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 Topic: Is Islamic State Islamic?

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  • Is Islamic State Islamic?
     Reply #60 - October 16, 2014, 07:15 AM
    Although they can justify their ideology on a theological basis, like all different factions within Islam, I would argue that the historical conditions in which ISIS arose have a greater influence on their ideology than the theological influence. Would ISIS exist as we know it if there was no Sykes-Picot agreement, or without decades of US and British interventionism in the middle east, or without decades of sectarianism in the middle east? Would ISIS exist as we know it if it was not for the Iraq war, and if it was not for the Syrian uprising?

    My point is that although Islamic scripture does have an undeniable role, the theological justification has emerged from the historical and political conditions in that region. The likes of Sam Harris are being incredibly intellectually dishonest when saying that ISIS is a "natural product of Islamic belief", while ignoring everything else that comes with it.
    Religion - The hot potato that looked delicious but ended up burning your mouth!

    Knock your head on the ground, don't be miserly in your prayers, listen to your Sidi Sheikh, Allahu Akbar! - Lounes Matoub
  • Is Islamic State Islamic?
     Reply #61 - October 16, 2014, 08:28 AM
    Hey Miixu, long time no see - hope you are keeping well.

    Oh and spot on  Afro
  • Is Islamic State Islamic?
     Reply #62 - October 16, 2014, 09:16 AM
    Mixu  far away hug far away hug
    He's no friend to the friendless
    And he's the mother of grief
    There's only sorrow for tomorrow
    Surely life is too brief
  • Is Islamic State Islamic?
     Reply #63 - October 16, 2014, 10:37 AM
    Quote from: Mixu Paatelainen on October 16, 2014, 07:15 AM
    Although they can justify their ideology on a theological basis, like all different factions within Islam, I would argue that the historical conditions in which ISIS arose have a greater influence on their ideology than the theological influence. Would ISIS exist as we know it if there was no Sykes-Picot agreement, or without decades of US and British interventionism in the middle east, or without decades of sectarianism in the middle east? Would ISIS exist as we know it if it was not for the Iraq war, and if it was not for the Syrian uprising?

    My point is that although Islamic scripture does have an undeniable role, the theological justification has emerged from the historical and political conditions in that region. The likes of Sam Harris are being incredibly intellectually dishonest when saying that ISIS is a "natural product of Islamic belief", while ignoring everything else that comes with it.


    I think people who only ascribe it to historical conditions are being incredibly dishonest. It is clearly both. Sam Harris's problem is he makes deterministic conclusions about inevitability of outcome in all conditions. But some people want to deny that there are theological and ideological seeds that have led to this.
    "we can smell traitors and country haters"


    Quote from: arX on May 01, 2011, 03:33 AM
    God is Love.
    Love is Blind. Stevie Wonder is blind. Therefore, Stevie Wonder is God.

  • Is Islamic State Islamic?
     Reply #64 - October 16, 2014, 11:10 AM
    Quote from: billy on October 16, 2014, 10:37 AM
    I think people who only ascribe it to historical conditions are being incredibly dishonest. It is clearly both. Sam Harris's problem is he makes deterministic conclusions about inevitability of outcome in all conditions. But some people want to deny that there are theological and ideological seeds that have led to this.


    Is there a counterfactual to the Middle East situation? I.E where 'the west' has interfered where there hasn't been the militarisation along Religious lines?
  • Is Islamic State Islamic?
     Reply #65 - October 16, 2014, 11:26 AM
    Quote from: Lilyesque on October 16, 2014, 11:10 AM
    Is there a counterfactual to the Middle East situation? I.E where 'the west' has interfered where there hasn't been the militarisation along Religious lines?

    I was thinking about this yesterday.

    Nicaragua had a brutal civil war followed by a long and brutal guerrilla war instigated largely by the US.

    The indigenous Miskito people fought mainly for the Contras, and suffered brutal reprisals from the Sandinistas. Christianity was pitted against Marxism.

    The country tired of war and hatred.  It's still poor, still corrupt, and increasingly anti-democratic under Daniel Ortega. Christianity and Marxism are now in bed together. But there won't be another war. I'd bet my land on it, and my land is all I've got.
  • Is Islamic State Islamic?
     Reply #66 - October 16, 2014, 11:31 AM
    Quote from: David on October 16, 2014, 11:26 AM
    I was thinking about this yesterday.

    Nicaragua had a brutal civil war followed by a long and brutal guerrilla war instigated largely by the US.

    The indigenous Miskito people fought mainly for the Contras, and suffered brutal reprisals from the Sandinistas. Christianity was pitted against Marxism.

    The country tired of war and hatred.  It's still poor, still corrupt, and increasingly anti-democratic under Daniel Ortega. Christianity and Marxism are now in bed together. But there won't be another war. I'd bet my land on it, and my land is all I've got.


    So it did rise up but then fizzled out?

    Interesting though, thanks! Something about the mid-east specifically I think. Oil, sectarian conflicts within the Islamic community, small groups of other religions, outside influence and interference, dictatorships based on religious edicts not other non-religious ideological basis.
  • Is Islamic State Islamic?
     Reply #67 - October 16, 2014, 11:50 AM
    Clan shit and a tradition of vendetta and score-settling don't help.
  • Is Islamic State Islamic?
     Reply #68 - October 16, 2014, 11:53 AM
    Quote from: David on October 16, 2014, 11:50 AM
    Clan shit and a tradition of vendetta and score-settling don't help.


    Edited below Tongue - can't include everything though!
    Quote from: Lilyesque on October 16, 2014, 11:31 AM
    So it did rise up but then fizzled out?

    Interesting though, thanks! Something about the mid-east specifically I think. Oil, sectarian conflicts within the Islamic community, small groups of other religions, outside influence and interference, dictatorships based on religious edicts not other non-religious ideological basis, tribalism and a tradition of vendetta and score-settling

  • Is Islamic State Islamic?
     Reply #69 - October 16, 2014, 02:01 PM
    Quote from: Mixu Paatelainen on October 16, 2014, 07:15 AM
    Although they can justify their ideology on a theological basis, like all different factions within Islam, I would argue that the historical conditions in which ISIS arose have a greater influence on their ideology than the theological influence. Would ISIS exist as we know it if there was no Sykes-Picot agreement, or without decades of US and British interventionism in the middle east, or without decades of sectarianism in the middle east? Would ISIS exist as we know it if it was not for the Iraq war, and if it was not for the Syrian uprising?

    My point is that although Islamic scripture does have an undeniable role, the theological justification has emerged from the historical and political conditions in that region. The likes of Sam Harris are being incredibly intellectually dishonest when saying that ISIS is a "natural product of Islamic belief", while ignoring everything else that comes with it.


    Can you be a little more specific, how does the Sykes Picot Agreement have a bearing on all this? Are you suggesting that Syria and Iraq should naturally be one country as the IS propaganda will have us believe?

    Everything is a product of historical circumstances. For example ISIL would of course not exist if the internet had not been invented, allowing all these lunatics to coordinate with each other so easily. But ISIS ideology is based on Islam. We can play this game with any ideological movement in history: the Spanish Civil War was of course caused by the historical circumstances of the time, but that doesn't mean that Franco was not heavily influenced by Fascist ideology and the Republicans were not heavily influenced by Socialism, Marxism, and Anarchism. But blaming the rise of these ideologies on the historical circumstances seems to be just an excuse to avoid confronting the ideology. The historical circumstances are in the past and cannot be changed.

    This idea that the problems of the third world are simply legacies of colonialism is a nice idea and I can see why a lot of people want to believe it. For people in the West, it allows them to explain the world without being judgmental of other cultures and societies and for people in the third world, it allows them to blame their problems on someone else without any self-reflection. In fact I myself accepted this idea uncritically when I was younger. But is there actually any evidence to support it?
  • Is Islamic State Islamic?
     Reply #70 - October 16, 2014, 02:08 PM
    Tony, if IS represents "true/real Islam"and is the inevitable and natural result of Islam in power, why is it that the Yazidi community were not wiped out during the 1400 years of Islamic rule in Iraq?
  • Is Islamic State Islamic?
     Reply #71 - October 16, 2014, 02:17 PM
    Quote from: Abu Ali on October 16, 2014, 02:08 PM
    ................why is it that the Yazidi community were not wiped out during the 1400 years of Islamic rule in Iraq?........

    that is very good question to answer Abu Ali..   I wonder whether you could suggest some answers for your own question?

    with best wishes
    yeezevee
    Do not let silence become your legacy.. Question everything   
    I renounced my faith to become a kafir, 
    the beloved betrayed me and turned in to  a Muslim     
  • Is Islamic State Islamic?
     Reply #72 - October 16, 2014, 02:18 PM
    The Americas are an important comparator.  They have an important pre Colombian heritage that is currently being rediscovered.  

    Arguably they had evolved imperial systems that actually in some ways enabled egalitarian and peaceful societies.  I think the same things can be seen in stone age Eurasian societies.

    Maybe I would blame the Egyptians and Persians who were far too much into hierarchies.  Islam is the direct descendant of this with its one true go (TM) and its prophet pbuh blah and meaning submission.

    This immediately enables power plays and heresies and fighting, and destroys pragmatism, co-operation, diversity and collective action for the commonwealth.

    So yes, Islam is to blame because it continually enables division and power plays, because it is in a clear hierarchical tyrannical tradition.
    When you are a Bear of Very Little Brain, and you Think of Things, you find sometimes that a Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and has other people looking at it.


    A.A. Milne,

    "We cannot slaughter each other out of the human impasse"
  • Is Islamic State Islamic?
     Reply #73 - October 16, 2014, 02:22 PM
    Re: yazidis - I think most rulers would have considered them Monotheists. So they would have paid Jizyah and been protected. They also live in a Mountainous region where it is difficult to impose regular taxes with the technology that they had at the time. Most rulers simply allowed the locals to go about their business and choose their own tribal leaders, as long as those leaders paid some tribute and nominally accepted the Caliph as the overall ruler once in a while.

    But most religious minorities were eradicated one way or another (through conversion or slavery) , there are no Zoroastrians left in Iraq today but that was the dominant religion prior to Islamic rule.
  • Is Islamic State Islamic?
     Reply #74 - October 16, 2014, 02:23 PM
    Quote from: Abu Ali on October 16, 2014, 02:08 PM
    Tony, if IS represents "true/real Islam"and is the inevitable and natural result of Islam in power, why is it that the Yazidi community were not wiped out during the 1400 years of Islamic rule in Iraq?


    Because Islam has actually been quite pragmatic a lot of the time - crack islam although being around over the centuries has got powerful recently as propaganda and communication techniques have improved exponentially!
    When you are a Bear of Very Little Brain, and you Think of Things, you find sometimes that a Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and has other people looking at it.


    A.A. Milne,

    "We cannot slaughter each other out of the human impasse"
  • Is Islamic State Islamic?
     Reply #75 - October 16, 2014, 02:23 PM
    Quote from: Abu Ali on October 16, 2014, 02:08 PM
    Tony, if IS represents "true/real Islam"and is the inevitable and natural result of Islam in power, why is it that the Yazidi community were not wiped out during the 1400 years of Islamic rule in Iraq?


    they weren't wiped out, but they have been subject to persecutions and their numbers reduced and their religion restricted throughout history. I think that being so small in number meant they kept their heads low and their location, perhaps being part of Kurdish society which had a strong ethnic counterbalance to the religious identity protected them too
    "we can smell traitors and country haters"


    Quote from: arX on May 01, 2011, 03:33 AM
    God is Love.
    Love is Blind. Stevie Wonder is blind. Therefore, Stevie Wonder is God.

  • Is Islamic State Islamic?
     Reply #76 - October 16, 2014, 02:31 PM
    Quote from: billy on October 16, 2014, 02:23 PM
    they weren't wiped out,    but they have been subject to persecutions and their numbers reduced and their religion restricted throughout history. I think that being so small in number meant they kept their heads low and their location, perhaps being part of Kurdish society which had a strong ethnic counterbalance to the religious identity protected them too

    Question is why they were NOT wiped out before??   and why are they wiping it now??  or why were they persecuted and sent to mountains with those chemical weapons  at the end of that first Saddam war with AMRIKA  by Saddam Army?  

    That is the same question Abu Ali  is asking...
    Do not let silence become your legacy.. Question everything   
    I renounced my faith to become a kafir, 
    the beloved betrayed me and turned in to  a Muslim     
  • Is Islamic State Islamic?
     Reply #77 - October 16, 2014, 02:36 PM
    in this speech the Yazidi MP Vian Dakhil says 'there have been 72 genocide campaigns on the Yazidis' -- which suggests that in the folk memory and history of the Yazidi people there have been at least 72 occasions in which they were subject to persecutions involving displacement and killings. They've probably been discriminated against on a societal level too.

    That's folk history I would assume, but whatever the details, its probably the case that Yazidis have survived rather than been free of persecution and that's down to their own tenacity and determination to survive, as well as other factors.

    http://youtu.be/HdIEm1s6yhY?t=1m50s
    "we can smell traitors and country haters"


    Quote from: arX on May 01, 2011, 03:33 AM
    God is Love.
    Love is Blind. Stevie Wonder is blind. Therefore, Stevie Wonder is God.

  • Is Islamic State Islamic?
     Reply #78 - October 16, 2014, 02:44 PM
    I believe their ancestral homeland is the mountains, that is where their shrines are. It may be that they came down to the plains for economic opportunities and retreated back to the mountains during periods of persecution in cycles. It would have been very costly for rulers to subdue those mountain regions from places like Baghdad. If the Yazidis were poor, then the cost of sending armies and tax collectors would have outweighed any benefits the Yazidis could have offered in terms of Jizyah payments.
  • Is Islamic State Islamic?
     Reply #79 - October 16, 2014, 02:48 PM
    Northern Iraq is - or was - quite diverse - Yezidis, Shabaks, Kurds, Catholics, Syriacs, Assyrians, Turkmens, Armenians, Chechens.
    Arabs settling in numbers are relatively new there. So people were used to other minorities despite villages and communities often keeping to themselves.

    Report from 2004 from HRW on Arabisation of Northern Iraq
    Danish Never-Moose adopted by the kind people on the CEMB-forum
    Ex-Muslim chat (Unaffliated with CEMB). Safari users: Use "#ex-muslims" as the channel name. CEMB chat thread.
  • Is Islamic State Islamic?
     Reply #80 - October 16, 2014, 03:10 PM
    I wonder if mountains are important in this.  If  life is easy you get homogeneity and power bases, leading to empires and big one god religions.

    Comparing with something in Peru - probably the highest agriculture on the planet.

    Quote
    http://ourworld.unu.edu/en/the-thriving-biodiversity-of-peru-potato-park

    "Since pre-Hispanic times, a co-evolutionary relationship built around management of biocultural resources with the mountain environment in Cusco Valley, Peru, has produced the ayllu mindset. While most studies describe ayllu as a political and socio-economic system, few systematic analyses of the ayllu as an ecological phenomenon exist.
    We understand the ayllu as a community of individuals with the same interests and objectives linked through shared norms and principles with respect to humans, animals, rocks, spirits, mountains, lakes, rivers, pastures, food crops, wild life, etc.

    The main objective of ayllu is the attainment of well-being or Sumaq Qausay; defined as a positive relationship between humans and their social and natural environments. To this end, great focus is given to achieving equilibrium between one’s natural and social surroundings and to maintaining reciprocity between all “beings”; including the Earth.

    This practice has proven pivotal to maintaining high biodiversity and has been described by scholars as the product of common-field agriculture. Attesting to this, the majority of subsistence and agricultural activities in the Cusco Valley are based on diversifying uses and the priorities and values of the communities.

    When you are a Bear of Very Little Brain, and you Think of Things, you find sometimes that a Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and has other people looking at it.


    A.A. Milne,

    "We cannot slaughter each other out of the human impasse"
  • Is Islamic State Islamic?
     Reply #81 - October 16, 2014, 03:25 PM
    Edwin Robert Bevan on the difficulty of Middle Eastern Monarchies to subdue the whole territory within their empires:

    Quote
    Take a map of Europe, and the different departments, we see marked out represent tracts available throughout, but in a map of Alexander’s Empire only part of each province counts. The rest is waste land—the desolation of the level desert, the desolation of the mountains. The mountains, although they catch and store the rain, are necessarily barren themselves in their higher parts, and only on their lower slopes and foot­hills can furnish the means of life to a civilized population— a population with more requirements than rude and ill-housed mountain tribes. The belts between mountain and desert, the banks of the great rivers, the lower hills near the sea, these are the lines of civilization (actual or potential) in Western Asia. The consequence of these conditions is that through all the history of Western Asia there runs the eternal distinction between the civilized cultivators of the plains and lower hills and the wild peoples of mountain and desert. The great monarchies which have arisen here have rarely been effective beyond the limits of cultivation; mountain and desert are another world in which they can get, at best, only precarious footing. And to the monarchical settled peoples the near neighborhood of this unsubjugated world has been a continual menace. It is a chaotic region out of which may pour upon them at any weakening of the dam hordes of devastators. At the best of times it hampers the government by offering a refuge and recruiting-ground to all the enemies of order. Between the royal governments and the free tribes the feud is secular. The ordinary policy of the Asiatic monarchies has been simply to safeguard the great highways of communication. It obviously follows from the restriction of civilized habitation to the narrow belts of territory just described that the main roads are fixed by nature to certain definite lines. The task set before itself by these governments has been, not that of holding an immense continuous area, but the comparatively simpler one of holding these lines. It is important to remember this in connection with rapid conquests like that of Alexander. To conquer the Achaemenian Empire did not mean the effective occupation of all the area within its extreme frontiers—that would have been a task exceeding one man’s lifetime—but the conquest of its cultivated districts and the holding of the roads which connected them. 

    In this eternal contest between civilized government and the free children of mountain and desert the frontiers which divide the two are necessarily shifting. Sometimes a region able, if proper pains be spent on it, to support civilization has been so overrun by the nomads as to fall altogether to their domain. This has been the case with most of the country along the lower Euphrates, once populous and lined with flourishing cities, and now, under the wretched Turkish administration, only the pasture ground of the Bedawin. On the other hand, sometimes civilized government has been able to push its way farther into the desert, higher up the mountain, either by conquest, or, more often, by the strong men of the tribes founding monarchies in imitation of the monarchies of the plain. This was the case with the Persians, highland clans at the dawn of history, but inhabiting valleys which were not unfruitful. 

    A thorough subjugation, however, of mountain and desert has been beyond the power of any Asiatic monarchy. If the great roads can be protected from marauders, enough seems accomplished........


    http://www.cristoraul.com/ENGLISH/readinghall/GalleryofHistory/House-of-Seleucus/Chapter-2-PHYSICAL-ENVIRONMENT.html
  • Is Islamic State Islamic?
     Reply #82 - October 16, 2014, 03:54 PM
    Quote from: Tonyt on October 16, 2014, 02:22 PM
    Re: yazidis - I think most rulers would have considered them Monotheists. So they would have paid Jizyah and been protected...


    In other words they had a different interpretation to modern day IS. Had they wanted to wipe them out they could.

    Yes they have been subject to many attacks and yes they live in mountains - but don't tell me that had the Islamic regimes had the will they could not have wiped them out.

    If all the Islamic regimes in power in Iraq throughout 1400 had believed as fervently as IS do that the Yazidi's should be wiped out they could have done so. We are talking about the Abbasid empire at it's height of religious, political and economic power. We are talking about the Turks (Seljuks) after them and so on...

    Had the Abbasids for example been as keen as IS on wiping out the Yazidis they could have applied their massive forces to do so - easily!

    But they didn't.

    They didn't because they were not all as totally nuts as IS is.

    As I keep saying, IS are certainly representative of Islam - but not the only true Islam - which doesn't exist. There are only interpretations.

    There have been puritanical trends within Islam and fairly liberal ones (compared to the times).

    Can I just get one thing clear Tony, since I have already said over and over again that IS do represent an authentic form of Islam, but they do not represent the "only" valid view of Islam.

    What is it here that you disagree with?

    Are you saying that IS represents the only true form of Islam?
  • Is Islamic State Islamic?
     Reply #83 - October 16, 2014, 04:46 PM
    I can understand how those who know next to nothing about Islam might fall for the view that the racist right (& of course the Salafis themselves) put forward that the Salafis represent true Islam, but it surprises me that anyone here on this forum could take that view, seeing as it is has been discussed so many times.

    I would suggest that those who think IS do represent "True Islam" go and study a bit more about Islamic History.

    But I'll attempt to at least put it as simply as I can:

    IS/ISIL/ISIS is a product of Jihadist ideology which in turn is a product of Salafi ideology which in turn owes it's rise mostly to Wahhabi movement started in the 18th century by Abdul Wahhab in what is today Saudi Arabia.

    Their views differ from the main traditional schools of Sunni Islam in many ways for example they do not consider it necessary to consult religious rulings of scholars of the main Sunni Mathhabs down the course of 1400 years of scholarship. They instead place emphasis on going back to original sources of Qur'an and Sunna and making rulings direct from that. (As if the scholars down the ages were unaware of Qur'an & Sunna.)

    To the simple-minded and uneducated modern day young Muslim this is very attractive.

    But it has created a very militant, puritanical and literalist & Jihad-driven version of Islam that differs in many ways from what many would call "Traditional" versions of Sunni Islam as represented by the scholars of the 4 main Sunni Mathhabs.

    The Salafis reject metaphoric or symbolic interpretations. (Some consider Sufis heretics to be executed.) They regard many of the practices approved of by scholars after the first generation to be innovations "Bid'ah" and outside Islam. They emphasises the importance of Jihad and regard it as meaning mainly physical Jihad with the sword rather than just struggle against one's nafs (ego).

    While they reject Taqleed (following past scholars of the main mathhabs) they nevertheless do have their own "select" group of favourite sheikhs from the past such as Ibn Taymiyya.

    Salafis as a whole are a minority of Muslims.

    IS are a minority of that minority. (IS are regarded extremists even by other Salafis.)

    Now as I have said over and over - they do have authentic sources. But no - and a thousand times no - they do not represent "True Islam". They represent one view - a very literalist, puritanical view. As I have said, puritanical literalist movements have cropped up many times during Islamic history, but they have generally been minority movements that either splintered into ever smaller groups and disappeared or they moderated.
  • Is Islamic State Islamic?
     Reply #84 - October 16, 2014, 05:06 PM
    And to deny that current political situations have no bearing on such militant groups is also foolish.
  • Is Islamic State Islamic?
     Reply #85 - October 16, 2014, 05:17 PM
    Quote from: Abu Ali on October 16, 2014, 03:54 PM
    What is it here that you disagree with?


    I don't think we do disagree on fundamentals. Rather we have different perspectives on what "Islam" means. To you Islam means the collective views of billions of Muslims over many centuries (including Abbasids, Ottomans, Sufis, Shias, etc. and modern day Muslims) So if you are going to take into consideration the beliefs of all those billions of people, of course there will be many interpretations. To me, Islam means what Muhammad wanted Islam to be during his lifetime alone based on my own study and interpretation of the earliest sources of his life, it is largely irrelevant to me what some 12th Century Sufi poet wrote, or how some Abbasid Caliph treated minorities.

    One single book: Ibn ishaq, is pretty much enough to read to get a good idea of what Muhammad himself wanted Islam to be about. That is the oldest source after all. Those hadith collections that Sunnis use (Bukhari, etc.) are also useful as a back-up, but they don't contradict Ibn Ishaq, they paint the same picture in fact.

    Quote from: Abu Ali on October 16, 2014, 03:54 PM
    Are you saying that IS represents the only true form of Islam?


    I am looking through my posts in this thread, and I honestly cannot find anything I wrote that would have given you that idea. Let me repost what I said yesterday:

    Quote
    But let me stress that I never meant to imply that they are the only group that do not contradict Islamic principles. I think that even the original Islam was probably broad enough to include a variety of philosophical outlooks and lifestyles. That is why it was a success.


    The original Islam appealed to warriors who wanted war booty and slave girls. But it also appealed to peaceful poor folk who wanted to benefit from Zakat, it also appealed to slaves who saw conversion as a chance to escape their misery, it also appealed to people longing for "spirituality" and felt like there must be more to life than meets the eye, etc. Most of those people are still attracted to Islam today, and not all of them are ISIS thugs.
  • Is Islamic State Islamic?
     Reply #86 - October 16, 2014, 05:31 PM
    Quote from: Tonyt on October 16, 2014, 05:17 PM
    To me, Islam means what Muhammad wanted Islam to be during his lifetime alone based on my own study and interpretation of the earliest sources of his life...

    One single book: Ibn ishaq, is pretty much enough to read to get a good idea of what Muhammad himself wanted Islam to be about...


    If you were a Muslim, Tony, I think you would be a Salafi by the looks of it - and if I was still Muslim I would still be arguing that your version of Islam is wrong and you can't ignore what the scholars down the ages have said.

    Instead I'll say "Lakum deenukum waliya deen" (To you your religion and to me mine.)  Afro

    I gotta stop wasting time on this  grin12
  • Is Islamic State Islamic?
     Reply #87 - October 16, 2014, 05:48 PM
    Mate we don’t really disagree on much. Only semantics.

    And you are wrong about me, I could never be a Salafist because I despise their whole outlook on life. The only Muslim I could be is a liberal, moderate one who never reads the Quran and Sunnah. If I actually started reading the sources I would become an apostate, in fact I’d like to think that I would be a lot like you were and are now.  Smiley
  • Is Islamic State Islamic?
     Reply #88 - October 16, 2014, 05:50 PM
    Quote from: Abu Ali on October 16, 2014, 04:46 PM
    I can understand how those who know next to nothing about Islam might fall for the view that the racist right (& of course the Salafis themselves) put forward that the Salafis represent true Islam, but it surprises me that anyone here on this forum could take that view, seeing as it is has been discussed so many times.

    I would suggest that those who think IS do represent "True Islam" go and study a bit more about Islamic History.

    But I'll attempt to at least put it as simply as I can:

    IS/ISIL/ISIS is a product of Jihadist ideology which in turn is a product of Salafi ideology which in turn owes it's rise mostly to Wahhabi movement started in the 18th century by Abdul Wahhab in what is today Saudi Arabia.

    Their views differ from the main traditional schools of Sunni Islam in many ways for example they do not consider it necessary to consult religious rulings of scholars of the main Sunni Mathhabs down the course of 1400 years of scholarship. They instead place emphasis on going back to original sources of Qur'an and Sunna and making rulings direct from that. (As if the scholars down the ages were unaware of Qur'an & Sunna.)

    To the simple-minded and uneducated modern day young Muslim this is very attractive.

    But it has created a very militant, puritanical and literalist & Jihad-driven version of Islam that differs in many ways from what many would call "Traditional" versions of Sunni Islam as represented by the scholars of the 4 main Sunni Mathhabs.

    The Salafis reject metaphoric or symbolic interpretations. (Some consider Sufis heretics to be executed.) They regard many of the practices approved of by scholars after the first generation to be innovations "Bid'ah" and outside Islam. They emphasises the importance of Jihad and regard it as meaning mainly physical Jihad with the sword rather than just struggle against one's nafs (ego).

    While they reject Taqleed (following past scholars of the main mathhabs) they nevertheless do have their own "select" group of favourite sheikhs from the past such as Ibn Taymiyya.

    Salafis as a whole are a minority of Muslims.

    IS are a minority of that minority. (IS are regarded extremists even by other Salafis.)

    Now as I have said over and over - they do have authentic sources. But no - and a thousand times no - they do not represent "True Islam". They represent one view - a very literalist, puritanical view. As I have said, puritanical literalist movements have cropped up many times during Islamic history, but they have generally been minority movements that either splintered into ever smaller groups and disappeared or they moderated.


    How different are the rulings of salafi scholars compared to the traditional sunni Mathhabs? From what I have gathered they are pretty similar anyway,

    What are some typical examples of what salafis call 'bidah' which traditional Sunni scholars have said is acceptable.
  • Is Islamic State Islamic?
     Reply #89 - October 16, 2014, 05:52 PM
    Sorry monstart, I'm outta this discussion now.
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