“One child and a teacher, indeed one book and a pen have the potential to change the world. Education is the only solution, education first.”
Malala Yousafzai shared these words in a speech at the U.N. three months ago.

Many media outlets assumed that Malala would receive this year’s Nobel Peace Prize since she was the Pakistani schoolgirl that Pakistan’s ultra-conservative Taliban shot.

Although she did not win the prize, her nomination (the youngest ever) should continue to impact on the Islamic world greatly. Even though the Taliban have been threatening her life, she hasn’t stopped. Malala has been a spokesperson in favor of girls’ education. She has convinced herself that God gave her this chance to champion the cause of education.

A PBS interviewer asked Malala whether she believes in cultural change through women’s education, and Malala replied, “First, Taliban scholars have been misinterpreting Islam. Islamic girls and boys have been granted the right to study and to attain knowledge. In terms of equality, Islam never recognized the difference between men and a women. I think Taliban terrorists have been misinformed because they have been championing the concept of jihad only. Why didn’t they read the Koran first? Their handlers have been misusing the name of Islam to further their own personal interests.”

In 2003, Master Ryuho Okawa, the founder and CEO of Happy Science, stated in a lecture titled “The Clash Between Religious Civilizations” (an excerpt is available below and the video lecture is available at the local branch temples), “It’s the will of the heavenly world that the Islamic regions undergo reformation. Everyone, including myself, now thinks this way.”

Master Okawa recorded Osama bin Laden’s spiritual messages in Feb 2013. He discovered that Bin Laden’s spirit was not in Heaven. However, the spirit of Bin Laden might not have had the ability to recognize that he was in Hell because the Koran never clearly defined the concept of Hell.

Master Okawa has claimed that Islamic extremists don’t qualify for justice:

Happy Science teaches when people return to heaven, they spend time at different levels in the spirit world, and the amount of time is dependent upon how much they contributed while they were alive in the world. According to HS, God judges every individual, and he rewards them in accordance with the results that they achieved. God is willing to benefit people in a fair way.

Education provides equal opportunities for boys and girls to achieve their dreams and goals. Society should not disregard their aspirations. They will surely serve to prosper the nation, and terrorist groups must not interfere with this valuable process of growth in the community. Islamic extremists should not constrain Malala’s promotion of education. It will help many women’s dreams to blossom.

Below is an excerpt from “The Clash Between Religious Civilization”.

(Master Okawa gave this lecture on November 3rd, 2001.)

 

9/11 Was A Clash Between Civilizations With Different Religious Backgrounds.

A while ago, a hijacked passenger plane crashed into the World Trade Center in New York, which caused a great tragedy that involved several thousand people. According to the propaganda in the media, the conflict was a war between civilized society and terrorism. This convenient expression made it easy for America to go to war. However, when I objectively observed the conflict, I didn’t agree that it was a war between developed countries and terrorist nations. Rather, I described it as a clash between civilizations of different religious backgrounds.

As I previously mentioned, I didn’t feel that it was a war between civilized society and terrorists. I saw similarities with the Pacific war between Japan and the U.S. allies. The United States viewed the Pacific War as a conflict between fascism and democracy, and the idea has been strongly supported up until this day. What really took place was a struggle between the Christian and Shinto civilizations. WWII was a fight between groups that believed in different religious traditions. As for Germany, Hitler was strongly influenced from the Germanic tradition of black magic. He fueled hostilities between Germanic black magic and Christianity.
At present, the war between “Western civilization” and “Islamic terrorism” is a popular phrase in the news and people are very familiar with the sound bite and the situation. However, I can offer a reason why people shouldn’t try to dismiss this conflict in their minds so quickly. Islam was originally belligerent in nature.

Muslims have historically claimed to be peaceful and benevolent people, however, when Mohammed actually established his religion, people persecuted him and he fled to Medina where he gained comrades and weapons to seize Mecca. In this sense, his religion and politics have always been one. Mohammed fought with the military over the land where he was persecuted, and he eventually recaptured it. Thus, the religious tradition of Islam emerged from Mohammed’s politics in terms of his policies and military action.

People have demonstrated a tendency to imitate the lives of their religious founders. It’s only natural for Muslims to present themselves in a belligerent way as the founder Mohammed did when he started his organization with fighting and territorial occupations. Mohammed’s people naturally want to follow what he did in the past. For Muslims, fighting isn’t wrong, some believers actually consider it to be a good deed.

 

What Lies Behind Islamic Fundamentalism

At present, problems exist over some fundamental interpretations of core Islamic texts. Fundamentalist religious groups, no matter what their religions are, tend towards belligerent acts and violent behavior. Whether they are Islamic, Christian, or Buddhist people, when fundamentalist groups use methods that are extreme in nature, their actions always result in an increase in hostilities. From the perspective of a fundamentalist, the world is full of heretics.

People, who support fundamentalism, try to impose the practices of the religion in the same way that their founder did in the age that he was alive, which has been the root cause of Islam’s troubles. They don’t accept anything that exists in disagreement with the original, textual sources, which have not included the natural changes to the structures of society that have occurred in the development of modern nations. Since they do not accept the concept of change, fundamentalists attempt to walk forward as they keep their eyes fixed on points in the past. They just destroy everything that goes against their outdated view of reality. Whether it’s Buddhism or Christianity, extreme fundamentalism brings out people’s belligerent natures.

Radical Islamic fundamentalists believe the United States is the root cause of corruption and degradation for the entire world. As Muslims believe Allah is omnipotent, and everyone is equal under him, fundamentalists have been seeking conditions to pave the way for true equality in today’s world. The vast majority of Muslims now suffer from poverty, And they haven’t had material resources for a long time.

Why are societal rewards unevenly and unequally distributed? The fundamentalists’ blame an American value called freedom. To them, freedom has given birth to the unwanted differences between the rich and the poor. Radical Muslim believers refuse to forgive this basic trespass against their outdated interpretation of their founder’s intentions for the rest of humanity.

Under Taliban reign, Muslim men in Afghanistan uniformly wore turbans, and grew their beards to full length. Women hid their faces with veils, and laws did not allow for women to work in companies or to study in schools. Followers originally established those rules long ago in times of extreme poverty in order to improve the mental and physical living conditions of the people, but the continuation of the same rules into present day society hasn’t encouraged the right environment for the promotion of the creation of material wealth. Since differences have naturally arisen between the rich and the poor, uniformity has been impossible for the fundamentalists to maintain, which has upset their interpretations on the importance of equality as determined in their ancient Islamic thought structures. They must realize that equality, for all of its strengths, cannot exist at the higher levels of today’s society.

Scholars have used pyramid diagrams to describe the distribution of social conditions. When they create these pyramid diagrams for the distribution of wealth, the top is always narrower than the bottom. The same happens when you create a pyramid diagram for education or for the physical strength of athletes. The shape of a triangle should be upright for stability.

Islam is attempting to force this pyramid to stand upside down. It’s trying to flip the triangle upside down to achieve equality, which will collapse with the wide top of the pyramid upon its tip due to an imbalance in the weight. The narrow part of the triangle will definitely get crushed. It’ll become easier in that environment to justify jealousy towards those people who have had wealth, a good education, and some happy fortune.

You could imagine that the Islamic movement in the 21st century will probably act as a substitute for the communism or socialism that existed in the 20th century. Marxism still exists, but the passing of time has been really weakening its popularity, and it should continue to decline further into the future. Yet, the influence of Islam will present a perfect replacement for that leftist thought. It’s important to know that they practically advocate equality in poverty, and their logic provides them with other good reasons for going to war with the West over its financial advantages.

To maintain equality in poverty, or to preserve the old idea of the existence of a God and his poor people who remain equal under Him, is an attempt to turn the clock back to a primitive age. A high possibility exists that their efforts to maintain equality in poverty will unknowingly transform into a movement, which could push the present situation back into ways of the past. Muslim thought empowers its people’s jealous feelings. Followers of Islam believe that Allah is the ultimate God. They are of the opinion that it’s wrong for people, who have faith in Allah, to live in poverty, to lack food, and to suffer from constant warfare while at the same time heretical Americans and other Western powers prosper.

As a result, Muslims have a tendency to think that evil is allowing the American nation to survive. Muslims want to prosper because they have the divine protection of Allah, but in reality, they are not seeing needed improvements in their communities. They blame America for their financial failures.

Muslims don’t find fault within their own ranks. Instead, members of the Islamic community are encouraged to get rid of their prosperous people. And if the remaining population doesn’t make efforts to become wealthy, then they will live their lives as they did in the past with a god like Allah who blesses everyone equally.

 

The War Is Actually Between Equality and Freedom.

In short, equality is good. However, if sustained over a long period of time, it discourages individual efforts. As I wrote, the pyramid easily collapses when people turn it upside down, and it’s extremely difficult to build it up again. Equality is ideal, but history has proven that equality has never been realized except in cases of extreme poverty.

Another thing about Islam is that it hasn’t permitted the practice of charging interest rates, which has prevented the development of commercial activities. Muslims have been trying to stick to their way of life from an era when their founder was alive, and the extension of their traditional activities from this era has become harmful to the future of humanity. Location and age have truly been a limiting factor for Islam.

Followers of Islam have been obstinate. They haven’t accepted anything that hasn’t been in accordance with the rules which the founder established. The teaching has stopped evolving along with time and the environment. It has become fixed within the framework of an established understanding of a past location and age. Islam has been subjected to grave limitations in terms of its environment and its historical understandings of what the present should indicate with relation to the past.

 

Fairness, Rather Than Equality, Supports the Dimensional Structure of the Other World.

The idea to treat people in the same way cannot be the will of God or Buddha. To view individuals as the same, when some have made efforts and others have been lazy, is not in accordance with the teachings of Buddhism. The dimensional structure of the other world is based on fairness rather than on the equality of everyone. If equality were really the best solution, then no need would have ever existed in the first place for the dimensional structure that is present in the other world.

If people consider their reality to include the existence of other world, it’s clear that individuals should take total responsibility for everything that happens in their lives. They receive judgments and collect rewards that accord with their achievements. They shouldn’t ignore this truth. God has the will to reward each individual’s efforts according to his or her results in a fair way.

In the meantime, God offers salvation to people who have failed. Angels and guardian and guiding spirits from the other world also consider efforts to save human beings constantly. They often extend their salvation to failures, and everyone isn’t categorized the same. They evaluate people from many perspectives, which include the perspectives of difference and equality.

 

Islamic Civilization Will Replace Socialism in the 21st Century.

Large numbers of people have had good reason to support equality. However, to ignore effort in this lifetime and to evaluate everyone’s accomplishments equally; it has become an act of evil.

Bin Laden attacked New York and the Pentagon, and jealousy was actually behind the attack. Despite his faith in Allah, the ultimate God according to his religious tradition, Bin Laden could not accept the images of prosperous Americans in the media that he saw while his people were not sharing the same, modern, creature comforts as well. Therefore, Bin Laden tried to wipe out what didn’t agree with his antiquated belief system. His way of accomplishing his religious work put his narrow-mindedness on display, and it also pointed out the limits of his religion.

The Islamic population has exploded to one billion people, and the Christian population has also increased to slightly over one billion with several hundred million more followers. They both have grown to quite large numbers. A religious war for sovereignty could begin at any point in time.

It seems that Muslims cannot accept the fact that Christianity is prospering instead of Islam. According to Islam, Mohammed was the ultimate prophet, and he came after the spirit of Christ appeared on Earth. It seems to me that some Muslims want to put an end to the current prosperity of the Christians in order to justify further the realization of an age of Islam somehow. However, the fact that people like Bin Laden thought that they could achieve their religious utopian on Earth through the destruction and deaths of many people demonstrates their spiritual immaturity. In this vein, considerations for the present-day clash between the Christianity and Islam are important to make because I predict that in the 21st century the Islamic civilization will replace socialism.

 

The Basic Teachings Of Happy Science Are Love, Wisdom, Self-Reflection, and Progress.

Happy Science (HS) teaches the Principle of Happiness, which consists of “love,” “wisdom,” “self-reflection,” and “progress” for achieving true happiness. Perhaps HS will not fade away over time because the movement is full of significant teachings on love. To a certain extent, people liken HS’s description of love to the ideas that they have encountered in Christian churches.

Since Master Okawa is a genius who believes in the importance of knowledge, Happy Science will never look the same as some of those backwards spiritual movements that appear in the media. Master Okawa and the staff at HS will continue to advance their members on the path to enlightenment. These people are not the kind to hinder innovation. For example, Master Okawa would never forbid women who love HS to put on their veils or to stay at home. The elite from their respective fields manage HS, and it should remain as such for years to come.

Regarding HS’s teachings on knowledge, members apply their life experiences and work hard to study and develop their intellect with good information. Thus, this spiritual movement has the ability to evolve into the new age and coexist with it. HS also teaches self-reflection to the people, which has helped members not to become overly haughty or self-centered. There are also lessons on the right way to develop. These teachings encourage members to make improvements to society and help them to understand the meaning of creating prosperity in the world.

Students of HS believe in the path of development, and they would never think of destroying the World Trade Center or of gassing the Tokyo Subway. HS teachings encourage the building of better lives. Rather than to think that it’s unacceptable to have skyscrapers in Manhattan, and to conclude that it’s best to knock them down, HS members would have the attitude that Americans in New York have been working hard, and they’d think of how to construct a similar building in Tokyo. These ideas are in the books and lectures of HS.

 

The Heavenly World Wants Islam To Undergo a Reformation.

When Islam loses this war, people expect innovation to take place within the religion. In the Second World War, Japan believed in its supremacy, but it lost. The Japanese had to enter into a period of self-reflection, and as a result, innovations took place. Likewise, Muslim people might change their way of thinking and start, for example, to allow women to take off their veils, to go to schools, and to seek employment.

In any case, the heavenly world would like the Islamic regions to undergo reformations. High Spirits in heaven as well as I have been looking at this issue in the same way.

Islam has grown to one billion followers. It must begin to reform. The suppression of human rights is very strong in the Muslim world. Islam places great importance on equality, but their people must also pursue the path to enlightenment. They should grow spiritually, and it’s part of the mission of all human beings.