{"id":85271,"date":"2020-05-21T12:07:09","date_gmt":"2020-05-21T18:07:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/?p=85271"},"modified":"2020-05-22T15:18:56","modified_gmt":"2020-05-22T21:18:56","slug":"who-founded-hinduism-and-other-matters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/2020\/05\/who-founded-hinduism-and-other-matters.html","title":{"rendered":"“Who founded Hinduism?” and other matters"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Bangalore,<\/a>
The architect\u2019s rendering for the Bengalaru India Temple, for which the groundbreaking date has not yet been announced \u00a0\u00a0(borrowed from LDS Newsroom)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

My latest bi-weekly column for the Salt Lake City\u00a0Deseret News<\/em> has now appeared:<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWho, exactly, founded Hinduism?:\u00a0<\/span>The title \u201cHinduism\u201d doesn\u2019t incorporate the name of its founder.\u00a0An excellent reason can be given for this: Hinduism has no single, known founder\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

***<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

I share here a fairly lengthy excerpt from Graham E. Fuller, A World Without Islam<\/em> (New York, Boston, and London: Little, Brown and Company, 2010). \u00a0Fuller probably isn\u2019t exactly what would be termed a \u201cbleeding-heart liberal\u201d \u2014 as I myself certainly am not: \u00a0He is a former CIA political analyst, as well as the former CIA station chief in Kabul, Afghanistan:<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

On the one hand, \u201cthey\u201d \u2014 Muslims and others \u2014 do indeed hate us because of what we have done to them: invasions, colonies, empire-building, wars, coups, political, economic, and cultural domination, seizure and exploitation of resources, arrogance, lack of concern, failure to respect and understand non-Western cultures. \u00a0We have heard these arguments before and there is a great deal of truth to them.<\/span><\/p>\n

For those Americans who are uncomfortable in acknowledging any legacy of ongoing destructive and damaging US actions against the rest of the world, the temptation is to reply, \u201cThat\u2019s right, blame America.\u201d \u00a0So we then search out self-serving and comforting answers: they \u201chate us for our freedoms,\u201d they envy our wealth and our way of life, they prefer to blame the West rather than taking a hard look at themselves and their own shortcomings. \u00a0And all of these arguments contain [a] grain of validity as well. \u00a0But they basically don\u2019t tell most of the story.<\/span><\/p>\n

Whatever the roots of anti-Westernism may be, the phenomenon still remains a problem for the West and the United States. . . .<\/span><\/p>\n

A combination of admiration, respect, fear, and anger characterizes the views of most developing nations toward the modern West and especially the US. \u00a0The West is admired for its surge of economic and political development beginning in the sixteenth century. \u00a0But it was specifically the West\u2019s technological and military advancements that were responsible for thrusting the West out into the habitat of other civilizations. \u00a0(144)<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Fuller\u2019s comment here, particularly the last paragraph cited above, should be read in conjunction with my recent blog post entitled \u201cDo Arabs hate America?\u201d<\/a> in which I draw indirectly upon the data generated by Zogby International\u2019s polling in the Arab world.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 \u00a0 My latest bi-weekly column for the Salt Lake City\u00a0Deseret News has now appeared: \u00a0 \u201cWho, exactly, founded Hinduism?:\u00a0The title \u201cHinduism\u201d doesn\u2019t incorporate the name of its founder.\u00a0An excellent reason can be given for this: Hinduism has no single, known founder\u201d \u00a0 *** \u00a0 I share here a fairly lengthy excerpt from Graham E. 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