Afraid of backlash against Muslims

[Anonymous]

How did PP get us from a letter signed by over 100 Muslims a year ago denouncing ISIS and its interpretations of Islam to a random selection of hadith on adultery?

I am guessing PP is the South Asian insisting Islam as pronounced by ISIS is the same as mainstream Islam and, seeing a very clear denunciation of ISIS by mainstream clerics, moves along to hadith from 1200 years ago which may or may not be of questionable origin.

[jsteele]

Anonymous wrote:How did PP get us from a letter signed by over 100 Muslims a year ago denouncing ISIS and its interpretations of Islam to a random selection of hadith on adultery?

I am guessing PP is the South Asian insisting Islam as pronounced by ISIS is the same as mainstream Islam and, seeing a very clear denunciation of ISIS by mainstream clerics, moves along to hadith from 1200 years ago which may or may not be of questionable origin.

I am reluctant to defend that poster who I believe to be very unfair toward Muslims, but I believe the discussion about Islam's treatment of woman is fairly long-running in this thread and not brought up to distract from the denunciations. However, I think it is very telling that the poster appears to have relied on an Islamophobic site and then ended up with a distorted version of the facts. When people are hoodwinked like this, I always wonder if they will learn from the experience. Based on what I've seen, they almost ever do. They simply double down.

[Anonymous]

Evidently Isis didn't read the letter. By the way what percentage of muslim clerics signed the letter? 100 must be a very small percentage, don't you think?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Evidently Isis didn't read the letter. By the way what percentage of muslim clerics signed the letter? 100 must be a very small percentage, don't you think?

Did it occur to you that most of the people fighting ISIS are Muslims?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Evidently Isis didn't read the letter. By the way what percentage of muslim clerics signed the letter? 100 must be a very small percentage, don't you think?

Did it occur to you that most of the people fighting ISIS are Muslims?

Yes, remember this? When ISIS burned the Jordanian (Muslim) pilot alive? Al Azhar, the center of Sunni scholarship in the Middle East, called for killing and crucifying ISIS. "This requires the punishment mentioned in the Koran for these corrupt oppressors who fight against God and his prophet: killing, crucifixion or chopping of the limbs. Islam forbids killing of the innocent human soul... It forbids mutilating the human soul by burning or in any other way even during wars against an enemy that attacks you," Tayib added in a statement."


http://english.alarabiya.net/en/News/middle-east/2015/02/04/Al-Azhar-calls-for-killing-crucifixion-of-ISIS-terrorists-.html

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Evidently Isis didn't read the letter. By the way what percentage of muslim clerics signed the letter? 100 must be a very small percentage, don't you think?

If you look at the list of signatories at the end, you will find clergy with great authority in Islam today. They head Islamic universities, are muftis, head sharia courts and so on. There are a few Islamic preachers here and there.

This is not like having a bunch of parish priests sign. It is more like having archbishops, cardinals sign, and top theologians and Vatican officials sign.

But I guess you wouldn't be satisfied unless 99 percent of all known imans had signed.

[Anonymous]

jsteele wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How did PP get us from a letter signed by over 100 Muslims a year ago denouncing ISIS and its interpretations of Islam to a random selection of hadith on adultery?

I am guessing PP is the South Asian insisting Islam as pronounced by ISIS is the same as mainstream Islam and, seeing a very clear denunciation of ISIS by mainstream clerics, moves along to hadith from 1200 years ago which may or may not be of questionable origin.

I am reluctant to defend that poster who I believe to be very unfair toward Muslims, but I believe the discussion about Islam's treatment of woman is fairly long-running in this thread and not brought up to distract from the denunciations. However, I think it is very telling that the poster appears to have relied on an Islamophobic site and then ended up with a distorted version of the facts. When people are hoodwinked like this, I always wonder if they will learn from the experience. Based on what I've seen, they almost ever do. They simply double down.

That is what is curious. The selected hadiths did not appear to have anything to do with the treatment of women in Islam, just the treatment of adultery. As PP noted three out of five don't mention women at all, one specifically mentions a man, and I am guessing the other two in Arabic use the masculine for adulterer.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
I don't believe God fathered a son. And I do believe that Mohammad was a good man who received divine revelation. Which sect of Christianity would you suggest?

Mohammed may well have been a good man who received divine revelation, but unfortunately he is not around today to tell us about the revelations. All we have are 1500 year old texts which have been interpreted in a wide variety of ways, including interpretations that have been used to justify the actions of ISIS.

I suggest you start with Unitarian Universalist Church, which started as a Christian denomination but includes ideas and rituals from other religions including Islam.

http://www.uua.org/beliefs/who-we-are/beliefs/islam

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
I don't believe God fathered a son. And I do believe that Mohammad was a good man who received divine revelation. Which sect of Christianity would you suggest?

Mohammed may well have been a good man who received divine revelation, but unfortunately he is not around today to tell us about the revelations. All we have are 1500 year old texts which have been interpreted in a wide variety of ways, including interpretations that have been used to justify the actions of ISIS.

I suggest you start with Unitarian Universalist Church, which started as a Christian denomination but includes ideas and rituals from other religions including Islam.

http://www.uua.org/beliefs/who-we-are/beliefs/islam

I have always wondered about him. Sharing and then recanting the satanic verses had a lot to do with the local politics around idol worship. That one episode has always made me view him differently than other prophets

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:How did PP get us from a letter signed by over 100 Muslims a year ago denouncing ISIS and its interpretations of Islam to a random selection of hadith on adultery?

I am guessing PP is the South Asian insisting Islam as pronounced by ISIS is the same as mainstream Islam and, seeing a very clear denunciation of ISIS by mainstream clerics, moves along to hadith from 1200 years ago which may or may not be of questionable origin.

"South Asian Poster" here. No, I did not make that post- it's completely incoherent.

Also, I've not been saying that the Islam ISIS is practicing is the"mainstream" Islam that the majority of Muslims practice. I've been saying it's the form of Islam that has been practiced from the earliest days of Islam. That they are not making up some new interpretation.

I thank you for making that clear distinction because you made my point for me. Islam is already being practiced differently by most and during the best days of the Middle East people practiced a very liberal view of Islam.

Since we already see that Islam, by most, is no longer practiced the way it was practiced at it's inception- then making a formal recognition of Reformation should not be so frowned upon.

Then it can easily be said that ISIS is not practicing the reformed version of Islam that is the most widely accepted and hopefully preached within mosques and Islamic schools. Can we say this right now?


As to the letter- There are many flaws and of course various interpretations of those statements. For example-#13, it says it is forbidden to force people to convert. Well when a person says convert or die, it can be interpreted as an option not compulsion. The infidel was given an option.
Or #10- It says not to kill people of the Book. That very clearly leaves out atheists, pagans, anyone of Dharmic religions (Jain, Buddhist, Sikh, Hindu).
Or where #12 says slavery was abolished by a universal consensus. Which universal consensus? There is not universal Islamic board that makes the universal consensus.
#22 then says you can't form a Caliphate without a consensus from all Muslims. Again who makes that universal consensus?

I'm sure the letter was well intentioned, but they're giving it to a group of people who believe their practice of Islam is the true way and once again interpretation come to play as well as the fact that these groups like ISIS and other Islamic terror organizations have plenty of their own scholars that can refute the claims of these scholars.


Jeff, it's unfortunate that you feel I am being unfair to Muslims. I really am not trying to do so, I've been trying to give facts related to history and tying that with current events and giving my POV as to this topic which is the purpose of this board. Obviously discussing anyone's faith will be a sensitive topic, but it is not out of the ordinary for this board, it was a Muslim who started thread.

(I read an article yesterday stating that a 9/11 moment of silence tried to be blocked at a college because it was unfair or offensive to Muslims. Is that a new catch phrase now? )
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/11/22/college-students-say-remembering-9-11-is-offensive-to-muslims.html

Muslims- I stand by what I've said, which includes me stating repeatedly that I am not against Muslims and abhor any unfair treatment towards you, I'm am sorry if you feel it unfair to have my differing opinions expressed.

[Anonymous]

PP who posted the letter from the Islamic scholars. I am not Muslim. But what the letter says is very much how Islam has been practiced for hundreds of years. (Except the slavery part, which existed in the last century.) Even in ancient Islam people were given the choice between converting or paying a tax, which in turn got you out of military service. This is why there were sizable Christian and Jewish communities in the Middle East throughout that time.

Just because ISIS says it is returning to how Islam was practiced at its origin does not make it so.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:PP who posted the letter from the Islamic scholars. I am not Muslim. But what the letter says is very much how Islam has been practiced for hundreds of years. (Except the slavery part, which existed in the last century.) Even in ancient Islam people were given the choice between converting or paying a tax, which in turn got you out of military service. This is why there were sizable Christian and Jewish communities in the Middle East throughout that time.

Just because ISIS says it is returning to how Islam was practiced at its origin does not make it so.

Technically you could say that is true since the letter is vague and leaves much up to interpretation. It doesn't specifically say not to kill people not of the Book. You're correct in that the Christian and Jewish communities did not disappear.. as the Zorastrian communities did. Then there are things that have have happened in more recent history, so we cannot say it's been 100s of years since.

For example, the Bangladesh Genocide was just a few decades ago. It was called political by a previous poster, the people that were being killed and raped were specifically of one religion and the reason was for proper Islamization of the area. Political/Religious- flip a coin.

''London, 6/13/71). The Sunday Times…..”The Government’s policy for East Bengal was spelled out to me in the Eastern Command headquarters at Dacca. It has three elements:

1. The Bengalis have proved themselves unreliable and must be ruled by West Pakistanis;

2. The Bengalis will have to be re-educated along proper Islamic lines. The – Islamization of the masses – this is the official jargon – is intended to eliminate secessionist tendencies and provide a strong religious bond with West Pakistan;

3. When the Hindus have been eliminated by death and fight, their property will be used as a golden carrot to win over the under privileged Muslim middle-class. This will provide the base for erecting administrative and political structures in the future.”

When a religion has specific laws and it's own courts and the nation state is based on religion- there is no separation between politics and faith.


I'm not going by what ISIS says it's practicing, I'm comparing to it to historical evidence and historical practice.


I absolutely know in my heart that the majority Muslims do not want people not "of the Book" to be killed and find that barbaric. Convert or pay tax or die is not a valid option, often these people are reduced to conversion or death because they are then banned from having jobs so how can they pay? These things can and need to be reformed.

But right now we cannot say that Islam forbids these things and we have historical evidence of this interpretation, thus ISIS or any other organization or even any mosque or Islamic school can interpret what determines compulsion, who deserves to die as infidels, who decides on a caliphate, etc.

We can say that it hasn't been practiced in X number of years or that is not true Islam or they are not practicing correctly or that it's all just political, but we are not being 100% even if we really want to believe these things.

[Anonymous]

Many refugees “come from cultures that are not gender equal and where women are the property of men,” Mr. Isdal said. “We have to help them adapt to their new culture.”

The first such program to teach immigrants about local norms and how to avoid misreading social signals was initiated in Stavanger, the center of Norway’s oil industry and a magnet for migrants, after a series of rapes from 2009 to 2011.

Henry Ove Berg, who was Stavanger’s police chief during the spike in rape cases, said he supported providing migrants sex education because “people from some parts of the world have never seen a girl in a miniskirt, only in a burqa.” When they get to Norway, he added, “something happens in their heads.”

nytimes

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/20/world/europe/norway-offers-migrants-a-lesson-in-how-to-treat-women.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&version=Moth-Visible&moduleDetail=inside-nyt-region-0&module=inside-nyt-region®ion=inside-nyt-region&WT.nav=inside-nyt-region

[Anonymous]

Refugees should be limited to families or women with small children. It is a huge mistake for a country to bring in refugees that are predominantly young males.


A record 104,460 asylum seekers arrived in Germany in August, bringing the cumulative total for the first eight months of 2015 to 413,535. Germany expects to receive a total of 800,000 refugees and migrants this year, a four-fold increase over 2014.

At least 80% of the incoming refugees/migrants are Muslim, according to a recent estimate by the Central Council of Muslims in Germany (Zentralrat der Muslime in Deutschland, ZMD), a Muslim umbrella group based in Cologne.

The asylum seekers are also overwhelmingly male. Of the 411,567 refugees/migrants who have entered the European Union by sea so far this year, 72% have been male, 13% women and 15% children, according to calculations by the United Nations Refugee Agency. Information about the gender of those arriving by land remains unavailable.

http://www.rights.no/2015/09/voldtektsepidemi-prover-a-dysse-ned-at-asylsokere-voldtar/

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Many refugees “come from cultures that are not gender equal and where women are the property of men,” Mr. Isdal said. “We have to help them adapt to their new culture.”

The first such program to teach immigrants about local norms and how to avoid misreading social signals was initiated in Stavanger, the center of Norway’s oil industry and a magnet for migrants, after a series of rapes from 2009 to 2011.

Henry Ove Berg, who was Stavanger’s police chief during the spike in rape cases, said he supported providing migrants sex education because “people from some parts of the world have never seen a girl in a miniskirt, only in a burqa.” When they get to Norway, he added, “something happens in their heads.”

nytimes

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/20/world/europe/norway-offers-migrants-a-lesson-in-how-to-treat-women.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&version=Moth-Visible&moduleDetail=inside-nyt-region-0&module=inside-nyt-region®ion=inside-nyt-region&WT.nav=inside-nyt-region

Even better, don't let these people in. Why bring in potential rapists and hope that we can change their culture?