Islam Converts

[Sister_Amy]

Yes, I figured most Muslims do not reckognize this sect, but I would rather know that I am describing it correct instead of what it is not. I know that Muslims believe that Muhammed was the “seal” the last of the prophets, and therefore any prophet after would automatically be discredited by “traditional” (for lack of a better word) Muslims.

I’m fairly certain that planteen believes he/she is Muslim and I’m not at all trying to disrespect what is believed, I’m just trying to figure out what it is to begin with, as I have never heard of it.

I think you have a fair understanding of it, sufficient to see the problem in it. Muslims believe that (a) Muhammad was a prophet and messenger, and that (b) the Qur’an is the word of God, revealed to Muhammad and perfectly preserved.

The Qur’an says that Muhammad is the last prophet/messenger. The only other prophet/messenger mankind will see is Jesus when he returns (according to Islamic belief.) If a person believes that there is another prophet, or messenger, or messiah (other than Jesus, who was the -only- Messiah) after Muhammad, then what he has done is invalidated his belief that the Qur’an is the word of God, by disbelieving in what it says, or disbelieving in what Muhammad taught. That’s what takes the person outside of Islam.

The Ahmadis are coming out of India/Pakistan around the time of British colonization, with a pacifist view that glorifies the colonizers and the English language. It’s hard for really anyone to accept it as authentic, as it waters down a number of teachings of actual Islam, and violates many others.

 

[Sister_Amy]

I have no problem whatsover with what you wrote.

I belong to a few forums, not just this one and in the one forum where it’s all muslims and 2% Christians, the Shia and Sunni go at it on a daily basis with full hatred calling each other a non-muslim and all sorts of insulting names.

That’s where I get my information from.

And since you said that Ahmadi’s can’t be muslims, I wonder if Planten and Paarsuray know that?

Maybe they can answer!

If you spend time on Muslim forums you’ll find that ignorant Muslims (and I ask Allah to protect me from being one of them) are quick to call each other disbelievers. They even call their scholars disbelievers–that’s how ignorant they are. They’ll say someone is a disbeliever or an innovator (almost as bad) simply for following a different school of thought. The Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) actually told his Companions that if a Muslim called another a disbeliever, than either he was correct, or he himself was a disbeliever. So it’s a really dangerous thing to do, because if you’re not right then it makes the person who said it a disbeliever. I say that to show the ignorance of those who are quick to make takfir on each other.

The scholars of Sunni Islam that I’ve heard from all agree that Shi’a are Muslims. They disagree with the Shi’a on a number of issues, and some sects of Shi’a go to more extremes than others do. But their basic beliefs (which differ on the matter of the family of the Prophet pbuh) do not, as I understand it, conflict with the creed of Islam. So it is not correct to call them non-Muslims.

 

[jakasaki]

If you spend time on Muslim forums you’ll find that ignorant Muslims (and I ask Allah to protect me from being one of them) are quick to call each other disbelievers. They even call their scholars disbelievers–that’s how ignorant they are. They’ll say someone is a disbeliever or an innovator (almost as bad) simply for following a different school of thought. The Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) actually told his Companions that if a Muslim called another a disbeliever, than either he was correct, or he himself was a disbeliever. So it’s a really dangerous thing to do, because if you’re not right then it makes the person who said it a disbeliever. I say that to show the ignorance of those who are quick to make takfir on each other.

The scholars of Sunni Islam that I’ve heard from all agree that Shi’a are Muslims. They disagree with the Shi’a on a number of issues, and some sects of Shi’a go to more extremes than others do. But their basic beliefs (which differ on the matter of the family of the Prophet pbuh) do not, as I understand it, conflict with the creed of Islam. So it is not correct to call them non-Muslims.

Again, I have no problem whatsover with you are writting…

To me, anyone who follows islam is a muslim and that included Planten and Paars. He follows islam and mohamads teachings and to me that’s a muslim.

The sunni don’t like the shia because they don’t believe in Ali and that is why they call them non-muslim and disbelievers. Plus the sunni are constantly bashing the shia because of their “own” hadith books and teachings.

I don’t know Sister Amy - all I’m contributing is what I’ve learned on other boards…

 

[dzheremi]

So Arabic is only okay if it’s Christian, is that what you’re saying?

No.

The poster made an outright attack on all Arabs, with a horrible description of the Arabic language.

In my first draft of my reply, I chastised the poster for that very reason until I re-read what they wrote and saw that it wasn’t clear that they were stating their own opinion, just the opinion of some people. So in trying to understand why some people might feel that way, I thought that it might be the case that they assume that everything that is Arab is also Islamic, and that their real trouble might be with Islam, not with Arabic. This false equivalency of everything Arab with Islam (or, for that matter, everything Muslim with Arabic) is not something I have cooked up in my own head. See for instance, this article. It is unfortunately very common. I have even seen articles on Assyrian churches in the USA being vandalized by ignorant people who assume that they are mosques used by Arabs (because there were anti-Arab and anti-Muslim slogans written on them)! So I think this attitude feeds into not just anti-Arabism but also “anti-everything from the Middle East”-ism, whether Christian or not.

Someone who holds that type of attitude is unlikely to be open to ANY aspect of Arab culture, and is more likely than not to be ignorant of the existence of non-Muslim Arabs, and is likely to change their tune (or at least back off with the unfounded and rude assertions of opinion as fact) when shown concrete evidence that their underlying assumptions about what is and isn’t “Arab” are wrong.

Which is pretty interesting if you consider the meaning of ‘Arab’ and that ancient Arabs considered their language one which made non-Arabs (like Greeks, for instance) sound like retards when they tried to speak. Such is the sophistication of the Arabic language.

Actually, that’s the farthest thing from interesting that I can think of. In Russian, the word for “German” comes a phrase meaning “dumb, unable to speak”, because when the Russians first encountered the Germans, they found them speaking a most barbarous language, and unable to understand the refined and proper Russian language. This assumption that “X are strange/dumb/‘retards’ because they don’t speak our language” is pretty common, and not at all a sign of “sophistication”.

And yet… you seem to agree with the poster as long as Christians are excluded?

Not at all. Read what I wrote above, or what poster Almosthome1 wrote in reply to your response

 

[Sister_Amy]

No.

In my first draft of my reply, I chastised the poster for that very reason until I re-read what they wrote and saw that it wasn’t clear that they were stating their own opinion, just the opinion of some people. So in trying to understand why some people might feel that way, I thought that it might be the case that they assume that everything that is Arab is also Islamic, and that their real trouble might be with Islam, not with Arabic. This false equivalency of everything Arab with Islam (or, for that matter, everything Muslim with Arabic) is not something I have cooked up in my own head. See for instance, this article. It is unfortunately very common. I have even seen articles on Assyrian churches in the USA being vandalized by ignorant people who assume that they are mosques used by Arabs (because there were anti-Arab and anti-Muslim slogans written on them)! So I think this attitude feeds into not just anti-Arabism but also “anti-everything from the Middle East”-ism, whether Christian or not.

Someone who holds that type of attitude is unlikely to be open to ANY aspect of Arab culture, and is more likely than not to be ignorant of the existence of non-Muslim Arabs, and is likely to change their tune (or at least back off with the unfounded and rude assertions of opinion as fact) when shown concrete evidence that their underlying assumptions about what is and isn’t “Arab” are wrong.

Actually, that’s the farthest thing from interesting that I can think of. In Russian, the word for “German” comes a phrase meaning “dumb, unable to speak”, because when the Russians first encountered the Germans, they found them speaking a most barbarous language, and unable to understand the refined and proper Russian language. This assumption that “X are strange/dumb/‘retards’ because they don’t speak our language” is pretty common, and not at all a sign of “sophistication”.

Not at all. Read what I wrote above, or what poster Almosthome1 wrote in reply to your response

I really got the impression, and again in this post, that you find it acceptable for people to continue hating Arab Muslims as long as they focus on Muslims then instead of allowing their blind bigotry to condemn equally non-Muslim Arabs.

Secondly, it isn’t that the Arabic language calls non-Arabs dumb or anything else. I thought that as someone who had studied semitic languages you could perhaps appreciate the beauty and sophistication of Arabic, but maybe I confused you with someone else.

 

[almosthome1]

I really got the impression, and again in this post, that you find it acceptable for people to continue hating Arab Muslims as long as they focus on Muslims then instead of allowing their blind bigotry to condemn equally non-Muslim Arabs.

Secondly, it isn’t that the Arabic language calls non-Arabs dumb or anything else. I thought that as someone who had studied semitic languages you could perhaps appreciate the beauty and sophistication of Arabic, but maybe I confused you with someone else.

Actually, Arabs do it too. The defination of “abeed” the term used to discribe Africans (at least where I live) literally means “slave”. So how is that any different? Is it more appropriate to refer to a group of as “slave” than to call them “dumb”?

Granted when people hear the term, they take it to mean African or African American where I live, but that is not the true meaning of the word.

 

[Sister_Amy]

Actually, Arabs do it too. The defination of “abeed” the term used to discribe Africans (at least where I live) literally means “slave”. So how is that any different? Is it more appropriate to refer to a group of as “slave” than to call them “dumb”?

Granted when people hear the term, they take it to mean African or African American where I live, but that is not the true meaning of the word.

I was talking to an Arab once and he used this term in conversation, i.e., “abeed.” I fussed at him for it, and he went on to make several disparaging remarks about black people, and didn’t seem to see any problem with it. Since then I try to avoid talking to him whenever possible. But that’s actually quite different than what I was talking about. 'Ajam, was the term I had in mind.

I’m not talking about modern-day Arabs anyway.

 

[dzheremi]

I really got the impression, and again in this post, that you find it acceptable for people to continue hating Arab Muslims as long as they focus on Muslims then instead of allowing their blind bigotry to condemn equally non-Muslim Arabs.

I don’t think either of my posts are addressing, let alone calling for, the condemnation of Arab Muslims or Arab Christians as much as commenting on the equation of ‘Arab’ with ‘Muslim’. But since you seem to have somehow gotten the idea that I find it acceptable for people to continue hating Arab Muslims just because they’re Muslims, allow me to explicitly deal with this idea that you have introduced: It is not okay now, nor has it ever been okay in the past, nor will be okay in the future for people to discriminate against ANYONE of ANY RACE because of their religion, language, or anything else. When we accept or reject ideas, we should do so on the basis of the content of those ideas, not on the cultural characteristics of those presenting the ideas. In other words, had the Greeks been the ones to bring Islam to the wider Middle East and the rest of the world, I would be just as against Islam as I am now, but not against Greek things or Greeks as people or Greek-ness as a concept. Does this make more sense to you now?

Secondly, it isn’t that the Arabic language calls non-Arabs dumb or anything else. I thought that as someone who had studied semitic languages you could perhaps appreciate the beauty and sophistication of Arabic, but maybe I confused you with someone else.

Indeed the Arabic language is beautiful. What does this have to do with what you wrote, saying that the Greeks sounded ‘retarded’ to the Arabs? Arabic is not more “sophisticated” than any other language. That sort of idea (that some languages are more sophisticated, more evolved, or “better” than others) has not been taken seriously by anyone in the field of linguistics for a long time, though it unfortunately remains popular with laypeople, usually with reference to their own language (or ‘high prestige’ varieties of it), or some language that they idealize or identify with for some reason.

Just yesterday I was talking with a Croatian acquaintance of mine in my Arabic class, and he asked me in Arabic “Which is the best language?”, to which I replied in Russian in order to better illustrate the point (and also because we both speak it better than Arabic): “That is impossible to say! Maybe I say it is Spanish or Arabic or Russian, but you might say Croatian, right?”

 

[planten]

Again, I have no problem whatsover with you are writting…

To me, anyone who follows islam is a muslim and that included Planten and Paars. He follows islam and mohamads teachings and to me that’s a muslim.

The sunni don’t like the shia because they don’t believe in Ali and that is why they call them non-muslim and disbelievers. Plus the sunni are constantly bashing the shia because of their “own” hadith books and teachings.

I don’t know Sister Amy - all I’m contributing is what I’ve learned on other boards…

** jakasaki, you are all on the right path about Sunni and Shia and Ahmadi except that you are all slightly off the mark.

1. The beliefs of Ahmadis are exactly like the Sunnis. No difference except:

a. That Muhammad was the last law bearing prophet.

b. No prophet will appear now ecept amongst the followers of the prophet Muhammad. ( I may be slightly wrong in describing this point. It is not easy to explain.)

c. Jesus has died a natural death at the comfortable age of 120 years. All messengers of Allah have passed away.

d. That reformers have been coming in the Ummah at the head of every century.

(May be there a few more differences.)

The Sunnis believe that Jesus is still alive and has not passed away. That Muhammad is the last prophet. No prophet of any kind will appear now on earth.

That was about Ahmadis and Sunnis.

Now about the Shias and Sunnis:

They believe in all basic things. The Shias dislike the first three Caliphs i.e. Abubakr, Umar and Uthman, even abuse them. The Shias do not like Aisha, the wife of the prophet, even abuse her. The Shias do not like another wife of the prophet, even abuse her.

At the same time, the Shias respect the father of hazrat Ali who was not a believer (that is what Sunnis say.) The Shias respect the family of the prophet (that family only which is from Hazrat Ali and Fatima). They respect the children of ali and say that they ha dthe right to Caliphate but Abubakr and Umar snatched it away.

Such things are highly disliked by the Sunnis. So they abuse the Shias for that. And the Shias abuse the Abubakr and Umar etc.

Amongst the Sunnis, there are few branches and one branch (Brelvi) is lenient towars the Shias. The other branch is harsh against the Shias.

Then there are others who are caled wahhabi (or Ahle Hadith). They do not believe in any one except the prophet. They stress too much on the hadith, even more than the Quran.

I will come back with more on the subject about Ahamdis too, later…**

 

[planten]

Continued…

jakasaki is right: To me, anyone who follows islam is a muslim and that included Planten and Paars. He follows islam and mohamads teachings and to me that’s a muslim.

Sis Amy is also right in describing that any one who calls another a Kafir becomes a kafir himself if the one called is not a kafir. So it is best to keep away from such bad things.

Then there is a better definition of Muslim by a Hadith. The prophet said: “Any one who recites the kalimah and eats from our food and faces our Qiblah is a Muslim. There is guarantee of his safety from Allah and the prophet. So, O Muslims, do not dishonor that guarantee.”

According to that hadith, Ahmadis should be Muslims.

Next, the non Ahmadi Muslims, specially Sunnis, hate and abuse the Ahmadis without limit. It is like the hatred and enmity that used to be in the time of the prophet in Makkah. They have no right to do that. The Sunnis call the Ahmadis as Kaafir since 1892 A.D. and say that the Ahmadis may be killed and they do do kill them. If any one wants to know about the state of Ahmadis, i used to visit “Thepersecution.org” site some time ago. Many Ahmadis (specially doctors) are being killed every week, month in pakistan just because of their faith. (That address of the site may not be exact.)

The Ahmadis number more than 170 million in the world now and they have a 24 hours television broadcast (i.e. MTA) all over the world since 1993 A.D. They have translated the Quran in more than 60 major languages of the world and they have established offices in about 190 countries of the world. The distribution of literature may be free, I do not know exactly.

The Ahmadis do not believe in Jihaad with weapons. Their leader Ghulam Ahmad forbade it 120 years ago and he said that it will be a sin to pick up weapons for the sake of religion.

It would be appropriate to give one website of Ahamdis: http://www.alislam.org

 

[Holly3278]

yes ,People here have a hard time staying on topic. ADD? But thats ok, I wont feed the trolls.

Are you calling those of us who choose to debate or discuss on this thread about Islamic converts trolls?

 

[Sister_Amy]

I don’t think either of my posts are addressing, let alone calling for, the condemnation of Arab Muslims or Arab Christians as much as commenting on the equation of ‘Arab’ with ‘Muslim’. But since you seem to have somehow gotten the idea that I find it acceptable for people to continue hating Arab Muslims just because they’re Muslims, allow me to explicitly deal with this idea that you have introduced: It is not okay now, nor has it ever been okay in the past, nor will be okay in the future for people to discriminate against ANYONE of ANY RACE because of their religion, language, or anything else. When we accept or reject ideas, we should do so on the basis of the content of those ideas, not on the cultural characteristics of those presenting the ideas. In other words, had the Greeks been the ones to bring Islam to the wider Middle East and the rest of the world, I would be just as against Islam as I am now, but not against Greek things or Greeks as people or Greek-ness as a concept. Does this make more sense to you now?

 

[Sister_Amy]

planten, just a few points for you

There is Ahl As-Sunnah wa al-Jama’ah. Those who you call “Wahhabis” are Sunnis. They believe in the Qur’an, and they believe in all of the Messengers and Prophets of Allah, the last of whom was Muhammad.

In response to your four points, many are incorrect, at least in the representation of Sunni (i.e., orthodox, mainstream) Islam. Muhammad is, according to Islam, the final prophet and messenger, and there will be no messenger or prophet after him, with the exception of the return of Jesus Christ (who of course already came as a prophet.) To say otherwise conflicts with the Qur’an. Muslims believe that Jesus didn’t die, but instead was raised up at the time when Christians allege he was crucified. There is no basis for saying he lived beyond that to be 120, and that as a statement conflicts with the Qur’an.

And on your last point that “reformers” come for every century (or ever generation, another reading) is a tradition I have heard among Sunni scholars also, although it is considered to be weak. Not sure if reformer is exactly the proper term, but even those you call “Ahle Hadith” and “Wahhabi” believe it’s a possibility.

Just to clear things up.

 

[dzheremi]

I am out of ways to explain this, I think.

Rejection of Islam should not entail rejection or hatred of everything that a Muslim might do, including the language they speak (which in most cases won’t be Arabic anyway). I enjoy a lot of Arabic music and literature, much of which is made by Muslims. I definitely enjoy learning the Arabic language so far, which is spoken mainly by Muslims (in that most Arabs are Muslim, not the other way around). I know better than to say it is awful or gross or whatever bad characterization someone could make of it. So when I read characterizations of the Arabic language as being like animal sounds or whatever, it seems to me an attempt to degrade the language as being the speech of animal-like people, very foreign and removed from what “normal” (non-Arab) people speak. It isn’t. The Arabs too have beautiful poetry, legends, hymns, theater, secular music, and all the other things that people who speak more “civilized” (~Indo European?) languages have. It’s just that for a lot of westerners, especially in today’s political climate, the language is intimately tied up with a sort of reflexively distasteful cultural mindset (including Islam, sorry to say it) that makes it seem “uglier” than it is.