Blasphemy

Recently I posted a message on the message board of a group I belong to. The gist of my message was that westerners are ignorant of the Middle East and Islam. My reason for this thinking was the recent bruhaha over the teacher from England who was teaching in Sudan. The teacher allowed her students to name a teddy bear Muhammed. What transpired next baffles the imagination. Fundamentalist Muslims called for the teacher's execution for blasphemy. My contention in my message was that the teacher should have known better than to name anything Muhammed in a Muslim country. She should have known she was going to be teaching in a theocracy. The teacher, in my opinion, was ignorant of the country she was going to and she was ignorant of Islam. I stated she was one in a long line of westerners that showed how ignorant they were and that these examples only reinforce the perception in the Middle East that the west is ignorant of Islam.
Another member of the group wrote back and said to the effect, if a person's religious belief is such that they feel threatened by a child's toy, then they need to re-exam their beliefs. The writer from the group is absolutely correct. If you believe something and you believe it strongly enough, then your beliefs should be able to withstand any criticism. If however your belief is threatened by a child's toy, you need to re-exam your beliefs. How in the name of (insert favorite sky pixie name here) can a religion be threatened by naming a child's toy after your founder/god/prophet!? Get over yourselves! Are your beliefs in your sky pixie that weak? What exactly do you believe? One would think that naming something after your sky pixie would be a form of flattery. Think about it, everyday the children would see Muhammed and perhaps think about the person the bear is named for. Are the fundamentalists ready to call for the execution of every father that names their son Muhammed? Blasphemy I say! How dare the father compare their son to the prophet! How about Muhammed Ali? Should he be executed because he, a westerner, selected the name Muhammed when he converted to Islam? How ignorant could he be?
I believe that westerners are ignorant of the Middle East and Islam. However, everyone in the world should be free to say anything they want, no matter how provocative. It is up to the people who hear the message to search their beliefs and decide how they will respond. Words are wind through our pharynx, as the writer put it. They are only as meaningful as the attention we give them. Naming a teddy bear, Muhammed, pales in comparison to the continued slaughter of innocent men, women, and children by suicide bombers in the name of god. Where is the talk of blasphemy when a suicide bombers kills himself and others in the name of god? Where is the outrage? Prove to me that your religion (every religion) is a religion of peace. The only way I will ever believe that Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, etc., are religions of peace is when there are no more wars, attacks, bombings, etc., in the name of god. There will still be wars in the world but no one will die in the name of their sky pixie.
Stop taking your religious texts literally! It is ridiculous to base your belief on things written between 1400 and 4000 years ago or more. These texts were written at time when humans lived in tents and were nomadic. Most of the population was illiterate. They were written before science was around to verify things. They events in the texts may have been based on actual historical events but they are also layered with mythology from all corners of the Middle East. Elements of Persian (7 day creation story), Babylonian (the flood), Egyptian (9 creation events), Roman (king is the son of a god, virgin birth), Greek (twins), and other mythology have made it into the bible and the koran. There is enough archaeological evidence to show their was a flood that was localized in the area of Caucasus area in Central Asia. There is also evidence that oral traditions can survive for thousands of years, i.e., Inuits in the Arctic have an oral tradition of Mammoths. Mammoths have been extinct for 10,000 years. The flood is very likely an oral tradition embellished from the end of the Ice Age. If the flood covered the whole Earth, how come only Middle Eastern place names are used?
The gospel writers built the Jesus story out of events in the old testament. Jesus walking on water is a retelling of Moses parting the waters. Jesus feeding the multitudes is a retelling of Moses feeding the multitudes in the desert. Jesus' family fleeing to Egypt for protection is a retelling of Joseph's family's going down into Egypt for help in Genesis. The story of the slaughter of the innocents is a retelling of the passover story in Exodus. Jesus entering Jerusalem on the donkey (colt) is a retelling of Zechariah 9:9-11. Jesus throwing the money-changers out of the temple is a retelling and embellishment of Zechariah 14:21. Jesus' sermon on the mount is nothing more than Psalms 119. Luke incorporates many elements of the story of Elijah into his gospel. John begins by retelling a hymn from Proverbs. Jesus' “I am” statements are directly from the burning bush in Exodus. Judah sells Joseph into Egypt; Judas sells Jesus. King Saul and Paul both tried to capture and kill servants of god. Both were overcome by god. As the saying goes, there is nothing ever new under the sun. There is nothing ever new in religious texts. The new testament is built on the old testament. The old testament is built on many myths from many different cultures. The koran is built on both the new and old testament, as well as other Middle Eastern myths.
The bible was built on other culture's mythology in the same way JRR Tolkien and JK Rowlings have taken northern European myths and created best selling novels. These authors took old stories and created something new. The writers of the old and new testaments did the same, They took old myths from neighboring cultures, or from the culture they were living in (Egypt, Babylon) and reworked them for their own culture, and called the new stories religious stories. The bible is in no way, shape, or form a work of god. It may have gods in it but it is nothing more than a book of mythology and fairy tales.
We shouldn't believe what is written in any religious text any more than we should believe what is written in the Odyssey or the Iliad, both of which were written several thousand years ago, around the same time as the old testament was being written down, These books are based on historical events but one does not believe there were cyclops, sirens, golden fleeces, etc. It is the same with the bible. There are historical events in the bible but there is too much mythology for me to accept it as anything other than a book of mythology created in the mind of men.