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Originally posted by Freddy:

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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'.

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Maybe so.

I guess it is just opinions based on observation, which of course may be way off.

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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."

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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.

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Originally posted by Steve Langton:
by Callan;

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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.

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If only it was that simple; but
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....

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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.

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Posted                      

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Originally posted by Freddy:

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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.

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That's how I see it too.

Except that I would broaden it to make invasiveness an inherent quality of Western culture.

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Originally posted by Golden Key:
Yes. Though in slight defense of my (probable) Viking ancestors, they didn't invent it, AFAIK.

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Fellow Viking! We have something to be proud of.

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"Consequently nothing is of greater importance to a person than knowing what the truth is." Swedenborg

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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.

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Posted                      

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Originally posted by Steve Langton:
by Callan;

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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.

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No, not entirely - but yes, ultimately....

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????

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Posted                      

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Originally posted by Freddy:

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Originally posted by Golden Key:
Yes. Though in slight defense of my (probable) Viking ancestors, they didn't invent it, AFAIK.

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Fellow Viking! We have something to be proud of.

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Originally posted by Golden Key:
mt--

Just the butter cookies, please. The world's had far too much of the rest.

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Originally posted by Golden Key:


But that's not all that they were. Any of them.

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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.

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I would think that someone from Wales, whose people have been hassled so much by outsiders, would understand that.

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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.

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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 ...

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Originally posted by mr cheesy:

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I would think that someone from Wales, whose people have been hassled so much by outsiders, would understand that.

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I am not "from" Wales, I live here. And you know where you can go with your lazy stereotype.

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Originally posted by mousethief:

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Originally posted by Steve Langton:
by Callan;

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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.

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No, not entirely - but yes, ultimately....

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????

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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.

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Originally posted by Callan:
If anything the radicalisation went in the opposite direction with the Crusades as a response to Islamic conquest.

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Posted                       

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Classical Islamic scholars were led by their so-called war-loving state religion to amazing heights in astronomy, philosophy, mathematics etc.

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Posted                         

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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....

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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....

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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.

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And for the umpteen-millionth time, I'm not denying the complications, stop assuming that I am

It still remains a basic one-side-of-the-line-or-the-other thing that if you follow the NT instructions on how to conquer the world for the faith, 'not with fleshly weapons', then you won't be fighting wars for your faith. And that means accepting that you don't conflate religion and state!

If you do try to have a religious state, as some Christians centuries after Jesus unwisely( ) 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".

If the faith actually teaches the 'religious state' option, the situation is simply screwed - obeying God will mean engaging in the necessary wars, etc. If the faith doesn't teach that but, as in Christianity, teaches an alternative in which you don't seek to be a religious state in the first place, then the dynamics are completely different.

Christianity in the NT teaches not to do Jesus' kingdom via the religious state tactic - result, so long as Jesus is trusted, no war by or on behalf of the faith (though possibly persecution of it).

Islam/Muhammad does teach the Islamic state and sets the example of doing it by war.... This means that in and for Islam there simply will be (and have been) various kinds of war and there will also be extremism from time to time when the relevant further circumstances arise....

To say this is not to 'over-simplify'; it is to draw attention to a key point at which a choice one way or other makes a massive and important difference....

Posted                      

quote:

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by Callan;

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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.

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And for the umpteen-millionth time, I'm not denying the complications, stop assuming that I am [brick wall]

It still remains a basic one-side-of-the-line-or-the-other thing that

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Posted                       

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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quote:

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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.

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Posted                      

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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.

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Posted                       

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"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."

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Posted                      

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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.

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quote:

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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.

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Posted                      

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Originally posted by Steve Langton:
I'm not detecting that more than a very few Shipmates actually support the 'religious state' idea.

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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.

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And the equivalents to those problems in other religions which operate as state religions....

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Posted                      

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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.

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Posted                       

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Originally posted by Doc Tor:
even if it is tainted by a degree of pragmatic fudging, is undeniable.

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Posted                      

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Originally posted by mr cheesy:

quote:

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Originally posted by Doc Tor:
even if it is tainted by a degree of pragmatic fudging, is undeniable.

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I still don't accept that those from outside of the religion are really able to identify what is or isn't "pragmatic fudging".

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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:

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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.

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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.

quote:

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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.

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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.

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Posted                      

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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.

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quote:

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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.

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