In the last blog, I considered beliefs and practices amongst Buddhists, Jews, and Christians that addressed the felt human need for atonement. Amongst Buddhists, I noted the Pure Land practice of nembutsu (chanting "Namu Amida Butsu" or "I take refuge in the Buddha Amida") and canonical stories of the Buddha's past lives. Amongst Jews, we considered Yom Kippur, and Jewish beliefs concerning the Akedah (Abraham's aborted sacrifice of Isaac). Finally, amongst Christians, we noted the centrality of Christ's death as an atoning event. All of these beliefs and practices strove to reach what William James called a "deliverance" that puts an individual in touch with the "MORE" of the universe and allows her to transcend her lower self. Let's now have a quick look at Islamic and Hindu atonement beliefs and practices.

Arguably, Islam was born of the need for reconciliation. Muhammad ‘Abduh writes of pre-Muslim Arabia: "The Arab nation consisted of various tribes, sundered by conflicts and enslaved by passions. Each tribe gloried in wars with its neighbor, capturing the women folk, killing the chieftains and pillaging the land." Faced with bringing stability to a region enmeshed in tribal conflict, the Prophet articulated a vision of a community unified under submission to a single god. "All praise be to Allah," he recited at the beginning of the Qur'an, the text which recorded that vision, and then continued with words that seek reconciliation with the "MORE" as he understood it. "You alone we worship, and to you alone turn for help. Guide us to the path that is straight, the path of those You have blessed, not of those who have earned your anger." Nor is the prologue to the Qur'an the only Islamic expression of the need for atonement. Annually Muslims make a pilgrimage to Mecca called the hajj. Most look forward either in anticipation to such a pilgrimage or backwards in grateful memory of the experience. From the shroud worn by celebrants, to the continual repetition of the Shahadah, the rituals of the hajj are "designed to bring the faithful as close as possible to God." Central to the pilgrimage is the desire for forgiveness and Hajjis pray for forgiveness at the site on which Adam and his wife first learned that their primary duty was submission to God.

In Islamic thought, the sacrifice performed during the hajj links intimately with the Akedah, for the act reminds Muslims of Abraham's sacrifice -- albeit of his other son, Ishmael. For Shiites, this connection is palpable since they believe that the ram substituted by God for Ishmael foreshadowed Hussein's martyrdom, the grandson of Muhammad and the man believed by the Shiites to be the rightful leader of Islam. Hussein's supporters abandoned him and he died as the result of an act of treachery while traveling to Kufa to lead a Shiite revolt against Sunni rulers. Some Shiites believe that they received salvation based on the death of Hussein. Indeed, over the Damascus shrine dedicated to Hussein a placard reads "Peace be upon Husain, the martyr, the thirsting one slaughtered as a sacrificial victim."

While both Sunnis and Shiites engage in atonement practices such as fasting and restitution, it is arguably amongst Shiites that atonement practices assume their most poignant form. Annually Shiite communities commemorate Hussein's sacrifice during the period of Muharram. David Pinault documents Hyderabad's commemoration of Muharram in his book, The Shiites. During Muharram, young Muslim men perform matam. In an "act of ritual mourning," they beat themselves, sometimes with their hands, and sometimes with sharp instruments in public to the cadence of a chant or poem. Highly coordinated to insure that the performer does not seriously injure himself, Pinault calls the ritual "collective penitence." Indeed, the comments made by those who perform matam suggest that a mixture of love and remorse is at the heart of the ritual. One participant whom Pinault interviewed said, "The Qur'an tells us to love Ahl-e-Bayt (the house of Ali), and matam shows our love for him." For others, matam is a way of showing solidarity with the slain martyr -- of expressing the idea that, had those participating in the matam been Hussein's contemporaries, they would not have abandoned him. Those who perform matam with this understanding "atone for the failure of the seventh-century Shiite community to come to Husain's aid."

In addition to the quotation from the Rg Veda in the introduction, a number of Hindu verses demonstrate atonement beliefs. The Upanishads, for example, say, "The one who knows the Brahman...wins all desires." In the Bhagavad-Gita, Arjuna says, "O gracious Lord, I prostrate myself before you and ask for your blessing. As a father forgives his son or a friend a friend, or a lover his beloved, so should you forgive me." Additionally, Patanjali's yogic formula presents one of the most sublime examples of atonement practices. Patanjali believed that the uneasiness that troubles humanity is separation from other expressions of the supreme self -- the Atman. He thought that people are unable to know other expressions of the Atman as subjects because of the relationship between thoughts and passions. An individual's thoughts and actions produce karma, and karma in turn "seeds" other thoughts and actions. The seeds produced by actions take the form of "subliminal intentions." The thoughts and actions that spring from these seeds bind a person to a cycle of death and rebirth in a world in which an illusion of separateness produces actual separateness. One must eliminate the seeds of thought and action, Patanjali said, if one is to experience liberation. Having eliminated them one reaches a state of "infinite knowledge" in which other subjects can be known as subjects. For Patanjali, then, atonement comes through karmic disentanglement that ultimately leads to the disintegration of the subject-object barrier so that the subject enjoys perfect communication with the object.

We could add a plethora of atonement practices from an abundance of other religions to these examples. Those presented, however, demonstrate the ubiquity of such beliefs and practices. Buddhists, who recognize no single creator deity, tell stories of the pre-enlightened Buddha's efforts to rescue others at the expense of his own physical being. They also engage in a variety of practices that aim at acquiring or transferring merit in hopes of easing the uneasiness of human existence. Yom Kippur and the traditions surrounding the Akedah testify to atonement thought in Judaism. Historically, atonement has been central to Christian theology, and Islam with roots in both Christianity and Judaism provides one of the most poignant examples of atonement practice. Finally, Hindu thought takes a radically different tack towards alleviating human uneasiness. It seeks restoration of the "broken relationship" between the self and the universe by advocating a discipline aimed at breaking through the subject-object barrier.

In the next blog, I want to take a careful look at the psychological and social needs addressed by atonement beliefs and practices. In subsequent articles, we will think about some of the ways that theologians have explained these beliefs and practices as well as a number of criticisms leveled against these theories. We will conclude this series with a constructive theory of atonement and assess that theory in terms of the psychological and sociological needs as well as the criticisms of historical theories of atonement.