the religion of peace

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How would you reform a decentralized religion? At best you could create a reform denomination…
 
I don’t believe that that’s entirely true. There was somewhat of a reformation via Muhammad ibn Abdul-Wahhab, whose followers are sometimes called “Wahhabies”. Muhammad ibn Abdul-Wahhab fought what he considered to be innovations (also known as bidah). For example, he opposed the common Sufi practice of praying to saints. That [and other] teaching was less than popular with sufis of his day. Sufis commonly use the term “Wahhabi” as a derogatory term that’s applied to salafis.

To some extent, Muhammad ibn Abdul-Wahhab succeeded, because there are many salafis today. His book ‘Kitab at-Tawheed’ is a popular book to this day. I can recall seeing that book in the mosque I used to go to.
 
When people talk about Islam reforming, they often compare it to the “reformation” in Christianity even though the reformation they envision in Islam would be something completely different than the “reformation” in Christianity because the “reformation” in Christianity was more of a rebellion of Christians against other Christians (Protestants rebelling against Catholics and other Protestants, and to an extent, Catholics rebelling against Protestants).

For Islam to be reformed, we can just have rebellions and new groups forming. Islam as a whole needs to change. It needs to completely reinterpret itself. Unfortunately, a religion is a religion, and especially something like Islam, I doubt seeing that happening. If there were any kind of reformation, which I highly doubt, it would be Muslims rebelling against other Muslims similar to the Protestant “reformation.” It wouldn’t be the kind of reformation, like those certain westerners who call for one, that was originally visualized.
 
To think one can ‘reform’ a religion, to try and turn it into something it’s not, in my opinion is the height of arrogance. It does not and logically cannot work.

Those who believe Islam is true will logically seek the most pure and unadulterated version of what Muhammad left behind, his life and teachings.

Just as with Christianity, we want the pure and unadulterated truth. Think of if someone wanted to ‘reform’ Christianity to approve same sex marriage? they are essentially trying to do that already and we obviously aren’t falling for it.

There are some serious, serious problems with the life and teachings of Muhammad and the Hadith, a ‘reform’ is arrogant and destined to fail, the only solution is evangelization and conversion IMO.

I hope this has helped

God Bless You

Thank you for reading
Josh
 
thephilosopher6 said:
I doubt seeing that happening. If there were any kind of reformation, which I highly doubt, it would be Muslims rebelling against other Muslims similar to the Protestant “reformation.” It wouldn’t be the kind of reformation, like those certain westerners who call for one, that was originally visualized.
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Have you been paying attention to the waring going on in the Middle East? It is a war between muslims and does break directly along the lines of denomination. You have Shia and Sunni at the highest level. You then have fundamentalists like Saudi wahhabism and whatever demented Islam ISIS espouses. You have this Shias of Irag and Iran. You have the more moderate Sunnis fighting in Syria. This is definitely a muslim vs muslim fight. The Saudis and to somewhat the gulf states are fighting proxy wars both to their north and to the south in Yemen in order to spread their version of Islam. Ironically we play a part in this because of support of Saudi and prior and continuing sanctions against Iran.
 
upant said:
is it possible to reform Islam so that it is truly a religion of peace?

politicalislam.com/islamic-reform-impossible/
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I don’t think it’s possible.

Let’s say, just for argument’s sake, that Muhammad wasn’t a prophet, but a man motivated for empire with a desire to keep its capital located near his home in the relative back-water of 7th century Arabia.

Both he and his region weren’t particularly wealthy, so he needed to motivate his uneducated war-fodder with something other than riches. “Guaranteed sexual heaven for all who fell serving the cause” would fit rather nicely. As women are not as biologically fit for engaging in hand-to-hand warfare as men are, there wouldn’t be much need to be very detailed about what heaven would be like for ladies.

Naturally, it would be a mistake to write any of this religion down while he lived. A contradiction in your texts would undermine the reality of payment to the troops during those critical early days of expansion. As such, it would be best to maintain a position where all theological hard-inquiries were ultimately answerable by Muhammad alone - which is exactly what he did.

Any my goodness was it successful.

A mere 3 centuries after Islam’s birth, all of North Africa, Persia and most of Spain were under Muslim rule with the Byzantines practically screaming for assistance after the loss of the Levant to Muslim forces (a la the early “Crusades”).
Islam was born in Arab Imperialism and religious warfare. Removing that aspect of it would be like removing the root from the tree. Tolerance and peace were only useful insofar as they kept non-Muslim subjects from mounting rebellions while they were systematically and institutionally assimilated.
Ironically, if the Catholic West (namely Venice) left the Orthodox Byzantines unmolested during this era, there is an excellent chance that the rise of Islam would have been far less pronounced, if it even happened at all, as Byzantium could have given Islam its undivided attention militarily. But then again, the Fall of Constantinople contributed very much to the exploration-then-Christianization of the Americas. Who could say if that was a fair trade for Christendom?

History is messy.
 
No, a bunch of Catholics can’t “reform Islam so that it is truly a religion of peace”. Change like that has to happen from the inside - Islam must reform itself.
 
do you disagree with what he says? if so what do you see as error and why?
 
drac16 said:
I don’t believe that that’s entirely true. There was somewhat of a reformation via Muhammad ibn Abdul-Wahhab, whose followers are sometimes called “Wahhabies”. Muhammad ibn Abdul-Wahhab fought what he considered to be innovations (also known as bidah). For example, he opposed the common Sufi practice of praying to saints. That [and other] teaching was less than popular with sufis of his day. Sufis commonly use the term “Wahhabi” as a derogatory term that’s applied to salafis.

To some extent, Muhammad ibn Abdul-Wahhab succeeded, because there are many salafis today. His book ‘Kitab at-Tawheed’ is a popular book to this day. I can recall seeing that book in the mosque I used to go to.
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A lot of the non-peaceful actions of militant islamists are credited back to “Wahhabism.”
 
thephilosopher6 said:
When people talk about Islam reforming, they often compare it to the “reformation” in Christianity even though the reformation they envision in Islam would be something completely different than the “reformation” in Christianity because the “reformation” in Christianity was more of a rebellion of Christians against other Christians (Protestants rebelling against Catholics and other Protestants, and to an extent, Catholics rebelling against Protestants).
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Muslims should be suspicious of the “reform” since it seems to involve conceding to the ideological demands of the West so that religion would be not be hostile to geopolitical order that West prefers (globalized neo-liberalism) and ideological values conducive to this. More importantly, reform would seem to vitiate the sharia, the way of Allah that influences how a Muslim should live his/her life (as a slave of Allah in total submission to him). It would be the equivalent of making the tawheed (the unity of God) subordinate to a foreign, fundamentally, un-Islamic ideology.

If Islam is to be “reformed”, Muslims should have positive experiences of non-Islamic culture. In contrast, someone such as Qutb had a negative experience of the West, seeing only decadence, and it had influenced to the point where he advocated an Islamic revival. I know a wonderful Muslim who was president of the Muslim Student Association at a university, and lived in a somewhat undeveloped area in her childhood. She is a very pious, effervescent, and compassionate person who is emotionally and intellectually engaged in the world. She sees the US cultural and economic institutions as promoting racism and social and economic inequality (and she would probably identify herself as a “socialist” or sympathetic to socialist ideas, and she does not post socially conservative memes.). She also sees the US foreign policy as promoting imperialism, and regards the US media as spreading “propaganda”. Do you think that someone like her would be the source that the US mainstream wants for a “reform” of Islam. She simply does not regard the US as a source for “reform”.

As for myself, I want an Islam that is more humanistic, and less sectarian and outwardly less priggish, but Muslims can hold socially conservative views, just not try to impose them on outsides.
For Islam to be reformed, we can just have rebellions and new groups forming. Islam as a whole needs to change. It needs to completely reinterpret itself. Unfortunately, a religion is a religion, and especially something like Islam, I doubt seeing that happening. If there were any kind of reformation, which I highly doubt, it would be Muslims rebelling against other Muslims similar to the Protestant “reformation.” It wouldn’t be the kind of reformation, like those certain westerners who call for one, that was originally visualized.
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Reform has a geopolitical element to it. Stop funding jihadis and supporting Salafi states!
 
Once, when his companions asked him: “O Messenger of Allah, what are the most excellent of actions?”

The beloved of Allah, Sallallahu alaihi Wasallam, replied:–

“To gladden the heart of human beings,
To feed the hungry,
To help the afflicted,
To lighten the sorrow of the sorrowful, and
To remove the sufferings of the injured.” [Sahih Bukhari].
 
Eric_Hyom said:
Once, when his companions asked him: “O Messenger of Allah, what are the most excellent of actions?”

The beloved of Allah, Sallallahu alaihi Wasallam, replied:–

“To gladden the heart of human beings,
To feed the hungry,
To help the afflicted,
To lighten the sorrow of the sorrowful, and
To remove the sufferings of the injured.” [Sahih Bukhari].
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But you don’t mention the fact that Muhammad married Aisha (his favorite wife, so polygamy) at age 6 and consummated that marriage at age 9. If Muhammad did it, then anyone who believes that he is the last and greatest prophet will not think it wrong, on the contrary. So how can one condemn child marriages when that is exactly what Muhammad did?

This is just one example. You also can’t ‘reform’ something like that either, unless you take people for complete fools, which many are not.

I hope this has helped

God Bless You

Thank you for reading
Josh
 
I don’t know why so many posts talk about ‘reform’ as if it can actually be done or a plausible theory. I think it’s very arrogant.

Imagine if it were Catholicism that one wanted to ‘reform’ and were discussing how to do that? Those people would be heretics and I would instantly and passionately oppose every one of them, because their intentions are evil as they simply seek to infiltrate and subvert the true teachings of Christ.

I don’t know why one would expect an Islamic person to see it any differently. The only solution is evangelization (Sharing the Gospel) and conversion (Them to see the truth in Christ’s teachings, the errors in Muhammad’s and convert of their own free will, which can be difficult since apostasy in Islam is punishable by death according to the Hadith).

I hope this has helped

God Bless You

Thank you for reading
Josh
 
josh987654321 said:
but you don’t mention the fact that muhammad married aisha (his favorite wife, so polygamy) at age 6 and consummated that marriage at age 9. If muhammad did it, then anyone who believes that he is the last and greatest prophet will not think it wrong, on the contrary. So how can one condemn child marriages when that is exactly what muhammad did?

This is just one example. You also can’t ‘reform’ something like that either, unless you take people for complete fools, which many are not.

I hope this has helped

god bless you

thank you for reading
josh
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+1

mj
 
josh987654321 said:
I don’t know why so many posts talk about ‘reform’ as if it can actually be done or a plausible theory. I think it’s very arrogant.

Imagine if it were Catholicism that one wanted to ‘reform’ and were discussing how to do that? Those people would be heretics and I would instantly and passionately oppose every one of them, because their intentions are evil as they simply seek to infiltrate and subvert the true teachings of Christ.

I don’t know why one would expect an Islamic person to see it any differently. The only solution is evangelization (Sharing the Gospel) and conversion (Them to see the truth in Christ’s teachings, the errors in Muhammad’s and convert of their own free will, which can be difficult since apostasy in Islam is punishable by death according to the Hadith).

I hope this has helped

God Bless You

Thank you for reading
Josh
Click to expand...
Agree.

MJ
 
Eric_Hyom said:
Once, when his companions asked him: “O Messenger of Allah, what are the most excellent of actions?”

The beloved of Allah, Sallallahu alaihi Wasallam, replied:–

“To gladden the heart of human beings,
To feed the hungry,
To help the afflicted,
To lighten the sorrow of the sorrowful, and
To remove the sufferings of the injured.” [Sahih Bukhari].
Click to expand...
Justification has been merited for us by the Passion of Christ. It is granted us through Baptism. It conforms us to the righteousness of God, who justifies us. It has for its goal the glory of God and of Christ, and the gift of eternal life. **It is the most excellent work **of God’s mercy.

vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p3s1c3a2.htm

MJ
 
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