Comparative Religion

For nearly three decades, the term, \u27integration of faith and learning\u27, or IFL, has stimulated the imagination of Christian educators. But as time has passed, the concept has become a cliche and lost its potency. Narrow, superficial, and contrived attempts to implement the concept have often only confused the issue further and induced a degree of cynicism. Despite this trend, the concept is still as relevant and important as it always has been, and there is no excuse for complacency. This paper does not wish to oversimplify the concept and its implications, but rather, to demystify it, to explore its implications in the new and enabling ways, and to propose strategies for implementing it effectively. In so doing, we will glorify God by reflecting his image more faithfully, as we were originally destined to do. This paper is simply a reflection of one Christian educator\u27s personal journey in relation to IFL. It is offered in a spirit of collaboration in the hope that it may...

Nupe is one of the major ethnic groups in Nigeria. The area it occupies is called Nupeland which falls within the lower basins of Rivers Niger and Kaduna in the Middle Niger region. The land is described as being generally in the area of low relief and abundant drainage formed by the influence of River Niger and its tributaries. Nupe can be seen in three perspectives: as a tribe, as a language, and as an ethnic group or nation. As a tribe, it has a distinctive identity. As a language, it is spoken as a mother tongue in several states of central Nigeria, including Niger, Kwara, Kogi, Nasarawa and Federal Capital Territory (F.C.T) Abuja. People who speak the language are called Nupenchizhi (plu). As a nation, or ethnic group, it evolved one of the greatest polities Nupe Kingdom, known both within and outside Nigeria. Nupe of old can be described as a nation rich in culture, civilization and power comparable with other world ancient civilizations such as Roman, Greek, Egyptian and Byza...

This scholarly article delves into the fascinating parallels between the flood narratives of Noah in the Old Testament and Manu in Hindu mythology. It explores the remarkable similarities between the two accounts, examining their historical and mythological contexts. The article aims to shed light on the significance of these flood narratives in different cultures, highlighting their shared themes of recreation and renewal. By analyzing these narratives, the article seeks to contribute to the understanding of the common human need to grapple with profound passages of time and life, such as birth, death, and transition. The exploration of these flood myths transcends literal interpretations, instead focusing on their rich symbolism and psychological impact on human societies. Significance of Flood Narratives The flood narratives hold immense significance across different cultures and civilizations. These myths have been perpetuated for millennia and are found in a plethora of societies worldwide. Such universality highlights the fundamental human need to grapple with complex themes of creation, destruction, and rebirth. By analyzing the flood narratives in different cultures, we can discern how various societies have interpreted and integrated these stories into their worldviews. These myths often serve as tools for conveying moral lessons, exploring the human condition, and addressing the profound questions of existence. As we delve into the flood narratives of Noah and Manu, we unravel layers of symbolism and meaning that transcend time and geography. Historical and Mythological Contexts To comprehend the parallels between the flood narratives of Noah and Manu, we must consider their historical and mythological contexts. In the case of Noah, the flood story is famously recounted in the Book of Genesis within the Old Testament. Here, God's decision to cleanse the Earth from wickedness and corruption through a cataclysmic flood forms the core of the narrative. Noah, portrayed as a righteous man, is divinely chosen to build an ark to save himself, his family, and a pair of each animal from the impending deluge. The story emphasizes themes of divine judgment, redemption, and renewal, reflecting the prevailing religious and moral beliefs of ancient Hebrew culture. Conversely, Manu's flood narrative is rooted in Hindu mythology, as preserved in texts like the Matsya Purana and the Satapatha Brahmana. Manu, depicted as a virtuous sage, receives a divine warning about an impending flood that will annihilate corrupt civilization. Similarly to Noah, he is guided to construct a vessel to save himself, the sages, and select animals. The story underscores the cyclical nature of creation, dissolution, and rebirth in Hindu cosmology, reflecting the cultural and spiritual milieu of ancient India. In both narratives, the floods serve as vehicles of purification and renewal, reshaping the world to rid it of corruption. The striking parallels between Noah and Manu indicate shared human inclinations to address fundamental existential questions through mythological storytelling. By delving into these historical and mythological contexts, we can appreciate the enduring significance of these flood narratives and their capacity to resonate across diverse cultures and epochs.

This paper addresses contextualisation of Yogic practices, in particular, pranayama or breathwork in the western Sufism. For at least a half of century western religious milieu has been subjected to the eastern religious tradition influx and syncretisation that has an impact on appropriation of Sufis traditions in the West. Contemporary developments in the western Sufis are regarded in line with the concept of ‘reflective spirituality’ (Roof) who claims that contemporary ‘reflective self’ finds it expression in the ‘reflective spirituality’ that tend to be highly fused and oriented towards the practical holistic
perspective of ‘self-realisation’.

Comparative religion is a field of study through which views of various religions about a particular topic or sets of topics can be collated, interpreted, and systematically compared for attaining useful insights and broadening the understanding of religious beliefs, behaviors, and actions [i]. The current research furthers the study of comparative religion by elaborating the conceptions or myths related to eclipses as found in various religions and cultures in the world. Written as a narrative literature review, it aims to collate these conceptions and opinions for comparative analysis. In this paper, we have studied the ‘myths’ and ‘mythology’ of the religions and cultures spread across Australia, Asia, the Americas, Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. It is found that some common themes exist in the beliefs held by various people and religions. However, if we compare these themes with each other, they are found to be considerably different indicating that they have not come from...

This study utilised a context-based analysis of field observations and fifteen in-depth interviews to examine how begging is practiced by the elderly in a city in Southwestern Nigeria. As both sub-categories of beggars in the population and the larger elderly persons in the society, elderly beggars are a distinct demographic group whose needs differ from the rest of the population. Adopting a livelihood perspective as the exploratory frame, the study explains how beggary constitutes a rational response to economic, social, physiological, institutional and structural imperatives, adopted by old people as a strategy for improving their wellbeing. The study concluded that in trying to eradicate begging among elderly, the context of their emergence must be duly examined and given considerable attention in the policy process. Efforts should also be directed at supporting households headed by the elderly as means of removing the most fundamental social and economic situations that promote...

Catholicism and Sunni Islam have been at enmity for centuries, although both have tried to communicate in recent decades. Over the last two decades, Al-Azhar University, the preeminent Sunni intellectual institution, has engaged with the Vatican to foster religious concord and mutual respect. Al Azhar University’s Grand Imam, Sheikh Ahmad Al Tayyeb, has met with various popes and promoted religious tolerance. Pope Francis has promoted interfaith dialogue with Al Azhar. It assesses Al-Azhar University’s role in the Catholic-Sunni dialogue and its triumphs, shortcomings, and prospects. This page uses various sources to explain the argument, its social and cultural setting, and the religious and political issues that shaped the discussion. It highlights the importance and challenges of interfaith cooperation. The overall research focuses on Al-Azhar University’s viewpoint to illuminate Sunni Muslims’ motivations for interfaith engagement with the Catholic Church. It describes the recon...

espanolLos banos, publicos o privados, han sido instalaciones presentes en diferentes culturas a lo largo de la historia, en todas ellas han cumplido funciones utilitarias higienicas y sociales de primer orden. Vitales para prevenir epidemias y potenciar la salud publica, han sido ademas lugares de encuentro e intercambio de ideas, espacios para el ocio y para rituales vinculados a la accion purificadora del agua como elemento unido a creencias religiosas. El estudio que presentamos expone como estas instalaciones eran ya conocidas por los pueblos ibericos de la cornisa cantabrica y de la meseta, actuando como precedentes de las termas romanas, banos arabes y del termalismo moderno y por otro lado tambien explica las caracteristicas, usos y fines de cada uno de ellos. EnglishThe baths, public or private facilities have been present in different cultures throughout history and have fulfilled all sanitary and social utilitarian functions of the first order. Vital to prevent epidemics ...

I Kinds of Time The following remarks concern the question of time in Walter Benjamin's thought on ethics and justice. This theme is intimately connected to his attempt to locate the idea of human action beyond the confines of the subject conceived as the underlying instance to which the will is attributed. His thought in this area is exploratory. In Benjamin's discussions and correspondence with Gershom Scholem, he experiments with ideas deriving from Jewish thought in order to create a locus for his understanding of the ways in which the human being is inserted into the order of justice. It is not prejudicial to the seriousness of this attempt if one notes that this is also partly what was at work in Benjamin's relation to the ideas espoused by Brecht and Adorno. Yet it is above all in the thought broached in the discussions and correspondence with Scholem, in the years preceding the publication of the article “Zur Kritik der Gewalt” in 1921, that Benjamin takes the ma...

The metaphysical lure of Wallace Stevens’s poetry has tantalized readers for decades yet refuses to be pinned down, evading categories like idealism, realism, and anti-realism. Throughout his entire career from Harmonium (1923) to The Rock (1954), Stevens was haunted by the “one” and the possibilities of change. Does change contradict oneness? Can change only occur within oneness? What is to be ultimately transformed through poetry? This essay cuts into the mystical dimensions of Stevens’s work by reading his “great image” that has no shape—his presentation of the cosmological spirit-principle that exceeds the Western philosophical and religious traditions. Stevens’s mystical-ontological insight is frequently accompanied by decisive transformations of conception into perception and, further, a supersensible feeling that reconfigures the self-world continuum. Stevens’s exploration of the senses of order during times of war opens up new modes of mind-reality and self-world correlations that could, in modern democratic countries, precondition the conditions of political and social change.

By the expression ‘extremely unusual sex acts’, I am not implying any prurient or pornographic aspect of the sex acts being described in the scriptures of these three major religions. The ‘unusualness’, which I deal with in this paper, is the exact opposite – the steadfast avoidance of even the smallest measure of sexual pleasure in the act – an act which ought to be taken only to produce progeny within marriage!

Although articles about the homeland and its value have been published in magazines and media, a comprehensive and useful article about the importance of the homeland from the Islamic point of view has not been published. In this article, I researched the importance and value of the homeland from the perspective of the Holy Quran and the hadiths of the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him), as well as the criteria of patriotism, the motives of patriotism, the rights of homeland, under the title: (Patriotism from the perspective of Islam). I hope this article is effective in motivating patriotism.

Morals are just, fair and good rules of human relations and human behaviours. Good conscience also comprises certain principles for imparting justice and fairness among the people. God conscience and morality are, thus, close to each other. Universality in ...

Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965) was a fascinating person, a multivalent icon, mostly known as a doctor in the primeval forest of Africa. There he elaborated the ethics of boundless responsibility towards all living beings as a treatment for the restoration of a decadent civilization. Until his death, Schweitzer was struggling to elaborate a worldview of reverence for life that would be embraced by all religions and cultures. His ethics should be universally true for all people, regardless of time, place, or cultural background. In this article we present his worldview of reverence of life in a critical way. It will be emphasized that Schweitzer was not aware enough that his philosophy was culturally, religiously, historically, and also personally (biographically) conditioned, since it is impossible for anybody to step out of his or her historical and cultural backgrounds. He limited his ethical reflection to the individual sphere and did not allow for any ranking among living beings o...

Differing from the mainstream notion about deconstruction as a differential reading of texts, the paper views it primarily as a process of subversion of self-identity of a person who faces the ‘alterity’ of the other in a concrete ethical situation. Thus it is seen more as an existential experience of the individual rather than a socio-political process. It seeks a pathway from Derrida’s deconstruction of texts to Emmanuel Levinas’s trial of individuality by the ‘face’ of the other. The face of the other that calls for the ethical responsibility of the ‘I’, challenges his autonomy. As human self-identities are unreal constructs produced by ontology through the integration of multiple experiences of phenomena into a uniform apperception of consciousness, its rupture alone will guarantee a passage to the realm of ‘otherness’. ‘Otherness’ manifested in the deconstruction of self-identity in ethics is viewed as more intense and radical than the subversion of identity that takes place in...

Whether one chooses to acknowledge or disregard its significance, nature has always been part of us. In an anthropogenic era, the dire state of the environment has made it an increasingly concerning topic of discussion among us. Nature has been extensively examined in numerous scholarly discussions ranging from secular to religious perspectives. This paper examines how nature plays a crucial role in helping us understand the relationship between God and humans, as portrayed in the Bible. The Bible being a religious text exists with very specific purposes. That being said, elements of nature were also used very specifically in the Bible. Most presently available scholarly research focuses on reading the significance of nature elements from religious perspectives. However, this research employs the eco-spirituality theory to examine the book of Jonah from the Bible to determine the relationship between Jonah, God, and nature. Through this secular perspective, the aim is to show that e...

This paper investigates the appropriation of the legendary figure of George Castriota Scanderbeg by Enver Hoxha since the earliest days of Albania’s communist regime. To this end, I am analyzing from an iconological perspective the juxtaposition of Enver Hoxha and George Castriota Scanderbeg’s images on the first pages of the very first reading primers after the end of the World War II. In so doing, this paper builds up previous work of the late Gëzim Qëndro on the relation of Enver Hoxha with the equestrian statue of George Castriota Scanderbeg at Tirana’s central square.

لَمَّا كان دين الإسلام يُستمَدُّ منَ الوحي، وجب حفظ مصادره، فحُفِظ القرآن بالنَّقل المتواتر، وحُفِظَتِ السُّنَّة النَّبويَّة بالرِّواية والنَّقد؛ فالرِّواية أحاطت بالسُّنن حتَّـىٰ لم يَضِع منها شيءٌ، وبالنَّقد الدَّقيق امتاز الصَّحيح الثَّابت من أوهام الرُّواة وأخطائهم، ومن كذب الـمُفترين وافترائهم، ومن هنا اهتمَّ المسلمون بقواعد "علوم الحديث"، وتحريرها.
ومن تلك القواعدِ: تقويةُ الحديث الضَّعيف؛ فإنَّ منَ الأحاديث الضَّعيفة ما لم يتحقَّق ثبوته، ولا قام الدَّليل على انتفائه أيضًا؛ فحُكْمُه التوقُّف فيه، ونطلبَ المرجِّحَ لأحد جانبَيهِ، فإن وجدنا له متابعًا يَعضُده أو شاهدًا يؤكِّده، ترجَّح ثبوته، وقبلناه.
ثـمَّ كثرت في زماننا كُشُوفٌ متسارعةٌ، فوُجِد فيها ما يوافق بعض الأحاديث الضَّعيفة، فهل يَصِحُّ الِاستدلال بتلك الموافقاتِ علىٰ تقوية تلك الأحاديثِ؟ وقدِ اختلف الباحثون المعاصرون في ذٰلك علىٰ قولَينِ، فمنهم من جوَّزه، ومنهم من منعه.
واستُدِلَّ لكلِّ قولٍ منهما بأدلَّةٍ، وتبيَّن بدراسة الأدلَّة ومناقشتها بإنصافٍ: قوَّةُ القول الثَّاني، وهو تقاعُدُ الكُشُوف الحديثة عن تقوية الحديث الضَّعيف الموافق لها.
والأحاديث الَّتي تنطبق عليها شروط الخلاف في هٰذه المسألةِ نادرةٌ جدًّا، ومنها - علىٰ وجه التوسُّع والتَّسامُح - حديثُ «صوموا تَصِحُّوا» وحديثُ «إنَّ منَ القَرَف التَّلَفَ»؛ فهما حديثانِ ضعيفانِ، وليسا واهيَينِ، ويدلَّانِ بوضوحٍ علىٰ معانـيَ صحيحةٍ، وتأكَّدت هٰذه المعاني ببعض الدِّراسات الحديثة.
فالقول الأوَّل يقتضي تحسينهما، والقول المختار يقتضي عدمَ التَّقوية، وأنَّـهما باقيانِ علىٰ ضعفهما.

¶ 1) Did you Know that the ‘Mummy Portaits’ of Roman Egypt were of proto-Christians (Therapeutæ-Essenes if they had died before Emperor Hadrian’s reign; “Christians” if they had died after)?
¶ 2) Did you know that the scholarly world, in general, has been victimized by the great influence of Plato’s “Noble Lie” doctrine, for over two thousand years?
¶ 3) Did you know that the great early Christian historian, Eusebius, made shocking use of Plato’s doctrine?
¶ Would you like to better understand the meaning  of religious ‘syncretism’, a practice, so condemned, but so massively and knowingly indulged in by early Church Fathers? Read on.

In "A Textbook Case of Comparative Cultural Studies" Donald Mitchell and Angelica Duran posit that the cultural basis from which all literary works emerge includes a religious component given the historical perseverance of religious traditions. Hence, a basic understanding of the religious heritage and contemporary mix in Chinese culture is exigent to develop valid interpretations about literary works. Mitchell and Duran describe the changes made to the most widely used Anglophone introductory textbook on Buddhism, the third edition of Mitchell's Buddhism: Introducing the Buddhist Experience, based on the globalization of Buddhism in today's world. Religious interaction and influence is dynamic, no longer a one-way flow of Buddhism from Asia to non-Asian countries but rather a multidirectional flow between countries in all continents. Close readings of two religious figures demonstrate this dynamic with Mo Yan's Wise Monk Lan in POW! and the Swedish Pastor Malo...

A legacy is what we remember about a person. Everyone who has lived on this earth has left positive or negative memories in those closest to them. But there are a few people that have profoundly changed the course of history. Two of these men who have left a long lasting, historical legacy on this world are Jesus and Muhammad. We will get a sense of how their lived during their lifetime. Then examine how they were remembered by their close friends and compare it to their modern-day legacy. These two men have the greatest influence on people's lives to this day; with over half of the world's population claiming to follow their teachings. I am taking a bold step as I examine using not only academic work in a rational and systematic manner, but also projecting my own intuition and feelings while attempting to answer, this question: Would Muhammad and Jesus recognize their legacy today, in a way they wished to be remembered?

In a brief passage from the third part of Ich und Du, Buber expounds his conception of idolatry as an objectifying disposition that contradicts the relational nature of an authentic religious act. I will show that the main categories of Buber's thought-that is, the Grundworte 'ich-du' and 'ich-es'-provide the theoretical coordinates through which Buber understands the antithesis between authentic religion and idolatry as one between relationality and its opposite.