A FEW THOUGHTS

When we look around us and see that so may problems in the world are based on, or is projected from, differences in religious beliefs as well as religious “excuses” (the christian crusades, fatwas and jihads, one can really start to wonder whether we may have a bit too much religion in the world. I can certainly acknowledge the fact that religion is the key element in many peoples lives and that religion in most ways contribute to hope and peace of mind rather than war and chaos. Though I can not shake the voice in my head going “Come on, Enough already!” when I read about six “new religions” at the Matador Network, “new” being just a figure of speech meaning that these are religions more or less unknown in “the west”.  Though it seems that only two of these are beliefs dated A.D.; the persian/iranian Baha’i from the 1800′s and Mandaeism dated back to Late Antiquity.  The other four all seem to origin from before christianity/BC.

Baha’i was proclaimed by a young Iranian, who called himself The Báb. He said that a messenger would soon arrive from God, who would be the latest in a line of prophets including Moses, Muhammad and Jesus Christ. It was founded as late as in the 1800s, and all the prophets of the world’s major world religions are all accepted as valid, including Krishna, Abraham, Buddha, Jesus, and Muhammad.

Mandaeism,  originally practised primarily around the lower Euphrates and Tigris, was a Gnostic Christian religion believing both Jesus, Abraham, Moses, and Muhammad to be false messiahs.  There are thought to be between 60,000 and 70,000 Mandaeans worldwide, and until the 2003 Iraq war, almost all of them lived in Iraq. Most Iraqi Mandaeans have since fled the country, and by 2007 the population of Iraqi Mandaeans had fallen to approximately 5,000.Most Iraqi Mandaeans now live in Syria and Jordan, with smaller populations in Western countries.

Jainism is an ancient religion from India that teaches that the way to liberation and bliss is to live a life of harmlessness and renunciation by living rightly after an ethical code known as “the three jewels of Jain ethics“: right faith, right knowledge and right conduct. Parshvanatha, the twenty-third Tirthankar, is the earliest Jain leader who can be reliably dated. However, Jain mythology asserts that the line of Tirthankars began with Rushabhdeva. Jains themselves tend to believe that Jainism has no single founder, and believe that Jainism is the one of the world’s oldest religions, predating Hinduism.

 Zoroastrianism was founded by the Prophet Zoroaster in ancient Iran approximately 3500 years ago and was for many years one of the most powerful religions in the world. Zoroastrians believe in one God, called Ahura Mazda (meaning ‘Wise Lord’). In Zoroastrianism, Ahura Mazda has an adversary called Angra Mainyu (meaning ‘destructive spirit’), and it is in the Abrahamic religions accepted that the concepts of Heaven and Hell, as well as the Devil, were heavily influenced by Zoroastrian belief.

The Yorùbá religion originated from the Yoruba people, one of the largest ethnic groups in west-africa. Yoruba includes one creator and approximately 400 supernatural spirits. The god Orisa’nla (The great divinity) also known as Obatala, chosen by Olodumare, descended from heaven on a chain, carrying a small snail shell full of earth, palm kernels and a five-toed chicken. He was to empty the content of the snail shell on the water after placing some pieces of iron on it, and then to place the chicken on the earth to spread it over the primordial water. Yoruba religious beliefs are part of itan — the complex of songs, histories, stories and other cultural concepts which make up the Yorùbá religion and society.

Mami Wata is another African religion that describes a water spirit known as Mami Wata. She is pictured as being incredibly beautiful with long hair and is frequently accompanied by an incredibly large snake. The religion holds that Mami will sometimes assume human form in bars or busy markets and also will abduct people while they are swimming or boating on the water. These captives are then released in dry clothes and better health, but only after agreeing to an oath of sexual fidelity to the spirit. Mami Wata is related to the Vodoun, which later has been transformed into what is knowns as Voodoo, these days in Haiti.

As a project manager in the IT-industry I would welcome an architect and migration specialist for a huge migration project of world religions, but that’s only in my dreams of course…