Some of the things you say might very well be true and I certainly find some of it interesting, but you seem to be leaning a bit heavily on this pillar (semi-pun intended). From the simple fact that followers of Sunni and Shia (not to mention all of the other smaller factions) are abundant there obviously is room for interpretation. Why would a more modern one not be possible?
actually others have inquired about this and i answered this, but i will again answer :
im leaning on this pillar, because this pillar is the most critical thing, the pivot in which extremism and anti reformism is able to flourish in islam.
its a logical axiom :
- koran says its direct word of god and true.
- koran is told to be unchanged
- koran says it is 'as clear as day' for both 'scholar and the shepherd'
if you take all these logical propositions together, what is said in koran, all the medieval laws and customs and orders, especially those verses that outright order waging war, subduing and killing of non muslims, becomes impossible to reject or reinterpret.
you cant reject because it is also the word of god, unchanged.
you cant reinterpret, because 'unchanged word of god' (koran itself) says that its verses are clear as light of day, and everyone, from learned to shepherd (the ignorant) can understand it.
a shepherd reads koran, it orders it to wage war on non muslims, subdue and convert them or get tribute from them, and how to ambush them in what condition and when not to ambush.
at this point, you cant come up and say 'you misunderstood' to him. he is right, based on the above logical assumptions.
there was no 'climagate' but private interests and right wing news organizations (ie fox news) picking and exaggerating on some piece of criticism in climate research. the kind of inside criticism in scientific community which is not only normal, but generally mandated to be there, in order for a research to be considered valid and scientific.
the same kind of news organizations which easily went as far to say 'what global warming, it is snowing here' while doing serious news pieces.
should they have, god forbid, attempted to * gasp * regulate wall street while wall street was doing all those scams ?
all in a country, and a political environment which have been brainwashed to the core by decades of yelps of "deregulation - you'll cost americans jobs !!" ?
and all the while having a right wing, 'hands off business' administration looming over their head ?
how many of you would dare attempt do actually, god forbid, do your job and try to question wall street in such an environment, and lose all future career options, even if not directly your job ? note that you would probably lose your job, had it been under bush administration, flat out.
even the most left wing politicians were not able to dare speak against wall street, and this 'deregulation - hands off' business, until it became as clear as day that wall street actually perpetrated scams. EVEN during the period wall street was dragging all the world down, there were still 'experts', 'pundits' who were coming up in news channels and delivering opinion on how this was not a crisis and no regulation was needed and attacking whomever dare talked about any regulation. remember how peter schiff was ridiculed right 2-3 months after crisis, despite all the stuff he has said has come to pass and he was right.
leave it aside, there are STILL some totally out of touch right wingers coming up in senate or house floor, and saying 'deregulation', even after it came out that goldman sachs actually perpetrated not 1, but 5 different kinds of scam in one mortgage backed hedge fund.
so, tell me, what would you do in such an environment, if you were them ?
you would watch porn. or play games. because, noone who put you there, wanted you to do your job.
the point is, there are irrefutable evidence that bible is not a book of revelations in its entirety. and there has been innumerable different 'bibles' per se, and some of them were approved.
not to mention that all those bibles were written by at most apostles of jesus, not having anything to do with him in his life.
exact opposite is said in islam. koran is to be said to have been directly sent from god, and all evidence to the contrary was destroyed. yet some still resurface (like the different koran from ~600 AD that was found in yemen).
Islam resisted because it has a much more unified worldview, thanks to being compiled from older mythology by a single man and records of original compilation (or something very close to it) still surviving. That doesn't make it more right. In fact it makes it easier to show there are plenty of bullshit in Koran, without any easy way of explaining away its inaccuracy. I guess when it is time, Islam will go down very hard. Such hard that what remains as Islam won't be recognizable to us as Islam at all.
koran wasnt compiled by mohammad. it was compiled after his death, some decades later, when it turned out that those who heard koran being 'revealed' were dying out and soon noone would be left. under the orders of kaliph, men went out to collect all existing verses. some were acquired from pelts that they were written onto, some were recited from memory by its close circle. then, when all was compiled, it was sent to all the lands under control of the kaliphate, and it was said that this was 'the' koran and all other scriptures whomever one had should be burned.
on another sidenote, there is great deal of difference in between the tone of final sermon of mohammed (which he gave to tens of thousands of people it is said), and the tone of koran. and recently, a ~600 AD koran was discovered in yemen, which is different from the current koran at hand.
According to Shias, Sufis and scarce Sunni scholars, Ali compiled a complete version of the Qur'an mus'haf [2] immediately after Muhammad's death. The order of this mus'haf differed from that gathered later during Uthman's era. Despite this, Ali made no objection or resistance against standardized mus'haf, but kept his own book.[32][36]
After seventy reciters were killed in the Battle of Yamama, the caliph Abu Bakr decided to collect the different chapters and verses into one volume. Thus, a group of reciters, including Zayd ibn Thabit, collected the chapters and verses and produced several hand-written copies of the complete book.[32][37] 9th century Qur'an manuscript.
In about 650, as Islam expanded beyond the Arabian peninsula into Persia, the Levant and North Africa, the third caliph Uthman ibn Affan ordered the preparation of an official, standardized version, to preserve the sanctity of the text (and perhaps to keep the Rashidun Empire united, see Uthman Qur'an). Five reciters from amongst the companions produced a unique text from the first volume which had been prepared on the orders of Abu Bakr and which was kept with Hafsa bint Umar. The other copies already in the hands of Muslims in other areas were collected and sent to Medina where, on orders of the Caliph, they were destroyed by burning or boiling. This remains the authoritative text of the Qur'an to this day.[32][38][39]
The reason that the whole "church and state" separation hasn't taken root in the Muslim world (except in Turkey, where most of the population opposes that separation in any case) is because it's like proposing a separation of "being and living": utterly nonsensical in any practical sense.
first of all, majority in turkey have no problems with secularism. its 25% minority middle eastern wannabees which are funded and guided from middle east are who are against secularism.
and the very thing you call 'nonsensical' is the reason you are today able to sit in front of something called the 'monitor', use something called 'keyboard' and post these medieval thoughts of yours into something called a 'website'.
all such developments were banned from middle east by religious elite, until 20th century took hold and it was no longer rational to do so.
By the way, ex-Muslims with any knowledge call it the "Quran" or "Qur'an", because they generally know a bit of Arabic and can differentiate between Qaf/Kaaf and sometimes make a distinction around the Hamza. Just FYI, the next time you want to pretend being an ex-Moslum.)
i dont give a flying fuck about what muslims in middle east call it. what i call is, 'koran', and i am going to call it that, it is compliant with the pronounciation here in turkey. i dont give a shit about arabic and differentiation in between its letters.
all that talk is bullshit, which are voiced by moderate muslims in a desperate attempt to justify and maybe smoothen islam. but it never works for those ends.
in koran, muslims have to wage war in all other entities (be country, be religion doesnt matter) and establish a world of islam. in which, all other minorities will get subdued and either pay tribute (cizyah) or convert. with no civil rights to power or anything similar.
there are various verses that directly order attacking and killing nonmuslims. as long as the verses that order jihad, and these verses that openly order attacking and killing other beliefs are in koran, coupled with its general medieval cultural tone, it will be impossible for islam to exist as a moderate religion and coexist.
koran cannot be 'interpreted', if one takes koran as unchanged word of god.
it openly states itself that it is unchanged word of god, and both the shepherd and the scholar can understand it with ease. it is a book that is 'as clear as the light of day' in its own words.
therefore, whatever is seen, and read in it, you have to accept it as true and do it as it says.
'rules to live by', like dont eat this kind of food on this day etc are not the main focus here.
what im talking about, a total set of laws that govern all aspects of life, as i noted, from how to divide inheritance in what percentages to criminal punishments for numerous crimes.
it is a complete constutition with full criminal and civil law.
have you studied koran ? no it seems. if you had done, you would know. i can easily say after all the cross checking i did, nothing in any other scripture, bar only the stone carved rituals of brutal south american religions can top it in regard to medievalness.
no, you havent spent any time in any radical islamist neighborhood in middle east. if you had, you would have known that it is totally a different dimension.
they are. but, in addition to koran, second tier of islam is mohammad's hadith, ie what he said. after that, his sunnet comes, which is the way he lived. the separations of sects in islam mainly start from that third point. some follow mohammad's life as example (sunnis) some dont. some follow his relatives (shiites). and so on. fundamentalism from koran remains same in all sects.
it isnt. with even fundamental christianity, you can still come up and argue that what they hold is not a genuine text from god. since all 4 major bibles were edited and decided upon in council of nicea in 325 ad in anatolia by the council called by byzantine emperor. with islam, it isnt the case, it purports to be directly from god.
Slashdot Mirror
Some of the things you say might very well be true and I certainly find some of it interesting, but you seem to be leaning a bit heavily on this pillar (semi-pun intended). From the simple fact that followers of Sunni and Shia (not to mention all of the other smaller factions) are abundant there obviously is room for interpretation. Why would a more modern one not be possible?
actually others have inquired about this and i answered this, but i will again answer :
im leaning on this pillar, because this pillar is the most critical thing, the pivot in which extremism and anti reformism is able to flourish in islam.
its a logical axiom :
- koran says its direct word of god and true.
- koran is told to be unchanged
- koran says it is 'as clear as day' for both 'scholar and the shepherd'
if you take all these logical propositions together, what is said in koran, all the medieval laws and customs and orders, especially those verses that outright order waging war, subduing and killing of non muslims, becomes impossible to reject or reinterpret.
you cant reject because it is also the word of god, unchanged.
you cant reinterpret, because 'unchanged word of god' (koran itself) says that its verses are clear as light of day, and everyone, from learned to shepherd (the ignorant) can understand it.
a shepherd reads koran, it orders it to wage war on non muslims, subdue and convert them or get tribute from them, and how to ambush them in what condition and when not to ambush.
at this point, you cant come up and say 'you misunderstood' to him. he is right, based on the above logical assumptions.
there was no 'climagate' but private interests and right wing news organizations (ie fox news) picking and exaggerating on some piece of criticism in climate research. the kind of inside criticism in scientific community which is not only normal, but generally mandated to be there, in order for a research to be considered valid and scientific.
the same kind of news organizations which easily went as far to say 'what global warming, it is snowing here' while doing serious news pieces.
no..
it seems that dick cheney is still about.
should they have, god forbid, attempted to * gasp * regulate wall street while wall street was doing all those scams ?
all in a country, and a political environment which have been brainwashed to the core by decades of yelps of "deregulation - you'll cost americans jobs !!" ?
and all the while having a right wing, 'hands off business' administration looming over their head ?
how many of you would dare attempt do actually, god forbid, do your job and try to question wall street in such an environment, and lose all future career options, even if not directly your job ? note that you would probably lose your job, had it been under bush administration, flat out.
even the most left wing politicians were not able to dare speak against wall street, and this 'deregulation - hands off' business, until it became as clear as day that wall street actually perpetrated scams. EVEN during the period wall street was dragging all the world down, there were still 'experts', 'pundits' who were coming up in news channels and delivering opinion on how this was not a crisis and no regulation was needed and attacking whomever dare talked about any regulation. remember how peter schiff was ridiculed right 2-3 months after crisis, despite all the stuff he has said has come to pass and he was right.
leave it aside, there are STILL some totally out of touch right wingers coming up in senate or house floor, and saying 'deregulation', even after it came out that goldman sachs actually perpetrated not 1, but 5 different kinds of scam in one mortgage backed hedge fund.
so, tell me, what would you do in such an environment, if you were them ?
you would watch porn. or play games. because, noone who put you there, wanted you to do your job.
i dont even know who dan brown is.
speaking as a vegegarian, that is a non problem for me.
the point is, there are irrefutable evidence that bible is not a book of revelations in its entirety. and there has been innumerable different 'bibles' per se, and some of them were approved.
not to mention that all those bibles were written by at most apostles of jesus, not having anything to do with him in his life.
exact opposite is said in islam. koran is to be said to have been directly sent from god, and all evidence to the contrary was destroyed. yet some still resurface (like the different koran from
~600 AD that was found in yemen).
Islam resisted because it has a much more unified worldview, thanks to being compiled from older mythology by a single man and records of original compilation (or something very close to it) still surviving. That doesn't make it more right. In fact it makes it easier to show there are plenty of bullshit in Koran, without any easy way of explaining away its inaccuracy. I guess when it is time, Islam will go down very hard. Such hard that what remains as Islam won't be recognizable to us as Islam at all.
koran wasnt compiled by mohammad. it was compiled after his death, some decades later, when it turned out that those who heard koran being 'revealed' were dying out and soon noone would be left. under the orders of kaliph, men went out to collect all existing verses. some were acquired from pelts that they were written onto, some were recited from memory by its close circle. then, when all was compiled, it was sent to all the lands under control of the kaliphate, and it was said that this was 'the' koran and all other scriptures whomever one had should be burned.
on another sidenote, there is great deal of difference in between the tone of final sermon of mohammed (which he gave to tens of thousands of people it is said), and the tone of koran. and recently, a ~600 AD koran was discovered in yemen, which is different from the current koran at hand.
According to Shias, Sufis and scarce Sunni scholars, Ali compiled a complete version of the Qur'an mus'haf [2] immediately after Muhammad's death. The order of this mus'haf differed from that gathered later during Uthman's era. Despite this, Ali made no objection or resistance against standardized mus'haf, but kept his own book.[32][36]
After seventy reciters were killed in the Battle of Yamama, the caliph Abu Bakr decided to collect the different chapters and verses into one volume. Thus, a group of reciters, including Zayd ibn Thabit, collected the chapters and verses and produced several hand-written copies of the complete book.[32][37]
9th century Qur'an manuscript.
In about 650, as Islam expanded beyond the Arabian peninsula into Persia, the Levant and North Africa, the third caliph Uthman ibn Affan ordered the preparation of an official, standardized version, to preserve the sanctity of the text (and perhaps to keep the Rashidun Empire united, see Uthman Qur'an). Five reciters from amongst the companions produced a unique text from the first volume which had been prepared on the orders of Abu Bakr and which was kept with Hafsa bint Umar. The other copies already in the hands of Muslims in other areas were collected and sent to Medina where, on orders of the Caliph, they were destroyed by burning or boiling. This remains the authoritative text of the Qur'an to this day.[32][38][39]
The reason that the whole "church and state" separation hasn't taken root in the Muslim world (except in Turkey, where most of the population opposes that separation in any case) is because it's like proposing a separation of "being and living": utterly nonsensical in any practical sense.
first of all, majority in turkey have no problems with secularism. its 25% minority middle eastern wannabees which are funded and guided from middle east are who are against secularism.
and the very thing you call 'nonsensical' is the reason you are today able to sit in front of something called the 'monitor', use something called 'keyboard' and post these medieval thoughts of yours into something called a 'website'.
all such developments were banned from middle east by religious elite, until 20th century took hold and it was no longer rational to do so.
By the way, ex-Muslims with any knowledge call it the "Quran" or "Qur'an", because they generally know a bit of Arabic and can differentiate between Qaf/Kaaf and sometimes make a distinction around the Hamza. Just FYI, the next time you want to pretend being an ex-Moslum.)
i dont give a flying fuck about what muslims in middle east call it. what i call is, 'koran', and i am going to call it that, it is compliant with the pronounciation here in turkey. i dont give a shit about arabic and differentiation in between its letters.
no you cant. if you do, you are committing big blasphemy, and you are worthy of being killed.
koran doesnt teach tolerance or peace.
all that talk is bullshit, which are voiced by moderate muslims in a desperate attempt to justify and maybe smoothen islam. but it never works for those ends.
in koran, muslims have to wage war in all other entities (be country, be religion doesnt matter) and establish a world of islam. in which, all other minorities will get subdued and either pay tribute (cizyah) or convert. with no civil rights to power or anything similar.
there are various verses that directly order attacking and killing nonmuslims. as long as the verses that order jihad, and these verses that openly order attacking and killing other beliefs are in koran, coupled with its general medieval cultural tone, it will be impossible for islam to exist as a moderate religion and coexist.
koran cannot be 'interpreted', if one takes koran as unchanged word of god.
it openly states itself that it is unchanged word of god, and both the shepherd and the scholar can understand it with ease. it is a book that is 'as clear as the light of day' in its own words.
therefore, whatever is seen, and read in it, you have to accept it as true and do it as it says.
no.
that is evident. you were reading your inner monologue.
however this is not an issue for inner spaces, inner monologues or this or that.
anyway.
Obama ? me ? no.
http://www.imdb.com/media/rm1726451200/tt1234548
try this one.
'rules to live by', like dont eat this kind of food on this day etc are not the main focus here.
what im talking about, a total set of laws that govern all aspects of life, as i noted, from how to divide inheritance in what percentages to criminal punishments for numerous crimes.
it is a complete constutition with full criminal and civil law.
read again and read well.
fool.
who are you telling all these tirades to ?
i didnt say i was a muslim or i believed in anything. i described the nature of koran and islam.
islamism is not a spiritual or metaphysical thing. it is quite worldly, real. it doesnt live in philosophical plane.
and,
have you studied koran ? no it seems. if you had done, you would know. i can easily say after all the cross checking i did, nothing in any other scripture, bar only the stone carved rituals of brutal south american religions can top it in regard to medievalness.
just google quran and read.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Council_of_Nicaea
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bible
main point here is this, there is no 'unchanged word of god' in christianity, anything can be contested and objected to.
no, you havent spent any time in any radical islamist neighborhood in middle east. if you had, you would have known that it is totally a different dimension.
they are. but, in addition to koran, second tier of islam is mohammad's hadith, ie what he said. after that, his sunnet comes, which is the way he lived. the separations of sects in islam mainly start from that third point. some follow mohammad's life as example (sunnis) some dont. some follow his relatives (shiites). and so on. fundamentalism from koran remains same in all sects.
it isnt. with even fundamental christianity, you can still come up and argue that what they hold is not a genuine text from god. since all 4 major bibles were edited and decided upon in council of nicea in 325 ad in anatolia by the council called by byzantine emperor. with islam, it isnt the case, it purports to be directly from god.