Posted on 02/07/2005 11:59:13 AM PST by ILL
It's almost mind-blowing to come to a realization that Islam is possibly (most probably) not a religion. These are the grounds: Even in the multitheistic societies (Greece, Athens, Rome) Gods and their roles were clearly defined within the ethical principles. Example: Aristotel, Plato, Socrates all agree that the main postulates of any religion must have: 1. ELEOS - compassionate love (loving charity, loving mercy) 2. AGAPE (all encompassing type of love for all that surrounds us, good and bad, with no outright rejection and without judgment on our part)
Other than Islam being totally devoid of both above factors it is the only "religion" (more accurately it should be called a sect or a cult) that openly advocates murder (killing of "the infidels"). Can you ever imagine a Jew or a Christian who has graduated to a status of a MARTYR, because he blew himself up in a busy supermarket?
The events of 9-11 got us all to think more about Islam than before. But even aside from that, if you look at the crisis spots all over the world in the last 20 years, you'll invariably find that Islamists were one of the principal combatants (The Phillipines, The Pan AM flight over Lockerbee Scotland, The Lybians, The Chechens, The Bosnian and Kosovo conflicts in former Yugoslavia, the children at Beslan Russia, both Gulf Wars, Afganistan, tension between Pakistan and India, not to mention Israel and Palestine, the conflicts at Darfur, the killing of the Dutch film maker Theo VanGogh for having made a critical documentary about Islam.... the list goes on and on, but I've had enough.
Welcome to Free Republic. That is a very good observation on Islam. It is the same conclusion that I have reached since 9/11. When I studied Islam in seminary it never occured to me that Islam was anything other than an all-encompassing religion for men.
Laz, how many times do I have to tell you? Stop hitting on every new Freeper that comes in the door.
So, what are you doing this Saturday?
And doggone it! You know I'm too old. Besides Saturdays are when I get my batteries recharged.
Islam consumes civlizations and destroyes them.
Islamic golden age was nothing but stolen Roman,Persian and Hindu traditions.
Allah could only send a prophet(about the worth of Islam).
Slap me silly, but it was only yesterday we spoke about tighter INS rules. Today's New York times shows that over 90% (combined total of applicants from Muslim Iraq and Muslim Albania) are granted residency in the US. Does that mean that there are only five normal people in the entire country? Didn't we already establish the inherent danger from within (the transplanted Muslim communities who continue to work even against the host countries, long after they have been granted residency?)
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/08/nyregion/08asylum.html?pagewanted=2
It'll be that way until we're hit with a terrorist attack that makes 9/11 look insignificant by comparison, unfortunately.
From my end, (I admit it sounds pathetic and desperate) I did write to SF Chronicle against their mocking of General Mattis, and I did write to the editors of the NY Times in regards to the percentage of aliens allowed from the Muslim countries. I am pretty sure it'll get me nowhere, but I do believe that after I have written some 10 or 20,000 letters like those, one or two might find good reception somewhere, since I can't say where, I gotta keep making a stink about all these stupidities. Somebody better give us some answers.
"Golden age of Islam" is best described by this guy:
"The myth of an Islamic Golden Age is needed by Islam’s apologists to save it from being damned by its present squalid condition; to prove, as it were, that there is more to Islam than the terrorism of Bin Laden and the decadence of the oil sheiks. It is, frankly, a confession that if the world judges it by what it is today, it comes up rather short, being a religion that has yet to produce a democratic or prosperous society, or social and cultural forms admired by neutral foreign observers the way anyone can admire American freedom, Japanese order, Israeli courage, or Italian style.
Some liberal academics openly admit that they twist the Moslem past to serve their present-day intellectual agendas. For example, some who propound the myth of an Islamic golden age of tolerance admit that their goal is,
"to recover for postmodernity that lost medieval Judeo-Islamic trading, social and cultural world, its high point pre-1492 Moorish Spain, which permitted and relished a plurality, a convivencia, of religions and cultures, Christian, Jewish and Moslem; which prized an historic internationality of space along with the valuing of particular cities; which was inclusive and cosmopolitan, cosmopolitan here meaning an ease with different cultures: still so rare and threatened a value in the new millennium as in centuries past."
In other words, a fairy tale designed to create the illusion that multiculturalism has valid historical precedents that prove it can work.
To be fair, the myth of the golden age of Islam does have a partially valid starting point: there were times in the past when Moslem societies attained higher levels of civilization and culture than they did at other times. There have been times, that is, when some Moslem lands were fit for a cultivated man to live in. Baghdad under Harun ar-Rashid (his well-documented Christian-slaying and Jew-hating proclivities notwithstanding), or Cordova very briefly under Abd ar-Rahman in the tenth century, come to mind. These isolated episodes, neither long nor typical, are endlessly invoked by Islam’s Western apologists and admirers.
This "golden" period in question largely coincides with the second dynasty of the Caliphate or Islamic Empire, that of the Abbasids, named after Muhammad’s uncle Abbas, who succeeded the Umayyads and ascended to the Caliphate in 750 AD. They moved the capital city to Baghdad, absorbed much of the Syrian and Persian culture as well as Persian methods of government, and ushered in the "golden age."
This age was marked by, among other things, intellectual achievement. A number of medieval thinkers and scientists living under Islamic rule, by no means all of them "Moslems" either nominally or substantially, played a useful role of transmitting Greek, Hindu, and other pre-Islamic fruits of knowledge to Westerners. They contributed to making Aristotle known in Christian Europe. But in doing this, they were but transmitting what they themselves had received from non-Moslem sources."
full article at: The Myth of Islamic Golden Age
http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/News/Trifkovic/NewsST110403.html
I'm sorry but I introduced stricter standards in my own personal view of what elements are necessary to make some cult/sect into a religion, which is why I can't agree with "On the subject of the matter, my comment is that Islam, like it or not, is a religion, even if its concept of divine love is distant from Christianity or other religions. If a worldview recognizes God and offers a systemic method of worship, it is a religion."
If that were true, my dog would qualify for a God (spelled in reverse) as he too takes a leak at the same firehydrant on a regular basis (maybe he even loves that firehydrant). Worldveiw sucks - last place I'll go to augment my thoughts. Again my dog offers those same qualities, but I don't think he rightly constitutes a religous following.
I forgot to thank you for explaining how the system works here, how the topics are moved, etc. Thank you.
In my opinion your standard is too strict -- it excludes most religions, not just Islam. Divine love is central to Christianity, it is inimportant in pagan religions, barely noticeable in Bhuddism, and any scholar of Islam will tell you that the Old Testament God of the Jews is just as jealous as Allah is, and at the same time infinitely merciful.
If someone would attach supernaturall qualities to a dog and develop a system of dog worship, that would be a religion (cf Egypt, -- wasn't Anubis a dog?)
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