Islam and Buddhism!

Today we talked more about religions. First we talked about Islam and how their central figure is Muhammad (570-632) he was known for supposedly speaking to God. His revelations from God were written in their religion’s holy book which is called the Qur’an. We learned that this religion is monotheistic and that there are about 1.6 – 1.7 Muslims in the world, also most of these Muslims are found in the Middle East like Indonesia, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. Muhammad was born in Mecca and the Muslims think that this is a very holy place, also Medina is another very sacred place where the Muslims are expected to go to before they die. We talked a little about how different the people of this religion dress than us, their women are dressed very modestly and we do not dress so modest, the Muslims were getting angry with us because our culture was starting to slowly weasel its way into theirs. After Muhammad died two groups were formed and they turned against each other, their names were the Shiites and the Sunnis. Then we talked about Buddhism, their central figure is Siddhartha Gautama (   563-483 BC). He was either going to be a king or he was to be a spiritual leader. His father of course wanted him to be a king instead of a spiritual leader so he kept him away from religion, until Siddhartha ran away only to discover that the world was so much different than the life his father gave him, there was suffering and war.  He sought to end all suffering. This religion does not have a holy book, but it does have what they call the 4 noble truths and they are: 1.- everyone experiences suffering, 2. The origin of suffering is the craving for acquisition of identity, 3. Suffering can be ended, and 4. The way to end suffering is the eight fold path. They believe in reincarnation, and if you were a good person on earth you would come back as a higher life form, but if you were a bad person you would come back as a lower life form until you were good and worked your way up to being a higher life form. Buddhism has 376 million followers in the world.