DO CHRISTIANS AND MUSLIMS PRAY TO THE SAME GOD...Prof. Hawkins dilemma...

A recent story in our paper caught my eye. It was a story about a professor at a Christian college who decided to start wearing a Muslim hijab (scarf head covering) to highlight the plight of Muslims who she feels are being unfairly blamed for the violent actions of a few Muslims.

The teacher, Dr. Larycia Hawkins, a tenured professor of political science at Christian Wheaton College near Chicago is being reprimanded and possibly fired, NOT for wearing a hijab but for saying that Muslims and Christians pray to the same God and should be treated with the same respect as Christians are.

Christianity and Islam are both termed as MONOTHEISTIC religions because they believe in a “single” god unlike other faiths that have “many” gods. To be fair, the Hindu religion has many gods but supposedly, they are all manifestations (expressions) of a “single” deity. The closest polytheistic religion we can point to is the old Roman and Greek religions where there was a “pantheon” of gods on Mt. Olympus, etc.

Anyway, the three great faiths of the world, Christianity, Islam and Judaism are all MONOTHEISTIC religions believing in the existence of one God.

So on a simple, rational level, we could say that if they all believe there is only one God, then they all must logically believe in and pray to the same God which is what Professor Hawkins surmised.

Wheaton College objected because the Christian God is actually a TRINITY which includes Jesus as the son of the father and the Holy Ghost as who knows what. Muslims worship Jesus but only as a prophet and not as a god since there can only be one god (Allah) in monotheism.

Jesus never claimed he was a god and his disciples/apostles never did either. It was Paul and later Christians that made Jesus into a god and thus creating the totally absurd construct of a trinity (3 gods in one) and making a mockery of the whole concept of monotheism, invented by Jews and bringing a semblance of civilization to a world locked in perpetual wars between their individual gods.

I don’t blame Wheaton College for chastising their professor; after all, they have to defend their religious beliefs as does she as their employee.

I do relish the fact that this incident points out how religion divides us and prevents us from behaving like members of “humanity” or the single entity that is mankind on this planet.

I also enjoy how this points to Christianity and the absurdity of its creations of faith that are based on absolutely nothing but someone’s imaginings that many thousands of people have died for and continue to die to this very day.

TURKEY: Why it matters...

People may ask why I am so interested in the country of Turkey and what goes on there. Well, when I had my medical manufacturing company, I established some good contacts in Turkey and sold quite a bit of my products there. As I have done with other countries I did business with, I thoroughly studied the history and culture of the country before visiting it. This approach has served me well as I impressed my hosts with my knowledge of their country and culture and gained for me their friendship that exists to this day even though I am now retired.

On my visits there, I encountered a modern country with a great history striving to do well in the new world economy. It had trouble with inflation which in some years was rampant (200%) and with government which seemed a little volatile at times. Turkey was a nominally Muslim country but the people that I dealt with were mostly secular.

After WWI when the Ottoman Empire collapsed (1914), a man named ATATURK took control and fathered the modern secular democratic Turkey of today. There have been occasions where the army had to step in and depose leaders that were moving Turkey back into theocratic ways which meant they were trying to use religion (Islam) to rule the country. The army, after bringing order to the political process, would then relinquish their rule once a secular government was formed.

I need to also mention that the Turks have had problems with a KURDISH minority in their country and at times the relationship has become violent. The Kurds are a people without a country that have existed for thousands of years and populate Turkey, Iran and Iraq as well as other countries.

I also have to mention that Turkey exists in Europe as well as in Asia Minor. Turkey has wanted to join the European Union for some time now but the Europeans (Germany) do not trust in Muslim Turkey’s stability…for good reasons.

RECEP TAYYIP ERDOGAN is a gentleman that seems to have been plotting, for quite some time now, a way to take over Turkey, declare himself a dictator, and turn Turkey into an Islamic state. He has taken slow but definitive steps to move the country in that direction and the biggest step he took was to basically dismantle and in some cases, imprison the army’s top command so they can never be able to step in and take control when they feel the country’s secularism was in danger.

A recent tactic he used to gain power was to create the impression that the Kurds are about to take over the country and must be stopped at all costs and he is the only person to save Turkey from the Kurds. This is obviously not true but the spin he was able to use to create this scenario united the Turks behind him as a savior. This is similar to what Hitler did with the Jews in Germany when he made them scapegoats for all of Germany’s woes and branded them as enemies of the republic…the rest is history. Erdogan also used Hitler in a recent speech he gave where he compared the Hitler Republic as a system of government he admired and wished to emulate…get the picture?

The picture with Turkey gets a little more complicated when you consider that they are part of NATO and our ally. The Kurds are also our allies in the war against ISIS in Syria and Iraq but Turkey considers them enemies and is actively bombing them; our allies are bombing our allies.

Turkey has also shot down a Russian jet making Putin vowing revenge knowing full well that the U.S. has to defend Turkey against all foreign aggression because they are a NATO member.

We use an airfield in Turkey to attack ISIS in Syria and Iraq.

You can see how the situation with Turkey is very fluid and full of uncertainty all because of ERDOGAN and his political party and his political ambitions.

This is why I follow this story closely because it can be a deciding factor in the history of the region in 2016.