Hi Neale,
I wish to share few thoughts with you. Since I am neither a Muslim nor a Christian I have few observations that I have observed over the years. I have had very close both Muslim and Christian friends. I have never seen any practicing Muslim even speak of our Lord Jesus Christ in a disrespectful manner. It’s a big no no in the holy Quran. In India our Muslim brothers call him with reverence Hazrat Isa (Prophet Jesus) and Prophet Moses as Hazrat Musa. I have seen innumerable Christians on the other hand casually speaking of Prophet Mohammad without much respect. A Muslim will never even in the wildest imagination (who truly worships the Quran) even dream of insulting the glorious Jesus of Nazareth. I wonder what was achieved in depicting the prophet Mohammad in cartoons that should leave nothing but an insipid flavour in the mind. Prophet Mohammad never spoke about virgins or any of the nonsense that goes about today yet people associate all the crazy stuff to the Prophet. The Muslim who is a firm believer and the hypocrite who uses Quran to his own needs both side together when the insult is directed to the religion or the Prophet. For those who do think that Islam is really what it is made out to be today, please read about the Hoards of Sufi saints who graced the land of Persia and India with the true teachings of Islam.
Thanks
Akshay Mathur

Reading this made me feel incredibly sad, and kind of helpless… just like I used to when I was little and the people I loved would argue and fight, often about things I did not understand. It nearly always seemed so pointless, and my heart would ache because of the confusion and grasping onto false ideas which always led to the ego believing it was vulnerable – fear leading to self defence, anger and hatred. I would look at the sun shining and the wind in the trees, look at their healthy bodies full of life and wonder, “why can’t we just be glad and play with each other and have fun?”
Religion is like bread. We all need to eat, although some people might choose not to eat bread. Bread comes in many forms, it can be fresh or old, sliced or whole… white bread, brown bread, multigrain bread… it goes on. It is possible to buy bread from a store, or from a market, from a neighbour, or to make it ones self. And one can eat bread alone, or in company.
We should celebrate bread, all bread… for bread nourishes and gives life… and life is good… life is wonderful! And bread, when eaten with love and fed to the soul, can also bring us closer to God. We should also celebrate those who choose not to eat bread, for there are other ways to live and other ways to know God.
I’ve never seen people fighting with each other over what kind of bread they had for breakfast that morning.(although it wouldn’t surprise me if this has happened!)
If we could only learn to think with our heart centres, perhaps we would see more clearly and understood who we truly were. When Magdi Allam chose to convert from Muslim to Catholicism, it should have aroused no more interest than if had simple switched to buying a different form of bread, from a different market.
The problem seems to be not the religion, but the meaning which has been attached to religion. It is not my place to pass comment on his decision to mark his conversion in such a high profile, prominent way; but he obviously knew that this would attract a great deal of media attention and publicity. He must have had reasons for this, and I respect his reasons. But from my perspective, his decision appeared to make his choice of faith symbolic in a political way bound to cause disturbance, rather than a choice of the heart.
Religion is so often used, whether intentionally or unintentionally, as a weapon of the ego, a tool to create separation. But the true seed of all religion, the call to love, does not need to shout loudly to make it self known, it does not need to throw stones into the sea to cause great waves, for love is the sea and the waves and love is the sound and also the ears that hear it. Love has so much power it knows it can move mountains in silence, but it knows also that even if mountains have moved, nothing has changed.
Having said this, the sadness of the situation is not that Allam chose to make such a ‘noisy’ announcement; it is the certainty of the reaction it would cause. What is so incredibly heart wrenching is that this is the nature of how volatile our world relations are at the moment. We are in such a terrible mess and is does not need to be this way! It as though many people are sleeping; and instead of having pleasant dreams in their sleep, they are having nightmares – frantic wild fantastical nightmares in which they become convinced that their family and friends are a deadly enemy and that they must try to destroy them.
The concept of oneness is so hard to grasp, so tricky to realise and absorb into ones daily being. The ego is constantly at work and will do anything to convince its owners that they are separate beings, at risk and that they must continually struggle everything around them in order to preserve themselves. This is why we must learn to think with heart and see with soul. Then religion can become like bread once more, and even if Magdi Allam had chosen to dance on rooftops and play a trumpet to announce his new faith, it might only have made a few people smile at his spirit and wish him happiness, nothing more.

In addition to that (I love how things move alongside…) I have just read in my weekend newspaper that the Pope decided to re-introduce an old Latin Mass from 1570 (?, Tridentine liturgy), which has been followed by a more modern prayer since 1960.
In the prayers for Good Friday, he included a prayer for the enlightenment of the Jewish people. While it omits mention of faithlessness and blindness, it reads “Let us also pray for the Jews: that God our Lord might enlighten their hearts, so that they might know Jesus Christ as the Savior of all mankind.”
Obviously, the Pope has not only offended the Muslims.

lol..everyone is the same. no matter he is a mosleem or a christian or any other religion, he is easily hurted and angered when someone insult and make down his religion. i’ve observed this in all countries and we are all the same.
im a christian too and before this i used to hate mosleem so much in my country cause they never stop trying to preach and talk bad about christianity. they say they respect Jesus more than the christian did but what is the meaning of respect when we dont even follow the way Jesus lived?
for christian here in malaysia, they are different. everyone has his own opinion whether it is right to insult others or not. and it really depends on our own relationship and perspective with others. some are very good in front but at the back, they throw out all their unsatisfaction.
lol..this is indeed funny. well, me too had gone through this phenomenon. getting angry when other faith insult and mock my belief in Jesus but now as i grew up, i know it rewards me nothing when i try to insist what i hold.
but whatever happen in this world, i know it wont affect my realtionship to God and Jesus. i simply assume those things as imagination and reflection of my own true life. so, never think that we are always right. sometime we need to be universal and consider all people feeling no matter how wrong his belief is. i believe everyone knows what he’s holding on and what he believes. so trying to get them fall or falter in their belief is not right for me. this is because it is the very spirit of the Father that will guide everyone of us to the truth.
just as the Lord says, it is You who will guide to me. so just be nice to all people and love them unconditionally. i love neale’s book cause it really gives me wider knowledge and sight on this issue. futhermore, its like reading the very word of my beloved Father in heaven.
so, just take it easy. look, the Lord has overcome the world. so there’s no need to be afraid when people make down your religion. if you get angered, there’s must be something wrong about your relationship with God. human are God’s beloved children and what is the thing that can block Him to reach us?
if the cartoon of prohet muhammad is published, will it change prophet muhammad? of course no. so let it be the way it is. it wont last once u let it go, it will go by itself and soon no one will ever think about it. it will only cause anger and hatred in u. these are their own. dont keep it, give it back to them not by proving to them that THIS IS WRONG but simly ignore it and let it flow. look, what we resist will persist.

to add thoughts to your last questions on your blog, “Here we go again”perhaps one answer is because we become so identified with our conditioned beliefs and look to others for our structure and guidance that we take any hit against what we believe personally. Religious beliefs are not without ego, unfortunately.
love me.

I was one of those people who feared Islam and Christianity. I hated God and didn’t care to speak to anyone about my fear. In my fear I attracted many Christians and Muslims in my life that created a vicious cycle of fear that made me see only the negatives of those religions. The fundamentalists scared me the most, they with their jubilant almost ranting wale’s of spiritual ecstasy they exhibited in their lives.
I would scowl at them and think thoughts of violence against them when they would speak to me. Islam with its tyrant leader who killed off his rivals then says that God told him in a dream that these acts were acceptable in His eyes.
The Christians stomping their feet with arms aloft praising Jesus while they condemned Gay’s and teaching that the world was a mere six thousand years old and men and dinosaurs walked together living in harmony.
Both religions taught hate and despair fighting with one another trying to prove whose God was greater. The Crusaders had caused thousands to die in the name of God. The Jihad forced their believers to run into crowds of people wearing bombs.
The Jews had denied both Christians and Muslims their rights to exist side by side in the holist of cities while they seize property and take lives in the name of holy right.
I saw these things and more everyday as I read the reports from the media and heard people around me gossiping. I was so sick of it all. I couldn’t see the sun that was blocked by so many clouds. Then I read Conversations with God, my fears subsided and I had a spiritual awakening that leads me to see that I was connected to them all. Then later I discovered reincarnation and living life after life, and becoming aware for the first time that I had been those fundamentalists in every religion. I had been the foot stumper and the bomb carrier. I had thought I was from the chosen and I condemned others to death.
Now I understand unconditional love, what it really means is ultimate connections with everyone not by spirit but by experience. I had experienced it all before, I just forgot.
Blessings
Blake Hayner

Taking the discussion forward, what should we do to when people are insulted? Taking inspiration from Saint Francis of Assisi, how can we “Sow Love, where there is hatred”? How do we Heal?
While dealing with Religion, how can the Spiritual Dimesion provide succor? Looks like a tough task!
But, consistent with your messages from God, which always lead to “LOVE” as a solution, Abdal-Hakim Murad introspects and EXPRESSED – “Islamic Spirituality – the forgotten revolution”:
How should we respond to this disorder? We must begin by remembering what Islam is for. As we noted earlier, our din is not, ultimately, a manual of rules which, when meticulously followed, becomes a passport to paradise. Instead, it is a package of social, intellectual and spiritual technology whose purpose is to cleanse the human heart. In the Qur’an, the Lord says that on the Day of Judgement, nothing will be of any use to us, except a sound heart (qalbun salim). [3] And in a famous hadith, the Prophet, upon whom be blessings and peace, says that
“Verily in the body there is a piece of flesh. If it is sound, the body is all sound. If it is corrupt, the body is all corrupt. Verily, it is the heart.
Mindful of this commandment, under which all the other commandments of Islam are subsumed, and which alone gives them meaning, the Islamic scholars have worked out a science, an ilm (science), of analysing the ‘states’ of the heart, and the methods of bringing it into this condition of soundness. In the fullness of time, this science acquired the name tasawwuf, in English ‘Sufism’ – a traditional label for what we might nowadays more intelligibly call ‘Islamic psychology.’
It is amazing how Sufi teachings echo God’s observations in “Conversations with God” series. It is “Sweet Madness”!

Einstein was at one time offered the leadership or Israel. I wonder what it, Israel, would have been like under him a man that was openly hostile to the bible, considered himself Jewish only in the sense of shared history and that the success of Israel depended on the just treatment of Palestinians. The plan of Israel seems to be based on a long view of history and so the gradual displacement of Palestinians, in a way that does not cause a total condemnation by the world community seems to be the way of it. Both sides can look forward to years of suffering and both sides seem equally resigned to it. I have no answerers. It is as though some fundamental change in the human spirit will be required. It is heartening to see so many here that are working on ending the war within themselves which is of course primary. More of a thought experiment than a real belief is the idea that i have reincarnated or may yet reincarnate into all people in the world, everyone i meet and it is like meeting myself everywhere and we are all doing the best we can. It leads me to a place of humility.