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Islam And Our Lack Of Free Will

Islam And Our Lack Of Free Will
(03-29-2020, 02:34 PM)Link Wrote: Until we can take out the corruptions, people are justified to be scared from this religion.

LOL
"Taking out the corruptions".
LOL
Read: "Taking out the inconvenient truths"
LOL

So let me get this straight.
Your god went to all the trouble to get a text produced, but it's too ineffective to expend the extra energy to get it transmitted correctly.
Alrighty then.

Pfffffft
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Islam And Our Lack Of Free Will
(03-29-2020, 04:36 PM)Cheerful Charlie Wrote: The problem here is that this is not how Islam acted for much of it's history.  Islam attacked Persia, Egypt, North Africa, Spain, France, Sicily and Italy, Asia, India, the Balkans, Hungary, Bulgaria, Albania et al.  It is not like these nations attacked Islam at all.

For over three centuries, Islam practiced violent jihad on the world until Pope Innocent III had enough and lead Europe to fight back, and many Moslems still are angry about the crusades.  "We weren't doing nothing and the Christians attacked us!  For no reason at all!".  Well no, Islam apparently died with Mohammed.  Or Islam ignored the verses about not attacking people who had done nothing, and payed attention to the "bad verses".

Today world powers justify their aggressive ambitions using human rights: those people do not respect human rights and are a threat to the modern world, we need to civilize them. Does it mean the human rights declaration in itself drives violence? Certainly not. Because territorial domination pursued by world powers is not prescribed in the human rights declaration. 

Arab tribes brutally fought each other until they were finally united by Islam, which enabled them to pursue their violent ambitions beyond their borders. They brought the Persian and Roman empires to their knees in barely two decades. 

Does it mean their religion was the cause of their violence? No, because the religious text itself does not prescribe anything near territorial expansion. 

109:6  You shall have your religion and I shall have my religion.
2:256  There is no compulsion in religion...
18:29  Say,"The truth is from your Lord": Let him who will believe, and let him who will, reject (it)...
60:8 Allah does not forbid you (as regards) the ones who have not fought you on account of the religion and have not driven you out of your residences that you should be benign to them and be equitable towards them; surely Allah loves the equitable. 

Further evidence?

From the constitution of Madina, the center of government of the prophet of Islam:

Quote:The non-Muslims included in the ummah will have the following rights:
  1. The security of God is equal for all the groups
  2. Non-Muslim members of the ummah have equal political and cultural rights with the Muslims. There will be complete freedom of religion and all groups will be autonomous.
  3. Non-Muslims and Muslims will take up arms against the enemy of the ummah and will share the cost of war. Muslims and non-Muslims are sincere friends with honorable dealings and no treachery.
  4. Non-Muslims will not be obliged to take part in the religious wars* of Muslims.
from MUHAMMAD AND THE JEWS, Barakat Ahmad p. 46 find the book here online

*Muslims were constantly attacked because of their new religion and were driven out from their city, Mecca, these wars were defensive. 

About the authenticity of the constitution: 
Quote:Tom Holland writes, "The Constitution of Medina is accepted by even the most suspicious of scholars as deriving from the time of Muhammad."
Holland, Tom (2012). In the Shadow of the Sword: The Battle for Global Empire and the End of the Ancient World.

Quote:Today's crop of jihadis, Taliban, al Qaeda, Boko Haram, Shabbaz, ISIL, and many others from Thailand to Burma, to the Philippines and Africa seem to be the ones who read the Quran and hadiths quite a bit differently.

A book that can be so interpreted for centuries to mandate jihad is a book that no intelligent, and merciful, compassionate God would have given to Mohammad, to give to mankind. By their fruits we shall know them.  This book will be a source of this sort of violence for centuries to come.

In this post, I provided evidence that the US was responsible for the formation of first extremist groups to counter Soviet Russia in Afghanistan, in fact, this is what Clinton unambiguously admits in a video footage. Also, I provided evidence that world powers continue to support Islamic extremism to further their objectives. 

So these groups are puppets in a larger power struggle, and they exist because of consistent support of world powers. Otherwise, their idealogy, namely, Wahhabism, founded around 1800, was unanimously rejected by Muslims. This extremist idealogy wasn't a serious issue until the western powers saw it as an opportunity to pursue their ambitions in the middle east region. 

Quote:The sectarian terror group won’t be defeated by the western states that incubated it in the first place
Now the truth emerges: how the US fuelled the rise of Isis in Syria and Iraq
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Islam And Our Lack Of Free Will
@Hussein

Wasn't religious tolerance in early Muslim societies extended to other believers (Jews and Christians) but not to unbelievers?

And weren't all the non-Muslims obliged to pay a special tax and abide by other similar, measures, effectively making them second-class citizens -- that is, unless they converted?

Wahhabism isn't "unanimously rejected by Muslims" if many Muslims are Wahhabists.

The problem with U.S. involvement in the Middle East and Central Asia is that we likely had very little understanding of the regional and doctrinal disputes which inflame so many passions in those places. We no doubt chose the wrong sides on many occasions because of our lack of information. So for instance, I personally think we should have taken strong measures against Saudi Arabia after 9-11, since the Saudis were financing extremist groups in Afghanistan. And it's certainly unfortunate we ever supported the Shah of Iran or Saddam Hussein.

You will find that Americans have different ideas on all these issues, just as they do about so many other issues.
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Islam And Our Lack Of Free Will
(03-30-2020, 08:19 PM)Alan V Wrote: And weren't all the non-Muslims obliged to pay a special tax and abide by other similar, measures, [

Yes, you are referring to Jizya:

Quote:According to Lane's Lexicon, jizya is the tax that is taken from the free non-Muslim subjects of an Islamic government, whereby they ratify the pact that ensures them protection.

Quote:Jizya or Jizyah (Arabic: جِزْيَة‎ jizyah IPA: [d͡ʒɪzjæ]) is a per capita yearly taxation historically levied in the form of financial charge on permanent non-Muslim subjects (dhimmi) of a state governed by Islamic law in order to fund public expenditures of the state, in place of the Zakat and Khums that Muslims are obliged to pay.[1][2][3] Muslim jurists required adult, free, sane males among the dhimma community to pay the jizya,[4] while exempting women, children, elders, handicapped, the ill, the insane, monks, hermits, slaves, and musta'mins—non-Muslim foreigners who only temporarily reside in Muslim lands.[5][10] Dhimmis who chose to join military service were also exempted from payment, as were those who could not afford to pay.

1. Muslims were involved in bloody wars to protect their territory
2. Muslims had to pay two types of religious tax: Zakat and Khums.
3. While unbelievers were exempt from both (1) and (2), they had to pay Jizya instead.

Quote:effectively making them second-class citizens -- that is, unless they converted?

I haven't seen any evidence indicating non-believers were treated as second-class citizens, and as it should be clear now, payment of Jizya was not because they were deemed as inferior.

Quote:Wahhabism isn't "unanimously rejected by Muslims" if many Muslims are Wahhabists.  

You are right, however, I said Wahhabism was unanimously rejected at the time of its inception around 1800.:

Quote:Reception by contemporaries[edit]
Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab's teachings were criticized by a number of Islamic scholars during his life for disregarding Islamic history, monuments, traditions and the sanctity of Muslim life.[78] One scholar named Ibn Muhammad compared Ibn 'Abd al-Wahhab with Musaylimah the liar alayhi la'na.[79] He also accused Ibn 'Abd al-Wahhab of wrongly declaring the Muslims to be infidels based on a misguided reading of Qur'anic passages and Prophetic traditions[79] and of wrongly declaring all scholars as infidels who did not agree with his "deviant innovation".[79]

The traditional Hanbali scholar Ibn Fayruz al-Tamimi (d. 1801/1802) publicly repudiated Ibn 'Abd al-Wahhab's teachings when he sent an envoy to him and referred to the Wahhabis as the "seditious Kharijites" of Najd.[80] In response, the Wahhabis considered Ibn Fayruz an idolater (mushrik) and one of their worst enemies.[80]

According to the historian Ibn Humayd, Ibn 'Abd al-Wahhab's father criticized his son for his unwillingness to specialize in jurisprudence and disagreed with his doctrine and declared that he would be the cause of wickedness.[81] Similarly his brother, Suleyman ibn 'Abd al-Wahhab wrote one of the first treatises' refuting Wahhabi doctrine[81] claiming he was ill-educated and intolerant and classing Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab's views as fringe and fanatical.[78]

The Shafi'i mufti of Mecca, Ahmed ibn Zayni Dehlan, wrote an anti-Wahhabi treatise, the bulk of which consists of arguments and proof from the sunna to uphold the validity of practices the Wahhabis considered idolatrous: Visiting the tombs of Muhammad, seeking the intercession of saints, venerating Muhammad and obtaining the blessings of saints.[82] He also accused Ibn 'Abd al-Wahhab of not adhering to the Hanbali school and that he was deficient in learning.[82]
From Wikipedia

There is an estimate of 5M Wahhabis, they are strongly supported by the main US ally in the region, Saudi Arabia. The ideology is advertised throughout the region. For example, they have Persian speaking satellite TV channels to propagate their ideology in Iran. 

Based on available evidence, I believe consistent support of world powers has been mainly responsible for the growth of this extremist ideology, which largely contradicts the Qur'an and Sunnah (tradition of the prophet).

Quote: We no doubt chose the wrong sides on many occasions because of our lack of information.  So for instance, I personally think we should have taken strong measures against Saudi Arabia after 9-11, since the Saudis were financing extremist groups in Afghanistan.  And it's certainly unfortunate we ever supported the Shah of Iran or Saddam Hussein.

You will find that Americans have different ideas on all these issues, just as they do about so many other issues.

Thanks for sharing your insights. Here, we do not think they were 'mistakes'. We believe those decisions were very well-measured, to secure the interests of western powers in this region. The security of Isreal being one of the most important ones. I think this view is strongly supported by available evidence.
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Islam And Our Lack Of Free Will
One of the important features of Islam, is that there is no separation between the religious and the political.
The nonsensical idea that extremist Islamic-political movements began under the tutelage of the United States in Afghanistan is totally refuted by
even the most basic knowledge of the subject.
https://www.hoover.org/research/religiou...-terrorism
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_te...80%931970s
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline...odern.html
http://theconversation.com/dont-blame-sh...ism-109918
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