Without reading the thread: my first thought is the religion founded by the Arab prophet Muhammad around 622-27 Common Era. (I don’t remember the year so I just put in a range that sounded right.)
The current consensus view of the chief architect appears to be Ustad Ahmad Lahori who died at age ~69 in 1649. At the time he was apparently working on the Jama Masjid ( commissioned 1644, completed in 1656 ) with at least one of his several architect sons ( Nur Allah ). He also was apparently one of the primary architects of the Shajahanabad ( commissioned 1639, completed 1648 ). In the Mughal case architecture seems to have been a family calling and we find multiple generations working under various Mughals, including Lahori’s sons, one of whom is the primary source for Lahori’s involvement ( Luft Allah in this case ). It seems most unlikely these highly paid specialists, some of them not subjects but rather imported experts from Persia or the Ottoman state, would have continued to work for a ruler inclined to maim them.
But we’re straying away from the thread into debate territory here and I have a growing suspicion that I’m not capable of making an argument convincing enough for you anyway. So I’ll drop it.
My problem with virtually all of these type of discussions is when someone mentions something like “Islam”, I think “Islam”, when someone mentions “Germany”, I think “Germany”. It makes for pretty boring answers, so I rarely participate in these word association threads :D.
A crescent.
Well, in that case I’ll say that the first visual image that comes to mind is a (then) young woman whom I knew ten or twelve years back. She was a tall, stacked redhead, and she was the first Muslim I knew well, and also the first person I ever met who had converted from Christianity to Islam.
While Islam is certainly a religion, I see it as having been morphed into a political movement.
Islam
Uslam
We all slam for a Denny’s Grand Slam breakfast now only…
Er, sorry. Don’t know what I was thinking.
Intolerance.
Intolerance by Muslims, or intolerance of Muslims?
Dude. Also an Indian here. The hand cutting off thing is almost definitely a myth. If you want to convince people on this board of anything, citations are the way to do it. If historians actually mention this story, find a cite, and mention it here. If you can’t find a cite, consider your own ignorance fought. Or to put it in your terms, a truth you did not know which you have found. For the record, I’ve probably studied the same history as you but do not recall reading about any hands being cut off in the textbook. It is quite possible our teachers may have told the story as it is a fairly popular legend, and that got conflated in your head as being in the text.
Apart from anything, an almost identical variant of the legend is told about Ivan the Terrible and St. Peter’s Cathedral. There’s also the Greek myth about Daedalus being locked up to prevent him from sharing knowledge of the labyrinth with anyone.
The first thing I think of is Osama Bin Laden.
The second thing I think of is my friend Fayrouz from college.
The third thing I think about is the asshole boss I used to work for who made a killer chicken shawarma. I’ve never had anything that can compare, but we left on terrible terms so I can’t go in and order the food.
Now I’m craving Middle Eastern food.
Sorry if my knee-jerk response isn’t PC. It’s called implicit association. Means absolutely nothing about my feelings toward Islamic people.
My lesbian friend from Madrid who appears to have converted to some kind of sufi variant of islam.
Don’t know why she did it, but if she’s OK with it and her new co-religionaries are OK with her… Well, OK then.
What’s the first thing I think of when I hear the word “Islam”?
Scarborough, ON, Canada.
Jaffa Old Town. I’ll be there next week - eating the best humus and pita in the world.
the only religion whose followers making news like this, in the name of the very religion wont surprise you:
- Iran moves to legalize marriage for girls under 10 years old
http://digitaljournal.com/article/329317#ixzz24O118yQf
2.Christian boy tortured and killed in Pakistan [ 24 August 2012]
Oh, please. Barbarism and stupidity in the name of religion isn’t restricted to Islam. The Christian push for the mass murder of homosexuals in Uganda comes to mind; something that’s heavily supported by American evangelical Christians. Or the call for the kidnapping of children of homosexual couples here in America.
In other religions its very rare. Other religions have also reformed themselves over time but not Islam.
Its at war with every other religion across the world:
Christianity and Islam
Hinduism\sikhism and Islam
Buddhism and Islam
Atheism and Islam
If the US was Islamic it wouldnt be the land of freedom and opportunity. Neither would it be the leader in science , technology and education.
Muslim – a conservative religious person
Islam - young black men wearing suits and bow ties standing on the street corner selling newspapers
Nonsense. Christianity is just as barbaric and tyrannical and irrational as Islam; it’s just not as powerful in most of the countries it dominates anymore. If you magically switched Christianity for Islam in America, very little of importance would change; if you magically turned Saudi Arabia and Iran into Christian theocracies instead of Islamic ones, they would be just as tyrannical and nasty.
And America isn’t exceptionally free, and it isn’t the “land of opportunity” except in its own fantasies. It’s one the least social mobile Western nations, tied with Great Britain last I heard.