...in the usual rubbishy and compliant cop-out from Karen Armstrong:

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http://comment.independent.co.uk/podium/article301627.ece
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Karen Armstrong: 'All the major traditions adopted the theology of
non-violence'

From the Hibbert Trust Lecture, delivered by the writer and broadcaster to
the Royal Society of Arts, in London

Published: 26 July 2005


The book I've just finished deals with the Axial Age. It's the period from
about 900 to 200 BCE [Before the Common Era], when all the major
traditions
that have continued to nourish humanity came into being at roughly the
same
time in four separate regions of the world, in China, India, Israel and
Greece.

Why should we go back to these ancient faiths? Because they were the
experts. In this period of history, not so much in Greece, though they
have
made some wonderful contributions, but especially in India, China and
Israel, people worked as hard to find a cure for the spiritual ills of
humanity as we do today trying to find a cure for cancer. We don't spend
as
much energy re-hashing, looking, examining, experimenting with our
religious
and moral traditions and we've rarely gone beyond these insights.

Every one of these traditions grew up in a society like our own that was
torn apart with violence on an unprecedented scale. Iron weaponry had been
discovered so weapons became more serious and wars more horrific than ever
before. A new market economy was in its infancy and people were preying on
one another aggressively in the marketplace.

In horror at this aggression, the Axial sages all turned in to find the
root
causes of violence in the human psyche. That was also certainly the case
with Islam, which took place at a time when tribal violence had risen to a
crescendo, a horrifying crescendo in Arabia in the 7th century.

So, every one of these movements, to a greater or lesser extent, adopted
the
theology of non-violence, and, insofar as they adopted that, the more
thoroughly they adopted the non-violent ethic the deeper they went into
the
self. Non-violence was at the root of the transformation.

The Axial sages said that compassion was the key. Compassion doesn't mean
feeling sorry for people or feeling pity for people but to feel with the
other, to learn to dethrone yourself from the centre of your world and put
another there, and this would be not only the test for any religiosity but
it would also be the means of entering into enlightenment.


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And from crap like this she makes a living...? *******!

Susie.