Harvard Ethics: An Oxymoron

[Guest]

Email from a yahoogroup forward to yours truly. Contains some frozen bile spewed by ex "Prof" of some C-grade university in Belgrade: Raju "Slobo" Thomas. Slobo Rajus seems to be loosing it in his old age. Warning: Plug your nose as you read..
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I was away in Europe for much of the time since September 2005, and just
got back after another one month visit.

Regarding your last email about Christianity. Your attacks on Jesus and
Christianity made me go back to the gospels about Christ’s life and the sermons
of St. Paul. These are the two greatest Jews and individuals that ever lived.
Jesus the Jew (he was born and died a Jew) preached a profound new value
system of compassion, forgiveness and non-violence. And Saul the Jew turned St.
Paul, started and spread a religion that eventually covered much of the
globe. These are the two greatest Jews that ever lived. The other two would be
Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein.

So why don't Jews believe in Jesus the Jew and his Jewish disciples
especially Paul? Because if they did so, the Jewish race descended directly from
Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, would come to an end. All Jews trace their lineage
racially through at least one parent (especially the mother who can always be
identified), to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, According to Jesus the Jew, God
has no chosen people. We are all equal under god.

In the Christian world, Christians criticize Christianity freely and
extensively. Almost all of this are attacks on the practice of Christianity, not
the life and teachings of Jesus Christ. Muslims and Hindus never indulge in
such self-criticism and destruction.

In democratic US and Europe, self-criticism is so widespread, one would
think that these are the worst and most evil countries in the world. It is not
unlike candidates for elections in the US describing their opponents as
incompetent, corrupt and evil. On the other hand, in the former communist Soviet
Union and China, they considered themselves infallible and perfect nations.
There are no similar self-attacks and criticisms of Hinduism and Hinduism,
or of Muslims and Islam, in the Hindu and Muslim worlds.

On the other hand, in the Christian world, Christians avoid slandering and
defaming other religions, especially Hinduism. Likewise, Muslims may
criticize Christian support for Jewish Israel, but there are no direct Muslim
attacks on Christians, Christianity and especially on the life and teachings of
Jesus. Similarly, Buddhists, Shintoist, Taoist and Confucian followers may
criticize the behavior of Christian countries, but they never attack
Christianity itself.

The only exception are the upper caste followers of Hinduism, especially
Gujerati banias and Maharashtrian Brahmins. Yet these same Hindus do their best
to migrate to the Christian West and launch their hate attacks on Christians
and Christianity while prospering from living here or through contacts with
Christian world. Such behavior represents hypocrisy, double-standards, and
ingratitude of the highest magnitude. did a WWW scan and found only Hindu
anti-Christian websites and they are horrible. No Muslim or Buddhist.

In the Christian and Muslim worlds, the general stereotype image of Hindus
and Hinduism is an extremely negative one. You can forget your puppets like
David Frawley and Konrad Elst. The image is approximately as follows.

Hindu scriptures and Hindu practice are full of contradictions, double
standards and hypocrisy. Hindus are comfortable telling lies, and they exaggerate
and make up things without scruples, because that is the nature of Hinduism.
(Just for example, the Hindu American Foundation keep repeating that they
represent 2 million Hindus in the US. [The total number of Hindus in the US is
1.081 million out of 1,765 Indian Americans including Hindus.]

To continue with the non-Hindu image of Hinduism: Sexual perversions
abound among Hindu gods and goddesses. Hindu families offer their young daughters
as prostitutes to temple priests in India. When Roman Catholic priests who
are expected to be celibate prey on young boys, it is considered wrong and
evil. But temple prostitution is not condemned and the priests are not
removed. One can always justify evil through some part of Hindu scriptures.

From the perception of the outside world, the caste system is one of the
greatest organized hereditary evils of all times, worse than slavery. The
former Dalits were treated as less than animals throughout recorded Hindu
history. The practice of Hinduism, with the worship of monkey and elephant-faced
gods and spider-looking goddesses, are an ugly sight to outsiders. Hindu
practices are considered dirty and ugly when millions of Hindus swarm into the
Ganges at Allahabad, Benares, Hardwar and elsewhere under the superstitious
belief that this will solve all their problems in this life and the next life.
The last Pope called Hinduism an “evil” religion. The patriarch of the
Russian Church called it the “devil’s” religion. This ugly image of Hinduism
is shared by much of the Christian and Muslim worlds of 4 billion people.

When I taught India politics for the last 30 years at Marquette University,
I would start by explaining Hinduism Buddhism and Islam on the grounds that
it is important to understand the nature of these religions to understand
South Asian politics. My students were almost exclusively mainstream White
Americans. They would independently look up Hinduism and Hindus out of
curiosity, especially now with the internet and worldwide web available. They tell
me that they cannot believe how people can believe in all this mythology, in
ugly monkey and elephant-faced gods, and practice it amidst such dirt and
filth. In one year, an American documentary showed a Hindu temple in Gujerat or
Rajasthan where thousands of rats were crawling around. Hindu devotees where
not only feeding the rats but also worshiping them. One of the girls in the
class said that when she saw it, she wanted to throw up. Another student
once said “How can people in this day and age believe in all this garbage.”

I DO NOT SHARE THESE IGNORANT VIEWS AND HAVE DONE MY BEST TO COUNTER IT.
But you should understand that this is a widespread impression in America and
the West. The building of almost a thousand Hindu temple in the US is not
helping. It is generating silent resentment. Muslims and Buddhists are not
engaged in such building sprees to show their religious power in the US.

The worst Hindu fanatics are among the one million Hindus who live and
prosper in the US which include yourself (The Hindu American Foundations claims
that there are 2 million Hindus in the US. This is a lie. According to the
2000 US census there is only 1.081 million Hindus out of 1.765 million
Indian-Americans. ) Like you, many of these Hindu-Americans hate and despise
Christianity, Christians and Jesus. It does not bother their conscience that you
Hindus enjoy the hospitality and generosity of the Christian West while
spewing hate and contempt for the Christian West’s religion and Jesus himself,
all behind the backs of the Christian West. You will never see such behavior
and attitudes among East Asian Americans or even Muslim Americans. It is
strictly a Hindu-American behavior.

What would you think of me if I lived with your family, enjoyed your
security and support in your home, prospered enormously because of your generosity,
but behind your back I went around saying horrible things about Hindus and
Hinduism? You would call this lacking gratitude, character and moral
integrity on my part. If you indulge in such Christian-hate views, you should have
the morality to go back to your Hindutva. You are what you are because of the
Christian world: - British Indian legacy of federal democracy, and the
hospitalityof Britain and the US.

You are exaggerating this Christian missionary dishonesty. That would be
un-Christian. Also caste is not part of Christianity. If caste is practiced
by Christians in India, it is overpowering legacy of Hinduism. Christ
preached just the opposite. According to Christ, "the first shall be last, and
the last shall be first," blessed are the poor and the meek for they shall
enter the kingdom of god. You picked some obscure statement attributed to Jesus
to show that he advocated violence. He said "no eye for an eye no tooth for
a tooth," if someone hits you "to turn the other cheek," "love them that
despise you, do good to them that hate you," prefer martrydom to violent
retaliation. He predicted that people would say all kinds of evil against him, but
his followers should love those who indulge in such hate against him. That
would be you.

There is a cliche, “Those who live in glass houses, should not throw stones.”
Everything that you see in the world today (economy, technology,
society, education) is because of the Christian West. India is one country
because of the British otherwise it might have been a thousand pieces. The English
language has given India the edge in the international, cyberworld, and the
US. India’s democracy, federal system, its educational system, its railway
and communications systems, and more, are all because of the British. There
is nothing Hindu about these accomplishments.

.I could go on. But I will stop here.
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