Addressing al-Andalus specifically, remember too, the Caliphate of Cordoba (the “Golden Age”) was bracketed by Visigoth Spain, which was very bad for Jews, and the taifa kingdoms and the Almoravid and Almohad invasions, which were very bad for Jews. So when you have one good period bordered by two bad periods, the good period seems somehow better than it otherwise would be, and however intolerant the Cordoban Caliphs may have been, they were a lot more tolerant than the Visigoths or the Almohads.
replying to captain amazings reply to me above:
At the outset, I ought to make it clear that I have problems with all organised religions not just islam and 99% of muslims I know are good people who I would trust with my life. This is why it all bothers me so much. It’s not really islam as it is generally practised that bothers me but islam as it would be practised if done properly. But since this thread is about islam…
re Muslim conquest of Spain. You may be correct as to the details however my point was that muslim conquests inevitably involve forced conversion as part of the deal. When the British ruled India, they didn’t try to convert the Indians to Christianity.
My understanding of the crusades is that they were more about driving back the muslims and recapturing Jerusalem and not about converting the inhabitants of any lands they crossed to Christianity.
re the apocalyptic tradition in Islam:
You’re right that Christianity also has such a tradition but in Islamic fundamentalist circles the end of the world is extremely imminent. If you make a peace sign with your fingers, Muhammed said that the time between his life on earth and the end of the world was the distance between your two fingers. Islamists take this to mean that the end is very nigh indeed.
re Islam, tolerance, and democracy
You mention Turkey but it could be argued that Turkey is only like it is because the army have guns pointed at the government. As regards tolerance for other beliefs, try asking the animist/buddhist/christian hill tribes of Bangladesh who have been given the old Islamic choice of convert or die.
Or try asking the non-muslims in the south of Sudan. Or the Christians in Pakistan. In fact, forget about non-muslims, try asking the moderate muslims in Algeria or Egypt or Nigeria or Iran. Whilst Christianity does exist in muslim countries they generally have to keep pretty quiet about their religion. This doesn’t compare very favourably with the status of muslims in “Christian” countries who have complete religious freedom.
In any case, I’m not really talking about how things actually are in muslim countries or how things have been in the past. I’m talking about how things should be in an ideal muslim state. When the Taliban were up and running, Osama used to say that Afghanistan and Yemen were the only two true muslim countries in the world and he was right. Extreme though the Taliban were, they are probably a closer view of genuine islam than any other muslim country.
Islam does indeed forbid music, backgammon, paintings, television etc etc. Islam does indeed state quite clearly that sharia law should be imposed. So those muslim countries that are “moderate” are only moderate because they are deliberately not implementing islam in all it’s glory. The reason they aren’t implementing islam is because (IMO) it’s insane and in their heart of hearts they realise this (even if they don’t realise that they realise it).
eg sharia law is without doubt the shittest legal system ever devised. If you cut a man’s hands off for theft, what happens if you later discover he is innocent?
eg islam forbids interest as usury. It would be hard to run capitalism without interest so islam wants to ban capitalism.
You say:
Well great, so you take into account the view of the muslim community and ignore the non-muslims. That’s not democracy.
re Islam as a threat to civilization
I may have overstated the case here however when you look at the list of things that would be banned in an ideal muslim state, when you look at their attitude to non-muslims (and America in particular), when you look at the legal system they want to introduce, when you consider that today’s radicals may have access to chemical or biological agents and when you consider that air travel has made the world a very small place, you may wonder.
The world is too complex a place for all the answers to be found in one book. I don’t care whether that book is Mein Kampf, Das Kapital, the Koran or Alice in Wonderland (although I would prefer Alice to the other three).
Islam differs from other religions because it is a whole system - religious, political, social and legal. Muslims believe the koran is right solely because the koran tells them it is right. They cannot leave islam because the koran tells them they can’t leave islam.
It’s a closed loop. It leaves no room for thinking outside the box, no room for natural human curiosity. A muslim’s whole thought processes are controlled by the thing that tells them what their thought processes should be. Naturally not all muslims fall into this trap but this is the sinister endgame of islam and in that it is extremely successful (in that many muslims are very devout and even the more secular ones still acknowledge the koran as the word of God).
Other religions aren’t quite so all-pervasive - I could probably live in a hindu dominated world or a buddhist dominated world or a jewish dominated world or a christian dominated world but I wouldn’t fancy living in a muslim dominated world. Can you honestly say that you wouldn’t say the same thing (assuming that the muslim dominated world was proper islam and not islam-lite like we see now in most muslim countries)?
A good parallel is the Iraqi people. For 30 years they have been subject to a totalitarian regime which told them what to think, what to say, how to live. The koran does the same thing only it is much more successful because it isn’t just a political ideology but a religion too.
This means that the people who are enslaved by it don’t even know that they are enslaved. Indeed many of them are willing to die for it without even realising that what they are dying for is the continuation of their own enslavement. It’s perfect, it’s almost genius. It would be funny if it weren’t so sad.
You say:
You are right and this is an argument that muslims themselves use when I confront them with all this. However the fact that Islam does seem to promote equality between races means nothing. It’s not a reason to actually believe any of it, it’s just a side-effect.
Another example of a hole in Islam:
remember the koran is the word of God so it all has to be literally true. For some bizarre reason Noah gets quite a lot of mentions in the koran. Maybe Muhammed liked the animals story (I do too). ok so Noah built his Ark - so was Noah the only person in the world to own a boat?
I don’t know where the Ark was built but let’s assume somewhere in the middle east. So can someone explain to me how the kangaroos managed to get to the middle east? Did they swim? Did they fly? What?
And what about the grizzly bears? Or tortoises?
Jojo, you have set up a straw man with your “ideal” Islam. The “ideal” Islam would have existed under Mohammed and his immediate successors–and it was not the horrible situation you describe. (BTW, can you point to the Sura that prohibits television?)
As to “apocalyptic” Islam, note the presence of any number of Christian cranks, beginning with Hal Lindesy and running through former Secretary of the Interior Watt right up to a number of current televangelists. They are every bit as sure that the “end times” are upon us now (and in the case of Watt, it may have influenced some of his rather horrible decisions regarding public land).
In addition, there is one extreme group within Christian Fundamentalism (not embraced by all Christian Fundamentalists, thankfully), that promotes certain political schemes toward Israel on the grounds that they need their view of Israel established in order to prepare for the last days–clearly politics run amok at the whim of bad theology.
Similarly with problems with the “literal” nature of the Qu’ran: there are constant battles in the U.S. courts to keep Creationism out of classroom and there are many literalists who promote specific laws regarding people’s rights based on their views of various passages.
Who are you to claim that Wahabbists are the “true” Muslims when their theological opinions (much as the theological opinions of the Christian Right in the U.S.) are less than 150 years old? Are you holding a Jack-Chick-for-Islam position that somehow “true” Islam went into hiding for 1100 years, only to resurface, now?
The reality is that someone standing outside the culture of Islam can obviously pick and choose the harshest parts of the Qu’ran to hold up as “true,” just as people can hold up the harshest comments from the Bible as “true,” but saying it does not make it so–especially in the face of statements by practicing Muslims that deny your odd interpretations.
I don’t have time (or the energy…I’m tired) for an in depth reply now, but will just say that while Osama bin Laden and the Taliban are Muslim, it’s a mistake to say that they are somehow more authentically Muslim than other Muslims or what they teach is closer to what the Qu’ran teaches. In fact, the Wahabi movement that shapes most of bin Laden’s world view only dates back to the 18th century, and since its establishment has been a minority view, and in fact, a much criticized view, within Islam. (It’s just one held by a country sitting on the largest oil reserve in the world, which gives Wahabism a power greater than it deserves) Bin Laden’s theological views are even more extreme than mainstream Wahabism. The Taliban come out of the Deobandi school, which only dates back to the 19th century. To say either of them make up “what Islam is supposed to be” is an outrageous view that only they support. The Wahabi aren’t even tolerant of other views within Islam, or even of schools other than Hanafi within Sunni Islam, which is a pretty big departure from the traditional Sunni view that all four schools are equally valid.
Earlier in the thread, Malthus and I quoted some poems by Sufi masters. Sufi is as much a part of Islam as Wahabism, has been around longer, and is much more in the mainstream than Wahabism. To say that the strict paticularlism of Wahabism is somehow authentic to true Islam, while the mystic universalism of Sufi isn’t is doing Islam a grave disservice.
Oh, and Islam doesn’t “forbid music, backgammon, paintings, television etc etc.”, some interpretations of it do.
Read The Two Faces of Islam by Stephen Schwartz. He shows clearly what an aberration Wahhabism is, and how Sufism for many centuries has been the normal understanding of Islam among the vast majority of Muslims.
He found this out for himself in Sarajevo where the Bosnian Jews and Sufi Muslims had lived in peace and harmony for centuries before their shared culture was nearly destroyed. Schwartz really loves the Bosnian folk songs which are Sufi-inspired and integral to the people’s lives. He tells how the Wahhabis tried to hijack the Islam of Bosnia and Kosovo but were rejected by the indigenous Muslims there because the Wahhabis tried to take away their music and stir up hatred.
Schwartz sees hope for the future in the traditional model represented by Bosnian Sufism, once the Muslims gather their collective will to repel Wahhabi influence.
Oh, and please stop calling for an Islamic “reformation.” This “reformation” already happened, and its name is Wahhabi. Schwartz shows how this was wished on the Muslims by Europeans who wanted the Wahhabis to undermine the Ottoman Empire. Never mind that the Ottoman system was made of tolerant Sufis while the Wahhabis who had been promoted by the West eventually turned around and bit it on the ass. Schwartz’s point is that the traditional tolerant, Sufi Islam would be much better for the world if allowed to exist.
Who was calling for the United States and the European countries to intervene and save Bosnia? It was the Jews. “Never again” being their motto.
I have read 9 translations of the Koran, and I believe you will find the following to be true:
(1)the newer the translation, the “kinder” it will be (that is, the translator is trying to appeal to the Western reader), and
(2)Most Muslims do not follow the Koran: the hadith/sunnah have become more important to most Muslims than the Koran.
I mention #2 (above) because I have a Muslim friend that believes the the Koran is the only guide for him. He rejects the hadith/sunnah because he calls them “traditions.”
He didn’t actually have anything to say, it was just a load of expletives about muslims. Nothing on topic, just a load of four letter words expressing his opinion on muslims and islam. No facts, cites or other details given.
I’d be interested in hearing what other posters, especially Islamic ones, have to say about this. What is the state of progressive Islam? Is it growing? I once found this guy during an internet search. Islam in Michigan looks pretty good, based on my scientific sampling of one professor.
Islam doesn’t need a reformation, it needs a humanistic renaissance. Oh, and while we are at it, there are some people around here who didn’t get the memo also.
hmm… I’ll try to explain myself more clearly.
To those posters who are disagreeing with me, I would urge caution. Don’t try to make Islam into a cuddly religion, it’s not. Even Islam’s most staunchest defenders would concede this.
Beagle, that link you gave was interesting but I’m really not at all sure that that guy speaks for most muslims. And on reading some of his articles even he suggests that for islam to work alongside other religions in a democracy, it may be necessary to have two legal systems running parallel to each other - a sharia one and a sane one (sorry, a non-muslim one).
Personally, I’m not at all sure that a sharia legal system is compatable with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, although I could be wrong.
Tomndebb and Captain Amazing, I’m not claiming that wahabism is the true islam. What I am saying is that there are certain beliefs that are common to all branches of sunni islam (and 85-90% of muslims are sunni). When I said that the Taliban probably represent the closest example of true islam I just meant that they rigourously enforced many of the teachings of islam - no music, no idols etc.
The idea of a religious police force patroling the streets beating people up who aren’t being islamic enough is also ok (according to one religious muslim I asked) because the “no compulsion in religion” line only applies to non-muslims. It’s quite ok to force other muslims in a muslim society to be more islamic.
The difference between the Taliban and other muslim societies is that the other societies don’t enforce all the tenets of islam whereas the Taliban did. I accept that the Taliban also did many other things that mainstream islam would condemn - killing thousands of shia, stopping children flying kites, preventing women leaving a burning building, making Hindus wear yellow armbands etc.
Of course, televisions are popular right across the muslim world but I would contend that the majority of muslims would ideally class televisions as idolatry, it’s just that they’re willing to overlook it since TV is so good.
Likewise with music, music is definately considered haram in islam (according to muslims I have asked). Music is of course popular in muslim countries but again muslims are prefering to overlook the strict teachings of islam because music is so good.
Of muslims I know, the religious ones don’t watch television or listen to music. The rest do but would probably concede that they are on shaky ground religiously.
Backgammon is banned because it is a game of chance (which are banned). I think there was some argument about whether chess was haram but, far as I know, the consensus is that chess is ok, just.
Paintings (of living things) are idols and hence forbidden.
Now the above is my understanding of mainstream islam. You may be able to find websites of liberal muslims saying the above is not true but I would contend that these people don’t represent the views of most sunni muslims. Again I emphasise that most muslims do watch TV and listen to music but my point is that in doing so they are knowingly ignoring the strict teachings of their religion.
I would dispute that sufiism has anything much to do with mainstream sunni islam. This site has some info about sufiism. Sufiism became very popular for a while because it is so much more laid back than sunni islam but it is viewed with suspicion by mainstream islam.
It may be that I have misunderstood islam because I am basing my understanding mostly on what muslims have told me rather than on any academic study I have done. And it may therefore be that muslims I know (Bangladeshi, Pakistani) follow one particular style of sunni islam but they assure me that the things that unite sunni islam are greater than the things that divide it.
I would be interested to know whether any of the things I have said strike a chord with posters to this thread who actually live in muslim countries - istara, collounsbury.
Nobody does, which is part of the issue. There is no universal voice in Islam and there is even no universal voice in “mainstream Islam”.
Quite true. The issue of whether music is forbidden ( to take one example ) isn’t one of them.
Unsupportable, since the question of what Islam teaches are heavily in dispute.
But the majority of Muslims don’t. You see what you are continually arguing is a variation of the No True Scotsman… fallacy - “If they were really Muslims they’d believe this…”
But they don’t and they’re still Muslims.
Ask some more. In point of fact it has been a theological debate almost from the start. The Qur’an is ambiguous and nowhere explicitly bans music. The central arguments against music are to be found in a few hadith. These have been challenged as being manufactured by some ( well at least one very prominent medieval hadith scholar I can think of, Iman Ibn Hamza ) and have been pointed out by other scholars as being contradicted by different hadith.
Now what can be said is that early Muslims, following a strict ascetic aesthetic, were deeply suspicious of entertainment and seeming frivolities and as such it became enshrined in the Sunni madhabs ( schools of jurisprudence ) as legalistic doctrine that the use of musical instruments ( excluding a small hand-held drum ) was impermissable. However the debate never went away and such legalistic interpretations are NOT considered holy writ ( if they were, there’d be only one madhab, not 4+ ). There has never been equanimity on this in Islam. Such exemplars of Sunni orthodoxy as the Abbasid Caliphs were active patrons of musicians and musical theorists. A ruler like the Sultan of Delhi Sikandar Lodi, could be considered quite orthodox and pious ( he razed many a Hindu temple ), while still patronizing music ( the compilation work *Lahjat-i-Sikandar Shahi was published under his patronage ) and could do this without any seeming contradiction.
As an example of the modern view, I plucked this from a question and answer cite dealing with issues of Muslim legalities ( Hanafi madhab ) :
*The relied upon position in the Hanafi school, as well as the other 3 madhhabs, is that musical instruments (besides the daff) are impermissible. While there is some difference of opinion, including that of some notable fuqaha, one should remain within what is relied upon.
However, given the difference of opinion, we cannot condemn those who use instruments in their dhikrs, as long as there is no other munkar involved. *
dhikr= prayer ( roughly )
munkar= prohibited or evil practices ( roughly )
A similar passage on watching TV:
*The position of my teachers, and god-fearing scholars I trust and follow is that TV is haram, because of its great harm (and the issue of it being picture-making, which the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) condemned in the sternest of ways). This is differed upon, however, and other top scholars permit TV. They agree, though, that TV would be haram for an individual who knows that they will fall into the haram as a result of it. *
You can argue this in any direction. You can just as easily claim that early puritannical ascetes pushed a “no-fun” agenda and manufactured claims to do so.
However once again I will reiterate that the theological evidence on this topic in Islam is highly equivocal.
Possibly. They could also be acknowledging that there is no theological consensus on such things :).
I would dispute your disputation :). Sufism is now highly interwoven throughout Islam, sometimes in odd ways. For example the Taliban, were/are heavily influenced by Deobandism, which is very similar to Wahhabism in many respects, but among its differences includes a strong strain of Sufism. To quote:
It also was a route to cultivating, through practice, love and devotion to the prophet Muhammad and, through the bonds of sufism, to those guides and elders who were his heirs in chains of initiation that stretched back through time. Many of the teachers at Deoband shared sufi bonds and many students sought initiation into the charisma-filled relationship of discipleship. The Deobandis cherished stories about the sufis. The practiced the disciplines and meditations that opened them to what was typically imagined as a relationship that developed from one focused on their teacher, to one engaged with the Prophet, and, ultimately, with the Divine.
From here:
http://www.ssrc.org/sept11/essays/metcalf_text_only.htm
That, IMHO is at the root of this disagreement. The fact is that you’re not entirely wrong. You’re just also not entirely right.
- Tamerlane
The OP assumes (as most people nowadays assume) that Islam is, and always has been, a “universalist” religion, like Christianity and unlike Judaism.
I recently read “Islam: A Short History,” by Karen Armstrong (Modern Library Chronicles series, 2000), and was very surprised to learn that THIS IS NOT TRUE. Islam is not a universalist religion. At least, it didn’t start out that way.
Mohammed never thought of Islam the way St. Paul did of Christianity – as THE one true faith to which all the world must ultimately be converted. He thought of it as the true faith of the Arabs, and only the Arabs. Arabs of his time believed – and, I suppose, still believe – that they were lineal descendants of Father Abraham, through his elder, bastard son, Ishmael, just as Jews believed they were descendants of Abraham’s second, legitimate son, Isaac. Mohammed believed Islam was simply the proper way of worship for the children of Ishmael, just as Judaism was the proper way of worship for the children of Isaac. He also believed the Arabs, being descendants of Abraham, shared with the Jews in Abraham’s covenant with God – that Abraham would keep the faith and his descendants would be as numberless as the stars, etc. The whole point of Mohammed’s career was NOT to show people the true way to heaven, it was to unite the Arabs in a single, just, orderly, familial community and put a stop to the endless bloody clan feuding that had afflicted them since time out of mind. That is why he declared, “Every Muslim is the brother of every other Muslim.” In other words, no more feuds, we’re all one clan here. (Not that that stopped the feuding, but I’m sure it helped. Some.) Everything Mohammed wrote that calls for intolerance towards infidels and idolaters should be interpreted as political propaganda against ARAB idolaters, period. Not surprising, considering that, after he started proclaiming his new revelation, Mohammed spent most of his life at war with non-Muslim Arabs.
During Mohammed’s lifetime he united all of Arabia under his theocratic rule, but he did not try to take it into any foreign lands. After Mohammed died, the religious state he had founded started doing what states always do and made war in its neighbors – and then found out that, at that moment in history, Arabia’s neighbors, Persia and the Byzantine Empire, were pretty easy pickings, their existing governments being weak and/or unpopular. The Arabs/Muslims conquered Syria, Palestine, Egypt, Mesopotamia, Persia, etc., and set themselves up as a ruling military aristocracy supported by the poll taxes of their subject peoples, the “dhimmis.” But at first the Arabs did NOT impose Islam on their non-Arab subjects, nor did they even encourage conversion. In fact the Arabs outside Arabia built themselves special military towns so they could live apart from the communities they were ruling and not be infected with the ways of the foreigners/infidels. It took a couple of hundred years for Mohammed’s original conception to change. Dhimmis started converting in mass numbers, mainly as a way of avoiding the poll tax and gaining full membership in the ruling elite, and Islam began its evolution into a universalist faith, and scholars invented new doctrines to justify that.
So, in other words, no, the Koran (which I have never read, beyond a few paragraphs) does NOT enjoin Muslims to spread the faith over all the world, and if any verse seems to you to command that, you must be reading it wrong.
Are there any Muslims out there who care to contradict any part of Ms. Armstrong’s account?
I’m not a Muslim, but I’ll say that you are correct. With a few caveats:
It appears uncertain whether Muhammed himself believed this. The evidence is scanty. It is known for example that he sent letters to such notables as the Emperor Heraclius and Persia’s Khusrau II requesting their conversion. Admittedly this was in part in the context of power politics ( involving disputes with hostile Arab clients of the Byzantines and Persians ), but I’d be wary of casting Muhammed himself as wholely non-universalist, though he probably was largely parochial. Also remember he had originally expected the Jews in Arabia ( thosae putative sons of Isaac ) to embrace his faith and was bitterly disappointed when they ( for the most part ) did not.
However it is a certainty that Islam was closely identified as ethnically Arab by his followers and Islam was indeed de facto non-universalist in its early years ( at least after Muhammed’s death ).
Depends what you mean as foreign. Syria, due to steady immigration, was a majority Arab region by Muhammed’s time and thus there was motivation to export Islam in that direction. Partly in this vein and but more directly responding to hostile action by a client state of the Byzantines, a punitive raid was launched deep into Syria by Muhammed in 629 ( it was a failure ).
More like a hundred, but it was actually a point of contention from much earlier. For example the schismatic Kharijites split into two sections for example - the extremists were ferociously opposed to non-Arabs becoming Muslims, while another branch ( the one that eventually spread to Africa, especially among the Berbers ) was universalist. It remained an ongoing debate for decades - The Umayyad dynasty was pretty staunchly Arabist. In order to become Muslims, non-Muslims had to become tributary ( mawla ) to an Arab tribe and there are numerous examples of Umayyad governors refusing to let conversions to take place ( in one famous example in 700 C.E. al-Hajjaj, the governor of Iraq, forced a large number of non-Arab agriculturalists who had fled to Arab garrison towns and sought to convert back to their farms ). A lot of this was economic, as initially Arabs ( Muslims ) were exempt from taxes except zakat ( a specifically Muslim alms tax, sort of the opposite coin from the jizya ). There was gradual reform, but theological opinion in favor of universalism outpaced government support for it. Islam can be definitively said to be universalist from the time of the Abbasid coup in 749, 117 years after Muhammed’s death.
- Tamerlane