Sharia on Saturday-no buidling can be taller than a mosque

The Blue Mosque

One of the Sharia laws states that no building can be higher than the height of a mosque.  This law is not in the Quran or the Hadith, so it had to have been made up.

I don’t believe any mosque is higher than the pyramids and Egypt is a Muslim country.  That tells me that this law isn’t really a law, just something a crazy Sunni Arab came up with.

But there is some reason to believe that this Sharia law is copied from other religions.  There was a time in Europe when the steeple of a Catholic church was the highest and tallest structure of the land.  The church was a source of news and information; all religious buildings served that purpose.  Technology changed all that.

The Vatican

Just as there was a time when the Vulgate could only be read in Latin, the Torah only in Hebrew and the Quran only in Arabic, now you can google them in your own language and see what these books really say.  I do believe that the original intent of all these books was personal guidance and you can find exactly what you’re looking for in all of these books.  You can find your own wisdom.  And you don’t have to wait for the speaker to get to the part that will help you the most, you can get right to it yourself.  This might explain why so many consider themselves to be spiritual rather than religious.

The Mormon Temple

But there will always be some who seek the social aspect of community prayer and receive great comfort in knowing they are not alone with their life’s struggles.  Seeking knowledge and wisdom from others might be the lazy way out, but that’s probably over shadowed by the feeling of belonging to a community where everyone believes the same as you. 

And some of these religious buildings truly are spectacular and inspiring and can leave you in awe of the love of God.  The mere beauty of these buildings shows that even on an artistic level, all religions see the beauty and the mysticism of their belief.  It’s the rituals that screw people up.  Who is a believer, who is a gentile, who can you trust.  That’s where the divisions lay.  To believe what the speaker says is not always the best advice as they could be seeking a different answer or, they could be speaking from their personal life experience, which may be different than yours.  If you seeking knowledge from a higher source go to that higher source and ask for yourself.  But if you’re seeking a generic message of goodness and charity and the unity of oneness with others, there is nothing wrong with that, or with admiring the beauty of a stunning building.