Belgian thought
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What next after Mosul and Raqqa?
- Thread starter Vixen
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banquetbear
Graduate Poster
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...A'isha: if nothing else is accomplished by this thread, just letting you know that your posts have been educational, and have given me fresh insight into a whole lot of things. Please keep fighting the good fight, and thank you for your posts. 
Mycroft
High Priest of Ed
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...A'isha: if nothing else is accomplished by this thread, just letting you know that your posts have been educational, and have given me fresh insight into a whole lot of things. Please keep fighting the good fight, and thank you for your posts.
A'isha
Miss Schoolteacher
Thank you both. 
I don't, but I do expect you to explain why some do and some don't. This implies there is some sort of a meaningful difference between their ideologies. I contend that difference is Islam and have made my case for that several times over.
You, on the other hand, dismiss it without giving anything resembling a reason, let alone a compelling reason.
You know, I was quoting your post. Now you disagree with it? Funny how that works with you.
Such attacks could be classified as terrorism. Do you have a point to make?
No, it's not. It's what the text says.
I'm actually claiming Christianity is based on the New testament, not the Old one. You know, kind of like Islam is supposed to be based on Medinan Mohamed, not the Meccan one? Well, that.
Yes, because it doesn't conflict with the New testament. Homosexuality is not mentioned there, so the Old testament is supposed to apply. There is a difference when it comes to treatment of unbelievers though.
By the way if you want to dive deep into comparative theology, I wouldn't try to use attitudes towards homosexuals as a way to smear Christianity and make Islam look good by comparison. You won't get far.
Which is yet another double standard on your part, considering you decided to completely ignore Q 2:190 and Q 2:194 when you picked out Q 2:193 above. You pick out single verses from the Qur'an and ignore any and all original context they have, but you insist that Bible verses have to be read solely in the fashion and in the context that you choose.
Seriously, A'isha?
Koran 2:190: Fight in the way of Allah those who fight you but do not transgress. Indeed. Allah does not like transgressors.
Koran 2:193: Fight them until there is no [more] fitnah and [until] worship is [acknowledged to be] for Allah . But if they cease, then there is to be no aggression except against the oppressors.
Koran 2:190 is a call to fight all non-Muslims, but don't go too far in your blood-lust, whatever that means. Koran 2:193 is a call to fight all non-Muslims, but cease fighting them if they convert to Islam, which offers a convenient clue as to what "transgression" in 2:190 is supposed to mean.
In other words, if you consider these two verses to reduce the problems with Islam, I rest my case. If this is the best defense you've got to offer of this religion, then there is nothing left to defend, it's evil, end of story.
No, just more of your dismissals of evidence. Please demonstrate to me, by citing the texts, not an opinion of some long-dead (or living) 'scholar', how am I misreading the principle of abrogation.
The link is to the index of the book, am I supposed to be looking at something specific, or is this another trick when you pretend a link explain everything when in fact it doesn't say anything on the subject?
One thing that you do love, A'isha, is to pick another religion, usually Christianity, and smear it, as to steer discussion away from Islam. This is an inherently dishonest tactic. An honest tactic to defend Islam would be either to show it has virtues that outweigh the bad it does, or else demonstrate the evils it does are unrelated to the religion, the religion is a random variable.
The best you can do with the first option is to cite the fact Islam at it's peak was marginally better than the rest of the world at their bottom, which is a complete non-starter. Your best attempts at the second option are downright pathetic, you scooped so low as to cite a made-up statistic in one superbly weak episode. What statistics you don't make-up on the spot don't support your claims.
It would be high time to climb down from your perch and admit that you were wrong on Islam this whole time. The fact you know the names of a lot of Islamic scholars and you use Arabic words for some Islamic principles in no way changes that. It might fool some people, especially those who come here believing nothing is wrong with Islam, but not those who actually read what you're saying. You see, since your most commonly cited 'argument' is "There is a similar passage in the Bible!", you already admit something is wrong with Islam, but you contend this is fine because there is also something wrong with Christianity. Islam is at fault regardless of other religions. I told you this before many times over.
McHrozni
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Possibly, what do you mean by religion? Explain which parts of which religion are there that make the difference.
It depends, really. Were you guessing? If yes, then no, if no then maybe
McHrozni
A'isha
Miss Schoolteacher
Are you under the impression that the terrorist groups in the poor nations I mentioned that aren't concerned with or interested in attacking the US are all non-Islamist terror groups? Because they most definitely aren't.
"They abused poverty to further their Islamist agenda. Poverty is a tool of Islamists, not the other way around" is not a quote from my post, sorry. Try again.
Yes, that your earlier assertion about Jewish terrorism pre-1945 is wrong (as are so many other things you've asserted).
It's what you think the text says, and your interpretational skills are sorely lacking (to say nothing of your complete inability to adjudicate other interpretations).
And you're completely incorrect on both counts.
"Fight in the way of Allah against those who fight against you, but begin not hostilities. Lo! Allah loveth not aggressors" is a more accurate translation, actually (that one is Pikthall's). Even Abu Ala Maududi, one of the "Big Three" Islamist thinkers, translated it as "And fight in the way of Allah those who fight against you but do not commit aggression because Allah does not like aggression".
Pretty much all exegetes understood this to be a command that Muslims could defend themselves if attacked, but only if attacked (even the Islamist ones like Maududi). God does not love the mu'tadīn, the verse says, "those who begin fighting, whether in sacred or non-sacred territory" (al-mubtadi'īn bi-'l-qitāl fī'-hill wa 'l-hāram).
Pretty much all of them also say it was revealed in response to the Quraish breaking the Treaty of Hudaybiyyah by attacking pilgrims to the Ka'aba, meaning it's a Medinan, not a Meccan, verse (since you seem to place so much importance on such things).
2:194 commands Muslims not to do anything to the attackers beyond what the attackers have done to them (ie, defensive response should be proportionate and responsive, and not go beyond that) - "and the one who attacketh you, attack him in like manner as he attacked you".
Uh, abrogation only exists in the opinions and writings of scholars, both living and dead. Its entire raison d'être is as an exigetical tool! You don't even know what abrogation is for, much less what the principles and modes of abrogation (there are more than one, you know) are, when they're used, the criteria for their use, who uses them, or why they're used!
Do you want a lesson in the basics of abrogation and how it works? Because I'd be happy to educate you for free if you don't want to read the books all about this specific topic that I already recommended that you read.
Pick a category from the right hand side there and enjoy. "Cruelty and Violence" and "Intolerance" are some good ones.
You're the one saying nonsense like "It is easy to use the Bible to justify peace and coexistence and it is difficult to use the Koran in that way. It is also difficult to use the Bible to justify wanton bloodshed and mayhem, but trivial to do so with the Koran."
If you don't want people to discuss Christianity in relation to Islam, maybe you should stop bringing up Christianity in comparison with Islam (and especially stop trying to argue how good and nice Christianity and the Bible supposedly are when compared to Islam) and the Qur'an.
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Belgian thought
Master Poster
Possibly, what do you mean by religion? Explain which parts of which religion are there that make the difference.
It depends, really. Were you guessing? If yes, then no, if no then maybe
McHrozni
Aha!
I sense a feeling from a person whose name started with "I" - Anyone here called Eileen or maybe Ayatollah or anything beginning with "I"?
No wait "Eyeiz" is coming through - sounds a bit like - "I eat lamb", but i keep hearing that "zzzzzz".
Anyway, enough of my spiritual ******** let me tell you that Islam takes the biscuit ...!
Do i win?
ETA - Religion still tastes like ****
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No, I'm under the impression many things can lead to terrorism. This is true, but your premise is that Islam, by itself, does not. Try to prove that and not some other claim please.
True, your post was:
Movements that combined Northern resistance to Southern economic domination mixed with weird ideas of Islamist "reform" began in Nigeria as soon as independence happened - the violent extremist Maitatsine movement founded by Muhammed Marwa that began in the 60's combined appeals to the urban poor and indigent with a rejection of anything outside the Qur'an
Which is just a more roundabout way of saying they used the poverty to promote Islam.
I'm reasonably sure a few terror attacks during the Nazi years do precisely nothing to further your cause of defending Islam from criticism. I'm reasonably sure you know what Nazis did to the Jews. In a situation like that some people will take up terrorism.
If you're claiming the situation Muslims face is remotely similar to it and therefore some terrorism is understandable if not downright justified (without even addressing whether Jewish attacks on Nazis were justified) I'm again proven right, you are hypocrisy made flesh.
Really. Prove it, from the texts themselves. Demonstrate to me which parts of the said texts prove I'm wrong.
Again with the "lost in translation" nonsense, I see
If Islam prohibits aggression, why did the early Muslims, the ones who spoke and heard Mohamed himself, launched a series of aggressive wars of conquest that lasted a hundred years and saw 2/3 of Christian world and the entirety of Zoroastrian world conquered and subjugated?
If this is a mistranslated, why didn't the ones who would be in the full knowledge that their faith taught non-aggression, because they spoke the language and because they spoke with the man who wrote the book, launched an aggression on an epic scale?
These are assertions, not interpretations. I don't take those for evidence, thank you very much.
It exists as an explicitly written command in the Koran.
Koran 2:106: We do not abrogate a verse or cause it to be forgotten except that We bring forth [one] better than it or similar to it. Do you not know that Allah is over all things competent?
There are several verses like that one. The whole thing is quite explicit, if two verses are incompatible, the latter one abrogates the earlier one.
Go ahead, explain it please.
Ok. I picked Cruelty and Violence, the first ten are:
1. The story of Cain and Abel, where the murderer is cursed for his murder. A prohibition of violence if there ever was one.
2. God promises to destroy everything.
3. God promises to destroy everything for the second time.
4. God makes good on his promise to destroy everything.
5. God makes more mayhem, a plague this time.
6. God orders an animal sacrifice.
7. A description of domestic violence.
8. God doesn't take mercy on a city.
9. Domestic violence and child abuse by angels (?)
10. God makes more mayhem, two cities are destroyed.
Which of these is a command by God for the believers to fight non-belivers again? I must've missed it. Two are, at worst, endorsements of domestic violence, if the whole thing is taken at face value and context is entirely overlooked. One is an endorsement of animal sacrifice and one is an admonition against murder. A clear majority - six of them - are destruction of man by God, threatned or otherwise, not commands against unbelievers.
Incidentally, this is one of the key differences between violence in the Bible and violence in the Koran. In the Bible, it is usually the God that does the killing on behalf of the believers. In the Koran, it is the believers that should do the killing on behalf of an almighty God, who could do anything but is too merciful to do so, so he orders his minions to do the work for him. Or something like that anyway.
You will not address this, I take it?
Maybe you should too.
That said, it is trivially easy to show which of these two religions spawned a better society. Is it Christians fleeing into Muslim countries or Muslims into Christian ones? That should tell you a lot.
The only claim to fame Islam has is a 300 year period between the years 800 and 1100, when Islam was at its peak. It was moderately more advanced than the rest of the world, especially Christian world at the time. By contrast the golden age of Christianity started no later than 500 years ago, you could make a convincing case it was 650 years ago and it is still lasting. The advances made within Islam were marginally better than the rest of the world at the time, advances made from Christian societies are almost without peer, the only two that may come close are inventions of agriculture and use of fire.
But of course this is all for naught because Islam had a period where it was better from Christianity and there are verses of violence within the Bible too, so both religions are equally bad, right?
McHrozni
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A'isha
Miss Schoolteacher
Oh good, we're making progress.
You tried to assert that the difference between terrorist groups that attack the US and terrorist groups that don't attack the US is Islam, and that's completely false. Because it's false, you couldn't back up your assertion, and now you're trying to dodge yet again.
Other way around, actually. They were using "Islam" (ranging from a salafist version to a completely heterodox version that rejected the prophethood of Muhammad) to promote their demands for socioeconomic equality.
Which is the precise opposite of what you tried to argue upthread when you claimed "Christian mistreatment of Jews pre-1945 didn't result in terrorism either."
Yes, really.
Well, from the bible, there's Matthew 5:18, "Heaven and earth may disappear. But I promise you that not even a period or comma will ever disappear from the Law. Everything written in it must happen."
Again with the "lost in translation" nonsense, I see
You don't have any better response to the fact that even Islamists like Maudidi translate it as "aggression"? You just have your chosen translation and you're going to stick with it because Reasons?
Because different Muslims at different times and places interpreted it differently, of course. Do you want a breakdown of all the different exegeses of that verse over time?
You seem oddly insistent that all Muslims always believed the exact same thing at all times.
Your own uneducated "interpretation" is factual, but the actual interpretations of Muslims themselves over the years are merely "assertions, not interpretations"? You have a truly remarkable double standard.
That's not a command, it merely establishes the existence of the possibility that God may remove a command or cause it to be forgotten, then replace it with another command. It's the standard proof-text cited in support of the existence of the concept of abrogation in the Qur'an, though such an interpretation is not universal (some scholars believe it refers to the abrogation and replacement of the Torah and the Bible as a whole by the Qur'an as a whole, rather than talking about individual verses within the Qur'an).
Except that 2:106 says no such thing. It does not provide any guidelines or rules for what verse abrogates another, for deciding whether any given verse has been abrogated, for determining whether such abrogations are explicit in the text or something that has to be gleaned from context, or even whether such abrogations can be discerned by humans or are solely the purview of God. All of those principles are completely extra-quranic.
Naskh, in its earliest form starting around 200 years after Muhammad's death, was broad and encompassed many things. Around 400 after Muhammad's death, the term "naskh" came to refer specifically to "the abrogation or annulment of a divine ruling by another divine ruling" ("divine ruling" here meaning hukm shar'i). The other exegetical tools that were once part of naskh were categorized separately: istithna', or "exception", takhsis, or "specification", and tabyin, "clarification". The main difference between these latter three and naskh is that naskh involves the complete abrogation of the ruling in its entirety, while the other three leave the rulings that are involved completely intact and fully in force.
There are also three "modes" of naskh: legal abrogation (naskh al-hukm duna al-tilawa), where the ruling of a verse was removed and replaced but the text of the verse remained in the Qur'an; legal-textual abrogation (naskh al-tilawa wa al-hukm) , where both the ruling and the text were removed and replaced from the Qur'an; and textual abrogation (naskh al-tilawa duna al-hukm), where the text was removed from the Qur'an but the ruling of that text was not.
For something to be considered naskh, and not one of the other categories, it has to meet five criteria:
1) The abrogated law was revealed by God
2) The abrogating law was revealed by God
These are because abrogation can only have taken place during the revelation of the Qur'an, and cannot have happened as a result of the derivation of legislation from the Qur'an and the Sunnah and is unequivocal within the Qur'an itself. There can be no abrogation as a result of ijma (consensus of the scholars) or qiyas (analogical reasoning).
3) The abrogated ruling has been abolished by the abrogating rule completely, not partially (otherwise it's not a case of naskh, but falls into one of the other three categories instead)
4) The abrogated and abrogating rulings have to be completely contradictory, ie they cannot be reconcilable in any way, shape, or form so there is no possibility of both of them being valid at the same time.
5) The abrogating rule is revealed after the law that it abrogates.
There's also sometimes a sixth criteria often added: there has to both an abrogating verse and an abrogated verse. It's not abrogation if a ruling was removed and nothing was put in its place, or a new ruling was introduced where there was no ruling before.
The third and the fourth criteria (and sometimes the fifth) is where the complications and confusions about naskh come in, because they're completely subjective and interpretive. What one scholar declares to be a case of unquestionable contradiction, another scholar says is merely a matter of takhsis or tabyin. This has resulted in pretty much no two scholars who accept the validity of abrogation agreeing on just what verses have been abrogated (the number of supposedly abrogated verses ranges from 294 down to just five).
That's why, for instance, ibn Kathir thought that Q 9:5 abrogated Q 9:6 and Q 47:4, al-Dahhak and as-Suddi thought that Q 47:4 abrogated Q 9:5, al-Bouti considered Q 9:6 to abrogate Q 9:5, and al-Tabari considered Q 9:5 and Q 47:4 to both be unabrogated, but with Q 47:4 acting as takhsis on Q 9:5 to form one single ruling. Al-'Arabi even reported that there were scholars who thought the first half of Q 9:5 was abrogated by the second half of Q 9:5.
You did, and deliberately so. That's just Genesis - wait until you get to Deuteronomy.
But I think you already know that.
Sure I will: it's wrong. The treatment of the Amalekites (which is still cited even today to justify actions) is only one such example.
That hasn't always been the case. Jews particularly would regularly flee from Christian lands into Muslim ones. You're pretending that the last 50-100 years are the way things have always been and the result of something innate and inherent, rather than just being the way things are at the moment.
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Minoosh
Penultimate Amazing
- Joined
- Jul 15, 2011
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- 12,901
I notice Indonesia, with its 203 millions of Muslims, has quite a few terror attacks internally (not all Islamist) but appears to export terror not at all.
Which leads me to wonder if there something about the Middle East, cauldron of competing monotheistic religions, that encourages internecine conflict among those who claim a common ancestor, one true god, and disagree over which prophet is more favored by that god.
Overall I would say the problem is more Islamism than Islam, and that modern Islamism is a relatively new development.
Now I'll try to understand the textual analysis.
Oh, and what next after Mosul and Raqqa?
ETA: Since my medieval Arabic sucks and I can't read Arabic calligraphy to begin with, I'm in no position to judge which translation (and hence interpretation) is the most plausible, using tools of textual analysis. "Aggressor" vs. "transgressor," for example. Outside sources are brought in, the whole thing is examined in context, and scholars can apparently compare notes without having to behead each other. Scripture is weird. Almost by definition. It allows people to see what they want to see, and further allows demagogues to cherry-pick which verses should be emphasized. Hence any references to what the New Testament says is subject to Aramaic words being translated to New Testament Greek, then into 17th-century English and so one.
Which leads me to wonder if there something about the Middle East, cauldron of competing monotheistic religions, that encourages internecine conflict among those who claim a common ancestor, one true god, and disagree over which prophet is more favored by that god.
Overall I would say the problem is more Islamism than Islam, and that modern Islamism is a relatively new development.
Now I'll try to understand the textual analysis.
Oh, and what next after Mosul and Raqqa?
ETA: Since my medieval Arabic sucks and I can't read Arabic calligraphy to begin with, I'm in no position to judge which translation (and hence interpretation) is the most plausible, using tools of textual analysis. "Aggressor" vs. "transgressor," for example. Outside sources are brought in, the whole thing is examined in context, and scholars can apparently compare notes without having to behead each other. Scripture is weird. Almost by definition. It allows people to see what they want to see, and further allows demagogues to cherry-pick which verses should be emphasized. Hence any references to what the New Testament says is subject to Aramaic words being translated to New Testament Greek, then into 17th-century English and so one.
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A'isha
Miss Schoolteacher
It comes from ع د و, to be hostile or one who is hostile. As used in the Qur'an, it can mean to be cruel, to be hostile, to attack, to assault, to violate, or as the nouns hostility, aggression, injustice, or even the descriptive "an enemy" or "enemies".
EDIT: To argue that Q 2:190 is about "transgression" is to argue that Q 2:190 and Q 2:194 contain duplicate identical commands just a few verses apart about the impermissibility of going beyond set limitations on behavior when fighting back after being attacked. Which I guess one can certainly do if one wants, but most exegetes recognized Q 2:190 as a proscription on opening hostilities but establishing the permissibility of fighting if attacked (it refers to "those who fight you" with the implication from the specific verb and pronouns used that the "those" being referred to are the active party doing the attacking while the "you" (the Muslims) are the party being attacked, rather than the other way around as it would be if the verse was referring to the permissibility of Muslims doing the active attacking on a passive party). Q 2:191 follows on from this by commanding Muslims not to attack polytheists in or near the Sacred Mosques unless they're attacked there first, this time specifically referring to "fighting" (qital) rather than just general hostility (i'tada).
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Belgian thought
Master Poster
Apologies - Mind fart
In your understanding of what I'm saying, maybe. This isn't a new position for me, nor is it the first time I've told you so.
No. I'm saying that Islam is driving a good number of terrorists to attack whomever, US and their friends and allies are targets quite often. The fact Islam inspires attacks against other targets as well in no way challenges that.
Yeah, yeah, sure. A Jewish attacks against Nazi propaganda theaters while the Holocaust is taking place certainly prove beyond doubt Islam is not at fault
This proves I'm right. If the religion was based equally on both sections of the holy texts, there would be no need to affirm in the New testament that some portions of the Old testament are still valid.
Do you have any better proof maybe?
I did mention the early Muslims, the ones who would have the most accurate interpretation, because if there was any question about it they could just ask the author directly, 'interpreted' it in a way that the verse means the worst possible thing, did I not?
No, I insist the intent was for the verse to mean one thing and one thing only. The ones who would obviously be in a position to know took it to mean wanton aggression against all things non-Muslim. The fact the same word can also mean something else doesn't challenge that.
You know, kind of like some 'translations' insist the 72+ virgins aren't virgins, but raisins, so Islamic paradise is deeper than a decadent orgy until the end of time? Then you look at the descriptions of those 'raisins', and you find gems like this one:
Koran 52.20: Reclining on ranged couches. And we wed them unto [raisins?] with wide, lovely eyes.
I have eaten raisins hundreds of times, but I have never seen one that had eyes. I'm quite sure grapes don't have eyes and can't grow them while they're drying into raisins. This trick with translating virgins into raisins is little different from the trick you're trying to use to obfuscate the issue.
No, not really. I just look at it unburdened, I have nothing to gain and I have nothing to lose from Islam being one way or another. I'd prefer it if it were a benign religion, but I have that preference under control. You could say I'm quite unbiased.
A Muslim who was taught all his life Islam is the perfect religion is the very definition of a biased observer. You suffer from the same problem, whether you're really an atheist or not, you refuse to acknowledge the obvious problems with Islam are indeed problems with Islam, even though you readily acknowledge problems with Christianity are Christian, and even blow those up out of all proportions to make Islam seem no worse than Christianity.
If that verse only applied to the Torah and the Bible, you'd expect two things:
1. The verse could say so. This one is not absolute, it's just something you'd expect in such situation.
2. There would be no contradiction within the Koran. This one is absolute, any contradiction makes your 'interpretation' logically false.
The fact number 2 is indeed false undermines your 'interpretation', proving once again you are not an unbiased observer. You accept a false 'interpretation' as possible where the only rational response is to reject it.
Koran 2:106: We do not abrogate a verse or cause it to be forgotten except that We bring forth [one] better than it or similar to it. (...)
Unless the passage of time can be reversed it means a latter verse overrides the former, because it says "we bring one better or similar". If it was something like "we also brought", you'd have a case, but in this manner you don't.
The other possibility is that a remembered verse overrides a forgotten one. Since we don't know what verses were forgotten we're only left with what we have.
There is no extra-Koranic sources or evidence that is needed to deduct what this means. You just need an open mind.
See, this is why I always put Islamic scholars in quotation marks. They don't deserve the title, the Koran clearly permits abrogation with better and similar rules, I re-quoted the passage above. However, the concept now demands the new rule to be completely irreconcilable with the old rule, which is irreconcilable with the possibility of a similar or better rule being implemented.
In other words, these 'scholars' failed at square one. Good job.
Overall I'd say I understood abrogation no worse than your 'scholars' did. If anything my understanding may be even superior for the reason above.
Hey, I did exactly what you told me to do.
But sure, let's play the game again, 10 verses:
1. Promise of God to fight on behalf of the believers.
2. God makes good on his promise.
3. God boasting how he destroyed the giants.
4. Another boast of how God destroyed someone.
5. A gift of God of something valuable in battle to believes.
6. A promise of how everyone will fear the followers of God.
7. God gives a king the courage to commit genocide.
8. God endorses a genocide.
9. Israelis commit a genocide.
10. Same as number 9
It's a little worse than Genesis, I'll give you that. The first five are still God saying how great he is and what he will do and the rest endorse misbehavior. Stripped of context they seem like promising examples of the evils within the Old testament. If you were to examine them in context, as you consistently demand to be done with Islam, you'd come to a different conclusion and the number would drop. Having double standards are a bad sign you know.
It's trivially easy to show almost any religion (that I know of) as false, ridiculous, sometimes even evil. In most cases you don't need to scoop so low as to take passages out of context to make it seem worse, as this annotated Bible does. Christianity has it's drawbacks, it has many drawbacks. It's just that Islam has more, much more, and this reflect in the sad state of Islamic civilization. Furthermore, whatever drawbacks Christianity has in no way improve or excuse the drawbacks of Islam.
Look at the fundamental difference: in Christianity, God has given man free will to do as he please, the man will be judged at death or judgment day based on what he will do with it. If you disobey God you could face a punishment, but you can still be a Christian. Catholic church, in a brilliant step of societal control, even went a step forward to act as an intermediary between man and God to absolve sins.
In Islam, man has to submit to God to the utmost. Free will doesn't come into play at all, you aren't a good Muslim until you find in yourself no resistance against Gods' commands. Free will doesn't even get mentioned as far as I know.
The difference in philosophy is similar to the difference between USA and DPRK, as are the results that come from it. Neither of those two is perfect, but it is quite evident one is better than the other. It is also evident which one is which.
This is why I used the qualifier "usually", as in usual, or in most cases. An example or two where this didn't hold true doesn't even begin to address it.
Of course Christian (mis)treatment of Jews is legendary, as is the marginally better treatment of Jews by Muslims in that era. General acceptance of Jews is something new indeed. The acceptance somewhat different beliefs within Christianity on the other hand is over 350 years old. To put the number in perspective, it has already lasted longer than the Islamic golden age.
There is more to the society than merely acceptance of people of different faith though. A big deal about the Islamic golden age is scientific and technological achievement. I would wager the civilization with origins in Christianity (it would be wrong to still call it Christian) does more of that every year than Islam did in it's entire existence. There are also other aspects where the civilization descended from Christianity wins against any other society in human history. Treatment of Jews was a lagging indicator and one of its worst aspects, judging that civilization on the treatment of Jews alone is like judging Islam on the merits of Hamas alone. I wouldn't consider that judgment fair.
McHrozni
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Islam was made into an Arabic national religion, the Arabs are its most fevered supporters and believe in it most wholeheartedly.
Well yes, modern Islamism is modern, or new. By definition.
What do you mean by Islamism anyway? Because most aspects of Islamism were present since early 7th century.
If I'm right it'll be a whack-a-mole until Islam is changed or destroyed.
If A'isha is right, I have no idea. Maybe she can provide a testable prediction or two.
This is a bad way of going about translations to begin with. The best way to go about is to find out in what context is the word being used and how it was understood at the time it was written down.
It is possible, albeit difficult, for a translation to completely change the meaning. However since we do have access to the initial Greek test and to some extent even the original Aramaic texts, we do see the meaning of the New testament has not been drastically altered by translation. The Old testament is also preserved in the Torah, and the discrepancies are not major, certainly not to the extent of outright reversing the meaning. This is despite two or three rounds of translations over many centuries, with the natural changes in languages that complicate the matter further.
A'isha, on the other hand, asserts this routinely happens when the Koran is translated from Arabic, in a single translation, all over the book and accompanying texts. Either Arabic is unintelligible and thus useless for communication, or else the excuse is a lot thinner than she realizes. Occam's razor suggests it's the latter.
McHrozni
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A'isha
Miss Schoolteacher
Except that the attackers in the US don't cite simply "Islam" as justification, but they cite the attacks and interventions of the US in other countries. That's the difference between terrorists that attack the US and terrorists that don't attack the US: not religion, but geopolitical concerns.
Yeah, yeah, sure. A Jewish attacks against Nazi propaganda theaters while the Holocaust is taking place certainly prove beyond doubt Islam is not at fault
You were completely wrong about there being no Jewish terrorism pre-1945, know you were so wrong about it that you've done a complete 180 and are now trying argue that it's totally unsurprising and expected for there to have been Jewish terrorism pre-1945, and yet you're completely incapable of admitting that you were wrong.
If the religion was based solely on the New Testament and the Old Testament were no longer valid, then why are Christians continually citing the Old Testament as religious justification for their positions, even for things that are in the New Testament ("A man shall leave his father and his mother and is united to his wife, and they shall become one flesh" is in Matthew 19:5, as spoken by Jesus Himself, no less, but the bill doesn't cite that, it cites the Old Testament).
Yes, and you were wrong, since the earliest exegetes also interpreted Q 2:190 as referring to aggression and hostility and attacking first.
In fact, it's pretty standard across the board that the most peaceful interpretations of verses in the Qur'an are generally to be found in the earliest tafsir, with the more intolerant interpretations coming in the later middle ages (not coincidentally, right around the time of the Crusades and the Mongol invasions).
A good survey of this is Asma Afsaruddin's Striving in the Path of God: Jihad and Martyrdom in Islamic Thought
And you would be wrong both about what you take it to mean, and what you believe Muslims have taken it to mean.
That's not a "translation", that's the theory of one guy who believes the Qur'an is not an Arabic Muslim text, but a Syro-Aramaic Christian text. No Muslim, exegete or believer, either today or in past, has ever translated houri as "grape".
No you don't, which is why you're so resistant to even the idea that Muslims have non-violent interpretations of the text, arguing that any Muslim who does is misreading the Qur'an and not practicing "true" Islam.
According to some interpretations, it does. Aya merely means divine sign or miracle, and elsewhere in the Qur'an the term is used to refer to the Qur'an as a whole and the Tawrat/Injil as a whole, such as Q 13:36-39
What counts as "contradiction" is completely subjective. That, in fact, is one of the problems with abrogation in general and why there's no agreement on what verses have been abrogated, much less how many.
That's the implication that the codifiers of abrogation used, yes. But the verse itself doesn't actually say that, and it certainly doesn't tell you which later verses are supposed to be the overriding ones, much less which verses were overridden. That's where all the extraquiranic cruft around the concept of abrogation came in.
It's why the second and third modes of abrogation exist.
It doesn't "now" demand that, that's the way abrogation has been since at least the 4th Century after Muhammad, when the rules of abrogation were mostly standardized. And it was debated even before then.
Al-Tabari (d. 923 AD) wrote, "A Qur'anic verse or a report about the Messenger of Allah can be considered to be an abrogator only if it negated an established ruling that had been made obligatory on people and cannot be interpreted explicitly or implicitly otherwise. If it can accommodate a different interpretation - in the way of introducing an exception, making a generalization specific, or providing more details to something less detailed - then it has nothing to do with concepts of abrogating and abrogated texts."
That is, as long as a ruling can be reconciled in some way with other rulings, it hasn't been abrogated. Arguments over this kind of reconciliation of specific verses is why scholars pretty much never came to any kind of agreement regarding which verses were abrogated.
You not only had no understanding of how the principles of abrogation worked, you actually dismiss and reject the actual rules of fiqh regarding abrogation in favor of your own "rules", which not only don't actually tell you what verses have been abrogated and what haven't, they bear zero relation to the way in which Muslims actually approach their own text.
Yes, that's your interpretation of the texts. But that's not what those texts actually say, as Skeptics Annotated Bible points out.
And as I said above, I like how you mock me for pointing out interpretational context in reading the Qur'an, shortly after insisting that you have to read the Bible based on interpretational context.
This is your double standard. All the times you label me a "hypocrite" appear to be nothing more than IMAX-level projection.
Oooh, you got so close there to finally understand and acknowledging the truth, but then backed away.
But at least you're getting closer.
The concept of being a slave to God not only absolutely exists in Christianity, it's even right there in the Bible (the New Testament even!): Romans 6:22, "But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life."
And free will certainly exists in Islam. Human beings can freely choose to do what they want to do, just as in Christianity, and God will judge them after death based on what they choose of their own free will, just as in Christianity. It's even in the Qur'an, Q 76:3: "We have shown him the Way, either to be thankful or reject", Q 74:38: "On the Day of Judgment, every soul will be held in pledge for its deeds", or Q 2:284: "Whether you show what is in your souls or hide it, Allah will call you to account about it.".
See also this fatwa about humanity's free will.
The existence of different and opposing sects in Islam has lasted even longer than Christianity's 350 years since the Reformation, you know. In fact, the reasons why Jews were treated better in Muslim lands for almost all of the history of both Islam and Christianity is that acceptance of the existence of people of non-Muslim religions (including the statement that those non-Muslims will go to heaven too) is baked right into the Qur'an, whereas the Bible (in both Testaments) is completely unaccepting of any other religion besides Christianity.
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A'isha
Miss Schoolteacher
The vast majority of Muslims in the world aren't Arabs.
I think that once ISIS is removed from their current physical power base, their membership and influence will dwindle drastically. I don't think they'll go away entirely, but I believe that al-Qaeda will once again become the main global Islamist terror organization, the way they were before the rise of ISIS.
Which is bad for your argument, since the earliest exegetes had an interpretation that is strikingly at odds with yours.
Concordances don't actually help in sorting out interpretations. This is why, despite almah not meaning what it has been translated to mean for a couple thousand years, the nature and description of the Mother of Jesus for almost all Christians has remained unaffected.
The Qur'an is not written in a straightforward narrative manner, the way the Torah and Bible were. That's why there are so many different ways of translating it (I have access to over fifty separate translations of the Qur'an, ranging from Islamist to Salafist to Modernist, and it's remarkable how different many of these translations are from each other even on the same verses), because not only do the translators have to deal with translating words and concepts into English, they have to add interpolations to the text in order to make it flow and be understood in English (that's why most translations of the Qur'an contain parts of the text in parentheses - those are the added bits by the translators in an effort to try and understand and explain the original text, but those are additions, not present in the actual Arabic original). In effect, it's the difference between translating a letter written in another language, and translating someone's abbreviated shorthand notes written in another language (when you don't know the method they used to abbreviate and write in shorthand and are trying to figure it out yourself).
Even in Arabic, understanding the Qur'an is so non-straightforward that the entire genre of tafsir, exegesis, was created in an effort to try and understand and explain the Qur'an. The fact that pretty much no two tafsir really agree with each other about what the Qur'an "really says" shows that even before the problems of translating between languages are tossed into the mix, the Qur'an is not nearly as straightforward and easily understood as you're trying to pretend it is.
Minoosh
Penultimate Amazing
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There are Shi'ite Arabs and Sunni Arabs. Both wholeheartedly think they're right.
I mean violent proselytizing with the goal of eliminating any traces of disagreement or secularism. Something like jihad as it's widely used now. And I mean really modern, as practically nonexistent until the end of the 1980s.
But how will you know if Islam has changed? Alcoholics Anonymous has changed, but the basic text remains the same. AA is even a useful proxy for Islam, in that total submission to God is suggested (or required, say some old-timers). There is something akin to a spiritual (or moral) struggle to find - and spread - peace. Other members see the steps as "accepting reality" or "finally growing up." There is no final arbiter and secular AA meetings exist. Anyone can call themselves a member. However it's quite true that AA does not assassinate apostates (AFAIK).
I was astonished when a half-Egyptian cab driver bringing me home from a meeting recited the 3rd-step prayer to me. His father had gone through the Big Book and annotated it comparing it to Islam. His father had produced a generally accepted (and generally liberal) translation of the Qu'ran.
The 3rd step prayer begins, roughly, "My creator, I offer myself to thee to build with me and do with me what you will."
His father's apostasy and, I believe, mental illness was tolerated until the late '80s. But he began to acquire an international following. A loose coalition of of disparate Muslims had him killed in 1990. But other sects of Islam also have accepted later "messengers," creating other splinter sects. Is that change? How about Sufism? Hijab practices are hugely diverse, each based on the same Arabic text. It's almost like things come and go just based on fashion.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is running for president of Iran again, reportedly in defiance of Supreme Leader Khamenei, who supposedly has a direct line to God (Supreme Leader is a pretty recent construct per my understanding of Shi'ite tradition.) Is defying the Supreme Leader defying God? Is Mahmoud still Muslim? Has Islam changed?
The picture of Mahmoud embracing Hugo Chavez's uncovered mother was very controversial. She was an older woman, but not ancient. Attempts to mask the photo varied from place to place. Was Mahmoud sinning? Or possibly the definition of sin changes from place to place?
When will we decide that Islam has changed? No more attacks, ever? International polling? A growing awareness that Lebanese food is delicious and most Iranians just want to sell us carpets? When there are no more moles to whack? Could be pretty soon. Or not. Islam is a younger religion than Christianity or Judaism but globalization could accelerate change PDQ. The suicide bomber gene could deselect itself. There is "live and let live" Islam that is far more prevalent than many Americans realize.
Why is that best? Do you actually do translations? I don't know if either you or A'isha are literally translating 7th-century Arabic, or just comparing different Qu'rans online (there are scads).
I don't think it's difficult at all. I don't know NT Greek either but here's an example (my examples are all from novels, FWIW). In "Absolute Truths" a clergyman going through a series of disasters keeps repeating, "All things work together for good for them that love God." But he struggles. Later another priest, his archenemy, points out the interpretation, "All things intermingle for good for those that love God." Same NT Greek verb.
One sounds like, mix everything together and bake a lovely cake. The other suggests an interplay of darkness and light that forms a pattern and reveals one aspect of divinity. IOW, the suffering has meaning. IOW, redemption.
Meanings of words change constantly. Does God tell man, "I created you," or "I writhed in agony [giving birth] to create you"? Was femininity systematically purged from the Bible? Both OT and NT God are male. Allah transcends gender. Iran pays for gender-reassignment surgery. Enlightened? Perhaps in that one area. Did Islam change?
How can Matthew say commas and periods will be preserved when neither existed in the 2nd century? Could it be "not a dot" or "not a speck" or "not an iota"? Yes. Because there are scads of translations.
Ancient scripture is unintelligible, IMO (and I've heard that modern Arabic can be used to elaborately say nothing). Evidence: Christianity ranging from Catholic Workers to Westboro Baptist Church. Raging religious wars in centuries past. Splinters form and further splinter. The Book of Mormon can be interpreted different ways, with more being "revealed" to you if you want, say, a new teenage wife. Then, when that becomes politically inconvenient, another prophet gets another revelation that says, "Oops, never mind. God just told me marriage consists of one man and one woman."
But the splinter groups stay splintered and then splinter further. Did Mormonism change? (Does anything ever reconcile?)
It is the very nature of poetic language to be ambiguous. In a way, that's what makes it poetic language.
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Minoosh
Penultimate Amazing
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Actually a lot of what you and A'isha write goes whoosh, right over my head. I have the temperament and training to play with words, to appreciate multiple layers of meaning and to strip away layers. But I am not a scholar. Side-by-side translations online (thus stripped of any physical scraps of support or stone tablets) are wildly disparate in both multiple online Bibles and multiple online Qu'rans. Neither was written for clarity, IMO. There's some broad consensus that you shouldn't lie, steal, kill, cheat on your spouse and worship idols (which IMO we pretty much all do). There's no God but God. I don't believe Islam should have holy places but most Muslims probably disagree with me. I don't know why Catholics pray in front of statues.
Last night on a long desert drive I was listening to callers earnestly discussing the Book of Revelations, much like someone would call in to discuss their favorite sports team's win or loss. I'm like, dudes, you are basing these comments on a hallucination. Some scribe ate too much moldy bread. I also find the Qu'ran unreadable in the translation I have, and reading different translations doesn't help. It doesn't matter what something says; it matters what people think it says. I agree with A'isha that Islam is not some abstract entity with a clearly spelled out ideology. It's the sum of the people who follow it, or at least identify with it. Same with other major religions.