originally posted by fraggle rocker :- The Sufi movement is catching fire in the U.S., displacing Zen as the exotic Asian religion du jour. ----------------------------------------- this just triggered off something which i'd been feeling for a while. the US is such an amalgamation of different cultures etc. one day 'this cool eastern religion is in', next day it's another. many people whom i've seen look to eastern religions for comfort without understanding them. when another 'cool' religion comes along they adopt that. 'the moorish invasion of europe......'. invasion of europe? invasion of spain more like. as far as i know the moors were restricted to spain. how can you classify the invasion of spain as the invasion of europe? another reason for there being more christian countries in the world today than muslim countries is that muslims never undertook spreading their faith as a great mission. sure when they conquered a place they would try and force it's inhabitants to their faith, but they were nothing like the christian missionaries who went all over the world....converting. why does christianity lay such an emphasis on conversion? are people of other faiths inferior? can they find 'salvation' only if they embrace christianity? i find this very pathetic. oh yeah, and anyone that dosen't agree with america is a flag burning bastard that loves to see americans die? :bugeye: it's exactly this kind of attitude that makes people flag-burning- american-death-wishing people.
They conqured most of the know world. Islam started in Arabia it conqured spain all the way to Persia, and some of the Byzanitne Empire. The reson they stoped at spain was because they lost. They also didn't care the much about exspansion. Airavatar you act like everybody is supports Missionaries in America. Not many people are that way. We have them here in the USA too. There anoying here also. We just can't stop somebody comming over there and saying stuff.
I myself despize the concept of a missionary for ANY religion. My personal belief is religion should be approached the same way one would approach stamp collecting. Its just something to take your mind off the world, provide a little comfort, and boost the ego a tad. NOT something to start a war over or to force on somebody else. ie no: "The 1952 Grenich Eagal stamp is the only true stamp. Believers in all other stamps will burn in eternal hellfire!"
I think of it as more of art. You can't nor should ever force somebody to find something beatiful. You can show somebody a painting, even say why you like it. If they don't thought there is no point in trying to convice something is beautiful because its there own personal beliefe. I guess its simular to your post clockwood
Salty The pseudism in aesthetics , will they ever catch up with pseudoscience nr #1 ethics ? Hey.......are we talking about religion here ? Clockwood It cannot be not true , as If I am reading my own writings . But Ur not a stampcollectors-razzia fan as I am I suppose ? Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Salty Both u and Airavata seem to forget about the Turks when you speak of the Islamic invasion of Euro . When it comes to Euro it was the Turks who are responsible for the many muslims of todays Yugoslavia for instance . And ofcourse lets not forget the Central Asians of today , including Russia . Fraggle Over 1.2 B , 20% of World Population is follows Islam In about 2015 Id say , there are more Muslims than Christians on this planet . (heflores)>Hey it seems you have going to have alot more Self claimed Gods to meet you according to this , Im sure that the Americans as individual and independant as they are , they'll head for the deepest of Sufism . Oh wait , more than half of the Muslims in America already did , although not through Sufism . Whitch brings me back to the pacifism mentioned here , i do not know if those muslims will be that peacefull when their day comes , and what could possibly happen if ties between the Islamist movements who cause "terrorism" will find in these Islamic men their brothers ? But back on topic : -Josif Stalin-eliminating opposition -Adolf Hitler-increase wealth -Vladimir Lenin (bordering)-create system -Ho Chi Minh-kick amerikan ass -Fidel Castro-survive -Tito-unite Im not saying I support any of these people , Im just saying they were great at what they did ; politics . I dont consider Che to be one , I think Che is much more a militant rather than a diplomat , I think a politican needs to be balanced between the 2 . I was wondering when we can start speaking of politics , what period in time where? And I dont mean th way politics have always been around , I mean when did it get this life of its own .
I wasn't talking about that invasion. The Turks got alot farther in Europe all the way to Austria. That wasn't in the 700s though under the original Islamic Empire. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
After invading and conquering most of Spain they attempted to do the same to France, who managed to defeat the Moors in battle thanks to the courage of Charles Martel and his army. The Moors were "restricted to Spain" not by choice, but by their inability to defeat the French. If during World War II the Japanese had landed troops along America's west coast and attempted to move eastward but were stopped in...say...Utah, Idaho and Arizona, would you now be arguing that the Japanese didn't invade America but only California, Oregon and Washington? Attempting to invade and conquer Europe wasn't "a great mission"? Keep in mind that most of the Middle Eastern countries were once Christian. They were everything like Christian missionaries, and arguably worse. I have no idea. I'm agnostic. Why does Islam? I doubt they find people of other faiths inferior. They may find the other faiths inferior, but probably not the people. Christians have some nerve actually believing their religion to be true... Do you expect people of all faiths to base life decisions on the premise that their religion is false, or just Christians?
I meant after they conqured that they got tired of exspanding. They could have easly raised another army and crushed the French. Its just that now they had to concentrate on internal problems. Plus its cold and france and if they are anything like me they like it where it dosent snow Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
i consider the christian missionaries worse than the muslim invaders in terms of spreading their faith. the spread of islam was only incidental along with the annexation of an area, but christian missionaries went on journeys SPECIFICALLY to convert people to christianity.
The missionary who knocks on your door is worse than the "holy warrior" who tries to kill you and steal your land? I have my doubts...
First of all, the quote to which I was responding made no specific reference to medieval Christianity, so I based my response on Christians of today. There is also the little question of tolerance in the pre-Christian Roman Empire. Refresh my memory; was it Scientologists who the pagan Romans threw to the lions? Have you any idea how militant Islam portrays Christians and Jews? How did Muslims justify their slave trade and "crusades" into Christian Europe? Of course the Crusades were brutal and horrible, but one is forced to consider the possibility that they may not have been nearly so bad - or may have never happened at all - had Muslims not first invaded Europe. Generally agreed to by whom? Could this be due to the fact that by the time the situation had reversed, Muslims had been invading, conquering and occupying land in Christian Europe for several centuries?
Understand. Just trying to put some historical perspective on it. As I said earlier, Islam seems to go through nearly the exact same phases as Christianity, about six hundred years later because Christianity had a 600 year head start. The Roman Empire was around for a long time. The earliest Christians were indeed thrown to the lions along with members of many other minorities. But sometime during the next 100-200 years Rome did turn into a very tolerant society. They allowed spokesmen for all religions to evangelize. Some scholars see that as their downfall, for the only religion at the time that was heavily into evangelism was Christianity, so after another century or two they had converted the entire population and its leaders. For those that think the Christianization of the empire brought about its doom, then it's due to the fact that they were originally so tolerant of divergent points of view. Yes. As I said, Islam is going through the same phase the the Christians went through about 600 years ago. It tracks so perfectly it's almost spooky. But during the Middle Ages the Muslim empires really were far more tolerant than Christian Europe. Jews prospered in Moorish Iberia; it wasn't until the Moors were run out and the Christians came back into power with the Inquisition that the Jews were in trouble again. They had no disagreement with the Christians about the "fact" that people who were NOT of the Abrahamic religions were barbarians and mertited no mercy. But if you want to pick out the real assholes in the whole sorry saga of the slave trade, how about the Africans who kidnapped and sold their own people? As for military forays into Europe, I'm sure quite a few of them were spouting the same crap that Bush is spouting today: We've got to save those poor people from their wicked leaders. The era during which Christianity had uncontested control over all of Europe and stifled all dissent is the millennium of ignorance and squalor that we fondly refer to as "The Dark Ages." What megalomaniac emperor could resist the temptation to bring those regimes down? I'm tempted to defer to your self-proclaimed superior knowledge of history, but I'm distracted by the fact that the Crusades started very early in the second millennium C.E. Europe had by this time been ravaged by Germanic tribes and the early waves of Mongols such as the Finns and Huns and perhaps even the Magyars, but I don't remember the first Muslim incursion into Europe occurring BEFORE the Crusades. Are you sure you have that sequence right? How about the Jews themselves? I have yet to meet one or read an account by a Jewish scholar who does not agree with that statement. Jewish life in Moorish Iberia, Arabic Baghdad, or Ottoman Sofia was not Disney World, but it was way better than under the Cossacks or the Nazis. And it was even modestly better than the fate of the average Jew anywhere in Reformation Europe. The European Jews had a brief period of acculturation and acceptance during the two or three generations prior to Hitler, and it was natural for them to believe that they'd finally found peace among the Gentiles, but Hitler really did blow it. Judging from my reading and the Jewish people I've talked with, there were only two times and places that the Jews themselves agreed they were treated better than in the more peaceful Muslim empires. One was western China, where they were welcomed so warmly that they simply assimilated and ceased to be a separate community or gene pool. The other is the U.S.A., where, if you take the complaints of the Orthodox elders seriously, the same thing is happening. Of course. The six-hundred year phase shift between the parallel paths of the two faiths has resulted in "interesting" historical phenomena every time their paths cross.
This essentially makes my point for me. Christians didn't invent religious intolerance in Europe. Christians are just as guilty of intolerance and persecution as the next guy. Christians are not more guilty of intolerance and persecution than the next guy. I've never disputed that Middle Age Islamic kingdoms were more tolerant, at least in some respects. What I disputed - and what started my participation in this debate - was the claim that we would be better off had Islam wiped out Christianity from Europe. I don't really hold African slavetraders in any more contempt than the white or Arabic slavetraders. In the end, they were all greedy people who were willing to violate individual rights in order to profit. The Moors began their invasion of Spain in 711 AD. Charles Martel defeated the Moors at the Battle of Poitiers in 732 AD. The first Crusade began in 1095 AD. (Ignore the biased presentation of the events. I only used this link to get the dates for the first Crusade.) I wasn't disagreeing. I was just asking.
Fraggle I wasnt speaking of those American Sufi's , I do not consider them muslim , they are as nuch Sufi as they are Zen Buddhists or Sweat-Yogaists .....those trends in America do not even involve acknowledged imams (ofcourse that doesnt say much for its knowledge since the people who have to accept it talk all sorts of bullshit) , no when I spoke of a muslim brotherhood I was refering to the Black Muslims of America , of different kinds of Islamic sects or groups . Ofcourse most of these people wouldnt be considered Muslims by the Iranian Ayatollahs either , but it is a common enemy they have against their common Islamic background . From that corner within the Black Islamic community , there has been plenty sympathy . Not really , if you call American Sufism that what you have described previously , I can tell you that it is not even close to compare with the true Islamic Sufi . Eating porc and being Jewish is not quite an option , the Jews have Qabbalah . Ofcourse the Jews you speak of are the secular atheist-like Jews , for instance Jerry Seinfeld . He's a Zen Buddhist . But hey , that shit is like Tae Bo to me . And Chechnya , well Im not thought on the Checnyan Islamic history that well , but as shit is today they want Sharia and are guerilla , they have not reached the suicide level quite like the palestinians yet , but after the theater incident in Moskva Id say the way is paved to some serious opposition . If you are telling me these people to be Sufi , then its not just like Ghandi getting angry , its like Ghandi turning into a Kamikaze militant ........ When the Sephardim were expelled from Spain by the Inquisition , it was Arabia where they were welcomed . And when we look at islamic occupation , we seriously have to distinguish between the Turks and Arabs , the Turks were unfriendly warriors , who occupied the Arabic land just as they occupied european land . The Armenians is one of the great examples of Turk oppression , and lets not forget the entire Yugoslavian war centered in the Muslim heritage the hated Turks left the Serbs . Galt They didnt , and they stopped the whole slavery thing after 817's Abbasid Slave Caliphs .
i agree with fraggle. medieval christians weer very intolerant. i mean you only have to read 'Ivanhoe' by sir walter scott to gauge the contempt with which jews were treated by christians. and i read in the paper today..... roman catholic priests in spain are requesting to church to beautify queen isabella...the first step towards being made a saint. they say she should be made a saint because she spread christianity throughout the latin world and converted millions to the 'faith.' well along with converting people, she exiled jews and muslims from spain, and she instigated genocide in latin america. she also set up the inquisition, which tortured and burned 'heretics'. and priests want her to be made a saint?
Im not familliar with the situation in Sudan , perhaps you could elaborate a bit ? Who exacly is enslaving who ?
The southern Sudanese Dinkas who are animists are enslaved and mutilated by northern Sudanese Arab Muslims, as described in the article linked below. Modern Slavery
