Quote:
Originally Posted by CastleBravo
Some time ago I read an article which set forth the premise that Judeo-Christian societies were guilt based, and Muslim societies were shame-based. The upshot was that the two societies percieve apologies quite differently. The guilt based look upon self abasement as a renewal from which mistakes are corrected, while shame based look on the same thing as a further slide into the abiss.
Now again this was some time ago when I read the piece, but that is what I took away from it.
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Put in a nutshell, that is true.
It is a very dangerous misperception of us Westerners to think that gestures and habits we are used to in the West necessarily must cause the same social or cultural reaction in the occident. There are no universal values shared by all people, even when thinking of earthly realisations of basic things like searching for happiness and avoiding pain - some strange people eventually see it right the other way around! Even less there is a shared basis in specific cultural and religious values between the West and Islam. After several futile years of trying to see it individually, I tend to generalise now that everybody who claims that Islam and Christianity share the same foundation in values and share the same morals and goals, simply does not know what he/she is talking about, and can come to his indifferentiated views only by ignoring very massively all the details that separate both ideologies so very fundamentally. These differences already start with the historic figures who are seen as being responsible for having caused both ideologies to exist. Jesus and Muhammad, as one concludes on them by the descriptions in the four Gospels and the claimed original quoting that the Quran is understood to be - hardly can be any more different. that it is said that all three major religions root on one and the same Abraham, means almost nothing, and is rated by me as opportunistic rethorics. Judaism is founded on Abraham. Christinaity reformated Judaism twice, and quite fundamentally, from the revenging psychotic and tyrannic Vulcan God of the Thora to the transcendended, mystic one-reality Jesus metaphorically pointed at, and then again the loving, all-forgiving old grandfather of the Protestants after they left their Calvinistic sado-maso-phase behind a bit. On the other hand: Muhammad, a conqueror, slayer, Godfather, slave trader, tyrant and massmurderer who spelled relgious doom on those not following him, and tried to subjugate and dominate foreign powers and internal critics alike by use of war, violence, blackmailing and intimidation.
Loud mocking laughter from me whenever it is claimed that Jesus and Muhammad taught the same message, and their followers were of the same kind.