Word: islam
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1950-1959
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...wrote Mohammed in the holy Koran. "What liars they are." Mohammed meant Christians and Jews, whom he had expected to accept his new vision. When they did not respond, he took to the sword. Before the onslaught Eastern Christianity declined in numbers, vigor and territory. Within 80 years of Islam's birth, the mosque had replaced the church from Antioch to Carthage...
...while Islam and Christianity waxed great and strong, the religion of Mother India, which worshiped God as One and as Three and as many, and saw in every faith a path to divinity, declined for a thousand years. Hinduism became a moldering mass of superstition and magic, social injustice and escape from the world...
Under the impact of rationalism and religious competition, reform began. Its first leaders were Ramakrishna (1836-86) and his disciple, Vivekananda (1863-1902). Mystical Ramakrishna, who said he reached union with God through Islam and Christianity as well as Hinduism, presented Vedanta as a religion of direct experience rather than mere traditional observance. Vivekananda injected a new sense of social responsibility by stressing Hinduism's teaching that God is in every man. Mahatma Gandhi (whom Agnostic Nehru once called "terribly Hindu") showed India how practical and effective religion could be even in the field of politics. Nehru carried...
...namely, the chasm between "the whole Judaic group of ideologies and religions" on the one hand and the "Buddhaic group" (Hinduism, the Mahayana and Hinayana forms of Buddhism) on the other. For the East, like ancient Greece, sees history as cyclical, recurrent, and hence irrelevant, while Christianity, Judaism and Islam see it governed by Intellect and Will, i.e., God. But in assigning history this divine importance, they "have reopened the door to self-centeredness by casting themselves, in rivalry with one another and ignoring the rest of Mankind, for the privileged role of being God's 'Chosen People...
...Mediterranean, a place of serene blue skies for many, has been an object of ambition to an important few. The eight pages of maps that follow show the restless flow of conquest across this ancient sea: the days when it was Rome's mare nostrum, then Islam's crescent empire, at last the shared hegemony of three great empires-British, French and Ottoman. Now once again it is a fragmented place; there is no peace; and the Mediterranean is again the center of history and the clashing of rival ambitions...