The problem isn’t Islam - it’s religion

JC Wilcox argues that “the only way to achieve a kinder, gentler Islam would be to rewrite history and erase the 7th century”. Why not go to the next level by suggesting that the only way to achieve a kinder, gentler humanity would be to rewrite history and erase all the centuries? After all, religion per se is the problem.

The established ego-driven, power-based religions exist around a mixture of guilt, fear, repression, repentance, empty promises and pseudo-rewards, conditioning, fake ambition and hypocrisy, exploitation and oppression, condemnation, cowardice and phoniness, all of which lead to a state of mass misery and corruption. They all promote a childish, menu-style morality stemming from a past that continues to dictate irrelevant rules and traditions, ready-made answers and the worship of all that is now dead. 

These belief systems are the greatest conspiracy the planet has ever known and at the centre of all this are a variety of man-made, mythical and much-misunderstood concepts concerning “God”. 

True “religion” concerns consciousness (awareness), from which emerges a flexible, spontaneous humanity, easily able to change and adapt to any situation and unattached to the past and its bogus “fast-food” solutions. On the contrary, it is a courageousness that involves what Indian thinker Osho called “a moment to moment capacity to respond to reality”.

Osho pointed out that “authentic morality is a by-product of consciousness. And the art of consciousness is religion.”

Methinks it’s time to start all over again!

John Shepherd