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Tenrikyo is the first church in Japan that
established the dogma in which the revelation has occurred to her. This coursed
some Japanese a big misunderstanding of the prophet in Islam. For that reason,
it is not easy to change Japanese attitude about religion, divinity and prophet.
That can be one of the main reasons why the pace of call activities in this
country is so slow. However, once the Japanese get to understand the right faith
and the spirit of Islam, the true religion will surely spread in a rapid pace
and on a large scale among Japanese, who are originally industrious and always
sincere to the problems they are facing.
The relations between Muslims
Many
of the Japanese Muslims live in the metropolitan area and its suburbs, but they
do not have a Muslim community to get together in one area. Those who live in a
large city tend to be individualistic, compared to those in the suburbs, and it
is not unusual that they don’t know who is living in their neighborhood. This
situation of the city hold true in Japanese Muslims and in addition, they often
live separately in different areas. As a result, the relations between Muslims
have been very weak and the only chances that Japanese Muslims get together are
when they visit Islamic organizations. Despite much guidance on Islam and many
lessons of Arabic hold by those groups, the newly-converted Muslims are busy
with their everyday life, and the lack of understanding of Islam sometimes leads
them to such mistakes as marrying to one who believes polytheism.
I also have to say Japanese Muslims and foreign Muslims are not
always on good terms because of the lack of approaching on the both side.
For
Japanese, the first reason can be the language problem that many Japanese speak
only Japanese, which prevents them from getting contact with foreigners. The
second reason may be the Japanese “mass-thinking
style” that makes Japanese unite together as the same nation and build a
wall to the foreigners. This is not simply because of the geographic factor of
Japan, but also because of the historical factor that Japan had closed the door
to the foreigners. As for foreigners, the main reason why they cannot have firm
relationships with Japanese is the lack of information on Japanese society.
However, some have their doubts about Japanese Muslims’ faith in Islam by their
behaviors that are far from the precepts of Islam.
From
the objective viewpoint as one Japanese Muslim, I have to admit that this holds
true for many Japanese Muslims, especially the newly-converted ones.
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