Someone asked me a while back what I thought was out of date in Islam and I realized I had neglected to reply.
I think that, taken as a historical phenomenon, Islam and the Qur’an were revolutionary. It was easily the best of the medieval religions, especially for women. It pushed the social boundaries as far as they could reasonably be pushed. However, in some cases what was then socially progressive and amazing is now actually a step backward.
Examples of revolutionary thinking (or revolutionary instructions from God, depending on your point of view):
Women had the right of divorce and could own property. All a woman’s money is hers to do with as she pleases. She could not be married against her will. You must have actual witnesses to adultery, not just circumstantial evidence, and if the accusation is proven false, the accusers get punished. In Europe, none of this was true. Much of it was common practice in Arabia, but Islam solidified it.
Examples of rules which went as far as they could at the time:
Two women’s testimonies are as good as one man’s when acting as witnesses to a contract.
Yes, it looks like a woman is only half as good as a man, until you realize that previous, women were not thought of as worthy or capable of being witnesses at all.
You may only beat your wife with a stick below a certain size.
Looks awful unless you understand that previously you could kill your wife with few consequences and there was no limit as to how badly you could hurt her, also with no penalty.
In these cases, I think that idea may have been that women were equal and nobody should beat anyone, but telling people that would have been too big a step at that time.
Examples of things that don’t reflect the world we live in:
The modesty thing. The Qu’ran says to draw your headcloth over your chest, not to stomp your feet when walking, and not to show off. Everyone wore a headcloth then, partially to keep your hair from getting too yucky in a desert where water baths were not particularly available, partially as a sunshade, and partially to wrap around the face in case of a dusty wind. Given the styles worn at the time, what this comes down to TO ME is Don’t show off how rich you are. Women wore their wealth in portable form as jewelry in necklaces, anklets, and earrings. If you cover your chest, nobody sees your necklaces. Likewise, the headcloth worn so will obscure earrings and if you don’t stomp, nobody will hear your anklets. This has two purposes. It keeps envy from affecting your interactions. It also keeps the other tribes who enjoy raiding from thinking that these women are rich and worth carrying off. Makes perfect sense then.
However, in modern day America, nobody wears a headcloth, and you can get huge gold-plated bling-bling at the mall for ten bucks so flashy jewelry isn’t a symbol of wealth. Nowadays, you don’t raid someone’s house if you think they’re richer that you, you just dis them on your next rap CD. So why would a modern American woman wear a headcloth? To look like an Arab from 600 C.E.? I’m all for identifying yourself as part of a group, but why do something that makes you and your religion look like weirdos? If you’re Pakistani, wear a salwar kameez. If you’re Bedouin, wear a thob and, yes, a headcloth. I see nothing at all wrong with keeping your culture. If you’re American, choose a high-neck one-piece swimsuit instead of a thong bikini, but do go to the beach.
There are other things but these are just what come to mind. I apologize for them being chick-centric. Owning a uterus does tend to make me think of woman-stuff first but that’s not to say it’s more important.
Martin, (and you too, HennaDancer) thanks for your effort and good humor in trying to pass on the knowledge.
My Question is this: What do you think Islam and its followers can do to repair its image in the West? Or, if you prefer, does it need to?
Just stumbled upon this…
http://www.answering-christianity.com/beating_no.htm
The author makes a very good linguistic argument that “beat” in Qur’an 4:34, the verse so beloved to CHRISTIAN MISSIONARIES, (bite me), actually means “seperate” or “leave”, a reading more consistant with other commandments and even some hadiths that seem to prohibit it altogether.
There are other sources and rulings that limit any beating to a symbolic one.
Here’s Yusuf Ali’s translation first:
4:34 Men are the protectors and maintainers of women, because God has given the one more (strength) than the other, and because they support them from their means. Therefore the righteous women are devoutly obedient, and guard in (the husband’s) ab sence what God would have them guard. As to those women on whose part ye fear disloyalty and ill-conduct, admonish them (first), (Next), refuse to share their beds, (And last) beat them (lightly); but if they return to obedience, seek not against them Means (of annoyance): For God is Most High, great (above you all).
And here is the author if the article’s alternate translation of the relevant bit:
(4:34) […]as for those women whose animosity or ill-will you have reason to fear, then leave them alone in bed, and then separate; and if thereupon they pay you heed, do not seek a way against them.
It is the opinion of a Sufi sheikh of my acquaintance that the original “disloyalty and ill conduct” is likely to refer to a woman actually prostituting herself behind a husband’s back. He comes to this conclusion from an examination of the Arabic words used in comparison with use of the same words elsewhere.
Also…If a man is guilty of so much as flirting with another woman, his wife has a right to divorce and he gets a public lashing of ten strokes. Those who toss around the wife beating verse never mention this side of Islamic Law.
The stick size question is from the opinion of several scholars, but is not in the Qur’an. There might be something in the Hadiths. there usually is. [/dismay]
There is a saying among scholars of Hadith, “You can find a tradition to support any position, and if you can’t find one, I’ll write one for you.” This is less true now than in the decades prior to Muhammad’s death. Now, the collections are pretty much set. I use them as inspiration and occasionally as a useful commentary on Scripture. I tend to question any that are inconsistant with Compassion and Mercy, (Ar-Rahman and Ar-Rahim) the two names of Allah that every practicing muslim repeats dozens to hundreds of times each day.
Another note:
Before Muhammad received the Revelation, women among the Arabs could be beaten with impunity, even to death, had no rights of divorce or inheritance, were actually treated as chattel, and essentially had no rights at all. This was also the practice among Byzantine Christians at the time, as was purdah, or “seclusion” and full facial veiling.
Martin
The answer is simple, JIHAD! We muslims must struggle to change the perception of the Faith in America and the rest of the West . We have centuries of negative propaganda to overcome, some misrepresentations dating back to the Crusades, as well as recent history.
We must be visible in denouncing those who use Islam as a justification for atrocities. This part has the extra challenge in getting airtime or print space, as the media loves bad muslim stories, which get better ratings.
We must be visible in contemproary life doing exactly what we do. Living, working, and contributing. We must also bet the public used to us as we are. Perhaps one day, inshallah, the sight of people praying in public will not be so strange. Perhaps one day, bearded men in robes and turbans will inspire respect at their convictions, rather than fear by association.
We must be involved in dialogue. Not just inter-faith, but also between the secular, commercial society and Islam… It could be argued that this is more relevent to contemporary life than Christianity.
If we get frustrated we can only pray, trust in Allah, and persevere.
Martin
Thanks.
I recognize that I did get a bit “techy” back on thursday or so. Sorry about that.
Peace,
martin
How valid is this phenomenom? Because, certain questions some Americans always ask (even on this enlightened message board) are: “Where are the moderate Muslims?” and “Where are those who unequivocally denounce violence against innocents?” and IMO these need to be addressed.
I have a feeling that in our media-driven world the silence on the Muslim community’s part can be construed as tacit approval of 9/11 or other acts of terrorism. So could you elaborate on the media’s role in portrayal of Islam and giving airtime to the community?
P.S: It is a strange world we live in where Hollywood producers change fictional plots to avoid controversy (which some see as “appeasing”) while at the same time your opinion on the media may indeed have some merit too.
I was a practising Soto Zen Buddhist for awhile. 
NOT originally poted by HennaDancer! Posted by HennaDancer’s oblivious but cute husband. Good stuff, though.
I have found one aspect of this (great!) thread especially interesting, and that is the similarity of many of the terms used to Hebrew. Here is just a few that stand out …
my format is Arabic - Hebrew = common meaning
salaam - shalom = peace
kaafir - kafor b’ikar = to deny the existance of G-d
raheem - rahem = mercy
tahara - tahara = (ritual) purity
There’s probably many others as well, but it does go to show how much the religions have in common - the “semitic” brotherhood.
The moderate Muslims are in their homes playing Chutes and Ladders with their kids. They live next door to the Jews who you don’t hear about denouncing the actions of Israel against the Palestinians. On the other side of them live Christians who you don’t hear saying anything about the recent priestly abuse scandal.
If the person blowing people up says I’m a Muslim or I’m a Catholic or I’m a Little Green Man from Venus, then the media will report that as it’s a newsmaker saying it. However, the rest of the Muslims and Catholics and Little Green Men from Venus are going on with their lives and that’s boring, unless you have an unhealthy fascination with Chutes and Ladders. Excitement sells copies and gets viewers. If you have ten pages of story on what’s big and flashy, people will buy. If you have a story on some guy who has a religion… I mean, it’s human interest to cover a non-American Gothic point of view, but that’s buried in the middle of the Life Section that nobody actually reads.
salaam - shalom = peace
kaafir - kafor b’ikar = to deny the existance of G-d
raheem - rahem = mercy
tahara - tahara = (ritual) purity
Something went wrong with my last post .:smack:
I find one aspect of this (great!) thread especially interesting, in the similarities of many of the Arabic terms used to Hebrew. Some examples are :
my format is arabic - hebrew = meaning
salaam - shalom = peace
kaafir - kafor b’ikar = to deny the existance of G-d
raheem - rahem = mercy
tahara - tahara = (ritual) purity
This should go to show at least something of the brotherhood of the two “semitic” religions.
Putting aside a discussion of modern Calvinists writers, this highlights a serious problem, both for you and for Islam. You are personally close to falling into the “no True Muslim” fallacy when you say things like, “As for marraiges in which one converts and the other doesn’t, it is ok, as long as the muslim partner is free to practice. If he or she is prevented from doing so, there is grounds for divorce.” It’s not necessarily “Ok,” many Muslims disagree.
The problem for Islam is that while your version of “liberal” Islam seems perfectly compatible with western liberal democracy, many variants of Islam are not. In fact, my guess is that most Muslims are closer to the conservative Islam of the Salafis than they are to your version. While it is true that this has as much to do with culture as it does with religion, it remains a serious issue that Islam as a whole is not doing a very good job of addressing.
**
Not to mention two semitic languages.
Hello,
I often find myself defending Islam from ignorant assertions made in the occasional thread along with Tomndebb, Tamerlane, Collounsbury (peace be upon him) and others but I am not a muslim myself. I have a couple of questions for you:
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What are your views regarding sharia law?
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What are your views regarding the separation of church and state? Should the state put into effect “God’s law” ie sharia or “man’s law guided by God” ie we ignore a large part of sharia and do what we think works best?
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I understand that muslims believe that Jesus was not in fact crucified but that the man who was crucified was a lookalike, a doppelganger. Do you believe this? If so, how did they manage to find an exact “body-double” of Jesus at such short notice? And one who was willing to be crucified in his stead at that?
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As far as I am aware non-muslims are not allowed into Mecca and Medina at any time of year (not just during Hajj). I have no problem with this since Saudi can do what they want (it’s their country), however the black stone situated in Mecca would appear to be quite obviously a meteorite that fell to earth many centuries ago. Why not allow some scientific analysis to take place in order to determine what manner of matter it is? The Catholic church did, after all, allow scientific analysis of the Turin Shroud.
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The method of killing animals halal is much the same as kosher except that with halal the person killing the animal has to say allahu akbar (God is great) when slitting it’s throat. According to Islam, saying “God is great” when you kill the animal makes it ok to eat. I daresay God knows he’s great and doesn’t need telling every two minutes by people all over the world. What’s going on there then?
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The dietary restrictions on eating pork would appear to come from the fact that pork harbours more harmful bacteria than other meats (lamb, chicken etc) and therefore 2000 years ago people got ill by eating under-prepared pork so pork was banned. Nowadays we understand about bacteria so these restrictions are not necessary. As long as pork is stored and cooked properly it’s perfectly safe to eat.
But anyway, my question is - do muslims think that pigs are dirty animals? Above and beyond the fact that eating pork is bad, are pigs themselves bad in some way? A Jewish friend of mine told me that pigs are dirty animals because they mate with their mothers and sisters and they eat shit but rats also mate with their kin if no other female is around and lots of animals eat shit (shit has lots of nutrients).
- Do you intend to get circumcised? If so, why?
Hello,
I never intended to represent all muslims and all variations of opinion. Much of this comes down to differences in schools of jurisprudence or Mahdhabs. The Salafi and Wahhabi, whetner they admit it of not, ( and they don’t) follow the Hanbali school. One of the usual features of Hanbali is the rigid application and enforcement of the strictest interpretation possible or the Qur’an and Sunnah. A note, most Hanbalis are not necessarily like the Wahhabis or Salafis
Most muslims I know belong to the Hanafi or Shaf’i schools, a bit more lenient. I don’t have the depth of knowledge to go into a detailed comparison of the four.
Your guess regarding how much the majority of muslims lean toward the conservative Salafiyya is worth about as much as any guess can be. Unless you have some inside knowledge or verifiable statistics that I lack…
I only claim to represent myself, and by extension, those with whom I am acquainted. Most muslims recognize the need to balance an Islamic lifestyle with what we call the Dunya, or the demands of the temporal world .
Martin
Wow!
Your “couple of questions” almost inspires me to quote something or other about the Spanish Inquisition;)
Sharia law is an odd subject. It’s origins are essentially the work of generations of scholars based first on the Qur’an, then on the Sunnah, then on Jewish law when the first two are silent on a question, and then upon the independant judgemant of centuries of precedence.
Very complicated. I don’t necessarily agree with all of the Laws, nor do I know them. Sharia is not essential to my religions belief or spiritual life.
I cannot advocate for the Sharia, as applied and understood in the Muslim world, being made the legal code for a muslim majority nation, never mind a secular or pluralistic one. The focus has been upon being as harsh as possible, apparantly to convince Allah of your country’s sincerity. This is inconsistant with my understanding of the Nature of Allah, nor the example of the Prophet in his legal conclusions. The actual application of law during Muhammad’s life was lenient, giving the lightest possible sentence or none at all. On some occasions, The Prophet turned away from a defendant and asked them not to confess to him.
Talk to the hand?
On the topic of Jesus, Yusuf Ali’s translation:
"4:157 That they said (in boast), “We killed Christ Jesus the son of Mary, the Apostle of God”;- but they killed him not, nor crucified him, but so it was made to appear to them, and those who differ therein are full of doubts, with no (certain) know ledge, but only conjecture to follow, for of a surety they killed him not:-
4:158 Nay, God raised him up unto Himself; and God is Exalted in Power, Wise"
That is about all the Qur’an says on the subject. I suspect that the Hadiths may go into more detail, but nothing shows up in a search of the database.
Who are the “theya” you mention?I have heard it said that either Judas or James bore a striking resemblance to Jesus. Even if it was not one of the Apostles, if Allah wants someone to think something, then I have no doubt they will be thinking it. See the above verse, 4:158:D
No “body-double” or “doppleganger” necessary if the Creator and Sustainer of The Worlds is involved!
I believe this is known as “Deus ex machina”.
I’m not sure what analysis of the Stone would prove. It has almost certainly been there at least 1400 years. Regardless of it’s origins, it has been sanctified as part fo the Hajj ritual, same as all of the other activities that were practiced before Muhammad. There are other details of Islam that are not essential to the Point that are sanctified survivals of earlier practices, modified as to not conflict with the Oneness of Allah. I would personally have no problem with a few tests
Start a petition to Riyadh…
Halal is very similar to Kashrut. The animal must have been raised cleanly and humanely, be a lawful animal in the first place, not be arfaid or agitated at the time of slaughter, be killed with a single stroke of a very sharp knife, severing the major blood vessels on both sides of the neck, all blood must be drained.
The actual words said are “Bismillah Ir-Rahman Ar-Rahim”, meaning “In the Name of Allah The Compassionate, The Merciful” or “Bismillah Allahu Akbar”, “In the Name of Allah the Greatest”. Keep in mind that those are merely incomplete representations of what the Arabic means. The reason for this is to recognize that we are taking a life that Allah created. We did not make it, we are using it with permission and recognition of the Source, and that we do not do it lightly.
No, Allah does not need to be constantly praised, As-Samad, (The Eternal, self-subsistant) needs nothing. It is for our own benefit that we recognize these facts as often as possible, the better to get over ourselves, the better to be humble.
We are forbidden to even touch any part of the pig, as it is unclean. As for the modern food science argument, I am willing to give up pork in obedience, as I lack understanding. It is true that pigs and humans are very similar in chemistry, and diseases pass very easilybetween us. With the cannibal feeding that we still do in the US, the next nasty prion disease is just around the corner, and people who don’t eat pork or touch pigs may be in the unenviable position of trying not to say, “Told you so”
I was circumcised at birth, as were a large percentage of Americans of my generation. I have not had my sons snipped, nor do intend to. That decision was made before my conversion and still stands. If they want to make that Covenant when they reach an age of understanding, they can. This is one point on which I differ from most muslims.
Martin
Non-muslims used to be allowed to go to Mecca apparently. Some still do, but very unofficially. Eg when a major telco installed a mobile network there, they had to get a non-muslim specialist in, there just weren’t any muslims available with the necessary skills at the time. It was all very unofficial and hushed up (but they told me, a journalist!)
A muslim friend recently told me that non-muslims got banned from Mecca when a tunnel was discovered where people were trying to break their way in (to where? the stone?) and these tunnel diggers were apparently “the jews.”
I have no idea if there is any truth in this - or whether any non-muslim group has ever threatened anything in Mecca in anyway. Martin do you know?
I wish I knew. Sounds silly to me, as the individual Jewish tribes that caused the troubles weren’t much of a problem by the time Mecca was reclaimed. I know that there are spscific scriptural references banning polytheists, but the Jews don’t count. Trinitarian Christians are frequently considered to be in that category, though.
I just hate it when anyone, particularly a muslim uses the phrase “The Jews” like it’s some monolithic organization.
Makes everyone assiciated sound like a moron.
Martin
My (limited) understanding is that the animal must be facing Mecca at the time of slaughter. A few years ago, I worked in a Kosher restaurant, where the chief chef was a devout Muslim. He asked his Imam whether he could eat our kosher meat and was told that while it was not “unclean”, because the animal was not facing Mecca it was forbidden to him to eat.
Most Muslims will eat kosher when halal is not avaidable, but apparently kosher isn’t halal, I don’t know about the direction, but I think that the slaughterer is meant to speak God’s name when the animal dies.