yesterday i heared something very bad about my previous relationship with a girl that i belived i liked her, but she didn't understand that. oh god, she spoke about me and my relationship with him in her new attempt but her new attempt was a friend of mine. i cannot believe she did tell him something humuilating about me. now i am badly emotionlly damaged. maybe it was a punishment from god, but if i can, i will do something in return

the following is a note by me on the last day of feb. 2008

Everyone has a past, but what is important is that what he/she does and will do now and in the future.

sometimes I feel lost; with my present conditions I become so disappointed. you know, I have this kind of feeling in the past five years, but now it is different. I feel that after taking a wrong way, I woke up too late and there is not much hope to make a good life and feel its beauties. I wish I was rich at least, but I am not. I have no ultimate friend to be happy with & my friends are busy with their selves. I cannot speak so much with my parents since they cannot understand me properly. sometimes I talk with my sister, she understands me to some extent, but she cannot do anything, she has problems of her own. I was to find my love but in two cases it lead to my defeat and moreover to my suffering.

you know, I have nothing in my life to be happy with; but yet I have a lovely friend who has been with me during this long period of loneliness, he is always quiet, but he is a good listener. during this period he has never left me. he is really good and lovely. sometimes I become angry, but he never becomes mad at me. he is really great and generous. he is all I have and have had since the beginning. he is my only hope of life. you know, he is GOD!

Today Islam beside Christianity and Buddhism is a major religion in the world. Islam has some similarities and differences with other great religions. In this article I want to take a look at Islam in comparison with other religions. It should be noted that although Islam has a great emphasis on its revelation, it is treated as a human process here. This procedure allows the comparative study of Islam as a great religion among other great ones, namely Buddhism, Zoroastrianism & Christianity. First of all, Islam should be viewed as a reformist movement in Arab society and an effort for constructing an Arabic civilization. There were a few people among Arabs who had acquaintance with civilized nations like Syria. There was a small Jewish minority in Arab peninsula who were much more civilized than the Arab majority. Arabs considered respect for them as civilized people and also as a holy community in which there had been a lot of people who received revelation from God. Mohammad the prophet of Islam was among those Arabs who thought about an Arabic civilization. He had a background of acquaintance with Christians and Jews. He travelled to Syria as a merchant in his youth, this travel was an opportunity for him to see a civilized nation and think about a parallel for the Arab nation. Also the neighboring Jewish community was an example to think about a religious civilization. The surprising fact about Mohammad is that although we can think of him as the one who aspire a reform in his nation, after he married a rich woman, Khadijah at the age of 25 who was 15 years older than him, he became conservative and for 15 years from the age of 25 to 40, his life was very ordinary. We don’t know what forced him to declare himself as prophet at 40. Before this, He might think that being moral in his society was his duty. From his background, we know that he believed in ethics and his ethical personality can be deduced from his title “Amin” which means honest. The people of Mecca entitled him as Amin in his youth and even when these people struggled with him about his new religion, they respected him. Then he might came to this point that for the glory of his nation, he should start a movement and if needed he should be ready for sacrifice. Muslims believe that up to this point, his personality experienced a perfection process and then when he became ready to receive revelation, Gabriel visited him at Hara cave at the mountain near Mecca and declare him as the last prophet. Before starting his career every month, he spent some days in this cave alone. This loneliness is very important for his movement & his ideology. This allowed him to organize his thoughts and gradually he founded a basis for novel ideas that constructed a new religion with a Jewish & Christian background. It is noteworthy that the founders of great religions had periods of loneliness before declaring their massages. Zoroaster came back from his journey in nature and declared the ideas of monotheism & eschatology; it was after his solitude that Buddha organized his thoughts and refused the polytheistic system of the Vedic religion. Jesus Christ had a period of lost years within which he possibly travelled within countries as well as being in solitude in nature. Now it was the time for an Arab to declare a new religion and Mohammad did so and by this, he became one of those great religion builders. Yet there is an important difference between him and the above mentioned religion builders. Each of them inherited a religious process and they perfected it to found a great religion, but Mohammad did not use his Arabic heritage and founded his ideas from Jewish and Christian beliefs in a way that Islam can be identified as a revised version of these beliefs. This is because of the fact that novel ideas before him had been spread in different peoples and his career was actually to organize them as the last declared great religion. The sources of Islamic ideology along with the innovation of Mohammad himself, were Christianity and mainly later Judaism. Both of these doctrines influenced from Aryan Great Religions, i.e. Zoroastrianism & Buddhism. Aryan Great Religions declared novel religious ideas. Zoroaster for the first time in history denied the polytheism and founded the idea of monotheism in its systematic way; also he organized primitive eschatological ideas of his nation and interpreted them morally, i.e. our destinies in another life are determined by our deeds in this life. Similarly, Buddha refused the polytheism, but without constructing a new metaphysics he became an agnostic and believed only in ethics as the basic principle in the universe; he also said that it is our moral characteristics that determines our destinies, but in contrast to Zoroaster, he believed that our destinies are whether to exempt from the life itself or come back to life as a reincarnated soul. Both of these great religions were created as responses to the development of ideas in their communities and more important, they were reactions of this development to their religious heritage. The main idea of these religions was ethics and they interpreted the life and destiny based on morality and it is this character that accounts for the pragmatism of these religions and that is why they are great religions. They founded universal religious thoughts about deity and eschatology. Both of the monotheism of Zoroaster and atheism of Buddha are parallel answers to the question of deity; Zoroastrianism adapted a metaphysical system, but Buddhism refused metaphysics and interprets the world physically. In addition, Zoroastrianism believes in resurrection & heaven and hell, but Buddhism believes in reincarnation & Nirvana. These ideas, especially those of Zoroastrianism were supplemental factors for the perfection of Judaism and the development of Christianity. Judaism was at first a tribal religion that experienced a period of development. The idea of monotheism gradually perfected in Judaism as a result of the work of prophets and at last it came to its final form under the influence of Zoroastrianism at the time when the old testament was put in writing under the Persian governors of the Achaemenids. Eschatology that originally did not exist in Judaism came to it under the influence of Zoroastrianism at the time when the social conditions of the Jewish community was ready to loan it as a result of oppression of the Seleucid government of Palestine. It should e pointed out that although Judaism was influenced by Zoroastrianism, but it is still an independent religion which gradually perfected from a rich background of Semitic civilization to the formation of Christianity and as a result Christianity became a great religion which has a background of Judaism with influences of Zoroastrianism and even Buddhism (For Influence of Buddhism on Christianity see: Hanson, James, M. “Was Jesus a Buddhist?”, Buddhist-Chrsitian Studies; 25 (2005), pp 75-89). From this Background, Islam organized Jewish and Christian ideologies and revised them to declare a religion in parallel for Arabs. From this point, Islam is similar to Manichaeism which was a combination of Great Religions of Buddhism, Zoroastrianism & Christianity, but the universal character of Manichaeism is much more than Islam. Islam can be considered as a universal religion only for its ideology, but it has only Semitic sources. We have some evidence from which we can understand that Manichaeism influenced Islam and Manichaeism was an example for it, but due to environmental conditions, it is limited to Semitic ideas. It should be pointed out that since Islam is a modified combination of Judaism & Christianity, it is a new great religion and is worth to study its ideas. However the only superiority of Islam is its absolute monotheism that opposed the trial characteristic of Judaism and also refused the trinity of Christianity. As the last point, it should be pointed out that Islam in contrast to other religions has a double character: Islam is claimed to be universal and yet it is local. Any religion in its cultural context has two aspects: ideological and traditional. The traditional aspect of a religion is not the work of a thinker, but it comes from ethnic costumes and the specific culture of the society in which the religion originates. From this point no religion is universal unless otherwise in any society it take the costumes and their changes into account. As an example the legal book of Vandidad of the Avesta originated from ancient traditions of Iranian Society and it belongs to a specific period of time. There are some costumes and rites that seems weird, useless and even insensible in our view, but they were practical and holy once in history. This is also the case for Mosaic laws & Jewish costumes. They came to practice in a long time and they were a means to keep the integrity of Jewish Society. These laws & costumes were in practice within the Jews of Arab Peninsula at the time of Islam. From Arabic point of view, this was considered as a sign of a civilized life; Arabs considered the laws and traditions holy and even divine. By this, it is no surprise that the traditional and legal system of Islam is based on Arab costumes and Jewish laws and costumes and although Islam claims to be a universal religion and from its ideology one can accept this, it is local considering its traditional and legal system.

Study of Religions

Generally there are two view points about religions and their study: the first one is that religions are inspirations from heaven, the second one deals with religions as a human process in the history of civilizations. The first one leads to the conclusion that from the beginning, god inspired and spoke to some prophets to guide people about essential subjects such as deity and maybe the idea of another life and resurrection. The second leads to comparative study of religions, i.e. study of the roots and origins of religions as a developing process in the history of human life. To accept any of these viewpoints, we need some evidence as support. This needs a glimpse to the trend of human civilizations and religions throughout the world. For the sake of simplicity and also to speak to the point, the case of primitive religions is not discussed here and I go over the case of advanced religions.

If we are to accept the first viewpoint, as it is usually expressed by clergies, we encounter some problems: the history of human life and civilizations contradicts with it! It is quite absurd to think about primitive religions as inspiration from god, moreover  advanced religions formed in some societies not all of them, also there was no prophet inspired from God in some nations, even in advanced ones such as Greece. Also those religions proved to be ancient are not perfect, even in essential subjects. An outstanding example of this matter is that there was no idea of another life and resurrection in early Judaism and Moses, the great Jewish prophet did not know anything about it, even we have some points mentioned in Torah and other books of the old testament (Hebrew bible) that tell us they believed to its opposite, i.e. the only life is the present one! It is a proved fact that these ideas originally did not exist in Judaism and they came to it under the influence of Iranian religion, the one we call Zoroastrianism. The Zoroastrianism itself has its roots in early Iranian religion that has a lot in common with Indian Vedic religion. The Vedic religion itself experienced a development process that can be deduced by investigating the books or hymns that remained from ancient times, regarding their chronological order.

From the illustrations made above, we may accept the second point of view, the view that was accepted by the most academic authorities in the world. From this point of view, we understand that as civilizations proceeds in development, the religions may be born, grown and completed.

But what is a religion, considering the above facts? We may say that a religion is an intellectual and also emotional process that moves toward perfection in civilizations. It is intellectual since it deals with reasoning about the existence of god and the necessity of a future life and although the discussion is polemic and controversial, we may accept these things; but these are only the backbone of a belief, and their interpretation and description requires an emotional process that really deals with inspiration. Religion is also emotional since the universe and even human life are so complicated that we cannot analyze it thoroughly, so we may use our inspiration to give an overall interpretation of the universe and our life and of our destiny. There were a few people who declared great ideas about religion and then their pupils completed the task so that a great religion formed. This is the case of Zoroaster & Zoroastrianism, Buddha & Buddhism, Jesus Christ and Christianity and at last Mohammad and Islam. After an overview about religious studies, I want to speak about  Manichaeism and its similarity to Islam.

An Example: Manichaeism & Islam

In Sassanid Iran, a man named Mani from now day Iraq (Babylon) that had the experience of living in several religious communities came to the conclusion that since every great religion has great ideas of its own, the best thing to do is to combine them into a single religion and declare a unique universal religion. He wrote about 7 books including a gospel, one of his books that was named “Shapurgan” was in Persian and he dedicated it to Shapur I the second Sassanid Emperor. Some fragments of this books have been found in Turfan in central Asia. He said in this book: “the wise lord, the one who gave wisdom and knowledge to the first man, from time to time and age to age sent wisdom and knowledge to mankind, once in India and by Buddha, once in Iran and by Zoroaster and once in the west by Jesus Christ. Now it is Mani’s teaching that shows the real interpretation of the older doctrines”. His religion was a mixture of ideas from Great religions plus some novel ideas to bring the different doctrines into an agreement. He declared his religion as universal and himself as the seal of prophets and the one whom Jesus had promised to come after him (it is written in the Gospel of John, chapter 14:16,17 that Jesus promised someone to come, but actually Jesus meant no specific person, from the context we may conclude that he meant the holy spirit).

The place that he started his career was really a crossroad of cultures and religions and the world center for the exchange of cultures and religions. His religions looked vey promising and might have brought about peace in the world if it succeeded to become widespread, but after a while the Zoroastrian clergies that felt their position in danger, executed him and by this his movement was not stopped. However for about a thousand years it was an important religion that inspired other religions and was spread from china to Spain, the whole domain of the civilized world, although it did not have any power as its support.

Now we may talk about Islam, from the above description we can see that there are some astonishing similarities between Manichaeism and Islam. Islam like Manichaeism is a kind of combination of religions with novel ideas, but in the case of Islam, only Christianity and Judaism were considered as the source and as great religions and this is primarily because of the conditions of Arab peninsula. Mohammad had contact only with Jews and Christians. Also note that Arabs had only acquaintance with Judaism rather than Christianity and Arabs considered respect for them as civilized people, that is why Islam’s main source is Judaism. Mohammad declared himself as the seal of prophets as the murdered Mani did, he declared his religion as universal as Mani did (at least from ideological point of view, otherwise we do know that legally Islam is a national religion for Arabs). Also the attitude toward Christianity in the two religions is the same; apart from the point mentioned above about Jesus promise, Mani believed that Jesus was not actually crossed and it was someone else similar to him that was crossed, and in fact Jesus went to heaven; exactly the idea about Jesus in Quran. There are some other similarities about good and evil and in the case of eschatology. in case of rites, there are also some similarities. For example Mani’s Religion included some rituals among them was ablution before prayer, the one that transferred to Islam.

The interesting point is that what was the source of these similarities? We may answer that it might be Salman the Persian, the one who is claimed to come from Iran and joined Mohammad. Disregarding the stories about him in Islamic books, Salman is actually an unknown person; he might not be an Iranian, but a Christian Syrian that lived in Sassanid Persian empire (that was why he was called Persian) and might convert to Manichaeism, and since Manichaeism had different versions in different countries, a Christian version of Manichaeism; the version that deals primarily with Christianity rather than Zoroastrianism or Buddhism. This hypothesis may solve the problem that although there are some similarities between Manichaeism and Islam, there is no mention of Iranian and Indian religions in Quran and Quran world is limited to Jewish and Arab society and to the most to Christian society