5 Ridiculous Things You Probably Believe About Islam

Some of what he is writing is true, some not.

Sorry to say that, like in the Bible, the sourates are in one hand very respectful of other faiths, prophets and population (e.g., sourate 26 vs 86 "you have to recognise Abraham, Moses, Jesus as Prophets - 86) All other religions are infidel and you have to fight against them...

It is true that SA is most "conservative" Muslim country. Turkey abandonned the veil mostly due to Ataturk (but for his reforms he killed around 30.000 people). The most "liberated" country with Muslims and Jews is Bosnia-Herzegovina where women never wore a "burqa", "chador" or "alnahana" and became doctors, philosophers, etc. Same for Lebanon, some Palestinians, some in Egypt, and the Arab Israelis are very "modern" women.

I believe it is due more to the local "imams" and "national political customs brainwash" that creates such differences. Education is certainly a major factor of being extreme or not...

Laurence,
Iran had a secular, social democratic Constitution from 1905-1979, patterned after European ones, with the same legal code. The monarchy was restored through Russian troops intervention, but the western Constitution and institutions remained. The Shahs were strongly anti-clerical. It was extremely rare to see women wearing the burqa. The city folk didn't and almost all the tribes didn't wear the burqa. The present Constitution preserves the secular institutions and rights but the the clerics have authority to overrule Parliament and have imposed sharia law in many but not all cases. Many mullahs do not agree with the ruling clique. Like the Ayatollah Sistani, the leading cleric in Iraq, many consider the clerics should advise but not interfere in the political, governmental sphere.
The late Ayatollah Montazeri, recognized as the highest-ranking cleric and Ayatollah Khomeini's successor until he split with him a year before Khomeini's death ( for which he was banned from being part of the ruling Council) , condemned the recent elections as fraud and the behavior of the government to protesters as illegal and criminal.

Clarke,
I know that, I lived in Iran for 4 years under the Shah... In Iran it was called the "chador" and this is true what you said about the situation as it was under Faruk in Egypt.
The "white revolution" of the Shah was one of the first uprising by the students and Ayatollahs and mollahs because the Shah wanted to do the same thing that Ataturk did in Turkey (no more Arabic writing, no more veil, same rights for women, land given back to the paesants, etc.).
Since Khomeini, the sharia law has been imposed to Iran in a drastic way. One of my colleague, Catholic, had to were the chador and sign a paper saying that she "admits to be under the new sharia Law"...

Laurence,
I regret we have the limitation of this Internet to speak of Iran. That said, let me make a few brief comments based on my own experience. First of all, please read something on the Shah's White Revolution. I looked at WIKI briefly just now and it has some good information but I don't necessarily agree with it overall for I've not studied it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Revolution I see there is a lot brought up by Google which I haven't looked into. I knew JFK as a Senator and later worked in DC getting to know top people in the White House, Pentagon, Congress etc. After the shock of his assassination, I went to London and then Iran. I got to know Iran and the region well. I used to drive from Tehran to Beirut, Damascus, Kuwait and the Gulf, Kabul etc. I knew the languages, worked on digs, migrated with tribes, stayed in remote villages in Iran to gather dialects but also knew the Shah's family and the wealthy "1000 families" who didn't mix directly with the Brits, Americans in Iran. And I also had fellow Americans of all kinds in the various Embassies in the region and what they knew. I remember the 1967 War very well, having had to get my wife and I, with trailer, out of the conflict through Iraq to Tehran . She had a Brit passport and was OK, but my American one was declared illegal, subject to seizure . I also had friends in Israeli intelligence and military. A main mentor of mine was S D Goitein who was a founder of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem in 1925.
Anyway, the Shah's father had done many of the things you say of Ataturk to unify the country and suppress the different factions in the provinces and the tribes. Still, at the time of the Russian, American and British occupation of Tehran in WWII had perhaps 45, 000 people, by 1968 maybe a million and a half, and it swelled after the oil price rise in 1973. The Shah and his father were enemies of the clergy. Khomeini himself thought the clergy were a bunch of backward fools and didn't want any mullah to be President. He was a religious fanatic but politically a Marxist, albeit not in the way the sincere leftist Iranians were who had strong labor union movements. The Shah's White Revolution was from the top. He was a nationalist, but supportive of the ideals expressed by JFK (who was certainly a Cold Warrior, but,I think, moving beyond that). The achievements of the White Revolution were considerable, although the Shah's hope to gain the support of the traditional Iranians throughout the the country failed for a complex number of reasons. Khomeini played a clever game to get support of Iranian intellectuals, only to betray them. I'll leave it there for now.

Alleh shoma chub!
Yes this is what happened + intrigues with the Italians for the petrol...

Laurence,
Bad nist mamnunam. An old post (2007) with many comments by me that may interest you: http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.action?articleId=281474977039936

In an excerpt from a longer poem, Forough Farrokhzad says:

"All our neighbors are planting
bombs and guns
in their gardens instead of flowers
I fear the time
which has lost its heart."

During the imposed Iraq- Iran war (1980-88), many soldiers carried a piece of her verse:

"Remember the flight
the bird is mortal."

I like very much Omar Khayam who said: "not without belief but far from the mosque and synagogue..."

I just read it. So true. So true also that the comments, for some, are ridiculous and we can see that a lot of them have no idea of the situation (political, social, context, history, etc.).

Laurence,
Hafez, at age 60 is said to have begun a Chilla-nashini, a 40-day-and-night vigil by sitting in a circle which he had drawn for himself. On the 40th day, he once again met with Zayn al-Attar on what is known to be their fortieth anniversary and was offered a cup of wine. It was there where he is said to have attained "Cosmic Consciousness". Hāfez hints at this episode in one of his verses where he advises the reader to attain "clarity of wine" by letting it "sit for 40 days".

I recently quoted him:

"Yet since the earliest time that man has sought
To comb the locks of Speech, his goodly bride,
Not one, like Hafiz, from the face of Thought
Has torn the veil of Ignorance aside. "

--["Last night I dreamed that angels stood...", Hafez (1325/26–1389/90)]

Apparently ridiculous things I believed about Christianity:

Jesus spread a message of peace, goodwill and love among mankind.

Jefferson and his Koran,

Do you remember the Barbary pirates Clarke?

Thomas Jefferson's Koran
"Launched in 1797, the USS Constitution (“Old Ironsides”) and her sister ship, the USS Constellation, were built to wage war on the Muslim pirates operating along North Africa’s Barbary coast. It was a wild, untamed region of petty states and warlords whose reach extended deep into the Mediterranean Sea, from Gibraltar to the borders of Egypt. Each owed his allegiance to the Ottoman Sultan, who demanded that payment of an annual tribute be made to his treasury in ex-change for the protection afforded by his Army. It was a tidy arrangement, one that worked well for the Sultan and those who knew their place in the social order.

“That the local rulers were obliged to share a portion of their meager income with Constantinople meant that new, more assured opportunities for profit would have to be found. The solution was piracy.

“For nearly four centuries the Barbary states, and the brigands they employed, prowled the Mediterranean in search of prey. The lumbering merchant vessels of the time were no match for the Muslim corsairs, built for speed and lightning strikes. It was a way of life that took its toll on countless merchant ships, most of which were only lightly armed and had little capacity to resist capture… "

The reason Jefferson purchased a copy of the Koran and learned the language was because he had been told by an Muslim emissary that what these pirates were doing was allowable within the writings of the Koran......Jefferson studied the Koran to come to a better understanding of our enemy!

The treaty of Tripoli came after the battle of Tripoli and the language used was to assure Muslims that the attack made against their land was against the piracy NOT their religion.

Don't your last two paragraphs contradict each other?

Haven't people used the Bible to justify slavery, sexism, racism, all kinds of rotten things?

Why is it only wrong when Muslims do it?

No they don't Margaret, And yes they have, and you can't justify a wrong by pointing out some other wrongs.....you know the ole two wrongs thing.

Dan E.,
I'm sorry, but you don't make much sense regarding Jefferson's view of Islam and perhaps don't know history. The British, French, American and other governments had similar deals with pirates in the New World, funded them and paid them for their activities.

Don't be sorry Clarke,

Just click the links that I provided and learn a bit yourself.

Dan E.,
I did read your link. An ignorant, fanatic person and Islamophobic. You could look at some of Akbar Ahmed's work for a reasoned view about Islam today.

Clarke,
"Useful idiots" That's what the faithful Islamist's call heathens who help them in their endeavors.
Feisal Abdul Rauf, the ground zero mosque Imam re-published his book;
"What's Right with Islam: a New Vision for Muslims and the West"
In Malaysia under the a different title and with some changes as
"A Call to Prayer from the WTC Rubble: Islamic Dawah from the Heart of America Post 911"
Look up that word "Dawah" Clarke....And I'm sure that you realize that Akbar Ahmed is a Muslim and is most likely doing the same thing that Feisal Abdul Rauf is doing, which is to say one thing to the faithful and another to the infidel....Infidel....That would be us Clarke we are the Infidels.

Their Goal Clarke is to promote their faith by any means possible. We have faithful Muslims performing honor killings in our country which is allowed by Sharia law we have Feisal Abdul Rauf declaring their desire to advance Sharia law in our country;
"For America to score even higher on the "Islamic" or "Shariah Compliance" scale, America would need to do two things: invite the voices of all religions to join the dialogue in shaping the nation's practical life, and allow religious communities more leeway to judge among themselves according to their own laws."

Clarke, It is not I who is the ignorant one.

Dan E.,
I think Rauf is speaking of his faith. Why do you assume there is anything hostile or deceptive in that ? Do you know otherwise? Do you wish to know?

"I think Rauf is speaking of his faith."

As am I Clarke! His faith allows him to deceive us in the advancing of his faith.

"Why do you assume there is anything hostile or deceptive in that ?"

I don't assume Clarke!
In your desire to show how liberal and tolerant you are you ignore the evidence that he has been deceptive and the fact that he is openly promoting Sharia law a hostile law that allows for honor killings as well as the restriction of individual rights or the women in their society.

Dan E.,
You are not making sense assuming such things of Rauf. Learn something about Islam.

Clarke,
Denial is more than just a river in Egypt!
I assume nothing I provide facts that lead to it as a reasonable determination.
Thing about is that you are only left with denial as you can't argue against it.

Again, It is not I who is ignorant of the teachings of Islam...It is you Clarke.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/08/06/akbar-ahmed-on-jon-stewar_n_673465.html
Akbar Ahmed On Jon Stewart: Americans' Perception Of Islam Is Way Off Base (VIDEO)

Author and former ambassador of Pakistan to the UK Akbar Ahmed appeared on the Daily Show last night to discuss his new book "Journey Into America: The Challenge of Islam." Ahmed visited over 100 mosques over America, discovering that the religion often defied American preconceptions. While "Islam is often equated to Arab," the author found a strong community of African American Muslims.

Unlike today's attitudes of intolerance and suspicion, Ahmed observes that the founding fathers maintained a deep respect for Islam. He warns that there is a "danger of history being rewritten" by modern opponents who refuse to expand their understanding.

In order to ease the current difficulties, "Muslim leadership [has] to work much harder at explaining Islam to American colleagues and friends." Ahmed claims that America and Islam are too deeply connected for the current state of affairs to continue: "we need to understand Islam very, very quickly, and as you said, bring the temperature down."

Biography: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akbar_S._Ahmed

8 Rumi quotes

------------
+ Thinking gives off smoke to prove the existence of fire. A mystic sits inside the burning. There are wonderful shapes in rising smoke that imagination loves to watch. But it's a mistake to leave the fire for that filmy sight. Stay here at the flame's core. + The ground's generosity takes in our compost and grows beauty!. Try to be more like the ground. + The universe and the light of the stars come through me. + When you do things from your soul, you feel a river moving in you, a joy. + Reason is powerless in the expression of Love. + Like a thief reason sneaked in and sat amongst the lovers eager to give them advice. They were unwilling to listen, so reason kissed their feet and went on its way. + If you are irritated by every rub, how will you be polished? + If the foot of the trees were not tied to earth, they would be pursuing me.. For I have blossomed so much, I am the envy of the gardens.

Libramoon C.,
Excellent quotes from Rumi. I believe he composed most turning around a pillar and they were recorded by the dervishes. He uses the simplest farsi language of all Persian poets. There are many levels of meaning in the poems of poets like Hafez. Like J S Bach, Hafez worked with an esoteric knowledge of number, for example.

Interesting fact about Hafez that I did not know. Can you tell me more about "esoteric numbers" used by him? Are they the same then in Hebrew or Chinese?

Iranians use Hafez' sonnets for divination, as some use the Bible, Quran etc. There is an esoteric system in the craft of Persian poetry, involving number, cosmology, sacred geometry, etc. Many levels of meaning. Music has the same, as do other arts including
architecture, pottery,rugs, dance,calligraphy,martial arts, painting and so on.
Rumi perhaps did not work so much according to the complex rules of the formal craft as other poets. The Chinese system contains the same ancient knowledge but developed different forms over time. But the Emperor' robe with its cloud collar contains the same cosmology as say a Persian rug, which may have, say ,16 overlayed patterns that one can separate through meditation. Similarly, a whole teaching can be read in a Tibetan tangka or a sculpture of the Buddha if it was consciously made. They guide one to a higher state of consciousness. All the ancient peoples understood the laws of creation through number and sound and measured nature's laws accurately, predicting eclipses, planetary and seasonal changes. We find in the meander patterns in 35, 000 year old graves in Siberia perhaps the same 13 number magic squares found in Babylon, China and Europe, and also among the Hebrews ( The Sigil of Saturn). The Hebrews are said to have this magic square around the time of China’s Shang dynasty (1700 b.c.), although exact dates are difficult to confirm. The numbers were based on musical scales that defined early human perception of cosmic rhythms. Individuals, in China for example were listening to the Number (and later trigram) qualities as the tone-voices of the “Interior Gods” of their body or the greater “god-tones” of planets and star beings. These Number-beats had to be maintained in balance and harmony, like any personal relationship, or one’s outer life would suffer. The principle is that geometry is “number in space”, music is “number in time”.

People in the west came to associate music directly with our soul, but not with our body. They lost the knowledge of the relationships that exist between tone and the inner constitution of our body. "The rhythm of the spirit has the property of grasping the essence of music; it gives presentiments and the inspiration of celestial science," wrote Beethoven in 1810. The Judeo-Christian God or Plato’s Forms impose a preassigned design on the chaos of a recalcitrant nature. Natural change is abstracted and instrumentalized, driven by a linear teleology which takes us from creation to the
realization of the given design. There is a plan, a beginning, a more or less straight line, and an end. For Orientals in the search for an explanation of origins, there is the assumption that the world is “self-so-ing” and auto-regenerative, with the energy of transformation residing within the process itself. This is close to what quantum physicists are learning about space and time in nature - from the 4% that is visible to them - what the rest is they infer from the visible and call it "dark matter," "black holes," " dark energy" and so on. The West looked outward, while the East looked inward. Both were right relatively but to look both ways is what is needed. The greatest mystery today for scientists is perhaps to understand gravity. Energy flows out and returns in an entangled universe. We contain all the energies in our bodies, and can work both up and down the scale of vibrations, transmitting them both ways.
A friend sent me a Christmas Haiku yesterday:

Two in the manger
The Word wakes as Number sleeps
Who dreams of return?

"White man's burden"?

Before the British came, India was one of the richest countries in the world. In 1800, India, China and Egypt (and probably many of the kingdoms of central Africa) were economically more developed than Britain. Indeed the British had nothing for sale that was of interest to the Indians or Chinese. When the British left in 1947, India was poor and industrially backward.

Britain did bring free trade to India and China. Britain had extracted large surpluses from India, and forced it into a free-trade pattern, which obliged India to export commodities and become a dumping ground for British manufactures. Historians estimate that the net transfer of capital from India to Britain averaged 1.5 percent of GNP in the late nineteenth century. The wealth transfer was financed by a persistent trade surplus of India, which was sent back to Britain or spend to expand the British Empire. India’s export-import ratio was 172.5 percent in 1840-69, 148 percent in 1870-1912, and 133.4 percent in 1913-38. This export orientation was a tool of colonial exploitation, and free trade a British ploy to force its manufactures on India and crush domestic industry.

Instead of enriching the world, the British Empire impoverished it. The empire was run on the cheap. Instead of investing in the development of the countries they ruled, the British survived by doing deals with indigenous elites to sustain their rule to extract maximum amount of revenues for Britain itself, which the British historians now deny.

Whether in 18th-centuryIndia, 19th-century Egypt or 20th-century Iraq, the story is the same. As long as taxes were paid, the British cared little about "the rule of law". They turned a blind eye to Indian landlords who extracted rent by coercion or indigo and opium - planters who had forced Indian farmers to cultivate and their products were forced upon the Chinese. Unable to sell anything to the Chinese, Britain sent in its gunboats, seizing Hong Kong and opening up a market for opium grown in India. Despotic repression was fostered where it protected British interests.

India is the prime example. Ruled by Muslims before the British, India was a prosperous, rapidly commercializing society. The Jagat Seth, India's biggest banking network and financier of the East India Company, rivaled the Bank of England in size. British rule pauperized India. The British restricted Indian weavers' ability to trade freely and the result was a drastic drop in living standards. Dhaka, now the capital of impoverished Bangladesh, was once a state-of-the-art industrial city. Its population fell by half during the first century of British rule. Now, average Indian incomes are barely a tenth of the British level in terms of real purchasing power. It is no coincidence that 200 years of British rule occurred in the intervening time.

Rabindranath Tagore wrote “The chronic want of food and water, the lack of sanitation and medical help, the neglect of means of communication, the poverty of educational provision, the all pervading spirit of depression that I have myself seen to prevail in our villages after over a hundred years of British rule make me despair of its beneficence.”

Durant's quote gives a limited perspective . From Spain to Asia (and Ceylon and Indonesia) decadent and corrupt civilizations were reformed democratically in what became the synthetic Islamic Empire in which Jews, Christians,Iranians and others contributed culturally and in government positions . This renewal was the case with India. Throughout the Middle East and Asia most who became Muslims were introduced to it by non-Arab Muslim teachers.The Islamic Age brought a revolution in every field of human thought, advancing mathematics , geography, the arts, architecture, philosophy, urban development, medicine, the establishment of schools, libraries, public works and social welfare. Europe remained in the Dark Ages for centuries. What the monks in Europe learned of Greek knowledge -- science, medicine and philosophy etc, which became the basis of the Renaissance -- came from Arabic translations.

In the city of Kut south of Baghdad, a half-flooded cemetery is one of the few memorials to British control of Iraq. The tops of gravestones stick out of the water which obscures the names of some of the 40,000 British soldiers who died in Iraq in World War I.
British rule over the three provinces which became present-day Iraq was never pleasant.
When the Kurds and Iraqis revolted against the British in the 1920's, Churchill advocated airplanes bombing villages.
BBC NEWS Britain's role in shaping Iraq
Feb 3, 2003 ... CHURCHILL'S SOLUTION. Winston Churchill. I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes.
news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/2719939.stm -