A muslim is supposed to at least remember some form of Allah’s name(s) when doing just about everything in life.
“Bismillah Ir-Rahman Ar-Rahim”- “In the Name of Allah The Compassionate The Merciful”,when starting nearly anything
“Alhamdulillah”- “All praises to Allah” just about constantly.
“Audhubillahi minas-shaitan Ir-Rajim”- “I seek refuge In Aallaah from the accursed Satan” when thinking of sin, remembering a sin committed, entering an unclean place or a place of sin.
“Mashallah”- “As Allah wills it” when seing anything good or desirable or when recieving praise.
“Inshallah”- “If Allah wills it” when making a promise or stating intent.
“Jazakullah Khayrun”-“May Allah reward you” considered better than the secular Arabic, “Shukran” or thanks.
There are a few more, but I just woke up.
This may all seem ponderous, but the concept behind it is very important in Islam. We must recognize that, ultimately, all things come from Allah, and we really deserve praise for nothing. We depend upon Allah for everything and should be constantly praising Allah to cleanse our hearts of arrogance…
Twomore, very important when one finishes a statement of what one believes to be religious truth:
“Astaghfirullah”- “May Allah forgive me” if I misrepresent.
and
“Allah Hafiz”- “Allah is The Knower of all things”
I seem to recall a two or three posters who seem to have done a series of hit-and-runs. They posted a bunch of stuff, insisted that I answer it, and haven’t responded to my responses.
Do I o-fend?
<sniffs pits>
I was under the impressiom that this was a section for debates. not strafing runs.
BrianLumkin(spelling corrected from several mispelled posts), x-ray, UnuMondo, come back!
I am sure that there are dozens of poorly researched,
misinformed websites to paste from…
Seriously, I was expecting some response at least. Even a “You’re full of it. Islam sucks anyway” would be some recognition of all the work I did in responding.
Please note the mock indignation and petulance assumed for comic effect.
I’m still curious about separation of religion and state within Islam. Christianity and Judaism seem to have the idea of a separation between the High Priest and King. Does Islam?
I’d also like to add my thanks for spending the time answering all these questions.
except that the koran is pretty specific on this point. You quoted part of verse 4:157. In my copy of the koran the full paragraph is as follows:
“They denied the truth and uttered a monstrous falsehood against Mary. They declared: “We have put to death the Messiah, Jesus the son of Mary, the Apostle of God”. They did not kill him, nor did they crucify him, but they thought they did”
That last sentence is given an alternative literal translation (in my koran) of “he was made to resemble another for them”.
I’m afraid I have a BIG problem with this. This one issue is so important that, from where I’m sitting, the whole of Islam stands or falls on it.
Muhammed claims that Jesus was not crucified. Uh? This offends me not as a christian (I wouldn’t call myself a christian) but as a lawyer:
according to the bible (our earliest written evidence of these events) Jesus was crucified. There is no suggestion that there was any doubt whatsoever over the identity of the man crucified.
while Jesus was dragging his cross through the streets, various people he knew (such as Mary Magdalene) came up to help him. They all seemed to think he was Jesus.
when Jesus died, Joseph of Arimathea, who had known Jesus since he was a boy and may have been his uncle, personally took his body down from the cross and laid it in the tomb. He seems to have thought it was Jesus.
the Roman Chronicles note that a man named “Christos” known to some as the Messiah was crucified during the reign of Herod. So the Romans seem to think they got the right man.
you say “Who are the “theya” you mention?” Good question. Who would have been responsible for getting this body double into place? Jesus was betrayed, the apostles had no idea that Jesus was going to be arrested so they couldn’t have arranged for the lookalike to sit in for Jesus when the Romans arrived. Once Jesus had been arrested he was in Roman custody for the whole time until he was crucified, I doubt the Romans would have made the switch.
you say “I have heard it said that either Judas or James bore a striking resemblance to Jesus.” Not sure where you got this from. I don’t think it says it in either the bible or the koran. James may have been Jesus’ cousin but that doesn’t mean anything - my cousins don’t look anything like me.
So the Jews seemed to think that Jesus was crucified, the Christians seemed to think that Jesus was crucified, the impartial Romans seemed to think that Jesus was crucified - in fact, everyone who was around at the time seemed to think that Jesus was crucified.
In fact, there was never any suggestion that Jesus wasn’t crucified until Muhammed plucked the idea from the air 600 years later. All the evidence we have suggests that the man who was crucified all those years ago was in fact Jesus. The only “evidence” against it being Jesus is the word of some guy who turned up centuries after the event.
Its no good trying to weasel your way around this fact by saying “well God is so powerful he can do anything, make people believe anything”. This is Deus ex Machina - suddenly bringing God into the equation in order to negate something to which all the available evidence points.
I would like to point out that all the evidence we have except for the Roman stuff was written at the earliest 40 years after The Guy died (or whatever else happened). It’s not exactly first-hand. At that, you say that the Apostles didn’t know Jesus was going to get crucified. It’s fairly clear in my Bible that Jesus did, at least, and he knew who was going to tell on him. Re-read that Last Night Out With the Boys bit.
Also, I think it’s pretty silly to say that you can accept the whole burning bush/parting the Red Sea/raising the dead/making the blind see/not being eaten by hungry lions/water to wine/creating really everlasting gobstoppers set of miracles (okay, one of those I made up as an exercise for the reader.) BUT you have problems with God being able to make one guy look like another? Maybe Bruce, Jesus’s little-mentioned third cousin from Sicily, had exactly the same color hair and was about the same height. Maybe that whole bit where Jesus gets stopped by that guy who wanted to carry his cross for him was just a diversion so that Bruce could slip in, put on the Groucho glasses that Jesus had been wearing all along, and get crucified in his stead. The only way you’d know is if God let you notice the strange tan lines on Jesus’s face, and geez, that’s pretty easy to cover up even if you only use the makeup kit provided by Bruce’s drag queen little brother Wanda and not relying on God at all.
There’s some other stuff that I disagree with here but now Martin wants a turn at it. This is, after all, his thread.
The Bible is supposed to be the word of God and prepared under divine inspiration - after all, it says so. The crucifixion, resurrection and divinity of Jesus is the core belief of Christianity.
The Koran is supposed to be the word of God and prepared under divine inspiration - after all, it says so. The non-divinity of Jesus is a core belief of Islam, hence the need to trash the crucifixion.
One of these has to be wrong, at least with respect to being divinely inspired.
The Bible does not claim to be the Word of God. It’s a history. It tells stories of what happened to a certain group of people and their interaction with God. It is people writing their memories, or in some cases, their versions of stories they have been told. It has been seriously changed over time. For one easily observable instance, the King James version leaves out several books which the Roman Catholic Bible leaves in.
The Qur’an does claim to be the Word of God, spoken directly or through an angel to Muhammed who told it to his people. The Arabs were well known for their oral histories. Shortly after the Prophet’s death, one of the important guys (I forget the name, perhaps Abu Bakr) got everyone together who had memorized this book and said, Okay, we’re writing it down. And they did. And it hasn’t changed since. We know because we have a copy of the Qur’an from shortly after it was first written and it is exactly the same as what you can get today. The only chance that what Muhammad said is not word for word what’s in the Qur’an is that the first gathering of memorizers all got something wrong, and given how big they are on memorization skills, it’s not likely.
I’m not judging on whether the Qur’an IS the word of God, just providing historical context.
I’m with Truth Seeker on this. This has been a strong thread, because it hasn’t fallen into proselitizing, has avoided an “I’m right, you’re wrong” approach, but tried to be instructive as to how martin sees the world. Please keep it this way, or move over to The Pit, where ranting and raving belongs.
Actually, there is no spelled out format of government. The first four leaders of the community, (kalifa, or successor) were elected by an assembly of the elders and respected men, as democratic as one could get in that century. The kalifa could only rule, originally, as long as he was percieved as just and rightious by the community. We are not supposed to suffer a tyrant. Later kalifas became hereditary dynasties and tended to have a ll of the problems associated with that mode of government.
As for High Priest and King…neither concept is particularly Islamic.
More like a President and Spiritual Advisors in the form of scholars. Scholars who can be ignored if you don’t agree with them, not Infallible Divine Representatives.
The majority of your evidence seems to come from the Bible. All of the stuff on Jesus, except what is interpreted as OT prophecy, comes from four accounts written decades after his ministry. I won’t even go there, as a discussion on the validity of the current Christian scriptures would be, (and probably has been…) an entire thread of it’s own. That is outside the scope of this thread.
I do not intend to convince you of anything. What you choose as to the points upon which Islam stands or falls is your business. There is a point upon which a religious person rests on his faith. Atheists, lawyers, and those who percieve themselves to be from opposing religions may shout, rail, attempt logical dissections, or pace back and forth in front of the jury with their hands behind their backs all they like. I’m sure the Christians, Jews, and anyone else with a strong religious belief would agree.
The details of Jesus’s end are not central to my faith. If you have read the rest of this thread, you will discern that I am not a complete literalist.
I agree with my wife. I don’t think that the whole Bible as it stands claims to be the literal Word Of God. There are plenty who do make that claim and I respect them for their convictions.
I never intended to trash the crucifictiion. A question was asked and I answered. I will not have my thread hijacked by “Bible/vs.Quran” Start another thread, and I might jump in.
I believe that an “Ask a Christian” thread would long ago have been hijacked, low-jacked, and jacked out of its socket. There is much selective tolerance afoot at SDMB.
I’m not sure what y’all are getting excited about.
I apologize if my post on the crucifixion offended. I added in a bunch of (I thought it was) humorous stuff to make it more fun to read, and I suspect it may have obscured my intent. What I meant (without embellishment) was that I find it unusual that there are heaps and heaps of unlikely miracles in the Bible and Qur’an but the one that seemed to stick was one that would actually be relatively easy to fake.
As for the Bible not being the Word of God, I was not saying that it was false or wrong or indeed making any value judgement at all, and also the same with the Qur’an. So far as I know, in no version of the Bible does the author say “God says” or “God told me to say…” whatever. Please correct me if you’ve read a version I haven’t. The Qur’an does say this. What I said and meant (and ALL that I said and meant) was that one book makes a claim the other does not.