Religion again!

The readers that read my blog regularly know that I am not a religious person,
I strongly believe in god and always feel him/her (is not a he or she) in my life and I always see his signs every where. I accept and respect all religions but I myself was born and raised in a Moslem family, my parents were not religious people but would follow certain general rules that I believe are common among all religions but my grand mothers both were religious and thought me from childhood how to pray in Arabic (Namaz) and other religious stuff. Whoever is born and raised in Iran even if not a Moslem learns about Koran, Islamic rules and practices, etc mandatory in school all the way through university. God knows how much of those things that we learned about Islam and Koran in school is true and how mush of it was made up by clergy men and Islamic teachers.

Any way I am a very liberal person and think as long as people are decent, try to be a good person and believe in god (I have seen some people that don’t believe in god “atheist” but still very decent and nice, I am including them in the group of good people any way), it does not really matter to what religion they belong. Most of people have certain religion because we are born with that religion. Any way another thing that I believe in, is that no matter how liberal and democratic we are we should not use freedom of speech and democracy to insult other religions and beliefs, we can respectfully disagree but insulting is bad and makes people more distant from each other.

Any how I wrote the above preface, just to give a brief idea about my personal opinion on religions. The story is that, at work every one in our team is Christian or at least raised Christian, just I and my boss who is Iranian are Moslems. He has been religious when he was young, he even belonged to an Islamic group back in revolution time in Iran but eventually he has grown out to be less religious and when we were talking about politics, Iraq and world’s reaction to Islamic terrorists, he would say that Islam is a peaceful religion and some crazy fundamentalists have ruined it’s reputation, etc. Recently he told us that how his son has converted to Christianity and talks to him all the time about Christianity and is encouraging him to covert to a Christian. Any way last week he told me and the other co-worker that I can consider as a religious Christian about the new book that his son has given to him, called Jesus and Muhammad written by Mark Gabriel a former Moslem and Islamic professor at an Egyptian university who has converted to Christianity. He was telling us how the writer has referenced to verses of Koran and has explained in his book how violent is Islam and the versus in Koran is all about violence, putting down women, etc. He told us after reading this book and referring to the verses and other references, besides other studies that he has recently about Islam he has come to conclusion that Islam is a false religion and other comments that I don’t mention here! He offered the book to my Christian co-worker to read, he read it in two days and they were both talking about it yesterday. I have not read the book but when you can loose your faith over a book like that may be there was never a strong faith any way.
As I said I am not religious at all but I got upset for two reasons, first of all I myself know there are things in Islam and other religions that does not make much sense in today’s world (like women rights) but 1500 years ago or 2000 years a go would work and helped people to live in a better way, when most of Arabs killed their baby girls, prophet Mohammad could not tell them men and women are equal ( they were not ready to hear that) but he told them at least not to kill baby girls because they are girls and tried to convince them that women should have rights as well, the rights are not equal to men’s right but it was better than nothing for that time. He could not jump to the last step all at once, or Jesus could not do that at his time either. History shows that Islam helped Arabs and lots of Moslem countries in old times to grow and have a better life style but for today there are things that should be modified by us human beings,especially because all religons have mixed with superstitious stuff and personal openions of their followers. Now we are in a stage of human history that we can follow our logic and decide better for our lives, we can follow the common spiritual rules of religions like being honest, don’t cheat, don’t gossip, don’t steal, etc but for human rights and other things we can follow our brain and by using education, democracy and voting systems try to improve the laws. So we can not just point at negative points and condemn over 1 billions Moslems religion, I know there are verses about war here and there in Koran but there are lots of verses about peace and forgiveness too. Prophet Mohammad said very clearly to every one that “every human being is same, you are better if you are more decent and if you try to be a better person, not because you have a certain color, language, etc” for 1500 years a go that was a big message to me, even in today world in a free country like US there are still people that they think they are better because they are white!!
Any way I know that I should read the book and then judge that but even my Christian co-worker said that the writer has said all about the negative points in Islam and Prophet Mohammad! No positive is in that book! The other reason that I got upset was why my boss gave the book to a non-Moslem, the non-Moslems already have not a good image of Islam and Moslems with all these bad news and advertisements!

Any way I still give my boss and every one right to believe and talk about whatever they want, and I know that there are lots crazy Moslems who are bad representatives of Islam but I know lots of good Moslems that are scientists, doctors, engineers, teachers, etc that contribute to societies and are great people.
At the end I like to know a good book that defends Islam and Prophet Mohammad, I think my co-worker should read that too and then decide how good or bad is Islam!

Please don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to defend Islam here or promote religious beliefs I just got upset because I thought based on one book, or specific group of people we cannot judge a religion and completely condemn it. Every one knows that people abused religions for the power and money at all times, Christians got involved in lots of violence in middle ages under the name of Christianity! That does not make Christianity a false religion.
Religion itself and its prophet can be very different from what its followers do!
We should all open our eyes wash it positively and see both sides of the coins!!!!!!!!!!!!