Yes. They’re a tiny minority, but they are going through the motions – collecting Temple implements, carving a cornerstone, etc.
As with nearly all else, in Judaism, you can find opinions both ways. Some Jews say, yes, we could re-build the Temple, re-introduce ceremonial sacrifice, and put those with the right surnames (Cohens) back into the priesthood.
Others say that Rabbinical Judaism, as we know it today, is just fine, and serves the religious needs perfectly well. There is no need for a physical Temple and a hereditary priesthood.
The latter is, by far, the majority view. But, as oft is said, if you get ten Jews together, you’ll end up with at least ten different theological opinions.
An even greater majority hold that rebuilding would be a rotten idea, because someone else’s temples now stand on the real-estate in question, and tearing down someone else’s house of worship to build one of your own is pretty tacky.
(Credit to Islam for converting Hagia Sophia to a mosque rather than razing it. And, anyway, it’s a museum now, not a fane of any sort.)
How is converting somebody else’s place of worship to your own better than razing it? It doesn’t show any more respect to the people you’ve taken it from. I’d give the Turks credit if they kept it as a church. Converting it to a mosque, though, is just as disrespectful as burning it down.
Exactly. It, at least, leaves open the abstract possibility of restoration.
The Syrians put statues of Zeus up in the Jewish Temple – “the abomination that causes desolation” – but, bad as that was, tearing the Temple down would have been worse.
(Leave it to the Romans to go the whole distance when it comes to atrocities.)
Oh, please. To say that religion and politics are intertwined in the same way between the US (or any Western Country) and the Middle East is laughable on the face of it.
Egypt was Egypt under Mubarak and it was still Egypt under The Muslim Brotherhood.
One of my cherished myths from childhood histories was that the Romans literally salted the ground so that nothing would grow when they wanted to crush someone’s city.
In the US, at least, they certainly are intertwined in the same way. The only difference between Alabama’s Roy Moore and Egypt’s Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh is the particulars of the religion they follow (and the fact that the former gets to impose his Christianist views as Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court while the latter holds no office whatsoever).
Then why did you call out Egypt as being different somehow after electing the Brotherhood?
Roy Moore is not representative of the US and I have no idea if the other guy is representative of Egypt, but I don’t know what you think you’ve proven with that statement.
He’s certainly representative of the state in the US I live in (and I picked him solely because I live in that state - I could easily have asked you about Mike Huckabee, or Bobby Jindal, or a number of other Republican elected officials here in the US). That’s why he was elected (not appointed) to be Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Alabama (after being removed the first time).
How does the intertwining of religion and politics as represented by Roy Moore differ from the intertwining of politics as represented by Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh? What do you think separates the role and preeminence of God, God’s laws, and scriptural support for both of those things in government as promoted by Moore from the role and preeminence of God, God’s laws, and scriptural support for both of those things in government as promoted by Fotouh?
You’re right - that was an addition made by Ramira when she quoted you. My apologies.
I have no idea who that guy is, so it wouldn’t make any sense for me to compare them. But since we’re talking about countries, why don’t you compare Obama with King Salman bin Abdulaziz (of Saudi Arabia).
Or, we could not play that stupid game at all and recognize that the national governments of the Middle East typically mix the political and the religious in ways that you just don’t see in the US. There is no US equivalence of the Wahabbi madrasas you see in Saudi Arabia or elsewhere in the region financed by S.A.
Then compare and contrast Moore’s views on the role and preeminence of God, God’s laws, and scriptural support for both of those things in government to Morsi’s, if you like.
One is an elected head of a representative democracy with term limits, the other is a hereditary absolute monarch. Both are religious men, but neither holds any clerical position or heads any religious institution or hierarchy, instead serving as heads of state with executive power distinct from (and devoid of) any religious authority within their respective countries.
Only in terms of degree, perhaps. Certainly not in terms of kind - as I’ve sad, the role and preeminence of God, God’s laws, and scriptural support for both of those things in government is pretty much the same among Christianists in the US as it is among Islamists in the Middle East.
Uh, yeah there are. A madrasa is merely a school of any type, though when talking about a “Wahhabi madrasa” people usually mean a specifically religious school intended to instill within its students a specifically conservative, fundamentalist religious education.
In which case the US is jam-packed with them, ranging from the nationally-influential seminary at Bob Jones University which trains fundamentalist evangelical preachers to small, local “Christian Academies” for ensuring that fundamentalist evangelical children are inculcated with proper Biblical values and insulated from dangerous secular knowledge and worldy sin.
Well, okay, but a really significant difference in degree is hard to distinguish from a difference in kind.
There aren’t any U.S. Christianists who are successfully able to issue decrees – fatwahs. No one here listens. (And the FBI will investigate if the decree is sufficiently threatening.) Our extremists certainly exist, but in so vastly smaller proportions as to make a complete difference in terms of individual safety.
In Iran, the Imams will find me if I talk trash about them. In the U.S., I literally have zero fear of this. I can go right up to Tim LaHaye and tell him he’s full of prunes, and I don’t have any concern that his people will follow me home and capture me.
People in Justice Moore’s home state…home town…home street!..can write letters to the newspaper saying they disagree with him, and not have to fear being harmed.
What I see is a lot of very poor informaiton about the MENA… Mace makes wild statements about the Kingdom financing madrasas - schools in the MENA. He can cite that perhaps - the government, not the private individuals - the private Saudis funding the non licensed schools. This does not look different from what Aicha mentions.
Then there is "fatwas’ - which are nothing more than the religious opinions and excepting in the Saudi arabia have no more force of the law in the MENA region than does the declarations of the preacher in the USA. That is, they have no force of law.
The problem is Americans thnk they know things about the MENA but in fact do not know very much, but a melange of the impressions from the Saudi (more true) and extrapolating this to all the MENA.
it is very clear that Monty is quite right in the extent of his comment which is now being Straw Manned into mountains of straw because you do not like the comparison, althouhg it was limited. The american politics has much religious influence impacting it, in particuar if you compare it to the european politics - and the american understanding of the MENA political situaiton exagerates in its turn (like the idiot states I see all the time such as in GQ asserting that banks in the Muslim countries cannot charge interest - “knowledge” that is only badly informed stereotypes).
Thisis nice, but then you can provide the accurate citations for the govenrment finanicng and not the private I am sure…
because in most of the MENA the schools are not these “wahabbi schools” but ordinary state secular schools… (bad quality ones)
Of course you “knew that” … (or maybe you confuse the Asians with us, the Pakistan and the Afghanistan… it is also the muslims yes? no differences to be made)
A fatwa is not a “decree”, it’s merely an interpretation or opinion issued by a religious scholar on a point of theology or religious law. Which happens all the time among Christian preachers, pastors, priests, and ministers.
In Iran, which is actually a repressive theocracy (as in, the government is explicitly controlled by religious figures directly ruling as God’s representatives on Earth), talking smack about said figures will get you into trouble at least as much because you’re talking about a government figure in a totalitarian state (criticizing government officials in a secular totalitarian state isn’t exactly conducive to your health either) as because you’re talking smack about a religious figure.
Since it’s a theocratic state ruled directly by clerics, fatawa issued by the Supreme Leader of Iran work somewhat differently than they do when issued by any other cleric. For one thing, unlike the vast majority of the Muslim world, there are no religious figures who can issue a competing fatwa to one that the Supreme Leader issues.
Islam is a wholly decentralized religion, and pretty much anyone can issue their own fatwa on anything they like (and they often do - when you hear about a sensational news item about some wacky religious ruling issued by some crazy Muslim cleric somewhere, it’s because of this). Muslims aren’t required to follow any given fatwa unless it’s issued by someone they personally consider a religious authority on the matter, and even then Muslims can reject that authority and follow a different authority who has issued a completely contradictory fatwa on the same subject, if they like. This difference of theological opinion is even enshrined in the fact that there are five distinct main “schools” of religious jurisprudence (four Sunni and one Shia), which quite often contradict each other on core precepts.
In countries like Iran, however, there are people who can override the jurisprudential independence of individual clerics, and enforce a blanket interpretation on the whole system and everyone inside it. So, not only can the Supreme Leader of Iran issue an interpretation, his particular interpretation is binding on every subordinate cleric and citizen of the country he rules, and its enforcement is backed up by its government.
Iran’s way of doing things is an aberration not just within Islam, but within Shia Islam - the most influential Shia cleric outside of Iran, Grand Ayatollah al-Sistani, has condemned the system that Khomeini established.
