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The Mohammedan Issue
However in his continuing role as an apologist for Mohammedism, he continues to display his philosophical naivety. In his response, he has employed the red herring tactic. In our first essay, the facts of the life and teachings of Mohammed were noted in summary. The intention was to let the devotee community understand wherefrom the Islamic terrorists drawn their life direction and justification for their increasingly numerous atrocities, which of course have fourteen hundred years of precedents. However, Satyaraja has not addressed the matter of the article in his response, but rather has simply offered off-the-point quotes from Srila Prabhupada that are apparently meant to validate Mohammed and the Koran.
These quotes are of two: firstly, statements by Srila Prabhupada that designate Mohammed as a saktyavesa-avatara; and secondly, a phrase or two of a lecture wherein Srila Prabhupada explains that books of knowledge meant to discipline human society are available throughout human society. In India there are the Vedas, and the Mohammedans have their Koran. Certainly this is information, but it does not address the violent nature of the life and teaching attributed to Mohammed in the Koran and Hadiths, which was the essence of the essay. Actually Satyaraja has apparently missed the footnote to the earlier article wherein we discussed the saktyavesa nature of Mohammed, so we will repeat this now in expansion.
The Supreme Lord has unlimited and varied saktis, divided into those of material illusion and those of spiritual truth. The borderline jiva soul is situated between these potencies. As per His design, the Lord may bestow an extraordinary quantity of one or more potency upon a particular jiva. This is known as saktyavesa, or dressed with potency. However all potencies are not one. We must repeat that the potencies of the Lord are varied, and it must be understood that not all lead one to spiritual realisation and the path of bhakti. Some spread ignorance and illusion. In the Gita, the Lord has stated that those who are “envious and mischievous” are continually cast into demoniac species of life. Sinful souls take birth in impious lands with impious association and become subject to false cheating religions as a reaction for their bad behaviour. However, still there is mention of the Supreme Lord and His overlordship of the creation within these primitive systems of thought with the hope of somehow or other disciplining these sinful, even demoniac souls.
The avatara of Buddha is an example of this principle. The Bhagavatam explains that Buddha appeared “just for the purpose of deluding those who are envious of the faithful theist”. Srila Prabhupada writes, “At the time when Lord Buddha appeared, the people in general were atheistic and preferred animal flesh to anything else. On the plea of Vedic sacrifice, every place was practically turned into a slaughterhouse, and animal-killing was indulged in unrestrictedly. Lord Buddha preached non-violence, taking pity on the poor animals. He preached that he did not believe in the tenets of the Vedas and stressed the adverse psychological effects incurred by animal-killing. Less intelligent men of the age of Kali, who had no faith in God, followed his principle, and for the time being they were trained in moral discipline and non-violence, the preliminary steps for proceeding further on the path of God realization...”
Similarly Sankaracarya spread illusion in the form of Mayavada philosophy, however, simultaneously he reintroduced the concept of transcendence that had been largely lost with the wide propagation of Buddhism.
In the Caitanya-siksamrta, Srila Thakura Bhaktivinoda explains that Sri Paurasurama caused the breakdown of Vedic civilisation by acting as a ksatriya while purporting to be a brahmana. This was the root source of the “varna by birth” concept, rather than the truly Vedic “varna by quality” concept. Furthermore Paurasurama’s repeated slaughter of the ksatriyas drove a deep wedge between the brahmana and ksatriya communities, who when in cooperation are the axis of the Vedic social system. Thus varnasrama collapsed.
Duryodhana of the Mahabharata is an empowerment of the personality of Kali. In the Mahabharata, Duryodhana was rescued by Arjuna from the Gandharvas. This rescue so mortified Duryodhana that he decided to take his own life to escape the shame. However he fell to sleep and in that state he was assailed by powerful demoniac entities that chastised him for his ideas of suicide and encouraged him to continue in his aggressive malicious hatred of the Pandavas. (These asuras affecting Duryodhana from the subtle realm were ignorantly hopeful of stopping the Supreme Lord’s plan of establishing the pious Yudhisthira as Emperor.) Soon, Duryodhana awoke free from the thoughts of suicide and even more determined to eliminate Yudhisthira, Bhima and Arjuna.
The incarnations of the Lord are “as numerous as the waves upon the ocean”, the Bhagavatam states in the First Canto. One of the six mentioned types of incarnations is the saktyavesa. Thus, great empowered personalities appear, act upon the stage of life, and then having fulfilled the purpose of the Lord disappear from view. These personalities certainly vary in their attitude and depth of relationship with the Lord, however they are all integrated into the abstruse plan of the Lord. Yet, it is wrong to presume they are all equal in cognizance of the Absolute Truth, or that their teachings have the same tone and transcendental validity. Though we accept Lord Buddha as saktyavesa, we certainly do not accept his teachings. In the same manner, those that know Vedic siddhanta and also know the content of the Koran and Hadiths will find a great gulf between the two.
It is not a display of spiritual intelligence to posture in the fashion of liberal political correctness that Mohammedism and Vedic Siddhanta are essentially one and that the Koran is equivalent to the Vedas, which was apparently the intention of Satyaraja in his response to my earlier essay. Selectively researching the statements of Srila Prabhupada for quotes to employ in the egoistic defence of one’s untenable position only deepens one’s disgrace.
Srila Prabhupada travelled the world, encouraging all to love God and develop that love through the chanting of whatever name of God they pleased. Rather than driving down the rocky road of discussing the actual content of the primitive scriptures of the meat-eaters with their adherents, Srila Prabhupada mercifully distributed the chanting of the Holy Names and sanctified foodstuffs. The philosophy of transcendence is precluded from the sinful meat-eaters. We see that if a religion/philosophical debate arose, particularly with the Christians, Srila Prabhupada would simply stick to this point of meat-eating. We, as his followers, should learn from this brilliant and simple preaching tactic of Srila Prabhupada and not walk down the path of back-slapping brotherly love where all religions are “one” and “I’m OK, you’re OK” is the byword. Srila Prabhupada upon invitation to a religious conference by Yogi Bhajan refused, decrying such events as essentially useless. Srila Prabhupada sought to distinguish his teachings from mundane religiosity, being at pains to designate his teachings the perfected “science of self-realisation”.
As Srila Prabhupada explains: "Man-made religion has no value. So man-made religions, there are so many religious systems, the Hindu religion, Christian religion, Mohammedan religion or this religion, that religion.”
So we see that Srila Prabhupada was tactful and positive in his preaching of the Holy Name, avoiding useless philosophical debate with the unqualified, thus not disturbing the minds of the ignorant, attached and unintelligent as recommended by Sri Krsna in the Gita. However, at the same time he made statements that reveal the content of these world views. These organised religions are simply material, they are an ultimately useless misrepresentation of the Supreme Lord. They are the perfect oxymoron: ‘the man-made words of God’, imposed on the people not by love but by the threat of an imaginary Devil. Being material, they come and go. However, the Vedas are not subject to the material time factor being emanated from the transcendental platform as the very breathing of the Supreme Lord.
Thus, for Satyaraja, here is Srila Prabhupada’s frank opinion of the Judeo-Christian-Mohammedan scriptures: “The sastras of the yavanas, or meat-eaters, are not eternal scriptures. They have been fashioned recently, and sometimes they contradict one another. The scriptures of the yavanas are three: the Old Testament, the New Testament and the Koran. Their compilation has a history; they are not eternal like the Vedic knowledge. Therefore although they have their arguments and reasonings, they are not very sound and transcendental. As such, modern people advanced in science and philosophy deem these scriptures unacceptable.”
If even “modern people” deem these three scriptures “unacceptable”, then we would hope that Satyaraja would also. If Satyaraja still insists on being an apologist for Mohammedism, then I would ask him to read again the following extracts from the Koran; perhaps he might then see the world view he is defending from his soft-focus dream world of political correctness:
"Allah was not just satisfied with killing the unbelievers. He enjoyed torturing them before killing them... Taste ye the Penalty of Burning!" 22:19-22
"Allah forgiveth not that partners should be set up with Him; but He forgiveth anything else, to whom He pleaseth; to set up partners with Allah is to devise a sin Most heinous indeed." 4:48 (“Partners” here means rival gods.)
“Let not the believers take for friends or helpers Unbelievers rather than believers: if any do that, in nothing will there be help from Allah. (K.3:28.) Allah's order was to, "slay them wherever ye catch them". (K.2:191)
In the verse 8:65, Allah tells his prophet: "O Prophet! Rouse the Believers to the fight (jihad). If there are twenty amongst you, patient and persevering, they will vanquish two hundred: if a hundred, they will vanquish a thousand of the Unbelievers."
The Koran tells Muslims to kill the disbelievers wherever they find them (K.2:191), to murder them and treat them harshly (K.9:123), fight with them, (K.8:65) humiliate them and impose on them a penalty tax if they are Christians or Jews, (K.9:29) and slay them if they are Pagans (K.9:5). The Koran takes away the freedom of belief from all humanity and tells clearly that no other religion except Islam is accepted. (K.3:85). That Allah would relegate those who disbelieve in the Koran to Hell (K.5:11) and calls them najis (filthy, untouchable, impure) (K.9:28). Allah orders the Muslims to fight the unbelievers until no other religion is left other than Islam (K.2 :193), the non-believers will go to hell and will drink boiling water (K.14:17), and asks the Muslims to slay or crucify or cut the hands and the feet of the unbelievers, that they be expelled from the land with disgrace; "they shall have a great punishment in world hereafter" (K.5:34).
"As for the disbelievers, for them garments of fire shall be cut and there shall be poured over their heads boiling water whereby whatever is in their bowls and skin shall be dissolved and they will be punished with hooked iron rods" (K.22:9).
The Koran also prohibits Muslims to befriend their own fathers or brothers if they are not believers (K.9:23), (K.3:28) and that actually Muhammad encouraged his followers to kill their own family in the battles of Badr and Uhud and asks the Muslims to "strive against the unbelievers with great endeavor (K.25:52), and “be stern with them because they belong to hell” (K.66:9).
The Koran says: "strike off the heads of the disbelievers" (thus the recent web-site videos) then after making a "wide slaughter among them, carefully tie up the remaining captives" (K.47:4).
The book of Allah says that women are inferior to men and their husbands have the right to beat them (K.4:34), and that women will go to hell if they are disobedient to their husbands (K.66:10). It says that men have an advantage over the women (K.2:228). It not only denies women equal right to their inheritance (K.4:11-12), it also regards them as imbeciles and decrees that their testimony alone is not admissible in the court (K.2:282). This means that a woman who is raped cannot accuse her rapist unless she can produce a male witness. But the most shocking verse was where Allah allows Muslims to rape the women captured in wars even if they are married before being captured, (K.4:24) (K.4:3). Thus, when a Muslim army subdues another nation, they call them kafir and rape their women. Pakistani soldiers raped up to 250,000 Bengali women in 1971 and massacred 3,000,000 unarmed civilians when their religious leader decreed that Bangladeshis are un-Islamic. This is why the prison guards in the Islamic regime of Iran rape the dissident women and then kill them after calling them apostates and the enemies of Allah.
On the world stage we can see the result of these “man-made” cheating religions. Jews, Christians and Muslims are increasingly busy in the business of killing one another in the name of God. To each the other is the Devil. In fact in these ‘religions’ it can be argued that there is more information given about this mythological Devil and his abode, than that of God and His abode. Thus we find that the adherents to these ‘religions’ are very quick to the see the Devil in practically everything (except themselves). Devil-consciousness is their apparent attainment. Such a divisive satanic world view will inevitably fail, leaving only destruction in its wake. If there is actually the ever-predicted Armageddon approaching, then it is surely one when the bomb-ravaged terrorised people of the world cry out to the Lord to know the Eternal Transcendental Truth that is only covered by their demoniac leaders wielding the fallacious “man-made” scriptures of the Jews, Christians and Muslims as vicious weapons upon one another.
Srila Bhaktivinoda has predicted the days when all those sincere amongst the befuddled Buddhists, Mayavadis, Jews, Christians and Mohammedans will find the true fulfillment of their religious quest in the path chalked out by yuga-dharma-avatara, Sri Krsna Caitanya Mahaprabhu. May the All-Merciful Supreme Controller bring those days ever closer to the harried and ignorant residents of Kali-yuga. May we all know the Absolute Truth by His Grace. When that Grace floods our heart, there will be no room for the abominable self-centred concepts of “friends and enemies”. There will only be Divine Love for the Lord and every beloved soul of His Creation.
Hare Krsna,
Bhakta Abdula