Contemplating Islam

[elwill]

In addition to my last post, something else I don’t think I’ve received an answer for: if you believe there’s a reward for growing a beard, why don’t you grow one?

it’s not one of the requirments of faith , and i’m not devout enough to grow it

i know that i will be rewarded if gave all my money as charity , but i personally will keep most of money for my personal life , why ? i’m not devout enough to spent all my money as charity
there’s hudreds of examples
for example , i will be rewared if i fast two days every week , but may be i will just fast the month of ramdan ( this is fard in my faith) , why ? i’m not devout enough to fast 2 days /week
i will be rewared if prayed extra slaht in the night ( out of 5 slaht which is fard ) , but i will not , because i’m not devout enough

after all i hope to become good worshiper

i hope you understood my point

 

[dzheremi]

feel defaming Islam as “Arab imperialism” is somewhat out of touch with reality.

I don’t think you actually read the post you quoted, then. I did not say that Islam is SOLELY Arab cultural imperialism or that it is never adapted to cultural situations. Obviously a quick look at Africa or Central Asia would be enough to see that Islam as it is practiced around the world can be as highly syncretic as any form of Christianity or any other world religion. That is totally not my point.

My point is that regardless of how many different strains of folk Islam you might be able to find, the model Muslim is still the Arab conqueror, Muhammad, whose followers brought the Arab culture with them to the horn of Africa, the Amazight cultural zone of North Africa, Coptic Egypt, Nubian Sudan, Visigothic Spain, Slavic and Turkic Eastern Europe, etc. They were all taught to turn away from Jerusalem and instead to turn to Mecca, as Muhammad himself made that change.

 

[elwill]

Incidentally, you’re blatantly avoiding this question, so I’m giving it yet again:

***Is a fitrah, or “the original healthy constitution of the nature of humans as created by God,” just a suggestion and not obligatory in the slightest? Mohammad declared the growing of beards to be a fitrah, and it seems painfully clear by the definition of the teaching that it’s more than a “suggestion.” ***

yes , he mentioned that it’s fitrah , not that it’s a sin , and yes it’s more than suggestion but not reached to obligatory level

 

[LDNCatholic]

ZAKI, you said:

The one about women praying behind men instead of with them/in front of them is a sign of male dominance is actually for a few simple reasons such as the best place for a women to pray is in her home and also-would a male be concentrating on prayer or a female’s behind if a women was praying in front of him? I know the second one is a bit dodge but seriously! No he would not! Male instinct if you get me…

If it isn’t about dominance why not just have the men pray on one side of the room and the women pray on the other. Maybe with a small curtain to divide the groups if it is really that hard to avoid looking to one side for the duration of the prayer.

 

[Byzantine_Wolf]

Elwill, I wrote two longer posts regarding the issue of Arabic culture and Islam (now found on the previous page), please respond to those as well.

it’s not one of the requirments of faith , and i’m not devout enough to grow it

So you don’t want to take the “suggestion” of the prophet of Islam, and mimic not only him but his companions, even when a reward is promised? I must admit also that, while it’s one thing to be humble and admit our faults, it sounds a bit strange to simply shrug off responsibility with, “Well, I’m not devout enough,” as if we’re making excuses before God. That brings me to the next point:

yes , he mentioned that it’s fitrah , not that it’s a sin , and yes it’s more than suggestion but not reached to obligatory level

Thank you for finally answering.

However, I wasn’t that there was middle ground between “suggestion” and “obligatory.” I am rather amused that growing a beard has now gone from a “suggestion” to “more than suggestion” (which sounds rather like a request than a suggestion). Also is “the original healthy constitution of the nature of humans as created by God” just a suggestion? It does not sound like one.

 

[elwill]

Elwill, I wrote two longer posts regarding the issue of Arabic culture and Islam (now found on the previous page), please respond to those as well.

i just didn’t want to go in circle , i thought if i responed that i will say the same words .
and i didn’t want for you to feel bore
seems to me that we just don’t have common ground , i feel that we just can’t understand each other

from our entire dicsussion , i concluded that the critical points of your objections are about using the original languge of quran in our salaht , while in the same time you saying that it’s not exactly your problem

you compare our qoran to another scriptures while in the fact muslims have specific beliefs about quran which differ than the beliefs of others in thier books

we consider the quran to be the literally words of God , it’s not the words of prophet mohammed nor the words of any of his companions

your view is that if the popular salaht performed in thousnads different languges , so its universal worship

my view is that if all muslims in all the world performed exactly one salat , so it’s universal worship

your view is that , if it was obligation for the muslim to use the arabic quran in his salat , then the religion of islam is limited to arabs , while my view is that it’s okey if non arab performed his salat in arabic so that islam not limited to arabs

So you don’t want to take the “suggestion” of the prophet of Islam, and mimic not only him but his companions, even when a reward is promised? I must admit also that, while it’s one thing to be humble and admit our faults, it sounds a bit strange to simply shrug off responsibility with, “Well, I’m not devout enough,” as if we’re making excuses before God. That brings me to the next point:

offcourse i like to take his suggestion and i like to please him , but i really have to focus in most important issue , i have to focus on these things which really help me in my beliefs

it have no meaning if muslim grow his bread and in the same time he don’t pay his zakat for example
it have no meaning if muslim grow his bread then dealed with people in rude manner

not God nor prophet (pbuh) judge muslims from this aspect atall
49-13 O you men! surely We have created you of a male and a female, and made you tribes and families that you may know each other;** surely the most honorable of you with Allah is the one among you most careful (of his duty); surely Allah is Knowing, Aware. **

afterall , if you aske me is it Good or evil to grow your bread so the answer will be it’s good to grow it with the intension of please the prophet.

 

[sedonaman]

What would you say to a person who was contemplating Islam?
I really need some strong advice and hard facts!

Maybe someone has already mentioned this, but you haven’t given any information on this person’s background.

 

[sedonaman]

… i alse believe that in islam we can’t separate the teaching of islam from the state ,

We will make a note of this comment. planten, are you listening to this?

…actually we have to establish islam in our state to bring the peace to the world

If this were possible, there should be peace throughout the Muslim world now.

 

[Byzantine_Wolf]

i just didn’t want to go in circle , i thought if i responed that i will say the same words .
and i didn’t want for you to feel bore
seems to me that we just don’t have common ground , i feel that we just can’t understand each other …your view is that , if it was obligation for the muslim to use the arabic quran in his salat , then the religion of islam is limited to arabs , while my view is that it’s okey if non arab performed his salat in arabic so that islam not limited to arabs

Yes I know, and that is precisely my point, as I showed in my diagram. Islam is indeed limited to a culture. If a non-Arab performed salat in a foreign language, he is appealing to a different culture. If I had to memorize all my prayers in Greek, I would be submitting to Greek. If I had to memorize all my prayers in Chinese, I would be submitting to Chinese. So, if I have to memorize all my prayers in Arabic, I’m submitting to Arabic. I’m submitting to another culture. If a religion makes you do that, it is not a true “universal” religion but a religion that filters everything into a culture, and ergo it cannot be considered a culture that doesn’t appeal to one people or region. Your argument is therefore false.

Again, as I showed in my previous post, you keep telling us that Islam isn’t geared to a specific culture, then continually admit that it is geared towards Arabic. There isn’t a matter of finding common ground, the matter is that your argumentation is inconsistent. In part I do not blame you for giving up defending it, because it is really indefensible.

offcourse i like to take his suggestion and i like to please him , but i really have to focus in most important issue , i have to focus on these things which really help me in my beliefs…

afterall , if you aske me is it Good or evil to grow your bread so the answer will be it’s good to grow it with the intension of please the prophet.

Then grow it to please the prophet. I don’t quite understand your excuses. You seem to essentially be saying, “Well I could grow a beard, but I don’t feel like doing it.” That’s a poor excuse for someone who is attempting to defend their religion. That would be like a Christian going to a Muslim forum, defending Christianity, then admitting, “Well, even though I shouldn’t lie, I do any way because I’m not devout enough,” or if a Christian woman doing the same thing said, “Well, even though I should wear modest clothing, I don’t any way because I’m not devout enough.” Any such person who admits to not being devout and ignoring practices of their faith while attempting to defend that faith, in fact, disgraces the very faith they are defending. As I said before, it’s one thing to be humble and admitting you’re not perfect, and another to outright admit you’re just not going to try because you lack faith and seem to be OK with it.

Like I said earlier, if I believed that it was “more than suggestion” - in fact, that it was “the original healthy constitution of the nature of humans as created by God” as fitrah is defined (a definition which you seem to continually be ignoring) - and I believed there would be rewards for doing so, I would be growing my beard. In fact, I would grow it as part of my spiritual growth, because it would build on my faith. I wouldn’t just say, “Well, I’m not devout enough” - that would signing myself over to the devil. I would be trying to struggle to be as devout as I can be. I would be growing my beard as part of the larger picture of being a true Muslim, because I would be following the commands of the prophet and the order that God intended for the nature of humanity.

 

[tomarin]

I don’t think you actually read the post you quoted, then. I did not say that Islam is SOLELY Arab cultural imperialism or that it is never adapted to cultural situations. Obviously a quick look at Africa or Central Asia would be enough to see that Islam as it is practiced around the world can be as highly syncretic as any form of Christianity or any other world religion. That is totally not my point.

Okay. Well at least we agree on this point. So far so good.

My point is that regardless of how many different strains of folk Islam you might be able to find, the model Muslim is still the Arab conqueror, Muhammad, whose followers brought the Arab culture with them to the horn of Africa, the Amazight cultural zone of North Africa, Coptic Egypt, Nubian Sudan, Visigothic Spain, Slavic and Turkic Eastern Europe, etc. They were all taught to turn away from Jerusalem and instead to turn to Mecca, as Muhammad himself made that change.

But that’s not the end of the story, is it? The Arabs expanded militarily; they conquered and converted Persia; they ceased to be an Arab kingdom and became an Islamic empire after absorbing Persia’s rich cultural heritage. That all happened prior to the movement of Islam througout the globe as a world civilization. So what we’re dealing with is something that is not irreducibly Arabic as you claim; and not irreducibly imperialistic outside of the so-called Arab heartland (where I acknowledge it is more stongly tied to its Arab roots than elsewhere, as one might expect).

I mean, you’re obviously right that there is an Arabic imprint on the religion and the early Muslims brought that Arabic culture with them wherever they went (the Arab heartland and north Africa). (Much as there is a Greek imprint on Orthodox Christianity wherever it went, such as Russia and the Balkans – should we call Orthodox Christianity “Greek imperialism”?) But does that warrant calling the world religion that resulted from this expansion mostly Arabic imperialism? Only as a polemical gesture, as far as I can see.

 

[tomarin]

If a religion makes you do that, it is not a true “universal” religion but a religion that filters everything into a culture, and ergo it cannot be considered a culture that doesn’t appeal to one people or region. Your argument is therefore false.

How is this any less true of Christianity than it is of Islam? Christianity emerged in a particular cultural milieu yet it claims to be universal, and we (Christians) have no problems with those claims.

It seems to me that what this comes down to is that you and Dzheremi have a problem with Islam having a sacred language (Arabic) rather than merely a liturgical language. But why it follows that Islam cannot be considered universal is a bit beyond me.

 

[jakasaki]

We will make a note of this comment. planten, are you listening to this?

If this were possible, there should be peace throughout the Muslim world now.

Hi SedonaMan, welcome back!

Planten hasn’t been around for weeks now…

 

[Booklover]

Hi SedonaMan, welcome back!

Planten hasn’t been around for weeks now…

But the nonsense continues does it not? Know what I mean?

Vickie

 

[jakasaki]

But the nonsense continues does it not? Know what I mean?

Vickie

Indeed

 

[Booklover]

Indeed

Pam, I’ll join you with the popcorn!opcorn:Yummy!

Vickie

 

[meedo]

ZAKI, you said:

The one about women praying behind men instead of with them/in front of them is a sign of male dominance is actually for a few simple reasons such as the best place for a women to pray is in her home and also-would a male be concentrating on prayer or a female’s behind if a women was praying in front of him? I know the second one is a bit dodge but seriously! No he would not! Male instinct if you get me…

If it isn’t about dominance why not just have the men pray on one side of the room and the women pray on the other. Maybe with a small curtain to divide the groups if it is really that hard to avoid looking to one side for the duration of the prayer.

Hello LDN,

This is already the case. It is not about dominance , it is about separation. In my area in Egypt women would be on the Top story of the masjid while men would be in the down level . The reason the habit went in some places that women were in the back , because when going down in prostration , it is not appropriate for a woman to be infront of men .

in other mosques in cairo there are curtains wree women pray on the side.

best regards,

Meedo

 

[tomarin]

But the nonsense continues does it not? Know what I mean?

As long as there’s a lot of gratuitous insults and aggressive polemic flying around, I have to agree with you.

 

[elwill]

Yes I know, and that is precisely my point, as I showed in my diagram. Islam is indeed limited to a culture. If a non-Arab performed salat in a foreign language, he is appealing to a different culture. If I had to memorize all my prayers in Greek, I would be submitting to Greek. If I had to memorize all my prayers in Chinese, I would be submitting to Chinese. So, if I have to memorize all my prayers in Arabic, I’m submitting to Arabic. I’m submitting to another culture. If a religion makes you do that, it is not a true “universal” religion but a religion that filters everything into a culture, and ergo it cannot be considered a culture that doesn’t appeal to one people or region. Your argument is therefore false.

well, i have to ask you two questions where i actually asked before
1- what is your defination for this word " universal religion" ?
2- what do you mean by culture of arabic ? as for i think that arabic is somekind of languge not culture

Again, as I showed in my previous post, you keep telling us that Islam isn’t geared to a specific culture, then continually admit that it is geared towards Arabic. There isn’t a matter of finding common ground, the matter is that your argumentation is inconsistent. In part I do not blame you for giving up defending it, because it is really indefensible.

i actually think that i put my hands on the problem
you dealing with arabic as to be culture , and i dealing with it as to be a languge , that’s why while i insist that your problem is with the language , you also insist that your problem is with culture

i think we have to deal with my 2 questions above for constructive discussion

Then grow it to please the prophet. I don’t quite understand your excuses. You seem to essentially be saying, “Well I could grow a beard, but I don’t feel like doing it**.” That’s a poor excuse for someone who is attempting to defend their religion.** That would be like a Christian going to a Muslim forum, defending Christianity, then admitting, “Well, even though I shouldn’t lie, I do any way because I’m not devout enough,” or if a Christian woman doing the same thing said, “Well, even though I should wear modest clothing, I don’t any way because I’m not devout enough.” Any such person who admits to not being devout and ignoring practices of their faith while attempting to defend that faith, in fact, disgraces the very faith they are defending. As I said before, it’s one thing to be humble and admitting you’re not perfect, and another to outright admit you’re just not going to try because you lack faith and seem to be OK with it.

in my religion , it’s okey to grow your bread and it’s okey to not , it’s not critical point in teaching of islam , but if you asking about the best of them so i will say that two of them are okey but growing it will be better

i just not find my self but laughing when you consider growing of beards is practice for our faith . oh God

Like I said earlier, if I believed that it was “more than suggestion” - in fact, that it was “the original healthy constitution of the nature of humans as created by God” as fitrah is defined (a definition which you seem to continually be ignoring) - and I believed there would be rewards for doing so, I would be growing my beard. In fact, I would grow it as part of my spiritual growth, because it would build on my faith. I wouldn’t just say, “Well, I’m not devout enough” - that would signing myself over to the devil. I would be trying to struggle to be as devout as I can be. I would be growing my beard as part of the larger picture of being a true Muslim, because I would be following the commands of the prophet and the order that God intended for the nature of humanity.

Growing beards might be encouraged, but is not mandatory in Islam. Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him had reasons for his time only, 1400 years ago, to command the Muslims to grow beards. This doesn’t mean that these reasons have to exist today.
Ibn `Umar, may Allah be pleased with him, quoted the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) as saying: “Be distinguished from disbelievers, grow your beards, and shave your mustaches.” In the Hadith, the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) related the reason for growing a beard to the necessity of distinguishing Muslims from non-Muslims. The non-Muslims referred to here are the Persians –fire worshipers - who used to shave their beards. The Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) wanted to teach Muslims how to be distinguished in their appearance, and their behavior.

If growing beards was mandatory in the Noble Quran, then we would have nothing to argue about. But since it was mentioned in the Sayings of our beloved Prophet peace be upon him, then it is important to know whether this law should apply to all times and all places or not. Some of our Prophet’s Sayings and laws were made only to solve situations that occurred 1400 years ago. These few Sayings don’t necessarily have to be applied today.

in my openion . growing the beard may be regarded as commendable but not obligatory, and, accordingly, shaving it would be classified as Makruh rather than Haram. It is true that none of the Companions was known to have shaved his beard. Perhaps there was no need to shave, and perhaps growing the beard was a custom among them."

Only the Noble Quran’s laws are all 100% applicable for all times and all places. Prophet Muhammad’s Sayings, yet most of them should be applied for all times and all places, but few of them shouldn’t.

grow the beards is from fitrah becuase shaving it is an act of revolting against the nature of man, and imitating women.

 

[Bastoune]

Christianity does not oblige one to give up one’s culture to adopt 7th-Century Arabic culture.

I would encourage people to read up on the “Satanic Verses” deleted from the Koran – the very mention of this makes every Muslim nervous. If Muhammad was unable to discern that those verses (in which Muhammad, I mean, “Allah”, tells Muslims to worship the minor moon goddesses worshiped by these tribes with which he wished to align himself militarily, as daughters of Allah) were satanic, whose to trust his judgment on any of his so-called “revelation.”

What’s more, the Koran is a jumbled, incomplete mess of nonsense taken from ONE MAN’s delusions (just like the book of Mormon… where’s the proof) – and many pages were destroyed as they were written on anything Muhammad could find such as leaves, pieces of wood, etc.

Muslims claim the Koran is the word-for-word revelation from God and there is an exact copy of the Koran (no errors) in Heaven. Really? But we know that the Koran of today is missing revelations as I mentioned above.

Unlike the Bible which is inspired but written by men, the Koran is supposed to be God talking. I would therefore wonder how Allah can get matters of science, Christianity, secular history, and the existence of djinns, so wrong if he is perfect.

Those who consider Islam want a sense of discipline and control that they don’t have in their lives. But the God of Islam doesn’t even guarantee you salvation even if you “do” everything right. You just “hope” your “works” please him but even still, since there is no concept of grace, a Muslim never really knows… unless he KILLS in the name of Allah, then it is automatic heaven. Get it?

Compare the life of Muhammad to that of Jesus, then compare the definition of “martyr” in Christianity (and examine the lives of martyrs) to that in Islam (where you die while KILLING…) and you will see the superiority of Christianity.

Islam is evil. There are many wonderful, devout Muslims who truly think they are following God and may God bless them and bring them into the fold of His true people.

 

[dzheremi]

Dzheremi ha(s) a problem with Islam having a sacred language (Arabic) rather than merely a liturgical language. But why it follows that Islam cannot be considered universal is a bit beyond me.

You’re absolutely right, this is what I have a problem with. I have that same problem with certain people (“Rastafarians”, mostly) who claim that Amharic is a sacred language, since it was spoken by their “God”, Haile Selassie. I have the same problem with the KJV-only crowd in Christianity, who believe that a particular translation is prefered by God.

If it were merely a matter of using Arabic in certain prayers, then that’s not a problem. Arab Muslims do it, Arab Christians do it. It’s fine. It makes perfect sense. The problem comes with the claim that Muslims (and, as far as I’ve seen, ONLY Muslims) make that Arabic is the LANGUAGE OF GOD, that the angels in heaven speak Arabic, etc. Apparently these views are fairly traditional to Islam, having been explained to me by a Muslim in rather simple terms: the Qur’an is the literal word of God, the Qur’an is in Arabic, therefore God speaks Arabic, and we must worship God in Arabic. Given this line of reasoning, I reject the Islamic basis for enshrining Arabic as a “sacred language” as part of my overall rejection of Islam and its claims. Since I don’t believe God is an Arab, I don’t believe that anything bad would happen if Pakistani Muslims offered their prescribed prayers in Urdu, or if Amazight Muslims recited the Qur’an in Tamazight, or Somali Muslims in Somali. That they are not allowed to do that, because apparently Islamic orthodoxy disallows them from doing it, tells me that there is more at work than some adherence to tradition as is the case in the Orthodox churches or the Latin Mass. There are theological underpinnings to this enforcement. God doesn’t listen to your “salat” if you don’t pray to Him in His language. Which just HAPPENS to be Muhammad’s language I’m sorry, but something is rotten in Mecca. Muslim claims of Arabic as the “sacred language” stink to high heaven.

And I never wrote that Islam cannot be or is not a universal religion, even as I reject its claims about Arabic as I reject basically everything else about it. It most certainly IS a universalizing religion, anyway. One of the things it makes universal is the use of Arabic by its faithful. A Muslim explanation for the use of Arabic in formal worship is precisely that it makes Islam a universal religion by the imposition of one language for all instead of however many local/national languages across the body of believers. As far as I can tell, this is purely a pragmatic concern (though, obviously, in the hands of people predisposed to believe in the “sacredness” of Arabic, it can take on religious overtones), so I have less of a problem with this point. It is qualitatively different than “this is God’s language”, “this language is pure and clear”, etc.

In short, appeals to the usefulness of one language in a liturgical setting are fine. Appeals to the character, linguistic properties, “sacredness”, etc. of one language (or the culture/s associated with the native speakers of that language!) are not. There is nothing about Arabic, even Qur’anic Arabic, that makes it inherently more suitable for the offer of prayer than any other language that a Muslim might actually speak. To believe otherwise, I guess you have to be a Muslim. I am not a Muslim, so I don’t believe it.