It suuuureeee is.
[quote]Chushin wrote:
“You don’t know what your talking about” doesn’t really qualify as a valid argument.[/quote]
I’ll repeat this.
[quote]yusef wrote:
Contrary to what people believe because of zealots mistakenly turning “jihad” into a reason to kill those who don’t follow their ways or beliefs, rather than turning it within as a reminder to “kill thoughts” and practice emptiness meditation themselves, the Islamic worldview has often been generous enough and large enough to embrace all religions. Not always, but sometimes. This is the stand I would like to see Islamic countries openly support once again in full flavor. For instance, the Ikwan al-Safa Brethren of Purity felt that a seeker after truth must “shun no science, scorn no book, nor cling fanatically to a single creed.” The true Islam is particularly open, generous and tolerant in this fashion
From the linked article
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I don’t want to be a dhimmi - but thanks
[quote]Chushin wrote:
If Islam does indeed involve politics, how does the religion say that leaders are chosen? Is it the holy men who also have the power to make decisions for the people? If so, how are they to be chosen? What, if any mechanism exists to remove leaders from power?
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Leaders are to be chosen by a process known as shura. Regrettably this selection process only occured in the first 100-200 years of Islam. It’s remarkably identical to a democratic election process. An individual is agreed upon to be nominated by the Muslims of the state, and then everyone pledges their allegiance to this new leader. Sound familiar :)? Btw… interesting fact… the first we caliphs of Islam also took pledges of allegiance of women (i.e. Islam was allowing women to vote all the way back in 600-700 AD!!).
The difference comes in that it is the caliph who makes the ultimate decisions. He can have a committee or shura which he can consult to make decisions (this can include politicians, diplomats, religious scholars and judges etc).
As for the mechanism that exists to remove leaders from power, a righteous leader is expected to step down himself if he cannot lead. An interesting point is that Islam does not condone or encourage taking up arms against a leader (i.e. civil war or civil unrest) even if the leader is conducting some sort of oppression against his people. Why? To avoid unnecessary bloodshed and violence.
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OK, but I have to point out that at least one regular here who says he is a Muslim has minimized (if not dismissed) the Sunnah. [/quote]
This person needs to sit down and learn his religion from its proper sources.
Firstly the terminologies are culturally dependent. For example in Saudi Arabia mufti means judge, whereas somewhere else it may mean a regular scholar. So it doesn’t really matter except for Ayatollah which is generally used by the Shia.
The need for guidance and interpretation is because of the massive amount of information found within the Quran and Sunnah. They need a person to study and learn them, and thus deduce rulings and principles from these texts. Studying Islam is an extremely academic process that can produce some startlingly intellectual scholars. If there were no scholars, then we would have individuals running around making rulings to serve their own needs (e.g. Al Qaeda etc)
The disagreements between these scholars actually occurs on some very FINE points. The only really major difference occurs between Sunnis and the other sects, so already that is scholars representing 90% of Muslims who have relatively minor disagreements with each other.
To discuss Sunni and Shia differences would require me to write an essay, so I won’t lol. But I can tell you for sure, that 90% of Muslims around the world, AS WELL AS the vast majority of Shia muslims, could not give a crumb about the statement of an Iranian Ayatollah.
This is clearly a very anecdotal statement. Sorry for being blunt but such statements can only come from beliefs that are a result of watching way too many dramatic and ignorant evening news stories. The media probably the #1 reason for Islam having such a bad image. The amount of Muslims who consider these acts as wrong form the VAST MAJORITY. I believe there is actually a statistical study by John Esposito/Dalia Mogahed exploring this issue.
The tiny fraction of ‘devout’ muslims who commit such atrocities make great front page news and late night tv material. As i said, no group of human beings whether Muslim or non-Muslim can unite to condone evil such as murder and terorrism. This is actually a part of Muslim theology as well but thats too in-depth of a topic.
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How on earth could SO MANY “Muslims” have gotten it SO COMPLETELY wrong? I believe it’s not a majority that carry out heinous acts, but there sure as heck are a lot who do.
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Why aren’t those of you who “got it right” reacting to non-Muslim anger and fear with “Yeah, we know. These clowns have got to go. We’ll do everything in our power to shame them, shout them down, and get rid of them ASAP. And BTW, here’s the truth about Islam, and we LOUDLY condemn those other actions.”
Instead, it seems for the most part folks like you have responded defensively, or just clammed up, or talked about “understanding their perspective.” (I really don’t mean to aim that all at you; you’re just my example of someone who seems to be legit in his lifestyle and beliefs.)
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And BTW, the survey done a while back in Great Britan showing that some significant % of young Muslims (about 17%???) believe that suicide bombings can be an appropriate action on the part of Islam (or some such thing) doesn’t exactly inspire confidence that “extremists” are few and far between).
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Oh, just curious, but, as I recall, you live in Canada. If you were “all-powerfull,” would you want to trade the current political system there for what you’d consider a truly Islamic one?[/quote]
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I have addressed this question already. The vast majority of practicing Muslims do not believe that these things are right. This is all a result of media distortion and dramatics.
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Believe me, we’re trying. But:
a) It’s very difficult to wake up and teach a population that has been sleeping for the past few 100’s of years. The very fact that Islamic scholarship dried up and shriveled in the past 3-400 years is one of the causes to this. To add to that, only very recently have the Muslim masses begun to respect scholarship again. Most Muslims after the colonial age lost the importance of learning their religion.
b) There are more than enough scholars who speak out against this. But they are never given airtime by the media. It all comes down to the media and who they choose to portray and how.
Think weightlifting… how much of a bad rap it has in pop culture. Similar is what is happening to Islam these days. I think I already posted last time that in Saudi Arabia alone, all their scholars came to a consensus back in the late 90s that terrorism was something completely forbidden by Islam and a heinous crime and punishable as an act of civil unrest and murder.
c) There are too many youth out there driven by emotion and political hot-headedness. They see children in Palestine and Iraq being killed and they are driven to join Terrorists (proclaiming themselves as being righteous and serving the good) out of frustration. -
If you’ve ever been to the UK and spent time with the Muslim youth there, (c) above will make a LOT of sense to you. It’s changing around the world anyway, with the most marked difference in the US and Canada because we have some scholars here who are better able to relate to the youth =).
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Firstly no human being can be all-powerful. That is impossible because how can such a being be restricted by human faculties. It defies common sense.
And no I would NOT trade CAnada’s legal system for a shariah system. Very easy answer.
Why?
– I still regard Shariah to be the optimal and most perfect way of governance because the laws have been formulated by the Creator of the Heavens and the Earth and the One who has infinite knowledge and infinite wisdom. Therefore He knows what is better for people than they would prefer for themselves. Who knows better how to fix a computer? The computer itself or the computer engineer?
– However, putting a Shariah system into place in a state that is by majority non-Muslim is not only silly and impractical, but wrong from an Islamic perspective. One of the concepts in Islam is that it cannot be forced upon anyone. It must be a choice.
I’ve tried to answer the questions as quickly as possible and did a lot of simplifying. Sorry for not elaborating too much but I really don’t like writing essays on forums lol.
If you have more questions, let me know, and I will write something that will be more comprehensive and help you to understand Islam more completely (along with its political paradigms).
[quote]Shoebolt wrote:
An interesting point is that Islam does not condone or encourage taking up arms against a leader (i.e. civil war or civil unrest) even if the leader is conducting some sort of oppression against his people. [/quote]
See…that’s the kind of thing that go against common sense. Call me what you will, but I don’t think something that important would be left out of the Quran.
The rebel in me thinks some crooked “leader” made that up when threatenend by removal. Wa Allah-u-a’lam.
[quote]lixy wrote:
The rebel in me thinks some crooked “leader” made that up when threatenend by removal. Wa Allah-u-a’lam.[/quote]
Question: I thought the Koran was told to Muhammad through the Angel Gabriel. If so, how could a crooked leader “make up” religious dogma to perhaps save his own skin as Lixy suggested?
If this has happened, how can Muslims comdemn Christianity by saying the Bible has been altered, when obviously by this example, Islamic law has been altered also?
Another example would be the extremists in Iraq, targeting other Muslims (which the Koran forbids) by saying “you are not ‘real Muslims’.” This gives the extremists the right to kill them. If you can arbitrarily claim one is “not a Muslim”, who’s to say who actually is and is not?
[quote]lixy wrote:
Shoebolt wrote:
An interesting point is that Islam does not condone or encourage taking up arms against a leader (i.e. civil war or civil unrest) even if the leader is conducting some sort of oppression against his people.
See…that’s the kind of thing that go against common sense. Call me what you will, but I don’t think something that important would be left out of the Quran.
The rebel in me thinks some crooked “leader” made that up when threatenend by removal. Wa Allah-u-a’lam.[/quote]
Bro, firstly, even though taking up arms against one’s own leader is not allowed in Islam, there are still numerous checks and balances in the Shariah to make sure that the leader does not go out of control. Judges and scholars still have the authority to advise leaders. In the past scholars have always had enormous rapport and support from the common people, so even if a leader was not religious he still listened to the scholars because for the most part they not only represented the religion, but the people as well.
Secondly, the evidence for this ruling is in numerous authenticated hadeeth, so it is not made up, there is a book by the famous Imam Ahmad ibn Hanbal called Usool-us-Sunnah in which he discusses the neglection of these hadeeth in his time by certain groups, and the resulting bloodshed that occured within Muslims in the early years of Islam after the time of first few caliphs.
Thirdly, learn Islamic history. You will notice that there were SO MANY incidences where people tried to overthrow leaders etc, they thought they were right etc etc, but what always ends up happening in civil wars? Hundreds of thousands of people died and another ruler comes in who is just as bad as the last one (If you are willing to let thousands of people die to enforce the fact that you think the leader is wrong then are you really a better person?). The wars in Sri Lanka between the government and Tamils is a fine modern example. Both sides fought for so many years… but 70,000 people died in the process. And both sides had almost equal support amongst the people, and both sides thought that they had the correct methodology.
This is just one of the wisdoms behind this ruling. Lets say no one revolts against a bad ruler. But is this as bad as the civil war that follows??
Compare Iraq under Saddam Hussein to Iraq in the last 5-6 years. Sure Saddam was an overcontrolling dictator and a man who killed man kurds. But how many people died during the last 5-6 years? The numbers are ridiculously incomparable.
This shows the wisdom of this ruling, and should make a point on you. Just because you don’t understand a ruling from God doesn’t mean you should dismiss it. He is the one with infinite knowledge and infinite wisdom… not you. Therefore if he makes a rule or law, perhaps you are not able to understand it with your limited human intellect. This is why the definition of Islam is submission. You submit yourself to the Creator of the Universe.
If you have more questions bro, don’t hesitate to PM me :).
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Question: I thought the Koran was told to Muhammad through the Angel Gabriel. If so, how could a crooked leader “make up” religious dogma to perhaps save his own skin as Lixy suggested?
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If this has happened, how can Muslims comdemn Christianity by saying the Bible has been altered, when obviously by this example, Islamic law has been altered also?
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Another example would be the extremists in Iraq, targeting other Muslims (which the Koran forbids) by saying “you are not ‘real Muslims’.” This gives the extremists the right to kill them. If you can arbitrarily claim one is “not a Muslim”, who’s to say who actually is and is not?[/quote]
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Firstly, that’s not what lixy said. And read my answer in the post to lixy above. But the Prophet Muhammad in those hadeeth was referring more to the later rulers who came after him and his companions. And in the end many individuals attempted to assassinate or harm the Prophet. On top of that, even though he was a political ruler as well, his main goal remained to convey the message of Islam to the people, so being in power or being deposed was not a concern to him, as long as people were still following Islam and submitting to God.
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This is where we get into a comparison of academic history between Islam and Christianity. To make it really really brief, Islam has a rich oral and written tradition of texts (Both Qur’an, Sunnah and the books of scholars) that exist to this day, and these texts are available to the entire world (in fact the most massive Islamic library is actually in McGill University, Montreal). On top of that God states clearly in the Qur’an that He has promised to preserve the Qur’an and protect it (as it is the final message to mankind), and that He has not granted this virtue to any book that has come before it.
Christian academic history is relatively poor in comparison, and the most richest and massive resources like the Vatican library, are not even available to the public. The few bible scholars that I know of who study the Bible on an academic level have concluded that there is not enough proof to trace the New Testatment to Jesus himself, and most of the writings are more collections of the experiences of God of select worshipers and individuals (Dead Sea Scrolls Explained, can’t remember the authors). If the academic history of the Bible itself is in Jeopardy by the scholars who study it, then how can we come to a definite conclusion on its authenticity?
- There is a flaw with your question here. What makes these people extremists is the fact that they are killing people. So what if they consider 90% of Muslims to be non-Muslim (they do btw)? Does this allow them to justify killing and murdering people??? It is also disallowed in Islam to fight non-Muslims unless they oppose the Muslims. I’ve already said before to Chushin, you don’t have to be Muslim or non-Muslim to know these people are wrong. It goes against the innate nature (fitrah) of a human being.
[quote]Shoebolt wrote:
Bro, firstly, even though taking up arms against one’s own leader is not allowed in Islam, there are still numerous checks and balances in the Shariah to make sure that the leader does not go out of control. Judges and scholars still have the authority to advise leaders. [/quote]
Advisory is a very limited form of authority.
True. But that doesn’t make them legitimate in my eyes any more that the Church’s clergy.
They represented some of the people. I don’t need to tell you how shi’ites were (and are still) treated.
I only know the one, but I take your word that there are “numerous” hadiths. But…politics has its way of getting in the way of what makes it into the authenticated section. Finding hadiths which fit any criteria of auhenticity that deal with something this important couldn’t have been that hard.
So? Had Al-Mamun not died unexpectedly (some would say miraculously), Ibn Hanbal wouldn’t have lived long enough to write that book.
I reiterate my point: Leaders twist and bend things to suit their agenda.
Mostly, it was querrels between leaders and would-be-leaders. People were only concerned because they had to take sides.
That’s quite the fatalistic stance you got there!
Civil wars only emerge when the pretendant tries to keep taxing the same area as his predecessor. The evil here is hegemony, not people getting sick of a crooked leader.
No. But it’s not like a bloodless coup isn’t heard of either.
So…the Tamils should bow to their overlords?
Borders are artificial and some nation-states were pretty much made up on the spot by fat men in a smoke-filled conference room.
We’re not talking about ablutions here. This is a game-changing ruling. I don’t believe anything this essential and potent would have been left out of the Quran.
You might disagree, but I hope you get my point.
Saddam was overthrown militarily by a foreign power. The parallel to our discussion is silly.
Errr…but I can at least try to understand the rationale behind it, no?
Again, if it was in the Quran, I’d shut my yap. But this defies common sense to the degree where I have to question the authenticity of the “numerous hadeeths”.
No argument there.
And…ditto!
Maybe I’m not making myself clear.
I’m not arguing against the word of God. I’m saying that a hadith on such a sensitive topic, and with a position that goes so blatantly against common sense (Sayiduna Ayub notwithstanding) should be taken carefully. Not swallowed as a ruling from God.
Thanks. I’d rather we keep it public though.
[quote]yusef wrote:
Gkhan wrote:
Another example would be the extremists in Iraq, targeting other Muslims (which the Koran forbids) by saying “you are not ‘real Muslims’.” This gives the extremists the right to kill them. If you can arbitrarily claim one is “not a Muslim”, who’s to say who actually is and is not?
How do you suggest this problem is solved? Maybe we should wear ‘Authentic Muslim’ badges or hoodies. Then the fake Muslims can’t hide behind their hijab.[/quote]
Way to dodge a question.
Well, are the Wahabbis practicing a pure form of Islam? Do they have a right to claim that those who are not following their brand of Islam is not a Muslim? Lixy would have us believe Wahabbis are not true Muslims. What is your take?
[quote]Shoebolt wrote:
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Hey, thanks. Good info.
Please ignore my other question. You answered it.
[quote]lixy wrote:
The wars in Sri Lanka between the government and Tamils is a fine modern example. Both sides fought for so many years… but 70,000 people died in the process. And both sides had almost equal support amongst the people, and both sides thought that they had the correct methodology.
So…the Tamils should bow to their overlords?
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I am surprised you are questioning events in the Sri Lankan sphere of interest. I am sure if there were a majority of Muslims or Reds oppressing a minority of Tamils, you would be silent on the matter.