Quote:
Alejandro Villanueva wrote:
Well, Mark, I do appreciate your comments and your opinion. But while it's true that bowing does not have to do with religion in the broad sense, in the particular case of Islam (or of some imans interpretations) bowing has to do with it. So, in general, yes you're right. Let this be the exception to the rule (although I'm pretty sure there are other faiths that share this point with Islam).
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Yes, I agree.
When it starts getting into religious territory, things become complicated. For example, in the Baptist area, there are Baptist who don't want to dance and then there are Baptists who don't want women wearing jeans. All under one religion, broken into different sects/areas/groups.
Religion becomes too personal to categorize. As noted by other people here, some of the Islamic faith don't have a problem with bowing while some do. IMO, it's a little like what David Orange described in his post. While he went through the Shinto ritual, he was praying to the God of Israel. Some people wouldn't do the Shinto ritual because they wouldn't believe that they could substitute the kami with their God. Some of the Islamic faith view bowing as prostration which goes against their beliefs.
I really don't think (at times) that it's a matter of having an "open mind", but a matter of how much importance that person puts on their religious beliefs. As all of us, we build our house of religion, sometimes it has a lot of windows and doors and sometimes it's a narrow hallway full of personal adornment. Both examples beautiful in their splendor and full of hard work.
How do you deal with that? On an individual, case-by-case basis, trying to avoid lumping the fringe elements into decisions about the group as a whole. IMO, anyway.
