In viewing Europe's fantastical self-immolation, in which elites and culturally Marxist judiciaries dare to incarcerate and prosecute politicians, bloggers and ordinary people for criticizing what I correctly define as a 'cult'; I cannot help but wonder at the abhorrent irrationality of the supposed secular and profoundly intelligent European Enlightenment mind which generated the 'Age of Reason'. It appears to me that far from initiating intelligence, the advance of secularism has led to the collective opposite. Witch-hunts of course, which murdered some 10.000 women and men, reached their apogee during the 17th century, the era in which science and rationality apparently subdued that wicked beast of Christian theocratic governance and mystical nonsense. Or so the very clever Enlightenment 'Fathers' tell us. Yet I can trace a direct line from the end of rational faith, and reason through faith to quote Rodney Stark, to Nazism, Communism [Fascism and Communism are both programs of National Socialism]; Multi-culturalism and the virulent appeals so prevalent in cultural Marxism and Post-Modernism to 'protect' Islam. Such linkages are clear to anyone who bothers to read history objectively and critically.
The problem that I have with Islam, and one that might be shared by a few others is this. I don't believe that the moon cult of Mecca is any more of a religion that the Sky God cult of Chinghis Khan, the Thunder-God Baal's cult, the celestial deity cults worshipped by sex-drenched writhing Assyrians, or the mystical paganism one finds in such irrationalities and anti-humanist autocracies embedded in Druidism, Hinduism, Shintoism, and Confucianism. Cults are not religions. Scientology is outlawed in much of the EU for financial fraud stemming from its cultish organization and rather non-spiritual and vapid cultish theology. I see little difference between the irrational claims of the followers of Bishop Cruise, and the policracy cult and claims of Islam. Certainly there is one marked and rather pronounced difference which needs to be stated of course. Scientologists are not racist, supremacist and intolerant and don't desire to rule the world – at least not as openly as many Muslims and Islamic sects vividly and violently pronounce.
This question then is the core of the cultural battle with Islam. Why is Islam a religion? If I ask a Muslim the answers given are the usual array of 'indignation's', 'but of course it must be', 'it always has been', 'it is the same as Christianity', 'it is a system of love and tolerance' etc. This is bunk and mental junk. None of the claims by Muslims as to why their cult is a religion are true. None are based on fact, just rhetoric. There is for example no Golden Rule as found in Matthew 7:12. I always hear from Muslims that the Koran, which is worse than Mein Kampf for violent, racist illiteracy, contains Matthew 7:12. But when I ask them to locate the exact verse phrasing the immanent expostulation, which must be applied to all humans regardless of cult affiliation, that you will do unto others as you would like done to you, mysteriously the verse cannot be found. I have read the Koran many times. Matthew 7:12 simply does not exist and runs completely counter to the entire philosophy of the Koran which is Allah the thing which manages all of life and his creator and mouthpiece Mohammed must be obeyed. Islam and Muslims are good. The rest bad and cursed. That is the summary of the Koran. You can't argue that it is not.
What is a cult? The standard definition is this:
Pronunciation:/k?lt/noun
1 a system of religious veneration and devotion directed towards a particular figure or object:the cult of St Olaf
a relatively small group of people having religious beliefs or practices regarded by others as strange or as imposing excessive control over members:a network of Satan-worshipping cults
a misplaced or excessive admiration for a particular thing:the cult of the pursuit of money as an end in itself
2 a person or thing that is popular or fashionable among a particular group or section of society:the series has become a bit of a cult in the UK[as modifier] :a cult film
Worshipping and venerating a thing. The Allah force, which is quasi-Marxist dialectical power which recreates the world every second or so pious Muslims inform us, and which manages every thought, deed, action and movement is an object and a thing. Muslims equate Allah with God. The two have little to nothing in common. Allah is al-Allah, which comes out of Hubal and moon deity worship, all of which preceded Mohammed by 3500 years. Moon and celestial worship informed the Arab pantheon of spiritual adulation. Mohammed's 'invention' was to take Hubal and make it the supreme object of worship for the Arabs and replace the 300 odd deities that were also venerated by the pagan Arabs. Al-Allah become the object associated with the Black Rock of the Kabaah shrine, a black asteroid that Muslims must kiss on their pilgrimage to Mecca, a journey and duty which also clearly denotes dogmatic cultish ritual. Islam is full of cult symbols, rituals, prostrations, prayers, memorization and the Koran itself means 'recital'. There is no rationality, no inquiry and no free-will. Allah determines all. Islam is the exemplar of anti-humanist pre-destination theology exemplified by the savagery and occult totalitarianism of Calvin's Geneva, or Hitler's Berlin.
Cult's are not religions. I have my own framework for what constitutes a religion. It is this. A true religion has to free the mind, the body, the spirit and the individual. A religion frees you. A cult enslaves you. A religion demands that you use the God-given tools granted to you including your mind to achieve truth, beauty, perfection and understanding. A religion will not put you or another human into chains. A religion does not force you to memorize, repeat, prostrate yourself, or mumble phrases in a language you don't understand. A religion demands that your mind understand and accept the ethical program which is premised on the Golden Rule and Natural Law Rights. A religion's core must be centered around these two key ideals. They are the foundations for freeing the human.
It took Christianity a long and uneven period of time to come to the above. Thomism, the Paris scholastics, and the Protestant Reformation all eventually pushed and pulled the Christian faith into accepting rationality, an immanent Golden Rule and Natural Law Rights. Christianity more than any other theology contains the central aspects of a religion. It frees people. That has always been its undeniable and quite exceptional essence.
My definition is at odds with the conventional. Webster's for example defines a religion in 7 ways;
'1. the personal commitment to and serving of God or a god with worshipful devotion, ....2. the state of a religious, .... 3a. one of the systems of religious faith and worship, 3b. the body of institutionalized expressions of sacred beliefs, observances and social practices found within a given cultural context, ... 4. the profession or practice of religious beliefs, ...5. archaic, scrupulous conformity,....6a. a personal awareness or conviction of the existence of a supreme being or of supernatural powers or influences controlling one’s own, humanity’s, or all nature’s destiny, ....7a. a cause, principle, system of tenets held with ardor, devotion, conscientiousness and faith, a value held to be of supreme importance, 7b. a quality, condition, custom, or thing inspiring zealous devotion, conscientious maintenance, and cherishing.'
None of the above makes any sense. Scientology might thus be considered religious. It certainly markets itself as a religious theology. Scientology meets the definition above in 3b, 5, 7a and 7b. But Scientology does not free you. It enslaves you. That is the root and core of a cult. Like Muslim Imams Bishop Cruise might offer the same palaver for my digestion as to why his cult is a religion, but I won't imbibe that either as truthful or even meaningful. There are clear distinctions between a cult and a religion. We must start to categorize Islam for what it is, which is obviously a cult and not a religion. Once we do that, the debate over what to do about Islam, Muslim immigration, and the Koran will become a lot more intelligent.