So the Sunnah is an actual set volume of writing? I'm trying to find it on google books but no luck.
I think everyone gets that not ALL Muslims are at fault for the acts of the few, that's not the discussion and never was.
The problem arises when you want to deny that they too are Muslims and have many followers, that the entire ideology includes punishments that are incompatible with the western worlds way of thinking (just like ALL religions).
To make matters a LOT worse there are a lot of cultural traditions that the faith of Islam gets blamed for too, like honor killings (which is actually an offset of the caste system and is only practiced by certain cultural groups such as Kurds, Indians and some Pakis).
But then there is the literal texts of punishments that SOME take to stand above common law.
Islam pretty much has it's dark ages right now via the Taliban and the various offshoots, Islam needs to modernise or perish, there is no other choice.
Think of the Quaran as the Bible, the hadiths the changes made to the bible (as in the KJV being interpreted from the Roman version, some added, some lost and in your case, the inspired words of Smith) and the Sunnah as the priests variations.
Think of the Sunnis and the Shias as Catholics and Protestants.
The huge difference between Islam and other religions is that in nations which are majority Muslim you find many, many clerics openly championing this behavior. Indeed, even when Muslim populations approach 5 percent we find these clerics openly calling for jihad and Sharia. That doesn't make all Muslims or Islam itself responsible for this behavior, but it DOES make Islam a significant threat to any non-Muslim culture.JohnOfSheffield, so what you're trying to say is because some nut gets up on a podium and starts chanting off vitrolic speech which causes some other nut to take seriously the speech and blow himself up, I should NOT stand up for the values of practicing Muslims and speak out that Islam does NOT permit such actions?
I think Islam is fine. Some d-bags need rehabilitation and un-brainwashing.
The huge difference between Islam and other religions is that in nations which are majority Muslim you find many, many clerics openly championing this behavior. Indeed, even when Muslim populations approach 5 percent we find these clerics openly calling for jihad and Sharia. That doesn't make all Muslims or Islam itself responsible for this behavior, but it DOES make Islam a significant threat to any non-Muslim culture.
JohnOfSheffield, so what you're trying to say is because some nut gets up on a podium and starts chanting off vitrolic speech which causes some other nut to take seriously the speech and blow himself up, I should NOT stand up for the values of practicing Muslims and speak out that Islam does NOT permit such actions?
I think Islam is fine. Some d-bags need rehabilitation and un-brainwashing.
The huge difference between Islam and other religions is that in nations which are majority Muslim you find many, many clerics openly championing this behavior. Indeed, even when Muslim populations approach 5 percent we find these clerics openly calling for jihad and Sharia. That doesn't make all Muslims or Islam itself responsible for this behavior, but it DOES make Islam a significant threat to any non-Muslim culture.
JohnOfSheffield, so what you're trying to say is because some nut gets up on a podium and starts chanting off vitrolic speech which causes some other nut to take seriously the speech and blow himself up, I should NOT stand up for the values of practicing Muslims and speak out that Islam does NOT permit such actions?
I think Islam is fine. Some d-bags need rehabilitation and un-brainwashing.
Statistics? Is there supposed to be some percentage of clerics calling for me to be enslaved or murdered that I should find acceptable?werepossum, and you base this on what statistics on Muslim clerics?
Edit: Personally, I dont find preaching about Sharia as vitriolic speech. Every Muslim is enjoined to uphold Islamic obligations, morals and values. Thats like Churches teaching its congregation what the Bible says about a subject.
Statistics? Is there supposed to be some percentage of clerics calling for me to be enslaved or murdered that I should find acceptable?
Let's put it differently. Ireland has Catholicism as its national religion. So does the Vatican of course. There are no regions of Ireland where judges sentence a woman to be gang raped because her brother had illicit sex with an unmarried woman and her family needs its honor restored. There are no regions of Ireland where judges sentence a woman to be buried to her chest and stoned to death, nor homosexuals to be burned alive or have walls toppled on top of them. Nor will you find these things in the Vatican, which is literally a Christian theocracy. Neither will you find prescribed Old Testament punishments being levied. On the other hand, these things are reasonably common in countries ruled by Islamic clerics practicing Sharia because they are PART of Sharia. Afghanistan under Karzai sentenced an ethnic Afghan to death for the crime of converting to Christianity - per the prescribed mandatory punishment under Sharia. Again, this places no guilt on most Muslims, but is undeniably part and parcel of the Islamic religion. To attribute to cultural practices what are established parts of Sharia and the hadith, and therefore core principles of Islam, is simply sophistry.
If you wish for Islam to be considered in the same light as other religions, push for a reformation of Islam to bring it to the same standards of tolerance and compassion as other religions. As long as Islam professes the same seventh century mores, it will be treated as a threat to Western culture even though most Muslims do not practice such things.
This problem arises when the commoners are poor people and the priests rule the land, for evidence, see African Christian militias.
This arises in Saudi Arabia as well, which is hardly poor. And it's strongest in Iran, which is not a poor nation. But we can agree that putting both secular and spiritual power in the hands of one man or group is never a good idea.
You don't think the commoners in SA are poor?
Have you ever been to SA?
Well secular power is only good when it's in the hands of the people (as in democracy) and spiritual power can NEVER be in the hands of the people, it's why the church (any church) is an anti-democratic institution commonly used to make leaders sway their parishoners to vote for what the preachers want them to instead of what would be good for the parishoners.
To me, religion and spirituality is and should remain a personal issue. I'm of this mind because i have yet to see something good come out of a congregation of religious people that didn't bring condemnations on others with it.
Yes, I've worked in Saudi Arabia for more than a year and the common people there do quite well.
OK, let's try this with Uganda, where the LRA rules the land and Christians are hacking children and women to death with machetes.
Make no mistake, religion, no matter WHICH religion is a tool to get desperate people to do desperate things to get out of the hell they are in, that is what they are told and they have nothing to lose. Judaism isn't spared either, Orthodox Jews are fucked in their heads and Hindus are equally fucked up, in fact the whole "acid in face" thing does come from India and there are tenths of thousands of wives that have experienced that. It's quite ok in Hindu courts to punish your wife for whatever reason you have, same as it would be in a Christian court if it was to follow the New Testament.
But Muslims don't do this because as you stated really early in the thread you fear for your life from these so called radicals which is why you don't say anything. If you want i can find your reply and quote it for you.
The LRA isn't the government though, although granted it is a blight on the world and as murderous a bunch of bastards as ever cursed any religion. Uganda's government has come a long way since DaDa.
Incidentally there were rumors reported last year that the LRA was preparing to move further into southern Sudan and contest with the Muslims and the Christian and animist ethnic/tribal militias for Sudan's oil. Here's hoping that all these groups converge there and wipe each other off the face of the Earth.
Statistics? Is there supposed to be some percentage of clerics calling for me to be enslaved or murdered that I should find acceptable?
Let's put it differently. Ireland has Catholicism as its national religion. So does the Vatican of course. There are no regions of Ireland where judges sentence a woman to be gang raped because her brother had illicit sex with an unmarried woman and her family needs its honor restored. There are no regions of Ireland where judges sentence a woman to be buried to her chest and stoned to death, nor homosexuals to be burned alive or have walls toppled on top of them. Nor will you find these things in the Vatican, which is literally a Christian theocracy. Neither will you find prescribed Old Testament punishments being levied. On the other hand, these things are reasonably common in countries ruled by Islamic clerics practicing Sharia because they are PART of Sharia. Afghanistan under Karzai sentenced an ethnic Afghan to death for the crime of converting to Christianity - per the prescribed mandatory punishment under Sharia. Again, this places no guilt on most Muslims, but is undeniably part and parcel of the Islamic religion. To attribute to cultural practices what are established parts of Sharia and the hadith, and therefore core principles of Islam, is simply sophistry.
If you wish for Islam to be considered in the same light as other religions, push for a reformation of Islam to bring it to the same standards of tolerance and compassion as other religions. As long as Islam professes the same seventh century mores, it will be treated as a threat to Western culture even though most Muslims do not practice such things.
The huge difference between Islam and other religions is that in nations which are majority Muslim you find many, many clerics openly championing this behavior. Indeed, even when Muslim populations approach 5 percent we find these clerics openly calling for jihad and Sharia. That doesn't make all Muslims or Islam itself responsible for this behavior, but it DOES make Islam a significant threat to any non-Muslim culture.
werepossum, you earlier stated the below. I asked for some substantiation. The above post is a completely different tangent. Address one point, and then we'll move to the next.
The LRA is as much government as Al Quaida or the Taliban movement is, it's a bunch of religious leaders proclaiming truth to suit their own purposes.
I would agree with your last statement if it didn't mean that the civilian population of the area would be raped and tortured to death before it was over... I do agree that they all need to perish before it will get better though.
Can't we find some fucking nation to clear out and stick the lot of them in? We did that once and Australia didn't turn out that bad in the end.
Iran, SA, Pakistan, Sudan, Libya, Lebanon, Egypt, how many do you need?
Think of the Quaran as the Bible, the hadiths the changes made to the bible (as in the KJV being interpreted from the Roman version, some added, some lost and in your case, the inspired words of Smith) and the Sunnah as the priests variations.
Think of the Sunnis and the Shias as Catholics and Protestants.
My understanding is the hadith explains the Quran. That you cannot understand how to interpret the Quran without reading the hadiths?
bfdd, see, if JoS kept quiet, this misunderstanding wouldnt have risen.
Please see my posts of Hadiths above.
Hadith (pronounced /ˈhædɪθ/;[1] Arabic: الحديث‎ al-ḥadīth [ħaˈdiːθ]; pl. aḥādīth; lit. "narrative") are narrations concerning the words and deeds of the Islamic prophet Muhammad. Hadith are regarded by traditional Islamic schools of jurisprudence as important tools for understanding the Qur'an and in matters of jurisprudence.[2] Hadith were evaluated and gathered into large collections mostly during the reign of Umar ibn AbdulAziz during the 8th and 9th centuries. These works are referred to in matters of Islamic law and history to this day. The two main denominations of Islam, Shi`ism and Sunnism, have different sets of Hadith collections.
Quick wiki summary
From that it would seem the hadiths are quite important in understanding the words of Muhammad.