Buddhism started to become a world religion when Buddha welcomed the Untouchable Svasti into the Sangha ( his group of followers). Jesus began a world religion it seems when he told the parable of the good Samaritan ( people disliked by the Jews) and later through the missionary work of Paul. Just when did Islam open the door to non-Arabs? Was there a particular event to mark this change, as it began as a religion for Arabs?

When Muhammad first started street preaching in Mecca/Mekkah with only his family members in tow, people only tolerated him because it seems he was preaching a little bit of peace then and there. But just as soon as others signed on from outside his immediate family and his little band grew to approximately 70-100, this is when Muhammad started acting up and pissing off the locals with his power trip. Finally, after about 12 years they had enough of his power trip and ran him out of town. Muhammad fled to Yathrib (later named Medina). There were all sorts of Yathrib scourges running around who Muhammad especially targeted to band with him for their brute force capabilities. Soon, Muhammad and his clan of vagabonds committed many atrocities upon the local society, eventually over taking Yathrib and renaming it Medina. Muhammad pillaged and murdered passing caravans, murdered thousands of Jews, then sought his vengeance upon Mecca.

Once Muhammad took Mecca, all the while invoking "revelation" to suit his many needs, his power in the land along with his ever growing "army" of course continually expanded. The Muhammadans from then on sought to overtake everything. Hadiths were created a couple of hundred years and more after Muhammad came and went…further building upon the Islamic foundation.

@Islam Lite, you seem to forget all about the extant manuscripts all dating well within the 1st century, all the Church father writings well within the 1st century and 2nd century which could in fact completely recreate the Bible as seen today, not to mention the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the day of Pentecost – from which the 1st Church was established and thereafter ALL THE CHURCHES AND EVEN CATHECHISM of the 1st and 2nd centuries. Read Acts, which talks all about the Churches.

Also, you shouldn’t throw stones (as you do so often) otherwise, in this instance, I’ll have to insist you throw out each and every Hadith, because ya know….hundreds of years after Muhammad and all that (and lets get real – even the Quran came around after Muhammad a whole lot longer than Muslims will ever admit). Which reminds me, why is it again the oldest known Quran to exist – the Othman Quran – is in fact only 33% complete? You don’t even have an original oldest Quran as Muslims always claim they do, ha, Ha, HA!

AND, the Othman Quran has NEVER EVER EVEN been carbon dated! Oh, but now you have the Sana Manuscripts – a find most Muslims ignore or deny; now this is supposed to be the oldest Quran and guess what? It’s so very different than the Quran known today in Arabic! And forget about the English versions of the Quran, none of those even resemble the Arabic versions. AND WE ALL KNOW IT.

Mormon religion helps members find happiness. Ways to be happy and have joy in your life and with eternal families.

Talk to a Mormon Missionary – http://mormon.org
Talk to a Mormon – http://lds.net

Duration : 5 min 17 sec

lewis black explains religion

Duration : 0:5:57

                                            Religion And Fanaticism

26/11 Mumbai was under siege, some 20 odd young men brandishing AK 47 rifles went on a killing spree at a busy railway station, and five stars hotels killing hundreds. This incident brings back memories of the now infamous 9/11 where a handful of highly motivated, misguided souls took controls of aircrafts and banged into the World Trade Center destroying it completely and killing thousands. These incidents again make us realize how susceptible we are in the face of such terror activities, where a group of highly trained and motivated people inflict so much pain and agony to the innocents. The very fact that the actors who perpetrate these acts are ready to die makes them more dangerous, because the very fear of death, the ultimate fear, itself is absent from their psyche and hence they can go to any extent to inflict terror in the minds of people, or they can go to any extent to get the authorities to bend on their knees. The very pertinent example would be the Hijack of Indian Airlines Flight IC 864 to Afghanistan. Their ( Of the hijackers, who were mainly terrorist from Pakistan owing allegiance to Taliban ) demand from the then Indian Government was to get their 20 operatives released from various jails that they were put in and Indian Government had to give in to their pressures as lives of 265 innocent Indians were at stake. The Pilots of the United Airlines aircrafts very well knew that their lives will be snuffed in seconds when they saw the world trade center getting larger and larger in front of their wind screens. Their psychology was so strong that with the knowledge of their death in seconds they kept flying straight into World Trade Center.

Unfortunately majority of such terrorist activities are perpetrated by the religious fanatics of Islam. Such tendencies are not limited to Islam alone but it is seen mostly in the abhramic religion ie Islam Christianity and Judaism. I urge my readers not to misunderstand me as I revere all religion as no religion in the world tells its followers to go and kill in the name of religion. In its essence and origin, Islam is a religion of mercy and peace, of kindness and tolerance, and of knowledge and enlightenment; it is not a religion of violence, fanaticism and ignorance.

What happens is that because of a miniscule group of misguided souls the entire religion and the followers of it suffers. The pain that a innocent Muslim goes through when their religion becomes the center stage of any terrorist activity is very evident in the following article written by a Muslim devout in Khalij Times. I reproduce that letter verbatim for my readers.

“Khaleej Times: No Time to Hide for Muslims by Aijaz Zaka Syed (View from Dubai )

  Every time innocents are targeted in the name of Islam around the world, one can’t face one’s non-Muslim friends and colleagues.  I feel like burying myself in the ground.  Growing up in a religious family, one never thought one would see the day when being a Muslim could be a source of shame.

A distraught friend who has devoted her life to speaking and fighting on behalf of Arabs and Muslims wrote in yesterday saying “I’ve had it with the Arabs and Muslims and Islamic militancy. Forgive me but I am throwing in the towel.”

I couldn’t write back to her but understood her pain…  She grew up in Mumbai and is understandably upset.

My friend went on to say: “The Muslims and Islam have a problem and only they can solve it.  If they do not, the whole world will turn against them.”

Can you blame the world if it’s turning against Muslims? What do you expect when not a single day passes without the name of our faith being dragged through the mud by fellow believers around the world?

Is this what Islam and the noble Prophet teach and stand for?

It’s all very well for us to say Islam has nothing to do with extremism and terrorism.  We can go on deluding ourselves these psychopaths do not represent us.

However, the world finds it hard to accept this line of argument because it sees the extremists increasingly assert themselves and take the centre-stage while the mainstream Islam remains silent.” 

 Religion seems to offer a particularly fertile matrix, in which fanaticism can grow, is religious belief itself the cause of fanaticism? Or is religion simply one of many catalysts that can transform desperation into extremism? We might find the answers in the teachings of the Founders of the world’s major religious systems. What do they say about fanaticism and religious zeal? Did they espouse it or promote it? And if not, where does it come from?

Some particularly sharp insights may be found in the Bahá’í Writings. Bahá’u'lláh clearly condemned fanaticism of all kinds. In a statement that seems to foreshadow our times, He wrote:

Religious fanaticism and hatred are a world-devouring fire, whose violence none can quench. The Hand of Divine power can, alone, deliver mankind from this desolating affliction.

(Epistle to the Son of the Wolf, p. 13

Religion itself breeds fanatics. If the teachings of the Manifestations of God had been followed, fanaticism would never have taken root within the religions they established. We can say this because fanaticism and hatred are so clearly contrary to their explicit teachings. It uses religion as a tool to further aims that have nothing to do with true religion. If we use a hammer to open a jar, we’re going to destroy the jar. Hammers are not meant for opening jars, and they are powerful enough tools to do considerable damage when misused. Religion is one of the most potent forces known to humanity. Misused, it is capable of doing correspondingly great damage.

Why do the fanatics succeed? The answer lies in a short story. A man whose family was German aristocracy prior to World War II, Owned a number of large industries and estates. When asked how many German people were true Nazis, the answer he gave can guide our attitude toward fanaticism. ‘Very few people were true Nazis,’ he

said, ‘but many enjoyed the return of German pride, and many more were

too busy to care. I was one of those who just thought the Nazis were a

bunch of fools. So, the majority just sat back and let it all happen.

Then, before we knew it, they owned us, and we had lost control, and

the end of the world had come. My family lost everything. I ended up

in a concentration camp and the Allies destroyed my factories. The essence of this story is simple. The terrorists are very small in number but they are very cohesive. Their negative attitude is cohesive as well. Therefore they can inflict so much pain. The good and peace loving people are much much larger in number but are not cohesive at all and hence their positivity and goodness does not percolate down the society. The fanatics are so cohesive that the fanatics rule Islam at this moment in history. It is the fanatics who march. It is the fanatics who wage any one of 50 shooting wars worldwide. It is the fanatics who systematically slaughter Christian or tribal groups throughout Africa and are

gradually taking over the entire continent in an Islamic wave. It is the fanatics who bomb, behead, murder, or honor-kill. It is the fanatics who take over mosque after mosque. It is the fanatics who zealously spread the stoning and hanging of rape victims and

homosexuals. It is the fanatics who teach their young to kill and to

become suicide bombers. Peace-loving Germans, Japanese, Chinese, Russians , Rwandans, Serbs, Afghans, Iraqis, Palestinians, Somalis, Nigerians, Algerians, Indians including Sikhs, Hindus, Muslims and many others have died because the peaceful majority did not speak up until it was too late.

Each religion brings out its own doctrines and insists upon them as being the only true ones. And not only does it do that, but also it thinks that he who does not believe in them must go to some horrible place. Some will even draw the sword to compel others to believe as they do. This is not through wickedness, but through a particular disease of human brain called fanaticism. They are very sincere, these fanatics, the most sincere of human beings; but they are quite as irresponsible as other lunatics in the world. This disease of fanaticism is one of the most dangerous of all diseases. All the wickedness of human nature is roused by it. Anger is stirred up, nerves are high strung, and human being becomes like tigers.”

Thus faith turns into fanaticism. The communal frenzy erupts and religious wars are fought with ensuing mass destruction and chaos. There is no doubt that more blood is shed on religious wars and persecution than on any other cause. But this is no fault of an individual. It is the evolutionary weakness. It is not a crafty design of one individual, or one particular religion. Our inability to convert faith into the knowledge of direct perception (of the truths as preached by the religious seers) is responsible for this. The mammal in us is still strong; we have as yet failed to evolve as complete human beings.

When a person embodies values like spiritual wisdom, purity of heart, qualities of universal love and altruism, we call him a saint or a sage. Sometimes such a person contributes to the welfare of humanity in such a great measure that he is referred to as God -the founder of a religion. Such examples are Sri Krishna, Jesus Christ, Lord Buddha, Mahavir, Guru Nanak, Sri Ramakrishna, Sri Aurobindo, and many more. The list is unending; we encounter such great souls in every religion of every continent and in every era.  These great souls have intuitive knowledge of oneness of human race. Their intuition is based on their experience or realization and conforms to rationality and reason. They speak from the experience of realization of Divinity acquired after transcending the limitations of body-mind complex. They have the direct knowledge of Reality. Millions of followers of these saints intellectually and emotionally grasp their message of love and compassion; but cannot claim to have experienced these values as direct knowledge. They believe in what the saints say.

None of the saints or their religion preaches hatred and killing. Every religion preach that humankind is a single family and the earth its common homeland. There is no place for fanaticism or the fanatics.

Amlan Roychowdhury
http://www.articlesbase.com/spirituality-articles/religion-and-fanaticism-699888.html

For a project. I thought I was ‘Pagan’ but I don’t know if thats correct.
And if you could, get me a website on the religion. (If you don’t thats fine)

THanks
Oh and one more thing, if you know this, is the religion that was most popular still used today?

They believed in the 12 Gods of Olympus as all Greeks in ancient times.
Greece is a Christian Orthodox country today.

A church has an endless number of ways that they can use a vinyl banner. From announcing a special event, to an everyday informational sign, a vinyl banner can be a cost effective way to purchase a necessary sign.

Here are a few ideas of how banners, both small and large, can be used at a church.

Banner Idea #1 – Service times. If your church has set service times, a small banner displayed in a banner stands can be very useful. This type of vinyl banner can be easily moved around when it is not in use, and brought back outside when it is needed. Service times can easily displayed on a permanent vinyl banner, which can be much more cost effective than have multiple temporary signs made.

Banner Idea #3 – Special Events. Churchs are known for holding community events, and a vinyl banner can be a great and inexpensive word to let the community know, and get them involved. This type of  vinyl banner can be used year after year, if the information displayed on the banner is general in nature. A general informative message pertaining to location and time the event will happen can be displayed on the banner.

If you choose a large custom banner, it can be hung outside of the church entrance, or on the wall of a room inside the church. Small banners can be displayed using banner stands, or by a more temporary method of hanging it on a wall.

Banner Idea #3 – Welcoming message. You can use a large vinyl banner to welcome your parishioners to your service. This type of custom banner should be hung either over the entrance to your building, or in the apse area of the church. This is a great way to get your welcoming message across easily, and the banner can be used for many years to come.

Banner Idea #4 – Congratulatory Messages and Announcements. Vinyl banners can work well to display a number of congratulatory messages that can be reused. For example, for a wedding service, a banner bearing a message could be displayed in the church hall or at the entrance to the church.

If your church is holding a christening or a baptism, once again, a banner could be used to announce the event. These banners can be general in nature, such as “Baptism Today” along with a Bible quote that is pertinent to the event.

Banner Idea #5 – Picnics and Events Held Outside the Church. If you regularly hold events that take place in another location, a banner will allow you to take your message with you. Mobility can be the key to attracting and notifying the community of what exactly is going on and this can be the perfect tool for that.

Vinyl banners can be hung indoors or outdoors and the fabric is made to withstand the rigors of the environment.

Hiring the right wedding videos Belfast institution to video your wedding day be a problematic procedure. You may also have thought about forgetting about the thought entirely.  Perhaps you may be more ready to expend the cash if you are convinced that the genuine  complete item will be fantastic .  To greatly enhance your wedding dvd make it a point to embody some of the subsequent aspects that are popular in good wedding videographers productions,  you have a great chance of getting something that is gratifying to you.  Get a hold of a business organisation  that are seasoned in the acts of subtlety, style and performance and you certainly will  be contented .

 Some thing it is advisable to bear in mind is that it is necessary to have a suitable provider  capture your wedding video. If you have an amateur version engineered by an unprofessional you may just not be over the moon with the video. A passionate enthusiast does not formulate videos for a job so their essentials tend not to be of quite as good industry-standard as your options simply need . Weddings could very well get darker in the night time, the light can turn in an instant in the morning, effective equipment is necessary to cover for it.  That is not all  it is a lot more than apparel that an amateur may possibly well not be experienced of.  It doesn’t necessarily coincide that  an friend or member of the family who goes to work in wedding videography for a livelihood are unable to do a professional job. Even so it normally takes working experience to make wedding videos look really superb.

You will want to make certain that the elegant notable and very important events are taken in full. This would represent that you are capturing all or considerable segments of the wedding and distinctive areas of the wedding party on top of that. Points you could possibly want to include are unquestionably the wedding cake slicing, the casting of the brides flowers and removing the garter and also other eminent instances. If you are  one designed for intamacy think about recording in advice from the wedding guests by having the videographer record the parties for you.

There are actually other sorts of little but serious items which you just see in remarkable wedding videographers production. You might be sure that that the camera view points that you are getting filmed at will get you to stand out, that the audio taken is actually of a platinum standard  to ensure you will manage to find out what is being expressed for the period of the vows thus, and that the editing and enhancing stuck between video portions generally flows.  A very important factor that the majority of qualified videographers draw on is to record a good deal more of the background actions than is demanded. The extra video can be struck  down to the ideal essentials mainly.

Do you know that Money is a form of cosmic energy and similar to all other energies, money has to be circulated , if not it will ” harden ” and resulting in difficulties subsequently. Money is also vital to everyone of us because we need it to buy services or goods from other people to fill our own needs and desires.

If we need money to go to flow our way and grow , we have to keep it circulating . This is a very simple theory yet it is not easy to understand . This not mean that if you have a purpose saving money under your bed , that is something viewed as useless !

Psychic Maria Duval recommends that we shoudn’t treat saving just for some “rainy days” ahead, but as a mean of developing the correct enthusiasm for work . Because financial success requires a certain enthusiasm in your daily tasks . Your emotion is what gives you the impetus the work for extra money.

Emotion spurs you towards your objective, assists you to remain strong in your tasks, and even makes your work easy and gratifying. If there is a lack of this emotional spur, saving money is very difficult. No matter how strong your determination is, it won’t make you a frugal person unless you have some kind of focus.

Some people rightly think that a stack of money can bring you calm of mind just in case of some disastrous times ahead. However, you need to differentiate between two different types of conduct depending on the emotion involved, namely, the negative feeling of worry or fear and positive psyche of love or fulfillment .

Some people are goaded purely by fear, which makes them want to put something by for a rainy day. But how uninspiring to live in continual fear of disaster ! How damaging this is to their psychological and spiritual balance, their spirit of initiative, enterprise and freedom. It’s better not to save at all than to live like this, don’t you think so?

For others, saving money regularly serves their desires to bring pleasure to themselves and people around them, like touring, go for trip , new car , helping the less fortunates, for their children’s training, and etc. And the energy of life, love and sharing is not blocked but helps to fuel focus and dreams in a positive and constructive way.

In the end, the benefit of saving money is really to boast your zeal for work as subconsciously, you will be growing ways to improve your work so that you learn more and earn more.

Baptism robes tend to be garments especially worn by initiates on the day they’re baptized into their faith. Occasionally, these words refer to what the clergy wears during the baptismal rite. They are usually white but baptism robes in pink intended for girls and pale blue for boys are available.

Throughout the Roman Empire, people were baptized while in the nude. Later, special apparel was developed for baptisms. The Eastern Orthodox religion specifies the fact that the initiate wears the actual robe for eight days. When he or she changes out of it and there’s an important celebration to commemorate the baptism. Most Catholics are christened as infants, but you’ll find special baptism robes for mature converts. Here the baptisms outfit for children is called a baptism gown which is typically long and white.

There are special garments to put on with regard to adult baptisms. They’re made to get soaked since baptism is by immersion of the body in water. The baptism robes are usually white and look similar to a choir gown which has no ornamentation. The Mormon Church makes it necessary that its male initiates wear white jumpsuits while women wear simple long dresses. A few Protestant churches just baptize their followers when infants. Others will simply baptize their followers after they have reached the adult years.

Presently there are dual lined gowns and culotte dresses to make sure modesty is guarded during the baptism so wearers do not need to wear different clothes beneath the robe. A majority of these are more expensive than all the conventional outfit.

Right up until the 19th century, infants usually were dressed in their best suit of clothes they had. During the Victorian times, expectant mothers would have stitched a baptism robe, embroider the edges and also the front, and enhance it with lace. A cap or a hood plus a knitted quilt would keep the baby cozy in a damp, cold church. Baptism robes were made for both boys and girls even though gowns were not as fancy for a boy as it was for the girl.

These days few new mothers hold the skill or time to sew an complex baptism robe. You’ll find online resources that cater to new mothers and fathers that are quite happy to spend up to many hundreds of bucks on the baptism robe. Some baptism outfits for boys and girls are made in huge amounts while others tend to be custom made. The sort of fabric, the lace and the quality of embroidery produced by hand or machines decides the fee.

Baptism garments can be purchased in a broad variety of materials starting from polyester, cotton to the priciest silk.  Baptism robes start at $50 to $70 in cost and may very easily cost hundreds of US dollars for the heirloom gowns which have been finished beautifully in imported lace and complex embroidery created by hand.

The web sites may also sell you specially made containers which will protect the color and the condition of the baptism robe so it could be handed down to the next generation and also to the one after that.

Did you know that no matter the occasion that you can easily make it special and original, and all your own? Our custom decal stickers feature your own wording and make fabulous personalized birthday favors. Shop our many designs that you’ll only find from New.Speedysigns.com to match your birthday party theme. We are all digital so you can be sure that there is no expensive type set up fee or anything like that, but we do offer the highest quality inks and materials to print it on, but those are inexpensive to you as well! You can order small quantities of your custom labels and decal stickers at affordable prices. The quality is amazing; you won’t believe how good your custom labels and decal stickers look!

Think about it, how impressed will you friend be at you planning their party with such enthusiasm, or to poke at your Father by declaring to the world he is now officially over the hill! Our custom-made aluminum signs or plastic corrugated signs can be a big hit. Choose from our funny designs or create your own using our online design tool. You can make custom signs say anything you want. You don’t even have to leave your chair. Design a birthday sign that says exactly what you want and see an instant preview. Of course once you have made your order we will direct it directly to your front step via UPS, and of course if you need a rush order on it, we do that too!

So when your buddy has reached the top of the hill or your child is now a teenager, celebrate in style with a funny birthday sign or decal stickers. You make the birthday party a hit with personalized  decal stickers. Our personalized Happy Birthday stickers will help make each birthday a special day! Great for parties, invitations, thank you notes, etc. Easy to use – just peel and stick. Our custom birthday decal stickers have a glossy finish.