments others made and to which I responded chasing this subject at Steven’s post:

James Dill:

Exegesis in Sunni Islam?

According to the Saudi Minister of Culture and Information Awwad Bin Saleh al-Awwad, a council of senior scholars will be established for the complex and will consist of prominent Hadith scholars in the world.  They will, the UAE’s National tells us: … look to “eliminate fake and extremist texts and any texts that contradict the teachings of Islam and justify the committing of crimes, murders and terrorist acts.”

Why is this potentially such a big deal?  Because the texts that they’re talking about potentially assessing as fake and eliminating are among the Ahadith (hadith).

David R, Graham:

Thank you, I had not seen this.  And yes, this IS a VERY BIG deal.  (Sorry, heuristic considerations drove me to the caps.)

For years I have mentioned that text criticism (of the several standard types) of Islamic literature, including Koran — and if they do Hadith, they will get to Koran, as Zafar implies, because of the logic of the effort — is the only sure way to defeat the Salafi and Shia Jihads (hegemonic puritanisms, which all puritanisms are, e.g., SJWs/Progressives/Lefties here today).  So, some Sauds grasp that fact as well.  This is indeed good news.

Luther’s 95 Theses rested on and invited text criticism of key Christian literature, to include the Bible.  Text criticism was their engine and the engine of the Reformation.  So yeah, Hayward is right, the Arabs had their Enlightenment before they had its precursor, Reformation.  An irony there is that Wahhab commenced the Salafi Jihad specifically to counter the several (by country) Enlightenments in the orbit of the Latin Church.

The Bush/Obama/Brennan/Clinton/McCain/Deep State/Globalist New World Order delenda est, thanks to text criticism.

Alan Saunders:

If only the British stood by their WWI allies the Hashemites.

David R. Graham:

Alan Saunders Indeed. Both Lawrence and Allenby argued for the Hashemites.  The British FO (i.e., The East India Co., who needed coaling stations along the east and west coasts of Arabia), their suspected (and actual) traitor St. John Philby (Kim’s father) and the puritan stoner Woodrow Wilson flipped British/US policy to favor sheep stealer Ibn Saud, who had sat out the war, unlike Faisal the Hashemite, who fought the war and whom Lawrence and the British Army (Allenby) supported doing so.

It was a geo-political betrayal of the first water by Wilson and the British FO.  Later, the American Charles Crane, representing Standard Oil, standardized US-Saudi relations by setting up ARAMCO after oil was discovered in eastern Arabia, al Saud lands and some not, but soon to be.

Hashemites left western Arabia, moved to Iraq and Jordan, but left in western Arabia the congeniality (Mutazilite Islam) with modernity MBS is now exploiting to draw tourism there.  Basically, al Saud has decided to make an effort — historically, they shun labor, prefer theft and slaves — to become self-reliant.

Amit Rege:

I hope the new Saudi rulers stop their funding of mosques and charities across the world.  This will defund the radicals all over the world.

Steve Hayward:

Precisely.  I’ll be looking for information about that in the coming months.  It’s very high risk for the crown prince: it was the Shah’s modernizations in Iran in the 1970s that helped fuel the fundamentalist revolutions against him.

David R. Graham:

Steve Hayward modernizations were land ownership changes, deep ones, forced.  White Revolution.  Impacted ayatollahs, who led the counter-attack.  Difference now, I think, is Saudi clergy-police also want modern world (facts), having been convinced (battlefield, al-Sisi, Trump) Salafism is a losing bet.

So, yes, key indicator will be whether or not Saudi funding of Salafi mosques/clerics around the world scales down or not.  I am very glad you are on this one, probably, IMO, the single most important generative engine currently functioning.  And POTUS Trump approves it.

Stuff is going on to which we, or at least I, have no access.  I get the feeling things officially talked about as in the future are things about which decisions are already made and executions in train.

The world is sated with analysts.
It is desperate for craftsmen.
And by world I do not mean voters.
I mean the dimension of spirit, geist, pneuma.

If you lie, cheat or steal,
you have no prestige in this world or the next.
If you tolerate those who lie, cheat or steal,
you are condemned in this world and the next.

Update 3: The Rev. Dr. Mark Durie: Ishmael Is Not The Father Of The Arabs

Update 4: Robert Spencer: Muslim leader calls for removal of parts of Qur’an that ‘promote terrorism,’ Muslim cleric calls for his beheading

AUM NAMAH SHIVAYA