Senate Understanding Islam (and reading the Qur'an chapter by chapter)

Thank you, CT-some-numbers.

This is more specifically for reading the Qur'an alongside each other, but if the mods feel the need to close it, then so be it.

Couldn't actually find that thread when I checked the search engine though...

 

I'm currently at the beginning of Surah 4, An-Nisa/The Women, and am right here in the Bible, which would be Genesis 16.

If y'all have any questions or wish to ask me anything about my thoughts regarding it, you may, but I hope that you guys will join me in reading this with me so we can all read it together while we still have a chance.

I will go extra slow from here on out and stop for the day so others can catch up.

Who will be joining me?

 

Hello, my thread was all about reviewing the Qur’an sura by sura, though I didn’t get too far.

 

@InterestingLurker

 

Perhaps I should rename this thread "Qur'an Readalong with InterestingLurker"!

Really, this was meant to be so I could have others reading with me and offering commentary.

Honestly, I'm fine with the mods closing this thread, but if not, perhaps you could offer some insight.

Are you a Muslim btw? Or perhaps come from a background of such?

 

No I was just curious, it came as a result of a long dialogue I was having with a user who is Muslim and encouraged me to make the thread. We can just merge it. I do want to pick up where I left off in that thread eventually. And since you’re interested in conversation, I thought you’d at least appreciate reading through its 7 pages.

 

Very well.

If the mods wish to combine these threads, then please do so.

 

Thank you! But right now, I'll try to read without too much "guidance" or "footnotes" as I want to get the essence of the Islamic holy book without, say, peoples' other interpretations of it. That being said, what translation are you using? I'm going by the Sahih International translation.

 

Understandable! Thanks for the heads-up.

 

I was disappointed that this thread didn't go any further than it did. Hope to see it continue.

 

I had started reading and making notes for the fourth sura, mostly concerning the role of women in Islam, and I had by warned by my Muslim friend that it contained some very difficult passages, and he was right. Just never got through it, and didn't want to skip past it until I got through it.

Definitely read it on your own and form your opinions, but I'd be interested for you to read my comments after you've read each sura for yourself first. Most Muslims complement their reading of the Qur'an, and Muslim posters earlier in this thread said. As for my edition, it's in the post you quoted.

 

If you want, you can read along with me using this website here.

And yes, as you can see by the link, Surah 4 is currently where I am on the Qur'an. Also, if you want, I suggest reading the Bible along with the Qur'an. I'm currently here on my reread of the Bible. The Qur'an is essentially a "sequel" to the Bible so I feel like it gives some context to what's said in the Qur'an, especially with Surah 2 (The Cow/Al-Baqarah).

 

يَا أَيُّهَا الَّذِينَ آمَنُوا كُونُوا قَوَّامِينَ لِلَّهِ شُهَدَاءَ بِالْقِسْطِ ۖ وَلَا يَجْرِمَنَّكُمْ شَنَآنُ قَوْمٍ عَلَىٰ أَلَّا تَعْدِلُوا ۚ اعْدِلُوا هُوَ أَقْرَبُ لِلتَّقْوَىٰ ۖ وَاتَّقُوا اللَّهَ ۚ إِنَّ اللَّهَ خَبِيرٌ بِمَا تَعْمَلُونَ - 5:8

"O you who have believed, be persistently standing firm for Allah, witnesses in justice, and do not let the hatred of a people prevent you from being just. Be just; that is nearer to righteousness. And fear Allah ; indeed, Allah is Acquainted with what you do."

^ I find this passage particularly relevant for today, though I was very much interested in the arguments against usury made by the Qur'an (I think it was Surah 2 "The Cow").

Currently on Surah 5 (Al-Ma'idah/The Table Spread) in case anyone wants to read along with me!

 

I also wanted to point out that during the time of the crusades, when it lasted for 300 years if I remember correctly. Salahuddin was almost a lot like a Taliban fundamentalist too. He did defend the Muslims I know that much, but Salahuddin took the medieval Christians that could not be deemed ransomed into slavery. That’s when he seized Jerusalem.

Salahuddin also fought other Muslims in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and Egypt. He was also Kurdish.


Yes I know some of you disagree and so were the crusaders to when the templar crusaders killed everybody in Jerusalem. That’s was 300 years before Salahuddin.

Basically my point is Islamic fundamentalist has been around for along time like it is today, just not as extreme in the time we live in.

I do have Muslim friends that and told me about Salahuddin and what he did, I asked if he did indeed took slaves and they even said yes but still thought of him as the savior, like how America sees George Washington against the British.

I hope that was ok to bring up, if not I will hold my thought. I was only trying to point of the fundamentalism which has been around for along time.

 

I just think you’re a little thin in arguing that selling captives as slaves makes someone “like the Taliban.” That was a pretty standard practice around the world at the time, including by Christian powers. Notably even hundreds of years later, during the Transatlantic slave trade of Africans, people always (mis) labeled the people they abducted as prisoners of war, because there was still an international consensus that this was a legitimate way to have/make slaves.

 

The thing is that's more of an imperialist action you are describing. It would be like saying that fascism wasn't something created in the 20th century cause Romans had previously invaded North Africa and Europe under the pretense that Italy deserved to be expanded.

Saladin also is just not a good point of comparison. Saladin was not just of his time, he was a good person for his time. There is a reason why he is still highly regarded in Europe among Christians. Dante puts him in limbo as a high honor for a non-christian for instance. Richard The Lionheart and him actually became close and really respected one another.

There was no religious fundamentalist reason for their warring. The Crusades had to do with geopolitics, with religion being an excuse, more often than not, retroactively applied. Saladin also is a symbol to much of the Arab world for anti-imperialist efforts on their behalf. It is history, it is complicated, but it is not fundamentalist extremism. In what way was causing death in war and taking slaves "fundamentalist" or extremist for the time? That does not make it ok, but it also doesn't make any negative term applicable.

Bad things being done by people of a group is not fundamentalism, and people in history who are not even close to the Taliban by modern standards. Here is how even wikipedia talks about the capture of Jerusalem.

Imperfect, but how does that seem like fundamentalism or the taliban given the time and place? You just give extremists what they want by associating them with historical figures they wish to claim and use to do awful things today. Don't remove context. Golden Dawn in Greece uses the Persian War and Grecian heroics at Thermopylae, Marathon, and Salamis to justify their modern hatred of Arabs and Muslims. They ignore all context of Islam not existing at the time, Persia being way more egalitarian than the Greece they defended, it being 2,000 years ago, it being about empires and not some xenophobic thing, etc.They still go to the Hot Gates and pretend to be Spartans, they are not though, their Muslim neighbor is not Xerxes and they are not being invaded.


A historical figure operating in their own context cannot be of an ideology that inherently relies on a perception of that person's past actions. Fundamentalist Islamists are a modern thing, in the same way Nazis are, in the same way Golden Dawn is in spite of Themistokles having existed and done things and stuff. It is about a perception of the past, and an attempt to bring it back free of context. It cannot exist in the time which is being aped.

Beyond that, the movement, not just ideology, but movement is very much a modern creation. The US created Islamic extremism to destabilize the region. Look into the history of the Mujaheddin, the US shipped in people from across the globe to commit terror attacks on Soviet run women's schools and the like. Even local Afghani conservatives and traditionalists did not just start doing that. The US had to create a movement out of just the general idea of fundamentalism which never united before cause it is not really an ideology.

Or to quote a fantastic article that's just a series of quotes from scholars that I highly recommend https://www.historyextra.com/period...-legacy-historians-how-affect-religion-today/

This paper is also fantastic, but obviously academic so not much light reading
https://scholarship.claremont.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2411&context=cmc_theses

Put simply, Saladin has nothing to actually do with fundamentalist Islam or extremism, people can claim historical figures all they want, that does not change that their ideology is immensely different than that figure's even for the time let alone considering that religion and ideology adapt to the time. Saladin was not a copy of Muhammad after all, Iteration is common in religion yet when it comes to Islam people want to just ignore that fact and treat an ancient figure as if he had the same context and practiced the same Islam as one type of modern Muslims who are one of various splinter groups.

Islam is so diverse and fractured like Protestantism, Catholicism, Evangelicalism, Pre-Millennial Dispensationalists, Presbyterians, Quakers, Orthodox, Baptist, etc are with Christianity. To say that any of the groups that are considered "fundamentalists" today are part of some long standing presence in Islam is incorrect. Let alone trying to tie someone like Saladin to that when he really was a Washington like figure, or perhaps that's not fair to Saladin cause Washington had more reason to be opposed to things like slavery.

Scholars don't even agree on how to define "Islamic Fundamentalism" mostly cause it doesn't exist as anything cohesive, it is a term created to invent a movement, to obfuscate backing right-wing terrorists who had any number of beliefs. Wahhabists and Salafists are not any more like Saladin than just about any other group, in fact they are far and away less like him.

I looked into some of the scholars who criticize the term itself and all seem neat and have unique reasons, but no easy excerpts.

well said, by that logic the Roman Republic was just like the Taliban due to its influx of slave labor due to a string of massive conquests

 

I never meant to say that Salahuddin was a Salafi or Wahhabi. He was still medievalist.

My point is Salahuddin was a tyrant over Shiite Muslims and yes he did believe christians and Jews are people of the book and allowed worship, but they were treated like second class citizens and taxed a lot. He mainly tolerated Arab Christians better than western Christians.

The reason why Salahuddin spared the people of Jerusalem is because the Christians there gave up the city and surrendered, other was Salahuddin was going to kill them all. Balin made a deal with Salahuddin and I am not referencing Kingdom of Heaven movie.

 

What's your point? That's a pretty progressive policy for the Middle Ages.

 

And what does any of that have to do with ISIL or any fundamentalist Islam? A military leader would have killed people if they had not surrendered? Yeah I can see how that is like ISIL. Also he tolerated Arab and Eastern Christians better than their fellow christians did.

Second class citizens and taxed a lot? Yeah that's totally extremism and fundamentalism like the Taliban. Remember how the Taliban was going around and doing tax collecting rudely? You clearly just worked backwards to a position dude. Also the tax thing is a neocon talking point that ignores the context of the tax code and why it was different for religion going back all the way to Zoroastrianism but I am not getting into that debate cause that is the entire point of those tactics, fixate on lies or things devoid of context in order to not have to say anything while saying everything with a wink and a nudge. I don't think you are doing that knowingly, but it is what those talking points exist to do.

Saladin was no more a tyrant than any leader of the time, in fact he was less of one than many who came later from all parts of the globe. So again, how the hell is he a root of Islamic fundamentalism or whatever dog-whistle one chooses?

 

Over-taxation of non-Muslims in Muslim states really isn't a unique feature of Salahuddin's rule. It was pretty much the norm by the time Islam became properly institutionalized (in the middle of the 9th century AD), is is how the status of dhimmi came about. It is a legacy of how Islam's expansion was financed (heavy war taxation of the conquered populations to keep financing further conquests as well as the continued occupation, which occurred before Islam became a formal religion), and it stayed the norm in Sunni Islamic states until the mid-19th century (abolition of the linked status of dhimmi in the Ottoman Empire, demanded by the UK and France as part of the price for their support in the war known as the Crimean War, but which really began as an invasion of the Ottoman Empire by Russia through Bulgaria, with the intent of taking Constantinople).

 

They also used the Jizya to fund religion specific works, like Hindu temples Aurangzeb built. Beyond that they didn't have to pay Zakat as that was religious and went to religious public works and stuff so there would be no use for non-Muslims so they did not have to pay it

 

I still see the taxes on someone who is of a different faith or because they are a different race forum of tyranny. It’s a lot like saying blacks can’t vote because they are not white and saying it’s ok to treat people second class citizens because they are different from you.

My point is about the Taliban is they believe in sharia law and so did Salahaddin, but he was not a Salafi muslim, he was a Sufi.

Even if Salahaddin was a moderate, there many Muslim kingdoms that did evil things similar to what Christian crusaders did. My point is both side did equal bad things to each other.

 

Medieval rule systems weren't democratic by any stretch of the imagination. Race didn't play a part in them (as a concept, what we understand as race did not even remotely exist), but all their taxation systems were by and large discriminatory, not just by faith and culture, but on territorial, class, profession and gender basis, to name but a few. They were, by and large, all unjust in their own unique ways. They also usually had a historical foundation - such as Jizya, which came about at first because rapidly expanding empires need a lot of money, and their soldiers would have resented being asked to pay the same burden as those they conquered, thereby endangering the conquests.

Sure, medieval rules treated some of their people as second-class - or third, or fourth, et caetera, for that matter. But these weren't modern nation-states, and their people usually weren't citizens - and when there were citizens to be found, not every person in the state was one. Judging such systems by modern ethical standards is inevitably going to result in finding them unfair, tyrannical and arbitrary. They were - by modern ethical standards.


Your point about the Taliban and Salahuddin both believing in Sharia law is one I don't get.

For the latter, it was pretty much the only legal system in force in his part of the world (and not a unified one, for that matter), still going through transformative processes; Salahuddin even contributed to establishing some of its jurisprudence.

The Taliban's approach, on the other hand, very much treats Sharia as an ossified corpus, which exists contemporarily with civil and common law systems, and even significantly different legal systems which use the Sharia as their foundation. And with regards to other religions, the Taliban's application of Sharia contradicts Salahuddin's application of Sharia.

These are very different people in their approaches, acting in radically different context, from very different positions, in very different times, and on differing foundations despite the corpus of them being called by the same name. Beyond words, there really isn't that much of a parallel to draw.


As to the respective crimes of Muslim and Christian kingdoms, history isn't a competition nor a scoreboard, and there's little point in passing judgment. The principals are usually long-since-dead, and those passing judgment tend to be more interested in how it serves their own discourse about their own times.

 

Yeah the existence of bad people, or good people relative to a point in time who did bad things is.....kinda pointless. What does that actually say about the Taliban or Islam or anything? Bad folk exist? Cool, next. That the Crusades did not contain much democracy? yup, now what?

You keep moving the goalposts to one thing or another to say....something? Again you clearly worked backwards to justify some mentality, but wont say what that is beyond the incorrect observation that Saladin, one of the most significant examples of a Muslim hero across the globe, is like the Taliban cause reasons and stuff.