On Islam, Religion and Love

One might note that Mohammed’s teachings were fairly liberal when he was getting started but got more rigid and authoritarian once he achieved a significant level of power. I can’t say whether he changed his views to curry support or whether power corrupted his message, but it’s similar to how the fundamentalist Wahabi sect gained influence when they got the support of the House of Saud. The two have been supporting each other ever since – and sitting to the Right in politics and religion.

“And all married women are forbidden unto you save those whom your right hand possesses.” -Quran 4:24

“Prophet, we have made lawful to you the wives who you have granted dowries and the slave girls who Allah has given you as booty” Quran 33:50

Muhammad may have improved the lives of some slaves, but he also gave explicit religious sanction to the practice of enslaving the wives and children of the non-Muslim enemies that Muslim armies defeated in battle. He told his followers that the prohibiion against adultery with married women didn’t apply to kafir women who were enslaved as war booty and that they should feel free to rape them.

All this was common practice among warriors of the 7th century, of course. The armies of the Byzantine Empire and the various Germanic kingdoms in Europe were just as eager to enslave civilians and rape women. However, very few on the contemporary left are eager to defend the practices of the Visigoths concerning slavery.

Why is it that so many people who are so perceptive about the evils of Western imperialism are so eager to discredit themselves by failing to hold non-Western cultures to the same moral standards? Yes Muhammad placed restrictions on the abuse of slaves and encouraged his slave-owning followers to free a slave or two when they needed to do a good deed to get right with God.

Nevertheless, Muhammad and his armies routinely enslaved the populations of defeated non-Muslim nations. Muslim raiders were attacking European coastal villages and carrying off captured slaves as recently as the the 18th century, and Muslim raids on non-Muslims for the purpose of capturing slaves continues to this day in places like Darfur, Chad, and Mauritania.

One can be a staunch opponent of the West’s evil and idiotic wars of aggression in the Muslim world without being an apologist for a 7th warlord and slaver, or those who follow him.

@Jessica permalink June 27, 2013

I suspect that both those of us who do things in the name of Islam and those of us who oppose those actions overrate how much of the behavior patterns of current Muslim-dominated societies are caused by what Mohammed did or did not say 1400 or so years ago.

I take it you’ve never lived in a Muslim society. What you’re ignoring is that even a moderately devout Muslim will try emulate Prophet Mohammed. To base their behaviour and their character upon him. Far from overrating his influence it is impossible to underrate it.

mfi

@mfi: If devout Muslims wish to emulate the Prophet, then exactly what he said becomes important. However, their emulation is selective and different from culture to culture and the fact that they do wish to emulate is itself the product of historical social conditions, including the comparative poor performance of most Muslim societies at modernizing/industrializing. That in turn has been strongly affected by Ottoman conquest and/or Western colonization and intervention and by the rise of oil incomes and the uneven way those are distributed among Muslim societies. It is also clear that oil money is deeply connected with the spread of Wahhabi Islam. I think these factors are more important for understanding current Muslim societies than exactly what Mohammed said.
I disagree with attempts to prove either that Islam is inherently peaceful or inherently aggressive based on texts from around 1400 years ago
I have only lived among Muslims in large numbers in India, southern Thailand, and Malaysia.

Me: “I disagree with attempts to prove either that Islam is inherently peaceful or inherently aggressive based on texts from around 1400 years ago”
mfi: “Red herring as neither Ian nor myself has attempted to do either.”

Misleading writing on my part. Please allow me to spell this out:

Because I disagree with attempts to prove either that Islam is inherently peaceful or inherently aggressive based on texts from around 1400 years ago that I have run into over and over again elsewhere but not here and not from anyone on this site, I push to put emphasis everywhere else.

@ Jessica June 29, 2013 1 & 2

I’m not interested in what you’ve experienced on other sites on neither our host nor myself has made any such ludicrous assertion nor would we.

However, their emulation is selective and different from culture to culture

Evidence please. Specifically please provide evidence and examples in support of your first assertion of selective emulation. Having done that please provide evidence and examples in support of your second assertion which is that such selective emulation differs from culture to culture.

Are you saying that the way in which Malay Muslims in Southeast Asia emulate Mohammed is the same as the way in which Saudi Muslims do?

I am not saying anything. You are the one making assertions about Muslim behaviour in different cultures I am the one asking you to provide examples and evidence in support of your assertions.

mfi

Markfromireland: “There are a bit more than 5 million orphans in Irak”

“A December 2012 report from UNICEF estimates the number of orphans in Iraq today at 800,000. ”

“A recent survey in Iraq found that between 800,000 to a million Iraqi children have lost one or both of their parents. According to aid workers this figure is a conservative estimate of the many thousands growing up in the shadow of violence.”

[Iraqi] Population (thousands) 2011, under 18 16146 {=16,146,000}

I have removed the URLs for these quotes because the URLs seemed to prevent the post from showing up.

There exist Sunni and Shia Islam as well as, for example the Alawites and Deobandi. Since Islam is not uniform, it is not possible that all Muslim societies are relating to the sacred texts in the same manner.

The overwhelming majority of Muslims do not regard the Alawites – more correctly called Nusayris as Muslims. A fact I have pointed out on this site recently.

Deobandi are an organisation of Hanafist revivalists whose membership is mostly confined to Northern India and the Indian diaspora. They’re not a sect. Are you seriously trying to claim that they are evidence for a cultural pattern amongst northern Indians?

You are still avoiding my questions. What evidence can you provide in support of your contention that :

their emulation is selective and different from culture to culture

1: In what ways is their emulation selective?

2: How does this allegedly selective emulation manifest itself in different cultures.

So far in response to my questions you’ve introduced red herrings, tried to change the subject, cited an offshoot of Islam that is so heterodox as no longer to be Muslim and tried to use a private society as evidence of cultural difference for an entire culture.

Could this be because you haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about? When are you going to get around to honestly answering the points I’ve raised?

mfi

Oops sorry Ian I think I forgot to close a tag.

mfi

@ Jessica June 30, 2013

As to this.

“A December 2012 report from UNICEF estimates the number of orphans in Iraq today at 800,000. ”

Why are you trying to change the topic? There’s an appropriate posting and discussion thread for those questions and this isn’t it as I am quite sure you know.

mfi

Given your repeated attempts to evade my

“The differences between Muslims arise from jurisprudential differences as to who were (and are) the Prophet’s lawful successors”

Yes, but the reason why that particular set of differences still matters today, whereas Arianism (over which Christians killed in each in quite large numbers) is a historical footnote is that the set of jurisprudential differences have come to have strong ethnic/national associations that last until today. The politically significant fact that Saudi Arabia is Salafi Sunni and Iran is Shia can not be explained only in terms of the power struggle over the caliphate of Ali. The long-lasting struggles between Safavid Persia and the Ottoman Empire are more relevant.

Wrong and a false analogy to boot. The disputes within Islam which is an inherently political religion are, always have, and will remain for the foreseeable future about who leads the Umma. Everything else is subsidiary to that vital and fundamental difference. I am not arguing with you about this and I am not discussing it with you any more than I would discuss whether or not the sun rises in the East. By all means continue with your arguments from invincible ignorance by all means continue to duck and weave and display quite remarkable amounts of intellectual dishonesty whatever you do or say will not change the fact that the core dispute within Islam is the same one it always has been and that is who should lead the Ummah it is a divide that transcends both ethnicity and nationality.

mfi

Teachings/ writings can mean anything, anytime. The devil is in the damned interpretations, and those interpretations, more often than not, are used to justify and rationalize the current state of affairs. St Augustine and Just War anyone? Quite literally, anything at anytime can be rationalized from any teachings/writings, and has been.

“Right, so what happened between then and now?”

The question of why major polities like the Roman Empire or the caliphates rise and fall is quite complex and has many different answers even from experts. It is important to remember that the caliphates remained quite large and powerful for over half a millennium, so they did pretty well.

The one single biggest thing that happened may have been the Mongols, who sacked Baghdad devastatingly in 1258. There were also a constant stream of lesser attacks, such as the Reconquista (as viewed from the Catholic side) in Andalusia/Spain and the rise of the Ottoman Turks. Internal disunity was also a factor.
There is also a theory that the loss of the extra taxes on non-Muslims over the centuries as they converted to Islam weakened the empire.
It may also be that part of the fall was simply a regression to mean. Things just going back to average. The Islamic empire grew to a vast size extremely rapidly, in part because of a number of lucky external factors. The Byzantine Empire and Persian Empire fought a series of wars that left both exhausted, plague decimated their populations, and killing among Christians in doctrinal disputes had left much of the population eager for anyone else to take power. So perhaps these factors led the Islamic empire to become larger than its “natural size” or somehow created structural patterns that worked well when rivals were already laid low but did not function as well when other powers revived or arose. Or that simply created an excessive respect for what had worked earlier and impeded innovation. Because it in a sense, it was not that the caliphates fell so much as that they did not keep up when the barbarians on the northwestern edge of Eurasia began to rapidly innovate in maritime transport and weaponry, then later industrialization.

To me, the part that seems most relevant nowadays is that perhaps Islamic cultures functioned so well for the pre-industrial ages that they became obstacles to later development. This pattern can be seen clearly in China, where the violent catharsis of the anti-tradition Cultural Revolution had to inflict massive damage before China could finally successfully industrialize. Perhaps that pattern is true for Islam as well.
More prosaically, in recent times, the windfall earnings from oil have been toxic for development, as it has been in most places, particularly those that are not already industrialized.

Barely on topic, but perhaps of some interest is the book The Years of Rice and Salt by Kim Stanley Robinson, which is an alternative history about what might have happened had the Black Death wiped out the population of Europe completely. I mention it because in that alternative history, it is Islam that eventually repopulates Europe.

Jessica, I appreciate your ideas on this subject. You are approaching it like an impartial and objective scholar, to the extent that’s possible. I respect that. I will add to what you’ve mentioned about what happened between then and now a little later. I think you’ll like it. It’s good stuff, and grounds for further respectful discussion on this topic.

Mark,

I’m actually one of “them” (non-Arab, though), and I think you’re making a nonsensical assertion when you say things like: ” utterly ludicrous assertion that the practices involved in emulating Prophet Mohammed differ from culture to culture when they do not.” I have (Muslim) relatives living in Muslim-majority countries with different majority ethnicity, and the religion-culture intersection can become quite complicated, particularly with regards to what aspects of the Prophet’s life are emphasized in following the Sunnah.

The current disputes *within* particular Muslim-majority cultures may be Sunni/Shia and focused on the leadership issue, but across cultures, I assure you that there are many points in life on which people differ.

Mandos
July 4, 2013

Then presumably you provide examples and evidence which is more than Jessica did. Please provide evidence and examples showing that purely on ethnicity Muslim practices in their emulation differ.

I don’t doubt that the religion-culture intersection can become quite complicated, particularly with regards to what aspects of the Prophet’s life are emphasized in following the Sunnah the core however remains the same. Different schools of Jurisprudence will emphasise different aspects and different hadiths this is true even within sects. This is jurisprudential not ethnic.

@ Mandos July 4, 2013

Am I supposed to care what you think? Consistently dodging the issue when challenged to back up her assertions and trying to change the subject as she did is intellectually dishonest. If your standards encompass such behaviour as acceptable that is your problem and your failing not mine. I have no intention whatsoever of lowering my standards to accommodate either her behaviour or your opinion .

mfi

Not to mention the fact that he never, ever gives citations for the absurd things that he argues for.

@ hvdub July 10, 2013

As with so much you write that’s false and you know it. You are the one who pretended to qualifications and experience that you do not in fact have which I pointed out in detail. And unlike you – you who pretended that you had experience as – and I quote you directly

a judge in certain civil matters

I backed up my rebuttal of your nonsense with references to the relevant legal practices, laws, and treaties.

mfi

mfi

A problem arrises in this disputation in the very languages being used.

On one side (Jessica et al) are accustomed to the modern colonial version of English, a particularly fluid, accommodating, versatile and creative usage that has been developed, a hallmark being the fungible attachment of meaning between originator and recipient (thus the refrain – you hear what you want to hear and disregard all the rest)

On the other (MFI) have learned the traditional, structured mother language, from which all others source. It is a language of definite meaning and usage and once established becomes resistant to facile alteration. This English IS the bedrock upon which the transient waves of fashionable edification crash.

What appears is there are two languages in conflict here. One broad and fluidly used versus the original being tight and precise and as a consequence, fail to address each other in commensurate terms and thus not accommodate resolution to this dispute. If common meanings are not found, this dispute becomes interminable and emotions will overcome any intellectual resolution – at that point all will be losers. Not that this conversation is going anywhere anyway.

I’m not a convert (and am a “he”), I’m a child of Muslim immigrants to Canada from South Asia with a large extended family back in South Asia as well as other countries.

I “fell silent,” because it was clear that it was useless to argue with you, because you want me to provide…what, scholarly references or something for my lived, direct experience?

I have relatives and friends of varying devoutness, and I shall say that only the most religiously educated actually really know, think, or talk about madhab. My late departed aunt, who didn’t speak a word of English, knew her Hanbali from her Shafi’i. There’s an overall awareness of Shia and Sunni—both exist in my family—but otherwise, the whole discussion is deeply academic. Most people take their religious practice from what their parents do, which is often mish-mashed bits and pieces partly mediated through South Asian culture.

Quoting wikipedia: I am not necessarily an opponent of this practice. However, there is what is written on the official label, and what people actually do. And in my personal experience, what people do “on the ground” has not, at least until recently, been coloured strongly by particularly aware adherence to madhab. Even the Shia/Sunni difference, in my experience, have a lot of bleed-through.

So I do not consider your criticism of Jessica to reflect “high standards”, but little more than a rather obscure from of academic bullying. Perhaps you have done a survey or something and found that my own experience is atypical—could be. But I find this telling:

But this is what Jessica is arguing. Apparently when she was living amongst Muslims she failed to notice that even within ethnic group as in India they were divided by sect and that this affects how they live and determines how they practice their religion.

It could be that, you know, she actually experienced that the sectarian differences are not very emphasized “on the ground”. Instead of believing her experience, you reach for wikipedia.

I absolutely assure you, most Pakistani Muslims wouldn’t find a greater affinity with an Iraqi Muslim of the same “official” inherit madhab than another Pakistani Muslim of another madhab.