James R "Kaffir" is not an insult.

[S.A.M.]

And thus, your ultimate opinion can be rapidly concluded.

Thanks for playing.

Yup always like a public record of such things.

For anyone interested in the original debate: Has Islam ever split?

http://www.sciforums.com/showthread.php?t=78792

 

[GeoffP]

Also for the public record, another saying of Maududi's you didn't seem to have a problem citing:

However, if his belief is contrary to clear teachings, and even after finding out that his belief is opposed to the Book of God he continues to adhere to his stand, and one is unable to treat his belief as an interpretation, then in such a case the judgment of wrong-doing or kufr could be applied to him, while bearing in mind the nature of the issue involved. But account must be taken of degree and gravity. All crimes and all criminals are not equal. They differ in seriousness, and it is a requirement of justice that the punishment which is awarded must take account of the degree of seriousness. To use the same rod on everyone is certainly unjust.

http://www.sciforums.com/showpost.php?p=1787479&postcount=16

So he certainly believes in punishment for disbelief. And you cite from him uncritically.

Here's the thing: no one can force you not to be blithe, unrepentant, ignorant, or inhumanitarian, Sam. This is a choice you take on yourself. You can even accuse those who criticize these things about you from all kinds of illogical standpoints. But you don't restart your own reputation by doing so.

 

[S.A.M.]

Sure I have no problem with that. For example, extremists who commit fitna through terrorism are considered apostates. They cannot be treated the same way as someone who draws a Mohammed cartoon. Islamic teachings about apostasy make it an issue between man and God. Islamic jurisprudence takes a more dim view of political consequences of such apostasy. Suicide bombers for instance show a distinct lack of faith in God.

 

[GeoffP]

Forgetting entirely Maududi's other comments on apostacy? And that your example is specious and derived? That the numerous other manners of committing apostacy have nothing to do with the above?

'Eminently' brilliant. I can see why you were so taken with Hitler's comment on propaganda.

 

[GeoffP]

Also, here's a question: just what kind of punishment should be leveled on someone who draws a Mohammed cartoon?

 

[S.A.M.]

Lets start with the number of people who are actually put to death for apostasy. How many this month alone?

Islamic doctrine requires a very heavy burden of proof because there is no way to know what is in anyone's heart. One must have irrefutable evidence of wrong doing which is dangerous to society, politically, [except when US supported dictators are in charge] before anything can even be brought before a jurist

How many people were sentenced to death under Maududi? Answer : zero.

However he is a conservative Hanafi cleric and would probably support mainstream Hanafi views on apostasy. Note that most Hanafis are Asians and I don't recall if anyone has ever been put to death for apostasy in Asia.

Within the Sunni Muslim tradition, Hanafi is one of four “schools of law” and considered the oldest and most liberal school of law. Hanafi is one of the four schools of thought (madhabs / Maddhab) of religious jurisprudence (fiqh) within Sunni Islam. Named for its founder, the Hanafi school of Imam Abu Hanifa, it is the major school of Iraqi Sunni Arabs. It makes considerable use of reason or opinion in legal decisions. Sunni Hanafi creed is essentially non-hierarchial and decentralized, which has made it difficult for 20th century rulers to incorporate its religious leaders into strong centralized state systems.

The Hanafi school of Islamic jurisprudence was founded by Abu Hanifa, born in Kufa, Iraq about A.D.700. He was one of the earliest Muslim scholar-interpreters to seek new ways of applying Islamic tenets to everyday life. In his lifetime Abu Hanifa was disgraced, called ignorant, inventor of new beliefs, hypocrite and kafir. He was imprisoned and poisoned. He died in 150 A.H. [circa 767-768 C.E.]. Abu Hanifa's interpretation of Muslim law was extremely tolerant of differences within Muslim communities. He also separated belief from practice, elevating belief over practice. Hanafi took Shafi as his rival and vice versa.

Broad-minded without being lax, this school appeals to reason (personal judgment) and a quest for the better. It is generally tolerant and the largest movement within Islam. The Hanafi school is known for its liberal religious orientation that elevates belief over practice and is tolerant of differences within Muslim communities.

Hanafi scholars refuse to control a human religious or spiritual destiny, and refuse to give that right to any human institution. Among the Hudud crimes, those crimes against God, blasphemy is not listed by the Hanafis. Hanafis concluded that blasphemy could not be punished by the state. The state should not be involved in deciding God-human relationships. Rather, the state should be concerned only with the violation of human rights within the jurisdiction of the human affairs and human relationships.

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/intro/islam-hanafi.htm

In Egypt the doctrine of the Hanafi school of law is considered to be the dominant expression of the Muslim fiqh. The Hanafis are the oldest Muslim law school. Since the ninth century, the jurists of this school have exerted a hegemonic influence over the production and application of legal norms in the eastern stretches of the Muslim world. Later, the Hanafis became the official law school of the Ottoman Empire. The Ottomans made their doctrine dominant in its Arab provinces, including Egypt. Even with the fall of the Ottomans, the modern Egyptian state continues to recognize the Hanafi doctrine as the source of the legal norms that the judges are required to apply in personal status (cases the legislature has left undecided). Hanafi law thus represents, in Egypt, the legacy of Muslim legal thought and practice.

Classical Hanafi doctrine holds that the capital punishment of the apostate serves mainly political aims. I quote two famous Hanafi jurists from Central Asia on this matter. The first is the eleventh-century Transoxanian jurist Sarakhsi, one of the major authorities of the Hanafi school. He says:

The change of religion and the original form of unbelief
belong to the most abominable of crimes. But [their judgment]
is a matter between God and his servant and the punishment
[of this crime] is postponed until the hereafter.
The measures advanced in this base world [and which thus
precede God's judgment] are matters of political expediency
[siyasat mashru'a] ordained by the law in order to protect
human interests" (Sarakhsi, n.d., vol. 10: 110).

In the same vein, the twelfth-century Hanafi jurist Marghinani, whose book al-Hidaya exerted a lasting influence on the Hanafi jurists of the Near East, states his position with the following words:

In principle, punishments are postponed to the hereafter
and the fact that they are advanced [so that they precede
the hereafter] violates the sense of probation [as the sense
of human life in this world]. One deviates from this principle
in order to defy a present evil and that is warfare
[against the Muslims] ('Ayni, vol. VI: 702-703). (2)

Both authors argue that the apostate's punishment is not clue to his belief but to the military and political danger that this belief may cause. They use this argument to show that women, even if they abandon Islam, should never be condemned to death because they are, according to Hanafi doctrine, physically not able to lead war on the Muslim community. The jurists conclude from this that capital punishment is not imposed for disbelief and apostasy but as a means to prevent the military and political dangers connected with it. They justify this punishment in terms of political expediency. Sarakhsi gives a systematic explanation of this reasoning, saying that it is not unbelief that is punished but that the ratio legis ('ilia) of the capital punishment is the political danger that results from unbelief (Sarakhsi, vol. 10:110). In other words, the Hanafu jurists do not feel competent to judge belief or unbelief but transform the crime to be punished into the crime of political rebellion, a crime more accessible to judicial decisions than belief or unbelief. The individual Muslim's belief or unbelief is thus left for God to judge.

http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2267/is_3_70/ai_110737774/pg_4

 

[GeoffP]

Lets start with the number of people who are actually put to death for apostasy.

How many were fined, jailed or otherwise harassed? What effect did this have on the freedom of belief which you espouse - here and there - in their peers?

Islamic doctrine requires a very heavy burden of proof because there is no way to know what is in anyone's heart.

Fascinating. No other religious system carries such a heavy burden of proof for apostacy - or, indeed, civil charges and fines for it.

How many people were sentenced to death under Maududi? Answer : zero.

Unsurprising, since he held no political office of any kind. He did found Jamaat-e-Islami, a brownshirt organization that holds views similar to his own, as a student of Qutb.

However he is a conservative Hanafi cleric and would probably support mainstream Hanafi views on apostasy.

There's no maybe about it, as I demonstrated. Whether he agrees with a small waiting period is kind of irrelevant.

And you draw spiritual weight of decision on what an unbeliever is from this guy.

 

[S.A.M.]

How many were fined, jailed or otherwise harassed? What effect did this have on the freedom of belief which you espouse - here and there - in their peers?

How many? Give me a number.

Fascinating. No other religious system carries such a heavy burden of proof for apostacy - or, indeed, civil charges and fines for it.

Yes, it certainly beats bombing innocent civilians and calling it collateral damages

Unsurprising, since he held no political office of any kind. He did found Jamaat-e-Islami, a brownshirt organization that holds views similar to his own, as a student of Qutb.

So how many put to death by his influence?

There's no maybe about it, as I demonstrated.

And you draw spiritual weight of decision on what an unbeliever is from this guy.

Hardly surprising. Most clerics are tradition bound.

 

[Michael]

Is it any surprise Syed Maududi turned out to be a religious bigot given the foundation ideology?

Suicide bombers for instance show a distinct lack of faith in God.

If you asked a suicide bomber, they'd tell you they have a strong faith in God. But yes, from another point of view, their faith is lacking. One wonders how would you go about explaining to the soon to be suicide bomber that they have so little faith?

You'd think you could appeal to rational. But you'd be mistaken. Pointing out that they're killing innocent women and children will not sway they're type of faith in God either - their faith is strong. Thus, a moral argument always falls on deft ears.

Muslims show a distinct lack of faith in God. Being atheist it is as easy for me to see this as it is for you to see the lack of faith in Suicide Bombers. As difficult as it is for the Suicide Bomber to see her own lack of faith, is it for you.

 

[GeoffP]

How many? Give me a number.

Hard to say how many people were cowed by such fear.

Yes, it certainly beats bombing innocent civilians and calling it collateral damages

Troll much? Tu quoque is not a point of view.

Hardly surprising. Most clerics are tradition bound.

So you're implying he's only an accomplice, not a frothing hater in his own right? That's a little hard to believe. Who told him to start Jamaat-e-Islami? God?

 

[quadraphonics]

Are you telling me that when Christians refer to infidels it is NOT with reference to their "lack of faith" in Jesus but their lack of faith in their own God or gods? I assure you, for Muslims, a Christians faith in Jesus is completely irrelevant since Jesus is a prophet. When they talk of a person being a kafir, it is specifically wit reference to their belief in the Islamic version of God.

The subject of the post you are responding to - and, in turn, your own previous post that prompted it - was not "infidel" or "kafir," but "your faith."

That a term whose definition specifically refers to a particular faith implies such a context, is not what you said earlier. You said that when a Muslim refers to "your faith," he's speaking of Islam. Can you see that these are not the same statement?

Why would God abandon the world and only restrict himself to those who can be saved through Jesus? What about all the people who never heard of Jesus? Why would God only be for the Jews if there is only one God? Then who are all the other people to look up to? etc etc.

Last I checked, said god was on the record as being both "jealous" and "vengeful." Wherever your presumption that god must be some kind of universalist humanitarian is coming from, it doesn't seem to be the actual scriptures or practices of the religions in question. That god doesn't seem to have any trouble picking sides, nor condemning huge portions of humanity to eternal torment. He's supposed to have wiped out the entire human race, except for a single favored family, at one point, and blessed his favored nations with victory in battle and subsequent genocide/slavery of the defeated nations on multiple occasions. He is understood by a great many to demand the death of anyone who departs the "correct" religion.

So the idea that a solitary god must necessarily be a beneficent god for all humanity, seems screwy - at least if said god is supposed to be that of Abraham. It presumes that such a god is also benevolent and just, and not a partisan for certain subsets of humanity (a position he takes again and again, very explicitly and forcefully, throughout Abrahamic theology). From a human science perspective, such a pan-humanist god is a pretty silly suggestion - the entire social-evolutionary advantage of organized religion is as a framework for hanging nation-scale political hierarchy onto. A just, universal god wouldn't do for that, exactly because he would have no reason to take your side in political conflicts with competing nations.

A kafir is someone with the inability to understand or accept the Islamic God.

Indeed. But that poses no difficulty for any reference of "your faith" being accurate.

But that is unavoidable. In any philosophical stream of thought, there will be "sides" and people who will favour one or the other.

So what? We have to accept people behaving as offensive bigots, because divergent views exist as such?

It is not always possible to consider all possible alternatives as equally valid and some alternatives automatically invalidate others.

That doesn't require one to disrespect the (equal) standing of others to come to their own decisions on the matter. You can think someone is wrong, without going so far as to insist that they don't have any right to disagree with you in the first place.

Perhaps there is an element of provincialism even in those who embrace the cosmopolitan outlook for surely they are as contemptuous of the narrow minded as the small towner who looks askance at the global citizen. Maybe even more so.

Arrogance is not the same thing as provincialism.

 

[S.A.M.]

Is it any surprise Syed Maududi turned out to be a religious bigot given the foundation ideology?

If you asked a suicide bomber, they'd tell you they have a strong faith in God. But yes, from another point of view, their faith is lacking. One wonders how would you go about explaining to the soon to be suicide bomber that they have so little faith?

You'd think you could appeal to rational. But you'd be mistaken. Pointing out that they're killing innocent women and children will not sway they're type of faith in God either - their faith is strong. Thus, a moral argument always falls on deft ears.

Muslims show a distinct lack of faith in God. Being atheist it is as easy for me to see this as it is for you to see the lack of faith in Suicide Bombers. As difficult as it is for the Suicide Bomber to see her own lack of faith, is it for you.

There is a discussion on suicide bombers and their faith somewhere - I remember looking up the studies on their religious convictions. Nevertheless, it should be pointed out that even if a suicide bomber was caught in the act, before he managed to pull it off, he would still not be under the authority of a religious cleric, but the civil government and its laws. Religious opinions ie fatwas do not have the force of law in Islam. Law is determined by civic consensus which is determined by the legal authority of the state. In fact he would be treated the same way as Kasab in India. By due process. Compare that with how the US fights terrorism. 10 years and counting in Iraq and Afghanistan. So many dead tortured and traumatised. And still unable to meet their goals.

 

[GeoffP]

Compare that with how the US fights terrorism.

Why?

 

[S.A.M.]

Why?

Because its an indication of how the ideology works. Note how the evil Arabs revolt against dictators. Without guns. Could that ever happen in the west?

 

[GeoffP]

Which is related to the OP how again?

And your point is...that Arabs only revolt without guns? (Like in Libya, I guess.)

 

[quadraphonics]

I don't think so. I think that even in secular settings, when someone accuses another of "being of little faith", this is to mean that the accused does not have the same faith as the accuser.

I don't - not generally. The most common use of that phrase is in response to someone that regards one's plans or suggestions cynically. The response is then "Oh ye of little faith." The faith there is usually understood to be general and abstract - faith in humanity, or in luck, or in the speaker's ability to anticipate, plan and execute. There's typically no particular religious reference present at all, in "secular settings."

Now, if a preacher delivering a sermon in a church says something about "those of little faith," there'd be some implication that the faith in question is that of the denomination attending the sermon. But even those types typically would not connote that way when speaking to a general, secular audience.

Not that I deny that bigoted supremacists do use that term in that way - such was exactly the subject of my complaint.

Perhaps in a thoroughly democratic, relativistic and liberal universe, things would be as you say.

That there are forces that reject secularism and liberalism, and work against such - including by attempting to appropriate and sacrilize common language - does not require that we all accept the propriety of them doing so and play along. They're working to destroy the actual definitions of words, for their own partisan ends - if we want a secular, liberal universe, we have to fight them. To capitulate on the grounds that the universe isn't secular in the first place is ass-backwards.

It is simply inherent in having a particular faith to believe it is the only right one, the supreme one and that everyone else should have it too.

Of course. But nothing in there requires one to disrespect the basic standing of others to come to their own conclusions on the matter.

If it is not the only right one, the supreme one, then why have it to begin with?? And if one is sure of something, one naturally wants to see others would be like that too.

The issue is not the basic nature of faith, nor the associated urge to proselytize. You can have all that stuff, without also rejecting the basic equality between your own spiritual convictions and anyone else's.

 

[S.A.M.]

Which is related to the OP how again?

Its an indication of how Islam is maligned by its detractors for theories and words, while the actions of the detractors themselves leave much to be desired. I mean seriously, I have to listen to bullshit from someone who is waiting for Jesus to come and kill all the Jews - and he is offended because there is a word in a foreign language which describes his beliefs!!!!! All while his taxes support occupation torture and murder of innocents on a daily basis. What could be more pathetic than that?

 

[quadraphonics]

Because Note how the evil Arabs revolt against dictators. Without guns.

Last time I checked, those Libyan rebels were having gun battles against Qadaffi's forces.

And the Egyptian military had some small role in getting rid of Mubarak, note - recall all those pictures of protestors in Tahrir square standing on tanks?

Could that ever happen in the west?

It has happened many, many times in the West. A recent example being the revolutions of 1989 - themselves widely considered models for the current uprisings in North Africa and elsewhere.

 

[GeoffP]

What me criticize?

Its an indication of how Islam is maligned by its detractors for theories and words

And whole-life-system political theories that would consign everyone else to second-class citizen status. And you expect everyone else to just kind of believe that it's really just bad press, no matter what the actual proponents of it - like Maududi - say about such ideas. And that we should just pretend that Islamic reformist movements are just crazy, or nonexistent; Maududi way or the highway.

Right.

 

[sifreak21]

EFC:

Put it in a PM.

In regards to insults - maybe you ought to consider less how you mean it than how it is received. You also might consider the common understanding of the term, especially in the context in which you use it, even if the term itself may not be an insult in all circumstances.

Also, as far as I know, GeoffP is not an atheist, and even if he was that doesn't give you the right to insult him.

Be thankful you got a polite warning this time. I really don't want to have to ban you again, but I will if I keep receiving complaints about you.

James you need to make up your mind. awhile back on of the mods said something along the lines of for you UFO NUTS out there was recieved as ufo idiots but he didnt mean it that way THAT was ok but now this is not ok? what is the stance? dont wanna stand up for this dude cuz all he really does is troll but you need to treat everyone the same