Originally posted by Freddy:
There has always been warfare among Christians as well [as Muslims], and that seems to have subsided somewhat. Of course if Trump is elected that may change...
![[Disappointed]](graemlins/disappointed.gif)
quote:The same could have been said of Christianity prior to the development of those ideas. And while it's true that the Church is no longer the ultimate power in society that it once was, it still exists. The same will be true of Islam. What we are seeing is the dying pains of Islam as the ultimate power in middle eastern societies.
Originally posted by Freddy:
Nor is their sense of threat an imaginary one. Islam relies on attitudes to authority, an unquestioning loyalty to Islamic teachings, and lifestyle restrictions, which are unlikely to survive long term exposure to Western ideas.
quote:Yes. Nicely put.
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
And while it's true that the Church is no longer the ultimate power in society that it once was, it still exists. The same will be true of Islam. What we are seeing is the dying pains of Islam as the ultimate power in middle eastern societies.
quote:What do you mean by this? There are secular governments of various stripes in various Muslim-majority countries. This may anger some extremist groups, but AFAIK there's little sign that Islam is declining as the dominant belief system in the Middle East in the way that Christianity is doing in the West.
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
What we are seeing is the dying pains of Islam as the ultimate power in middle eastern societies.
quote:I don't argue with this.
Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:
Islam is currently the fastest growing religion in the world and will most likely overtake Christianity before the end of the century. This is largely to do with population growth. The projections don't seem to involve very large numbers of Middle Eastern Muslims leaving the religion.
quote:I'm not so much thinking of it as a rejection of Westernization as a feeling of being threatened by the West in any number of ways. Certainly many extremists embrace much about the West.
Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:
For some individuals it may be a deliberate rejection of Westernisation (and that too could be defined in different ways. In most cases it's not a rejection of everything modern.)
quote:This is an important point. Why would this be?
Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:
Most Muslim 'terrorism' is aimed at other Muslims, many of whom are probably not very Westernised by our standards, although they may have a different theology or lifestyle from their attackers.
quote:Yes, it's nothing new. But there has always been warfare among Christians as well, and that seems to have subsided somewhat. Of course if Trump is elected that may change...
Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:
The other problem with seeing Islamic extremism or terrorism as a sign of change in the Middle East is that, as we know, there's been warfare among Muslims, and between Muslims and others, for centuries. It's not a sign of anything new in the world.
quote:(edits are mine, I don't think it is fair to name a single country, see link for the original)
Today, [our foreign policy] is one of the most dangerous and the most powerful global forces that is unleashing prolific levels of violence all over the world...All of us have seen and felt the dramatic pain of watching the September 11th attacks... But do we feel any pain for the victims of [our] aggression? Two hundred thousand people were killed in the initial war on Iraq. That bombing of Iraq has continued for 10 years now.... [our] foreign policy is soaked in blood.
quote:I agree. I think that no prophet has given a great description of how that ideological struggle plays out on the ground.
Originally posted by hatless:
Yes, no prophet's thoughts impress me, too, but I think there is also a more cultural and ideological struggle going on.
quote:That is a fascinating insight.
Originally posted by hatless:
The shorthand for this, and I love crude over simplifications, is that feminism is the biggest thing to have happened in our life times. Its implications lie behind every controversial subject on Ship of Fools, every argument convulsing the church, most of the issues governments are grappling with today...
quote:The lack of coherent intellectual resources to respond is exactly what I am talking about. The most important response is therefore reactionary hostility.
Originally posted by hatless:
I'm not aware of any coherent theological debate going on in Islam. I'm not sure it has the resources to respond to this.
quote:Isn't this deliberate promotion a reactionary response to perceived threats to Islam?
Originally posted by Arethosemyfeet:
I think what's missing from this discussion is any reference to the deliberate promotion of radical Wahhabism by the House of Saud.
quote:The money would not be there if those who are providing it did not see it as a great cause.
Originally posted by Arethosemyfeet:
Would any of us think that the resulting success was a reaction to an external threat, or would we simply recognise the impact of money even in the realms of faith?
quote:I'm not sure what the best description is. The sexual revolution, reproductive rights, equality between the sexes and more generally, a challenge to authority as traditionally wielded by men, what right wingers used to call "cultural Marxism" .. There is an entangled collection of ideas and movements, and an entangled mass of resistance to them. Power and sex and gender and authority and challenge.
Are you sure that feminism is the best way to describe it? How about sexual revolution?
quote:Agreed. "Entangled collection" is a good way to put it.
Originally posted by hatless:
I'm not sure what the best description is. The sexual revolution, reproductive rights, equality between the sexes and more generally, a challenge to authority as traditionally wielded by men, what right wingers used to call "cultural Marxism" .. There is an entangled collection of ideas and movements, and an entangled mass of resistance to them. Power and sex and gender and authority and challenge.
quote:Umm. OK.
Originally posted by hatless:
I don't think it's an irrelevant side issue that Chelsea Manning...
![[Paranoid]](graemlins/paranoid.gif)
quote:True, but so-called Christian involvement hasn't ended. Even without Trump running things the 'Christian world' has done a good job of physically destabilising a range of Muslim countries up to the present time, as no prophet's flag has indicated!
Originally posted by Freddy:
There has always been warfare among Christians as well [as Muslims], and that seems to have subsided somewhat. Of course if Trump is elected that may change...
quote:This is an interesting idea. I don't remembering hearing accounts of terrorists using this as an explanation for their actions - and the young Muslim women who've unwisely travelled from Europe to Syria to participate in the struggle with ISIS presumably haven't considered the possibility at all.
I think there is also a more cultural and ideological struggle going on. Western culture is undermining patriarchy, and that is a problem for the cultures most religions come from, certainly for Islam.
The shorthand for this, and I love crude over simplifications, is that feminism is the biggest thing to have happened in our life times.
quote:To the extent that Western culture appears to involve believing in an entitlement to own the entire world, rather than just the bit you currently live in, yes.
Originally posted by Freddy:
Isn’t it obvious that Western culture, whether Christian or secular, represents a potent threat to Islam?
quote:Well said.
Originally posted by orfeo:
quote:To the extent that Western culture appears to involve believing in an entitlement to own the entire world, rather than just the bit you currently live in, yes.
Originally posted by Freddy:
Isn’t it obvious that Western culture, whether Christian or secular, represents a potent threat to Islam?
quote:You would think. I'm sure that's true.
Originally posted by orfeo:
But then that represents a potent threat to everything else, not just Islam.
quote:Thanks. That's exactly what I am trying to get at in the OP. Why the incomprehension?
Originally posted by orfeo:
It's arguable that much of the history of "Western culture" over the last several centuries has consisted of surprise that the rest of the world keeps objecting to erasure, and incomprehension as to why other people might not want to fully Westernise.
![[Confused]](confused.gif)
quote:Yes, yes. The freedom.
Originally posted by orfeo:
The incomprehension is because Westerners think it self-evident that being Western is wonderful. After all, look at all the shiny things that Westerners have.
And the freedom! Don't forget the freedom.
quote:There is a direct correlation between a military presence and suicide bombing, as shown by the work of Professor Robert Pape.
Originally posted by Freddy:
Sometimes I think that the best way to counter the threat of these reactionary forces would be to remove every kind of military presence near those countries and instead to do everything possible to bolster their economies.
quote:Nonsense.
Originally posted by Martin60:
Islam is becoming the dominant religious belief system in the old West too. There's no sign of it's decline in Europe anywhere and it will be far more effective at proselytizing than Christianity. You can only marry in. The availability of alcohol, female nudity, gambling, tobacco, dogs, representational art in Leicester doesn't affect The Ahmeds At Number 7 for 3 generations at all in their devotions.
What's to understand?
quote:This is an excellent point. I think describing jihadism as 'Islamic extremism' is incorrect, since jihadism is as much political as religious.
Originally posted by orfeo:
quote:There is a direct correlation between a military presence and suicide bombing, as shown by the work of Professor Robert Pape.
Originally posted by Freddy:
Sometimes I think that the best way to counter the threat of these reactionary forces would be to remove every kind of military presence near those countries and instead to do everything possible to bolster their economies.
I don't think there's quite the correlation with terrorism more generally. But there is probably some relationship.
Perhaps this is best illustrated by where terrorists don't tend to come from. For example, Iran. A theocratic state. If it was all about being extremely religious West-haters, you would think Iran would be an excellent source of Islamic terrorists.
But, while Iran is generally believed to have provided sponsorship of some groups at various times, you don't find many Iranian terrorists.
quote:That's nice dear. New West. Doesn't happen here.
Originally posted by Sober Preacher's Kid:
quote:Nonsense.
Originally posted by Martin60:
Islam is becoming the dominant religious belief system in the old West too. There's no sign of it's decline in Europe anywhere and it will be far more effective at proselytizing than Christianity. You can only marry in. The availability of alcohol, female nudity, gambling, tobacco, dogs, representational art in Leicester doesn't affect The Ahmeds At Number 7 for 3 generations at all in their devotions.
What's to understand?
Junior Ahmed's cousin in Toronto is off to the Dawn Foundation in Toronto, which the the Toronto School of Theology's effort to create an imam program. (It is a public university after all).
The Dawn Foundation runs a nice, middle of the road Canadian-sensitive and aware program, it is NOT those koran thumpers from Saudi Arabia.
quote:While that was clearly true in the case you mention, I can't believe it is true of the majority. I don't know; but one anecdote doesn't make an argument.
Originally posted by Moo:
There is one thing that has struck me about those who commit acts of terrorism in the name of Islam. Namely, that they frequently do not live according to the tenets of Islam.
quote:Yeah. I mean, you'd struggle to think of a major cosmopolitan English city which recently elected a Muslim mayor who had voted for gay marriage when he was an MP. That would never happen.
Originally posted by Martin60:
quote:That's nice dear. New West. Doesn't happen here.
Originally posted by Sober Preacher's Kid:
quote:Nonsense.
Originally posted by Martin60:
Islam is becoming the dominant religious belief system in the old West too. There's no sign of it's decline in Europe anywhere and it will be far more effective at proselytizing than Christianity. You can only marry in. The availability of alcohol, female nudity, gambling, tobacco, dogs, representational art in Leicester doesn't affect The Ahmeds At Number 7 for 3 generations at all in their devotions.
What's to understand?
Junior Ahmed's cousin in Toronto is off to the Dawn Foundation in Toronto, which the the Toronto School of Theology's effort to create an imam program. (It is a public university after all).
The Dawn Foundation runs a nice, middle of the road Canadian-sensitive and aware program, it is NOT those koran thumpers from Saudi Arabia.
quote:I don't find it that baffling. There are plenty of alienated young people, in many countries. Add in racial discrimination (as in France against Muslims), and a family ancestry in N. Africa, and an animosity against Western incursions in the ME.
Originally posted by no prophet's flag is set so...:
The book I referenced is the foundation of my understanding.
The missing part of my understanding is how someone, a young person, sits in front of a computer a western country, goes to a mosque, and then gets murderous ideas, either travelling off and joining these terror groups, or getting a weapon, bomb, or vehicle and kills people where he\ she lives. The thought processes and rage necessary are beyond my ken. Is it delusion? How do they get to this?
quote:Alienation, yes. Young men who feel they have no stake in society, nothing to lose.
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
There are plenty of alienated young people, in many countries. Add in racial discrimination (as in France against Muslims), and a family ancestry in N. Africa, and an animosity against Western incursions in the ME.
quote:I have been thinking this very thing ever since the Nice attacks.
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
Young men who feel they have no stake in society, nothing to lose.
I often wonder if simply giving them a stake in society - something to lose - would dramatically reduce the number who are willing to blow themselves up or kill as many of us as possible before getting gunned down.
quote:Apples and chalk mate.
Originally posted by Callan:
quote:Yeah. I mean, you'd struggle to think of a major cosmopolitan English city which recently elected a Muslim mayor who had voted for gay marriage when he was an MP. That would never happen.
Originally posted by Martin60:
quote:That's nice dear. New West. Doesn't happen here.
Originally posted by Sober Preacher's Kid:
quote:Nonsense.
Originally posted by Martin60:
Islam is becoming the dominant religious belief system in the old West too. There's no sign of it's decline in Europe anywhere and it will be far more effective at proselytizing than Christianity. You can only marry in. The availability of alcohol, female nudity, gambling, tobacco, dogs, representational art in Leicester doesn't affect The Ahmeds At Number 7 for 3 generations at all in their devotions.
What's to understand?
Junior Ahmed's cousin in Toronto is off to the Dawn Foundation in Toronto, which the the Toronto School of Theology's effort to create an imam program. (It is a public university after all).
The Dawn Foundation runs a nice, middle of the road Canadian-sensitive and aware program, it is NOT those koran thumpers from Saudi Arabia.
quote:I think the main problem with this assessment is that it's essentially an argumentum ad Scotsman, defining your case into existence rather than demonstrating it. For example, you seem to be arguing that Keith Ellison and Sadiq Khan aren't really Muslims because they participate in representative democracy (so they miss the "authoritarian" check box), use social media and they usually wear Western fashions.
Originally posted by Freddy:
Isn’t it obvious that Western culture, whether Christian or secular, represents a potent threat to Islam?
Not that Islam can’t survive in the West. It does well in many Western countries. But almost every aspect of Western culture is an affront to the values and attitudes of the Islamic world.
It is not just that they see us as immoral and atheistic, but that this immorality and secularism is aggressively and continually exported into every country that does business with the West. Everything from fashion to cinema to alcohol and social media are almost unstoppable agents of a lifestyle that is anathema to faithful Muslims.
And that is without even mentioning the political and military interventions that have plagued them for hundreds of years.
Nor is their sense of threat an imaginary one. Islam relies on attitudes to authority, an unquestioning loyalty to Islamic teachings, and lifestyle restrictions, which are unlikely to survive long term exposure to Western ideas.
quote:Fair point.
Originally posted by Crœsos:
I think the main problem with this assessment is that it's essentially an argumentum ad Scotsman, defining your case into existence rather than demonstrating it. For example, you seem to be arguing that Keith Ellison and Sadiq Khan aren't really Muslims because they participate in representative democracy (so they miss the "authoritarian" check box), use social media and they usually wear Western fashions.
quote:Once again, the answer to that would seem to rest on how you define "the Islamic world". Are Keith Ellison and Sadiq Khan part of "the Islamic world"? Neither of them seems to have a notably negative view of "us". How about the late Muhammad Ali? Ali was pretty clear on why he had a negative view of "us".
Originally posted by Freddy:
quote:Fair point.
Originally posted by Crœsos:
I think the main problem with this assessment is that it's essentially an argumentum ad Scotsman, defining your case into existence rather than demonstrating it. For example, you seem to be arguing that Keith Ellison and Sadiq Khan aren't really Muslims because they participate in representative democracy (so they miss the "authoritarian" check box), use social media and they usually wear Western fashions.
I had never heard of "Argument ad Scotsman." Good one!
Still, just because many things about Western culture are widely seen as an affront to Islamic values, this does not necessarily mean that they will be taken that way by all Muslims, or that those who don't take it that way are not true Muslims.
The question I am trying to answer is the mystified response of Westerners who seem to have no idea why so many in the Islamic world seem to have a negative view of us.
quote:I fully admit that it is completely wrong, maybe even immoral, to reduce society to these kinds of categories. I'm sure everyone knows that this kind of oversimplification results in just those kinds of absurdities.
Originally posted by Crœsos:
What's interesting here is the way "Muslim" and "Westerner" are seen as mutually exclusive categories, so that no one who is a Muslim will ever be considered a Westerner.
quote:Yes it is.
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
My best friend was a Sufi, so I suppose he was part of the 'Islamic world'. This is just lazy thinking.
quote:Yes, I find myself frequently shouting at the idiots on the news.
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
I am mystified why anyone would be puzzled that some people in the Middle East are hostile to the West. They must have missed out history and politics in their education.
quote:Look up the "Aarhus model" (named after the 2nd-largest city in Denmark where this is happening) and you will find a place that is giving people a stake in society for exactly this reason.
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
quote:Alienation, yes. Young men who feel they have no stake in society, nothing to lose.
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
There are plenty of alienated young people, in many countries. Add in racial discrimination (as in France against Muslims), and a family ancestry in N. Africa, and an animosity against Western incursions in the ME.
I often wonder if simply giving them a stake in society - something to lose - would dramatically reduce the number who are willing to blow themselves up or kill as many of us as possible before getting gunned down. You very rarely hear of a rich suicide bomber. Rich terrorist leaders, yes, but not foot soldiers.
quote:I believe there is university training for Muslim clerics in some cities. (That's what I meant when I referred to official training.) But it's not compulsory.
Originally posted by Sober Preacher's Kid:
British Universities can't sprout madrassahs?
The University of Toronto saw it as enlightened self-interest. [...]
And if it helps keep the costs down for Christian programmes by sharing the infrastructure costs more widely, everybody wins. (This is why the Catholics are now sharing space with a rabbinical seminary.)
[...]
quote:Some universities also offer courses for Christian ministers, but they're also not compulsory. A lot of Christian ministers have little, or no, formal training. So, it's not just a mark of Islamic extremism.
Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:
I believe there is university training for Muslim clerics in some cities. (That's what I meant when I referred to official training.) But it's not compulsory.
quote:Excellent point. Extremism comes in all shapes and sizes - some harmful, some beneficial, most unremarkable.
Originally posted by Ricardus:
People are talking as though 'Islamic extremism' was one thing.
quote:Poor Muslims living under theocracies are actually bloody lucky that we are prepared to share with them our Western middle-class experience of how boring prosperity and freedom actually are, and how incapable of producing the true happiness which their quaint, simple and colorful lives offer.
Originally posted by orfeo:
After all, look at all the shiny things that Westerners have.
And the freedom! Don't forget the freedom.
quote:Forewarned is forearmed. I wonder why no one has made pamphlets to send.
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
Poor Muslims living under theocracies are actually bloody lucky that we are prepared to share with them our Western middle-class experience of how boring prosperity and freedom actually are, and how incapable of producing the true happiness which their quaint, simple and colorful lives offer.
quote:Indeed. I certainly wasn't arguing that any religious group should be obliged to train its clergy in a way that outsiders deem acceptable.
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
Some universities also offer courses for Christian ministers, but they're also not compulsory. A lot of Christian ministers have little, or no, formal training. So, it's not just a mark of Islamic extremism.
quote:I agree that 'extremism' is a term that can cover almost anything. I'm assuming that the OP was using the term to mean some kind of terrorism, or perhaps support from terrorism.
Originally posted by Ricardus:
People are talking as though 'Islamic extremism' was one thing. To my mind, there's a difference between 'Let's blow up the West' extremism and 'Lock up your women' extremism, although any individual extremist may participate in both.
quote:Gnomic as always. Care to explain why?
Originally posted by Martin60:
quote:Apples and chalk mate.
Originally posted by Callan:
quote:Yeah. I mean, you'd struggle to think of a major cosmopolitan English city which recently elected a Muslim mayor who had voted for gay marriage when he was an MP. That would never happen.
Originally posted by Martin60:
quote:That's nice dear. New West. Doesn't happen here.
Originally posted by Sober Preacher's Kid:
quote:Nonsense.
Originally posted by Martin60:
Islam is becoming the dominant religious belief system in the old West too. There's no sign of it's decline in Europe anywhere and it will be far more effective at proselytizing than Christianity. You can only marry in. The availability of alcohol, female nudity, gambling, tobacco, dogs, representational art in Leicester doesn't affect The Ahmeds At Number 7 for 3 generations at all in their devotions.
What's to understand?
Junior Ahmed's cousin in Toronto is off to the Dawn Foundation in Toronto, which the the Toronto School of Theology's effort to create an imam program. (It is a public university after all).
The Dawn Foundation runs a nice, middle of the road Canadian-sensitive and aware program, it is NOT those koran thumpers from Saudi Arabia.
quote:Channeling the energies of young males in non-destructive directions is an issue for all human societies. In the pre-civilised state for which we evolved, young males had considerable status as the warriors of the tribe. If we don't need warriors, what's the route to status for young men ?
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
Alienation, yes. Young men who feel they have no stake in society, nothing to lose.
I often wonder if simply giving them a stake in society - something to lose - would dramatically reduce the number who are willing to blow themselves up
quote:This, given its history, is a greater condemnation of Christianity than Islam.
But whilst a common form of Christianity teaches us to be meek and mild nice people who don't display anger, Islam teaches that infidels are a legitimate target for anger.
quote:Yes. Only by burning them alive would they be prepared to burn forever in the afterlife.
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
So when Christians were burning people - for about a 1000 years, I think - this wasn't anger, but a purer form of love. Hot, hotter, hottest, is God's love.
quote:As I recall it's not so much that we don't display anger - some things we should be angry about if we love and care;it's that we carry on the fight 'not with physical weapons' as Paul put it, and that we keep a watch on our anger so that we don't 'lose it' in various harmful ways.
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
Originally posted by Russ,
quote:This, given its history, is a greater condemnation of Christianity than Islam.
But whilst a common form of Christianity teaches us to be meek and mild nice people who don't display anger, Islam teaches that infidels are a legitimate target for anger.
quote:You understood exactly what I meant I believe: it's a false comparison between cultures. We have Sadiq Khan, Canada has 'The Dawn Foundation ... a nice, middle of the road Canadian-sensitive and aware program, it is NOT those koran thumpers from Saudi Arabia.'. The biggest mosque in liberal Muslim Keith Vaz' Leicester is Salafist. My excellent devout Sunni neighbour denies that the mosque is Sunni, denouncing them, literally, as extremists. He goes to a Majlis. I have received nothing but neighbourly politeness from the traditionally garbed Muslim lads in the neighbourhood and men going to prayers at the Salafist mosque. I encounter occasional lone liberal Muslims, 1:100 if that. My Kurd barber is one, extremely outspoken and secular with me, critical of his culture and the one he has to swim in here, in which I thankfully established he has to be extremely discreet. I can think of three others I've met, including a Bangladeshi who regards the Hajj as a con and one who nearly became my step-son-in-law.
Originally posted by Callan:
quote:Gnomic as always. Care to explain why?
Originally posted by Martin60:
quote:Apples and chalk mate.
Originally posted by Callan:
quote:Yeah. I mean, you'd struggle to think of a major cosmopolitan English city which recently elected a Muslim mayor who had voted for gay marriage when he was an MP. That would never happen.
Originally posted by Martin60:
quote:That's nice dear. New West. Doesn't happen here.
Originally posted by Sober Preacher's Kid:
quote:Nonsense.
Originally posted by Martin60:
Islam is becoming the dominant religious belief system in the old West too. There's no sign of it's decline in Europe anywhere and it will be far more effective at proselytizing than Christianity. You can only marry in. The availability of alcohol, female nudity, gambling, tobacco, dogs, representational art in Leicester doesn't affect The Ahmeds At Number 7 for 3 generations at all in their devotions.
What's to understand?
Junior Ahmed's cousin in Toronto is off to the Dawn Foundation in Toronto, which the the Toronto School of Theology's effort to create an imam program. (It is a public university after all).
The Dawn Foundation runs a nice, middle of the road Canadian-sensitive and aware program, it is NOT those koran thumpers from Saudi Arabia.
quote:In previous threads I found the Scotsman fallacy being used inappropriately. My point is that in a religion which has developed over time and shows variation of belief and/or practice there is a genuine need to look at the developments and try to decide which are legitimate developments and which are perhaps going down the wrong track - that is, which are the 'real' form of the faith, and which are a false form of it. This is a very different kind of issue to the kind of prejudice the Scotsman fallacy represents; it needs serious discussion which unfortunately can be derailed by thoughtless references to the 'true Scotsman' line of thought.
I don't see why the Scotsman fallacy is inappropriate.
quote:As I read it the 'true Scotsman fallacy' is about getting yourself out of an embarrassment which starts with the prejudiced statement "No Scotsman..." and then finds that actually some ethnic Scots do do whatever it is. This is a rather different situation to asking whether, say, Mormonism or Anabaptism (or possibly something else) is the 'true' form of Christianity.
The Scotsman fallacy is about purity or essentialism.
quote:Ironically, in the leafy shires the two who immediately spring to mind are married to Christians. Probably not representative. The plural of anecdote, yadda, yadda, yadda.
Originally posted by Martin60:
quote:You understood exactly what I meant I believe: it's a false comparison between cultures. We have Sadiq Khan, Canada has 'The Dawn Foundation ... a nice, middle of the road Canadian-sensitive and aware program, it is NOT those koran thumpers from Saudi Arabia.'. The biggest mosque in liberal Muslim Keith Vaz' Leicester is Salafist. My excellent devout Sunni neighbour denies that the mosque is Sunni, denouncing them, literally, as extremists. He goes to a Majlis. I have received nothing but neighbourly politeness from the traditionally garbed Muslim lads in the neighbourhood and men going to prayers at the Salafist mosque. I encounter occasional lone liberal Muslims, 1:100 if that. My Kurd barber is one, extremely outspoken and secular with me, critical of his culture and the one he has to swim in here, in which I thankfully established he has to be extremely discreet. I can think of three others I've met, including a Bangladeshi who regards the Hajj as a con and one who nearly became my step-son-in-law.
Originally posted by Callan:
quote:Gnomic as always. Care to explain why?
Originally posted by Martin60:
quote:Apples and chalk mate.
Originally posted by Callan:
quote:Yeah. I mean, you'd struggle to think of a major cosmopolitan English city which recently elected a Muslim mayor who had voted for gay marriage when he was an MP. That would never happen.
Originally posted by Martin60:
quote:That's nice dear. New West. Doesn't happen here.
Originally posted by Sober Preacher's Kid:
quote:Nonsense.
Originally posted by Martin60:
Islam is becoming the dominant religious belief system in the old West too. There's no sign of it's decline in Europe anywhere and it will be far more effective at proselytizing than Christianity. You can only marry in. The availability of alcohol, female nudity, gambling, tobacco, dogs, representational art in Leicester doesn't affect The Ahmeds At Number 7 for 3 generations at all in their devotions.
What's to understand?
Junior Ahmed's cousin in Toronto is off to the Dawn Foundation in Toronto, which the the Toronto School of Theology's effort to create an imam program. (It is a public university after all).
The Dawn Foundation runs a nice, middle of the road Canadian-sensitive and aware program, it is NOT those koran thumpers from Saudi Arabia.
I look forward to the widow Zubaida plying me with multiple large containers of Asian food for the greater Eid, Al-Adha, starting tomorrow. I shall wear my keffiyeh with pride when I go the the celebrations.
I don't fear for my safety, despite a demented Somali trying to take it from me, but I do for the local Ahmadiyya shopkeeper.
I encounter Islam as a very broad church. Do you know any Muslims?
![[Razz]](tongue.gif)
I'll say as much without dancing around the issue. ![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
quote:In fact, some research suggests that younger British Muslims are often more religiously radical than their parents.
Originally posted by Callan: I'm not convinced that 3rd generation Muslims hold the same views as 1st generation Muslims.
quote:Great idea.
Originally posted by Freddy:
quote:Forewarned is forearmed. I wonder why no one has made pamphlets to send.
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
Poor Muslims living under theocracies are actually bloody lucky that we are prepared to share with them our Western middle-class experience of how boring prosperity and freedom actually are, and how incapable of producing the true happiness which their quaint, simple and colorful lives offer.
quote:Sigh. I supposed I asked for that false dichotomy.
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
quote:Poor Muslims living under theocracies are actually bloody lucky that we are prepared to share with them our Western middle-class experience of how boring prosperity and freedom actually are, and how incapable of producing the true happiness which their quaint, simple and colorful lives offer.
Originally posted by orfeo:
After all, look at all the shiny things that Westerners have.
And the freedom! Don't forget the freedom.
quote:Actually it's about artificially defining your categories to deliberately exclude cases which disprove whatever point is being made. For instance, despite the fact that Sadiq Khan and Keith Ellison claim to be Muslims, some will argue that they can't really be Muslims because they haven't tried to establish a religious government or engaged in the violence which is inherent in their faith (as helpfully pointed out by non-Muslims who know better than they do). In other words, all Muslims are violent theocrats because anyone who isn't a violent theocrat cannot, by definition, be a Muslim. They don't count or are a "special case".
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
by quetzalcoatl;
quote:As I read it the 'true Scotsman fallacy' is about getting yourself out of an embarrassment which starts with the prejudiced statement "No Scotsman..." and then finds that actually some ethnic Scots do do whatever it is.
The Scotsman fallacy is about purity or essentialism.
quote:Unleash the freedom bombs! So generous!
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
Poor Muslims living under theocracies are actually bloody lucky that we are prepared to share with them our Western middle-class experience of how boring prosperity and freedom actually are, and how incapable of producing the true happiness which their quaint, simple and colorful lives offer.
quote:Steve Langton's response ;
originally by Croesos;
quote:Actually it's about artificially defining your categories to deliberately exclude cases which disprove whatever point is being made. For instance, despite the fact that Sadiq Khan and Keith Ellison claim to be Muslims, some will argue that they can't really be Muslims because they haven't tried to establish a religious government or engaged in the violence which is inherent in their faith (as helpfully pointed out by non-Muslims who know better than they do). In other words, all Muslims are violent theocrats because anyone who isn't a violent theocrat cannot, by definition, be a Muslim. They don't count or are a "special case".
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
[qb] by quetzalcoatl;
quote:As I read it the 'true Scotsman fallacy' is about getting yourself out of an embarrassment which starts with the prejudiced statement "No Scotsman..." and then finds that actually some ethnic Scots do do whatever it is.
The Scotsman fallacy is about purity or essentialism.
quote:And just like that, problem solved! There's no such thing as "Islamic extremism", so we don't need to worry about its alleged origins.
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
And I should point out that I'm NOT saying "all Muslims are violent theocrats because anyone who isn't a violent theocrat cannot, by definition, be a Muslim". To me, the question of who is a 'true Muslim' is verging on irrelevant because the fundamental problem is that Islam is as a whole false anyway. . . .
. . . In this case there are NO 'true Muslims' (and so no valid application of the Scotsman stuff) - just people dealing in different ways with the confused and conflicted ideas Muhammad left behind him.
quote:I think my profile says "Atheist", but maybe you could use your previewing skills to check that for me. It's been a while.
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
Two minor points - remind me, Croesos, what your basic standpoint is; Christian, atheist, what? And I note the Ship is thanking me for actually using the preview function because only about six Shipmates do use it. Maybe more of you should use it.....
quote:Are you being obtuse and illogical on purpose?? Of course there is Islam and there is 'Islamic extremism' and it's going to take a lot of sorting out. And in case you hadn't noticed, what I've been posting is of direct relevance to understanding the origins of the extremism and how it might be better (and less violently) combated.
And just like that, problem solved! There's no such thing as "Islamic extremism", so we don't need to worry about its alleged origins.
quote:
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
To me, the question of who is a 'true Muslim' is verging on irrelevant because the fundamental problem is that Islam is as a whole false anyway.
quote:So your posts are "of direct relevance" to a "question . . . verging on irrelevant"? And it's going to take a lot to sort out this irrelevancy?
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
Are you being obtuse and illogical on purpose?? Of course there is Islam and there is 'Islamic extremism' and it's going to take a lot of sorting out. And in case you hadn't noticed, what I've been posting is of direct relevance to understanding the origins of the extremism and how it might be better (and less violently) combated.
quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
quote:
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
To me, the question of who is a 'true Muslim' is verging on irrelevant because the fundamental problem is that Islam is as a whole false anyway.quote:So your posts are "of direct relevance" to a "question . . . verging on irrelevant"? And it's going to take a lot to sort out this irrelevancy?
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
Are you being obtuse and illogical on purpose?? Of course there is Islam and there is 'Islamic extremism' and it's going to take a lot of sorting out. And in case you hadn't noticed, what I've been posting is of direct relevance to understanding the origins of the extremism and how it might be better (and less violently) combated.
me too!!!!quote:I don't know. One is characterised by praying five times a day, attending mosque on Fridays, not drinking alcohol or eating pork, fasting for a month each year and going on a Hajj. The other, in addition to these, is part of the largest active terrorist organisation.
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
by Croesos;
quote:Are you being obtuse and illogical on purpose?? Of course there is Islam and there is 'Islamic extremism' and it's going to take a lot of sorting out.
And just like that, problem solved! There's no such thing as "Islamic extremism", so we don't need to worry about its alleged origins.
quote:You're preaching to the choir.
Originally posted by Crœsos:
Unleash the freedom bombs!
quote:Yes, and it polarised on the "Are Muslims inherently terrorists?" question then too. I'm not sure there's much else too be said.
Originally posted by chris stiles:
Didn't we have this discussion in another thread a few months back?
quote:(Trying to untangle the negatives...) You mean that salafist mosques, say, could be a point of entry for violent extremists into a gradually less and less violent muslim community?
Originally posted by Zogwarg:
To not give them no way back in the community, but through extremist gates (If the extremists are the only ones who will open them the door)
quote:Actually I've been desperately trying to get away from the 'true Muslim' thing because it is indeed an irrelevant and distracting argument. The fact remains, however, that right back to Muhammad and the Quran Islam teaches the idea of an Islamic state, a kind of state Muhammad was willing to use war to establish and actually did use war to establish. Therefore Muslims are likely to believe that an Islamic state is an Allah-ordained goal to try and establish, and that war is a legitimate way to do it.
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
I see. So the fact that Islam is so obviously wrong is so clear to Steve Langton that this means he doesn't really need to determine which are the True Muslims, because it is all fake, y'see? But he does anyway. And, wadderyouknow, the only person in a position to tell who is, in fact, a true Muslim is the aforementioned Steve Langton.
quote:As has been observed, I think you are taking us on a wild goose chase here.
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
Of course there is Islam and there is 'Islamic extremism' and it's going to take a lot of sorting out.
quote:I wasn't actually contrasting 'Islam' and 'Islamic extremism' - I was just pointing out, in reaction to a rather illogical misinterpretation by Croesos of an earlier post from me, that Islam is a real thing, and Islamic extremism is a real thing. Croesos in turn was apparently busier trying to 'twit' me than to actually answer serious questions.
I don't know. One is characterised by praying five times a day, attending mosque on Fridays, not drinking alcohol or eating pork, fasting for a month each year and going on a Hajj. The other, in addition to these, is part of the largest active terrorist organisation. How is that difficult to sort out? Applied intelligence is needed, not critiques of this faith against that.
quote:Floggers of Deceased Equines often point to Jesus saying he wasn't changing the OT. That means all the nasty and violent things God is written to have commissioned are still on and Christianity is not a religion of peace.
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
Note also - just in case you missed earlier statements in this thread - that I'm NOT denying Islam's/Muhammad's aspirations to peace; but I am pointing out that those aspirations are severely compromised by those other aspects of Muhammad's teaching and example.
Now please, how about seriously explaining why I'm supposed to be so wrong....??
quote:The obvious answer is that you prosecute violent extremism regardless of religious practice, and leave alone religious practice that isn't violent.
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
On a quick reading, I think Eutychus is confusing things considerably.... Sorry, but what about just for one the obvious question about 'religious practice' including the violence of 'holy war'?
quote:So to summarize the true Christians are the pacifist anabaptists (a tiny proportion of all Christians) and the true Muslims are the Wahhabi terrorists (a tiny proportion of all Muslims). Therefore true Christians are peaceful and true Muslims are violent terrorists.
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
...for Christians a very important part of combating Islam will be recognising that certain late (C4 CE) additions to Christianity are not legitimate developments of the original teaching but actually contradict Jesus' and the apostles' teaching and have had bad consequences. Those false doctrines are essentially similar to the faults/contradictions I pointed out in Islam, that is, the state religion and violence in the name thereof.
quote:It could be argued that that is, mutatis mutandis, a not unreasonable summary.
Originally posted by mdijon:
true Christians are peaceful and true Muslims are violent terrorists.
quote:I dare say that there are very few of any religion who wouldn't support religious violence under any circumstances but it is clearly wrong to believe that only a minority of Muslims believe that they should be fighting a jihad including the killing of innocent people.
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
There are no doubt some Muslims who genuinely believe that the Koran does not support religious violence under any circumstances, but they are a minority.
quote:Well it is certainly true that there are many different individual Muslims with a good deal of different opinions about their religion. Obviously.
The majority do not practise what they believe their religion requires for a number of reasons - laziness, cowardice, ambition for comfortable prosperity, or sheer human decency.
quote:Bullshit. A Muslim is not "bad" just because they don't behave in the way that you've ordained they should behave. Because you're not the arbiter of how they should behave to be true to their religion.
In other words, they are good people not because they are "really" non-Muslims (the true Scotsman fallacy), but because they are bad Muslims.
quote:Please shoot that Scotsman and get him out of the argument (which will not entail any violence because he isn't real in the first place)!!!!
In other words, they are good people not because they are "really" non-Muslims (the true Scotsman fallacy), but because they are bad Muslims.
quote:That is a good secular answer for a pluralist state. It's pretty useless in helping us to understand where the violence came from and how we can prevent it arising to begin with. And one of the lacks in your whole response there is any significant distinctively Christian view....
The obvious answer is that you prosecute violent extremism regardless of religious practice, and leave alone religious practice that isn't violent.
quote:The group calls itself Islamic State. That doesn't mean that it is the only way to run an Islamic State nor does it mean that all Muslims believe in the Islam as the state religion.
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
mr cheesy - please explain why I should accept that kind of scorn from someone who once asked on another thread "What is the relevance of 'state Islam' to IS?" A clue - what does IS stand for...?
quote:Despite which Jesus effectively scrapped the whole of OT ritual and made the Temple redundant.
Floggers of Deceased Equines often point to Jesus saying he wasn't changing the OT. That means all the nasty and violent things God is written to have commissioned are still on and Christianity is not a religion of peace.
quote:I'm glad about that, because that's exactly where I find myself. What standpoint are you attempting to argue from?
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
That is a good secular answer for a pluralist state.
quote:Who is the "we" here, exactly? And what tools are you suggesting "we" use to help us understand? How is your approach more "useful"?
It's pretty useless in helping us to understand where the violence came from and how we can prevent it arising to begin with.
quote:The OP was framed in terms of Islam versus Western culture. Please explain how a "distinctively Christian view", whatever that is, might address this.
And one of the lacks in your whole response there is any significant distinctively Christian view....
quote:I agree with the first part of your sentence - as you should have read in my earlier posts, I recognise that Muhammad would probably be worried by some aspects of IS. But the general idea of 'state Islam' and where it originates in Muhammad's teaching is definitely relevant to IS and how we deal with it.
The group calls itself Islamic State. That doesn't mean that it is the only way to run an Islamic State nor does it mean that all Muslims believe in the Islam as the state religion.
quote:Why is it?
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
I agree with the first part of your sentence - as you should have read in my earlier posts, I recognise that Muhammad would probably be worried by some aspects of IS. But the general idea of 'state Islam' and where it originates in Muhammad's teaching is definitely relevant to IS and how we deal with it.
quote:I would agree that many Islamic states are bad. But that's not really in question here. The question is whether Islamic states are always, without question bad because there is something stinky about the whole idea of Islam.
Our local churches are currently dealing with many refugees from various Islamic states - it's a struggle these days to find many such states that would satisfy you as being democratic etc. And the few you might just about approve seem currently to be under attack from those who want something more like Muhammad's own version.
quote:Right, exactly. You "don't see how" because you are totally ignorant about what Muslims actually believe. I'm glad we're agreeing on that point.
Rephrasing the end of your sentence slightly to "nor does it mean that all Muslims believe in Islam being a state and ultimately global religion with the world being run as Muhammad ran Mecca" I'd have to say that I don't see how they'd disbelieve that and still claim to be following Muhammad's teaching - I think they'd find a lot of Muslims considering them heretical and indeed to be persecuted as such.
quote:God help us all.
Muhammad taught and practised Islam as a state religion - who am I to question his teaching about the nature of his own religion - though I'm certainly prepared to question whether that religion is actually the truth about our world.
quote:How do you know this? If it seems an obvious, non-evidence-requiring conclusion to you then maybe that is a bit circular.
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
The majority do not practise what they believe their religion requires for a number of reasons - laziness, cowardice, ambition for comfortable prosperity, or sheer human decency.
quote:Quick responses before going to an appointment this afternoon;
Originally posted by Eutychus:
quote:I'm glad about that, because that's exactly where I find myself. What standpoint are you attempting to argue from?
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
That is a good secular answer for a pluralist state.quote:Who is the "we" here, exactly? And what tools are you suggesting "we" use to help us understand? How is your approach more "useful"?
It's pretty useless in helping us to understand where the violence came from and how we can prevent it arising to begin with.quote:The OP was framed in terms of Islam versus Western culture. Please explain how a "distinctively Christian view", whatever that is, might address this.
And one of the lacks in your whole response there is any significant distinctively Christian view....
quote:I also live in a secular state (well, just about with a few rags of an Anglican establishment still confusing things). However,I am not myself secular and I have opinions on the matter in areas where the secular pluralist state is properly neutral. I and other Christians can and should be understanding Islam in Christian terms and offering Christian answers.
Originally posted by Eutychus:
quote:I'm glad about that, because that's exactly where I find myself. What standpoint are you attempting to argue from?
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
That is a good secular answer for a pluralist state.
quote:[/qb]"We" is pretty much everybody in the West, I think. Deciding as a practical matter which acts we will prosecute doesn't do much towards analysing and understanding where the problem came from in the first place. The 'tools' Christians should use should basically be a Christian understanding explained as required to both Muslims and non-Muslims. The aim would be to convert Muslims, by peaceable persuasion, to an unambiguously peaceable Christianity which would surely be a quite useful result.
from SLquote:Who is the "we" here, exactly? And what tools are you suggesting "we" use to help us understand? How is your approach more "useful"?
It's pretty useless in helping us to understand where the violence came from and how we can prevent it arising to begin with.
quote:The OP was framed in terms of Islam versus Western culture. Please explain how a "distinctively Christian view", whatever that is, might address this. [/QB][/QUOTE]
from SLAnd one of the lacks in your whole response there is any significant distinctively Christian view....
quote:That's as maybe, but I don't get the feeling people are looking for a theological discussion here. The Koran clearly has within it elements that lend themselves to violence, as does the Bible, whatever you or I might say about the NT superseding the OT.
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
However,I am not myself secular and I have opinions on the matter in areas where the secular pluralist state is properly neutral.
quote:I think that's where you go wrong. You need to start by understanding Islam on its own terms. Many people have pointed out that you appear bent on imposing your view of how muslims should think on Islam. I certainly think your views on muslims' view of the Koran are a projection of your views on Scripture more than anything inherent in Islam.
I and other Christians can and should be understanding Islam in Christian terms
quote:Then why are you so insistent on approaching this from a specifically Christian point of view? It's almost as if you believe in a state religion...
"We" is pretty much everybody in the West, I think.
![[Two face]](graemlins/scot_twoface.gif)
quote:The first step to that is to agree on a "Christian understanding" before pontificating about everyone else. I might sympathise with your Anabpatist leanings, but I don't think you're going to build a consensus by ignoring other forms of Christianity be they contemporary or historic.
The 'tools' Christians should use should basically be a Christian understanding explained as required to both Muslims and non-Muslims.
quote:I can't help wondering how many religious wars started off allegedly underpinned by such intentions.
The aim would be to convert Muslims, by peaceable persuasion, to an unambiguously peaceable Christianity which would surely be a quite useful result.
quote:Not again
'Christendom'
quote:So in summary, your plan is:
One way a Christian view could address the situation would be by finally clearing that up and separating church and state. Another way is simply by showing Muslims a different way to relate religion and state - a way which unfortunately is considerably compromised in the ideas of the RCC, Orthodox, Anglicans and some other groups.
quote:Hence the usefulness of the Council of Europe's distinction between "religious practice" and "violent extremism".
Originally posted by Teekeey Misha:
My tendency (I suspect) is not to damn "Islamic Terrorism" because it's "Islamic Terrorism" but to damn "Terrorism" because it's performed by human beings and human beings are fundamentally flawed.
quote:As it happens I walked past the exact location of one of those bombs a few weeks prior to the event, and have been looking into the politics of Thailand for other reasons.
Originally posted by mdijon:
When bombs went off in tourist areas in the South of Thailand a month or so ago I was confused to see a Thai security official rushing out a statement that they had ruled out terrorism. It seemed pretty much by definition an act of terror.
Then I realised what they meant - they meant to imply that it was the "red shirt" or some other purely political group rather than Muslims. It seems remarkable that the definition of terrorism is gradually shifting to mean Muslim involvement rather than good honest political motives for blowing people up.
quote:Yes, I do apologise; I slipped from "Extremism" to "Terrorism" and I didn't mean to do so; I meant "extremism" rather than "terrorism". Although the former might well include the latter, I was trying to focus on "extremism in general" rather than "violent extremism in particular"!
Originally posted by Eutychus:
Hence the usefulness of the Council of Europe's distinction between "religious practice" and "violent extremism".
quote:Sort of fair comment. But in attempting to understand Islam on its own terms, I find pretty much universal agreement that Muhammad did in fact after some initial havering fight a war to set up an Islamic state - it's not an easy thing to ignore! Nor is it easy to ignore that the major Islamic heresy/split is not theological but apparently over who should have succeeded Muhammad as 'king' (whatever the official word used) of that Islamic state.
by Steve Langton
quote:I think that's where you go wrong. You need to start by understanding Islam on its own terms. Many people have pointed out that you appear bent on imposing your view of how muslims should think on Islam. I certainly think your views on muslims' view of the Koran are a projection of your views on Scripture more than anything inherent in Islam.
I and other Christians can and should be understanding Islam in Christian terms
quote:You do also realise that the disunity you're experiencing is because the Muslims have the difficulty of having to deal with exactly the contradiction and conflicted ideas that I've identified - with the added problem that they have to believe that it's the word of God...
I realise this is difficult, because as I have got to know them I've realised muslims make evangelicals look positively united and well-coordinated...
quote:Absolutely, and as soon as you widen the frame to include non-evangelicals the picture becomes much more similar, and when you include non-western voices even more similar.
Originally posted by Eutychus:
I realise this is difficult, because as I have got to know them I've realised muslims make evangelicals look positively united and well-coordinated...
quote:Whereas once Christians drop the belief that the Bible is the word of God it does wonders for their unity.
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
You do also realise that the disunity you're experiencing is because the Muslims have the difficulty of having to deal with exactly the contradiction and conflicted ideas that I've identified - with the added problem that they have to believe that it's the word of God...
quote:You made me smile there (though that's not as rare as Gamaliel sometimes good-naturedly pretends). In my days at Uni I was of course in the evangelical Christian Union - and the simple fact is we had considerable unity across Anglicans, Methodists, Presbyterians and Congregationalists, Baptists, Brethren, Charismatics of all kinds, lots of people from independent congregations, Lutherans and others from abroad - and even some Catholics and Greek Orthodox.
Whereas once Christians drop the belief that the Bible is the word of God it does wonders for their unity.
quote:Which is exactly what you are doing with Islam.
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
lilBuddha, you appear to be making what is commonly thought of as a 'Fundamentalist' error of reading the Bible 'flat' and not allowing for the teaching to progress and develop.
quote:Of course it's incoherent; like between Muhammmad and now there has been some 1400 years of history and not just a single history for all of Islam but different histories in different countries to create the pressures that make people 'extremists' now. The point I've been making is actually one of the few coherent bits going right back to the foundation. All the different parts of modern extremism link in those ideas going back to Muhammad's acts and example and the support of those acts in the Quran.
Originally posted by Eutychus:
The point is that it's impossible, and indeed pointless, if not counterproductive, to address "Islamic extremism" as a coherent whole, because you are not dealing with a coherent whole or anything like one, however much you think you are.
quote:I somehow don't think I'd be very popular if I derailed this thread into a fully detailed Christian theodicy at enormous length!
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
quote:Which is exactly what you are doing with Islam.
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
lilBuddha, you appear to be making what is commonly thought of as a 'Fundamentalist' error of reading the Bible 'flat' and not allowing for the teaching to progress and develop.
The "preparatory stage" rhetoric is rubbish unless your God is massively incompetent, inconsistent and capricious. We are talking infanticide, filicide and genocide. How the Hell does any of that prepare a nation for Jesus.
That Christians have to rationalise or readjust should give them a less prejudiced understanding of Islam.
quote:Actually I tend to see it more that humans are massively incompetent, inconsistent and capricious, requiring God himself to act quite drastically in healing our affairs. As for
unless your God is massively incompetent, inconsistent and capricious.
quote:In the way that world typically was, these things at least achieved that Israel survived to be able to learn what was necessary for the nation to provide the background for Jesus' act of salvation to be understood and effective; it's actually surprisingly hard to think of other ways of doing that which don't either make God unacceptably directly coercive, or end up with even more massacres by the other nations involved.
How the Hell does any of that prepare a nation for Jesus?
quote:Which is only true if you believe that there is only one possible way to interpret those bits of the Quaran and Muhammed's actions. A lot of Muslims do not agree with your interpretation of either.
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
All the different parts of modern extremism link in those ideas going back to Muhammad's acts and example and the support of those acts in the Quran.
quote:The argument that there is something rotten in the legacy of Mohammed is the argument that the bad Muslims - the jihadists - seem to be following the published writings of Mohammed more closely or more literally or more obviously than the good Muslims - the prayerful modest hard-working self-controlled charitable good-neighbourly Muslims who live honourable lives within the religious and cultural tradition they have inherited.
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
The question is whether Islamic states are always, without question bad because there is something stinky about the whole idea of Islam.
quote:I'm sure some would declare them to be following Wesley's precepts more closely, but who is to say that is correct? It looks a pretty subjective judgement and there is a lot of that about.
Originally posted by Russ:
If there were two groups of self-proclaimed Wesleyans, and the dishonest murderous bunch seemed to be following the precepts in Wesley's writings more closely than the abstemious and community-minded bunch, would we not conclude that Wesley was a bad egg, despite the lived testimony of the latter group ?
quote:Obviously you have misread what I wrote and totally confused the issue.
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
I dare say that there are very few of any religion who wouldn't support religious violence under any circumstances but it is clearly wrong to believe that only a minority of Muslims believe that they should be fighting a jihad including the killing of innocent people.
One does not have to believe that violence is always wrong under any circumstances to not be a terrorist blowing up a plane. Obviously.
quote:The issue is not Muslims' different opinions about Islam (such as Sunni/Shiite) but about the different responses by Muslims to the near consensus among them that it enjoins religious violence.
Well it is certainly true that there are many different individual Muslims with a good deal of different opinions about their religion.
But to then make the connection that those who do not do religious violence do not do it because they are lazy or otherwise deficient.. well that's just plain wrong.
quote:It is on the basis of the relationships I have had with Muslims both here in Australia and during years working in India that I included the factor "basic human decency" as a prohibitory factor.
You need to go and talk to a few more Muslims.
quote:It has nothing to do with what you or I or any other outsider "arbitrates" or "ordains".
A Muslim is not "bad" just because they don't behave in the way that you've ordained they should behave. Because you're not the arbiter of how they should behave to be true to their religion.
quote:I'm getting a little fed up (and to be fair Chris you're coming in for some annoyance originating with others here, I think you're mostly OK) with people who just tell me that "there are other interpretations" or that others "do not agree with me" as if somehow that in itself answered my points fully and made me wrong.
Originally posted by chris stiles:
quote:Which is only true if you believe that there is only one possible way to interpret those bits of the Quaran and Muhammed's actions. A lot of Muslims do not agree with your interpretation of either.
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
All the different parts of modern extremism link in those ideas going back to Muhammad's acts and example and the support of those acts in the Quran.
quote:The argument from me is not so much that some are following more closely than others, but that the writings/teaching/example are themselves confused and incoherent. had Muhammad ONLY taught the peace stuff, there'd be no problem, or at any rate only a problem of the non-peaceful obviously disobeying. But both sides are there in the teaching, aspirations of peace but undermined in practice by the other teaching and example of the Islamic state and the wars to support it. And to make matters worse, while claiming association with Jesus, Muhammad decidedly goes backwards from a better way taught by Jesus....
The argument that there is something rotten in the legacy of Mohammed is the argument that the bad Muslims - the jihadists - seem to be following the published writings of Mohammed more closely or more literally or more obviously than the good Muslims - the prayerful modest hard-working self-controlled charitable good-neighbourly Muslims who live honourable lives within the religious and cultural tradition they have inherited
quote:Quite possibly explained by the well-known proposition that one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter.
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
Surveys of Muslims (admittedly of those living in the West) reveal a significant proportion who admire terrorists but do not emulate them
quote:And a lot of Westerners are all for bombing the heck out of most of the Middle East. Except Israel that is. But that's OK, 'cos they are all terrorists
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
Surveys of Muslims (admittedly of those living in the West) reveal a significant proportion who admire terrorists but do not emulate them - hence the very reasonable conjecture as to the reasons for this anomaly, such as laziness, cowardice etc.
quote:Or sheer point of view. Our friends are freedom fighters. Our enemies are terrorists.
Originally posted by orfeo:
The only thing I can think of that might successfully distinguish "terrorists" is the nature of the targets.
quote:Not a "well-known proposition" but a lazy, banal and amoral cliche that gets trotted out with a mindless alacrity and predictability that puts Pavlov's dogs to shame.
Originally posted by orfeo:
Quite possibly explained by the well-known proposition that one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter.
quote:You are being disingenuous.
What is a "terrorist", after all? Were the French Resistance terrorists?
quote:"Violence for political ends" was what the Allies were engaged in during WWII - armed violence to overthrow the Nazi political system.
Violence for political ends, yep.
quote:Not exactly By earlier French definitions they would most definitely be.
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
You are being disingenuous.
Anyone who claims to be incapable of distinguishing ISIS from the French Resistance is lying.
quote:There are a considerable number of other groups fighting against the Syrian government. The West is generally sympathetic to them. Do they have a moral case?
Originally posted by mdijon:
ISIS are at war in Syria. They have zero moral case.
quote:I think you've completely misread my post. I can't see how you think I'm arguing that at all.
Originally posted by orfeo:
Whatever it is that makes ISIS into terrorists, I don't think "fighting in Syria" is a sufficient explanation.
quote:...or it's a view that takes into account different perspectives.
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
quote:Not a "well-known proposition" but a lazy, banal and amoral cliche that gets trotted out with a mindless alacrity and predictability that puts Pavlov's dogs to shame.
Originally posted by orfeo:
Quite possibly explained by the well-known proposition that one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter.
quote:Yes, okay, on rereading your post I might not have taken it all in, and certainly YOU might think that I hadn't read it properly based on what I wrote, but...
Originally posted by mdijon:
quote:I think you've completely misread my post. I can't see how you think I'm arguing that at all.
Originally posted by orfeo:
Whatever it is that makes ISIS into terrorists, I don't think "fighting in Syria" is a sufficient explanation.
The point about my paired sentences was not that one can conclude the second from the first, but actually the opposite - to illustrate that the first had pretty much no bearing on the second.
quote:Yes, I would say so. We wouldn't let a silly thing like our geographic location get in the way.
Originally posted by Golden Key:
orfeo--
(Slight tangent.)
Does Australia consider itself to be part of the West? Does the West consider Australia a part? Oz obviously has Western roots (plus indigenous).
Thx.
quote:Well, yes. Of course you do. But if you have access to a computer, you also have access to enough information to inform yourself as to how wrong you are and how other people saying "but there are other interpretations" are really saying "how can you not know there are other interpretations?"
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
I seriously want to know what other interpretations there are, why there is disagreement, etc.
quote:Yes, this is a difficult question to answer. I think partly it must be about intention. We know that IS is interested in creating an intense form of theocracy built on violence.
Originally posted by orfeo:
The problem still remains in this form: what exactly is it about ISIS that gives them zero moral case?
quote:See, I think this does depend on what is the question being asked of young Muslims, particularly in the West. There may indeed be a difference between "support" of the idea that there is something worth fighting for in the name of - or under the banner of - Islam on the one hand and wholehearted support for the whole IS package on the other.
Because the Muslims answering survey questions that indicate some kind of sympathy with "terrorists" of whatever description are presumably doing it because they DO think whoever they sympathise with (not necessarily ISIS) has some kind of moral case.
quote:Burning people alive on camera, use of children in executions, total denial of human rights within their controlled territory. Yes the problem still remains, my point was to decouple that problem from the label of terrorism.
Originally posted by orfeo:
The problem still remains in this form: what exactly is it about ISIS that gives them zero moral case?
quote:Your wording noted, I would expect that most Muslims would very rarely express any sympathy with ISIS. Of course some few people will think they have a moral case, as do some for Hitler. Morality is very arguable.
Originally posted by orfeo:
Because the Muslims answering survey questions that indicate some kind of sympathy with "terrorists" of whatever description are presumably doing it because they DO think whoever they sympathise with (not necessarily ISIS) has some kind of moral case.
quote:Made me smile!
Originally posted by mousethief:
Islamic extremism stems from ... CONSTANTINE!
Now going to read Steve's post to see if I'm right.
quote:You are I think a bit exaggerating my position. I do indeed have a computer and I do use it. I just used it to check that my memory about Sufism was right and that actually they were more likely to be victims of suicide bombers than perpetrators. And because I have studied the stuff quite a bit, seems I was right....
Originally posted by Doc Tor:
quote:Well, yes. Of course you do. But if you have access to a computer, you also have access to enough information to inform yourself as to how wrong you are and how other people saying "but there are other interpretations" are really saying "how can you not know there are other interpretations?"
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
I seriously want to know what other interpretations there are, why there is disagreement, etc.
For example, how many Sufi suicide bombers have you read about?
Seriously: if you don't know about the difference between Sunni and Shia and Sufi and Yazidi and Druze, or Arab and Persian and Berber, then you need to do that asap. This is a starting point. It's not your end point.
quote:Right, so all those other Muslims don't count for the purposes of your argument. How convenient.
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
You are I think a bit exaggerating my position. I do indeed have a computer and I do use it. I just used it to check that my memory about Sufism was right and that actually they were more likely to be victims of suicide bombers than perpetrators. And because I have studied the stuff quite a bit, seems I was right....
I also used it to follow your link; being well into Christian non-conformity I was not too surprised by the variety of Islamic sects it revealed. But it also of course revealed that most of these are very minor and not very significant to the current discussion. The majority Sunni/Shia seem to be essentially teaching what I am critiquing.
quote:I suspect almost every other person on this board is bored of trying to persuade you that the things you believe are not objective facts but just opinions you've derived from a limited exposure to Islam and Islamic teaching.
It's not so much a case of "how can (I) not know there are other interpretations?" I'm well aware of there being other interpretations!!!! After all I rather much belong to what many would see as an 'other interpretation' of Christianity myself! My objection was to people who, instead of producing solid issues to discuss, just make airy vague comments about 'other interpretations' and act as if merely by saying that they've somehow proved me wrong. Such an approach is not a legitimate argument.
I know there are variants of Islam which teach peace - so far I've yet to come across such a variant which convinces me they've a sufficient argument to counter the rather obvious and fundamental historic fact of Muhammad's own choice to establish an Islamic state and fight wars to establish and maintain it, or to counter the obvious interpretation of the Quran texts which support Muhammad doing so.
quote:So there is at least one scholar who thinks your obvious conclusions are utter bunk.
Although the original Islamic sources (the Qurʿān and the ḥadīths) have very little to say on matters of government and the state, the first issue to confront the Muslim community immediately after the death of its formative leader, the Prophet Muḥammad, in 632 CE was in fact the problem of government and how to select a successor, khalīfah (caliph), to the Prophet. From the start, therefore, Muslims had to innovate and to improvise with regard to the form and nature of government.
Islam is indeed a religion of collective morals, but it contains little that is specifically political—that is, the original Islamic sources rarely convey much on how to form states, run governments, and manage organizations. If the rulers of the historical Islamic states were also spiritual leaders of their communities, this was not because Islam required the imām (religious leader) to be also a political ruler, but because—on the contrary—Islam had spread in regions where the modes of production tended to be control-based and where the state had always played a crucial economic and social role. The “monopoly” of a certain religion had always been one of the state 's usual instruments for ensuring ideological hegemony, and the historical Islamic state was heir to this tradition.
etc and so on
quote:Just because you've thought of them doesn't make them "right or even serious" either.
It's not just "Are there other interpretations?" - it's also are they in fact credible interpretations or questionably stretched and strained interpretations. Merely that they exist doesn't make them right or even serious.
quote:link to book blurb
Abdullahi Ahmed An-Naʿim argues that the coercive enforcement of shariʿa by the state betrays the Qurʿan’s insistence on voluntary acceptance of Islam. Just as the state should be secure from the misuse of religious authority, shariʿa should be freed from the control of the state. State policies or legislation must be based on civic reasons accessible to citizens of all religions. Showing that throughout the history of Islam, Islam and the state have normally been separate, An-Naʿim maintains that ideas of human rights and citizenship are more consistent with Islamic principles than with claims of a supposedly Islamic state to enforce shariʿa. In fact, he suggests, the very idea of an “Islamic state” is based on European ideas of state and law, and not shariʿa or the Islamic tradition.
quote:The problem is that even 'Sunni' and 'Shia' are blanket terms that are about as useful a descriptive label as 'Orthodox', there are numerous schools within each form of the faith. For a number of reasons (including geo-politics) the more conservative forms have gained ascendance in the post-War era, which has tended to lead to a narrowing of the dialogue over exactly how the actions of Muhammed should be contextualised.
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
I also used it to follow your link; being well into Christian non-conformity I was not too surprised by the variety of Islamic sects it revealed. But it also of course revealed that most of these are very minor and not very significant to the current discussion. The majority Sunni/Shia seem to be essentially teaching what I am critiquing.
quote:The number of experts on Islamic jurisprudence on a Christian website is going to be low, so most of us don't know enough to directly refute you.
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
My objection was to people who, instead of producing solid issues to discuss, just make airy vague comments about 'other interpretations' and act as if merely by saying that they've somehow proved me wrong. Such an approach is not a legitimate argument.
quote:Which also can't be lumped into a single (or even two) "teaching". A Sunni from Turkey likely believes in a very different form of Islam than a Saudi Sunni. You might as well be talking about the teachings of "Protestantism". Yes, there are some commonalities but the differences are more notable, particularly to the practitioners of different Protestant sects.
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
I also used it to follow your link; being well into Christian non-conformity I was not too surprised by the variety of Islamic sects it revealed. But it also of course revealed that most of these are very minor and not very significant to the current discussion. The majority Sunni/Shia seem to be essentially teaching what I am critiquing.
quote:Can't disagree at all Steve! Islam formed in reaction to the catastrophic failure to institutionalize Jesus.
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
quote:Made me smile!
Originally posted by mousethief:
Islamic extremism stems from ... CONSTANTINE!
Now going to read Steve's post to see if I'm right.
I don't think Islamic extremism 'stems from Constantine' in any simple way. More it is another example of the bad way of linking religion and state which goes back beyond Constantine as well. The relationship with Constantine lies in (at least) two areas
1) When Muhammad came along, it was about 200 years after Constantine so the primary Christian example to influence him was the actually-not-so-Christian state church. The Quran includes at least one chapter related to a military operation against the Byzantines, ie Constantine's successors.
On the one hand this makes it understandable that Muhammad made the choices he did, and we Christians need to accept the past role of Christians in this (though also noting that this wasn't Christianity as Jesus taught it). On the other hand, I feel that if Muhammad had been a true prophet and really, as he claimed, correcting and improving Christianity, I'd be a lot more impressed by him if he had gone back to Jesus' position on religion/state relations instead of following the 'Constantinian' example which makes war and violence in the name of the faith pretty much inevitable....
2) The other aspect is that Islam has been much affected by the military opposition of 'Christendom' especially in the Crusades - which in a sense I think IS still see themselves as fighting - but also in European colonisation of Muslim countries all over the world. Christians need to be concerned about that and recognise the part of Christendom in forming Muslim thinking.
I think it was Eutychus who reacted to a mention of 'Christendom' with 'not again' or words to that effect - but seriously, in this case the involvement of Christendom as an opponent of Islam and forming their attitudes to the 'Christian' West is pretty undeniable.
quote:If your response to violence emerging from, among other things, religious difference is to announce that everybody must convert to Anabaptism forthwith, you are part of the problem, not the solution.
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
by Eutychus;
quote:That is a good secular answer for a pluralist state. It's pretty useless in helping us to understand where the violence came from and how we can prevent it arising to begin with. And one of the lacks in your whole response there is any significant distinctively Christian view....
The obvious answer is that you prosecute violent extremism regardless of religious practice, and leave alone religious practice that isn't violent.
quote:Yes. Clearly and objectively yes.
Originally posted by Golden Key:
--Were the American revolutionaries traitors to England?
quote:No. Also clearly and objectively.
Were the people in America who stayed loyal to England traitors to America?
quote:And those have roots in the way the West has dealt with the Middle East since WWI.
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
Worth pointing out also that Islamism is not simply religious, but also political. Therefore you have to calculate the political forces at work in the rise of AQ and IS.
quote:That's part of it. You can also factor in the insane rule of the secularists, who imprisoned, tortured and executed Islamists, and also the rise of Iran, which is tilting the Middle East off its old axis. Oh, the West helped in that, of course.
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
quote:And those have roots in the way the West has dealt with the Middle East since WWI.
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
Worth pointing out also that Islamism is not simply religious, but also political. Therefore you have to calculate the political forces at work in the rise of AQ and IS.
quote:Way before that: The Roman Republic occupied much of the Eastern Mediterranean a century before Christ was born. Some people just don't remember that "Never get involved in a land war in Asia" is a sound strategy and that they aren't in a game of Risk(tm). In the Battle of Carrhae (near the Turkey/Syria border, of all places) Rome suffered one of its worst defeats.
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
quote:And those have roots in the way the West has dealt with the Middle East since WWI.
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
Worth pointing out also that Islamism is not simply religious, but also political. Therefore you have to calculate the political forces at work in the rise of AQ and IS.
quote:And 7 centuries before Mohammed when Arabs were an obscure small tribe. It was the Achaemenid Persians and Parthians that were the trouble then, the former Zorastrians and the latter probably some mix of Zorastrian, Greek cult and other stuff. While modern Iranians might see some some continuity with the Sasanian empire I don't think the Achaemenids or Parthians would get much of a look-in and it was all pre-Islamic.
Originally posted by Sioni Sais:
The Roman Republic occupied much of the Eastern Mediterranean a century before Christ was born.
quote:My recollection is that as a territory conquered by the Arabs becoming Shia allowed them to be Islamic, whilst differentiating them from the (generally) Sunni Arabs.
Originally posted by mdijon:
It's a funny accident that Iran is Shia. I think the story is that although there were both Sunni and Shia overlords of pre/peri-Islamic Iran the Shia appealed more to the local population and it stuck.
quote:Checking with the source of all knowledge: Persia was Sunni until the Safavid dynasty, who had previously been a Sunni religious order but gradually became a Shia group, conquered/ reunified it in about 1501 under Ismail I.
Originally posted by Callan:
My recollection is that as a territory conquered by the Arabs becoming Shia allowed them to be Islamic, whilst differentiating them from the (generally) Sunni Arabs.
quote:With all due respect to your good lady wife/ Orac/ Wikipedia (delete as appropriate) I think that there were ebbs and flows and that the Iranians/ Persians were always attracted to Islamic 'heterodoxy'. This is a good account of the complexities involved.
Originally posted by Dafyd:
quote:Checking with the source of all knowledge: Persia was Sunni until the Safavid dynasty, who had previously been a Sunni religious order but gradually became a Shia group, conquered/ reunified it in about 1501 under Ismail I.
Originally posted by Callan:
My recollection is that as a territory conquered by the Arabs becoming Shia allowed them to be Islamic, whilst differentiating them from the (generally) Sunni Arabs.
quote:Actually no, there is one scholar saying pretty much what I said myself. Just he's spelling out some of the complexities which I avoided to make the basic point.
quote:So there is at least one scholar who thinks your obvious conclusions are utter bunk.
Even the points you make above are disputed by scholars. From the Oxford Islamic Studies website: quote: Although the original Islamic sources (the Qurʿān and the ḥadīths) have very little to say on matters of government and the state, the first issue to confront the Muslim community immediately after the death of its formative leader, the Prophet Muḥammad, in 632 CE was in fact the problem of government and how to select a successor, khalīfah (caliph), to the Prophet. From the start, therefore, Muslims had to innovate and to improvise with regard to the form and nature of government. Islam is indeed a religion of collective morals, but it contains little that is specifically political—that is, the original Islamic sources rarely convey much on how to form states, run governments, and manage organizations. If the rulers of the historical Islamic states were also spiritual leaders of their communities, this was not because Islam required the imām (religious leader) to be also a political ruler, but because—on the contrary—Islam had spread in regions where the modes of production tended to be control-based and where the state had always played a crucial economic and social role. The “monopoly” of a certain religion had always been one of the state 's usual instruments for ensuring ideological hegemony, and the historical Islamic state was heir to this tradition. etc and so on
quote:A near perfect statement of 'Constantinianism'! Indeed that is basically what the whole business is about, from long before Constantine down through Henry VIII and so on, and in all manner of other religions besides Christianity.
The “monopoly” of a certain religion had always been one of the state 's usual instruments for ensuring ideological hegemony, and the historical Islamic state was heir to this tradition.
quote:Why is that somehow "utter bunk" when I say it?? (sorry quetzalcoatl - I know you weren't responsible for that one...). Or simply, this is what I've been saying all along - that from Muhammad's setting up an Islamic state rather than a different relation between his religion and the surrounding world, Islam IS political and you need to consider that to deal with the problems we currently face.
Worth pointing out also that Islamism is not simply religious, but also political.
quote:I never said there were no other factors; there very much are - but the basic situation Muhammad set up, and the Quran's support of it, are still an extremely important part of the mix.
In other words, taking it back to the Qu'ran is too simplistic, and leaves out a huge amount of stuff. It's like blaming the IRA on the Reformation.
quote:If you think about it, everyone converting to Anabaptism forthwith would be quite a good solution - no more war or persecution!!
Originally posted by Callan:
quote:If your response to violence emerging from, among other things, religious difference is to announce that everybody must convert to Anabaptism forthwith, you are part of the problem, not the solution.
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
by Eutychus;
quote:That is a good secular answer for a pluralist state. It's pretty useless in helping us to understand where the violence came from and how we can prevent it arising to begin with. And one of the lacks in your whole response there is any significant distinctively Christian view....
The obvious answer is that you prosecute violent extremism regardless of religious practice, and leave alone religious practice that isn't violent.
quote:Now that's more like it!! And having just checked there's a Kindle edition, can't wait to add it to my stock and read it. I will be particularly interested in how he treats the issue that;
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
And, wadderyouknow, here is another scholar who argues that Islam should be separated from the state:
quote:link to book blurb
Abdullahi Ahmed An-Naʿim argues that the coercive enforcement of shariʿa by the state betrays the Qurʿan’s insistence on voluntary acceptance of Islam. Just as the state should be secure from the misuse of religious authority, shariʿa should be freed from the control of the state. State policies or legislation must be based on civic reasons accessible to citizens of all religions. Showing that throughout the history of Islam, Islam and the state have normally been separate, An-Naʿim maintains that ideas of human rights and citizenship are more consistent with Islamic principles than with claims of a supposedly Islamic state to enforce shariʿa. In fact, he suggests, the very idea of an “Islamic state” is based on European ideas of state and law, and not shariʿa or the Islamic tradition.
quote:My current view is that basically yes, there is the teaching in the Quran of how there should be no coercion. The problem is, on the face of it, Muhammad robbed that aspect of most of its force by his own actions in (sorry about the repetition) setting up an Islamic 'kingdom of this world' state and using warfare and execution of opponents on behalf of that state. We will see....
the coercive enforcement of shariʿa by the state betrays the Qurʿan’s insistence on voluntary acceptance of Islam.
quote:The problem is indeed on the face of it. You have a superficial view of Islam and what you have written about your superficial view probably far outstrips the word count of what you've read Muslims saying about their Islam. Go read and listen, then form a view.
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
The problem is, on the face of it...
quote:With all due additional respect I'm more with Orac on this. That review really put me off with the sentence
Originally posted by Callan:
With all due respect to your good lady wife/ Orac/ Wikipedia (delete as appropriate) I think that there were ebbs and flows and that the Iranians/ Persians were always attracted to Islamic 'heterodoxy'. This is a good account of the complexities involved.
quote:Also I don't think attraction to heterodoxy really sounds convincing given that for the first few hundred years I don't think it's clear who was going to be regarded as orthodox. The split was very early and orthodox depends on the winners, who weren't established at that point.
In contrast to Zoroastrianism, Islam did not regard women as the property of men
quote:Given how voraciously a hyperlexic Aspie like me can read, that sounds unlikely. You will note that having been pointed to a book with a promising different view, I'm about to spend my money on it and read it (and I'm wondering whether the person who found the book will actually be doing that himself, or whether it just served his purposes to use the blurb to get at me....)
Originally posted by mdijon:
quote:The problem is indeed on the face of it. You have a superficial view of Islam and what you have written about your superficial view probably far outstrips the word count of what you've read Muslims saying about their Islam. Go read and listen, then form a view.
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
The problem is, on the face of it...
quote:Bullshit. You said that there was only one possible way to understand Muhammad and that was in terms of Constantinian-style state-building. That link is clearly making the argument that the state-building was clearly influenced by the Koran and Hadith, but as they don't actually say very much about it that there was a whole load of improvising going on from the earliest days.
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
Actually no, there is one scholar saying pretty much what I said myself. Just he's spelling out some of the complexities which I avoided to make the basic point.
quote:That is very clearly not what the link says at all. Indeed it makes it very clear that Islamic state building after Muhammad involved a lot of creative interpretation of the scriptures and was influenced by a lot of other stuff.
During Muhammad's life you had a de facto Islamic state which didn't need a great deal of formalised 'politics' because of the living presence of the prophet and the revelations of the Quran to guide things. A somewhat similar though not identical situation existed in the early days of Mormonism and its prophet Joseph Smith.... But you certainly had the basic realities of an Islamic state established by war and continuing to use warfare to establish and defend itself.
quote:You keep stating that it is a fact that there is only one way to read Muhammad and then when I show you that scholars say that the Islamic states were the way they were due to a range of factors (ie not just a "plain" reading of the Koran) you then change the argument saying that is what you said all along.
Given the limited nature of political stipulations in the Qurʿān and the ḥadīths, Muslims have had to borrow and to improvise in developing their political systems. These systems, however, have been inspired by sharīʿah (Islamic law), as represented in the Qurʿān and the sunnah; by Arabian tribal traditions; and by the political heritage of the lands Muslims conquered, especially the Persian and Byzantine traditions.
quote:You could only make that statement if you'd not actually bothered to read the hundreds of closely argued words I've provided for you to consider. Written by experts on the subject.
Why do you think this makes my views "utter bunk"??
It essentially is my view just from a slightly different viewpoint!
quote:I'm sorry, are you saying here that you cannot possibly have a superficial view on something because you have Aspergers and read books?
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
quote:Given how voraciously a hyperlexic Aspie like me can read, that sounds unlikely.
Originally posted by mdijon:
The problem is indeed on the face of it. You have a superficial view of Islam and what you have written about your superficial view probably far outstrips the word count of what you've read Muslims saying about their Islam. Go read and listen, then form a view.
quote:My friend, (a) I have met lots of Muslims and I know for certain that Islamic Jurisprudence is complex (b) I know for a fact that many Muslims practice non-violence (c) I know many intelligent Muslims take opposing views on many things, including how to interpret the Koran and (d) I know - far more than you appear to - that there is an enormous amount about Islam that I don't know and therefore I would be extremely cautious about claiming things about it that a short google search can prove are categorically untrue.
You will note that having been pointed to a book with a promising different view, I'm about to spend my money on it and read it (and I'm wondering whether the person who found the book will actually be doing that himself, or whether it just served his purposes to use the blurb to get at me....)
quote:1) There are only so many ways you can 'read' a man who raises an army to conquer the city of his birth and make it for all practical purposes an "Islamic state". And does/orders/leads a lot of military actions on the way. And to call that 'peaceable' is a considerable stretch of the English language or any other....
You keep stating that it is a fact that there is only one way to read Muhammad and then when I show you that scholars say that the Islamic states were the way they were due to a range of factors (ie not just a "plain" reading of the Koran) you then change the argument saying that is what you said all along.
The fact is that Muhammad's words in the Koran were open to a whole load of interpretations with regard to violence - leading some to say that it is a religion of peace and others to go down the route of extreme violence.
You are the one saying that violence is the only possible reasonable reading of the Koran,
quote:That is, Muhammad's teaching is conflicted and contradictory. Again if you read back upthread you will find me stating that in words which pretty much paraphrase the words of mr cheesy's which I just quoted. I also pointed out quite reasonably that because of this ambiguity (again using mr cheesy's words);
The fact is that Muhammad's words in the Koran were open to a whole load of interpretations with regard to violence
quote:Precisely because Muhammad puts both angles and so presents an incoherent view, and because he himself clearly did the 'Islamic state' and the war on its behalf thing himself, it is at least unsurprising that the majority of Muslims through history seem to have chosen the warfare option and too many have "(gone) down the route of extreme violence".
leading some to say that it is a religion of peace and others to go down the route of extreme violence.
quote:I AM the one saying that the conflicted and contradictory readings pretty much guarantee that the violent route will be followed, especially given the rather indisputable action of establishing an Islamic state which (the religious state thing) also causes violence when foisted on the essentially truly peaceable Christian and Buddhist teachings.
the one saying that violence is the only possible reasonable reading of the Koran
quote:Again what's your problem? The basic factor they quote is precisely the one at the root in a different context of the 'Christian' states; and they may be saying that Muhammad's state didn't quite constitute initially a certain kind of state, but as I say it clearly was a 'state or an intended state' in everyday terms. As I said, there are only so many ways you can read a guy raising an army to conquer his home city and set himself up as ruler....
scholars say that the Islamic states were the way they were due to a range of factors
quote:You're slightly mixing cause and effect here. Yes, Muhammad will have set up his Islamic state due to a range of factors including some naivety on his part about the likely consequences of setting up such a state. And yes, further factors will have caused the continuance of what he started. The point remains that he did as a historical fact set up an Islamic state in every way that matters for the current thread, and via the 'plain reading' of the Quran (which you seem to agree with me was in real terms Muhammad's words) purported to have God's support for what he did - a FACT on which the later rulers built.
...the Islamic states were the way they were due to a range of factors (ie not just a "plain" reading of the Koran)...
quote:That is utter rubbish. The "majority of Muslims throughout history" have not "chosen the warfare route".
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
Precisely because Muhammad puts both angles and so presents an incoherent view, and because he himself clearly did the 'Islamic state' and the war on its behalf thing himself, it is at least unsurprising that the majority of Muslims through history seem to have chosen the warfare option and too many have "(gone) down the route of extreme violence".
quote:No, they don't "guarantee that the violent route will be followed" as the long list of different opinions as to how to apply the Koran shows. You're just talking shit.
I AM the one saying that the conflicted and contradictory readings pretty much guarantee that the violent route will be followed, especially given the rather indisputable action of establishing an Islamic state which (the religious state thing) also causes violence when foisted on the essentially truly peaceable Christian and Buddhist teachings.
quote:I'm saying nothing of the kind and would not presume to agree with you about something that you clearly know absolutely jack shit about.
You're slightly mixing cause and effect here. Yes, Muhammad will have set up his Islamic state due to a range of factors including some naivety on his part about the likely consequences of setting up such a state. And yes, further factors will have caused the continuance of what he started. The point remains that he did as a historical fact set up an Islamic state in every way that matters for the current thread, and via the 'plain reading' of the Quran (which you seem to agree with me was in real terms Muhammad's words) purported to have God's support for what he did - a FACT on which the later rulers built.
quote:Could you clarify something for me? What's the distinction between "extreme violence" and the ordinary kind violence typically associated with states? I'm kind of working from a Weberian understanding of the state as inherently violent, so the distinction seems useful.
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
Precisely because Muhammad puts both angles and so presents an incoherent view, and because he himself clearly did the 'Islamic state' and the war on its behalf thing himself, it is at least unsurprising that the majority of Muslims through history seem to have chosen the warfare option and too many have "(gone) down the route of extreme violence".
quote:Actually as an Anabaptist I pretty much agree with you about the violence of states.
Originally posted by Crœsos:
quote:Could you clarify something for me? What's the distinction between "extreme violence" and the ordinary kind violence typically associated with states? I'm kind of working from a Weberian understanding of the state as inherently violent, so the distinction seems useful.
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
Precisely because Muhammad puts both angles and so presents an incoherent view, and because he himself clearly did the 'Islamic state' and the war on its behalf thing himself, it is at least unsurprising that the majority of Muslims through history seem to have chosen the warfare option and too many have "(gone) down the route of extreme violence".
For example, if we compare the initial Islamic conquest of Jerusalem in 638 and its re-taking by Muslim forces during the Second Crusade (both negotiated surrenders after a siege, with no exceptional atrocities afterwards) with the conquest of Jerusalem by the Christian forces of the First Crusade (city taken by storm, followed by a series of massacres considered excessive even by the standards of Mediæval warfare), most people would class the last as much more "extreme" than either of the first two. How do you arrive at the opposite conclusion?
quote:Why specifically Islamic states? Is the Russian bombing campaign in Syria (to pick one example) notably less extreme than the Syrian government's own bombing campaign (conducted with Russian support)?
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
Actually as an Anabaptist I pretty much agree with you about the violence of states.
In this case I was quoting somebody else in a context where much was being made of the difference (though nominal as I see it) between what Islamic states mostly do and what organisations like IS do.
quote:Not suggesting the majority of Muslims throughout history have constantly been at actual war; just that they have accepted the basic idea implied by Muhammad's actual practice of war, and the Islamic state which like most states does depend on the possibility of war.
That is utter rubbish. The "majority of Muslims throughout history" have not "chosen the warfare route".
quote:We're back to that non-argument about all the 'different opinions/interpretations'. It's still a non-argument so how can I realistically respond? Can you give me a concrete example of a credible not obviously strained argument which explains how to get round the facts of Muhammad's own violent actions?
No, they don't "guarantee that the violent route will be followed" as the long list of different opinions as to how to apply the Koran shows. You're just talking shit.
quote:That seems to refer to my comment that you appear to agree with me that the Quran was Muhammad's words. I based that comment on your own reference to "Muhammad's words in the Koran".
I'm saying nothing of the kind and would not presume to agree with you about something that you clearly know absolutely jack shit about.
quote:Then you do not get it. It is not state or religion, but people. If the world were naught but Anabaptist anarchists, there would be war, rape, murder, etc. Religion is sometime the excuse, but people are the cause.
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
Actually as an Anabaptist I pretty much agree with you about the violence of states.
quote:1) No 'great reading of Islamic scholars' - just simply literally quite a bit more such reading than you were implying. And I submit, BTW, a great deal more reading than one Muhammad seems to have given the NT before (a) producing a seriously distorted version of Jesus, and (b) completely ignoring Jesus' much better ideas on religion/state relations. Which in turn doesn't give me much confidence in either Muhammad or a Quran which appears to reflect that ignorance of Jesus....
Originally posted by mdijon:
I, mdijon, am seriously disputing that that's a profoundly inferential point in a coherent argument.
Tell me about your great reading of Islamic scholars again when you've got beyond the "about to buy" stage.
quote:WOW!
I, mdijon, am seriously disputing that that's a profoundly inferential point in a coherent argument.
quote:No, actually I do very much get it. It's part of the whole "All have sinned and come short of the glory of God" thing that indeed people do all the war, rape, murder etc. I know perfectly well that states are not strictly persons (though they often are nominally so for legal convenience).
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
quote:Then you do not get it. It is not state or religion, but people. If the world were naught but Anabaptist anarchists, there would be war, rape, murder, etc. Religion is sometime the excuse, but people are the cause.
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
Actually as an Anabaptist I pretty much agree with you about the violence of states.
quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
quote:Why specifically Islamic states? Is the Russian bombing campaign in Syria (to pick one example) notably less extreme than the Syrian government's own bombing campaign (conducted with Russian support)?
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
Actually as an Anabaptist I pretty much agree with you about the violence of states.
In this case I was quoting somebody else in a context where much was being made of the difference (though nominal as I see it) between what Islamic states mostly do and what organisations like IS do.
quote:I don't want to derail this thread into Anabaptism - or no more than is really necessary anyway. But I think if you look at what worries people about even the 'better' Islamic states and Sharia law, I don't want Christianity to be like that and perceived that way. And I don't want Muslims to be looking at 'Christian countries' and seeing a 'crusading' enemy.
And I'm still not clear on what you're arguing regarding the proper role Christians and the state. Is it that Christians should never concern themselves with the doings of the governments under which they live, even in democratic systems where such is expected of them? Or is it that if everyone adopts your particular form of Christianity there will be a "withering away of the state" (that sounds vaguely familiar) to be followed by some anarcho-utopian paradise? Considering the persistence of the state compared with other forms of human organization, this seems a bit naïve.
quote:Your opposition seems to be to the state generally, so we're talking not just about war but also the other forms of state use of violence. This includes most of the ways modern societies discourage or punish internal bad actors. Abolishing the state would create all kinds of problems, none of which you seem to have any realistic solutions to.
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
Why specifically Islamic states? Is the Russian bombing campaign in Syria (to pick one example) notably less extreme than the Syrian government's own bombing campaign (conducted with Russian support)?
In this case, context again - the discussion was about the difference between different manifestations of Islam. I actually did originally leave out the word 'Islamic' there but realised that I'd be widening a bit beyond the original context. Anabaptist pacifism isn't exactly happy about any war. Syria is a mess; the only distinction I can see is that Russia may be trying a bit harder to appear civilised than the Syrian government itself.
quote:What I'm against is not 'the state' but the 'State Church/Christian country' business. I actually do believe Christians can potentially be considerably involved in the state.
Also briefly – and I could expound this at greater length of course – the Anabaptist view in general is not about “How we would run the state”, and we basically don't want to. It's more about how we live as yes “God's holy people”, but with a status in this world almost of 'resident aliens'; it's how we live, peaceably if we can (but 'turning the other cheek' rather than fighting back if the state won't let us live peaceably), among a 'world' (and I may not interpret that quite as you expect) which is likely often to be hostile, and how we do good for our neighbours as much as possible, which certainly includes sharing our views, but should include a fairly conscious effort not to be what Peter calls 'allotriepiskopoi', which roughly translates as “bossy-boots in other people's business”.
quote:If I recall correctly, the New Testament featured a government (more than one, actually) with a non-Christian state church that alternated between indifference and hostility towards Christians. If that's your goal, IS would seem to fit the bill pretty well.
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
I expect states to go on till Judgement Day. I'm trying to change the relationships between state and church back to the NT model.
quote:No, it's not my 'goal' - just the realities of living a 'born again' life in a world of unbelievers who we are NOT supposed to kill for their enmity or coerce into conforming to us!
If that's your goal,
quote:I owe my peace to the state monopoly of violence. I rely on it. Invoke it. Abolition of the state cannot be a Christian tenet. Leavening it, softening it, making up for its economically necessary starkness, filling in the gaps with charity, opposing abuse of power beyond the utilitarian is. We are utterly dependent on the state, there is no alternative, how can we repay, serve accordingly?
Originally posted by Crœsos:
quote:Your opposition seems to be to the state generally, so we're talking not just about war but also the other forms of state use of violence. This includes most of the ways modern societies discourage or punish internal bad actors. Abolishing the state would create all kinds of problems, none of which you seem to have any realistic solutions to.
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
Why specifically Islamic states? Is the Russian bombing campaign in Syria (to pick one example) notably less extreme than the Syrian government's own bombing campaign (conducted with Russian support)?
In this case, context again - the discussion was about the difference between different manifestations of Islam. I actually did originally leave out the word 'Islamic' there but realised that I'd be widening a bit beyond the original context. Anabaptist pacifism isn't exactly happy about any war. Syria is a mess; the only distinction I can see is that Russia may be trying a bit harder to appear civilised than the Syrian government itself.
quote:I think I'd say we are utterly dependent on God. God deals in the world explicitly via his people, less obviously 'providentially' through the world's own institutions. We trust him when he says we his people are to limit our tendency to meddling and being 'bossy-boots' in the state ourselves, that he is also providentially ruling/overruling the state to bring good out of it, including to bring good even out of its evil acts.
We are utterly dependent on the state,
quote:Ultimately, existentially, but as citizens, people, social organisms we are utterly dependent on human structures, organization and relationships for everything including the quality of the air we breathe.
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
by Martin60;
quote:I think I'd say we are utterly dependent on God.
We are utterly dependent on the state,
quote:Aye, as St. Theresa of Avila apparently said.
God deals in the world explicitly via his people,
quote:Aye, the universe freely increases in the quality of its organization.
less obviously 'providentially' through the world's own institutions.
quote:Indeed we must never abuse our power, no matter how high we are in the apparatus of state, the organization, disposition of society.
We trust him when he says we his people are to limit our tendency to meddling and being 'bossy-boots' in the state ourselves,
quote:That's not a claim that has any meaning for me.
that he is also providentially ruling/overruling the state to bring good out of it, including to bring good even out of its evil acts.
quote:We are the world.
And yes we are to seek to do good to the world around us, even if sometimes the world doesn't see it that way.
quote:So, keeping out of the way and not engaging in 'the world' in any way whatsoever other than to preach at people and warn them of the judgement to come constitutes 'doing good' does it?
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
by Martin60;
quote:I think I'd say we are utterly dependent on God. God deals in the world explicitly via his people, less obviously 'providentially' through the world's own institutions. We trust him when he says we his people are to limit our tendency to meddling and being 'bossy-boots' in the state ourselves, that he is also providentially ruling/overruling the state to bring good out of it, including to bring good even out of its evil acts.
We are utterly dependent on the state,
And yes we are to seek to do good to the world around us, even if sometimes the world doesn't see it that way.
quote:No. That has never been what I've said and I've said more than enough that you should know better. Bear in mind that to a large extent where I'm suggesting 'disengagement' it is where there has been unChristian engagement which needs to be sorted out before we can easily get more positive again.
So, keeping out of the way and not engaging in 'the world' in any way whatsoever other than to preach at people and warn them of the judgement to come constitutes 'doing good' does it?
quote:That might be because most of 'what they should be doing' is not some exotic 'instead' but just ordinary everyday life but with a significantly different Christian attitude. Because the Constantinians have added something questionable to what we do, of course dealing with it concentrates on getting rid of the unnecessary extras rather than on the ordinary which is largely in common - you know, the 'Mere Christianity' stuff.
I've seen plenty of posts where you've outlined what you think Christians shouldn't be doing but very few where you've outlined what they should be doing instead.
quote:I'm not arguing for the kind of negative legalistic purity that one sees in groups like the Exclusive/Plymouth Brethren or the more extreme Amish. On most things that should be ordinary Christianity and not so legalistic; I'm arguing for the one big 'purity' issue of really separating from the state, where the wrong answer has done so much damage; and yes, maybe initially over-separating to be clear ourselves and make clear to the world that we don't want to go back to the improperly domineering 'Christian country' past.
sufficiently separated themselves into the kind of purity you imagine Baptist/Anabaptist churches to have over and against everyone else.
quote:You're the one who brought up "negative legalistic purity," not Gamaliel. You're foisting your presupposition of what Gamaliel is saying onto him, and calling what he is doing "foisting." Freud would call that "projection."
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
You in effect are the one (or the main one of a few) who keep trying to foist a more extreme position here on me than I'm actually stating.
quote:
Originally posted by Martin60:
Aye, the universe freely increases in the quality of its organization.
![[Killing me]](graemlins/killingme.gif)
nice one!quote:Where exactly did he say that? Do you have chapter and verse? "Thou shalt not be bossy-boots." I'm guessing this is the result of some interpretation from passages that not everybody interprets in the "Anabaptist" fashion.
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
We trust him when he says we his people are to limit our tendency to meddling and being 'bossy-boots' in the state ourselves,
quote:The urge to sing here is nearly overwhelming.
Martin:
quote:We are the world.
Steve: And yes we are to seek to do good to the world around us, even if sometimes the world doesn't see it that way.
quote:Indeed, St. Paul defended it in rather strong terms. Not just the state. The wielding of violence by the state.
Originally posted by Martin60:
I owe my peace to the state monopoly of violence. I rely on it. Invoke it. Abolition of the state cannot be a Christian tenet.
quote:...except I'm not sure we can ever get to "Mere Christianity". There are always interpretations, perspectives, misunderstandings, and disagreements involved--not to mention personal and cultural baggage. Even separatist and/or conservative Anabaptists have
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
by Gamaliel;
quote:That might be because most of 'what they should be doing' is not some exotic 'instead' but just ordinary everyday life but with a significantly different Christian attitude. Because the Constantinians have added something questionable to what we do, of course dealing with it concentrates on getting rid of the unnecessary extras rather than on the ordinary which is largely in common - you know, the 'Mere Christianity' stuff.
I've seen plenty of posts where you've outlined what you think Christians shouldn't be doing but very few where you've outlined what they should be doing instead.
quote:Actually although Gamaliel didn't use the exact words "negative legalistic purity", he has said many things implying that I do think/act similarly to groups like the Amish and Exclusive Brethren, and that I'm about stuff that could fairly be described as "negative legalistic purity". Indeed I don't think Gamaliel would object much to me so summarising it! I don't think I'm 'projecting' it onto him. And he's been rather persistent in that approach even when I've gone out of my way to deny/refute such an interpretation of my words.
Originally posted by mousethief:
quote:You're the one who brought up "negative legalistic purity," not Gamaliel. You're foisting your presupposition of what Gamaliel is saying onto him, and calling what he is doing "foisting." Freud would call that "projection."
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
You in effect are the one (or the main one of a few) who keep trying to foist a more extreme position here on me than I'm actually stating.
quote:Also nice one, Martin! But no direct comment right now....
quote:
Originally posted by Martin60:
Aye, the universe freely increases in the quality of its organization.
quote:As it happens I do have 'chapter and verse'.
quote:Where exactly did he say that? Do you have chapter and verse? "Thou shalt not be bossy-boots." I'm guessing this is the result of some interpretation from passages that not everybody interprets in the "Anabaptist" fashion.
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
We trust him when he says we his people are to limit our tendency to meddling and being 'bossy-boots' in the state ourselves,
quote:The word I translated as 'bossy-boots (in other people's affairs)' is rendered in YLT as "an inspector into other men's matters" (italicised and starred above to pick it out in the long quote), and in the original is the single Greek word 'allotriepiskopoi' which breaks down into
12 Beloved, think it not strange at the fiery suffering among you that is coming to try you, as if a strange thing were happening to you, 13 but, according as ye have fellowship with the sufferings of the Christ, rejoice ye, that also in the revelation of his glory ye may rejoice--exulting; 14 if ye be reproached in the name of Christ--happy are ye, because the Spirit of glory and of God upon you doth rest; in regard, indeed, to them, he is evil-spoken of, and in regard to you, he is glorified; 15 for let none of you suffer as a murderer, or thief, or evil-doer, or as an *inspector into other men's matters*; 16 and if as a Christian, let him not be ashamed; and let him glorify God in this respect 1 Peter 4:12-16 (YLT)
quote:Except that the Bible says that in an important sense Christians, while emphatically 'in the world' are also supposed to be 'not of the world', but rather to be God's people showing 'the (God-rejecting) world' a different and better way. We can discuss exactly what that means, but it's definitely there in scripture, even in the words of Jesus hiumself and puts a significant qualification to what Martin says there... even though I agree he's got a valid point in some senses.
quote:The urge to sing here is nearly overwhelming.
Martin:
quote:We are the world.
Steve: And yes we are to seek to do good to the world around us, even if sometimes the world doesn't see it that way.
quote:And if you mean by that to justify Christians/the-Church wielding violence through the state or the state wielding violence on behalf of the Church, you've very much misunderstood Paul. But given the length of this so far, I'll come back to that in a separate post. You should perhaps check out my blog 'stevesfreechurchblog' - I'll go and do some UBB practice in the near future on how to give you a direct link to it.
quote:Indeed, St. Paul defended it in rather strong terms. Not just the state. The wielding of violence by the state.
Originally posted by Martin60:
I owe my peace to the state monopoly of violence. I rely on it. Invoke it. Abolition of the state cannot be a Christian tenet.
quote:I don't think mt meant to do that at all, and I expect Martin60 was taking a kind of two kingdoms approach to supporting the state monopoly on violence.
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
quote:And if you mean by that to justify Christians/the-Church wielding violence through the state or the state wielding violence on behalf of the Church, you've very much misunderstood Paul.
quote:Indeed, St. Paul defended it in rather strong terms. Not just the state. The wielding of violence by the state.
Originally posted by Martin60:
I owe my peace to the state monopoly of violence. I rely on it. Invoke it. Abolition of the state cannot be a Christian tenet.
quote:Nor do most of, perhaps all, the rest of us here.
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
What I don't do is either go all Jacques Derrida and similar acting as if all interpretations are equally credible, or go all papal suggesting I or my church has some infallible authority that makes my interpretation special.
quote:I actually rather suspected mt wouldn't mean quite that - but there are rather too many, including among mt's Orthodox brethren, who do take it that way. And I wanted to kind of face him with that and make him clarify his position further. As I said almost immediately, I was running out of time where I was. The slightly provocative response in the meantime seemed appropriate compared to saying nothing - maybe I misjudged that a bit.
Originally posted by chris stiles:
quote:I don't think mt meant to do that at all, and I expect Martin60 was taking a kind of two kingdoms approach to supporting the state monopoly on violence.
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
quote:And if you mean by that to justify Christians/the-Church wielding violence through the state or the state wielding violence on behalf of the Church, you've very much misunderstood Paul.
quote:Indeed, St. Paul defended it in rather strong terms. Not just the state. The wielding of violence by the state.
Originally posted by Martin60:
I owe my peace to the state monopoly of violence. I rely on it. Invoke it. Abolition of the state cannot be a Christian tenet.
quote:And I wasn't saying so; but I've recently faced quite a few people on the Ship who do seem to be 'going all Jacques Derrida' by blethering abstractly about 'other interpretations' and the like as if merely saying there are other interpretations in itself proved me wrong or narrow-minded,and others who've been all to happy to scornfully insinuate I'm going 'papal'.
Originally posted by Baptist Trainfan:
quote:Nor do most of, perhaps all, the rest of us here.
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
What I don't do is either go all Jacques Derrida and similar acting as if all interpretations are equally credible, or go all papal suggesting I or my church has some infallible authority that makes my interpretation special.
quote:Again, not what I've been saying. I'm saying the Church should not itself be entangled with the state and that individually Christians need to be careful when the state is directly involved - and especially not to be trying to run the state....
what this means in practice other than we shouldn't get involved in the nasty, tainted State in any way whatsoever - which is difficult to envisage as being practically possible in a modern, developed society
quote:One of the reasons I go 'light' in this area is that if you think about it, this can be very different in different states; different in say Nazi Germany compared to most modern democracies, for example. I'm trying to lay down the initial principles, not to tell you where your personal "must obey God rather than man" must come.
If we're a teacher, a civil servant, an NHS employer or a whole host of other things then it's the State that will pay our salaries. So far as I can see Steve Langton is suggesting: You can be a teacher but not a magistrate or policeman. You can do all manner of things as long as it doesn't make you a busy-body in some way. Which would immediately rule out any number of roles that involve regulation in some form or other - be it the DVLC, Trading Standards or being a School Inspector ... well, actually, come to think of it ... [Big Grin]
quote:Given that state use of violence is the underlying mechanism for the rule of law, I suspect the confusion comes from your lack of understanding of the Weberian state.
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
quote:And if you mean by that to justify Christians/the-Church wielding violence through the state or the state wielding violence on behalf of the Church, you've very much misunderstood Paul.
Originally posted by mousethief:
Indeed, St. Paul defended it in rather strong terms. Not just the state. The wielding of violence by the state.
quote:So... you are free to access state funded education and the protection of state-violence viz a vis the police, you're just not prepared to get involved.
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
From the examples Gamaliel gives, Yes, in most democracies I wouldn't see a problem in being a teacher in a state school; but one teaching job I wouldn't take would be RE, because I don't think that's the state's business. I also think that 'church schools' should in fact be private rather than entangled in the state, with the risk that the state, 'paying the piper', may end up calling unacceptable tunes.
Police - On the whole I think not even in a democracy; I'll hopefully get back to the 'state violence' thing again, but one of my main reasons here is that I see the Church's job as being in 'preventative medicine', socially speaking, and in a role akin to Christian Peacemaker Teams in a warzone. Street Pastors work with the Police to quite an extent - but it is part of their value that they are clearly a distinct 'rescue service' rather than a moral enforcement service.
quote:Please unpack that. Why might you be telling someone else that they mustn't do something that you rely on as part of the justice system?
I think a lot of the same might apply to 'magistrates' - but if a Church friend felt led to that kind of role, I would be advising caution rather than outright "You mustn't". Even in our democracy there are some trends that might change that.
quote:Not really sure what that has to do with anything. Surely it is less about their status in society as "kings and emperors" and more to do with their status in the law system as purveyors of justice.
Should be noted, BTW, that in reading older texts you need to be aware that until quite recently 'magistrate' was not just a word for a local low-level judge, but meant anybody of 'high level' in society up to and including kings and emperors. The Anabaptist 'Schleitheim Confession' uses it in that wider sense.
quote:OK but on some level the civil servant is in a power position over others, right?
On the others, I think the point is not things that involve regulation in general, but what is being regulated and by what rules. "Obeying God rather than man" is not likely to be a regular issue for workers in the DVLC, for instance. As I pointed out above, the 'busy body' business is actually rather specific; it's effectively about the "Because God is on my/our side I'm/we're entitled to boss you around" kind of idea. In the DVLC you are doing a neutral kind of job which nobody can realistically object about normally, and there are usually no religious implications where you can be seen as an inappropriately religious 'bossy-boots'.
quote:Oh ok then. So I can take it that if your town was flooded you'll be refusing any help from the evil military? If you're in a conflict situation, you'll not stand behind the blue helmets of any UN force as they protect you from murdering crowds? You'll refuse to accept food distributed by the military of any complexion whilst starving?
Different jobs in different societies you assess on a case-by-case basis.
I think being a soldier is a very clear NO-NO! And more rather than less so in a supposedly Christian state where Jesus gets explicitly involved in the state's acts. Christians ought to witness strongly against that.
quote:Thank goodness for that.
Having said that, I wouldn't confront a recently converted soldier with a kind of 'fatwa' that he must leave the army immediately or be excommunicated. I think the appropriate thing is to give him space - and importantly information - to think the thing through for himself in light of his new Christian status; while also warning him that he's in a position where even in our democracy that "We must obey God rather than man" might come up sooner rather than later.
quote:Hopefully it doesn't involve the government, the military, the justice system or the DVLA, otherwise you might be a practising hypocrite.
And I don't think I could advise a new convert to carry on in Hitler's SS except in terms of protesting against it....
Sorry, got to do something else now till later, possibly tomorrow...
quote:That's not entirely fair. Various anabaptists have resisted the state and gone their own way.
Originally posted by mousethief:
As near as I can tell from what I've read on the Ship, the Anabaptist position is: God bless the status quo, and the best we can do is ameliorate the damage done by the state to the poor and disadvantaged after the fact.
quote:NO!
Originally posted by mousethief:
As near as I can tell from what I've read on the Ship, the Anabaptist position is: God bless the status quo, and the best we can do is ameliorate the damage done by the state to the poor and disadvantaged after the fact.
quote:Actually on a quick glance at Wiki, the 'Weberian state' sounds like a pretty good definition of the state as 'the world' practices it.
Given that state use of violence is the underlying mechanism for the rule of law, I suspect the confusion comes from your lack of understanding of the Weberian state.
quote:OK, but you're not untangling yourself from "the world", you seem to be relatively randomly deciding that some bits are worth using (but not participating in) and other bits are not. In fact you're just picking-and-choosing which bits of the world are convenient for you to make us of. Just like everyone else.
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
One of the ambivalences of the situation for Anabaptists is that we find ourselves dealing not with a straightforward 'World/Church' dualism but also with a third body of a 'world-entangled' church which basically we also need to separate from. And that's on the one hand a difficult dance, on the other hand it's a dance we shouldn't be having to do because the serious Christians should join us in obeying God, and the 'nominal' Christianity created by that world-entangled church, of people who think they're Christian by birth in a so-called 'Christian country' basically shouldn't exist (and before any idiot says it, even in jest, that is NOT, of course, a call for extermination).
quote:OK, so why aren't you objecting to the state? That makes no sense - first you're complaining that various activities are taking the rightful place of God, then you're saying that that's ok when it is convenient for you to be ok.
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
mr cheesy; Anabaptists are not objecting to 'the state' per se - we accept it as part of the world we live in, and occasionally we find ourselves having to oppose it in the interests of 'obeying God rather than man'; and in most of those cases you'd probably agree with us. Some states we find much more difficult to live in/with than others.
quote:It seems to me that you're just confused.
What we do very much object to is the dubious creation of the so-called 'Christian state' which confuses the whole issue for everybody.
quote:OK, minor detail - literally 'magistrate' comes from roots which mean, approximately 'great' and 'stratum/level'. It's actual usage is of rulers of varying degrees, in other words people with power from the top dogs like kings and emperors down to their delegates like the local judges for whom we now use the term magistrates. They ruled - whether they purveyed justice or tyranny might be a different matter!
quote:Not really sure what that has to do with anything. Surely it is less about their status in society as "kings and emperors" and more to do with their status in the law system as purveyors of justice.
quote: by Steve Langton;
Should be noted, BTW, that in reading older texts you need to be aware that until quite recently 'magistrate' was not just a word for a local low-level judge, but meant anybody of 'high level' in society up to and including kings and emperors. The Anabaptist 'Schleitheim Confession' uses it in that wider sense.
quote:Two different questions going on here
OK, but you're not untangling yourself from "the world", you seem to be relatively randomly deciding that some bits are worth using (but not participating in) and other bits are not. In fact you're just picking-and-choosing which bits of the world are convenient for you to make us of. Just like everyone else.
quote:I've not asked that question, and as far as I can see it doesn't matter anyway. If I was to parachute you into an imaginary country which had all of the same civil structures as the UK but none of the religious historical baggage, I think you're saying you'd still not participate in certain things. Indeed it seems that you lack of participation is nothing to do with the religious heritage of the country. Am I wrong in that?
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
Two different questions going on here
Q1; Should the church be institutionally entangled in the state in such a way that the state can be regarded as a 'Christian country'? This can actually range all the way from a national establishment like the CofE to the kind of thing you see in the US 'Religious Right'.
A: NO.
quote:OK, let's assume we're talking about the state we both live in, the UK. It is a state that has no religious establishment, where there is no suggestion that there is anything favourable given to one religion over any other. How then is your idealised Christian to live?
Q2; And having hopefully not too far in the future got rid of that, how do Christians live in the state?
A; Well for starters it's likely to depend on which state. It's not so much we 'pick and choose what we like', it's that we have this ultimate limiting point of 'obeying God rather than man'. If we are allowed, we should overall benefit the state. Unlike many others who disagree with their state for various reasons, the state should not have to fear violent rebellion by the Christians, even though there may not be absolute obedience to whatever the state wants.
quote:That seems to me to be fairly obviously irrelevant. If you like, let's imagine that the country no longer has a military and has forsworn fighting foreign wars.
Bear in mind that when Christians have conned themselves into believing it's OK to be in armies, it's not a big step to the kind of thing seen in Ian Paisley on Romans 13, of getting a Christian army together to effectively take over the state. Are you sure you'd approve of that?
quote:
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
quote:NO!
Originally posted by mousethief:
As near as I can tell from what I've read on the Ship, the Anabaptist position is: God bless the status quo, and the best we can do is ameliorate the damage done by the state to the poor and disadvantaged after the fact.
Actually what you're describing sounds more like the position of those who issued that "A Call for Unity" that Croesos referred to in the post preceding yours. Broadly I interpret that situation in the Southern USA as Christians taking just about every attitude but the Anabaptist one, though with Martin Luther King probably closest.
quote:Surely it's the other way around, isn't it? Dr. King was trying to influence the state to change its policies towards those he felt were more in line with the will of God: ending racial segregation and promoting just and equal treatment of all citizens by the state. In other words, he "trie[d] to use that kind of localised political power for [his] goals". Working for just treatment by the state seems like exactly the kind of 'worldly' interference you oppose, plus Dr. King and his followers weren't "relying fully on God" but were instead relying on their own actions and hoping to create a world where the state could be relied on to be just (or at least more just than Alabama in 1963).
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
One implication of this is that if/when the Church does become entangled in the Weberian state and tries to use that kind of localised political power for its goals, it becomes compromised and weakened because it is no longer relying fully on God, indeed is in varying degrees disobeying God and following goals he disapproves of in ways he disapproves of.
quote:That seems to be the entire point of this kind of otherworldly theology: the rejection of the idea that anything happening in (of) the world is any concern of the faithful.
Originally posted by Gamaliel:
It's not that I don't think Steve isn't raising some valid points, simply that he's offering half-baked airy-fairy solutions that aren't at all grounded in the real world.
quote:That's nearly as unreal as asking, as you also did, what is the relevance of state Islam to IS - indeed maybe more so, given that you live in England and would have to be severely mentally or physically challenged to have failed to notice the Church of England, by law established. OK, a considerably attenuated establishment, but enough to be little use and a big problem....
the UK. It is a state that has no religious establishment,
quote:Point of information: I don't live in England.
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
That's nearly as unreal as asking, as you also did, what is the relevance of state Islam to IS - indeed maybe more so, given that you live in England and would have to be severely mentally or physically challenged to have failed to notice the Church of England, by law established. OK, a considerably attenuated establishment, but enough to be little use and a big problem....
quote:The situation is mixed; but I'd have been following the line of a clergyman I've heard of who preached racial equality till his church was clear of all those who refused the message - down I think to about four people - but then things changed and the church is now thriving on people who were willing to accept the message. Racists should not have been able to find a church in Alabama that accepted them. And those denominations should I hope have resolutely refused to follow segregation laws even if it meant they ended up writing to Luther King from the next door jail cell - but did they?
The "Eight Alabama Clergymen", on the other hand, seem a lot closer to your Anabaptist ideal. They do express a hope that Alabama treat its negro citizens more justly (which is bad, from an Anabaptist point of view as you've explained it), but they also counsel against actually doing anything practical to bring that about, which seems to be exactly in line with your "relying fully on God" principle.
quote:MLK clearly believed in the state otherwise his appeal for a historic change to the dud cheque given to black people by the USA's (this "great nation") founders would be rather pointless, don't you think?
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
There is plenty that can be done in Anabaptist terms - and MLK did in fact do a lot of it. His position was also mixed and went too far in places. As in Nazi Germany, it's a case of if everybody who called themselves 'Christian' had believed and followed the Biblical teaching the local government would have had little real power.
Without being there to know every detail I can't comment in detail.
quote:Sorry - mea definitely culpa. I was so distracted by wondering what a 'banglican' was that I missed your actual Welsh location.
Point of information: I don't live in England.
quote:To a large extent, yes - depending on what was being offered instead of nominal Christianity in the particular state. However in such a case the situation would be very much clearer all round than where we have a three-way situation involving a distorted form of Christianity as well.
Please answer the question. If there was no established church, no history of Constantinian Christianity, would you still refuse to engage with the state in the ways you've said above?
quote:Yes you would refuse to engage or yes you would engage?
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
To a large extent, yes - depending on what was being offered instead of nominal Christianity in the particular state. However in such a case the situation would be very much clearer all round than where we have a three-way situation involving a distorted form of Christianity as well.
quote:As far as I can tell most of those fighting ISIS are Muslims and most of those who are the victims of ISIS are Muslims too. If ISIS are fighting against Christendom they are going a very odd way about it.
Originally posted by Gamaliel:
More red herrings. There are Muslims fighting ISIS as well as Welsh lads.
quote:Given the chances of that latter proposition, except in a case like post-1945 Japan where a war loser has been forced to unwillingly disarm, I think it fair to treat that as Cloud-Cuckoo-Land, not a real question.
And why should you benefit from any of them if you are not prepared to participate in them?quote:That seems to me to be fairly obviously irrelevant. If you like, let's imagine that the country no longer has a military and has forsworn fighting foreign wars.
Bear in mind that when Christians have conned themselves into believing it's OK to be in armies, it's not a big step to the kind of thing seen in Ian Paisley on Romans 13, of getting a Christian army together to effectively take over the state. Are you sure you'd approve of that?
quote:
I prei you tell me nay or yee,
To passe over the grete See
To were and sle the Sarazin
Is that the law?
Reply;
… Sone myn,
To preche and soffre for the feith,
That have I herd the gospell seith,
But forto sle, that heire I noght.
Modern version
…. I pray you tell me yes or no; to pass over the great sea to war against and slay the Saracen – is that lawful?
Reply; …..My son, to preach the faith and suffer for it, that I have heard the gospel says; but to slay for the gospel, I hear nothing in it of that.
Second Poem
To slen and feihten ous bidde
Hem whom thei scholde, as the bok seith, Converten unto Christes feith.
But hierof have I gret mervaile,
Hou thei wol bidde me travaile;
A Sarazin if I sle schal,
I sle the Soule forth withal,
And that was nevere Christes lore.
Modern version ….
They bid us fight and slay those who they should, according to the Bible, convert to faith in Jesus. And it seems to me something to marvel at, how they tell me to work in such a way; for if I slay a Saracen, I shall also slay his soul (because he will die ‘unsaved’ -SL) – and that was never Christ’s teaching.
quote:I've already pointed out that in different states you will run into that 'obey God rather than men' in different areas and at different stages. In some states it would be fine to be a teacher in a state school - in others it would be pretty much impossible. There's no simple answer except to point out the 'obey God rather than men' principle, that when obeying man forces disobedience to God, back out of it. And there will be cases when Christians have different judgement when exactly they've reached that point and I have to respect them even if I also ask "Are you sure?".
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
quote:Yes you would refuse to engage or yes you would engage?
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
To a large extent, yes - depending on what was being offered instead of nominal Christianity in the particular state. However in such a case the situation would be very much clearer all round than where we have a three-way situation involving a distorted form of Christianity as well.
Please try to write clearly. I'm not here talking about Christianity - nominal or otherwise - I'm trying to understand what your problem is with the state, and you keep bringing it back to Christianity, which I've already removed as part of the thought exercise.
quote:You are still not answering the questions I've posed. I'm interesting in how you are determining which operations of the the state are acceptable for Christians to be involved in and which are not.
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
I've already pointed out that in different states you will run into that 'obey God rather than men' in different areas and at different stages. In some states it would be fine to be a teacher in a state school - in others it would be pretty much impossible. There's no simple answer except to point out the 'obey God rather than men' principle, that when obeying man forces disobedience to God, back out of it. And there will be cases when Christians have different judgement when exactly they've reached that point and I have to respect them even if I also ask "Are you sure?".
quote:OK, so I can take it from this that if I was to allow you to create your own state, it would be a godly one? You wouldn't have independent secular authorities like police and law courts?
The 'problem' is simply that the state is the godless world and likely to not necessarily be sympathetic, and likely to present you with occasional pitfalls in obeying God.
quote:Yeah, you've said that multiple times. We get it. What we don't get, and in my experience of you we never get, is any conception of what the thing would look like if the current system change to be like the one you hope and pray for.
That's why it's an extra problem when the state isn't the godless world but the confused body of a supposedly 'Christian' state with a mix of the Christian and unChristian, godly and ungodly-but-in-the-name-of-God; including that because it's more or less on the side of the war and persecution business, the supposedly 'Christian' state may be persecuting the Christians who stand against it....
The 'Christian state' is one of the biggest and worst sources of Christian disunity in all kinds of ways, starting simply with the big issue that the 'Christian state' isn't meant to happen in the first place.
quote:I don't think that's an obvious progression at all. Although I am basically a pacifist and do find it hard to understand how Christians can be in the armed forces (or work for armaments companies), nevertheless I am sure very few of those folk in a country such as Britain have made the leap to think they are fighting for God.
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
If our approach is that it's OK to be in the army - and kill people,remember - it's pretty much only a matter of time before you start thinking "If I can use the army or in general 'warfare with physical weapons', on behalf of the worldly state, why can't/shouldn't I use it for the more important cause of God?"
quote:I certainly think there was something of public religious ritual about both WW1 and WW2 even though some agonised about fighting. Most baptist churches have some kind of memorial to the war dead. I think it isn't a stretch to say that Remembrance as a thing has become a form of civic religion.
Originally posted by Baptist Trainfan:
Yes; I accept that they might have done in the past - some of the pronouncements made by British religious figures in 1914 were quite horrific, for example; and some Christians agonised over taking up arms in WW2 and ultimately decided that it was the lesser of two evils. But I can't see folk thinking in the way you suggest in today's secular society - Established Church or not (and, by the way, I hate "civic religion").
quote:Sorry GK; I did intend to respond to that one. I hope you'll understand that in a situation where I've been rather on my own here with stuff being thrown at me from several often contradictory directions I've not been able to keep up with it all. I'll copy your post off now into my 'SoFdrafts' file so I've got it readily accessible, and work on it. To avoid tangents on the thread your response may be a PM.
Originally posted by Golden Key:
Steve--
When you get a chance, would you please address what I said here? Particularly about the Ordnung.
Thanks.
quote:You've slightly misunderstood my point, I think. it's not that those who are involved in armies will automatically think their country is fighting for God. It's the logic that having accepted 'physical weapons warfare' at all, in a non-Christian state, the anomalies of killing for a not always 'godly' worldly state can lead to a line of thinking that it's better to fight for God, rather than to re-thinking the fighting at all bit.
Originally posted by Baptist Trainfan:
quote:I don't think that's an obvious progression at all. Although I am basically a pacifist and do find it hard to understand how Christians can be in the armed forces (or work for armaments companies), nevertheless I am sure very few of those folk in a country such as Britain have made the leap to think they are fighting for God.
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
If our approach is that it's OK to be in the army - and kill people,remember - it's pretty much only a matter of time before you start thinking "If I can use the army or in general 'warfare with physical weapons', on behalf of the worldly state, why can't/shouldn't I use it for the more important cause of God?"
Yes; I accept that they might have done in the past - some of the pronouncements made by British religious figures in 1914 were quite horrific, for example; and some Christians agonised over taking up arms in WW2 and ultimately decided that it was the lesser of two evils. But I can't see folk thinking in the way you suggest in today's secular society - Established Church or not (and, by the way, I hate "civic religion").
quote:When are you going to put MLK right then Steve?
Originally posted by Martin60:
Steve Langton, MLK went TOO FAR?! How? Where? When?
quote:Oops! That should of course have been
I was trying to outline how we got where we are, in effect. And point out that in that process, accepting fighting for the state has had the risk of turning into it being OK to fight for God as well, whereas if you strongly DON'T fight for God you are at least considerably more likely to think fighting acceptable in the state's lesser causes.
quote:I think I had in mind alternative versions one of which was 'more likely to think fighting UNacceptable' and somehow the wrong version actually got typed...
...considerably LESS likely to think fighting acceptable...
quote:Where did he go wrong Steve?
Originally posted by Martin60:
quote:When are you going to put MLK right then Steve?
Originally posted by Martin60:
Steve Langton, MLK went TOO FAR?! How? Where? When?
quote:Extreme beliefs, maybe; but actual fighting? That arises when the beliefs are put into practice and cause real-world problems. And if the belief is that you should have your beliefs enshrined in a state which necessarily discriminates against other beliefs, the fighting is likely to happen sooner rather than later. IS is not just a vague reaction to our freedom - it is a consequence of Muhammad having set up his new faith as a state religion, and having himself engaged in warfare for it.
Maybe extremists are just what you get for having freedom.
quote:To a certain extent modern Islamic extremism is perfectly intelligible in terms of Muslim history. The first Muslims conquered large parts of the world and settled down and established governments. In time the governments were viewed as corrupt and were overthrown by other Muslims seeking renewal of the original vision. This is not something that was invented by the Muslim Brotherhood or Ibn Wahab or Khomeini. Modern Islamic extremists define themselves against the modern west because of the western presence in Islamic societies and the Islamic presence in the west which, in turn, defines the nature of the contest. But the whole "let's overthrow the government and establish a proper Islamic regime" thing is a recurring theme in the history of the Muslim world.
To what extent do we believe that Islamic extremism is a logical consequence of a dominant secular/free (in concept if not always in actuality) paradigm?
quote:Well Jesus did set up a non-conformist option - and yes, the risk was martyrdom and the early Christians took that risk to keep Jesus' teaching, and the kind of 'kingdom' they established in his name, clear.
He was setting up some kind of community. In those days that inevitably meant something all-encompassing. He wasn't within the Roman Empire in its pagan days where religious tolerance generally prevailed, unless you refused to say prayers to the Emperor.
quote:A consequence possibly, but not the only consequence as people keep telling you. If you follow M you don't automatically get to IS.
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
Extreme beliefs, maybe; but actual fighting? That arises when the beliefs are put into practice and cause real-world problems. And if the belief is that you should have your beliefs enshrined in a state which necessarily discriminates against other beliefs, the fighting is likely to happen sooner rather than later. IS is not just a vague reaction to our freedom - it is a consequence of Muhammad having set up his new faith as a state religion, and having himself engaged in warfare for it.
quote:What on earth do you mean? How can Christians coming into a pagan country be entering a State Church situation?
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
Christianity had in fact engaged in non-conformist style mission to the Saxons - but by that time there was already a 'state church' situation which kind of unnaturally overrode that.
quote:Things that come out of your head are not necessarily the truth, Steve Langton. Just because you said it does not mean everyone - or anyone else - here accepts it.
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
And may I remind you that Anabaptism is basically 1st Century original Christian ideas - not the 16thC-17thC ideas which were developed in a state church situation and in cases like Cromwell were to say the least ambivalent....
quote:I think we've hit peak Steve Langton.
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
We've discussed the Pacific situation in our local Anabaptist group. We've yet to come up with a clear solution; but again, most of the missionaries were coming from a 'state church' or at least 'Christian country' situation and maybe didn't really consider alternatives. Even Baptists (as distinct from Anabaptists) could be a bit ambiguous in that area.
quote:No, the missionaries to paganism were obviously NOT 'entering a State Church situation'. Though they were entering a situation which effectively had a different pagan 'state religion'. The point is that by Saxon times there was already a 'state church' situation outside Britain/England in the Roman Empire which effectively took over the mission in a state church way.
Originally posted by Baptist Trainfan:
quote:What on earth do you mean? How can Christians coming into a pagan country be entering a State Church situation?
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
Christianity had in fact engaged in non-conformist style mission to the Saxons - but by that time there was already a 'state church' situation which kind of unnaturally overrode that.
Let's be honest: a lot of us here are getting totally fed up with you (a) banging on, at length, about this point to the exclusion of all others and (b) saying that we don't (or even refuse to) understand you. People such as myself are actually pretty sympathetic to your position; but we don't want it to become the central theme of every debate.
quote:Hahahahahha
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
'Elephant in the room'?
![[Yipee]](graemlins/spin.gif)
quote:
Incidentally, the latter was rather attractive to German Nazis fleeing the post-WW2 chaos. I guess they weren't proper anabaptists - just fascist racists who happened to be in an anabaptist tradition.
![[Ultra confused]](graemlins/confused2.gif)
![[Help]](graemlins/help.gif)
quote:Looks to me that the phrase exactly fits what I'm talking about.
Elephant in the room or Elephant in the living room is an English metaphorical idiom for an obvious truth that is going unaddressed. The idiomatic expression also applies to an obvious problem or risk no one wants to discuss.
![[Smile]](smile.gif)
You don't need to PM me. My point was just that even Anabaptists have their own interpretations and traditions. And I suspect that, at least for the Amish, Old-Order Mennonites, and Hutterites (I think they're Anabaptist), many of the traditions are Traditions.quote:Given the volume of your posts on the topic, I don't think it can be claimed to be any kind of elephant in this room. If anything it is an animal who has rather overstayed its welcome.
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
Looks to me that the phrase exactly fits what I'm talking about.
quote:Anabaptists, or hiding out as Anabaptists?
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
What, you haven't heard of the Mennonite Nazis in Paraguay and Canada?
You surprise me.
quote:Actual Mennonites holding actual Nazi views. Google it if you don't believe me.
Originally posted by Golden Key:
Anabaptists, or hiding out as Anabaptists?
quote:It looks to me that you're actually going back on-topic.
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
Sorry to go off-topic,
quote:Irony, old bean.
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
quote:It looks to me that you're actually going back on-topic.
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
Sorry to go off-topic,
quote:I was aware that Mennonites in Germany had supported Hitler; partly this was because Germany (pre-Hitler) had provided them refuge from communist persecution in Russia, and Hitler was big on anti-communism. Partly like many in the West, eg the UK's Edward VIII, they didn't realise the full evil. Indeed many in Germany didn't realise the full picture and AIUI the reality of the extermination camps was concealed even from many Germans. Mennonites were far from alone in mis-estimating Hitler.
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
What, you haven't heard of the Mennonite Nazis in Paraguay and Canada?
You surprise me.
quote:or at least you don't want to discuss it for reasons you haven't yet made clear....
obvious problem or risk no one wants to discuss.
quote:I'd been looking for a way to nudge things back away from the current tangent, without having to get all official and heavy handed. You just gave me an easy way in.
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
quote:Irony, old bean.
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
quote:It looks to me that you're actually going back on-topic.
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
Sorry to go off-topic,
quote:Riiiight, yes I'm obviously the cause of the tangent. No you're right I don't really want to discuss it with you any more, given that the only thing you seem to want to discuss is your own understanding of Constantinism.
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
And that is definitely a tangent to the issue of 'state religion or would-be state religion as relevant to Islamic extremism'.... So can we get back to that
quote:or at least you don't want to discuss it for reasons you haven't yet made clear....
obvious problem or risk no one wants to discuss.
quote:From that I probably do still need to PM you further; but I won't if you positively refuse. In original context 'Mere Christianity' is the huge mass of common ground between denominations, as opposed to the things they differ on. It was so conceived by Baxter at the time of the ECW and CS Lewis picked it up as the title of his book
Originally posted by Golden Key:
Steve--
Thanks for your reply.
Nobody's got mere Christianity, objectively. They may well have their understanding of it. Kind of like Queen Elizabeth I said, that all that matters is "Christ and Him crucified; all the rest are trifles". But which things are the trifles? One person's mere Christianity may simply be doing good works, because at least that much is clear. Someone else might consider an Orthodox service part of mere Christianity, because it contains the essence of the whole thing. For someone else, it might involve memorizing the King James Bible, and learning Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic to understand every nuance. Etc.
quote:God knows what any Muslim lurkers will think of this thread. Christian imperialism?
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
quote:I'd been looking for a way to nudge things back away from the current tangent, without having to get all official and heavy handed. You just gave me an easy way in.
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
quote:Irony, old bean.
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
quote:It looks to me that you're actually going back on-topic.
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
Sorry to go off-topic,
quote:Could you express an opinion on my suggestion that a lot of the trouble is precisely the concept of an 'Islamic state' that can fight/be-fought-for, as opposed to a plural democracy with religions operating as 'free churches' (and yes I know Islam doesn't have churches - I just mean following that model)?
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
Sorry to go off-topic, but it struck me that the Sunni tribes in Syria have a massive political vacuum in their midst. Revolting against the Assad regime has provoked massive violence against them, while IS offer a barbaric alternative.
Where is the political leadership, which will enable them to steer a course between the two barbarisms? Possibly, they need a mini-state of their own, or a self-determining province of some kind.
But perhaps things have gone too far now, for any talk of mini-states. Some journalists are predicting 10 more years of war, partly because of its proxy nature.
quote:Yes, this is a good point. It also seems quite telling to me that so many have sort refuge in Europe. Which suggests that they're more inclined to head towards liberal democracy of some kind than into the arms of extremists.
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
Sorry to go off-topic, but it struck me that the Sunni tribes in Syria have a massive political vacuum in their midst. Revolting against the Assad regime has provoked massive violence against them, while IS offer a barbaric alternative.
quote:Well, see, the problem with this is that small states don't really work in that part of the Middle East. The best example of this we have is the sub-state of Kurdistan, which is (arguably) a haven for a minority. But that's indirectly caused a whole lot of other trouble for other Kurds in the region, particularly when the Turks want to see - at least some of - them as terrorists against their state. Where there are princely states in the ME, they tend to be authoritarian in nature, and it appears that there isn't much hankering after that form of government from the throngs of people who have refugee-d north rather than south and east.
Where is the political leadership, which will enable them to steer a course between the two barbarisms? Possibly, they need a mini-state of their own, or a self-determining province of some kind.
quote:That wouldn't surprise me. Libya is essentially in a state of perceptual war, Iraq is a basketcase, Iran is fighting a war of words with Israel, Jordan is stretched and barely holding togther, Lebanon is looking East and is worried about how it might affect them. Turkey is getting stuck into Syria largely because they're worried about Kurdish instability in Turkey.
But perhaps things have gone too far now, for any talk of mini-states. Some journalists are predicting 10 more years of war, partly because of its proxy nature.
quote:I *do* positively refuse, though I prefer "politely decline".
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
From that I probably do still need to PM you further; but I won't if you positively refuse. In original context 'Mere Christianity' is the huge mass of common ground between denominations, as opposed to the things they differ on. It was so conceived by Baxter at the time of the ECW and CS Lewis picked it up as the title of his book
![[Biased]](wink.gif)
I want to contain this topic here, rather than having it spill over into my inbox.quote:Not convinced. A lot of western discourse about Islam tends to view it as this rather scary immutable religion which will carry on inspiring the faithful when the proverbial visitor from New Zealand sits down to sketch the ruins of St. Paul's. But the thing with religions is that they exist, primarily, inside people's heads. (The debated issue, of course, being the extent to which they live in peoples heads and live in the mind of God.) The other idea that exists in peoples heads is that governments exist to make their lives better. That sets up a tension. Given the frankly inadequate nature of government in the Middle East there is a kind of plausibility, for ignorant and desperate people, that an Islamic regime can solve their problems. But once the Islamic regime gets power, it then has the responsibility of solving those problems. At which point, disillusionment sets in. You or I may not live to see it but, eventually, the wall will come down and great will be the fall thereof.
Originally posted by Martin60:
@Callan
I like it but Islam is forever. Like Western materialism.
No cultural institution has lasted ten thousand years, so there is hope, but I suspect Islam could. I went to a Salafist mosque for the first time yesterday. It was a very powerful experience. Moving, sublime, mysterious, male, beautiful, austere, respectful. I yearn for that kind of belonging.
I cannot see any emotionally intelligent (Richard Dawkins continues to fail miserably by calling pious SCIS rapists 'scum'), inclusive development in culture, especially media, that could ever embrace and elevate the masses from materialism and Islam. Apart from emergent Christianity of course.
quote:That's kind of the inherent contradiction of Steve's position. For the conditions necessary for his utopia to exist (rule of law, relative peace, etc.) there needs to exist a rather large infrastructure (the state, or a state-like entity) exactly contrary to the desired outcome.
Originally posted by Gamaliel:
Even if any of these guys wanted to act in what Steve takes to be THE NT way, they couldn't have done because the conditions for them to do so didn't actually exist.
quote:A 'free church' model did in fact exist in the NT, Gamaliel, and in the early centuries till it was gradually eroded in the 4th Century. You find quite a few mentions of it in early writings outside the NT as well. It is true that by the 7th Century Muhammad didn't have ready access to it because the Roman Imperial Church didn't follow it and he seems not to have had much access to wider documents.
Mohammed wasn't capable of working with a 'Free church' or, rather, 'Free mosque's model as that didn't exist.
quote:No, by the 5th Century the Church was already in State Church mode across the Roman Empire. And so yes it did tend to missionise in a state church mode. But there would also have been just ordinary Christians doing old style 'gossiping the gospel' into these areas as traders and travellers. If anything the awareness of Christianity as the official religion of 'the enemy' might have been a barrier to pagan acceptance in Britannia, Caledonia, Hibernia etc. and the free church view might have done better.
The Celtic Church wasn't a 'Free church' model either. It'd been part of the overall Western Church until Roman administration ceased in the early 5th century.
quote:By the 7th Century, sadly yes - but even then, why not go back to the original even if it got you into trouble with the Empire? And I repeat, if Muhammad got that one wrong he certainly wasn't a true prophet of the God of Jesus...
That's how things worked back then. Why would it be any different in 7th century Medina than 7th century Mercia or 7th century Madrid or 7th century anywhere else?
quote:Actually in that sense the conditions didn't exist in NT times either - but the apostles trusted that a Jesus who could rise from the dead could also get his message through despite the adverse conditions. Essentially like the apostles, the 7th century Christians could have done it if they'd tried.
Even if any of these guys wanted to act in what Steve takes to be THE NT way, they couldn't have done because the conditions for them to do so didn't actually exist.
quote:Of course they wouldn't act exactly like radical Reformation Anabaptists because the situation was more than a bit different. The later Anabaptists had to react against a centuries-more-deeply-entrenched RCC and against a Reformation that had wimped out - consciously in Luther's case, I understand - from following the Bible as far as the Anabaptists had.
But to expect 7th century Muslims or Christians to act like radical reformation Anabaptists is completely anachronistic.
quote:Have you not heard of a book called: "The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire"?
But would it really not have worked if the 7thC Christians had gone back and tried the earlier model? Things weren't so different from the 3rdC - they wouldn't have been all that 'anachronistic', and they'd have been more faithful to the gospel and the style of church Jesus intended.
quote:NO - the logic of the situation has spoken to anybody who can be bothered to work it out. 'The Langton' doesn't think of his pronouncements in the kind of way you suggest at all. One of the problems of Islam is that it is NOT, as I seem to recall you once suggested, mr cheesy, a completely different religion. It claims to be in the Judeo-Christian tradition and a major inconsistency such as I've pointed out, in going backwards to the religious state idea rather than re-affirming the better ideas from Jesus, puts a serious question on that claim and so on Muhammad's claim to be a true prophet of the Judeo-Christian God.
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
Good glad we've got that sorted out: anyone reading this and considering becoming a Muslim! Desist! The Langton has spoken!
quote:NOT what I said and if you trace back up you'll find the post where I made a quite critical distinction.
that Islam is a fake religion?
quote:Yes, during the ferment of the Reformation, with all kinds of experiments being tried, some people with 'Anabaptist/'rebaptising' views did attempt the setting up of 'small religious states', the most famous being that at Munster in N Germany and some 'satellites' of the same group such as the town of 'Oldcastle' (can't remember the Dutch and haven't got the book readily accessible) where according to some accounts Peter Simons, brother of Menno, was killed influencing Menno's turn to pacifism.
Also - if you are setting up a small religious state (and, of course that's exactly what the anabaptists did several times) and you are attacked from the outside, what options do you have?
You can flee to a safer space.
Or you can defend your nation.
The latter is not an unreasonable thing to do.
quote:I'm not 'just' saying that 'State involvement (in itself) is firm evidence of Islam being untrue'.
Steve, your views on the wrongs of State religion are well known. However, I doubt that you can expect other Shipmates to readily accept that State involvement is firm evidence of Islam being untrue, for exactly the same reasons that other Shipmates don't readily accept that State involvement in Christianity is firm evidence of Christianity having lost its way.
quote:No, slightly - actually much - more subtle than that.
"Islam is violent because Muhammad was wrong and therefore Islam is against the truth"
quote:Really. I'm fascinated to learn your complex and multi-layered argument then.
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
No, slightly - actually much - more subtle than that.
quote:OK but Muslims don't believe the New Testament is accurate or authoritative. So arguing that the Koran says something different to the NT is stating the obvious. They don't believe the NT accurately reflects the teaching of Jesus.
Muhammad was sincere but he was wrong. One of the ways he was wrong is that he ignored/rejected the teaching of Jesus on how God wants his people to relate to the state, and produced instead, and very much acted on, a different view.
quote:That doesn't matter, though, does it Steve. A lot of people believe that he was the ultimate prophet and was more in-tune with God than anyone else that had been before.
IF Muhammad had come up with the state religion thing as part of a whole new religion, then you'd argue the case just on the merits of what Muhammmad taught - and maybe, though it wouldn't be a good thing exactly, it might turn out that Muhammad had a real God behind him who really did want religious states for the faith delivered through Muhammad.
quote:Again, only if you accept the Christian understanding, which Muslims obviously don't - otherwise they wouldn't be Muslims, they'd be Christians.
Unfortunately for his credibility, Muhammad came up with this idea as part of a religion which claimed to follow from and even supposedly improve the Judeo-Christian tradition. Which means he ends up with the walloping contradiction of portraying God as wanting something which, through Jesus, God had already rejected.
quote:You do realise that there are other people on this website who do not accept that you have the correct understanding of Jesus' teachings, right?
And I do hope you're not going to try and argue that a religious state enforced by an army is a better solution than the 'free church/plural society' option implied by Jesus' teaching.....
quote:No, that's the Maze at Hampton Court.
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
I imagine that Christian heaven is like this thread, interminable, very boring, and full of endless circles and cul de sacs.
![[Devil]](graemlins/devil.gif)
quote:So prove my interpretation of the NT wrong - you may find that a great deal harder than you think. If I am right, then clearly an 'Anabaptist approach - or something akin to it' was potentially available, just had been obscured by the Imperial hijack of the faith.
Originally posted by Gamaliel:
I think, Steve, that it's not so much a matter of people rejecting or attacking Anabaptism so much as your insistence that the Anabaptist approach - or something akin to it - was available to 6th century monks or 7th century Muslims or whoever else simply because it accords with your particular interpretation of the NT.
quote:The conditions existed or didn't just as much as they had for the apostles, so why wouldn't they apply in the 7thC??
I am saying that the kind of approach you are advocating couldn't have applied to Mohammed or to St Aidan or St Augustine or whoever else back then because the conditions for it did not exist.
quote:OK, it's a sinful world, people make mistakes. It's important to correct the mistakes, not just let them go on forever.
You seem to assume that all people had to do was read the NT and it would all have been obvious.
That's not how these things work.
quote:Being pedantic, situations like the Arthur story - even if you consider much of it legend - show that yes, the Romano-British had been nominally Christianised by the Roman Empire by the time of the Saxon invasions. And that's rather the point - the invading Saxons in dealing with Christianity were dealing with the religion of an enemy fighting fiercely to keep them out of Britannia and willing to kill Saxons to achieve that. Which is a good reason for them to regard the religion as suspect - as I said.
As for your speculation that the Picts or ancient Britons might have been resistant to the Christian message because it was associated with a colonial oppressor - well that has to remain purely speculative - by the time Christianity made headway in these islands they'd largely become Romanised or at least accustomed to having Romanised societies on their doorstep.
quote:So we're back again to that vague evidence-less assertion that there are a lot of different opinions/interpretations which have to somehow all be considered equally valid.
I'm not suggesting for a moment that you ditch your Anabaptism, simply to recognise that it is one among a number of ways to approach and understand these things.
quote:Modern Islam still has that concept; the problems are
Early Islam also had the concept of the "People of the Book", which meant that Muslim rule did not involve forcing Jews and Christians to become Muslim.
quote:Actually when this has come up, Steve's complaint about me has quite consistently been that I don't oppose the church-state liaison for the right reasons. I'm against it for wicked, secular, modern reasons, rather than because of the One Right Reading of the Bible as brought to you by, and named after, the Anabaptists.
Originally posted by Gamaliel:
As I've said on another thread, as an American, Mousethief doesn't believe in church-state linkage in the UK sense or Russian sense ... But all we hear from Steve is how Mousethief's 'fellow Orthodox' do - as if to be Orthodox or Anglican or RC is synonymous with belief in a conjoined Church and State.
quote:The sense that I get from talking to Muslims is that they're often confused about why people remain Christians when it seems obvious to them that Muhammed's testimony is the final and witness superseding all the others.
Originally posted by orfeo:
Early Islam also had the concept of the "People of the Book", which meant that Muslim rule did not involve forcing Jews and Christians to become Muslim.
quote:You are probably right there. I've said similar things myself, though it's an issue that I've perhaps dealt with more often 'ashore' than Shipboard.
If that is any refection of the way earlier generations thought, I wonder if in the early days there was a level of co-existence because those early Muslims expected all the Christians to give up all that Jesus stuff and do things the right way really quickly.
quote:Sorry if I don't take you as a reliable source as to the way Christians related to Muslims.
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
As regards the effects of 'End-times' ideas, I don't think this would affect early interactions with Islam much. But AIUI the regular (though not only) interpretation of the Millennium in that era was not the 'pre-Millennial' idea of Jesus coming to instate the earthly Millennium, but rather a view that the Millennium represented an era on earth which would end with Jesus coming back.
quote:source
"Although [Muhammad’s] treachery has prevailed up to the present day, we nevertheless put our trust in the Lord who has already given us a sign that good is to come, that the end of this beast is approaching, whose number, according to the Revelation of St John, will end in 666 years, of
which already nearly 600 have passed.”
quote:Well, again, that's not really a measure of what or isn't relevant. I think the differences in Islamic and Christian understandings of Eschatology are very relevant to the context of how the different religions and adherrents related to each other down the years. If you don't that's fine, don't contribute.
But while an interesting idea to follow up elsewhere, I don't think it's all that relevant to the Islamic extremism. A tangent as far as I'm concerned.
quote:Now there's a twist I'd not come across before. One for the Biblical Inerrancy/Interpretation thread?
Pope Innocent III wrote in 1213:quote:
"Although [Muhammad’s] treachery has prevailed up to the present day, we nevertheless put our trust in the Lord who has already given us a sign that good is to come, that the end of this beast is approaching, whose number, according to the Revelation of St John, will end in 666 years, of which already nearly 600 have passed.”
quote:I wasn't asking whether you took (any) Pope as authoritative. I was researching and discussing how Christians viewed Muslims, and like-it-or-not the Pope's words had a lot of influence on a lot of Christians at that time.
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
Now there's a twist I'd not come across before. One for the Biblical Inerrancy/Interpretation thread?
Just in case you haven't been paying attention, I don't exactly accept the Pope as having any special authority as a biblical interpreter, and this one is an example of why I don't.
quote:<snipped irrelevant stuff>
Looks like the Pope...
quote:What, you know for a fact that Christians interacting with the early Islamic adherrents understood the bible in that way, do you?
Many more biblical-minded Christians would regard both the Pope and Islam as representatives of what the Beast 'stands for' by virtue of both being deeply involved in the religious state concept....
quote:Again, you seem to just be repeating the same thing as fact without actually giving any reasons for it. Why is it a "tangent" and what basis do you have for saying that it didn't affect "relations very much"?
Otherwise, though a tangent anyway, I don't think eschatology would affect 7thC relations with Muslims all that much; but I do find hints that by the time of the Crusades the then common interpretation of the Millennium might affect things.
quote:Right, and now you have to find writings from the period which showed Christians who "didn't do state churches" and thus related to Islam in a completely different way.
However, your reference here if anything emphasises my point - Christians who didn't do state churches wouldn't have been 'Crusading' but looking for other ways to deal with Islam (akin to what St Francis at least tried in 1219). And an Islam which didn't do state Islam would have been an entirely different kind of problem that wouldn't have needed to be 'crusaded' against.
quote:No, but I know, and you should know if you're going to parade eschatology all over the place, that many Protestants later interpreted the Papacy as the Beast, and those who saw the state church tyranny as a key part of that Bestiality would regard Islam as an example of the same principle. That's what I was referring to there.
quote:What, you know for a fact that Christians interacting with the early Islamic adherents understood the bible in that way, do you?
: Many more biblical-minded Christians would regard both the Pope and Islam as representatives of what the Beast 'stands for' by virtue of both being deeply involved in the religious state concept....
quote:That would be quite tricky to find a lot of, because "Christians who 'didn't do state churches'" were mostly hiding from persecution by the Christians ("Christians"?) who did. But as a significant example which you obviously overlooked when I quoted it earlier, how about the attitude expressed by John Gower, a contemporary of Chaucer and thus of the Crusades. Please don't make me have to waste everybody else's time by quoting it in full again.
Right, and now you have to find writings from the period which showed Christians who "didn't do state churches" and thus related to Islam in a completely different way.
quote:I'm sure such words from a Pope were widely influential. But there's also surely an issue of whether they deserved to be and whether they were anything like a valid interpretation. And they didn't and they weren't, respectively.
I wasn't asking whether you took (any) Pope as authoritative. I was researching and discussing how Christians viewed Muslims, and like-it-or-not the Pope's words had a lot of influence on a lot of Christians at that time. I'm not claiming that it is a particularly useful interpretation, I'm stating that it was widely held.
quote:Which has absolutely nothing at all to do with a discussion of why Muslims were not always violent to Christians.
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
No, but I know, and you should know if you're going to parade eschatology all over the place, that many Protestants later interpreted the Papacy as the Beast, and those who saw the state church tyranny as a key part of that Bestiality would regard Islam as an example of the same principle. That's what I was referring to there.
quote:You mean apart from how surprising it is that Muslims failed to be constantly violent when faced with that kind of treatment by the Popes?
Which has absolutely nothing at all to do with a discussion of why Muslims were not always violent to Christians.
quote:And I'm saying that you don't know what you are talking about as you are no kind of expert on the subject. Large numbers of Muslims deny this point, including Islamic scholars - some of which I've pointed to on this thread.
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
But I'm not saying Muslims were always violent to Christians. I am saying, and have said repeatedly, that Muhammad left behind him a confusion in which a clear aspiration to peace and hope for peace were undermined by his decision, supported by the Quran whatever you think of its origins, to establish a de facto Islamic state with a de facto Islamic army to conquer the home city which had exiled him.
quote:No, you don't get to tell me that I must just accept things you say. I don't. I think you're talking total shite. That you think you know Islam better than Muslims. That you believe you are better than Islamic scholars. That you believe you have a magic key to understanding that evades those who are most closely engaged with the subject.
That confusion leaves a conflicted religion in which the same dynamics are at work which produced Crusades, Inquisitions, and the 'Wars of Religion' in a Christian context. That is the fundamental origin of Islamic extremism, individual examples of which are then triggered subsequently by other more geographically and temporally local factors. And you'd have saved us all a lot of time if you'd accepted that from square one instead of attacking things I wasn't saying anyway. Or even just attacked what I was saying instead of what I wasn't.
quote:Quite possible; but how does that counter the rather evident historic fact that Muhammad simply DID use military force to set up an Islamic state de facto with the aid of an Islamic army using very emphatically what Paul would have called 'worldly weapons', and which state continued to engage in warfare?
Large numbers of Muslims deny this point, including Islamic scholars - some of which I've pointed to on this thread.
quote:I believe you about the existence of those Muslims. But there still remains an issue about whether they have a legitimate and logical interpretation of Islam or whether they are interpreting the original religion wrongly. If they are wrong, then their mere existence won't do anything to cure the problem of Islamic extremism. And the extremism can always come back by showing itself to be the authentic version.
I really don't care whether you accept his thesis or not. It is simply a fact that there are Muslims who do not believe Islam and the Koran mandates them to set up Islamic states. You just have to deal with that reality.
quote:Hurrah. Thank you Jesus.
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
I believe you about the existence of those Muslims.
quote:Nope, that issue doesn't remain because it doesn't matter. If a large proportion of Muslims believe one thing, it makes bugger all difference if you think it is legitimate or illegitimate. Self-evidently what matters is what they believe their faith tells them to do not what you believe their faith should be telling them what to do.
But there still remains an issue about whether they have a legitimate and logical interpretation of Islam or whether they are interpreting the original religion wrongly. If they are wrong, then their mere existence won't do anything to cure the problem of Islamic extremism. And the extremism can always come back by showing itself to be the authentic version.
quote:That's your problem right there; it doesn't actually matter whether "they're getting it right or not" - what matters is how they process and live their own faith.
Merely saying such Muslims exist doesn't prove they're getting it right.
quote:I think what Steve is saying is similar to what I've seen other conservative commentators say; namely that the 'early islam' was characterised by conquest and violence, and so Islam is always likely to revert conquest and violence. The problem with that argument - of course - is that it assumes that a textual-literalistic impulse will always prove to be the strongest - which perhaps says more about those putting forward the argument than about Islam.
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
Nope, that issue doesn't remain because it doesn't matter. If a large proportion of Muslims believe one thing, it makes bugger all difference if you think it is legitimate or illegitimate. Self-evidently what matters is what they believe their faith tells them to do not what you believe their faith should be telling them what to do.
quote:This isn't at all clear, and there are plenty of fairly obvious counter-examples. The most obvious and familiar to Westerners is Rabbinic Judaism. Jews themselves accept that the Judaism they practice today is a latter-day adaptation of the faith (or as those like Steve Langdon would call it, an "inauthentic version"). Despite the fact that they've adapted prayer and ritual to substitute for the temple sacrificial system only a few outsiders would consider it to be "fake Judaism", because most religions are considered authentic based on the sincerity of their believers (in other word, by faith), not some historical textual analysis.
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
I believe you about the existence of those Muslims. But there still remains an issue about whether they have a legitimate and logical interpretation of Islam or whether they are interpreting the original religion wrongly. If they are wrong, then their mere existence won't do anything to cure the problem of Islamic extremism. And the extremism can always come back by showing itself to be the authentic version.
quote:Up to a point I am saying that; but I'm seeing other factors as well, particularly in the relationship between Islam and Christianity whereby Islam does, despite mr cheesy's constant efforts to dismiss it, claim to be derived from the Judeo-Christian tradition, and Allah to be "the God of Abraham and (for Arabs) Ishmael" with Jesus/Isa recognised as a Muslim prophet even if we think the Islamic picture of Jesus is distorted.
I think what Steve is saying is similar to what I've seen other conservative commentators say; namely that the 'early islam' was characterised by conquest and violence, and so Islam is always likely to revert conquest and violence. The problem with that argument - of course - is that it assumes that a textual-literalistic impulse will always prove to be the strongest - which perhaps says more about those putting forward the argument than about Islam.
quote:How much will you give me for this beautiful piece of irony, ladies and gentlemen? Who will start the bidding at €100? One hundred Euros for this beautiful bit of contemporary irony. I see one hundred. Do I see two? Two hundred? I see one fifty. Do I see one seventy-five?
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
quote:NO - the logic of the situation has spoken to anybody who can be bothered to work it out. 'The Langton' doesn't think of his pronouncements in the kind of way you suggest at all.
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
Good glad we've got that sorted out: anyone reading this and considering becoming a Muslim! Desist! The Langton has spoken!
quote:What's the exchange rate?
Originally posted by Golden Key:
Will you take quatloos?
quote:Why does this have anything to do with extremism?
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
Up to a point I am saying that; but I'm seeing other factors as well, particularly in the relationship between Islam and Christianity whereby Islam does, despite mr cheesy's constant efforts to dismiss it, claim to be derived from the Judeo-Christian tradition, and Allah to be "the God of Abraham and (for Arabs) Ishmael" with Jesus/Isa recognised as a Muslim prophet even if we think the Islamic picture of Jesus is distorted.
quote:Partly that was just by way of intro to the points I then went on to make. But also the fact is that Islam is quite consciously presented by Muhammad and the Quran as being in the Judeo-Christian tradition. It is therefore not a wholly separate and independent religion to be discussed in isolation, and contrasting Christianity's approach to these issues with Islam's approach may help understanding.
Originally posted by chris stiles:
quote:Why does this have anything to do with extremism?
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
Up to a point I am saying that; but I'm seeing other factors as well, particularly in the relationship between Islam and Christianity whereby Islam does, despite mr cheesy's constant efforts to dismiss it, claim to be derived from the Judeo-Christian tradition, and Allah to be "the God of Abraham and (for Arabs) Ishmael" with Jesus/Isa recognised as a Muslim prophet even if we think the Islamic picture of Jesus is distorted.
quote:
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
the fact is that Islam is quite consciously presented by Muhammad and the Quran as being in the Judeo-Christian tradition.
quote:Both of these points result in basically concluding that the foundation of Islam introduced something profoundly new into the world. And, that either declared the Judeo-Christian tradition corrupt, or was a corruption of the Judeo-Christian tradition. Either way, ISTM, there's a sufficient discontinuity that it's better to consider Islam on it's own terms, effectively as a wholly separate and independent religion.
It is therefore not a wholly separate and independent religion to be discussed in isolation, and contrasting Christianity's approach to these issues with Islam's approach may help understanding.
quote:This is where I'm not so sure. I've yet to finish the book mr cheesy put me on to, but what I'm reading seems to be a Muslim who is thoroughly unhappy with the traditional Muslim state set-up, sees all the rational reasons for doing it a different way, and is trying to re-interpret Islam to fit with what he sees as rational. I've yet to read far enough to find out how he does that, or thinks he does that, but I think there is a chink there which can be opened up to challenge Islam itself, via the dilemma this Muslim faces.
Of course, you're going to get nowhere trying to discuss nature of Islam with muslims on this basis - it will simply be rejected out of hand.
quote:I think the key there is "part of the teaching of Isa in Islamic terms". If the NT teaching which suggests that the Kingdom can never legitimately be expressed as a nation state exists within Islam (ie: those sayings of Jesus are recorded as sayings of Isa within Islamic scriptures) then, sure, the challenge to the concept of an Islamic State can come from within Islam, on entirely Islamic terms - it doesn't need reference to Christian Scripture. If those sayings of Jesus are flatly contradicted by Islamic Scripture then no amount of appeal to Christian Scripture is going to have any headway at all.
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
by Alan Cresswell;
quote:This is where I'm not so sure. I've yet to finish the book mr cheesy put me on to, but what I'm reading seems to be a Muslim who is thoroughly unhappy with the traditional Muslim state set-up, sees all the rational reasons for doing it a different way, and is trying to re-interpret Islam to fit with what he sees as rational. I've yet to read far enough to find out how he does that, or thinks he does that, but I think there is a chink there which can be opened up to challenge Islam itself, via the dilemma this Muslim faces.
Of course, you're going to get nowhere trying to discuss nature of Islam with muslims on this basis - it will simply be rejected out of hand.
And the challenge I think can only work on the understanding that Christianity's rejection of the religious state goes back to Jesus and is part of the teaching of Isa in Islamic terms; and there is traction simply in the fact that this isn't one of the traditional arguments between the two faiths and can come fresh.
quote:This analysis seems to fail rather spectacularly on two points.
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
And in end, the question is in that contrast - a God who gives a really good way through Jesus and the apostles to spread a religion non-coercively, voluntarily; and then 600 years later changes his mind and tells Muhammad to go back to the essentially coercive state religion where in many ways the state is something of a barrier to preaching and hearing the word' and the 'conversion through force' questionable.....
quote:Seems a bit circular and dependent on what you think God is like. Neither Jesus nor Allah is very much like Odin, so I guess both Christianity and Islam are false since neither god is very Odin-like.
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
What I'm saying is confront Islam with that kind of thing, ask the question which is the better way, the most 'God like'? Of course to do it, some Christian repentance and change will be needed as well....
![[Roll Eyes]](rolleyes.gif)
quote:Seems to me that you're using that historical fact to try to give Christianity some sort of authority within a Muslim worldview. As some sort of older form of Islam which might form a baseline from which a well-meaning Muslim might validly critique present-day Islam.
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
the fact is that Islam is quite consciously presented by Muhammad and the Quran as being in the Judeo-Christian tradition. It is therefore not a wholly separate and independent religion
quote:But Muslims believe that the NT is inacurate so there is no contradiction.
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
And in end, the question is in that contrast - a God who gives a really good way through Jesus and the apostles to spread a religion non-coercively, voluntarily; and then 600 years later changes his mind and tells Muhammad to go back to the essentially coercive state religion where in many ways the state is something of a barrier to preaching and hearing the word' and the 'conversion through force' questionable.....
quote:Literally LOL. I was going to write a longer break down of how SL's statement was faulty, but this simple retort will do.
Originally posted by leo:
quote:But Muslims believe that the NT is inacurate so there is no contradiction.
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
And in end, the question is in that contrast - a God who gives a really good way through Jesus and the apostles to spread a religion non-coercively, voluntarily; and then 600 years later changes his mind and tells Muhammad to go back to the essentially coercive state religion where in many ways the state is something of a barrier to preaching and hearing the word' and the 'conversion through force' questionable.....
quote:Indeed, if he was mistaken in believing he was a prophet, isn't he if anything more than average likely to have come up with confused ideas?
"Do you, mr cheesy personally believe that Muhammad is a real prophet of God, and that we are therefore obligated to believe that he can't have made any mistakes, and interpret his acts and teaching accordingly whatever the appearances?
Or is it your personal belief that he was in fact an ordinary bloke, who may have sincerely believed he was a prophet, but in fact was just as likely as the next man to come up with a mix of good and bad ideas, stuff which may be interesting and exciting but can also be flawed and confused and lead to bad results that he didn't realise or foresee?
quote:Which, to me, seems to be addressing the wrong person. The question is about what Muslims think about Muhammed - and the answer to that would be that for the vast majority of Muslims IME there would be no doubt that Muhammed is a true prophet, indeed The Prophet. Whether that means he didn't make mistakes is probably a different question, and one over which I would expect there to be some disagreement within Islam. I see nothing logically problematic with a belief that Muhammed faithfully and accurately recorded and passed on the message he received from Allah, but that in other aspects of his life he didn't always get it right, made mistakes, and took a less than perfect course of action - or even, the best possible course of action in the circumstances he faced but that that was still imperfect.
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
The question is
quote:
"Do you, mr cheesy personally believe that Muhammad is a real prophet of God, and that we are therefore obligated to believe that he can't have made any mistakes, and interpret his acts and teaching accordingly whatever the appearances?
Or is it your personal belief that he was in fact an ordinary bloke, who may have sincerely believed he was a prophet, but in fact was just as likely as the next man to come up with a mix of good and bad ideas, stuff which may be interesting and exciting but can also be flawed and confused and lead to bad results that he didn't realise or foresee?
quote:No, I've answered it several times: it doesn't matter what I think. What matters is how Muslims perceive their own religion.
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
A bit ago, I asked mr cheesy to clarify his views about what looks to me and most people to be the historic fact that Muhammad set up an Islamic state by military force. He's been rather persistently evading that answer.
quote:No, I am not a Muslim. But that's irrelevant as to why Muslims become extremists.
"Do you, mr cheesy personally believe that Muhammad is a real prophet of God, and that we are therefore obligated to believe that he can't have made any mistakes, and interpret his acts and teaching accordingly whatever the appearances?
quote:What I think of Muhammed is utterly irrelevant as to this question.
Or is it your personal belief that he was in fact an ordinary bloke, who may have sincerely believed he was a prophet, but in fact was just as likely as the next man to come up with a mix of good and bad ideas, stuff which may be interesting and exciting but can also be flawed and confused and lead to bad results that he didn't realise or foresee?
quote:What I think of Muhammed is utterly irrelevant as to this question.
Indeed, if he was mistaken in believing he was a prophet, isn't he if anything more than average likely to have come up with confused ideas?
quote:What I think of Muhammed is utterly irrelevant as to this question.
As I'm reading the evidence so far provided, and I think it's a legitimate reading, yes there are a lot of modern Muslims who have seen the flaws in Muhammad's position and in the Islamic state (and religious states in general) idea. And the problem is, they're attempting to interpret the situation without quite yet being willing to accept that the problems they're seeing are simply because Muhammad wasn't a true prophet, but an ordinary guy who got things wrong and left things confused....
quote:The point you are very persistently failing to grasp is that a large area of the Quran, and Islamic teaching generally, tries to claim that Islam is a successor of the Judeo-Christian tradition while very persistently telling Jews and Christians how to behave, and not just telling us how we should interpret our scriptures but actually insisting that if they don't agree with Muhammad our Scriptures are 'corrupt'. Islam both hijacks our traditions and denigrates them at the same time. We, Christians and Jews, have EVERY RIGHT to defend our faith against that Islamic criticism, and to criticise, comment, question, and tell them our views in response. If he didn't want that criticism Muhammad shouldn't have involved our faith in his. By dragging our faith into his he gave us EVERY RIGHT to criticise. End of!!
The point you are consistently failing to grasp is that it isn't up to people outside of Islam to tell Muslims how they should behave or to try to determine which are "true" interpretations of the Koran.
quote:No one is saying that Islam is immune from criticism, neither its texts or its praxis.
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
If he didn't want that criticism Muhammad shouldn't have involved our faith in his. By dragging our faith into his he gave us EVERY RIGHT to criticise. End of!!
quote:The word of God-Emperor Langdon I, on the other hand, is immune from not only criticism but any comment at all. Note the Imperial "End of!!" precluding any further discussion. You can tell that God-Emperor Landon I is speaking ex cathedra because of the two exclamation points.
Originally posted by chris stiles:
No one is saying that Islam is immune from criticism, neither its texts or its praxis.
quote:Crœsos, you know that's over the line in Purgatory, and are quite capable of producing arguments without personal insults. Kindly desist from the latter outside Hell.
Originally posted by Crœsos:
The word of God-Emperor Langdon I,
quote:That's an extremely naive view.
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
The point you are very persistently failing to grasp is that a large area of the Quran, and Islamic teaching generally, tries to claim that Islam is a successor of the Judeo-Christian tradition while very persistently telling Jews and Christians how to behave, and not just telling us how we should interpret our scriptures but actually insisting that if they don't agree with Muhammad our Scriptures are 'corrupt'. Islam both hijacks our traditions and denigrates them at the same time. We, Christians and Jews, have EVERY RIGHT to defend our faith against that Islamic criticism, and to criticise, comment, question, and tell them our views in response.
quote:I'm afraid you did say that Muslims who were legitimately following Muhammed would be looking to set up a violent Islamic state:
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
mr cheesy, I have simply not been saying about Islam many of the things you suggest. Read me more carefully, please.
quote:
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
As I've pointed out previously, much of the problem here is that Islam was consciously set up by Muhammad to be a 'state religion' and therefore Muhammad himself saw it as proper to practice war/persecution to set up his Islamic state, to defend it, and to expand it. And that approach is heavily supported in the Quran.
quote:You said that there was a true and legitimate development which was the true track of Muhammed and that was the violent Muslim state. You said that.
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
My point is that in a religion which has developed over time and shows variation of belief and/or practice there is a genuine need to look at the developments and try to decide which are legitimate developments and which are perhaps going down the wrong track - that is, which are the 'real' form of the faith, and which are a false form of it.
quote:Steve Langton, you have been granted considerable leeway in your posting in a gracious attempt by the powers that be to keep you onside.
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
Read me more carefully, please.
Hosts, Admin, I tried but this was a tricky one to respond to....
quote:that kind of thing is simply not what I'm saying.
If these women were obedient Muslims then wouldn't they be blowing up infidel Westerners at every opportunity?
quote:OK but this is an unfair comparison because you are taking one expression of Christianity - anabaptism - saying it is the authentic version of Christianity and then using as a contrast against the whole of Islam.
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
As above, I'm saying that IF your religion, like Anabaptist Christianity, DOESN'T do the 'religious state' thing it will not fight wars in the name of the religion, not persecute in the name of the religion (beyond the reasonable situation where any voluntary group says "If you really won't keep our rules please leave"), nor rebel against the state in the name of the religion, and if they do feel it necessary to disobey the state in the interests of obeying God first, they will still be subject to the state by accepting martyrdom for their disobedience rather than fight back with guns etc.
IF your religion DOES accept the idea of running a religious state or being privileged in the state above others, then that adds a whole new set of reasons for wars and rebellions and persecutions, wars for other reasons can be exacerbated by that 'God is on our side attitude' and so on.
quote:I take it from the 'OK' that you are agreeing with my basic point that the religious state (or notion of it, desire to set up such a thing,etc.) does have that effect of adding religious war/rebellion/persecution/etc., to the other more general coerciveness of Croesos' "Weberian state" which operates as the 'local monopoly of force'.
OK but this is an unfair comparison because you are taking one expression of Christianity - anabaptism - saying it is the authentic version of Christianity and then using as a contrast against the whole of Islam.
One could self-evidently reply that anabaptism does not represent anything other than an recent aberration within Protestant Christianity; that one can only compare the whole of Islam with the whole of Christianity; or that in fact the "true" essence of Islam is a peaceful non-state sect.
However you dress it up, you are still engaged in a process of using your own definitions of what is the truth of Christianity and Islam and unfairly comparing the one with the other.
quote:I guess one could reply that - but is it absolutely 'self-evident'? Protestant Christianity itself claims to be a 'Reformation' - an attempt to return to the original compared to an RC church which Protestants consider to have gone off the rails more than a bit. The Anabaptist claim is simply to have seen a further area that needed reforming for consistency with the Protestant biblical ideal, namely the idea of a 'Christian state' and the problems that entails - like the 'Wars of Religion' that followed the Reformation in Europe. Is that really an aberration, or a truer insight into the NT teaching?
One could self-evidently reply that anabaptism does not represent anything other than an recent aberration within Protestant Christianity
quote:And the main piece of evidence on that still appears to be what most people accept as the historical fact that Muhammad fought a war to set up an Islamic state.... EVIDENCE to the contrary please....
the "true" essence of Islam is a peaceful non-state sect.
quote:Don't, I said no such thing. I was simply trying to engage with you on the ridiculous and superficial level at which you put your point.
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
I take it from the 'OK' that you are agreeing with my basic point that the religious state (or notion of it, desire to set up such a thing,etc.) does have that effect of adding religious war/rebellion/persecution/etc., to the other more general coerciveness of Croesos' "Weberian state" which operates as the 'local monopoly of force'.
quote:Ookay then.
I'm saving fuller examination of the idea of Anabaptism as the truest expression of Christianity for a separate thread on Anabaptism I hope to start.
quote:No, what is rather the point is that people have interpreted their faith(s) in wildly different ways, and thus the whole project of seeking to find the "original founding intention" is a fools errand.
But it is rather the point here that both religions (and other religions probably do it too) have over the centuries developed variations which are so diverse that it is pretty clear they can't all represent the original founding intention, and therefore may be seriously defective in representing the intentions of the God they worship.
quote:But you're not asking awkward questions, you're the person who walks into a French bar and attempts to engage in a discussion of French grammar based on your knowledge of the superiority of English. That's not "asking awkward questions", that's a stubborn refusal to even begin to engage with the thing on its own terms.
And please do remember that in theory Islam and Christianity worship the SAME God so from a Christian viewpoint Islam is in effect a variant and possibly heretical form of Christianity, a situation which very much entitles Christians to compare the two faiths and ask awkward questions of the newcomer.
quote:Nope and nope. Utter drivel. And pretty dangerous drivel at that, if your conclusion is that your projection of a state-building violent Islam is the only real and authentic one.
Where there are such variations within a religion it is both useful and necessary to explore which may be the 'true' version. I mean, when one version says "No fighting and we're willing to be martyrs", and the other says "We have a duty to fight wars for our faith and burn heretics at the stake" - which is the authentic version of the faith is rather important, and can't be trivially sorted out by the other common Shipboard tactic of declaring it to be just a matter of "There are other opinions" and implicitly or explicitly everybody's opinions are of equal value. Clearly, whichever is true, those alternatives are not a matter for indifference.
quote:But who are you to make that assessment and why should anyone care what you think?
And such are the variations within Islam and within Christianity that it is logically impractical to compare "the whole of" one faith with "the whole of" the other. It may not be possible to establish every detail of the 'true original'; but I'd submit it is possible to establish broad outlines for a workable comparison.
quote:I don't think you have any tools to educate anyone on this point - other than your repeated claims of knowledge. I reject your claims. So what now?
I guess one could reply that - but is it absolutely 'self-evident'? Protestant Christianity itself claims to be a 'Reformation' - an attempt to return to the original compared to an RC church which Protestants consider to have gone off the rails more than a bit. The Anabaptist claim is simply to have seen a further area that needed reforming for consistency with the Protestant biblical ideal, namely the idea of a 'Christian state' and the problems that entails - like the 'Wars of Religion' that followed the Reformation in Europe. Is that really an aberration, or a truer insight into the NT teaching?
quote:See and there you go again. Of course I must be in favour of anabaptists because I have previously said something about the Christian state.
And I'm a bit puzzled by your seeing that as an aberration because unless I grievously misunderstood one of your earlier posts, you don't believe in the 'Christian state' idea yourself.
quote:I don't need evidence, because I'm not engaging with you on this point. As I've stated over and over and over again, it makes no difference what I think. And what does matter is what Muslims think, and there is plenty of evidence that large numbers of Muslims do not interpret their faith in that way.
I've run out of time for now; but the point is that it is a legitimate matter to explore whether
quote:And the main piece of evidence on that still appears to be what most people accept as the historical fact that Muhammad fought a war to set up an Islamic state.... EVIDENCE to the contrary please....
the "true" essence of Islam is a peaceful non-state sect.
quote:This seems to rest on the erroneous assumption that persecution only ever arises at the hands of the state. I'm sure as Rhineland Jews were massacred by peasant mobs caught up in the religious fervor surrounding the First Crusade their last thoughts were "Well, at least this isn't state sanctioned violence, otherwise we might feel somewhat persecuted!"
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
As above, I'm saying that IF your religion, like Anabaptist Christianity, DOESN'T do the 'religious state' thing it will not fight wars in the name of the religion, not persecute in the name of the religion (beyond the reasonable situation where any voluntary group says "If you really won't keep our rules please leave"), nor rebel against the state in the name of the religion, and if they do feel it necessary to disobey the state in the interests of obeying God first, they will still be subject to the state by accepting martyrdom for their disobedience rather than fight back with guns etc.
quote:As Jews are entitled to ask of Christians?
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
And please do remember that in theory Islam and Christianity worship the SAME God so from a Christian viewpoint Islam is in effect a variant and possibly heretical form of Christianity, a situation which very much entitles Christians to compare the two faiths and ask awkward questions of the newcomer.
quote:Definitely!!!
As Jews are entitled to ask of Christians?
quote:Didn't say that. In the case of Christians observing the 'NO Christian state' idea they would also be following the 'warfare not with fleshly weapons' teaching of Paul, and the notion in Peter that Christians are not only not to murder but not even be that 'allotriepiskopoi' thing.
This seems to rest on the erroneous assumption that persecution only ever arises at the hands of the state.
quote:That's as erroneous as taking a person who starts a sentence with "Right" to be meaning s/he thinks your last utterance was true. It's just a verbal tick.
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
I take it from the 'OK' that you are agreeing with my basic point <snip>
quote:Well we've already had that thread 20 times in the form of underlayment and tangents on other threads. But okay.
I'm saving fuller examination of the idea of Anabaptism as the truest expression of Christianity for a separate thread on Anabaptism I hope to start.
quote:Unless the founding intention was to create a foundation for diverse variations. Maybe that's a feature and not a bug.
But it is rather the point here that both religions (and other religions probably do it too) have over the centuries developed variations which are so diverse that it is pretty clear they can't all represent the original founding intention,
quote:I sense a "One True Church" theme arising.
and therefore may be seriously defective in representing the intentions of the God they worship.
quote:Then that would doubly apply to Judaism, which existed for some good while before the newcomer Christianity showed up. The question is, whose questions have any bite, and why? Does age always imply correctness? Islam asks questions of Christianity, on the basis of a reformation of Christianity, not on the basis of being the elder of the two.
And please do remember that in theory Islam and Christianity worship the SAME God so from a Christian viewpoint Islam is in effect a variant and possibly heretical form of Christianity, a situation which very much entitles Christians to compare the two faiths and ask awkward questions of the newcomer.
quote:That's one polarity one can discuss when comparing and contrasting religious movements. There are many others. Certain subspecies of Buddhism are pacifist. Does that make them right, and Christianity wrong? Pacifism is not the only, and not necessarily the most important, criterion when seeking the True Church.
Where there are such variations within a religion it is both useful and necessary to explore which may be the 'true' version. I mean, when one version says "No fighting and we're willing to be martyrs", and the other says "We have a duty to fight wars for our faith and burn heretics at the stake" - which is the authentic version of the faith is rather important, and can't be trivially sorted out by the other common Shipboard tactic of declaring it to be just a matter of "There are other opinions" and implicitly or explicitly everybody's opinions are of equal value. Clearly, whichever is true, those alternatives are not a matter for indifference.
quote:Go for it. I'll wait here.
And such are the variations within Islam and within Christianity that it is logically impractical to compare "the whole of" one faith with "the whole of" the other. It may not be possible to establish every detail of the 'true original'; but I'd submit it is possible to establish broad outlines for a workable comparison.
quote:It is to me.
quote:I guess one could reply that - but is it absolutely 'self-evident'?
One could self-evidently reply that anabaptism does not represent anything other than an recent aberration within Protestant Christianity
quote:That's not what "reformation" means. It merely means an attempt to improve something.
Protestant Christianity itself claims to be a 'Reformation' - an attempt to return to the original compared to an RC church which Protestants consider to have gone off the rails more than a bit.
quote:The point isn't the naked historical fact. Nobody has evidence to disprove it because we all know it happened roughly that way. Therefore it's hard to see why you keep pushing that particular point. No, the issue is not what happened at that point in time, but how contemporary Muslims interpret those events, and particular the theological and philosophical and historical framework(s) which underlay contemporary Islam, and into which they fit the events of their Founder, as well as the events of today. And you are strangely silent on that point, for someone who wants to paint contemporary Islam a certain color.
And the main piece of evidence on that still appears to be what most people accept as the historical fact that Muhammad fought a war to set up an Islamic state.... EVIDENCE to the contrary please....
quote:It is certainly true that the word 'reformation' can simply mean that. It is also rather clearly true that the very much expressed intention of the 'Reformers' was not a general or vague improvement, but a specific goal, a specific kind of reformation/improvement, of taking a church which had gone wrong by departing from Scripture, and to 're-form/reshape' it by going back to the Scriptural original. As you said yourself, new shit (post-4th century Orthodoxy or medieval RCC) shouldn't contradict old shit (the actual teaching of Jesus and the apostles in the NT).
That's not what "reformation" means. It merely means an attempt to improve something.
quote:No, I don't expect you to be in favour of every aspect of Anabaptism; we aren't here discussing Anabaptism as such - but I am puzzled that your own view appears to be opposed to the 'Christian state' and the 'religious state' in general, yet you refer to that view as an 'aberration' of the Anabaptists. Is it also an 'aberration' when expressed, in terms an Anabaptist can pretty thoroughly agree with, by the Muslim author of that book you recommended?
See and there you go again. Of course I must be in favour of anabaptists because I have previously said something about the Christian state.
quote:.
Nobody has evidence to disprove it because we all know it happened roughly that way.
quote:Ah. I misunderstood your use of quotes around "reformation" -- I thought you were meaning to point out the meaning of the word. Why did you put it in quotes, then?
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
by Mousethief;
quote:It is certainly true that the word 'reformation' can simply mean that. It is also rather clearly true that the very much expressed intention of the 'Reformers' was not a general or vague improvement, but a specific goal, a specific kind of reformation/improvement, of taking a church which had gone wrong by departing from Scripture, and to 're-form/reshape' it by going back to the Scriptural original.
That's not what "reformation" means. It merely means an attempt to improve something.
quote:Wow. That is an incredible amount of contortion in a very small amount of writing. You say you never claimed that persecution only ever arises at the hands of the state and to demonstrate that you claim . . . that vigilante violence is actually an example of violence perpetrated on behalf of the state! The term "one size fits all" doesn't even begin to cover your obsessive attempts to frame all violence (and just about every other action you disapprove of) as state action.
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
quote:Didn't say that. In the case of Christians observing the 'NO Christian state' idea they would also be following the 'warfare not with fleshly weapons' teaching of Paul, and the notion in Peter that Christians are not only not to murder but not even be that 'allotriepiskopoi' thing.
Originally posted by Crœsos:
This seems to rest on the erroneous assumption that persecution only ever arises at the hands of the state.
The Rhineland situation at that time would I think reflect people under the mistaken idea that the state they lived in should be 'Christian' so that there was no place for Jews - that is, it seems to be private vigilante action by people nevertheless taking the 'Christian state' line.
quote:I'm not sure that several centuries of political, religious and philosophical thought could easily be summarised by one book.
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
It still remains a fact that it would be a good idea to correct Muhammad's mistake; unfortunately there is no easy way to do that in Islam - and if Croesos thinks I'm contorted, he should read this book mr cheesy introduced me to by a Muslim who's attempting that, and so far doing brilliantly in arguing against the religious state but making very heavy weather of reconciling that argument with Muhammad's actual teaching and example. OK, I haven't finished yet and he may surprise me - but so far his efforts don't seem to really work.
quote:I'd want more than one book; but having been specifically recommended this one by another participant on this thread, I'm giving my opinion so far on it - and thinking of other cases where I've come across similar arguments, feeling they're all rather convoluted because they're not faced by something which is easy to expound as they want, but by rather big obvious facts which tend against their position and which they need to 'get round' to justify their position.
I'm not sure that several centuries of political, religious and philosophical thought could easily be summarised by one book.
quote:
In his book The Hidden Pillar , which was privately circulated, Abed al-Salem Faraj takes this new belligerent Islam to its logical conclusion in a way that is quite new. He argues that the jihad was one of the "pillars" of Islam and was central to it. This was an extraordinary innovation that, in those days of heightened tension, many Egyptians were prepared to accept.... He thus limited Islam to one aggressive doctrine and excluded many other more complex traditions, in the same way as Crusaders and religious Zionists had produced caricatures of their religion.
quote:This is the awkward bit - and in effect how an 'Independent' like Cromwell was able to fight a war including such incidents as the Drogheda massacre and end up with many years of what was effectively a Puritan tyranny.
Civil authorities are called to serve God's will of justice and peace for all humankind, and to respect the rights of conscience and belief.
quote:Which, and similar arguments, was taken as justification for the Protestant side of fighting against not some horrendous Nero/Hitler/Stalin, but against the UK's democratic government trying to end anti-RC discrimination in NI.... And I'm fairly sure the Republican/RC side would be using similar arguments, it's a line of reasoning that goes back even beyond the separate RCC to the united Imperial Church of Theodosius & Co.
Certain people who wish to bolster up a rotten government and the persecuting laws of the same, condemn the resistance of the martyrs, reformers, confessors, non-conformists, puritans and covenanters to the evil laws and governments of their day, and to all who would follow in their train in this our own generation....
quote:Steve Langton, you may like to consider the wise words posted earlier on this thread describing
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
This is a bit of a tangent here but (...)
quote:You are straying off the topic and onto your hobby horse again. That is against the rules. You cannot reasonably expect to stay on board and continue to flout the rules.
the reasonable situation where any voluntary group says "If you really won't keep our rules please leave"
quote:I'm not sure why you're bewildered by us making heavy weather of it when you acknowledge that Muslims (who, naturally, have a far better understanding of what Muhammad said and did and subsequent Islamic scholarship) make heavy weather of it. I don't think it's helped clarify things here when the conversation has spun off into vaguely related tangents.
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
The case I made originally, and I've been a bit bewildered by how heavy weather you've all made of it, was that whatever in the present world may be the immediate causes of violent Islamic extremism, the ultimate cause of it was Muhammad's decision to set Islam up in the form of a religious state.
quote:However, in relation to your "heavy water" comments, that doesn't seme to be an issue for a very large number of Muslims living in secular states - which includes several Muslim majority countries such as Turkey or Malaysia (which, of course, doesn't mean those countries don't contain a sizable minority of Muslims who would seek to make those nations religious states).
To really prevent it means tackling the state-and-religion link, to somehow get Islam to work like the early Christian church seeking only voluntary membership and not seeking a privileged place in the state.
quote:I too have been surprised at the heavy weather. But that's how we do it.
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
The case I made originally, and I've been a bit bewildered by how heavy weather you've all made of it, was that whatever in the present world may be the immediate causes of violent Islamic extremism, the ultimate cause of it was Muhammad's decision to set Islam up in the form of a religious state.
quote:I suppose that it may be possible to mitigate individual examples of Islamic extremism by reducing the more immediate provocations. I'm guessing that you mean a reduction in the Western military presence that every Western leader appears to dearly wish for.
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
We may be able to mitigate individual examples of Islamic extremism by reducing the more immediate provocations - but even that's not going to be easy. To really prevent it means tackling the state-and-religion link, to somehow get Islam to work like the early Christian church seeking only voluntary membership and not seeking a privileged place in the state.
quote:Maybe so.
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
Anyway, I don't understand the process whereby the 'ultimate cause' is ascertained in relation to historical stuff, except by saying 'because I say it is'.
quote:Well, it also matches with fashion and prejudice.
Originally posted by Freddy:
quote:Maybe so.
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
Anyway, I don't understand the process whereby the 'ultimate cause' is ascertained in relation to historical stuff, except by saying 'because I say it is'.
I guess it is just opinions based on observation, which of course may be way off.
quote:I think that is a great observation.
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
Well, it also matches with fashion and prejudice.
Here are three statements:
"the ultimate cause of the French revolution was the clash between monarchy and the rising bourgeois."
"the ultimate cause of the French revolution was the Enlightenment, which had begun to desacralize the monarchy and the church."
"the ultimate cause of the FR was the deregulation of the grain market, leading to starvation."
quote:If only it was that simple; but
So, I think the whole "if we go back to the original texts we can see where everything went wrong" is wrong, because it isn't inevitable. When societies go off the rails, as it were, they then chose to prioritise certain texts.
quote:Steve, you're basically claiming that the rise of ISIS is entirely attributable to the fact that Mohammed resorted to violence in setting up the Ummah just under a millennium and a half previously. Palpable nonsense is the kindest description of your position. Religions and societies simply do not work as you think they do.
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
by Callan;
quote:If only it was that simple; but
So, I think the whole "if we go back to the original texts we can see where everything went wrong" is wrong, because it isn't inevitable. When societies go off the rails, as it were, they then chose to prioritise certain texts.
1) As I see it there were certainly several causes/reasons for Islam itself and why Muhammad came up with what he did. But
2) there is only one cause/reason for the violent extremism, which is that choice to set up an Islamic state, and to fight a war to do it.
3) Once you've done that, the only way to really hope to get back to a peaceable option is to provide a positive theology for doing so - not just an aspiration or hope, a concrete reason to do peace. Christianity 'upgrades' Judaism with a positive policy to spread the Kingdom of God in a new way under a new covenant with a new Messianic king. Unfortunately in Islam that option was either ignored, rejected or possibly just not known to Muhammad, and the conflicted position between practical war and aspirational peace just drags on to Muhammad's death and the conflict remains unresolved - but simply by existing, the war option kind of counts more....
quote:That's how I see it too.
Originally posted by mousethief:
If you really want to discover the ORIGIN of Islamic extremism, you're barking up the wrong tree. Don't look to Mohammed. Look to the crusading Popes.
quote:Vikings all.
Originally posted by Freddy:
quote:That's how I see it too.
Originally posted by mousethief:
If you really want to discover the ORIGIN of Islamic extremism, you're barking up the wrong tree. Don't look to Mohammed. Look to the crusading Popes.
Except that I would broaden it to make invasiveness an inherent quality of Western culture.
quote:Fellow Viking! We have something to be proud of.
Originally posted by Golden Key:
Yes. Though in slight defense of my (probable) Viking ancestors, they didn't invent it, AFAIK.
quote:No, not entirely - but yes, ultimately....
Steve, you're basically claiming that the rise of ISIS is entirely attributable to the fact that Mohammed resorted to violence in setting up the Ummah just under a millennium and a half previously. Palpable nonsense is the kindest description of your position. Religions and societies simply do not work as you think they do.
quote:Quite irrelevant. What was the state of Islam before the Crusades? Peaceful, high-culture, promoting learning, etc. This was destroyed by the Crusades, and especially the concept of jihad as a fight against personal sinfulness, transforming it into a fight against the Christian West, which meaning it's held pretty much ever since. Your whole "this state that state" thing misses the point by a country mile. It's just a return to your one-note opera. But put aside your one-note opera for a second and look at the historical facts. What "radicalized" the Muslims? Christians.
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
by Callan;
quote:No, not entirely - but yes, ultimately....
Steve, you're basically claiming that the rise of ISIS is entirely attributable to the fact that Mohammed resorted to violence in setting up the Ummah just under a millennium and a half previously. Palpable nonsense is the kindest description of your position. Religions and societies simply do not work as you think they do.
And Mousethief is very right that the Christians ('Christians'??) like the Crusading Popes have a lot to answer for in this as well - but then they were crusading against - er - Islamic states.... and doing so from the position of - er - Christian states.... And without that idea on both sides, how would they have a religious war? Other kinds of war, maybe - but religious????
quote:Rape, pillage, plunder, and little butter cookies in a tin.
Originally posted by Freddy:
quote:Fellow Viking! We have something to be proud of.
Originally posted by Golden Key:
Yes. Though in slight defense of my (probable) Viking ancestors, they didn't invent it, AFAIK.
quote:Just making the point that the Vikings were not admirable people. They were nasty rapists and murderers.
Originally posted by Golden Key:
mt--
Just the butter cookies, please. The world's had far too much of the rest.
.)quote:So what else where they, these Vikings?
Originally posted by Golden Key:
But that's not all that they were. Any of them.
![[Angel]](graemlins/angel.gif)
quote:Classical Islamic scholars were led by their so-called war-loving state religion to amazing heights in astronomy, philosophy, mathematics etc.
Originally posted by Golden Key:
mr cheesy--
Actually, I made a point of including most of the world, and not just the Vikings--and that includes the "that's not all that they were".
IMHO, if we start comparing, in this context, ancestral cultures, who did what, "minority languages", long-term effects of the cultures, etc., things could get pretty heated, pretty quickly. So I'm going to opt out.
quote:I am not "from" Wales, I live here. And you know where you can go with your lazy stereotype.
I would think that someone from Wales, whose people have been hassled so much by outsiders, would understand that.
quote:I think you'll find the raping-and-pillaging was a pretty fundamental part of being a Viking and that it only didn't happen in some parts because there was nobody there to rape and pillage.
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
Some Vikings sailed across the North Sea and raided Britain and Ireland, with the rape and murder and pillaging. Other Vikings sailed to Iceland, Greenland and onto North America without any of the rape and murder. Others sailed through the Mediterranean trading in a large range of goods. Others peacefully settled islands off the Scottish and Irish coast, and areas of the mainland of northern Britain, living side by side with the natives - in some places the settlers assimilated to the local culture (eg: Norsemen settling in parts of France becoming Normans, largely indistinguishable from the rest of the local French culture). Many just stayed and farmed, fished and raised their families in Scandinavia.
quote:I don't know that this is fair either. They were always a smallish group, they really did have a religion which glorified violence and striking out into new territory. I think it is an unproven rhetorical point that only a minority were into rape-and-pillage - if that was true, they'd never have been able to invade any new land.
There was a relatively small minority who were extremists, committing violent crimes against others. And, what has happened? The whole Viking people have become seen as synonymous with the extreme minority. Sounds familiar ...
quote:??? No stereotype intended. My understanding-- from comments I've heard over the years, including on the Ship and even in nursery rhymes--is that the Welsh have been looked down on a lot, *wrongfully*, forbidden to speak their language for a long time, etc. And I was surprised that someone from a country with that experience would make seemingly-disparaging comments about "minority languages" and how a particular culture never produced anything positive.
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
quote:I am not "from" Wales, I live here. And you know where you can go with your lazy stereotype.
I would think that someone from Wales, whose people have been hassled so much by outsiders, would understand that.
quote:I think you are over-egging the pudding here, to put it politely. Prior to the Crusades Mohammed unified Arabia, under Muslim rule, which involved a certain amount of fighting, and his successors then conquered the territories of what are now Iraq, Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Israel (and the occupied territories), Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Morocco, parts of Spain and Portugal and Sicily. Muslim armies penetrated southern France and raided Italy as far north as Rome, as well as besieging Constantinople. The express justification of this was to impose expand the frontiers of 'The House of Islam' and contract those of 'The House of War'.
Originally posted by mousethief:
quote:Quite irrelevant. What was the state of Islam before the Crusades? Peaceful, high-culture, promoting learning, etc. This was destroyed by the Crusades, and especially the concept of jihad as a fight against personal sinfulness, transforming it into a fight against the Christian West, which meaning it's held pretty much ever since. Your whole "this state that state" thing misses the point by a country mile. It's just a return to your one-note opera. But put aside your one-note opera for a second and look at the historical facts. What "radicalized" the Muslims? Christians.
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
by Callan;
quote:No, not entirely - but yes, ultimately....
Steve, you're basically claiming that the rise of ISIS is entirely attributable to the fact that Mohammed resorted to violence in setting up the Ummah just under a millennium and a half previously. Palpable nonsense is the kindest description of your position. Religions and societies simply do not work as you think they do.
And Mousethief is very right that the Christians ('Christians'??) like the Crusading Popes have a lot to answer for in this as well - but then they were crusading against - er - Islamic states.... and doing so from the position of - er - Christian states.... And without that idea on both sides, how would they have a religious war? Other kinds of war, maybe - but religious????
quote:Excellent point.
Originally posted by Callan:
If anything the radicalisation went in the opposite direction with the Crusades as a response to Islamic conquest.
quote:I have NOT been denying that. Obviously where a stable state has been established and is no longer a war zone, more civilised pursuits can prevail. The UK didn't do too badly in those areas even during and after the upheavals of the ECW, on through the 1688 Revolution, and considerable involvement in European wars....
Classical Islamic scholars were led by their so-called war-loving state religion to amazing heights in astronomy, philosophy, mathematics etc.
quote:It is interesting to think about the line that Muhammad crossed.
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
Muhammad crossed a crucial line there, and this book I'm now reading makes clear it's not easy to get back from it....
quote:Actually, this is not quite right. The problem of European politics during this time was that 'states' (for want of a better word) were comparatively weak and there was a long standing problem of feudal rulers settling disputes themselves without recourse to the centre. So, if you are a French Count and another French Count is giving you jip, rather than go to the King, who is in no position to help you out, you summon your vassals and get medieval on his arse. (Apologies to any proper medievalists who read this paragraph).
Likewise the Crusades were only possible because there was a (nominally) Christian state - created in a bit of a muddle over a century, but then upheld partly by a tradition that could ignore the NT teaching because it had faithlessly persuaded itself that 'Sola Scriptura' was not enough....
quote:And for the umpteen-millionth time, I'm not denying the complications, stop assuming that I am
The point of this lengthy disquisition is not to say that the Crusades were a good thing. It's to say that like most historical phenomena they were complicated.
![[brick wall]](graemlins/brick_wall.gif)
![[Eek!]](eek.gif)
) tried, and as Muhammad clearly did, then the dynamics will be that certain kinds of external and/or civil war for/against the state religion will be inevitable, and/or discrimination/persecution within the state which may provoke violence, and more extreme forms will be all-too-likely, given that "all have sinned and come short of the glory of God". quote:m8, if you think that everything boils down to your Anabaptists/ Jesus, good - everyone else, bad dichotomy you can't complain when people think you are oversimplifying everything a tad.
by Callan;
quote:And for the umpteen-millionth time, I'm not denying the complications, stop assuming that I am [brick wall]
The point of this lengthy disquisition is not to say that the Crusades were a good thing. It's to say that like most historical phenomena they were complicated.
It still remains a basic one-side-of-the-line-or-the-other thing that
quote:Again, not what I'm saying. Much much more to Christianity, just not directly relevant to this topic.
m8, if you think that everything boils down to your Anabaptists/ Jesus, good - everyone else, bad dichotomy you can't complain when people think you are oversimplifying everything a tad.
quote:And I'm afraid you're not going to get the full answer on this thread either, as I'm trying to explain my position on Islam deliberately without "going the whole Anabaptist hog". For purposes of this thread a much less thorough separation of Church and State will do.
I've asked you before, and never received a cogent answer, about what happens when Anabaptists find themselves in a majority in a population. Leaving it to the minority to run the State apparatus isn't tenable, or justifiable, but as far as I can tell, that's what you'd argue for.
quote:Not arguing; but with serious reservations that when the temptations to extremism do arise, as they clearly have in many parts of the world right now, I'm not sure that the arguments for the peaceable approach are either strong enough in their Islamic basis, or simple and comprehensible enough, to win over the disaffected who are likely to be extremists.
So, Islam has developed (again, AFAICT) a sophisticated and nuanced theology of secularism. Muslims serve in all tiers of the State, whether the State is fully secular, nominally Christian, nominally Muslim, or a theocracy. Not every Muslim magistrate or school governor wants to declare violent jihad just because they exercise secular power, and that's simply because they have a theology that's says that public service is a common, divinely-sanctioned, Good. Like very many Christians.
, ok?
quote:Also by mr cheesy;
I guess we just need the "right kind" of Muslims in public service: those who believe in decency but not so much in their own religion that they're going to use positions of authority to bring about violent jihad and usher in Sharia.
Which amounts to that we're tolerant of Muslims as long as they don't actually try believing in Islam.
quote:Of course being separate from the state, I won't be making that decision; but you sum it up rather well - how pluralist can you afford to be with a religion that has jihad as physical warfare and the setting up of a religious state as major components? And how sure are you of the stability and solid foundation (not to mention comprehensibility to non-academic Muslims) of the version of Islam that won't fight a war to set up an Islamic state?
And presumably the same for those nasty Roman Catholics: they're allowed to have their own churches and practices, just be sure not to actually undermine our society with that crazy belief in the Pope.
quote:Steve, your argument boils down to "Despite all the evidence that Muslims can and do support serving a secular state without tying themselves up in theological knots, I don't believe it."
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
Not arguing; but with serious reservations that when the temptations to extremism do arise, as they clearly have in many parts of the world right now, I'm not sure that the arguments for the peaceable approach are either strong enough in their Islamic basis, or simple and comprehensible enough, to win over the disaffected who are likely to be extremists.
quote:I've mentioned that book by a Muslim that I'm reading - he is very much "tying himself up in theological knots"... and that has seemed the case with others I've come across.
"Despite all the evidence that Muslims can and do support serving a secular state without tying themselves up in theological knots, I don't believe it."
quote:Then we might as well close this thread, because we can't really find the origins of a phenomenon without looking at historical precedent and drawing conclusions from it based on what we can gleam about conditions and motivations of times past.
Originally posted by Callan
People in the past had their own concerns - strange and often barbaric as they seem to us now - and using them as lay figures in theological disputes inhibits understanding of the past and the present and is probably bad theology as well.
quote:Or at least Steve's Version of Islam. Because, you know, these guys' version might just not include imposing Sharia on Great Britain or the U.S. But Allah forbid we let the dirty stinking Muslims define their own religion. It's our job to tell them what they need to believe in order to be members in good standing of their own religion.
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
I guess we just need the "right kind" of Muslims in public service: those who believe in decency but not so much in their own religion that they're going to use positions of authority to bring about violent jihad and usher in Sharia.
Which amounts to that we're tolerant of Muslims as long as they don't actually try believing in Islam.
quote:You may be right about that, depending of course on how "the 'religious state' idea" is actually defined.
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
I'm not detecting that more than a very few Shipmates actually support the 'religious state' idea.
quote:Probably not a safe assumption at all. There are not only a variety of positions Christians hold on the church-state relationship, there are a variety reasons they hold those positions. Some of those reasons have more to do with politics than with theology. But the fact that you have met with disagreement over and over here about this topic is likely a good sign that many others do not see the same problems you do, because they do not understand Jesus' teaching the way you do.
You probably see the problems I do, especially those which have been shown up by the 1600 years of supposedly 'Christian' states in defiance of Jesus.
quote:Again, probably not a safe assumption.
And the equivalents to those problems in other religions which operate as state religions....
quote:I'm going to translate that as "I disagree with him".
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
I've mentioned that book by a Muslim that I'm reading - he is very much "tying himself up in theological knots"... and that has seemed the case with others I've come across.
quote:I still don't accept that those from outside of the religion are really able to identify what is or isn't "pragmatic fudging".
Originally posted by Doc Tor:
even if it is tainted by a degree of pragmatic fudging, is undeniable.
quote:Well, likewise. But I was offering some nuance to Steve.
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
quote:I still don't accept that those from outside of the religion are really able to identify what is or isn't "pragmatic fudging".
Originally posted by Doc Tor:
even if it is tainted by a degree of pragmatic fudging, is undeniable.
quote:There was a very good analysis, possibly by the great Oxford historian Terry Jones, on the telly 15-20 years ago that showed that one of the Pope's motives, in the light of his fundamentalist chilialism, was to unite the chivalrous knights - constantly warring barons - of Europe to make Jerusalem ready for Christ's return. To fulfil the apocalypse. A thread that ran through Victorian to WWI England to say the least: Balfour was an anti-Semitic Anglo-Israelite. Just the other side of the same coin as SCIS.
Originally posted by mousethief:
We[']re the popes who preached the holy crusades really interested in Christian states? Or in destroying the Muslim state?
It's most disingenuous to posit the Muslim conquests as the origin of the Crusades. It was 300-something years later, and the rhetoric of the popes was centered on access to the holy places, not ancient history. The Arab Muslims were in fact not radicalized. The meaning of jihad had changed to an internal struggle against sinful impulses.
Your red-eyed axe-wielding fanatic had laid down his arms and gone back to herding sheep. Whatever you guys dredge up to justify the crusades, you need to come to grips with this fact.
quote:Then we might as well close this thread, because we can't really find the origins of a phenomenon without looking at historical precedent and drawing conclusions from it based on what we can gleam about conditions and motivations of times past.
Originally posted by Callan
People in the past had their own concerns - strange and often barbaric as they seem to us now - and using them as lay figures in theological disputes inhibits understanding of the past and the present and is probably bad theology as well.
quote:Or at least Steve's Version of Islam. Because, you know, these guys' version might just not include imposing Sharia on Great Britain or the U.S. But Allah forbid we let the dirty stinking Muslims define their own religion. It's our job to tell them what they need to believe in order to be members in good standing of their own religion.
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
I guess we just need the "right kind" of Muslims in public service: those who believe in decency but not so much in their own religion that they're going to use positions of authority to bring about violent jihad and usher in Sharia.
Which amounts to that we're tolerant of Muslims as long as they don't actually try believing in Islam.
quote:The primary reason Christians did not have access to the Holy Places at this period was because of the Seljuk Turks who had conquered Anatolia (which had hitherto been part of the Byzantine Empire) and then pushed south to control Jerusalem. So to talk as if the 'Muslim conquests' were something that had happened "300 years ago" is a little bit unhistoric. Incidentally, the first two books immediately to hand - Tom Holland's 'In The Shadow Of The Sword' and Christopher Tyerman's 'God's War' disagree with you about Jihad being a purely spiritual matter. It was both the war between the believer and himself and the believer and the non-believer.
It's most disingenuous to posit the Muslim conquests as the origin of the Crusades. It was 300-something years later, and the rhetoric of the popes was centered on access to the holy places, not ancient history. The Arab Muslims were in fact not radicalized. The meaning of jihad had changed to an internal struggle against sinful impulses.
quote:I'm not trying to justify the Crusades. I'm merely pointing out that from the point of view of Christians of this period your picture of a peaceable Islamic civilisation minding its own business would have seemed a little bit starry eyed and that, to a large extent, the historical facts are on their side.
Your red-eyed axe-wielding fanatic had laid down his arms and gone back to herding sheep. Whatever you guys dredge up to justify the crusades, you need to come to grips with this fact.
quote:Will come back on more recent posts tonight - I hope. Meanwhile I missed something while posting late last night/early this morning....
It's not fit for purpose - that purpose being living in a modern secular state
quote:You don't live in God's gigantic universe. You live in Stockport. Unless your theology permits you to fully engage with your neighbours and your community - and yes, that involves getting your hands dirty and helping to run it - then it's not fit for purpose.
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
by Doc Tor;
quote:Will come back on more recent posts tonight - I hope. Meanwhile I missed something while posting late last night/early this morning....
It's not fit for purpose - that purpose being living in a modern secular state
Anabaptism is not about the purpose of "living in a modern secular state". Like other Christians, our purpose is to live in God's gigantic universe, not your narrow secular state. In God's universe, it is the secularists who are not 'fit for purpose'.
Having said that, among religious views in general, any religion which accepts the view that its job is peaceable persuasion is a better fit in the secular state than a religion which believes in conversion at swordpoint and imposing a religious state. Yes??
quote:Others have observed the same thing. Isn't it amazing?
Originally posted by Doc Tor:
Their orthopraxis is vastly superior to yours.
quote:I think the takeaway from this post is something I've been thinking for quite a while now (like about 10 pages...) which is that debating the origins of Islamic extremism is a futile exercise when it comes to considering the best way of engaging with Islam today.
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
I'm not sure about orthopraxis but my Muslim neighbours, local shopkeepers, and friends, seem to live quite peacefully, (well, OK, this is orthopraxis), and don't seem about to wield Kalashnikovs in my direction. Should I earnestly ask them to renounce Islam, as it has a dark violent past? I don't think I am going to do that.
(Of course, we have a Muslim mayor - danger!).
