is the title of an article to be found in "Sacred Fire" magazine issue 5. It is an interview with Shaykha Tasnim Hermila Fernandez, representative of the Sufi Order International. It's well worth reading the entire article, but there were a couple of paragraphs I thought would make for an interesting discussion here:



"All religions are man-made", Shaykha Tasnim says, "so we forget that Jesus did not come to found a church, capital C--the Christian church or the Christian religion. He came to awaken the people, to give them a message from God, to speak to them in a way they could understand. Given his audience, he used a lot of agrarian metaphors--mustard seed, fig tree and vine. They knew what a mustard seed was. The important thing is that the messenger connects the message to the immediate experience of those who are to receive the message.

“In the Koran, those who delivered the message, known and unknown, are said to number one hundred forty-four thousand. One hundred forty-four thousand simply indicates that the number of messengers is large, not that it is limited to this specific amount—innumerable, really. For instance, I can cite Buddha, Moses, Krishna, Mohammed, Jesus, et cetera—I can county thirty, forty, fifty messengers. One hundred forty-four thousand and more messengers have spoken to the created ones since the first breath was given to Adam. Ultimately, only God knows.


to find out more about the magazine, go to http://www.sacredfiremagazine.com
to find out more about Shaykha Tasnim, go to http://www.churchofall.us