RENAISSANCE DECEMBER 2020

38 Monthly Renaissance December 2020 Faith & Beliefs Essence of Polytheism (6) Am ī n A ḥ san I ṣ l āḥī A Cursory Assessment of the World Today Now we possess the light which we can use to look at the world and observe the situation of existing nations, specifically the “developed” ones with respect to shirk and idol worship. Since this book has been written with consideration to utmost brevity, we shall firstly concentrate on signalling the most important features and, secondly, keep the current condition of followers of all religions, not discuss the reality of their faiths and, thirdly, only mention those nations who hold some level of cultural significance. Otherwise, this story could become so long that it will be very difficult to bring it to a close. For ease of debate, we shall review nations of the Far East and followers of Buddhism, then look at India, followed by Western Europe and the United States on the one hand and Russia on the other, so that we may assess the dark and distorted forms of polytheism hidden in these cloaks of modern civilization. In spite of the claim of researchers that polytheism has disappeared from the world, it is widely spread out throughout the world. Far East The majority of people in the Far East are followers of four religions: Shintoism, Taoism, Confucianism and Buddhism. The original, oldest religion of Japan is Shintoism and it remains the main one to date, although Japan is considered to be the land of 500 religions. In the beginning of 6 th century C.E, Buddhism entered through Korea, but when a strong nationalist movement took root in 9 th century C.E, Shinto rose up again and since then, it is the official and national religion. The key principle of this religion is worship of nature and elders. It has about 8 million deities but the main is the goddess