Islamists Target World Heritage!

[larelo6 3]

Pakistan: Man receives death threats, forced to flee home over moustache deemed un-Islamic

Military intervention is indeed required!

  Edited July 5, 2012 by larelo6  

[Alejandro24 575]

I've thought in another thing because the title...

A moustache is considered un-Islamic ?

What crosses through the head of that people of the Jihad? If he likes his moustache, let him then, are he causing damage or something like that?

Dictators, dictators and fascists everywhere .

  Edited July 5, 2012 by Alejandro24  

[Easy Bakes 253]

He should sign up for old timey bare-knuckles fights

[Duke87 1,070]

Now that is a mustache!

As for the death threats, well, clearly there are nutty nuts out there with their priorities way out of whack and a willingness to take extreme action about them. We all know this, but it helps to be reminded.

[A Nonny Moose 8,263]

Unfortunately there is a large group of illiterates led by fanatic, mad, imams who pass themselves off as Islamic scholars. They are no better than the Inquisitors of the 15th and 16th centuries in the Christian era. They are immature, and unable to face up to the necessity of truly finding out what the Prophet has written. They take excepts from the Holy Book and twist it to suit their fevered imaginations, and cry Jihad.

Islam, like Christianity, is a philosophy of peace.

Each and every one of them, by their own lights, are falling into the hands of Iblis.

When it comes to madmen, Christianity has its share. Think of the money-mad fool in the Vatican who cried out "Deus vult" giving his blessing to the Crusades.

I guess every major religion has its growing pains, but the world is not nearly as much on-side with this any more. It is time for Islam to stop being diffident and start policing these people. Individual communication with Allah is important, but the repute of His people is also important. The fanatics need to be marginalized and strongly discouraged by main-line Islam of all the sects.

[iLovePwnage 2]

its pretty crazy yall, i heard timbuktu, in mali, the place that is being attacked, is the oldest city in the world + one of the hardest to get to due to harsh deserts... makes me wanna play simcity 4 and build modern day USA with old abandoned places and new ones as well,.

[A Nonny Moose 8,263]

These infidels who attack holy places need to be taken out permanently by whatever means. Timbuktu is the oldest city still extant. This is along the same lines as the Taliban in Afghanistan blowing up ancient Buddhists monuments. Islam is much more tolerant than that, but some false imam has lied to these guys, and here we go again.

[samima 92]

These infidels who attack holy places need to be taken out permanently by whatever means. Timbuktu is the oldest city still extant. This is along the same lines as the Taliban in Afghanistan blowing up ancient Buddhists monuments. Islam is much more tolerant than that, but some false imam has lied to these guys, and here we go again.

I can't tell you how much i agree with Nonny Moose. Also, and i would know because i am muslim, Jihad means Strife not Holy War. The word was just twisted.

Trust me, if you actually look into it, all of the misconcepions will be gone.

[A Nonny Moose 8,263]

Thanks for that. I am a person of the Book, so what do I know?

[raja_indy14 8]

I find it incredibly difficult to see in religions any 'intrinsic' characteristics that are fundamental and in any sense 'real', from which certain actions are merely unthinking, illogical deviations. As a socially constructed entity, a religion is however it is viewed, defined, and performed at any given time in any given social context. To argue that 'well those aren't real [insert religious group]' because they deviate from a certain, subjective understanding of what that religion should be is illogical. Essentially, religion is what people make of it, and many of the holy scriptures can be interpreted in a myriad of different ways to justify or condemn a range of activities and moral perspectives.

Both Christianity and Islam have histories of being deployed to justify and exhort to massive violence, are the people who did/do this not Christians or Muslims? To make blanket statements about Islam being fundamentally a religion of tolerance is nearly as bad as making blanket statements about it being a fundamentally violent religion. Neither is really an accurate descriptor of such a vast (both spatial and temporal) social construction.

Also, Timbuktu is not the oldest city still extant.

  Edited July 7, 2012 by raja_indy14  

[Easy Bakes 253]

I find it incredibly difficult to see in religions any 'intrinsic' characteristics that are fundamental and in any sense 'real', from which certain actions are merely unthinking, illogical deviations. As a socially constructed entity, a religion is however it is viewed, defined, and performed at any given time in any given social context. To argue that 'well those aren't real [insert religious group]' because they deviate from a certain, subjective understanding of what that religion should be is illogical. Essentially, religion is what people make of it, and many of the holy scriptures can be interpreted in a myriad of different ways to justify or condemn a range of activities and moral perspectives.

Both Christianity and Islam have histories of being deployed to justify and exhort to massive violence, are the people who did/do this not Christians or Muslims? To make blanket statements about Islam being fundamentally a religion of tolerance is nearly as bad as making blanket statements about it being a fundamentally violent religion. Neither is really an accurate descriptor of such a vast (both spatial and temporal) social construction.

Also, Timbuktu is not the oldest city still extant.

So which one is?

Jericho?, Athens? Baghdad?

  Edited July 7, 2012 by Easy Bakes  

[A Nonny Moose 8,263]

Actually, for oldest city extant, I'd go for Petra, except it is deserted.

[Odainsaker 2,137]

Probably Jericho, Damascus, or other ancient cities in Syria.

Destroying temples, destroying icons, destroying books, and finally destroying people has been a such a common pattern that it must have less to do with any particular religion and more to do with human sociology and organization control, for which a particular religion becomes a convenient, momentary tool. Parts of the Islamic world are today at a frighteninly familiar point, one we've seen often enough before in witch burnings, "burning books and burying scholars," orthodox iconoclasm, the Crusades, reigns of terror, kulturkampf, Krystallnacht, great proletarian cultural revolutions, the killing fields, the Balkans...

What else do we make of the destruction of most mosques and more muslims at the hands of other, self-described muslims? It just seems all so sadly...commonplace and familiar.

  Edited July 8, 2012 by Odainsaker  

[raja_indy14 8]

Thankfully, wiki has a list for that. Damascus and Jericho seem to be at the top of the list.

[A Nonny Moose 8,263]

Probably Jericho, Damascus, or other ancient cities in Syria.

Destroying temples, destroying icons, destroying books, and finally destroying poeople has been a such a common pattern that it must have less to do with any particular religion and more to do with human sociology and organization control, for which a particular religion becomes a convenient, momentary tool. Parts of the Islamic world is today at a frighteninly familiar point, one we've seen often enough before in witch burnings, "burning books and burying scholars," orthodox iconoclasm, the Crusades, reigns of terror, kulturkampf, Krystallnacht, great proletarian cultural revolutions, the killing fields, the Balkans...

What else do we make of the destruction of most mosques and more muslims at the hands of other, self-described muslims? It just seems all so sadly...commonplace and familiar.

Can't agree more. See my post in Current Events today. This nonsense is not limited to any given people. Some are just more clandestine than others. Islam is having the same growing pains as Christianity had 500 years ago. The Jihadists should look around, and stop playing with mirrors.

[raja_indy14 8]

But Islam and Christianity have had such different historical trajectories that, even broadly speaking, it appears to impart little understanding to see the current malaise in terms of historically displaced developmental paths. At least three things seem to be far more relevant in understanding the present situation.

1) By an accident of history and geography, one of the most conservative brands of Islam (Wahhabism) ends up with a royal sponsor sitting on gigantic oil reserves and, by virtue of this position, the support and protection of the world superpower. It is free to set up conservative-brand madrassas across the Islamic world, paid for by the global demand for oil.

2) The undeniable failure of secular modernization in so many Muslim-majority countries to bring significant material improvement. If the imported ideology of capitalist/socialist progress has not been seen to work, why not turn to an indigenous traditional one?

3) The systematic violation and/or capture of secular authoritarian governments and their countries by foreign interests and states. This served as the impetus for the initial significant Islamist reactions in 1979: the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the Iranian Revolution.

[A Nonny Moose 8,263]

Interesting theory. However, the real problem in most Islamic states is the massive illiteracy. The work of Mohammed is meant to be read directly and not interpreted by another person.

Because most of Islam was part of either the great Moorish Empire until about 1500 or the subsequent Ottoman Empire, a great deal of "keeping the peasants in their place" has occurred. The rich are very rich, and the poor are beggars with a small middle class of merchants and traders.

General literacy and the following education would put a lot of clerics out of work.

[samima 92]

Again, I can't agree more.

[IL. 1,043]

You're not really listening to this nonsense are you?

Fanatism exists in everything, not just in islam, and not just in relegion, there is fanatism even in football, and the history syai t loud and clear, when the croud fight each other and destroy the stadium just because their favorite team lost.

Examples are infinite in everything.

Everything can go extreme.

On another side however, saying islamists, as you include all islamists, is just not right, not all islamists are fanatics, and not all muslims are fanatics either, many islamists are moderate, others are a bit extreme, there are alot of direction in that.

& in this thread, I suppose you are not talking about Islam, inless if you want so, you need to start a new thread, and I will join in.

It's always a matter of prespective, never look at things from a personnal perspective, always look at it from a global one, looking at all the different groups of people and not concentrating on just one, because you will conclude that all humans in different cultures and relegions and etc... especially today, share of alot of principal propblems and such.. such as fanatism in this thread.

[raja_indy14 8]

Interesting theory. However, the real problem in most Islamic states is the massive illiteracy. The work of Mohammed is meant to be read directly and not interpreted by another person.

Because most of Islam was part of either the great Moorish Empire until about 1500 or the subsequent Ottoman Empire, a great deal of "keeping the peasants in their place" has occurred. The rich are very rich, and the poor are beggars with a small middle class of merchants and traders.

General literacy and the following education would put a lot of clerics out of work.

I had thought about editing my post to include the factor of mass illiteracy, but decided that this could be assumed to be a generally understood.

Mass illiteracy certainly enables and exacerbates the factors mentioned previously, and it interacts quite closely with at least the first two. The fact that so many governments in the Islamic world have failed to provide effective, secular mass education makes Saudi-funded madrassas much more effective and appealing. It is a signal failure of the secular modernization drives of the 1960s and 1970s.

As for the history, neither the Moors nor the Ottomans ever constituted the 'most part' of the Islamic world, although symbolically the latter came fairly close. Nonetheless it still sustained a titanic and prolonged struggle against the Safavid Persians, who would not have agreed with the view that it was part of the Ottoman domain. Although I don't know enough about it to discuss in too much detail, I do know that the impact of the Mongol invasions on the Islamic Middle East were profoundly devastating. The wanton depopulation of huge areas of productive agricultural land and the discontinuation of ancient agricultural practices; the repeated invasions from the 13th to the 16th centuries annihilated such wondrous cities as Baghdad, where the Tigris ran black with the ink of texts thrown into it (not to mention the blood of the hundreds of thousands slaughtered), and the cultured urban centres of Persia; and the psychological blow to Islamic intellectualism initiated by this 'scourge from God' that, in addition to the physical destruction of libraries and learned centres, prompted a widespread philosophical retreat into conservative theology.

What came out of this calamity, at least initially, were not cultured regimes with a strong intellectual bent, but warriors: the Mamelukes in Egypt, the Turks in Anatolia and Southeast Europe, and Mongols (Timurid) in Persia and Afghanistan. Although the latter two subsequently attempted to recover the culture of the shattered Persian and Mesopotamian civilization, it would be a slow process - eventually it would seem simpler to just borrow from the increasingly dynamic Europeans.

Finally, I would say that what's more important is that general literacy and educational attainment would put a lot of authoritarian regimes out of work, which have always had much more political clout than clerics (well, except in Iran).

@IL. Although that might be the impression one gathers from some posters, the overall tone of the thread would seem to suggest that (a) fanaticism or extremism are hardly limited to Islam and (b) that while there is much discussion of the general, this should not be taken to indicate the universal. Tendencies and patterns are drawn out for the sake of simplicity.

  Edited July 9, 2012 by raja_indy14  

[IL. 1,043]

Are you in other words saying that muslims, during all their history, were only worriors, and did not build a culture nor any scientific achievements and such?

[Easy Bakes 253]

Are you in other words saying that muslims, during all their history, were only worriors, and did not build a culture nor any scientific achievements and such?

No I think hes saying that after building up such a civilization/culture and having it devastated by barbarians,they became what they are today.

[A Nonny Moose 8,263]

Are you in other words saying that muslims, during all their history, were only worriors, and did not build a culture nor any scientific achievements and such?

No I think hes saying that after building up such a civilization/culture and having it devastated by barbarians,they became what they are today.

I get the same impression. Don't forget that the Islamic area preserved much of the ancient science when the Church was busy putting it all out of business though superstition and ignorance. Too bad we know so little about the Dark Ages, but that's why they are Dark.

[raja_indy14 8]

Are you in other words saying that muslims, during all their history, were only worriors, and did not build a culture nor any scientific achievements and such?

I am puzzled by this interpretation.

No I think hes saying that after building up such a civilization/culture and having it devastated by barbarians,they became what they are today.

Yes and no. While I tried to point out an alternative reason behind the end of the Golden Age of Islam (that is, not a general stultification under monarchical regimes), I wouldn't suggest that this can be seen as directly leading to the present situation.

  Edited July 10, 2012 by raja_indy14  

[A Nonny Moose 8,263]

Actually, as far as the Middle East is concerned, I believe Islam has found itself in a strange middle age. Since Islam is one of those religions without a central authority figure, they lack a positive religious compass. The Imams often take unfair advantage of this.

[IL. 1,043]

I think it's more a problem of education, and ages of colonisation and trying to just "look" like the west, the arab person today, is not only a stranger to the western world and culture, but also a stranger to hes own culture, colonisation tried to make arabs look more like westerners, also there was some ages of poverty and bankrupsy that made a big reason for the arab countries to be colonised, and to go into poverty and ignorance.

The problem here is not with relegion, it's the mentality of most arab countries today, that spreads to all the domains of life, everything is connected to each other.

Another problem also, is, as a result for ignorance, poverty and low education in many arab countries, Islam started to be understood in the wrong way, where many arabs only followed the "layers" of Islam.

Poverty also made a good environement for extremisme and such things, wich can be psycologicly explained, and wich is something that almost every country in the world had those times.

On the other side, there are groups of people, that "worship" the west, and will just throw them selves between their arms and deny their own origin and culture and their home country.

The arab person is a stranger to the universal, and also a stranger to hes own culture (phylosophy class ).

Another point is that, also many arabs, don't know their real history, by that, I mean the larger history, it is that that cares about the art and scientific progress, and how the society was and etc... on the other hand, the small history, is that history that only talks about the palaces and the royal families and the wars.

[IL. 1,043]

I am puzzled by this interpretation.

Just a missunderstanding

No I think hes saying that after building up such a civilization/culture and having it devastated by barbarians,they became what they are today.

Yes and no. While I tried to point out an alternative reason behind the end of the Golden Age of Islam (that is, not a general stultification under monarchical regimes), I wouldn't suggest that this can be seen as directly leading to the present situation.

I agree, while it can be a part of that, but I'm sure there are alot of reasons.

P.s.: The islamic civlisation didn't fully collapse for centeries, it was just not in it's golden ages during the ottman empire that was ended after the world war 1, for many reasons, including economic reasons, and because arabs beleived the english when they promised them that they will help them to make an arab union after getting rid of the ottman dominiance, but the result was colonisation.

& there are many reasons, some are in muy previous post

P.s: I did not say the arabic civilisation, because the islamic civilisation (including in north africa) was multi-cultural and multi-ethnical civilisation.

Are you in other words saying that muslims, during all their history, were only worriors, and did not build a culture nor any scientific achievements and such?

No I think hes saying that after building up such a civilization/culture and having it devastated by barbarians,they became what they are today.

I get the same impression. Don't forget that the Islamic area preserved much of the ancient science when the Church was busy putting it all out of business though superstition and ignorance. Too bad we know so little about the Dark Ages, but that's why they are Dark.

Actually they did more than preserve

  Edited July 10, 2012 by IL.  

[A Nonny Moose 8,263]

Actually they did more than preserve

I guess you are referring to the invention of the zero and great advances in mathematics and engineering. A lot of that is being uncovered now that the great museums like the Topkapi are more open.

  Edited July 10, 2012 by A Nonny Moose  

[IL. 1,043]

Actually they did more than preserve

I guess you are referring to the invention of the zero and great advances in mathematics and engineering. A lot of that is being uncovered now that the great museums like the Topkapi are more open.

Also the architecture influence, and not to forget the history and societies science, by Ibn Khuldun..., and also health care like shampoo and others..

Btw, the zero is said to be not an arab invention, actually many civilisations before used the zero, like the egyptian civilisation, and even babylon.

[raja_indy14 8]

Actually, as far as the Middle East is concerned, I believe Islam has found itself in a strange middle age. Since Islam is one of those religions without a central authority figure, they lack a positive religious compass. The Imams often take unfair advantage of this.

I would still say that to see this simply as the work of wayward imams working on an illiterate population is overly simplistic. Islamism, whether radical or moderate, is in almost every facet a reaction against the external world, particularly Western capitalism, and its penetration or violation of Muslim-majority countries. For one thing, illiteracy cannot explain it entirely because there has always been mass illiteracy, but Islamism as a political movement only emerged slowly since the 1950s (when Western modernization first began to significantly effect Middle Eastern countries) and exploded in 1979 against Anglo-American domination of Iran and Soviet intervention in Afghanistan.

If one reads the works of Sayyid Qutb, a leading member of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt in the 1950s/60s and one of the 'founding fathers' one might say of contemporary Islamism, one finds a strong vein of disgust with the West: it's materialism, decadence, and hypocrisy. A recovered and autonomous Islam founded firmly in spiritualism and social order is held up as the object of struggle. If one were to make a broad statement about the present-day sources of Islamism, I think it would be more correct to look at the clash between capitalist globalization and local traditionalism, between the promises and results of secular modernization, and at the ongoing unequal political and economic interference in the affairs of the Middle East by the leading capitalist powers.

After all, the Iranian revolution and the theocracy that followed was not largely a consequence of religion-hungry fanatics, but a widespread reaction to a foreign-dominated, illiberal regime bent on secular Westernization. That Khomeini ended up in control of a regime headed by Islamic jurists was more a consequence of political shrewdness and capacity to exploit a power vacuum, rather than a goal of the revolution.

PS; zero and the decimal system was actually invented in Hindu India, but refined in Persia and transmitted to Europe via Arab North Africa. Preservation, hybridization, elaboration, and invention across a vast range of scientific and philosophical subjects occurred during this time, however. One advantage may have been that the Islamic philosophers in the period were much better able to source their ideas in the rich philosophical heritage of Greece, Persia, and India, while the Greeks who had dominated the region before looked upon non-Greek philosophy with contempt.