No James, that was not the case.
Let me put things into perspective.
All started from this incident-
James,
You can see that Muhammad and his followers were forced to run away from the Makkah, leaving all their property behind. Yes, they attacked the caravans of those who seized their property. One can blame Muhammad for that.
Secondly, even on the second occasion, it was again Maccans, who attack Madina, not Muhammad. Thus, he had every right to fight for him, his followers, his land and his faith too.
Thirdly, contrary to his opponents, when he attacked Makkah, his original native land and won over it, he did not order any slaughter after winning, which was a usual practice in those days.
As far as i can see it neutrally, it seems to me that though he crossed limits sometimes but not by a far distance, and certainly not according to the established practices of that time.
The period just before him is dipped in the blood. An eye for an eye was considered justice. It was a a period of complete choas and the sward was the only mean of justice. Muhammad changed that a lot. He estabished rules and moral practices, which were far better than those were in the practice.
Ghandhi cannot make Laden his follower, no matter how hard he would try. Laden needs at least Linchon, who can talk with his hands too, along with his mouth.
And, when one talks with his hands, things are bound to happen. Muhammad was different from Jesus in this regard, without any doubt. Having said that, one has to react according to his circumstances. One can blame Muhammad for that, if he wants. And, i do not think that would be completly unfair too. But, one certainly not blame him for all that is happening in the name of Islam. That is unreasonable.
So, you are saying that whether these verses advocate violence or not is the only deciding factor.
Okay.
You already said that.
Does that seem to be natural?
Was it not better if you mentioned that there are some verses of the Quran supporting peace too?
That is precisely the perception that i am challenging.
UPF, contrary to the general perception, you would not find clerics supporting suicide bombing. It would be quite difficult to find such cleric who does not oppose that. If you donot belive me, give it a try. At least 90% clerics will say that Islam does not allow this, if not more.
This is the misperception in the mind of a average westner that Islamic cleric community supports terrorism. The reality is just the opposite. That is what i am trying to underline.
The problem with people is that they start giving the importance of a cleric to a terrorist too, just as you mentioned that laden and that cleric have equal knowledge of Islam according to you. Think again what you are saying.
The Muslims, who say that Islam support terrorism, are not cleric by any benchmark, neither in knowledge nor intention. They are either fooled or trying to fool others. They never consult it with the experts of the islam. Those, who try to present themselves intellectual and expert in Islam, do not do more than what you do. They just find anything such that supports then and propogate it, without investigating whether that is true or not.
One blind folloing the other blind. That spreads propoganda and more and more people start taking it as a truth.
Secondly, People do not realize that why laden is saying what he is saying and why a cleric is saying what he is saying. They do not look at the motives.
I accept that my tone was somewhat harsh but i was not angry. I do not get angry that easily. I used that language intentionally. There are some reasons for that.
Not all but applies only to Abrahamic religons. Eastern religions are free from this, more or less. You would not find Vedanta and Buddhism reacting much to circumstances in the preaching. Yes, there may be one rare inclusion here and there but not much.
UPF, when you are quoting something to reply me, i will certainly take it that you are agree with that too. That is natural, unless you do not clarify that. You said that you googled and find this. How am i supposed to interpret your statement other than what i did? How can i ever assume that you are not agree with what you are quoting yourself, unless you tell me otherwise?
That is certainly a political violence, with the seasoning of religion. But, it has nothing to do with faith but homeland only.
You have done that already. There may be some more too but i can defend most of those.
Secondly, i can post the same number of posts advocating peace, which no one can challenge, not even a cleric.
Yes, it leaves some questions unanswered.
That is precisely my argument. Do not take literal sense but try to see in which context all is said, otherwise one is certainly going to misunderstand.
And, i demostrated you that how unreasonable it could be.
It appears that such is exactly the case, by your own presentation.
And I am all too well familiar with the “Black Stone” issue (far more than you could believe). But let me see if I can explain something here concerning aggression and ruler-ship.
We all know that no ruler likes new ideas that even might challenge his authority, who would? And it seems that Muhammad was always under the protection of someone else’s ruler-ship, who always seemed to eventually turn against him. In effect, he entered the world of someone else, gained their protection, and then gained a following contrary to those protecting him. He was converting people against their prior rulers. He was not converting the rulers.
As a result, he went from place to place, gaining followers along the way. And eventually some of his followers were getting kicked out of the regions he had visited. His religion was being rejected by the rulers of each place. And their method for rejecting was primarily running off people they didn’t like, not necessarily killing them. In that process, they probably ceased property of those fleeing.
Muhammad took offense to that. He fought back.
So what we have is someone who started something that the rulers didn’t like (no big surprise as rulers like nothing that isn’t their own). When the rulers tried to protect THEIR land against the new ideas, battles broke out. People began killing people on both sides. What you are now calling “persecution” was the same as what you also call “defending your beliefs”. They were defending their beliefs against Muhammad’s and persecution was the means.
Did Muhammad ever acquire ruler-ship over any land without killing off, running off, or persecuting those who fought against his ideas? It appears that Medina was headed that way, but at what point did even Medina become the property of Allah or Muhammad such that: The book now states that any disbeliever is to be killed or at minimum run off, the exact thing that Muhammad fought against?
In contrast, look at what we call Science. Have ever heard of a story telling of scientists, after being persecuted (which they certainly were), gathered arms, fought, and killed off their persecutors? Science gets used by all kinds of people to fight other people. But what doesn’t? Anything that works gets used. But when did you ever hear of scientists (modern day priests and monks) gathering arms to fight off their oppressors? Yet Science has covered the world with more influence than Islam, and in a much shorter time.
Granted today, Secularists persecute anyone not bowing to Science. But Secularists are not Science, they, much like everyone, merely use it to conquer others.
And today’s version of science has become exactly what it fought against too: “believe us or else”. But they didn’t [openly] murder people, or declare the holy authority to kill dissenters, in order to gain that power.
No i’m not saying that nor have i said it. But i have presented evidence in favor of my position and contrary to yours. There are versus in the Quran and Hadith which advocate violence, there are quite a few of them, and for the most part they are unambiguous. That there are also many versus that promote an ideal of peace does not change any of those facts. If you think it does then it would probably be incumbent on you, not me, to present those verses with explanations of how they negate the message of these many other verses clearly advocating for violence against nonbelievers.
i’m sure there’s much truth to what you say here, but it does not change the fact that millions of Muslims nonetheless read the Islamic scriptures and use them to justify militancy and “holy war”. This is not news or propaganda, it is a globally recognized phenomenon. You can insist that those Muslims are misinterpreting the message of the scriptures all you want, the scriptures are STILL propagating violence.
What do you mean? Which motives are you referring to?
Probably true, i think the violence of Hinduism and Buddhism tends to be more subtle than the violence of the Abrahamic religions.
You’re right, i should have been explicit that the editorial comments were not mine, and presented my reasons for posting them.
Faith and homeland are not separate for the Jews, or anyone else who considers Israel to be holy land.
Yes, and different people will answer those questions in different ways using different parts of scripture to justify them, and that is central to the point that it is possible to have a valid interpretation of scripture that contrasts with that of the Umma.
If someone thinks in general that literal meaning is more important than historical context, then i may disagree (in fact i do disagree, for the record) but i would be hard pressed to demonstrate their position as unreasonable. i don’t think you have successfully demonstrated that either.
Quite possible. I also do not consider myself as an expert of Islam either. Having said that, i certainly get some basics right.
That is true. But, he was not challenging their social or economic status but religious only.
Before going into that, let us have a look at the era of Just before Muhammad.
So this was the scenario before him.
Besides this, there is one more vertical that should be kept in the mind; the first marriage and the first wife of the Muhammad.
Not much is known about the childhood life of the Muhammad, except that he was an orphan. His father died before his birth and his mother six years later. He was brought up by his relatives and started trading in very early age.
It is known that he became a merchant and "was involved in trade between the Indian ocean and the Mediterranean Sea. Due to his upright character he acquired the nickname “al-Amin” (Arabic: الامين), meaning “faithful, trustworthy” and “al-Sadiq” meaning “truthful”[57] and was sought out as an impartial arbitrator. His reputation attracted a proposal in 595 from Khadijah. His reputation of being an impartial arbitrator helped him a lot in his life.
She hired Muhammad for a trip to be her trade agent. Muhammad did that and he earned twice more profit than normal. Meantime, she also heard something about the prophecy of becoming Muhammad the next prophet. Driven by these two things, she offered Muhammad to marry her. Initially Muhammad refused saying that he has no money to support his wife. Khadija said that her all money will be his so he need not to worry about that and Muhammad accepted the proposal. Later, as she promised, she used all her money and influence to help Muhammad and Islam.
This lady Khadijah was 40 years old and had been widowed two times before marrying Muhammad, while Muhammad was merely 25 years old. This marriage was a happy one and lasted 25 years, till the death of Khadijah. At the time of her death, Muhammad was 50 years old but never married another girl. His all other 12 marriages happed later, after crossing 50.
He loved and respected her very much, even after her death.
Nothing happened much during the first 15 years of their marriage. Muhammad received her first revelation at the age of 40 and things changed after that. That event was not easy for the Muhammad to digest. He was very depressed or even frighten to some extent. He also thought that he is suffering from some mental decease. Returning home, he lay on the bed and asked Khadija to cover him with the blanket. She consoled him and gave him courage.
Nothing happened during next three years and then Gabriel reappeared. By this, Muhammad’s mind became cleared from the confusion and he started preaching.
Thy Guardian-Lord hath not forsaken thee, nor is He displeased
He was having good life. he was rich and famous by now. There was no need for him to get into all this.
Secondly, unlike Jesus, divine intervention did not happen to him in the early age but at the matured age of 40. Furthermore, he questioned himself about that too and did not accept that blindly, though one can question the validity of his sayings.
As far as the issue of him approaching masses is concerned, he had no choice but to act in that way.
Thus, he started from his own family. The first one was his wife and then his closest friend Abu Bakar and his adopted son Zyad. Abu Bakar helped him a lot in this regard later. But, it was not the case that he did not approach elites, though not in very early stages.
By this time, Islam had not taken much shape. Muhammad was focused more moral issues like killing girl-childs, helping the poor etc. HIs opposition became firce only when he criticized idol worshipping. His own uncle, Abu Tahib was the most critical of him.
Muhammad addressed a joint group of all leaders of Meccan Qurash leaders to convince them but things did not work out. However, frighten by the rising popularity of his, some of the ranking and influential leaders of the Quraysh tried and failed to come to some arrangements with Muhammad in exchange for abandoning his preaching. They offered him admission into the inner circle of merchants and establishing his position in the circle by an advantageous marriage, but Muhammad refused. During this period, Muhammad urged his followers to be pacifist, commanding them to “deal gently with the infidels”.
After this incident, the persecution of the Muhammad and followers started increasing.
Umar ibn al Khattab was the first influential Meccan leader to accept Islam.
Though the answers were considered satisfactory, the Quraysh did not convert to Islam. But, this gave much credibility to the Muhammad amongst the Jews and Christians of Medina. They started to believe that Muhammad must be a prophet, otherwise there is no way that he can ever answer those questions. This earned reputation helped Muhammad a lot when he migrated later to Madina.
Now, Muhammad decided to migrate from Mecca to Medina and cash his reputation there as a prophet.
Meecans tried to kill Muhammad, becoming aware of his plan but failed. Muhammad fooled the send assassins and slipped away quietly in the night. Though, his followers were able to escape from Mecca, but all their wealth and property were seized by Meecans claiming that all that belong to Mecca.
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So James, you can see that Muhammad did not outplace any person from Medina to claim his authority. They willingly surrendered. Yes, some (three) clans and Jews opposed him initially. The objection of the Jews was that he was not from the direct family of Moses.
Muhammad gathered a group of 300 soldiers and attacked a Meecans caravan in order to regain the seized property of his migrated followers. Meecans send a troop of 1000 soldiers to protect. This clash is known as Battle of Badr but Muhammad won it.
This win elevated the position of Muhammad in the Medina as Medianean forces were never able to defeat Mecca in the past. Thus, rest of the clans of the Median also started seeing Muhammad as a competent leader and fighter and gave their consent to the join the federation of Medina, formed my Muhammad. They have to do that otherwise they would be left alone helpless between two giants.
The transition was smooth; more of less and not without any bloodshed and nobody left Medina after taking over by Muhammad. Having said that, it is general statement and nobody cannot rule out some odd incidents of migration from Medina.
The perfect example of this is the Bediuen tribe, who used to live in the outskirts of Medina. They did not oppose Muhammad and joined the federation but never accepted Islam and remained Pagan. In return, Muhammad asked Muslims not to keep family relations with them but never ask Muslims to kill or harass those and that tribe continued to live alongside Medina, throughout the muhamadean period.
There are reasons for that.
The first reason is the timeline. Modern science has the history not more than 300 years. Before that all science was either included in religions or philosophy. We cannot imagine how science would have been used if it was at the same stage at the time of Muhammad or Jesus.
In this context, a story of Mahbharat is pertinent. Realizing that the battle would not going to end easily, Arjuna and Aswathma called Brahmastra to attack each other. Brahmastra was considered to have the capacity to mass destruction, something like Nukes. Later, asked by Lord Krishna and Indra, Arjuna withdrew his but Aswathma was not aware of the process of withdrawal. His Brahmastra was guided to kill the family of Pandavas. Thus, it went straight to the womb of Uttra, which the only remaining heir of the Pandavas.
Seeing no option, Lord Krishna himself entered in the womb of Uttra and save the unborn child.
The second reason is that scientific inventions or perceptions are personal matter. Means, It has not anything to do with social practices. Thus, an innovative scientist cannot have as friends or foes as any innovative religious figure may have. People, in the past also, became foe to the scientific innovations only when it contradicts religious postulations. Otherwise, religions always nourished science considering as a form of knowledge.
But James, if having religious faith causes bloodshed all the time, why there is no such example in the Indian subcontinent?
Why Buddhism, Jainism and Sikkhism did not face such hardships from monotheists of Hinduism?
At that time, those were the same thing. Religion and government were not separate.
All of that is nice and many things to talk about (especially how the Jews (for example) test their prophets), but it all misses the point -
The Quran now states in black and white that killing is required and better than persecution for the sin of not believing. It doesn’t really matter how peaceful the rest Islam might want to be. It’s reference book requires the killing of dissenters.
The Jewish scriptures have many incidents of killing. But each one speaks of a particular killing of a particular type or group at that time. I don’t think they have any scriptures telling them to always and forever more kill anyone who does this or that.
The Christian scriptures are profoundly against killing regardless of anything. That doesn’t mean that Jews and Christians never kill, but at least they don’t have what amounts to commandments requiring killing. But Islam does. If Islam wants peace, it appears that the Quran is Islam’s worst enemy, a permanent document requiring violence until everyone agrees with them. And there is a very serious problem with that, besides the obvious;
If a man has to kill another due to not being able to enlighten him, how much of a prophet can he be? What kind of a prophet must he be?
The Quran seems to be affixed words of death, condemning itself. How could it be saved?
I am sure it is pretty damn low, as with all of the religions. The question is, which of those systems can stop their own initiative to kill.
Islam seems to demand (via the Quran) eternal killing or forced immutable programming. Christianity demands that the killing stop and never start up again. Judaism, although had documented to never kill, changed that into “only kill for profit and when you won’t be blamed”. Buddhism says to just forget the whole issue. Hinduism seems to be saying all of it at the same time. Rational Humanism says mind your own business far more honestly and carefully.
And interestingly, America and Hinduism are subtly merging through Judeo-Secularism. Christianity, having its leaders murdered off, properly retreats from entropy to perhaps one day learn how to prevent the killing (such as putting the Pope in a bubble box ).
Yes, that is right. You have presented the literal meaning of the verses thus the burden falls on me to show how they mean otherewise. That is precisely what i did in the response of your quoted first verse and i can do the same for almost all other verses too.
It is merely a time consuming exercise, not a difficult one.
UPF, I am sorry to say that is not true either.
The fact of the matter is that more Muslims are against the concept of Holy war than in the favor. Forget about what media says. Try to talk to some Muslims personally and you will know the truth. This misperception about Muslims is subtly planted by the western media into the western minds over the time.
People like Sam Harris are the pefect examples of how western intellectualls knowingly/unknowingly demean Islam.
The problem with such Muslims is that they are being crushed between two walls. Terrorists are at one side and those people, who wrongly believe that majority of the Muslims support terrorism, are on the other side. They cannot afford to be vocal and even if they do that (like that cleric), non-Muslims do not believe them either. That is the real problem.
An average Muslim, is just like any other person of this world. He is not interested in all this and also aware of who is right and who is wrong but he fears to say that openly, for the simple reason that by saying such, he will make terriorists his enemy and others are not going to believe whatever he says. Thus, he choses to remain silent but that does not mean that he supports terrorism.
Secondly, it is the western people, especially US, who told extremists that they can use Islam to cover their political purposes. But, people use to have very short memory.
US and other forces did the same with ISIS initially when it was fighting Asad in Seria. But, now, all of a sudden, they become redicals and the most hate worthy people and Islam the most hate worthy religion as well.
UPF, see where the crux of the problem is. It is not Islam per se but its misuse.
US lived under the impression all along that it belongs to some other world and will be immune to all consequesnces, but 9/11 made it realized that they are also human, just like others. And, now they are trying to correct the mistakes to some extent but it is too late now.
Obama becoming the US president is an indirect apology from the US to Muslims.
The ture purpose of Laden for defining Holy war that way.
I was refering to Paleastine, not Israel.
And, that refutes the notion too that religions are the cause of all wars. No war ever happened becuse of any Hindu religion. The real cause was not that what is written in them, but that the people intrepreting those were wise and not misused any.
Because, i did not take up all verses.
Secondly,i think that you should read my two replies to James too in this reagard.
guided to kill the family of 