I trust and hope that the final went well? And I hope not too many more?
Thanks for the clarification, still way above my pay grade.
Cheers!
The final went well. Just three more now.
I can try to answer some of the questions in your post #20...
1. I’m pretty sure the Arabs are the descendents of Ishmael (hence the Ismaili sect, and the name Ismail is common amongst Muslims). Hebrew and Arabic are both Semitic languages and are fairly similar. Genesis says Ishmael’s descendents would have their hand against Isaac’s, and against the world. Boy is that true. The Muslims do indeed hate the Jews, and pretty much the rest of the world too.
2. Wahhabism is a relatively young sect of Islam. If I remember right it originated in the 1700s and was created by Muhammad Abd al-Wahhab. The Saud family, who had controlled the area around Riyadh since the 1400s, adopted Wahhabism in the 1700s and it’s still the majority sect in Saudi Arabia.
3. Wahhabism and Sunni Islam in general doesn’t have a heirarchy of clerics, but Shi’a Islam does. The lowest rank is the mullah, followed by the hujat al-Islam ( “proof of Islam” — al-Sadr was one of these), then the ayatollah, and then the grand ayatollah (i.e. Khamenei in Iran). The imam is the guy who leads prayer and gives sermons at the mosques—both Sunnis and Shi’ites have them.
I’ll let Cronos & Muawiyah give their input too :)