A few days ago I saw a video on YouTube with The Young Turks founder Cenk Uygur. He was talking about how as a student he got very excited about philosophy and thought of majoring in the subject. When he went to talk with his professor, the professor asked which philosopher he wished to study. Cenk’s response was, “Yeah, yeah, no, no, when do I become the philosopher?” And the professor laughed: “That’s preposterous. How dare you think you could actually become a philosopher, like think for yourself.” Cenk, to himself: “You guys are wasting your life analyzing other philosophers? I don’t want to study other philosophers. I want to create my own philosophy.”¹

I think the same thing should apply to the study of religions. We need to study religions so as to create our own religions – taking the best of each and rejecting the outdated or irrelevant.

Let’s start with Islam:

Each week I go to a private place (not a cafe) where I can be alone and read without interruption. And I look forward to spending a few hours catching up on the news and listening to online news and videos. Several months ago this very loud janitor started interrupting my peaceful reveries by yelling loudly into his cellphone while sweeping the floors. So I tried to ignore him and didn’t think much of him until one day I saw him in a corner of the plaza hidden behind a large pole on his prayer rug and I completely turned around my feelings towards him. To me, he was now a fellow “man of God” and I loved him.

Though Koran comes from the root word meaning “to read” or “to recite,” it also comes from the root word meaning “city” or civilization.² And it seems to me that Islam reached its greatest effect in the civilizing influence it had on the Arab society of the time. Arab society before Islam was largely oral and polytheistic and nomadic. Islam united a largely diverse population and diverse belief systems. Monotheism brought people together and helped facilitate the emergence of larger kingdoms. Also, Islam helped bring everyone under a common law – Sharia – and this helped not only politically, but economically, by making trade and travel less risky than it was before.³

The basic concepts of the Koran:⁴

1) The unity of God (or Tawhid) or monotheism.

2) Sharia law: submit to the laws of God as outlined in the Koran. These laws relate to religious practices, social behavior, family, dietary laws and even laws of warfare.

3) Prophets as God’s messengers: Abraham, Moses, and Jesus were all prophets. Muhammad was the last prophet.

4) Submission to God through service to others.

5) Struggle for justice or jihad both inwardly and outwardly.

6) Accountability of deeds on the Day of Judgment.

The Koran itself is regarded as a miracle, since Muhammad was illiterate at the time of its inception.

“The Koran is not meant for one time and one people, but for all people and for all time, until the end of time,” says Sohaib Sultan, author of The Koran for Dummies.⁵ Unlike Judaism which considers itself a chosen people, Islam is meant for everybody. And if you don’t believe, then you are considered kafir, which means ungrateful, a “rejecter of faith” or “denier of God’s Signs and Blessings.”⁶

Muhammad once told his companions that “the greatest jihad is to speak the truth in front of a tyrant ruler.”⁷

To me, Islam, at least in its fundamentalist, literalist interpretation, could be considered such a tyrant ruler. Why can’t I be grateful to God and to all existence on my own terms? Why do they have to be on the terms of the archangel Gabriel, who allegedly spoke for God as he commanded Muhammad to “Recite!”?

In Surah 4 of the Koran titled “The Women,” it says: “Men are in a position of authority over women in as much as God has favored them with certain capabilities, and in as much as they spend their money on maintaining women.” It goes on to say: “Good righteous women are dignified and keep covered what God kept covered of the anatomy. Those who you have reason to fear their deviation, reason with them, punish them by refusing to have relations with them, and some you may have to get going on their way. Once the deviation is corrected, do not ever take advantage of them; God is Supreme and Exalted.”⁸

Where these the words of Gabriel? Of God? Or of the compilers of the Koran. Certainly they would not pass the test of today’s liberated Western consciousness.

Or how about these words from the same Surah 34: “If two men among you commit indecency, they will have to pay a price for doing it. If they repent and correct their ways, leave them alone; God is Forgiving and Merciful.”⁹

How could God or Gabriel or Muhammad not be held at least remotely responsible for the use of these ayahs by the indiscriminate Islamic State (IS) as justification to throw homosexuals off buildings in 2016:

Before a crowd of men on a street in the Syrian city of Palmyra, the masked Islamic State group judge read out the sentence against the two men convicted of homosexuality: They would be thrown to their deaths from the roof of the nearby Wael Hotel.

He asked one of the men if he was satisfied with the sentence. Death, the judge told him, would help cleanse him of his sin.

“I’d prefer it if you shoot me in the head,” 32-year-old Hawas Mallah replied helplessly. The second man, 21-year-old Mohammed Salameh, pleaded for a chance to repent, promising never to have sex with a man again, according to a witness among the onlookers that sunny July morning who gave The Associated Press a rare firsthand account.

“Take them and throw them off,” the judge ordered. Other masked extremists tied the men’s hands behind their backs and blindfolded them. They led them to the roof of the four-story hotel, according to the witness.”¹⁰

This 2016 Associated Press article went on to say: “At least 36 men in Syria and Iraq have been killed by IS militants on charges of sodomy, according to the New York-based OutRight Action International, though its Middle East and North Africa coordinator, Hossein Alizadeh, said it was not possible to confirm the sexual orientation of the victims.”¹¹

In other words, they didn’t even have to be gay to be thrown off a building. Just to appear gay.

Okay, this is an extreme example of the “religulous,” as comedian Bill Maher put it in his 2008 movie mocking religions.¹² But fundamentalist, literalist beliefs in every religion make Maher’s job really easy.

On the other hand, there is Sufism, the mystical arm of Islam. Sufism seeks the esoteric meanings of Islam. Muhammad himself is considered by Sufis to be the first Sufi. Outside of Muhammad, the most well known Sufi is probably Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī, more popularly simply as Rumi. Rumi was a 13th-century Persian Sunni Muslim poet, jurist, Islamic scholar, theologian, and Sufi mystic.¹³

Rumi, who had lost the most important person in his life, a fellow mystic named Shams, knew loss, and Rumi translated his feelings for the loss of his friend to his feelings about being lost from God: “Listen to the story told by the reed, of being separate. ‘Since I was cut from the reedbed, I have made this crying sound. Anyone separate from someone he loves understands what I say, anyone pulled from a source longs to go back.’”¹⁴

But not only is it our love for God, Rumi states, but God’s love for us is even greater. From Muhammad’s Hadith qudsi: “God saith: Whoso seeketh to approach Me one span, I approach him one cubit; and whoso seeketh to approach Me one cubit, I approach him two fathoms; and whoever walks towards Me, I run towards him.”¹⁵

Huston Smith, author of “The World’s Religions,” is probably at the other end of the spectrum from Bill Maher. Religions and the religious impulse are to be respected. The Bill Mahers of the world believe in science. Yay Science! Seeing is believing!

But even science teaches us today that there is nothing observed which is unaffected by the observer. Those who believe in science could really be classified in a religion all their own: scientism.

There is an underlying reality to the universe which cannot be seen. But I don’t think faith need be involved. Perhaps the correct word is knowing as in the Latin word gnosis. It’s not a knowing of facts and figures. It’s a spiritual knowing. A knowing from beyond the world of appearances. A knowing that could be called intuition. “Be still and know that I am God.” as it says in Psalms 46:10.

My own spiritual teacher, a man named Thane Walker (or Thane of Hawaii as he preferred in his later life) used the term mentation. That is a realization that you are the world. That the world you see is you.

Hindi Sri Anandamayi Ma explained: “I realized that the Universe was all my own manifestation.”¹⁶ And as Mary Pat Fisher says in Living Religions,“The aim of Zen practice is enlightenment, often experienced as the flash of insight known as satori. One directly experiences the interrelatedness of all existence, often in a sudden recognition that nothing is separate from oneself. As one Zen master put it:

“The moon’s the same old moon,
The flowers exactly as they were.
Yet I’ve become the thingness
Of all the things I see!”¹⁷

Or, as Tye Sheridan (playing the part of the son) in the movie Last Days in the Desert¹⁸ says: “I walk out [in the desert], too. Sometimes when I’m out there, I feel this thing rising inside me, that I am everything and that everything is me. That I will always be alive. Forever.”

And, as I have discovered on my own, it’s not just that all things are connected, but all events are connected.

Or how about the Christian Saint Joseph of Cupertino? He was so enthralled with God that at the very mention of His name he would go into ecstasy and levitate. His nickname was “Bocca Aperta,” Latin for “Open Mouth” because he would inevitably fall into a state of open-mouthed rapture.¹⁹

With the realization that we are the world, there is no need for the Ten Commandments. Killing others would be equivalent to killing yourself. Lusting after others would be equivalent to lusting after yourself. Stealing from others would be stealing from yourself. And how couldn’t you love God if God is you?

As 17^th century philosopher Angelus Silesuis said, “I know God could not live one moment without me.”²⁰

When I first read Huston Smith’s book The World’s Religions, he would describe each of the major religions so seductively that at the end of each chapter I would say, “Oh, yes, I want to become Buddhist.” Or “I want to become Hindu.” Or “I want to become Muslim.”

Muhammad himself was certainly a seductive man, at least to me. He was devote. He was stalwart. He was sincere. He was strong. He was handsome (at least in my mind). He married a woman older than him, who happened to be his employer and who became the chief supporter of his outrageous claims of divine intervention.

Muhammad was a husband, a father, a businessman, a warrior, a politician, and a prophet. Followers of Islam are encouraged to ask themselves, in effect, “What would Muhammad do?” But at least imitation of Muhammad is a real possibility, since Muhammad was a real human being.

On the other hand, Jesus was 100% human and 100% God, say some. Jesus was also very seductive. When others persecuted a wanton woman, Jesus asked those without sin to cast the first stone. When people were sick, he healed them. He saw through people and always knew the right thing to say and the right thing to do.

Jesus appealed to the common man because Truth is common to all who seek it. But Jesus claimed (or at least others claimed for him) that he was the only begotten son of God. And his followers were encouraged to ask themselves, in effect, “What would Jesus do?”

Well, Jesus would heal the cripple, the blind, the lame, the dead. How is one supposed to imitate that? That is, without claiming their own Godhood. And most Christians are just fine to, in effect, let Jesus do it.

The United States is a very practical country. There are only a very few religions which were actually born in this country. Perhaps the largest of which are Mormonism, Christian Science and maybe Scientology, if you believe, like the IRS does, that they are a religion. But Americans try to put religious truths to practical use.

In Christian Science, the religion in which I was raised, we were taught, that “Divine Mind always has met and always will meet every human need.”²¹ If Jesus could heal others (he never had to heal himself), why couldn’t we? I mean, mind is mind. And that means that my mind is just as holy and divine as the mind of Jesus. That is, if I am functioning from the divinity within myself.

The problem with most Christians (other than mystics) is that they are spiritually lazy. They are satisfied that their place in heaven is secured merely by having faith in Jesus as their personal lord and savior. And they pray to a God in Heaven who may or may not respond, depending on His (never Her) whim.

They don’t have to enter into the lion’s den like early Christian martyrs did. The book of Psalms says: “I have said, Ye are gods; and all of you are children of the most High.”²² And Jesus referred to this text in the book of John when he said: “Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are gods?”²³ So Jesus himself is said to have said, in effect: “No, I am not the only son of God. All of you are children of the most High.”

So if we are all the sons and daughters of God, don’t we have access to God in the same way that Jesus did? Of course we do.

Buddha also was a very seductive figure. He was born with a silver spoon in his mouth and he gave it all up for God and Truth and Enlightenment. And after he got it, he spent the rest of his life coming up with ways to help others achieve that same enlightenment.

The Jews have no charismatic central figure like Jesus or Muhammad or Buddha, but I’ve always admired the fact that Jewish law is never settled. It’s not written in stone, or if it is, it’s always open to debate. How American can you get? Debating the rules of religion like I am doing in this paper is perhaps an example of Talmudic debate.

As far as classifying themselves as the “chosen people,” what religion does not think it’s the best religion. If not, why would it even exist? At least Judaism is not a missionary religion like Christianity or Islam.

Islam claims it is the final revelation. It’s not. Neither are the Jews the only chosen people. The chosen people are those who choose themselves for the rigorous task of following the way of God, no matter where that path may lead.

And there will never be a final revelation. The universe is infinite, and we’ll keep on having revelations as long as the universe keeps on spinning. And that will be forever.

It’s time for a 21^st century religion. A religion based on all the fundamental truths at the base of the religions of the past. But without the institutionalization.

Let me quote from the introduction to Huston Smith’s The World’s Religions:

“Lincoln Steffens has a fable of a man who climbed to the top of a mountain and, standing on tiptoe, seized hold of the Truth. Satan, suspecting mischief from this upstart, had directed one of his underlings to tail him; but when the demon reported with alarm the man’s success—that he had seized hold of the Truth—Satan was unperturbed. ‘Don’t worry,’ he yawned. ‘I’ll tempt him to institutionalize it.’”²⁴

That’s why we need to take Cenk Uygur’s advice and create our own philosophy, and our own religion.

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