The 2084 Precept (50 page)

“And how does that teaching justify itself?
With what logic?”

“Well, the justification states that God
gave us Free Will, the ability to decide everything for ourselves.
He also ensured that we were handed the responsibility for our
decisions, and for our resulting actions and for the results of
those actions. And we are therefore to blame.”

“That begs the question, Peter, as to what
reason he might have had for giving you Free Will in the first
place.”

That was not a question. I did not say
anything.

“So,” he continued after a pause, “since you
are the guys responsible for what is a pretty ghastly and
catastrophic mess, perhaps your Free Will needs to be guided onto a
different track, pushed in fact, brought into line by fear. What is
your view on that?"

"Again, I don't know, Jeremy. Therefore I
have no view."

"Well, then could we continue with the
history please?"

"Yes, of course. Many centuries subsequent
to Jesus' murder, his mother, Mary, was apparently put to
work."

"Put to work?"

"Well, in the sense that she has apparently
been trying to achieve some of the things that were not achieved
before. She has appeared supernaturally several times on our
planet. She has appeared in five different places in France, two in
Belgium, one in Mexico, one in Japan, one in Italy, and a total of
five times in a single place in Portugal, the town of Fatima. My
divinity instruction did not make it clear to me as to why this
particular town required so much attention, but apparently it did.
At least, those are the apparitions I understand to have been
approved by the Vatican."

"Approved by the Vatican?"

"Yes, the Vatican is the center of power for
the Catholic version of Christianity. They have a classification
system for Mary's apparitions; approved apparitions, non-approved
apparitions and rejected apparitions. Of the sites of the
non-approved apparitions, I recall England, Spain, Egypt, Ireland,
Poland, Slovakia, Croatia, Nicaragua and a town called (believe it
or not) Rome City in Indiana, USA. There are probably more."

"And the approved apparitions were witnessed
by lots of people?"

"No, actually not. Usually just by one
individual or by a small group. And mainly children, by the way,
and mainly only during the past two or three centuries. The
apparition in Lourdes, France, for example, was seen by a 14 year
old girl in the year 1858. Actually, this girl had a total of
eighteen visions overall. Three shepherd children witnessed the
apparitions in Fatima, Portugal, during our World War I. The two
apparitions in Belgium occurred shortly prior to the outbreak of
World War II and were witnessed respectively by a young girl, who
had a total of eight visions overall, and also by five more
children aged between nine and fifteen years old. But a few adults
have also had these visions, Jeremy. The apparition near Akita in
Japan, for example, was witnessed by a nun in the year 1973, and a
statue of the Virgin Mary on that site also wept tears on 101
occasions until 1980, at which point in time it apparently
stopped."

"Why?"

"Why what?"

"Why did the statue stop weeping?"

"I don't know."

"Well, why did it
start
weeping in
the first place?"

"I don't know."

"O.K., but then why were these particular
locations chosen for the apparitions?"

"I don't know that either. I have many
knowledge gaps."

"But you personally believe in these
occurrences, the approved ones at least?"

"No, but I don't
disbelieve
them
either, Jeremy. These are apparently factual events. I simply don't
know."

"So…if I understand you correctly,
Christianity deems the life of Jesus and the apparitions of his
mother to have been reasonably successful as regards improving you
and your species?"

"Yes. That is the belief of the Christians.
However, a lot of non-Christians hold the view that nothing was
achieved. They hold the view that the human race has in fact
deteriorated further in the twenty centuries following the birth of
Jesus, and, what's more, in accelerated form. They cite the
increase in mass slaughter—war, civil war, genocide, ethnic
cleansing, and they cite the increase in individual crimes—murder,
rape, theft, drugs, torture and so on. And as further proof they
state that the horrific activities of the most recent century far
exceeded the horrific activities of all the previous ones: the two
world wars, the death factories, the manufacture of thermo-nuclear
weapons and all of the rest I mentioned to you in our meeting on
that particular subject."

"And which view is the correct one, do you
think?"

"I don't think, Jeremy. I just recount the
facts. You can adopt whichever view you prefer."

"Very well," he said. "I must say that by
sticking to the facts in these interviews, and avoiding opinions,
you are making it much easier for me. There is no clouding of the
issues. Could we possibly move on to the next one?"

"Certainly we can. The next one is
Islam."

"A bit of a recapitulation before you start,
if I may," interrupted Jeremy, "you are an agnostic and you
therefore accept the fact that the Christian religion may be the
explanation for all things, that it may be the true religion?"

"Correct."

"And do I assume correctly, Peter, that this
is also your view regarding the Islamic religion?"

"Yes, your assumption is correct."

"O.K., I just wanted to make sure I had got
it right. Please fire away."

"Islam is a religion," I said, "which
emerged some fourteen centuries ago in the area inhabited at the
time by the so-called lizard-eaters of the Arabian peninsula. It is
based on a series of prophets, the last and greatest of which,
according to the Islamic bible, the Koran, was Abu al-Qasim
Muhammad ibn Abd Allāh ibn Abd al-Muttalib Ibn Hāshim ibn Abd Manāf
akl Quraschī."

"Long name," said Jeremy.

"Quite. He is referred to simply as Mohammed
in our part of the world and in fact his name, with spelling
variations, is now the most popular name given to new-born babies
here in the U.K.—ahead of Jack, Harry and Oliver. Mohammed was born
in Mecca, in the Saudi Arabian desert, around 570 years after Jesus
Christ. In his early years he was an analphabetic shepherd boy, but
he was given some education later on by certain members of his
family and eventually declared himself at the age of forty or
thereabouts to be a prophet of Allah, as the Islamic God is called.
This did not meet with everybody's approval and after several
discordant and antagonistic years he was more or less obliged to
flee with a small group of followers to the city of Medina—as it is
now called—at the age of fifty two. Thus the Christian calendar
year of 622 became the 'year zero' in the Islamic calendar."

"Ah hah, so you have different calendars on
your planet also."

"Yes, we do. Now Mohammed continued
preaching his religious philosophies and at the same time gradually
formed a coalition of local tribes in the Medina area. He then
began an eight-year conflict—involving plenty of slaughter—to fight
his way back over the 450 kilometers to Mecca and conquer it. Quite
a feat, if you think about it, an army of poorly trained,
unprofessional soldiers winning battles against some of the major
powers of the time, the Bezantines and the Sassanids among
others."

"Eight years for 450 kilometers."

"Right, but don't forget the times we are
talking about. Right now, they are planning the construction of a
high-speed railway line between the two cities and Mohammed would
have been able to cover the distance in a single day, in just over
two hours in fact. Not that he would necessarily have wanted to
return to Mecca nowadays, I don’t know.

Oh? And why wouldn’t he?"

“Because the Saudi Arabian Mecca is no
longer Mecca. It is no longer possible to recognize it as Islam’s
holiest city. The three million or so pilgrims who now visit each
year could be forgiven for thinking they had landed in Las Vegas.
The city has become a vast collection of skyscrapers served by
large numbers of hotels and expensive shopping malls, all
interconnected by multi-lane roads and their corresponding
spaghetti junctions. In order to achieve this, the Saudis bulldozed
ancient hills and mountains and numerous historical and religious
buildings such as the Bilal mosque dating from Mohammed’s time. The
house of Khadijah, the first of Mohammed’s many wives, has been
turned into a block of toilets. The Makkah Royal Clock Tower is one
of the world’s tallest buildings and is built on top of the remains
of around 300 historically significant sites. The Makkah Hilton is
built on top of the house of Mohammed’s close companion, Abu Bakr.
And…”

“But surely something is left, Peter? What
do the pilgrims visit otherwise?”

“Oh yes, there
is
something left, but
not much. Many pilgrims now arrive in packaged tour groups and are
consequently tied to their hotels. They participate in a mixture of
guided shopping trips and guided visits to remaining historic
sites. These include the Sacred Mosque and the Kaaba itself and the
house where the prophet Mohammed lived. For a long time this house
was used as a cattle market, and has since been converted into a
library which, however, is not open to the public. The Saudi
clerics fear that if allowed inside Mohammed’s house, the pilgrims
would commit the unforgiveable sin of praying to the prophet rather
than to Allah himself. And so, for various reasons, the calls for
the demolition of these remaining sites continue. And the whole
situation is aggravated, do I need say it, by the latent discontent
between the Salafist brand of Saudi Islam and the many different
pilgrims’ sects, all of which are rejected by the Salafists as
being false ones.”

"O.K. Peter. Interesting stuff. But you were
describing the origins. Allah became, so to speak, the new
God?"

"Yes and no," I replied. "There are many
experts who describe Christianity and Islam as sister religions.
Certainly many of the personages in the Bible and the Koran are the
same, including Old Testament personages, and their existence is
acknowledged by both religions. This includes Jesus and his mother
Mary, by the way, although Islam describes Jesus as being more a
kind of apostle than a prophet. That is why Mohammed changed the
direction of prayer away from Jerusalem and toward Mecca, by the
way."

"He did?"

"Yes, he did.

"So what are the big differences?"

"There are no big differences. Just the
minor ones of some humans kneeling when praying, others close to
full stretch on the ground, others sitting, and others, including
priests, pray standing up. Some face east, some look at the ground,
and some face the sky (for example, certain soccer players as they
make the sign of the crucifix and say thank you after scoring a
goal).

"No, I didn’t mean the differences in prayer
customs. I meant the big differences between the religions,
Peter."

"Oh. Sorry. Well…there are equally as many
experts who say that these are
not
sister religions, nor are
their gods the same. These experts state that there are three major
differences. The first one is that, for the Christians, their God
is a Triune God, a three-in-one God, consisting of God himself, his
Son—who appeared on Earth in human form—and something else called
the Holy Ghost."

"The Holy Ghost? What is that?"

"I don't know."

"O.K. I'll look it up."

"In contrast, Mohammed was definitely a
human being, rather than someone in human form, and he was
not
the son of the Islam God, Allah, who has never had any
sons at all. Nor does Allah have any other partner within his
domain. Mohammed, coincidentally, also had no sons, although he
certainly married. In fact, he married eleven or twelve times.

"Hmm…"

Yes…now the second major difference,
according to these experts, is that in the Christian religion you
attain salvation—you are saved—if you don't sin. You are also saved
if you
do
sin but then repent and request forgiveness,
sincerely of course, of God and his Son. The Islamic Koran, on the
other hand, says that your way to salvation is attained if your
good deeds while on this planet heavily outweigh your other
deeds."

"According to all of these particular
experts."

"Yes, according to all of these particular
experts. At the same time, good deeds and bad deeds are classified
in a different manner. For example, Islamic law (Sharia) says that
men are superior to women and may use physical violence against
their wives if they do not behave in certain matters as the men
would like them to. Under the same law, the penalty for a wife who
commits adultery is death at the hands of the state. Death by
stoning, no less, although nicer methods of execution are also
allowed by certain of the Islamic sub-sects of which, by the way,
there are over one hundred. Recently, a young woman was stoned to
death for having had sex with three men. She claimed that the three
men had raped her, but she couldn't prove it, so it was bad luck
for her."

"Not very compassionate."

"No. But there is
some
kind of
compassion. For example, another woman recently sentenced to death
by stoning for adultery was allowed to have her death delayed until
she had finished the breast-feeding of her newly-born child."

"Hmm…"

"Men, on the other hand, are permitted to
have several wives."

"That doesn't seem fair."

"Oh, I don't know, it's in line with
biological principles, among other things."

"Biological principles?"

"Yes. Now let me see, what would be an easy
way to explain that to you? O.K…we are happy to put ten cows into a
field together with a single bull. But we will not put ten bulls
into a field together with just one cow. The latter would be
unnatural. It would also have disastrous consequences. It is a
biological matter. The male animal, in general, is not only by
nature a polygamous animal, but is also, with some exceptions, more
than ready to have sex with an adulterous female animal,
irrespective of whether that adultery is willing or forced (as in
the case of the ten bulls and the one cow)."