My final exam

Final Exam 2007

Question 1- Abdullah Juma Alaraimi
Question 2- a.alaraimi, a.alaraim@yahoo.com,
Mr.alaraimi, mr.alaraimi@gmail.com
Question 3- Missed 3 days and 4 days late
Question4- http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2039852550211418553&q=abdullah+alaraimi&total=1&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=0
Question 6- My grade in midterm is “A”
Question 7- I think I deserve “A”
Question 8- My video was about the role of women in Islam. I started to think radically about this subject, because I fell as if there is a lot of misunderstanding. If is evident to me, because I am often asked by American questions that deal with women and Islam. Because I am not an expert, I started my research at the local Mosque in Anaheim. There was a speaker recently there, Imam Ali. This is why I fell I deserve extra credit.

Question 9 – Autobiography
My birth place and home city is Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. This is the capital city of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. It is a modern metropolitan city of nearly 3 million people now. This is where the seat of the Saudi government is including all major members of the House of Saud who are the de facto ruling authority in the Kingdom. Riyadh, Saudi Arabia is also the historical and cultural center of the country since its formation after the collapse and break up of the Ottoman Empire in the wake of World War I. Official independence was recognized internationally in 1932 with the unification of the Hejaz and Najd kingdoms into the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia with the House of Saud in political control of the new country as a monarchy assisted by a Consultative Council of 90 appointed members.
One of the most significant and dignified roles of this monarchy is to function as the Protectorates of Islam’s two holiest cities, Medina and Mecca, which are within the boundaries of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and provide safe passage for all Muslim pilgrims who are making their once-in-a-lifetime pilgrimage to Islam’s holy centers, primarily to the Great Mosque in Mecca where Muslims enter into the sanctuary where the ancient Ka’baa rests in the middle as representative of the stone that Abraham nearly sacrificed Ishmail to prove his faith in Allah. This place of holy worship is held sacred by all Muslims because Prophet Muhammad said that every Muslim should make a pilgrimage to undertake the holiest of Islamic rituals to become an official Muslim pilgrim that has completed his or her obligations to this religious faith which I was raised in all my life.
Riyadh, Saudi Arabia is a place of almost three million people but this is a place of almost one hundred percent Sunni Muslims and the religion of Islam dominates and prevails over the daily rituals, routines, and habits of people going about their business and doing their trade and exchange as any sophisticated city. The prayer times for Muslims are five times per day every day and the prayer ritual is short so the Muslims during their work weeks are always taking this specific break time to undertake their daily ritual prayers to Allah. The Saudi businesses are all by law required to permit these prayer times as breaks in the work schedule so that the Sunni Muslim work force can meet these religious prayer obligations. Obviously, Sunni Muslims are able to enjoy full rights to religiously express themselves on the job and amongst each other. People in Riyadh are Sunni Muslims first in their daily routines and their other personas are second place. This is how Riyadh has been for centuries because of the importance this city has been in the history of Islam as much as it has for Saudi Arabia.
This growing up around one hundred percent Sunni Muslims in my neighborhood and community was definitely a huge impact on my life and perception of other human beings. In my childhood perspective, the only people on this earth were Sunni Muslims praying five times per day, attending to the mosque on Fridays as a community, and having grand dinners and feasts on appointed ritual days of celebrations where all the older generations of people would wave the tales of all the heroes and heroines from our ancient past and recent past to retain such strong determination to keep faith in Islam.
Muslims were the only people I knew in my youth and all my friends, teachers, and authority figures were all Sunni Muslims that I can recall with the exception of one high school English teacher that was an American from Los Angeles, California and who taught the English language classes my junior and senior year in the Riyadh high school I attended. This American language teacher was a free thinker from what I can recall about him. He wasn’t a religious person he told us in class but respected our religious faith of Islam. He was kind, considerate, and understood to take the proper break times for Muslim prayers and raised no objections to being around Muslims all the time either. Mr. Lewis was an open-minded teacher who had taken the opportunity to teach overseas in Riyadh to experience a new culture and a new lifestyle among different people.
This was a great experience for me because of knowing only Sunni Muslims because of my neighborhood being in the section of the City of Riyadh where there was no other religious organizations and groups present in our communities. We were a Sunni Muslim stronghold from ancient times which made this sense of tradition and ritual habits to be very important and valued by the older generations compared to us in the younger generations. However, as we grew older, us younger Sunni Muslims in my neighborhood grew to appreciate this ancestral value placed in our Islamic faith and its numerous criteria to remain a faithful, obedient member and ally of Allah. We grew to understand the strength we gained from Ramadan fasts and undertaking the ritual breaking of the fast with our older family members to achieve closer communications and understanding across generation gaps. We were very different us in the younger generation because of the Internet, the television access we had, and the information we learned compared to the older generations of Saudi students and young people. We were able to be the first really global Saudi generation in Riyadh since we knew about the other parts of the world and we knew issues in newer, more open ways than our family ancestors and our community elders. We were seeing the world from globalist perspective as we were opening up our country in the future for certain to more global participation in the international economic, political, and social order forming around the world right now. Us in the youngest Saudi generation were indeed still anchored in our religious faith of Islam more than anything else no matter what information sources we now had available to us and how much information we learned outside our family homes and religious schools in our neighborhood. We were going to be global minded no matter what our parents and grandparents told us young Saudi Muslims coming of age in the late 1990s and then facing the pressures and predicaments of the post-9/11 fallout with the Western powers, particularly the United States.
This was a problem time for us young Saudi Muslims because we were facing the prospect of a significant global challenge from other parts of the world to challenge our religious faith at its core and disagree with some of its prime tenants that militant Islamic groups were twisting horribly against anything us peaceful Muslims believe these parts of Islam mean. For example, the concept of jihad is overblown in the Western press as part of every Muslim believer’s core personality and that Islam is a religion that requires blood sacrifice for God to advance its radicalized, militant agenda. In fact, jihad is a concept that Prophet Muhammad has even said meant that internal struggle that the Muslim believer must encounter in life with doing what is right and what Allah approves or doing what is wrong and violating what Allah approves.
Coming to America then on scholarship to get my education and get my undergraduate degree, and possibly my graduate’s degree, meant in fact coming into an increasingly hostile culture towards Muslims and the religion of Islam because of the recent over blown mass media stereotyping and slandering of the Arab Muslims to create and sustain these negative characteristics and stereotypical images of my people and my religious faith. I came into America thinking some negative things about the country and its people because of this prospect of facing hostility and prejudice towards me as an Arab Muslim college student. In fact, there has been no overt acts of racist prejudice or hostile feelings expressed towards me by any American and this means being around them all the time too on campus, in my apartment complex, and when I go to Los Angeles to check out the night life. Yet, I felt that it might happen a few times but this is just something that was in my own mind. Because I came here with a lot of hype about the anti-Arab Muslim thing going on in America after 9/11 and the targeting of Saudis may be going on because of some of the attackers coming from my country. But, this is all mass media slander, defamation, and hype of stereotyping Saudi people as militant, radicalized Muslim terrorists when we are simple, good, and honest people because of our strong religious faith which is a religion of peace and brotherhood. Islam is not a religion of hate and war. This is pure media hype in the Western press to sell magazines, newspapers, and get high ratings for the television shows.
My religious identity as a Muslim and my ethnicity as an Arab from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has been held up in confidence and with great prestige by me and the Americans have been friendly and kind in almost all situations as I pursue my degrees in business and management here. This experience has impacted my life in other ways because I realize that us Saudis and Americans are so alike in our basic needs to want safe, healthy lives for ourselves and our families and have our freedom to practice our own religious beliefs on our own terms like we have done so for centuries so far. And we are very much a like in wanting independence from outside interference and we are trying to achieve a global world together where we can all live side by side in peace and on equal terms with each other politically, culturally, and socially and respect one another’s differences in religious beliefs and in ethnic identities.
Question 10 – First Person Narrative of Visit to Religious Center
My field trip to a Roman Catholic Church mass on a Sunday morning in early December was a chance for me to learn about a religious group’s services distinctive from own. Being a life long Muslim in a country with all Muslims around me, my understanding of Christianity and Roman Catholicism is very limited. Although the central figure in the Roman Catholic faith, Jesus, is the second greatest prophet in my religion, next to Prophet Muhammad, I only learned about Jesus from the Muslim perspective as a human prophet rather than God’s Son and humanity’s long-awaited Messiah.
This Sunday Mass at St. Matthew’s Catholic Church started at eleven o clock sharp so I was there ten minutes ahead of time and watched as Roman Catholic believers of all different ethnic groups were putting their hands in the holy water inside the church and doing the sign of the cross. I watched this with great interest because I was never exposed to this ritual in my life before. It was my first experience with the sign of the cross even though I know that the cross is an important, powerful Christian symbol.
After the mass, I talked with some of the Roman Catholics and they made it clear to me that this object that Jesus was crucified on represents the very act of God that saved humanity itself from impending disaster because Jesus Christ as God’s Son died on that Cross that day to resolve human sins through God’s act of unconditional love. This is a comment that I memorized and wrote down from one of the Roman Catholic believers which I thought to be an excellent answer. This was an important answer for me to also help me interpret the rituals and rites used in the Sunday Mass services that I attended.
The mass opened up with a small group of people near the front of the altar to the right playing a couple of guitars, a piano, and two flutes and singing a very beautiful song. Although I had a music book to leaf through it took me a while to figure out the words to the song and the actual song in the book. It was pointed out to me finally be a neighbor in the church pew who showed me the song page number on her book. I turned to it and found the title: “Come All Thee Faithful.” This is a Christmas song based on the fact that the song book was one of Christmas hymns. This is a beautiful song because it is about the birth of Jesus as Christ among us ordinary humans in the town of Bethlehem near Jerusalem. The birth of Jesus is also celebrated as a great event by us Muslims because of the high status as a great prophet in our religious faith and that his mother Mary is the only woman’s name in our entire holy book. And Mary is believed by us Muslims to be a virgin when she gave birth to Jesus and therefore God had caused a miracle to happen when she became pregnant with Jesus.
The Sunday Mass is centered around Jesus as the Christ is what I realized as the priest at the front of the altar began to recite some ritual prayers and spread out his hands in the air. All the Roman Catholic faithful would recite as a whole group back to the priest after he would recite some type of prayer. This ritual of the priest saying prayers and the crowd answering them is somewhat similar to a practice that we engage in when we gather for our Friday prayers at the mosque in our Muslim communities in my home country. The difference is that Jesus is God’s Son in these prayers and that there is a third part of God as well called the Holy Spirit. I heard the name the ‘Holy Trinity’ a few different times and I could tell this was the focus of the Apostle’s Creed which everyone in the church building recited line for line together.
The Sunday Mass then shifted over to the readings from the Holy Bible that were done not by the priest but by some young members of the Church who were nervous but did well since they had microphones to read into and everyone in the audience could hear them despite their soft voices. The first reading came from the Book of Proverbs in the Old Testament of the Holy Bible and these proverbs, according to the reader, were written by King Solomon during his reign over Israel. And King Solomon’s words of wisdom are to avoid being selfish and greedy with material things and material possessions. The second reading was from the Gospel of Luke which is found in the New Testament of the Holy Bible. The four Gospels are the central story and teachings of Jesus while he was alive two thousand years ago. And this particular story was about Jesus turning the water into wine at a wedding to please the wedding guests and please his mother who requested it. This miracle of turning the water into wine shows Jesus possessed extraordinary, godlike powers and could do incredible acts that defied regular human imagination. This turning the water into wine was done by Jesus to prove that he was someone very different than the ordinary people of his time.
The Bible readings were followed the priest coming to the podium and microphone to give a sermon on the two Bible readings and relate them to modern day life for the Roman Catholics in the audience. This priest spoke for about twenty minutes on the way that the proverb wisdom from Solomon applied to people’s materialistic concerns in modern life and how people have to realize that they can’t be too greedy and too materialistic or they lose faith in God’s love and God’s way. The priest also talked about how the miracle act of Jesus Christ at the wedding to turn the water into wine was done out of love from his heart to please his mother and people and to prove that he was an extraordinary human being that was blessed and gifted because Jesus is the Son of God.
The priest then shifted his attention to doing the whole ritual surrounding the Sacrament of Communion that all the Roman Catholics in the audience were obliged to participate in and receive a white wafer on their tongues and drink some red non alcoholic wine from a chalice and then declare themselves as one the same with the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ. This whole ritual was first performed by the priest. This was a re enactment of the Last Supper of Jesus Christ the night before he was arrested and then crucified. The priest held up the big white wafer that he had in front of him on the altar and declared it as the Body of Christ. He then held up the gold chalice and declared this to be the Blood of Christ. And like the apostles that night who were with Jesus at this Last Supper event, the priest then eats the bread and drinks the wine from the gold chalice to convey his symbolic and physical commitment to Jesus Christ as Son of God and Savior of humankind.
The participation of the rest of the church in the Communion ritual was something to see because all the people took their time and took turns to line up in the aisles and go up front to receive a white wafer and take a drink from gold chalices. The whole ritual took about fifteen minutes as everyone returned to their church pews and get on the kneelers and meditate or pray for a few minutes. Later, when talking with the Roman Catholic church members after the mass, the believer is returning to pray to God, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Ghost to purify and cleanse all evil and impurities from his or her soul, heart, and mind. Two or three more group prayers were done and then the congregation was dismissed with a concluding song that was really sweet and long.
This is an experience that I will never forget as a devoted Sunni Muslim who has never been to a Christian facility nor church nor have I ever encountered any of the Christian rituals, readings, and faithful praying together that I witnessed and observed at St. Matthew’s Catholic Church that Sunday morning in early December. This was an experience that made me recognize that all religions have their people converge together to pray, love God, and appreciate their sacred rites, rituals, and readings from their holy books. The Roman Catholics were clearly putting a lot of attention on the Last Supper of Jesus Christ and his crucifixion for all humankind’s sins because of the number of rituals associated with these events of his life. However, the teachings of Jesus in the Four Gospels is also a centerpiece of the Roman Catholic Sunday mass. The priest took almost twenty minutes to explain the implications and meanings of Jesus turning water into wine at his mother’s friend’s wedding.
Question 11 - The Miracle Story Surrounding Lady of Guadalupe
This miracle story has a brown skinned Virgin Mary appearing to a Mexican peasant near Mexico City and her image was cast on the under side of his coat. This visit of the Virgin Mary was also accompanied by a message to the peasant man to get the Mexican people to convert to followers of her son, Jesus Christ, and recognize him as their personal savior. It was a pivotal event in converting the Mexican people into Roman Catholic believers and continues to be a seminal event in the religious history of the people. The Mexican people recognize and honor the Lady of Guadalupe as their own revered icon.
The Lady of Guadalupe miracle story incorporates the Mexican people, who are descendants of the ancient Mesoamerican civilizations of the Aztec and Maya, into the center of the Christian faith and religious tradition through having their own singular miracle story about the Mother of Jesus. Here the Virgin Mary herself is standing there in a miracle appearance to the peasant man who has her sacred image cast onto his coat, which hangs in a church there, with the supposed physical evidence of the story’s truth. It is a story that makes Mexican believers feel that they are special in a real way since they have this distinctive miracle happening in their country and in their region. The Lady of Guadalupe is their Virgin Mary version separated from the white Christian traditions and therefore a symbol and signal for them to undergo conversion. The conversion rate of the Mexican people to Roman Catholicism was speeded along and widespread after this miracle story was spread through the population.
In Southern California today, Mexican American communities honor the miracle story of the Lady of Guadalupe within their family traditions and practicing of their religious beliefs which for the most part are strictly Roman Catholic. The Lady of Guadalupe icon is found in many Mexican American homes and neighborhoods. She is seen as a spiritual benefactor as well as a protector as evident in the fact that even Mexican American gangsters bear tattoos of her image to provide spiritual protection. In other words, the Mexican American people today have carried on this tradition of the Lady of Guadalupe protecting them and serving them exclusively and distinctive from other groups.
Question 12 - Latino Religious Experience Distinctive from Asian Experience in North America
The Asian people, the Chinese, Japanese, and Pacific Islanders, came to North America with their own distinctive religious traditions, beliefs, and values distinctive from Christianity. These religious experiences were entrenched in Confucianism, Buddhism, and other Asian religious faiths that recognized no all-powerful, personal God like the Christians but felt the religious need to find the ultimate peaceful, tranquil consciousness internally. Bringing their Buddhist, Confucian, Shinto, and other Asian religious faiths to North America was done without problems by the Asian immigrants because of them being segregated from the whites and their Christian religious beliefs in the early immigrant experiences to North America. The historical presence of Chinatowns are still found in many places because of the Asian immigrants being segregated and confined within their own separated community apart from the whites. As a result, the Asian immigrants kept their language, their customs, and their religious beliefs solid and strong when they immigrated to North America in their insular, segregated communities.
The Latino religious communities in North America were almost all Roman Catholic believers because of their conversion to this religious faith over the decades after the Spanish Conquest of the 16th century. The Latino religious communities were converts to Spanish style Roman Catholicism that preserved the Catholic beliefs and rituals from the medieval times in Western Europe. This old style Roman Catholic belief system was adapted and adopted by the Latinos in all areas by the 19th century when the United States took over the American Southwest and California in the Mexican-American War of 1846. This acquisition of the northern part of the newly independent Mexico resulted in the Mexican American and the Latino community as a whole being segregated apart from the whites once they flooded in. For the most part, the majority of white settlers were Protestants and anti-Catholic. Between the fact that they were Catholics and brown skinned, the whites made sure the Latinos were segregated apart from their Protestant, all white communities.
The Asian and Latino immigrants were both similar in holding onto their family religious traditions, ways, and beliefs as best as they could in their segregated, insular communities apart from the whites. These religious traditions and beliefs were a source of refuge and relief from the system of white racism and white supremacy that was imposed on both the Asians and Latinos. Racial segregation meant that both the Asians and Latinos were isolated and alienated in their separate neighborhoods and forced to turn inward to religious beliefs and religious feelings. Through the decades of racial segregation and racist treatment of the Asians and the Latinos, the religious traditions, beliefs, and rituals have been a source of integrity and strength for them to endure the white rule over them. Since the eroding away of racial segregation and racism in recent decades, the Asian and Latino communities have continued to uphold their distinctive religious traditions and beliefs as morally and ethically reflective of their inner strength and endurance in a racist culture and society. The Asian religious experiences and Latino religious experiences were sources of refuge and strength for them to resist and endure the racist, unfair situations and experiences that they had to face as minority ethnic groups. They were permitted to exercise their religious freedom in North America because of their isolation, alienation, and separation from the mainstream white race. As a result, the Asian and Latino communities have distinctive, original, and interesting religious traditions that show they were able to endure this long period of mistreatment and lower racial status among the white racists here in North America.
Question Thirteen - How Buddhist Church Served as Ethnic Adjustment for Japanese Americans
The Buddhist principles, rituals, and churches were very important for Japanese Americans to make the ethnic adjustment of being a minority race that encountered racist hatred and racist policies from the white majority. The Buddhist faith teaches a believer to become Buddhist saints in mind, action, and feeling by detaching from the external, material world and finding inner enlightenment called Nirvana. It is in this state of total suspension and detachment from material self where a person is able to extinguish that material self and become non-self as one with the greater self. This extinction of the material self is considered the only means to happiness and individual freedom in life. The Buddhist church served as an important refuge and source of spiritual strength for these Japanese immigrants coping with racism and unfair treatment from whites based on ethnicity. The Japanese are a very proud, honorable people who considered themselves a superior race of Asia and therefore were literally unprepared for this degrading, humiliating experience of being dubbed a secondary, minority ethnic group by the white majority in the United States. Segregation, alienation, and isolation of the Japanese immigrants into their own communities apart from the white race was something that made Buddhism extremely valuable and attractive to the immigrants.
Japanese Americans could also converge together in the Buddhist churches to air out their opinions, feelings, and differences about the American experience for themselves. They tightened their ties among one another in the Buddhist churches to make themselves have at least each other in a segregated, racist society. These Japanese Americans were able to assimilate into the American mainstream culture through having the best of both worlds including their Buddhist churches available. By learning the English language, attending American schools, and working American jobs, the Japanese immigrants made their adjustments to the American cultural life and economy. Yet, at the same time, the Buddhist churches remained a source of ethnic pride and heritage for the Japanese Americans. Here in these churches they could be themselves again as practicing Buddhists who were detaching from their material selves and material lives.
Question Fourteen - Lessons Drawn on Diversity of Religious Experiences
There are some hurdles to overcome in American society to practice religious beliefs and in the past these conflicts sometimes turn ugly and racist in nature. The most recent example was the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks in 2001 when the Arab Muslim ethnic group was targeted for racist attacks and racist hate crimes. White Americans couldn’t distinguish between the differences among Muslims and that the Muslim terrorist groups are not representative of either the Muslim religion or the vast majority of the Muslim people. Yet, these racist attacks demonstrate how Muslims were cast as the enemy and the Islam religion was defined as a source of violence and anti-Americanism. The Arab Muslim communities in the United States faced threats, attacks, and discriminatory treatment by the public in the aftermath of 9/11 and this racist perspective still exists in some places.
Likewise, the Native Americans were targeted back in the 18th and 19th century when they tried to practice their religious beliefs. One of the examples that emerged in the 19th century was the spread of the use of the Ghost Dance to make Native Americans immune to the white ways and bring back the old Indian beliefs again. The Ghost Dance was targeted as a religious ritual that defied and opposed white rule so the U.S. government denounced it and sent military troops to stop Ghost Dance activities in some native tribal lands. The Ghost Dance ritual was used by a variety of tribes during the late 19th century when the Native Americans were being attacked and forced into reservation systems by the U.S. military forces. The Ghost Dance ritual was the source of the massacre at Wounded Knee in 1890 when U.S. regulars opened fire on defenseless Native Americans.
Buddhists, Hindus, and many other religious groups have also encountered obstacles in practicing their religious faiths in the United States. Although they are freely able to practice their beliefs and rituals, the religious practices are kept within their communities. The attempts to try to convert white people to Buddhism, Hinduism, Shinto, and the rest of the Asian religious belief practices are not found to be aggressive in the course of American history. The Asian Americans have kept their religious practices within their own groups and they are very insular and closed about their religious belief systems in many ways. The Buddhists, Taoists, and other Asian religious groups quietly do their thing and they do not step on anyone else’s turf or toes for sure. Based on the religious membership of these Asian groups, these are very much ethnic religious groups who have kept their religious beliefs bounded within their own ethnic boundaries. Some whites have joined these religious groups but at their own accord and not because a Buddhist knocked on the front door to come join the group.
Question Fifteen - One Religious Movement Transformed American Life in Unexpected Ways
The most curious, fastest growing religious group in the United States is the Church of Latter-Day Saints, or Mormons, who have been known for their missionaries who knock from door to door to spread the Gospel of Jesus supplemented by the narrative of the Book of Mormon. This religious group can be considered one that transformed American life in unexpected ways from its humble origins in upstate New York. Founder and Prophet, Joseph Smith, was visited by an Angel of God who showed him where to find the ancient plates that he translated through the use of seer stones contained with the plates into what became the Book of Mormon. Called as a Prophet of God, Joseph Smith became the leader of a small group of followers who were persecuted for some of their unique religious practices, including polygamy. The Mormons fled as a group to the backwoods of Illinois where they faced persecution again and where their leader and prophet was gunned down while being held in a jail cell. The murder of Joseph Smith marks the turning point of the religious group because the new leader, Brigham Young, chose to lead the Mormons out to Salt Lake City, Utah. It was here where they established their model religious community under the leadership of Young and the other Apostles. The Mormons built a thriving community in Utah and they became very hard working people, moral people, and giving people despite their strange origins and the mysterious person of their founder and self proclaimed prophet Joseph Smith.
The Mormon religion was a secretive religious group and non Mormons were forbidden from their temples constructed to undergo some of the holiest, most sacred ceremonies, such as Baptism of the Dead as well as the Mormon wedding ceremony. The Baptism of the Dead basically was baptizing dead members of the family to release them from the spirit prisons into Paradise with Jesus, God, and Joseph Smith. The Baptism of the Dead ritual is done in highly secret circumstances. Likewise, the wedding ceremony is secretive and mysterious in its rituals. For example, the husband is given a secret name for his wedded wife so that he and only he holds her key to Paradise since she would only be permitted in when he informs the Heaven Gatekeeper of her secret name. This kind of secrecy and strange rituals has caused many Christians to criticize the religious standing of Joseph Smith and his role in forming this religion.
Was Joseph Smith for real? Did he really translate the Book of Mormon with seer stones? Or, did Joseph Smith write the book himself and sell it off as a Book of God to start this new religion and not only make a lot of money but end up with almost one hundred wives? The Mormon religion today is the fastest growing Christian sect in the West and the position and standing of Joseph Smith remains under heavy criticism and attack by Americans today of other faiths especially since Republican presidential candidate Matt Romney is a Mormon. The attack on Romney from the conservative evangelical Christians is that Joseph Smith is a fraudulent prophet. He was not for real. The evangelical Christians are opposed to Romney because of their disbelief in the prophet hood of Joseph Smith as well as the legitimacy of the Book of Mormon as another book of God. Other Christians have stepped up criticism against Romney and the Mormon faith for its strange beliefs in pre-destiny and God having a human form. These are beliefs denounced as heresy. Also, the Mormon faith preached for a long time that non-white ethnic groups were condemned by God and could not ever have salvation. This Mormon doctrine was finally renounced because of pressure from the national government. In addition, the Mormon practice of polygamy continues in some isolated Mormon communities in Utah and elsewhere in the West.
The Mormon religion is distinctive because of its founder claiming to be America’s prophet and the religion is based in the Americas. The Book of Mormon chronicles the lives and fate of ancient people who lived in Central America and how they were visited by the resurrected Jesus Christ himself. He gave his gospel teachings to these ancient American people before ascending into Heaven to be at the right hand of God the Father. The resurrected Jesus revealed a special fate for the ancient American people and the ordained mission of Joseph Smith was to restore the Christian Church on American soil as desired by Jesus Christ’s gospel given to these ancient Americans in Central America two thousand some years ago. The Mormons have become successful business people and politicians. The Mormons have become prominent community citizens in many places. They are known for their love for God and family. Despite some of the questions raised about their religious beliefs, the Mormons have grown in membership.

Midterm

Religious Studies 302i
Midterm
Fall 2007
Abdullah Juma Alaraimi
SID#005916493




1. I did not post anything’s.
2. I missed 2 days and three days late.
3. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=992901635889636728

4. To read or not to read, this is the question: Be honest. How much of the following book did you read? Not A Genuine Black Man? Required readings from the Reader?
One of the my best habits I have is reading. Fortunately for me, yes, I was able to read Not A Genuine Black Man and the required readings for this course. I set apart two hours every evening for me to isolate myself in a library or a quiet place to read. Knowing this course required a lot of reading, my intent was to slowly over the weeks read all the required material and carefully reflect on the deeper meanings.
5. Give an example of consilience explanation to one specific religious phenomenon.
In the United States of America, and especially here in Southern California, instead of people worshipping snakes, people are worshipping money. This is a false god for sure among so many people in this society. People are worshipping money because of their full inner consciousness attention being paid to it. How many people do you know that think about money constantly and consistently over the course of any given day? This worship of money as a false god has consequences, of course, just like when people worship a snake as a false god. For money worshippers, the consequences are clear. They become arrogant, prideful, greedy, and selfish. Money as the god means a human being must do what it takes to get more of it and morality becomes suspended away from traditional concepts and origins. Money worshippers become hard hearted, cold blooded, and vicious people when they begin to buy mansions, luxurious things, and hang around other wealthy people all the time. Money worshippers engage in the practice of debasing, dehumanizing, and degrading others considered subordinate and inferior in every way.

6. How can the theory of memetics help in understanding why certain religions are more successful than others in terms of popularity in the USA? Be sure to explain how memes are different than genes.
The theory of memetics is fascinating for me to help explain why certain religions are more successful in terms of popularity in the USA than others. For instance, the Mormons are one of the fastest growing religious organizations in the USA with huge new increases in membership around the country because of their hard working missionaries who for two years go knocking on doors to spread the Mormon memes. The theory of memetics in explaining the rise of popularity in this Mormon religion is interesting to me.
Here is what new believers are told as representing the memes. First and foremost, the prophet of the Mormon religion is an American man from upper New York named Joseph Smith. Second, he claims to have been visited by Angels and one of them led him to the ancient gold plates buried in a hillside near his family home. Third, rocks on a breastplate were buried with the ancient plates and these rocks were used by Joseph Smith to translate the gold plates into the Book of Mormon. This Book of Mormon tells the story of an Israeli tribe coming to Central America and this tribe was visited by Jesus Christ after his resurrection, where he taught his Gospel among them. This guy who wrote the gold plates buried them in the New York hillside until Joseph Smith found them. Mormonism has spread so much because of the memes being distinctive from the old-time Christian religions. It distinguishes American Mormons from other Christians and gives Mormons an American bent and character. Mormons claim to be the real, true Americans because they are following the real, true American made religion and American born Prophet. It is a classic example of how powerful memes can be. Although replication and imitation is involved in the same sense as genes, the memes of religions are distinguished by the fact that they are external made up human knowledge rather than genetic information that controls proteins and other building blocks for cells.
7.` Describe how evolutionary theory via natural selection as first presented by Charles Darwin and later by Richard Dawkins helps in understanding human migration, cultural development, and social identity.
The natural selection mechanism in the evolutionary theory does help explain human migration, cultural development, and social identity in today’s vast, diverse human world. Evolutionary theory is all about organisms adapting to their ecological habitats around them and adapting their physical selves to the environmental pressures, forces, and opportunities. Human beings are living organisms that can consume vast amounts of food and wreak havoc on ecological habitats when overpopulation occurs. Obviously, human beings have an advanced intellectual capability and consciousness compared to most mammals to understand how to migrate great distances to find better, more ample space and resources to prosper. The human migration patterns traced by anthropologists out of Africa demonstrate this exact motivation. People move to go find more resources. The natural selection does play a role in this migration because of the struggle for survival eliminates the least fit and allows only the strongest, best adapted organisms to survive and continue to breed. Human slavery can be used an example of how humans exemplify this natural selection mechanism in cultural and social ways. These stronger, better adapted, and more powerful human groups degrade, debase, and humiliate the inferior, less adapted groups by enslaving them for their own benefits. The Jim Crow system in the American South after slavery is a great modern example of how one group of human beings upholds principles and beliefs of racial superiority due to natural selection. To this day many Southern whites believe they are more fit, stronger, and better adapted than the Southern blacks who are still considered inferior, less intelligent, and less fit.
8. Why is the notion of ‘race’ biologically obsolete yet culturally viable?
I was reading this amazing book about how mitochondria in the DNA-RNA complex of every human being in the whole human world ties us to the same common human parents at the very beginning of the human race emerging on this planet. That’s amazing to think that we are all one family despite our racial and cultural distinctions. At one time in our ancestral past, our family trees are all joined at the same root. The biological evidence therefore makes us all the same organism and that racial distinctions once upheld as scientific fact are exposed as false. Yet, you go down into the American South, as I did last summer, and yes, these people have not found out about the recent biological evidence. In fact, in one town in Alabama, there is nobody in my opinion there that has learned we are all one family. The blacks in this Alabama town are clearly considered inferior by the whites who see themselves as superior. Racism is culturally viable in this town so that the white people can justify their superior cultural and social status to the blacks even though there is no biological basis for it. In the White House, President Bush and Vice President Cheney are clearly members of the wealthy, white elite establishment in the USA. They see themselves as very much superior, powerful, and better than the rest of Americans from other income classes, as well as other races, based on their political records and history of their political behavior as politicians. They are no different than the white people in the town of Alabama in their basic racist beliefs, in my personal opinion, but they keep those white racist beliefs to themselves and never try to air them out on public record.
5. Explain how a religious idea, ritual, or practice gets transformed on American soil?
One of the religious rituals that changed in its North American environment is that of baptism among the Christians. I researched the ritual of baptism to find out that the Roman Catholics practice the medieval version of it. In the Roman Catholic churches, infants are brought to the church in a ceremony involving the priest chanting prayers, blessing the newborn baby, and putting holy water on his or her forehead. There is a formal basin in the back of the church for this ritual to take place. The parents, godparents, and priest as well as family members participate in the short ritual in a private ceremony. In North America, the formal Baptism ritual done in a church was thrown out by many of the evangelist and revivalist movements. Instead of having this ritual done in such formal circumstances, these emotion-based Christian groups began to hold group baptism rituals down by a stream or river. Full immersion in the river was done by the believers in the imitation of Jesus being baptized by John the Baptist in the River Jordan a couple of thousand years ago. These river baptism ceremonies were accompanied by singing, dancing, and praying in group fashion very different than the formal medieval baptism ceremony. Recently, I attended a Christian evangelist style church with a friend here in Southern California. The head preacher was asking people to give up their lives for Jesus Christ and be baptized into the Christian faith. Believe it or not, this church had a full on Jacuzzi with the bubbles bubbling and the spotlight on it, and these new believers would go in a back room and return dressed in a white robe like Jesus the preacher said and then each would be immersed into this Jacuzzi by him. This is the baptism ritual in the evangelist Southern California church in 2007 which has changed the ritual from the river baptism ceremonies from the 19th century. However, there was a lot of singing, chanting, and praying going on when these baptisms were done in this Jacuzzi. The whole church was participating in it like the evangelist and revivalist groups in the river baptism events.
10. Explain Peter Berger’s concept of heretical imperative and how it applies to religious pluralism in general.
The heretical imperative is a fascinating concept that can be used to help understand and explain religious pluralism in general. In the USA, the number of religious groups and organizations is simply astounding to me. In my home country, there are a few different sects of Islam and that’s it. There is very little religious pluralism. Very few Christians and Muslims are found anywhere in the little towns and villages in my country. Here in the United States, there are so many different sects of Christianity that I can’t count them and in the urban areas, there are diverse kinds of different religious groups because of the large, diverse number of immigrant groups who have settled here. Particularly here in Southern California there is just a tremendous diversity of religious groups. All this diversity and pluralism is brought on by the people splintering up into different religious groups holding onto distinctive, unique beliefs different from other religious groups. The lecture we had on inductive, deductive, and reductive in relation to Berger’s concept of the heretical imperative was especially valuable for me in understanding how religious pluralism proliferated here. Religious groups diversified because they were given the freedom and permission to diversify. Any religious group can freely practice their distinctive beliefs no matter how heretical that they may seem to mainstream, powerful religious groups. The USA allows people to practice the heretical imperative and form their own religious groups when any like-minded group decides that they are distinctive and unique enough to do so. My research exposes so many smaller cult groups in Southern California that are the ultimate practitioners of the heretical imperative by their select, unique beliefs usually surrounding a central cult leader who proclaims special visionary powers or knowledge of the future that separates them from everyone in mainstream religions.
13. Take one religious movement and describe its influence in North America.
I have to select the Puritans or Pilgrims who are romanticized in the American history books as being the first English settlers who came over to escape religious persecution in the Massachusetts Bay area. These Puritans arrived to build their utopian Christian community and bring God’s Kingdom down to Earth among humans. The Puritans believed that every person had great potential to become an optimal performer. Puritans believed in maximizing their potentials as Children of God. When Puritans began to prosper, accumulate wealth, and grown socially prominent in their communities, these were graces, blessings, and benefits shed on them by God Himself. This was the reward for their good works. The profit motive and profit maximization that became the central driver of the American capitalist economy can be rooted for certain in the Puritan ethic. Although American capitalists are not Puritan Christians, this Puritan ethic is the same thing as the profit motive but stripped of all religious attachments. The Puritans were influential because they were proclaiming that they were the purest Christians and that maximizing potential and accumulating wealth were simply desirable ends that God blessed as good and beneficial for human beings. By being industrious, hard working, and seeking rewards monetarily and materially, the Puritans set the course for the development of modern American capitalism.
14. How would Nietzsche describe the death of God and the rise of new religions?
Nietzsche would describe the death of God and the rise of new religions as fundamentally necessary for human beings to improve themselves and their future generations. The Judeo-Christian God is dead according to Nietzsche. This was a made up, big lie orchestrated by human beings to control others. This reward-punishment, Heaven-Hell arrangement, and God-Devil rivalry are all false teachings to people to control their inner consciousness and control their lives. Nietzsche said humans had the responsibility to become the new moral supermen. Humans had to take it upon themselves to denounce these false teachings and accept the reality that the Judeo-Christian God was a big sham. The rise of the new religion involves intellectual, rational, and reasonable men setting the new moral standards and criteria based on what is necessary to advance the human race from this deceptive, decrepit way of the old religions. The moral supermen will no longer be held back by the restraints, rules, and doctrines of these old time religions because these new moral supermen no longer believe that we are under the burden in this life and in the afterlife of dealing with this human like, angry, wrathful God. The death of this God only means that this God doesn’t really exist at all. This was a great lie. This was a false dogma. Humans made up this human like, angry, wrathful God to scare humans and control humans. The death of this God means that humans have to take responsibility to become moral supermen who achieve their potential in this life and try to do what is right based on what is right rather than what a religious frames is right. The new moral supermen make their own moral rules, principles, and boundaries in the wake of this death of this Judeo-Christian God and the whole scam of heaven-hell, God-devil, and everything else about the Christian religion being extinguished and thrown in the dustbin of human history.
15. How does Stephen Wolfman’s ‘new kind of science’ support Stephen Jay Gould’s notion of spandrels or unintended consequences complexities?
Stephen Wolfman’s ‘new kind of science’ supports Gould’s notion of unintended consequences complexities because of the way that something simple does evolve into something complex as most evident by the computer revolution example. The first personal computer built by Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs in a garage in the late 1970s was so simplistic compared to the personal computers today. The complexity of the personal computer’s capabilities today is so beyond the complexity of the first one. The laptop computer is so powerful today because of the way the simple first machine spawned so many people trying to improve on it and advance on it . The unintended consequences were what people innovated to make the personal computer better from Bill Gates to those college guys that innovated Google. Wolfman’s ‘new kind of science’ is following this Gould’s notion that unintended consequences always result when humans innovate, imagine, and visualize newer, better improvements on already existing things. Another great illustration of it is the advancement of the airplane since the Wright brothers flew that first one in the early 1900s. Today, the B-2 bomber of the USA makes it very clear how something simple turns into something so complex over time due to squandrels which result from humans innovating, creating, brainstorming, and advancing already existing molds and structures into improved, more effective ones. In one hundred years, the airplane has gone from a thing that barely lifts off the ground to this B-2 bomber that can fly undetected by radar and drop huge bombs on anyone anywhere without any defense against it. The scary thing is that the B-2 bomber is already outdated and that there are faster, better airplanes already being produced and proliferated in the USA production facilities.
16. Why does religious diversity almost always start with its founder?
The founder of every religion is always stepping up, speaking out, and proclaiming a new, distinctive, and original message and therefore establishing a new, distinctive, and original relationship with the Higher Power or God. In every single religion, from one end of this world to the next, the founder is always a revered, sacred, and holy figure who is seen as distinctively better, improved, and existing at an elevated plane of existence compared to ordinary humans especially after he or she is gone. For instance, my family religion of Islam started with one man - Prophet Muhammad. He was called by God in the hills of Mecca and the Angel Gabriel began recite the new Book of God that we Muslims consider written by God Himself - Holy Quran. Prophet Muhammad denounced all the different cults and pagan religions in Mecca at that time and proclaimed that a new religion had been born for the purpose of cleansing away and getting rid of all these false religious belief systems. This new religion began to be called Islam which means ‘to submit’ and of course this submission is to the one and only Allah (God). This started a new religion in the middle of the desert and it was completely different from any other religion. It was creative, original, appealing, and attractive as Prophet Muhammad was the central figure and the Holy Quran was the centerpiece of the new faith. In the case of the religion of Buddhism, the Buddha did the same thing as Prophet Muhammad. He announced a new religion based on a new set of truths and beliefs that came to him while in deep meditation alone. Buddha came up with the basic doctrines while in this state of pure enlightenment. Buddha came to full awareness and broke his own cycle of death and rebirth by extinguishing his human wants, needs, and appetites in a total sense. He was able to achieve a state that is called Nirvana. It is a total blissfulness with all human wants and appetites being extinguished. The Buddha nature is pursued by all these religious followers today because of this one man’s mission to find the real truth. In both the cases of Prophet Muhammad and the Buddha, these religious groups are so different but their founders are very similar in declaring themselves separate and apart from all other religious faiths preceding him and all those around him at their respective time periods while alive.
17. What was the tipping point in Brian Copeland’s life which prompted him to want to commit suicide?
Copeland was stressed out so much because he couldn’t feel comfortable in his own skin. He couldn’t come to terms with the situation facing him. He was an outcast. He was considered and socially deemed as inferior to white people. He felt this cultural stereotyping in a significant way that made him feel so alone and isolated and finally he hit the depths of despair in the racist San Leandro. He had a tipping point where death seemed to him to be a better, happier prospect than living life in this kind of humiliating, dehumanizing situation all over skin color. The racial and cultural stereotyping wherever he went and socially interacted with others was what I felt built up that huge resentment which resulted in him falling into this major depression which triggered his suicidal thoughts. He saw life as something so cruelly unhappy for him to live that death was something more attractive in every way. He saw that it would be better for him to be dead than alive.
18. What were the more subtle forms of racism that Brian encountered while growing up in San Leandro?
Stereotyping is something that is subtle but apparent when the victim feels anxiety, tensions, and negative emotions over it. The stereotyping done by white people towards black people is almost automatic in San Leandro. This white racist stereotyping done here is that black people can’t be trusted, black people are potential thieves, druggies, and criminals, and that black people are inferior and unintelligent. The white people view black people as not equals. They are scum. They are dirt. They are less than human. These are the nasty, evil sentiments in white racists’ consciousness towards blacks. These subtle forms of racism that Brian Copeland encountered were as small as glances, the way white people conversed with him, and the way that his same age white peers talked to him and treated him as someone different; an outcast.
19. How does Brian’s experience of racism dovetail with the experiences of Malcolm X? How are they different?
Malcolm X experienced much more violent racism than Brian Copeland did. In Lansing, Michigan, when Malcolm was a little boy the violent, racist group known as the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) murdered his activist father. As a consequence, the whole family was broken up and Malcolm ended up in Detroit and then Boston with relatives. All the children were forced to go live with different family members and nobody ever was convicted for the father’s murder in Lansing. Malcolm X’s violent episode in childhood involving white racism and race hatred was far and beyond anything that Brian Copeland encountered for sure. Also, Malcolm X had to go through a whole period of being a hoodlum in the streets dealing drugs, running numbers, and burglarizing white people’s homes. This landed him in jail for many years where he converted to the Nation of Islam and became a devotee to Prophet Elijah Muhammad who wrote letters to him and guided him to this path he would take after his jail release as a major minister in the religion. The racist hatred that Malcolm X encountered as a child was translated obviously into a racist hatred for white people through the Nation of Islam platform that upheld a religious doctrine that white people were blue-eyed devils void of any goodness and any moral conscience. The incredible speeches delivered by Malcolm X against white people are very different from the responses towards white people conveyed in Brian Copeland’s story.
20. In what ways did certain North American Indian religions absorb and integrate Christianity into their own religious ideas and rituals?
As evident in the reader, the North American Indian religions in some cases did absorb and integrate Christianity into their own religious ideas and rituals. The figurehead of Christianity, Jesus, became a saint like, holy, and revered figure in some of the North American Indian religions as an honest, powerful shaman who walked in the path of the Great Spirit. The Native American Indian religions basically hold that a holy force holds all things together and this holy force is commonly referred to in most as the Great Spirit. Native American life and their religious practices revolved around this centralizing holy force. The key goal was to maintain harmony with this holy natural power and move in rhythm and tune to its cosmic pulse. Harmony was the way to ensure the success of the tribe in social life, in hunting, and in war. The Native Americans firmly believed that disharmony with the holy force resulted in disaster for tribe and individuals. The Native American religious groups saw in Christianity a common tie in the monotheism doctrine on God and the Great Spirit doctrine of a centralizing holy force holding everything together and in harmony. The Jesus Christ figure was also a common thread in Native American religions as we find the Christ-like Hiawatha among the Iroquois oral traditions and the Christ-like Sweet Medicine over in the Plains’ Sioux tribes. The integration of Christianity and some of its rituals were very much synthesized and integrated through their matching symmetries and qualities to Native American beliefs and rituals. The same path towards moral goodness, moral love, and moral brotherhood was visualized by the Native American shamans in some of the groups and Christianity was simply interpreted as another way to the same holy force; the Great Spirit; God.
21. In Laverne Jacobs’ narrative, he speaks about how he felt conflicted about his Native American religious identity and his newfound faith in Christianity. How did he attempt to reconcile the two?
Laverne Jacobs feels a conflicted feeling when becoming a Christian because he doesn’t want to separate from his own Native American religious identity. Jacobs is able to try to reconcile the two faiths because of his realization that most of his Native American rituals are about intimacy with a benevolent supernatural power which in the Christian faith is called God. The Christian faith holds that Jacobs must seek God through his personal relationship with humanity’s Savior or Messiah, Jesus Christ, who must be accepted in his heart in whole to make the conversion and transition into a full and faithful Christian believer. This religious pressure to accept Christ into his heart and life full force and full faith in order to harmonize his life and relationship with the holy, supernatural force or God becomes a pivotal point of awareness for Jacobs. He comes to see the reconciliation is maybe possible that his Christian conversion is indeed his vision quest as a Native American. He is finding his path and direction to walk. This is where he is going to live a life of full purpose as advocated by the Native American religious traditions and beliefs of his family and tribe. He is finding this awareness as he deals with the conflict between the two since his Native American religious identity places the most emphasis on harmony with the supernatural power evident in all of nature and humanity as well. He is finding that Christianity is just another path to that harmony that he is walking because this is his chosen fate. This is his vision quest towards a fulfilling, meaningful life in the future.
22. What is the Native American Church of Jesus Christ? How did it evolve?
The Native American Church of Jesus Christ is one of those religious organizations that evolved from this concept that Jesus Christ was a great shaman from the East, a great holy man, a great holy teacher, and one who had achieved intense, intimate harmony with the supernatural holy power; the Great Spirit. Jesus Christ found the harmony and taught about his experiences and times in the harmony state according to the Native American Church of Jesus Christ. One of the most particular rituals of this Native American Church is the use of peyote. A body of rituals developed around peyote when it was introduced in the late nineteenth century and it was incorporated into the Native American Church to help and assist young men in their vision quests to find themselves and find their life’s direction and responsibility. This Church evolved around the belief that Native Americans and Jesus Christ are connected in the harmony of the ultimate supernatural, holy power; the Great Spirit; God. This intimacy with the spiritual center of the Universe and all of life is so crucial to the Native American Church of Jesus Christ and Jesus Christ had achieved it and resonated in it, vibrated in it, and taught many great things while one with the Great Spirit.
23. Detail Frederick Douglass’s critique of slavery via his autobiography. In what specific ways did it criticize conventional religion?
The critique of slavery given by Frederick Douglass in his autobiography is insightful, stunning, and dramatic. His description of some of those torturous beatings endured by the slaves, as well as the rapes of the young black girls on these slave plantations by their white masters, is just nauseating at times. He is able to show how really dehumanizing, sick, and degrading slavery really was when being practiced by these white slave owners in the American South. The specific ways he criticized conventional religion was in relation to how the white slave masters and families pretended to be good Christians. These white Christians even quoted biblical verses to justify the institution of slavery and cast the whites as a superior race on Earth second to none. The conventional religions allowed the white slave owners to justify their slavery institution and these religious leaders in the South did nothing to denounce and expose slavery as immoral to the slave owners at Sunday services. Slavery was justified, upheld, and called beneficial to the poor, unintelligent, and brutish slaves from the forbidden continent of Africa.
24. What are the major differences between Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. when it comes to liberating blacks from oppression?
The major differences between Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. was clear in regards to liberating blacks from oppression. Martin Luther King Jr. came along in the mid-1950s with his activism against Jim Crow racism in the American South with his leadership being noted first in the famous Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955. With a doctorate degree in Theology, Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. upheld the doctrine of non violent civil disobedience. He taught his followers to stand up morally strong and non violently to their oppressors and take their brutality by turning their other cheek like Jesus did and proving that standing on the higher moral ground will win out in the end. King said that by taking the moral higher ground the white racists already have lost and they can’t kill every black and be violent when the blacks are standing arm in arm and only being non violent in their methods. King was extremely successful in pressuring the national government to change the Jim Crow situation in the American South through direct action and change the racial segregation system forever. In contrast, Malcolm X preached a doctrine that the white people were blue eyed devils that were offspring of an ancient genetic experiment gone bad and that they were incapable of being good, moral people and therefore the blacks must have their own nation and society separated from the whites. Malcolm X called out for black separatism and wanted blacks to avoid contact and interaction whites whenever possible and become self-sufficient and dependent only on each other until they could carve out their own all-black nation. Malcolm X said that blacks have arm themselves and defend themselves whenever appropriate. He mocked King’s nonviolent civil disobedient doctrine as totally ineffective and causing the black people only to remain oppressed.
25. Why is genealogical disassociation a key factor in understanding the emergence of new religions in America?
Once people break away from their original gene pool, like the Africans and Europeans did when they came to America, the emergence of new religions was inevitable. These migrants no longer participating in their traditional village, town, or family religious rituals, ceremonies, and events as when they were back in their homelands. In the Africans’ situation, they were cut off from their African homeland against their wills and dragged here to be forced to toil as slaves on huge plantations. The Europeans came to find cheap land, new economic opportunities, and new religious opportunities as well. The proliferation of religions of such diverse nature across the United States has always been connected to this original disassociation from the Old World cultures in Europe for the white Europeans and the African culture for the Africans. These people were soon developing new religious rituals, ceremonies, and events based on their new interpretations and new approaches to going about their religious activities. In this sense, the diversity of religion in America was begun at the very start when the original white settlers and black slaves arrived here.

Extra Credit
26. Write your own analysis of the arc or overall theme in the Reader for either the American Indian experience or the African American experience.
The American Indian religious experience is really fascinating for me as an international student raised and groomed in a strict version of Islam among a population of one hundred percent Muslims in my home country. Islam is the only religious belief system I had ever really known and practiced in any fashion. I had never touched upon any of the other religious belief systems because my society and culture is very inward looking and insulated from the outside world in many ways for a long time in history because of our vast deserts splitting us from other people. We have been Muslims for hundreds of years with very remote influence from other religious systems for long stretches of time. The North American Indian section was so interesting for me because I have come to terms with the truth about their central belief being this state of harmony with the singular, most powerful, supernatural force that holds everything together as well as creates everything at the same time. The Great Spirit. Is this Allah of my religion? This question has been on my mind since learning so much about how the American Indians were deep believers in being in harmony with their natural environment and with this supernatural holy force at all times and in all aspects. The key effort was to remain in harmony in spirit, mind, and body with this Great Spirit or Allah. American Indians were in the religious mood of trying to enjoy the beautiful earth around them as well as each other in a harmonious, peaceful existence if possible with the supernatural force of all supernatural forces; the Great Spirit. Tragically, the coming of the white Europeans with their drive to acquire land, accumulate wealth, and create dynamic, complex economies based on many types of economic activities were too overwhelming for the North American Indians to overcome. The most important thing for the Indians was seeing the spiritual side of life rather than accumulating material things and possessions.
27. Compare and contrast one reading from the American Indian section with the African American section. Be sure to illustrate the differences and the commonalities.
The two different readings chosen for this comparative analysis is the one about the Native American Church of Jesus Christ and the reading by Martin Luther King, Jr. and his argument for the use of Christian principles and Christian morals to face down racism and Jim Crow in the American South. Both of these readings are connected by Christianity. Both African people and Native American people adopted, integrated, and synthesized some of the Christian teachings, rituals, and figures in their own religious activities, practices, and rituals. Over time, this integration process of Christianity into the lives of African Americans and Native Americans becomes something naturally acceptable to these African Americans and Native Americans that follow these Christian principles. By the time Martin Luther King, Jr. was preaching nonviolent civil disobedience based on Christian principles, the vast majority of blacks in the United States were Christian believers. By the time that the Native American Church of Jesus Christ was established, less Native Americans than African Americans were Christians because of absence of any genealogical disassociation like experienced by African Americans. The reaching out to the African Americans with Christian beliefs connected Martin Luther King, Jr. to these black folks and they became a powerful, unified force for those years during the height of the civil rights protests in the 1950s and early 1960s. Martin Luther King, Jr. would use biblical metaphors in his great speeches and underscore the importance of Jesus in his life and his faith in the principle of Christian unconditional love. In contrast, the Native American Church of Jesus Christ does not have a huge number of Native American members attracted to it. This Church evolved with integrated beliefs of Christianity and Native Americans but in terms of numbers, Native Americans do not flock to Christianity like the African Americans did in the South. These readings demonstrate to me how important their original religion is for Native Americans in North America because they are connected here geographically, historically, and religiously. The white Europeans and black Africans came here and became disconnected from their cultural and social pressures to uphold religious systems and beliefs as their ancestors did.