العربي الديمقراطي The Latest From The Arab World
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By Ahmed A. Yousef
Humans are such ironic creatures! Everything around us is constantly changing. Numerous things in our lives are cyclical. The certain things in life are death, taxes, and change. Whether one believes in a creator or is a creationist, all can agree that our universe never stops moving and changing. It’s a thing we call “time.”
Most religions can agree to a few premises:
- The deity is beyond time.
- All creations are perfect, even if in many cases the wisdom of the perfection is beyond our limited knowledge and abilities.
- Religion serves as a framework to life.
Based on these premises one can conclude that religion is prefect timeless framework through which we choose to navigate life. With this conclusion in hand along with the earlier observation that change is constant and inevitable, we can see the error in our longstanding view of religion. Many of us are guilty of seeing religion as stuck in antiquity. Hence, the recent calls to change religion. I beg to differ, rather than changing religion we should change how we view religion. Viewing religion as the perfect creation that as all other creations is constantly changing opens one’s mind to seeing religion as a fluid and dynamic framework.
Through this new vantage point one can see how blasphemous it would be for anyone to interpret religion literally, thereby removing the façade of what is commonly referred to as fundamentalism. To remove fundamentalism would eliminate much of the philosophy behind radicalization. We can all agree that it is easier to change one’s self is easier than changing the world. I have faith, and among the things I have faith in are humans reaching their greatest potential.