Kala and the carvings on a keris hilt

[A. G. Maisey]

Jaga, I am not Muslim, you are, and accordingly I bow to your opinions in this matter of bling.

However, my personal experience with friends and acquaintances who are Muslim, some of whom are very committed & observant Muslims, is that there is a rather wide variation in what people of the Muslim faith believe to be correct.

There was the Muslim gentleman who did some engraving for me, in his office he had a number of very good carvings of birds, a couple in particular were really excellent, they were falcons.

I commented on them and asked if it was acceptable for a man of his beliefs to possess such things.

I should have kept my mouth shut.

I got a 20 minute lecture from him about lifelike images, complete with quotes from al Quran. Apparently my understanding of prohibitions on the making of images was totally incorrect, and only those with a deficient understanding of the teachings had this belief in prohibition of living beings in art.

The truly devout Muslims I know in Indonesia go out of their way to appear humble and unostentatious, although they might ride around in Mercedes Benzes, they invariably dress in a very plain style and never wear jewellery.

I rather feel that Islam, as in virtually all religious belief systems is open to interpretations on exactly what is correct and what is not correct, according to the ideas of the interpreter.

[jagabuwana]

That tracks Alan, I agree with you completely. Please don't bow to my opinion on this, it is no more valid than yours. Anyway by most criteria I have qualified myself out of the faith.

Islam is at its heart, I think, an ascetic and sober religion, so anything rousing to the senses is treated with caution. That so happens to cover the joys of music, the topic of which seems to get the same kind of reaction from many Muslims that your engraver had about his carvings. There are many prohibitions in Islam that many a believer will find very uncomfortable and when confronted with it will find a way to reconcile it. I am happy the keris and at least some of its elements were reconciled because from what I understand about Islam it could have just as easily been erased. Maybe the guardians on the hilts did their jobs well.

[A. G. Maisey]

The thing that gets me about the all faiths of The Book is that at their core they are are all the same, all worship the same One God, and at their absolute root all come from the same source, but all the variations seem to believe that their own interpretation is the only correct one.

One God, but many interpretations, and the interpretations are from Man, not from God.

Then if we factor in the Hindu faith we find that once again we only have one Supreme Being, or one God with a capital "G":- Ishvara.

The multitude of deities being no more than aspects of Ishvara.

I reckon God must cry sometimes to see the mess that His creation, Man has made of things.

[Anthony G.]

Originally Posted by A. G. Maisey

The thing that gets me about the all faiths of The Book is that at their core they are are all the same, all worship the same One God, and at their absolute root all come from the same source, but all the variations seem to believe that their own interpretation is the only correct one.

One God, but many interpretations, and the interpretations are from Man, not from God.

Then if we factor in the Hindu faith we find that once again we only have one Supreme Being, or one God with a capital "G":- Ishvara.

The multitude of deities being no more than aspects of Ishvara.

I reckon God must cry sometimes to see the mess that His creation, Man has made of things.

I absolutely agreed with you Alan. I do sometimes think of these issues as well and why mankind loves to create complications.

[A. G. Maisey]

Anthony, I feel that it is rather that man loves power, certainly the gaining and retention of that power will create complication.