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Topic: praying five times a day...
| Author | Message |
| UGoGirl | Posted – 7/24/2007 7:51:02 PM | show profile ... I'm all for it. Pray to Allah, God, the creator of all. Pray to the global consciousness, pray before your meals, meditate. Ask for wisdom, patience, guidance. I don't do it (at least not five times a day) and in fact I don't even characterize it as praying, in general I think it's a very healthy practice (assuming you are not praying for the slaughter of those infidels or muslims, etc. etc.). I don't think God, Allah, or the creator needs us to pray, but I think we need to take a few minutes out of our day every so often and be present, in the moment, stop and smell the roses and seek some peace and focus to the day. |
| Bleak Spouse | Posted – 7/24/2007 7:52:43 PM | show profile screw allah... if some jerk never came up with the fictional character of allah, there'd be a lot more peace in the world. |
| Mag Girl | Posted – 7/24/2007 8:14:54 PM | show profile Bleak, you could say the same thing about a number of religions. Ever hear of the Crusades? Let's not get into a religious generalization fight on here...we're all smarter than that. |
| Bleak Spouse | Posted – 7/25/2007 5:13:03 AM | show profile what can i say. i'm not a fan of allah. |
| Iron Eagle | Posted – 7/25/2007 8:00:21 AM | show profile Why not choose to do something poistive five times a day like not stoning the wife.. |
| chucho | Posted – 7/25/2007 10:58:05 AM | show profile This is a bait post if I've ever read one. Screw Allah? I'm godless so I kind of agree, especially since Allah is the Christian and Jewish god, too (yes, it all the same series of mythological stories taken from old Semitic texts and stories so it's the same god -- I find it humorous that a lot of Muslims view the Holy Trinity as polytheism, which is precisely what it is, but I digress.) As far as praying five times a day, it has the same qualities as meditation would, and it the kind of stuff you find in most religions. (Evangelical Christianity is the laziest in this regard. Get drunk and beat your wife on Saturday night, ask for forgiveness before bedtime, all is forgiven! Then you can beat your wife next Saturday night, ask for forgiveness, etcetera.) But why not just meditate? It does the same thing. PS -- All the stereotypes aside, I find it quaint that Christians get all high and mighty about misogynists in Islam when all Abrahamic faiths are paternally oriented, seeped in the language of war, and discriminate against women. Keep in mind all three of these faiths originated in a group of bedou hicks in the sticks of Mesopotamia. Islam is the youngest off the three, so it's dealing with issues of orthodoxy that Christians were delaing with not too long ago. For example, w wife in the UNITED STATES could not press charges against her husband for rape until the 1980s. You've cone a long way is nuch short time baby! |
| Katie | Posted – 7/25/2007 11:21:37 AM | show profile | email poster Gratitude goes a long way and it opens your heart chakra as well..... |
| Iron Eagle | Posted – 7/25/2007 11:24:01 AM | show profile Chucho - many relgions have found ways to liberate women from the repressive stench of male domination. Islam needs a good whack in the chops. There are to many horror stories that aren't going away. I hope women are able to break the one-sideded dominance and become equal partners. Only then will they be able to defend themselves. Can't these guys just avert their eyes when they see a woman's leg without beating the crap out of them. |
| Bleak Spouse | Posted – 7/25/2007 11:49:06 AM | show profile churcho: You're godless now but will you reach out to Allah on your death bed? |
| sue ellen mischke | Posted – 7/25/2007 12:26:33 PM | show profile paying? i don't get it. why? for what? doesn't make sense to me. sorry. seems like a waste of precious time. |
| sue ellen mischke | Posted – 7/25/2007 12:44:36 PM | show profile i meant praying... i get paying. paying makes sense. praying...not so much. |
| Mag Girl | Posted – 7/25/2007 1:02:51 PM | show profile Fundamentalism in any religion is bad. It's *fundamentalist* people of Islamic faith who treat their women horribly. Just like *fundamentalist* Christians who put women in a subservient place. Those that scream the loudest are usually the ones most often heard... don't confuse focused media attention for blanket truth and practice across a religion - any religion. |
| Iron Eagle | Posted – 7/25/2007 2:14:29 PM | show profile well put Mag Girl. I've seen a few beautiful Iranian, Algerian films on these subjects that cut to the heart of the injustice. My hopes are always with the women. Check out The Apple. |
| Bleak Spouse | Posted – 7/25/2007 4:25:39 PM | show profile >>>Just like *fundamentalist* Christians who put women in a subservient place. And it's not just the men -- I've met hardcore chrtistian women who relish their role as subservient in a marriage. I dated a girl in college who told me her parents were a bad example for her because her mother was the dominate one in the marriage. And that she needed to marry a Christian leader (which she did). What was interesting to me was that if I was reading a book on religion that wasn't relate to her beliefs it would make her upset and she'd tell me to put it down and pick up the Bible instead (for instead, a book on Buddhism, or even a book written by a Catholic). So yeah, you don't have to tell me about crazy Christian fundamentalists cause I made the mistake of dating one. |
| Mag Girl | Posted – 7/25/2007 4:34:04 PM | show profile Bleak, I know- that's why I said fundamentalist Christians, not fundamentalist Christian *men* :) I grew up in the South- I know alllll about fundamentalist Christians. So then you get my point about fundamentalism and that it's not being muslims in general or the name Allah being the cause of "evil." |
| sue ellen mischke | Posted – 7/25/2007 4:35:06 PM | show profile the world would be a peaceful place without religion... |
| Mag Girl | Posted – 7/25/2007 4:38:49 PM | show profile oh, I dunno Angela...I'd like to think that too, but I think mankind will always find something to fight about. Men have fought each other since the beginning of time, for various reasons. Territory, access to food and resources, I have to depose that guy to avenge my daddy, that prince stole my woman... |
| Iron Eagle | Posted – 7/25/2007 4:45:47 PM | show profile I'm reading Christopher Hitchen's book at the moment. |
| UGoGirl | Posted – 7/25/2007 9:43:17 PM | show profile Really, Chucho, I wasn't trying to start a fight with this post, but I'm not surprised it got ugly fast. I got to thinking about this a couple of days ago when I was out for an early morning walk. At about 6 am when almost no one is out and about where I live, I passed by these two guys who clearly (to me) seemed to be taking a moment at the beginning of the day to pray. I thought they must be Muslims, but they had a landscaping business, which stereotypically is run by Hispanics (here at least). So I don't really know. But I thought that when we see Muslims praying, for most of us I think our first reaction is something like they're different, odd, maybe even scary. And yet, I think praying is very much along the same lines as meditating, or saying a Christian prayer.. etc. etc. And (Angela) why pray at all, what's the use? Well I'm just about 100% sure that I won't even pique your genuine interest in this topic through this argument, but here goes... I know this will probably sound very far out, new agey, but I believe that there is a little bit of God in all of us and in everything around us. And taking a few moments to be quiet and listen instead of letting that nonstop chatter continue chattering in our mind, can be very helpful, very grounding. Think about it... have you ever been at a point in your life when you couldn't stand yourself. Well, who is the you who was not able to stand yourself? I think we have our chattering, judgmental, busy, neurotic ego that is the voice constantly going on and on in our heads. And then we have our true selves, the part of ourselves that goes on and on beyond our time in this body, that represents our true selves, our wise selves, our selves most connected to God. And the more we can keep at bay that neurotic, chattering, judgmental self (ego) and stay at the higher level, the more at peace we'll be. But it takes some quiet time and reflection. Mind you, I spend the vast majority of my life with that chittering, chattering, egotistical ego self, but I'm trying to let me true self shine through (and be totally in the moment) at least a little bit during the day. |
| chucho | Posted – 7/26/2007 7:17:02 AM | show profile >> Chucho - many relgions have found ways to liberate women from the repressive stench of male domination. << One thing I think Christianity has to its credit: a liberal God. Jesus was the Hippie Semitic prophet. But still, in America women couldn't vote until the 20's and, as I pointed out before, a husband could rape his wife and there was nothing she could do about it into the 1980's. Women are still paid less and the evangelicals are robbing them of access to fmaily planning (by shutting down Planned Parenthood clinics, poor women are shit out of free OBGYN services, not just abortion). How about American Christians focus on their issues with woman beofre pretending to know what's in the minds of Muslim women? By the way, Hindus are pretty paternalistic and can be very mysogynistic, too. I know a Brhaman guy (a liberal humanist who eats meat, including beef) who has an uncle who is such a fundamentalist Hindu that he will not eat ANYTHING that isn't cooked by his wife IN THE NUDE after she bathes! Seriously. It's like a fundamentalist Hindu thing. This guy's wife has to cook naked and is shut off from the rest of the household until she's done. And I sem to recall that Bauddists don't allow women to become monks (or most of the sects do this, not sure). So, you're wrong. Many religions have varying degrees of mysogyny and paternalism (custody over women). And Christinaity, as I mentioned before, is the most "user friendly" and it allows a very easy process for absolving ones self of sin. This allows a lot of religiously sanctioned bad behvior. (Sinning is bad, but if you sin it's very easy to "cleanse" yourself. It doesn't do much to keep men from being pigs andabusive spouses in that context.) The abuse of women is still a lingering problem in the self-righteous Christian society in the United States. >> Islam needs a good whack in the chops. << All self-righteous evanglelical religions need a whack in the chops. But yah I agree that it's time for Ilsam to go through its own Reformation. Won't happen any time soon, and it doesn't help when Americans and Europeans paint all Muslims withthe same brush. (HINT: American Muslims have an average of 4.3 years of college education, are wealthy, don't use the niqab (the women's Islamic ninja mask, which isnot mentioned in the Quran) as a political statement, and are not terrorists.) >> Can't these guys just avert their eyes when they see a woman's leg without beating the crap out of them. << I agree completely. I have a couple of young (attractive and single) Muslim Saudi women freinds that LIKE the gender segregation (single men drink at the proverbial separate water ofuntins) precisly because so many Arab men behave like pigs. And I also assure you that Arab women aren't waiting for the Bush admiinstration to swoop in and rescue them. In fact, the more the Bush amdinistation spews this horse shit, the more women and men in the Muslims world are radicalized. |
| chucho | Posted – 7/26/2007 7:17:21 AM | show profile >> churcho: You're godless now but will you reach out to Allah on your death bed? << Nope. Life after death is identical to life before birth. I live for now as a moral humanist, and am pretty darn sure unless I go insane I will be that way to the end. It happens. PS -- That dumb platitude about "no atheists in foxholes"? Please. Let me give you my version: there are no truly religiously faithful people in foxholes. As soon as death is staring them in the face, the good old fashioned instinct for survival kicks in most of us, because we want to live to eat and fuck another day. >> Fundamentalism in any religion is bad. It's *fundamentalist* people of Islamic faith who treat their women horribly. Just like *fundamentalist* Christians who put women in a subservient place. Those that scream the loudest are usually the ones most often heard... don't confuse focused media attention for blanket truth and practice across a religion - any religion. << AMEN! >> I've met hardcore chrtistian women who relish their role as subservient in a marriage. << IMO: Marriage is a contract of paternal custody over women. That's pretty much how it originated everywhere. It's one step away from the awful dowry system. >> nd yet, I think praying is very much along the same lines as meditating, or saying a Christian prayer.. etc. etc. << Of course it is! And I've had Muslims tell me as much. I had even one guy explain how the supplicating involves placing the "chakra" points on the ground. Also keep in mind the whol spirit of the Muslim prayer: it's about supplication. It originated with the very Christ-like concept that you bow before your enemy on earth. It's supposed to be about humility and making peace. Obviously, it's being warped horribly by a bunch of savage pricks, but still. I have lived in two Islamic countries and when I first arrived I was a little freaked out by the call to prayer and flummoxed by this adherence to praying five times a day (especially the pre-dawn prayer: which begins with the call "Prayer is better than sleep" in Arabic and is done around 4:30 a.m. to give people time to wake up and get to the mosque -- other than that the muezzin's call is the same for all of them: "God is great, repeated, Come for success, repeated" (I'm paraphrasing a bit).) I went to a rock and roll jam session witha group of liberal Arab Muslims. At the sunset prayer they put down their instruments and prayed right in the music room. It was funny to me because east happened to be where the 42-inch plasma television was sitting, so it looked like they were praying to the teevee. But anyway, I mentioned to them "Man, this is still weird to me to see that" and they paughed and said basically "Relax, dude." |
| sue ellen mischke | Posted – 7/26/2007 10:06:02 AM | show profile Ugo...when I get to the point where I can't stand myself...I simply change at least one little thing in my life...and things are better. I doubt asking a higher being to help me stop hating myself would do the trick. It's far too passive. And as far as I'm concerned, the only part of ourselves that lives on after our heart stops beating is the memory of us carried by those who knew us... |
| chucho | Posted – 7/26/2007 10:09:04 AM | show profile Here's a good one from the WaPo written by a reformed jihadist: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/20/AR2007072001808.html |
| UGoGirl | Posted – 7/26/2007 10:28:53 AM | show profile Angela, but perhaps you are fine just the way you are without changing a thing. That's the point. |
| sue ellen mischke | Posted – 7/26/2007 10:14:03 PM | show profile Ugo...there isn't one of us on this planet who is fine the way she/he is...always room for improvement or change. |
