Islam in a Nutshell

Off Topic Politics and World Issues
21

[quote]Varqanir wrote:
DrSkeptix wrote:

Your other prejudicial comments I will address at another time.

Prejudicial? Or prejudiced?

A small nuance, admittedly, but an important one.[/quote]

Prejudicial–harmful to someone.

Your Madlibs response to Chushin can be taken in the fashion you intend: to draw attention to the inferred prejudice, or to parody and provoke critical thought.
Or perhaps your intend was to draw an uncritical moral equivalence. Here I disagree.

Is Judaism a political system?
Emphatically no. Since c. 30 BC to 1947 AD, it had no temporal authority, and survived in parallel to whatever empowered political authority, chiefly by force of ethical reserve. The Idumeans were forcibly converted, but never again did Judaism force itself on others, or persecute others at the point of the sword or project a temporal power. The same is not true of Islam through the early caliphates. No equivalence there.

Is the place of Moses the same as Muhammed?
No. Why is it that these awful religious discussion on this board seem to uniformly believe that Judaism stopped, cold in 586 BC, at the latest? The religion continued to develop until now, and after 70 AD abandoned the practices and military postures of the Old Testament. (Maimonides may have written about the ideal temporal leader, but he was referring not to Moses but to the Caliph he served in Cairo.) Can we say the same about Islam? I am no expert in Islam, but I think not: so much of what we see now seems to reflect thought frozen in the 12th century; i.e., that of a unified militarized theocratic state.

Is Israel a theocracy?
Arguable. I could argue that the UK is a theocratic state in the true sense since the Queen is also Head of the CoE. But why is it that these discussions invariable conflate the religion with the State and its temporal government? The State is a parliamentary democracy with Jewish institutions and British Mandatory Law. It does not force conversions; the State is multiconfessional in many regards. Compare that with Iran (regarding the Bahai), Pakistan (regarding Hindus), the Saudi entity (regarding everybody). Criticize the government and politics of Israel, the State, its leaders, the minority of nutcases with outsized power, but why does that subsume all of Judaism?

And last, “antiisemitism.”
You are too well educated, Varq, to sink to that canard that “Arabs are semites, too.” Nonsense. Anti-semitism, the political and cultural movement which was an abreaction to the Emancipation (and arguably, the Industrial Revolution) is specific to the irrational animosity to Jews. Period.

There. Nothing prejudicial. Nothing prejudiced.
I trust you can say the same.

22

[quote]Varqanir wrote:

But I promise you that if there were a billion Jews, and only 20 million Muslims, nothing would change. The terrorists would just shout “Baruch Elohim!” instead.
[/quote]

Very well said. Any of the worlds major religions can be twisted to justify terrorism. All it takes is the right combination of poverty and ignorance.

23

SO pick a side and fight already . . .or stand in the middle and get shot by both sides . . .lmao

24

[quote]DrSkeptix wrote:
…
[/quote]

I believe you just made Varq’s point.

26

[quote]yusef wrote:
@Sifu:

Your article that you pasted is simply wrong. I don’t even know where to start, and I doubt it was written by a Muslim.

All of the explanations and justifications, the facts, the interpretations, looks like some twisted piece of propaganda.[/quote]

I agree. It did not call for anybody’s death, not even one time, so it cannot be representative.

27

[quote]fireplug52 wrote:
My take is this:

There seems to be some trouble reconciling the current (in some cases) violent state of Islam with the historical roots of Islam. During the European medieval period the Muslim world was far more enlightened and free, comparatively. Relative freedom of religion was the norm along with a permissive attitude towards science and technology.
[/quote]
Where on earth did you get this?

Dude. The Christian Crusades were in response to Jihad. They were trying to recapture holy land taken by force by the muslims. No crusade and all of Europe would have been wearing turbins and burkas. I beleive some Muslims made as far as Ireland.

They (Crusades) certainly evolved into something else but, luckily for the christians, this wasn’t the very definition of their religion. I don’t recall Christianity describing anyone murdering during the crusades as the perfect man to be emulated by all, or even the last prophet of god.

No it doesn’t sound familiar. Maybe becuase it stopped 1000 years ago? It did last for about 500 years, so I guess muslims should be coming out of their’s by…1400 or so.

Nope. What’s shocking is that they have been in their own dark age since the inception of the religion. Wonder if there is any correlation there? Does poverty cause extreme religious views or do extreme religious views cuase poverty? A few artists and mathmatical descoveries hundreds of years ago doesn’t = enlightenment.

28

BTW - the Crusades so derided today where not campaigns to take lands never held by Christians, but to retake lands held by Christians which had been conquered by the peaceful Muslims . . . nice to draw your historical cutoff where you want . . .

another historical gem - Vlad the Impaler (Dracula) was the guy holding the line in Eastern Europe against the advancing peaceful armies of Islam . . . what the Muslims could not accomplish through war, they will now try to accomplish through immigration . . . silly Europeans . . . .

29

[quote]fireplug52 wrote:
My take is this:

There seems to be some trouble reconciling the current (in some cases) violent state of Islam with the historical roots of Islam. During the European medieval period the Muslim world was far more enlightened and free, comparatively. Relative freedom of religion was the norm along with a permissive attitude towards science and technology.

At the same time Europe was in it’s own dark age. Religious persecution, intolerance and racial intolerance were commonplace. Science and technology were lost. Religious warfare against the “Saracens” and even more particularly against other Christian sects was also quite common. Compare the Christian Crusades with the current Islamic Jihad.

The bible was used to justify killing in the name of god, and paradise was assured by the pope for those who might die killing Muslims in the holy land. Of course those promoting and perpetrating the violence gained earthly monetary and secular power as well. Some of the medieval popes lived like hedonists. Sound familiar?

It might occur to some people that much of the Muslim world is in it’s own dark age. Is it any surprise that as extreme poverty and ignorance becomes the norm that religious extremism follows?[/quote]

Actually, Muslims invented the concept of Holy War. The Roman emperor had to falsify Christian doctrine in order to encourage the same kind of zeal in his soldiers.

Islam began with and spread by conquest. Don’t take away its appeal now. Its intellectual contributions were primarily by non Muslim remnants, “kafirs” and dhimmis, if you will. As the population becomes increasingly Muslim under the oppressive Muslim rule, it seems less and less intellectual work gets done.

Given a glorious head start, with the knowledge of the Greeks and the ancient world, what have Muslims done? Besides exterminate the Greeks along with the remnants of that ancient world, I mean.

Europe is not really so bad off. I would have rather enjoyed being a Scandinavian. Pity the state of the Nordic countries these days, with their unappreciative guest population.

I had wanted to address these matters earlier when someone mentioned art and science. I’m pretty tired right now but this will do, “in a nutshell”, as it were.

According to the United Nations, more books are translated into Spanish in one year than have been translated into Arabic in the last thousand. What’s the problem? Don’t they want to join the modern world?

30

[quote]valiant knight wrote:
Actually, Muslims invented the concept of Holy War. [/quote]

Don’t forget rape, slavery, lying, patricide and squat-rack curls.

31

[quote]lixy wrote:
valiant knight wrote:
Actually, Muslims invented the concept of Holy War.

Don’t forget rape, slavery, lying, patricide and squat-rack curls.[/quote]

So you do agree with the Holy War assertion?

To your non-productive response, I can’t recall any other religion that explicitly condones lying.

32

[quote]yusef wrote:
Confound not truth with falsehood, nor knowingly conceal the truth. Verse 2:42[/quote]

And…

33

The concept of going to war against other people because they worship a different god than you do? Oh, yes, surely this never existed on planet earth until the Muslims came along.

Please.

Then again, I suppose if one defines a Muslim as one who submits to God, and accepts the proposition (mentioned by Shoebolt’s friend) that the ancient Israelites were Muslims too, then sure, one could say that the Muslims at least gave a name to a concept that was already millennia old. They called it milkhemet mitzvah, or “war by commandment.” In other words, commanded by God (ha-Metzaveh, “the Commander”).

34

[quote]Varqanir wrote:
The concept of going to war against other people because they worship a different god than you do? Oh, yes, surely this never existed on planet earth until the Muslims came along.

Please. [/quote]

Stop being non-productive.

In that case, what about polytheists?

35

[quote]lixy wrote:

In that case, what about polytheists?[/quote]

Kindly note the part about “a concept that was already millennia old.”

I’m sure that shortly after the first man made himself an idol out of mud, he went around knocking everyone on the head who didn’t acknowledge the divinity of his mud idol.

36

[quote]Varqanir wrote:
The concept of going to war against other people because they worship a different god than you do? Oh, yes, surely this never existed on planet earth until the Muslims came along.

Please.

Then again, I suppose if one defines a Muslim as one who submits to God, and accepts the proposition (mentioned by Shoebolt’s friend) that the ancient Israelites were Muslims too, then sure, one could say that the Muslims at least gave a name to a concept that was already millennia old. They called it milkhemet mitzvah, or “war by commandment.” In other words, commanded by God (ha-Metzaveh, “the Commander”).[/quote]

Memory search in progresss.
First, a grammatical point. Milkhemet is in the genitive case, not the nominative; “war of commandment” would be better. Better still, “war of obligation,” since tzav means “to tie.” It is about context.

I do not know if the term is in the OT. Perhaps you take it from Maimonides, who distinguished this type of war as an obligation imposed on the Hebrew Tribes to destroy seven occupying nations. But in that context, Maimonides hurried to point out, that since every last vestige of those seven nations was destroyed, there is no longer any such “commandment.” Over and done, no more such commandments or wars. The term is consigned to millenia past, and has no validity now.

37

[quote]DrSkeptix wrote:

Memory search in progresss.
First, a grammatical point. Milkhemet is in the genitive case, not the nominative; “war of commandment” would be better. Better still, “war of obligation,” since tzav means “to tie.” It is about context.[/quote]

Thanks for clearing that up, Doc. I do hate to be anti-sem… wait, I already used that gag. Never mind.

[quote]I do not know if the term is in the OT. Perhaps you take it from Maimonides, who distinguished this type of war as an obligation imposed on the Hebrew Tribes to destroy seven occupying nations. But in that context, Maimonides hurried to point out, that since every last vestige of those seven nations was destroyed, there is no longer any such “commandment.” Over and done, no more such commandments or wars. The term is consigned to millenia past, and has no validity now.

[/quote]

Right. Saul’s war against the Amalekites was an unambiguous case of milkhemet mitzvah, because God, by way of Samuel, commanded Saul to “go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.”

The concept may no longer, as you say, be a valid doctrine in modern Judaism (although it does seem to be a tenet of Zionism: if it’s a mitzvah to occupy the land of Israel, it’s a mitzvah to fight for it), but then, that was not under dispute. Rather, what was under dispute was the claim that it was Mohammed and his bunch who, after more than ten thousand years of humans practicing religion and warfare, were the first people on the planet to figure out how to put the two together.

A claim which, I’m sure you’ll agree, is an absurdum in se.

39

Now now, let’s not quibble over semantics. It is from the Muslims that we get death in battle as the entrance into Paradise, 72 virgins and all that. A quote by a particularly excited lad sticks out from memory: “Excellent! All that stands between me and Paradise is to be killed by those people!”

Religion can be identified by tribe and ethnicity and fight for your god, what have you, but Islam is special in its “kill unbelievers to get into Heaven” spiel.

2 of the 3 “Peoples of the Book”, Judaism and Islam, have religions that are particularly bloodthirsty. I’m thinking we could do away with these cults altogether. Judaism has a saving grace in that its holy war isn’t eternal. Who knows what they would do if, say, they managed to acquire a world spanning empire, but that is just human nature.

Islam’s war appeals to that side of human nature and it is eternal. Islam is a warrior’s religion.

40

[quote]Varqanir wrote:
DrSkeptix wrote:

The concept may no longer, as you say, be a valid doctrine in modern Judaism (although it does seem to be a tenet of Zionism: if it’s a mitzvah to occupy the land of Israel, it’s a mitzvah to fight for it),

[/quote]

Well, then those Zionists who so believe had better brush up on their Maimonides, who distinguished the “obligatory” war (inclusive of the defensive war) from the “voluntary” war–that fought by the leadership to expand its territory for glory, profit, etc.