You make two points, I will discuss why both stem from fundamental misunderstandings:
(1) "People praying to Allah/Jehovah should be considered Hindus too"
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->If we were to argue that Allah/Jehovah are not Gods at all, then how is the Hindu viewpoint any different from Allah saying "There is no God but me" and all other "Gods" are false.
With respect SaiK - I think you are misinterpreting the Hindu concept of "God" (as being the same as oneness/unity) to serve a particular narrow need to reject Allah and Yahweh. I believe that is wrong.
As long as a person accepts that it is OK to worship Allah or Shiva, and both are the same - he subscribes to the Hindu scheme of things.
If, however, he says that Shiva is out, only Allah/Yahweh are in, then that is a closing of the mind that goes against the tenets of Hinduism. Similarly saying that Shiva is in, Allah is out could be a closing of one's mind.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->(Point 2 is for the next post).
(1) "People praying to Allah/Jehovah should be considered Hindus too"
Here we're talking about Hindus praying to islamic allah and christian jehovah.
First preliminaries:
(a) I've written about this elsewhere, but to summarise:
<b>Christian jehovah is not same as Judaic Yahweh.</b>
Hear me out: reason is because Yahweh is the God of the Jewish tribe who has a specific covenant with them. (The covenant contract is made via the practise of circumcision.)
The Jews are the ones who know Yahweh, it's their scriptures that describe and mention him. He is their God.
Now, the scribes of christianity needed a religion, a background to attach their jesus to and give him legitimacy. They copied the Pentateuch and muddled up even the copying process and called it the OT.
Jesus then supposedly created a new covenant: his NT. No circumcision is required, christianity is no longer the local religion of Jewish people, but a universal (=meaning of word 'catholic') religion. This is because christians didn't know the actual meaning of the Jewish concept of 'messiah' and got it wrong by confounding it with the Zoroastrian Saoshyant (World Saviour). Instead of the messiah being the one of David's line to deliver the Jews from the Romans, the messiah became the 'world saviour', making christianism into a 'catholic' religion: for all mankind.
- All christians of today say that jesus is the same as the god of the OT.
- The Jewish people do not recognise that their God (Yahweh) is jesus. They do not accept that their God would be born as a human.
Therefore, these are fundamentally opposing claims. Who to believe? Easy: the Jews, because they are the ones who had the original scriptures that the christians copied badly to make the OT. And the Jews were the ones with a valid deity that the christians misunderstood and turned into a pagan-style dying-and-resurrecting deity, the fictive godman jesus.
Yahweh being the local God of Jewish people, he was never originally meant to be a universal deity as jehovah was fashioned into by christians. If you read Deuteronomy (I think it was), you will find out how there are numerous references to many Gods, of which Yahweh is the one who made a covenant with the Jewish people. This is how Jewish people are defined: those who have made that covenant with their God Yahweh.
I had explained this elsewhere in IF but can't find it. Some related bits are also here and here
(b) Now, when the man-made character of jehovah insists 'thou shalt have no other gods before me' you are talking about the 'universal christian god'. He's the same as the 'universal' islamic allah (not same as Pagan Arabian deity Allah, one of several Arabian Gods). Islamic allah's character is the same as christian jehovah's character and only his name has anything to do with the Old Arabian deity's.
<b>This bit is very important to understand: no Hindu can honour the fictional christoislamic deities allah-jehova without honouring these gods' Number 1 commandment: Thou shalt have no other gods before me.</b>
If some Hindu ignorant of this shows his 'respects' to either of these gods, then <b>he fails to show proper respect because he has not yet denounced his own Hindu Gods</b> or the Gods of the Japanese, Greeks, Africans, etcetera.
See the mutual exclusion here? This is exactly why
<b>you cannot be both a Hindu and a follower of the christoislamic god.</b>
This is a logic error that only Hindus ignorant of the fundamentals of christoislamism can make, and it is one of the reasons no christoislamic will ever accept you.
More importantly, such a Hindu is not truly showing any respect for the actual <i>characters</i> of these non-existent deities as described by their inventors the early christians and muslims. Instead, such a Hindu, when he thinks he is praying to the christoislamic god(s), is praying to his own mental idea of what this deity is like. And his mental idea of these gods is wrong - as I said, the christoislamic scriptures determine what their gods are like - so he is not praying to the christoislamic gods at all, but to an idea he made up.
(c ) The christoislamic gods' characters are the very opposite of what Hindu and others' Natural Gods are like. <b>The 'all-loving' jehovah in the NT, where he is called jesus, threatens with eternal hellfire</b> for those who are not saved (non-christians) or those who are christians but haven't kept to his laws. (Salvation is a tricky business in christianity, not a single sect has ever agreed on how it is achieved, so let's not discuss this here.)
Islamic hell of the al-rehman allah the 'all-merciful' is also eternal for the kafirs and many muslims too. (Mohammed tells how he's seen hell and most of it is populated with women - and that while women are 50% of the average human population).
All people who ever lived who were not christian went to christian hell and all those who ever lived after the 'seal of the prophets' (mohammed) and weren't muslim are in islamic hell (jekinnah/jahannah - Arabian version of Hebrew 'Gehenna', the garbage dump just outside Jerusalem where the corpses ended up in).
Neither can co-exist, because which hell does the non-christian non-muslim go to? You get more funny questions like: do all christians end up in islamic hell and all muslims in christian hell?
Anyway, the point was: <b>excruciating punishment for all of infinity for finite sins (such as not believing) by a supposed 'all-loving, all-merciful' god is contrary to Dharmic Religions and most other Natural Religions</b>. It is certainly not what Hindus have in mind when they think of Gods.
So as I said before, the Hindu is severely mistaken when in his ignorance he chooses to honour these christoislamic gods (who if they had existed, would be considered the very definition of utter evil) as if they were similar to our own or to the Kamis or Le Grand Esprit.
Also, to show respect for the christoislamic gods requires that Hindus not only denounce their Hindu Gods and Other Gods, but also other Hindus as well (because they still follow the Hindu Gods).
<b>In conclusion:</b> A Hindu who imagines himself being both Hindu and as praying/showing respect to the christoislamic god is not in fact praying to a christoislamic god, but to a being of his own imagination. It is our own Gods to whom such a prayer is offered in the end, because the unwitting Hindus tend to imagine the fictive christoislamic god as having the same characteristics as our own and our own Gods are the ones who end up listening and accepting the salutations therefore.
That's why when a Hindu says 'All Gods are the same', <i>it is in this sense</i> that he really thinks they all are the same.
The Hindu is only deluding himself if he thinks he is praying to the christoislamic deity, when he is in fact thoroughly ignorant about any and all aspects of that same fictive deity. And if the christoislamic gods existed, they would in fact be thoroughly offended by any Hindus who bowed down both to them <i>and</i> to other Gods, because it flies against the primary law they stipulated: 'one god, me, me, me! or eternal hell'
<b>Any Hindu who wishes to honour the christoislamic god: conversion to christoislamism is the only way. Else you are still insulting christoislamics by pretending to show their deities respect by doing exactly that which offends their deities the most.</b>
(1) "People praying to Allah/Jehovah should be considered Hindus too"
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->If we were to argue that Allah/Jehovah are not Gods at all, then how is the Hindu viewpoint any different from Allah saying "There is no God but me" and all other "Gods" are false.
With respect SaiK - I think you are misinterpreting the Hindu concept of "God" (as being the same as oneness/unity) to serve a particular narrow need to reject Allah and Yahweh. I believe that is wrong.
As long as a person accepts that it is OK to worship Allah or Shiva, and both are the same - he subscribes to the Hindu scheme of things.
If, however, he says that Shiva is out, only Allah/Yahweh are in, then that is a closing of the mind that goes against the tenets of Hinduism. Similarly saying that Shiva is in, Allah is out could be a closing of one's mind.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->(Point 2 is for the next post).
(1) "People praying to Allah/Jehovah should be considered Hindus too"
Here we're talking about Hindus praying to islamic allah and christian jehovah.
First preliminaries:
(a) I've written about this elsewhere, but to summarise:
<b>Christian jehovah is not same as Judaic Yahweh.</b>
Hear me out: reason is because Yahweh is the God of the Jewish tribe who has a specific covenant with them. (The covenant contract is made via the practise of circumcision.)
The Jews are the ones who know Yahweh, it's their scriptures that describe and mention him. He is their God.
Now, the scribes of christianity needed a religion, a background to attach their jesus to and give him legitimacy. They copied the Pentateuch and muddled up even the copying process and called it the OT.
Jesus then supposedly created a new covenant: his NT. No circumcision is required, christianity is no longer the local religion of Jewish people, but a universal (=meaning of word 'catholic') religion. This is because christians didn't know the actual meaning of the Jewish concept of 'messiah' and got it wrong by confounding it with the Zoroastrian Saoshyant (World Saviour). Instead of the messiah being the one of David's line to deliver the Jews from the Romans, the messiah became the 'world saviour', making christianism into a 'catholic' religion: for all mankind.
- All christians of today say that jesus is the same as the god of the OT.
- The Jewish people do not recognise that their God (Yahweh) is jesus. They do not accept that their God would be born as a human.
Therefore, these are fundamentally opposing claims. Who to believe? Easy: the Jews, because they are the ones who had the original scriptures that the christians copied badly to make the OT. And the Jews were the ones with a valid deity that the christians misunderstood and turned into a pagan-style dying-and-resurrecting deity, the fictive godman jesus.
Yahweh being the local God of Jewish people, he was never originally meant to be a universal deity as jehovah was fashioned into by christians. If you read Deuteronomy (I think it was), you will find out how there are numerous references to many Gods, of which Yahweh is the one who made a covenant with the Jewish people. This is how Jewish people are defined: those who have made that covenant with their God Yahweh.
I had explained this elsewhere in IF but can't find it. Some related bits are also here and here
(b) Now, when the man-made character of jehovah insists 'thou shalt have no other gods before me' you are talking about the 'universal christian god'. He's the same as the 'universal' islamic allah (not same as Pagan Arabian deity Allah, one of several Arabian Gods). Islamic allah's character is the same as christian jehovah's character and only his name has anything to do with the Old Arabian deity's.
<b>This bit is very important to understand: no Hindu can honour the fictional christoislamic deities allah-jehova without honouring these gods' Number 1 commandment: Thou shalt have no other gods before me.</b>
If some Hindu ignorant of this shows his 'respects' to either of these gods, then <b>he fails to show proper respect because he has not yet denounced his own Hindu Gods</b> or the Gods of the Japanese, Greeks, Africans, etcetera.
See the mutual exclusion here? This is exactly why
<b>you cannot be both a Hindu and a follower of the christoislamic god.</b>
This is a logic error that only Hindus ignorant of the fundamentals of christoislamism can make, and it is one of the reasons no christoislamic will ever accept you.
More importantly, such a Hindu is not truly showing any respect for the actual <i>characters</i> of these non-existent deities as described by their inventors the early christians and muslims. Instead, such a Hindu, when he thinks he is praying to the christoislamic god(s), is praying to his own mental idea of what this deity is like. And his mental idea of these gods is wrong - as I said, the christoislamic scriptures determine what their gods are like - so he is not praying to the christoislamic gods at all, but to an idea he made up.
(c ) The christoislamic gods' characters are the very opposite of what Hindu and others' Natural Gods are like. <b>The 'all-loving' jehovah in the NT, where he is called jesus, threatens with eternal hellfire</b> for those who are not saved (non-christians) or those who are christians but haven't kept to his laws. (Salvation is a tricky business in christianity, not a single sect has ever agreed on how it is achieved, so let's not discuss this here.)
Islamic hell of the al-rehman allah the 'all-merciful' is also eternal for the kafirs and many muslims too. (Mohammed tells how he's seen hell and most of it is populated with women - and that while women are 50% of the average human population).
All people who ever lived who were not christian went to christian hell and all those who ever lived after the 'seal of the prophets' (mohammed) and weren't muslim are in islamic hell (jekinnah/jahannah - Arabian version of Hebrew 'Gehenna', the garbage dump just outside Jerusalem where the corpses ended up in).
Neither can co-exist, because which hell does the non-christian non-muslim go to? You get more funny questions like: do all christians end up in islamic hell and all muslims in christian hell?
Anyway, the point was: <b>excruciating punishment for all of infinity for finite sins (such as not believing) by a supposed 'all-loving, all-merciful' god is contrary to Dharmic Religions and most other Natural Religions</b>. It is certainly not what Hindus have in mind when they think of Gods.
So as I said before, the Hindu is severely mistaken when in his ignorance he chooses to honour these christoislamic gods (who if they had existed, would be considered the very definition of utter evil) as if they were similar to our own or to the Kamis or Le Grand Esprit.
Also, to show respect for the christoislamic gods requires that Hindus not only denounce their Hindu Gods and Other Gods, but also other Hindus as well (because they still follow the Hindu Gods).
<b>In conclusion:</b> A Hindu who imagines himself being both Hindu and as praying/showing respect to the christoislamic god is not in fact praying to a christoislamic god, but to a being of his own imagination. It is our own Gods to whom such a prayer is offered in the end, because the unwitting Hindus tend to imagine the fictive christoislamic god as having the same characteristics as our own and our own Gods are the ones who end up listening and accepting the salutations therefore.
That's why when a Hindu says 'All Gods are the same', <i>it is in this sense</i> that he really thinks they all are the same.
The Hindu is only deluding himself if he thinks he is praying to the christoislamic deity, when he is in fact thoroughly ignorant about any and all aspects of that same fictive deity. And if the christoislamic gods existed, they would in fact be thoroughly offended by any Hindus who bowed down both to them <i>and</i> to other Gods, because it flies against the primary law they stipulated: 'one god, me, me, me! or eternal hell'
<b>Any Hindu who wishes to honour the christoislamic god: conversion to christoislamism is the only way. Else you are still insulting christoislamics by pretending to show their deities respect by doing exactly that which offends their deities the most.</b>