The main quest of Sufism is a mystical experience of God like that of Prophet Mohammed. Main line Muslims argue that the experience of Prophet Mohammed was a unique one. We as Christians think it’s a demonic experience that Prophet Mohammed had. That is exactly what he thought first, before being convinced by his first wife, Khadija, and her uncle that he actually had encountered the divine. Many Sufis are unable to articulate clearly their experience of God in their ecstatic state. It is a vague and undefined phenomenon, which they claim can only be experienced. The fast pace of the rhythm of music at which this experience happens is not unique to Sufism. Hare Krishna devotees indulge in rhythmic chanting leading to an experience of Krishna consciousness. Many tribal religions are also involved in a similar type of worship which is regulated by rhythmic drumming and ecstasy as worship. In Voodoo, there is rhythmic music and ecstasy, opening up to possession by spirits. Therefore this psychological phenomenon cannot be considered an encounter with the divine. None of the prophets of the Old Testament, or even Jesus, indulged in mysticism. Moreover this practice has actually opened up people to commune with demons rather than with God.
In his book, The City of Djinns, William Dalrymple explains his encounter with a dervish. As a young man he meets a dervish, who talks to him about how he stood waist deep in the Yamuna River as a spiritual exercise to encounter the unseen. During one of these sessions, he gets a revelation from a djinn, not God. So the Sufis knowingly or unknowingly started dabbling in the occult. Such dervishes become famous black magicians who are in business all over the Indian Subcontinent, casting spells and claiming to cure illnesses. The mausoleum’s of famous dervishes become the places where people believe they still are available to help them, even after their death. The Mausoleum of Hazrath Nizammudin in Delhi is one such place where Sufism has led to necromancy. Necromancy opens up the door to the world of ‘Dark Islam’, where local magicians do business using the evil spirits.
In some cases Sufism has led to pantheism-like expressions like, “I am God” indicating the mystical union with God. This is also a possible case of demon possession. Such dervishes were persecuted and executed by their Islamic contemporaries for blasphemy. There is no consensus regarding Sufism among Muslims. Some accept it, some reject it as evil.
Some of the good things that have resulted from Sufism include a trend towards peace and tolerance, a focus on service to humanity, a renunciation of the worldly in search of the spiritual, non –political stance etc. Thus, it stemmed the spread of radical Islam and gave rise to moderate Islam.
The dervishes seek to find God by their works of piety and acts of love and service. They believe that God will reveal himself to them and they can experience him and have a relationship with him, if they do the list of things taught by the Sufi orders. They seek salvation through works and devotion. It is a heavy burden, a call to step into unfamiliar spiritual ground where they encounter evil spirits rather than God. God in and through Christ, offers salvation as a gift. He does not accept our self-righteous acts. Everyone needs to receive the gift of Salvation, get born again, be regenerated by the Spirit of God so that they can enter into a relationship with God. In this relationship we are the children of God. He takes care of us. The salvation offered by Christ is so much more transformative and practical than the uncertain ways of the dervishes. There is no assurance of Salvation in Islam. But the bible repeatedly teaches assurance of Salvation.
The goal of Sufism is noble and in the right direction. But it fails miserably in fulfilling it’s goal, which is to bring it’s practitioners into an intimate relationship with the true God.
CHRISTIAN PARENTAL DILEMMAS’
Dr. Vernon Jones, an American psychologist of repute, carried out experiments on groups of
schoolchildren to whom certain stories had been told. The heroes of the stories were the
same in the case of the different groups of children, but the heroes behaved contradictorily to each group. To one group “St. George,” slaying the dragon emerged a very brave figure, but in another group, fleeing in terror and seeking shelter in his mother’s lap. “THESE STORIES
MADE CERTAIN SLIGHT BUT PERMANENT CHANGES IN CHARACTER, EVEN IN THE NARROW CLASSROOM SITUATION,” concluded Dr. Jones.
How much more permanent damage the rapes and murders, incests and beastialities of the
“Holy Bible” has done to the children of Christendom, can be measured from reports in our daily newspapers. If such is the source of Western morality, it is no little wonder, then, that Methodists and Roman Catholics have already solemnized, marriages between
HOMOSEXUALS in their “Houses of God.” And 8 000 “gays” (an euphemistic term for sodomites) parade their “wares” in London’s Hyde Park in July 1979, to the acclaim of the news and TV media.
The “Holy Bible” the chapter 38 of Genesis. . verse 18 – “AND SHE CONCEIVED HIM.”
Three months later, as things were bound to turn out, news reached Judah that his daughter- in-law, Tamar, had played the “harlot” and that she was with “CHILD BY WHOREDOM AND JUDAH SAID, BRING HER FORTH, AND LET HER BE BURNT.” (Genesis 38:24). Judah had deliberately spurned her as a “witch” and now he sadistically wants to burn her. But this wiley Jewess was one up on the old man. She sent the “ring,” the “bracelet,” and the “staff,” with ª servant, beseeching her father-in-law to find the culprit responsible for her pregnancy. Judah was in a fix. He confessed that his daughter-in-law was more “RIGHTEOUS” than himself, and “HE KNEW HER AGAIN NO MORE.” (verse 26). It is quite an experience to compare the choice of language in which the different Versions describe the same incident. The Jehovah’s Witnesses in their “New World Translation” translate the last quotation as – “HE HAD NO
FURTHER INTERCOURSE WITH HER AFTER THAT.”* This is not the last we will hear about in the “Book of God” of this Tamar whom the Gospel writers have immortalized in their “Genealogy of their Lord.”
I do not want to bore you with details but the end verses of Genesis 38 deal with a duel in
Tamar’s womb: about the twins struggling for ascendancy. The Jews were very meticulous
about recording their “first borns.” The first-born got the lion’s share of their father’s
patrimony. Who are the lucky winners in this prenatal race? There are four in this unique
contest. They are “PHAREZ and ZARAH of TAMAR by JUDAH.” How? You will see
presently. But first, let us have the moral. What is the moral in this episode? You remember
Er and Onan: how God destroyed them for their several sins? And the lessons we have learned in each case was “REPROOF.” Under what category of Timothy will you place the incest of Judah, and his illegitimate progeny? All these characters are honoured in the “Book of God” for their bastardy. They become the great grandfathers and great grandmothers of the “only begotten son of God.'(?)
See Matthew 1:3. In every version of the Bible, the Christians have varied the spelling of these characters’ names from those obtained in the Old Testament (Genesis chapter 38) with those contained in the New Testament (Matthew chapter 1) to put the reader off the scent. From PHAREZ in the “Old” to PARES in the “New,” and ZARAH to ZARA and TAMAR to THAMAR. But what about the moral? God blesses Judah for his incestuous crime! So if you do “evil” (Er), God will slay you; if you spill “seed” (Onan), God will kill you, but a daughter-in-law (Lamat) who vengefully and guilefully collect her father-in- law’s (Judah’s) “seed” is rewarded. Under what category will the Christians place this “honour” in the “Book of God?” Where does it fit? Is it…Your?
1. DOCTRINE?
2. REPROOF?
3. CORRECTION? or
4. INSTRUCTION INTO RIGHTEOUSNESS?
Ask him who comes and knocks at your door – that professional preacher, that hot-gospeller,
that Bible-thumper. Here, he deserves a prize if he can grant an explanation for the correct
answer. There is none born who can justify this filth, this pornography under any of the
above headings. But a heading has to be given. It can only be recorded under –
“PORNOGRAPHY!”
According to the high moral scruples of the Christian rulers of South Africa, who have banned the Book, “Lady Chatterley’s Lover,” because of a “tetragrammaton” – a four-letter word, they would most assuredly have placed a ban on the “Holy Bible” if it had been a Hindu religious Book, or a Muslim religious Book. But they are utterly helpless against their own “Holy Book,” their “SALVATION” depends upon it!
Read Genesis 19, verses 30 to the end.
The “history” has it that, night after night, the daughters of Lot seduce their drunken father with the noble (?) motive of preserving their father’s “seed.” “Seed” figures very prominently in this “Holy Book”: forty seven times in the little booklet of Genesis alone!
Out of this another incestuous relationship come the “Ammonites” and the “Moabites,” for whom the God of Israel was supposed to have had a special compassion. Later on in the Bible we learn that the Jews are ordered by the same compassionate God to slaughter the Philistines mercilessly – men, women and children. Even trees and animals are not to be spared, but the Amonites and the Moabites are not to be “distressed” or “meddled” with because they are the seed of Lot! (Deuteronomy 2:19)
No decent reader can read the seduction of Lot to his mother, sister or daughter, not even to
his fiancée if she is a chaste and moral woman. Yet you will come across perverted people
who will gorge this filth. Tastes can be cultivated!
Read Ezekiel 23. The “whoredoms” of
the two sisters, Aholah and Aholibah. The sexual details here puts to shame even the
unexpurgated edition of many banned books. Ask your “born again” Christian visitors, under what category will they classify all this lewdness? Such filth certainly has no place in any “Book of God.”
Watch now how the Christian fathers have foisted the incestuous progenies of the Old
Testament upon their Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ, in the New Testament. For a man who
had no genealogy, they have manufactured one for him. And what a genealogy! Six
adulterers and offsprings of incest are imposed upon this holy man of God. Men and women deserving to be stoned to death according to God’s own law, as revealed through Moses, and further to be ostracised and debarred from the House of God for generations.
Why should God give a “father” (Joseph) to His “son” (Jesus)? And why such an ignoble
ancestry? “This is the whole beauty of it,” says the pervert. “God loved the sinners so
much that he disdaineth not to give such progenitors for His ‘son.'”
Of the four Gospel writers, God “inspired” only two of them to record the genealogy of His
“son.” Between David and Jesus, God “inspired” Matthew to record only 26 ancestors for His “son.”
But Luke, also “inspired,” gathered up 41 forefathers for Jesus. The only name common to these two lists between David and Jesus is JOSEPH and that, too, a “supposed” father
according to Luke 3:23 (AV). This one name is glaring. You need no fine-tooth comb to catch
him. It is Joseph the carpenter. You will also easily observe that the lists are grossly
contradictory. Could both the lists have emanated from the same source, i.e. God?
Matthew and Luke are over-zealous in making DAVID the King, the prime ancestor of Jesus,
because of that false notion that Jesus was to sit on the “THRONE OF HIS FATHER DAVID” (Acts 2:30). The Gospels believe
this prophecy, for they tell us that instead of Jesus sitting on his father’s (David’s) throne, it
was Pontious Pilate, a Roman Governor, a pagan who sat on that very throne and condemned its rightful (?) heir (Jesus) to death. “Never mind,” says the evangelist, “if not in his first coming, then in his second coming he will fulfill this prophecy and three hundred others beside.” But with their extravagant enthusiasm to trace the ancestry of Jesus physically to David, (for this is actually what the Bible says – THAT OF THE FRUIT OF HIS (David’s) LOINS, ACCORDING TO THE FLESH” (literally, not metaphorically Acts 2:30), both the “inspired” authors trip and fall on the very first step.
Matthew 1:6 says that Jesus was the son of David through SOLOMON, but Luke 3:31 says
that he (Jesus) was the son of David through NATHAN. One need not be a gynaecologist to
tell that by no stretch of the imagination could the seed of David reach the mother of Jesus
both through Solomon and Nathan at the same time! We know that both the authors are
confounded liars, because Jesus was conceived miraculously, without any male intervention.
Even if we concede a physical ancestry through David, both authors would still be proved liars for the obvious reason.
As simple as the above logic is, the Christian is so emotionally involved that it will not
penetrate his prejudiced mind. Let us give him an identical example, but one where he can
afford to be objective.
We know from history that Muhammed the Prophet of Islam, was the son of Abraham
through ISHMAEL, so if some “inspired” writer came along and tried to palm off his
“revelation” to the effect that Muhummed was the son of Abraham through ISAAC, we would,
without any hesitation, brand such a writer as a liar, because the seed of Abraham could
never reach Amina (Muhummed’s mother) through Ishmael and through Isaac at the same time! The differences of lineage between these two sons of Abraham is the difference
between the JEWS and the ARABS.
In the case of Muhummed, we would know then that anyone who says that Isaac is his
progenitor, was a liar. But in the case of Jesus both Matthew and Luke are suspect. Until the
Christians decide which line of ancestors they prefer for their “god,” both Gospels will have to
be rejected. Christendom has been battling tooth and nail with these genealogies for the past 2 000 years, trying to unravel the mystery.
They have not given up yet. We admire their perserverance. They still believe that “TIME
WILL SOLVE THE PROBLEM.”
We have already nailed 85% of Matthew and Luke to Mark or that “mysterious ‘Q’.” Let us
now allow Luke to tell us who “inspired” him to tell his “most excellent Theophilus” (Luke
1:3) the story of Jesus. See page 56 for Luke’s preamble to his “Gospel.” He tells us plainly
that he was only following in the footsteps of others who were less qualified than himself,
others who had the temerity to write accounts of his hero (Jesus). As a physician, as against
fishermen and tax collectors, he was no doubt better equipped to create a literary masterpiece. This he did, because “IT SEEMED GOOD TO ME ALSO” to “PUT IN ORDER.”
These are his prominent justifications over his predecessors.
In the introduction to his translation of the “Gospel of St. Luke,” A Christian scholar J. B.
Phillips, has this to say – “ON HIS OWN ADMISSION LUKE HAS CAREFULLY COMPARED AND EDITED EXISTING MATERIAL,BUT IT WOULD SEEM THAT HE HAD ACCESS TO A GOOD DEAL
OF ADDITIONAL MATERIAL, AND WE CAN REASONABLY GUESS AT SOME OF THE SOURCES FROM WHICH HE DREW.” And yet you call this the Word of God? Obtain “The Gospels in Modern English,” in soft cover by ‘FONTANA’ publications. It is a cheap edition. The Christians will soon decide to have Phillips’ invaluable notes expunged from his translation! And do not be surprised if the authors of the RSV also decide to eliminate the
“Preface”2 from their translation. It is an old, old habit. As soon as those who have vested interests in Christianity realize that they have inadvertently let the cat out of the bag, they
quickly make amends. They make my current references “past” history overnight!
Who is the author of “The Gospel of St. John?” Neither God nor St. John! See what “he” (?) says about it “himself” (?) on page 58 – John 19:35 and 21:24-25. Who is his “HE”
and “HIS” and “THIS?” A-N-D, his “WE KNOW” and “I SUPPOSE.” Could it be the fickle one who left him in the lurch in the garden, when he was most in need, or the fourteenth man at the table, at the “Last Supper,” the one that “Jesus loved?” Both were Johns. It was a popular name among the Jews in the times of Jesus, and among Christians even now. Neither of these two was the author of this Gospel. That it was the product of an anonymous hand, is crystal clear.
Let me conclude this “authorship” search with the verdict of those 32 scholars, backed by
their 50 co-operating denominations. God had been eliminated from this authorship race long
ago. In the RSV by “Collins,” invaluable notes * on “The Books of the Bible” are to be found
at the back of their production. I am reproducing only a bit of that information on page 59.
We start with “GENESIS” – the first book of the Bible. The scholars say about its “AUTHOR”:
“One of the ‘five books of Moses’.” Note the words “five books of Moses” are written in
inverted commas – “.” This is a subtle way of admitting that this is what people say – that it
is the book of Moses, that Moses was its author, but we (the 32 scholars) who are better
informed, do not subscribe to that tittle-tattel.
The next four books, “EXODUS, LEVITICUS, NUMBERS and DEUTERONOMY”: AUTHOR?
“Generally credited to Moses.” This is the same category as the book of Genesis.
Who is the author of the book of “JOSHUA?” Answer: “Major part credited to Joshua.”
Who is the author of the book of “JUDGES?” Answer: “Possibly Samuel.”
Who is the author of “RUTH” Answer: “Not definitely known” AND
Who is the author of:
1ST SAMUEL?……………………………….. Answer: Author “Unknown”
2ND SAMUEL………………………………… Answer: Author “Unknown”
1ST KING?…………………………………… Answer: Author “Unknown”
2ND KING?………………………………….. Answer: Author “Unknown”
1ST CHRONICLES? Answer: Author “Unknown, probably …”
2ND CHRONICLES? ….. Answer: Author “Likely collectly …”
And so the story goes. The authors of these anonymous books are either “UNKNOWN” or
are “PROBABLY” or “LIKELY” or are of “DOUBTFUL” origin. Why blame God for this
fiasco? The Long-suffering and Merciful God did not wait for two thousand years for Bible
scholars to tell us that He was not the Author of Jewish peccadilloes, prides and prejudices;
of their lusts, wranglings, jealousies and enormities. He said it openly what they do:-
We could have started the thesis of this book with the above Quŕánic verse and ended with it,with the satisfaction that God Almighty had Himself delivered His verdict on the subject – “Is the Bible God’s Word?”, but we wished to afford our Christian brethern an opportunity to study the subject as objectively as they wished. Allowing believing Christians, “reborn”Christians, and their own Holy Book the Bible to testify against their “better” judgement.
The Old Testament prophets had tons of mystical experiences. So did Paul. So did Peter.
But they did not teach it as a doctrine or teaching which can be achieved through some method. Their experience was a God initiated event, which in the case of Isaiah, Ezekiel and Paul turned out to be a commission to work, to go out on behalf of YHWH and communicate His message to the people. They did not generalize it because they knew it was God revealing himself to them and not their method of reaching ecstasy through some method. Moreover they were able to articulate the experience and the message they received very clearly. The dervishes cannot articulate their experience because they were, most probably, in an altered mental state, which they themselves worked into by using rhythmic music.