This remarkable book, by a doctor born in a refugee camp in Gaza, should be read by everyone concerned with that region.
In January 2009 he lost three of his eight children when a tank shell struck his house in Gaza. Yet he refuses to demand revenge, and believes that medical workers on both sides should lead the way to peaceful co-existence.
The book gives insights into his childhood, medical training and experience in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Israel, as well as in Gaza. Forgiveness is found in all three great Abrahamic faiths. He writes “Hatred is an illness. It prevents healing and peace.”
Forgiveness is found in all three great Abrahamic faiths. He writes “Hatred is an illness.….. It prevents healing and peace.
Forgiveness and … hatred too? The Healing above does not refer to healing of anything but the mind.
Confucianism has so much to recommend it, and Hinduism… and Buddhism!
It is not ‘hatred’ that is the evil,
nor is it the root of the Matter;
this ‘hatred’ is a natural defence-response, towards neglect and ill-treatment.
It is the damaging and life-demeaning hostile ‘enemy’ conduct that has caused that hatred,
that is the ‘Villain’, to be found and (un)forgivingly unmasked and corrected at all costs.
———
Be reminded also, please,
that Forgiveness is conditional upon the forgiven-person or community mending-their-ways;
and this is so of God’s, Allah’s, and Adonai’s forgiveness,
as well as of Man’s.
Forgiveness energies must be balanced at the 5th sacrament/chakra level (the Throat).
Without the health and balance of that 5th level, the 6th will falter, and so will the daily pre-extreme-unction 7th level.
It is only at the 7th and final sacramental level, of Unction (which the pastoral-somato-psychologists recognise as setting one’s Spacing as well as being the Unction-sacrament and the ‘crown chakra’)
that there is no condition set for becoming enabled to move ‘forward’ or ‘upward’;
for the Unctional, divine or sacramental energy-centre, unlike the previous six, is a ‘one-way-only, and ‘final’, ‘departure-gate’,
that as it were closes behind you, once-and-for-all (and possibly includes “All Is Now Forgiven”**, especially in the case of your being manslaughtered or murdered i.e. wrong and death not at all of your own free-will).
By their very-nature and definition,
Unction is un-conditional;
but Forgiveness only works conditionally, as the ‘sinner’ performs atonement,
begins doing the right thing, and gives-up doing the wrong thing.
———
But the simple and friendly Method III, in the first and the last place, would have ensured you didn’t ‘sin’, ‘do wrong’, or fail to make a win-win-win peace-settlement.
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** Jesus said that (“) whatsoever sin you commit against the Creator or the Redeemer, may be forgiven you;
but a sin against the Holy Spirit may never be forgiven you(“).
(Self-Test for Atonement:
How many of the multiple-human-livings, more than just one-human-living, that you may have been drawing, or being given, from the Common Purse and The Environment during your life up to date,
could you “repay” (atone for) in your remaining lifetime ?
I have not read the book and realize the man may be neither Arab nor Muslim. If that is the case then his case is also not very illustrative of the situation there.
Lord Hilton,
There is and must be an element of animus, polemic, righteous indignation and anger in many Holy Scriptures dedicated to or revealed by a benevolent God, gods or their prophet. That is certainly true of the Bible, the Gita and Egyptian Book of the Dead. However no holy book which is not dedicated to or revealed by a god who people see as a specialized minor god of War or admit to be evil is as polemic, hate-filled or angry as the Koran. Other sacred texts of Islam build on this. The Muslim Arabs have an unbroken history of hate, violence and attack on other peoples and write beautiful poetry and memoirs about how they learn to forgive or live with suffering sometimes. We who know the group know this is until they can achieve cultural extermination of their enemies or real extermination if that is not possible. Then the Brits are happy to freeze the frame on the innocents killed in wars they themselves did not fight against the Muslim Arab powers. To adopt Islam is to adopt a position of endless warfare against all those not Muslim.