Karen Armstrong on religious diversity, unity
Karen Armstrong also opines that despite the diversity of rites and rituals and many self-contradictory messages even within a particular scripture, the common and universal essence of all the great religions of the world is the plead for empathy, forgiveness as well as mercy and compassion. She also quoted Socrates as saying that the greatest wisdom in life on earth is to know what one does not know.Book on religious pluralism launched in U.M.
posted by James Wong Wing-On at 12:38 PM
2 Comments:
Greetings James,
Karen Armstrong's talk on Saturday was definitely finely calibrated to avoid any offense to her hosts. Her books are very well written and scholarly, and I definitely never found anything inflammatory in them.
But I realised that just I'm thinking as a non-Muslim.
It has occured to me that many Muslims still believe that 9/11 was perpetrated by other parties and the Twin Towers were brought down by "other means".
I, too, condemn many of the Bush Administration's subsequent actions in Iraq and Afghanistan, but to me the basic facts of the events on 9/11 are just beyond disputing anymore.
The gulf in understanding is huge, maybe unbridgeable at this moment.
With that in mind, I went back to read 2 of her books - "The Battle for God: Fundamentalism in Judaism, Christianity and Islam" and "Muhammad: A Western Attempt to Understand Islam".
I believe there are portions in both books which COULD offend some Muslims, if they don't keep an open mind.
If you don't mind some intellectual sparring, I will quote some related passages from the book later, as I dive deeper into it.
It still puzzled me until this day why Malaysian opened arms for its ex colonists ?
Why why why why ?
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