I am sorry read yet another post asking why Hindus are praying to stones got me going. Muslims consider praying to ANY image as Idolatry — does that mean Christians, Buddhists & others who stand before paintings of Christ, the Buddha & their respective Gods are praying to oil and paint?
Do we think these people are fools, they do not know that these images are not real, they are just oil & paint? What? We know no one would say something like that but amazingly people actually say that about Hindus — we are this dumb? We are praying to stones, and we have no clue? And why always limit the mention to Hindus & never mention Buddhists? We see them praying before statues of the Buddha also, so why the omission?
The put downs come easily when the skin is dark, and the religion is not Abrahamic, it seems. Buddhism is not an Abrahamic faith but most of the followers are white and so escape the censure, the mockery that dark-skinned Hindus get. OPEN Racism in the 21st century!
Think of the photographs in our smart phones – photographs of our loved ones during holidays, vacations, celebrations. Looking at them makes us happy, we smile. Some of those loved ones are no more, seeing their photos makes me cry! Sometimes we may even talk to these photographs, tell them how much we miss them!
But you do realize that they are just pictures, right? Just digital images, not real people? Would anyone ask such a question? Yet when such images are turned into 3 dimensional images, people seem to lose their minds. Yes, Hindus do realize these are images made of stone, they are images of our Gods made with solid material, the same as the images of Christ, the Buddha and others made with oil and paint!
Just as the digital images of our loved ones makes us cry and laugh, just as the painted images of Christ, the Buddha and others make the followers of these religions see them with reverence and pray to them, so do the 3 dimensional images of our Gods makes Hindus revere and pray to them.
Just as the photos remind us of our loved ones, these images remind us of God!
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Idolatry comes in many shades, many types & not just one. If God were ever to come to earth to visit us, for Christians He MUST come down as a tall, handsome, young, blond, white man with blue eyes! If He comes down as a Black man or a woman, Christians might refuse him, kick Him out! And if He comes down as a brown man and says His name is Rama, they might outright try to kill Him!
For Muslims, God must come down as a bright light and speak with a booming Darth Vader like voice! He cannot take any image for that would be Idolatry!
But we see here that God is forced to render Himself in a form that is acceptable to the followers of these Religions – that is also Idolatry! God must meet their pre-conceived notions of how He/She/It must look like, otherwise it is not God! Idolatry!
But I bet you have never read or heard of such views! Bias is real, religious bias is a lot more real. Add this bias to racism and that is one deadly combination, full of hate and bigotry. Some of the ideas being expressed here, you will read nowhere else for I face a Christian/Islamic media that controls the world and will not let such ideas see the light of the day for they make their religions look bad. Time and again I have faced censorship in this so-called “land of the free, home of the brave!”, lol.
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