Armstrong 10-13

One of the first things I thought about writing about was something that I already mentioned in class and in one of my blogs, but it came up again in chapter 10. I appreciated this time how Armstrong made a clear distinction between the teachings of religion and its practice. On page 196 she describes Jerome and how he said that the Jews were not worthy of compassion, noting that he did so "with a callousness that showed scant redard for the teaching of Jesus and Paul, who had both declared charity to be the highest religious duty." This obviously doesn't make it right, but I appreciate how she began to make that distinction. I've been thinking about how this could be relevant to today, and I think it is important because if one can understand the teachings of a particular religion, then one can interpret peoples' actions in light of their theology. I would never say that just because someone acts in line with their theology that they are automatically correct, but if someone acts in a way contrary to the teachings of the religion they profess to follow, then it provides legitimacy to critique those actions from a religious standpoint. Hopefully understanding Judaism, Christianity, and Islam better will help me (or us) evaluate the actions of representatives from those groups in the present.



I was also just generally interested in Armstrong's account of the beginning of Islam. I had never thought before about the impact of language on religion, but she mentions that "At last God had spoken to the Arabs in their own language and had brought them into the community of true believers" (217). I thought this point was really interesting because if that's really how Arabs viewed Islam at the time then it is easy to see how it spread so quickly. It would be hard to say if people really took that perspective or not, but it's an interesting angle. I was curious though why she called Muhammad a "spiritual genius" (218). It seems like an oxymoron to me: spiritual implies divine influenve while genius implies innate capability. It seems like it would have to be one or the other... but maybe I'm thinking about this too much....

(Apparently I lost my internet connection and when I went to publish I lost the last half of this post because the autosaving wasn't taking... sorry, I just don't have the energy to rewrite everything... Perhaps I'll be able to finish up in the morning)