Submitted by Manuel F. Nuñez(United States), Dec 30, 2007 at 20:04
Beyond that, however, a "moderate" Muslim, in order to call himself a Muslim, must believe that (1) women and non-believers do not have the rights of believers; (2) all man-made governments are illegitimate and must be replaced with Islamic governments (the Caliphate); (3) Shari'a law must be imposed on all persons, including the punishments dictated by the Quran; and (4) the practice of all other religions must be either eliminated or strictly suppressed. These tenets define Islam, and without them there is no Islam. A reading of the Quran makes this abundantly clear.
... Let's take them one step at a time, shall we?
1) "Believers" are not just men. They are men and women. Women have certain rights over men according to the concensus ('ijma) of the scholars on SOME issues within the fiqh (jurisprudence) of marriage. I have to keep reminding people of ignorance (like yourself) that there is NO BOOK called "The Shari'ah" and that it is not JUST based on the Qur'an but also on the Sunnah, which is open to all manner of interpretations. In Sunni Islam alone there are FOUR schools of methodology of derivation of Law, each with dozens of sub-schools. And the result of all of this is thousands of books of Law, with hundreds of thousands of fatwas (legal opinions).
Now, the thing about Non-Believers -- that term is not used for Christians or Jews or Gnostics or Hindus or people of ANY established religion. ANYONE with a REVELATION -- i.e. a BOOK -- are known as ahl-ul-kitab. These are EXPLICITLY Gnostics, Christians (actually Nazarenes, but we've come to regard the Christians as the watered down form of these people), and Jews. They are subjected to the Laws of their traditions. In the case of Judaism, they are held accountable to either the 613 Mitzvot OR the Shari'ah -- whichever they prefer (and the preference is given to them). This was how the Prophet s.a.a.s. ruled and how the first four Caliphs ruled. In the case of Christians, who have no Legal Body and have taken the pagan laws of their spiritual ancestors -- the Greeks and Romans -- they are subjected to their own Laws. And if you actually read Islamic History -- like Marshall Hodgson's "The Venture of Islam" three part series, you would KNOW this ...
2) Any government with which the Muslims have a treaty MUST be regarded as LEGITIMATE. And if you wish to say "Well...treaties with Muslims are not eternal..." let's take the mirror and turn it back onto our own government. Our laws and treaties have not exactly been immutable, have they? As a matter of fact, how many Native Tribes did we royally screw over by cancelling out previous treaties? How many millions of people did our cancelled treaties exterminate? With the single exception of the Armenian slaughter that ONE of the Turkish rulers oversaw, I do not recall any such gross violation of honor as that which our own government perpetrated again and again upon both blacks and Natives within the last 150 years alone.
The myth of Muslims invading countries and forcing them to convert at the point of the sword is easily disproven if we take a good look at Southeast Asia, wherein a HUGE percentage of the countries are Muslims. It is not only Indonesia, Malaysia and Brunei, but remember that there are minority populations of Muslims in the Philippines and in Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand and Burma/Myanmar as well.
And let's look at this... when was there an Arab Army or a Persian Army invasion into the Island Nations of Southeast Asia? NEVER. These people accepted Islam freely, of their own free will and accord, and adapted the Shari'ah laws to their own cultures. "The Luwaran" is a basic textbook of an adaptation of the Codes derived from the Shafi'i Methodology by the 13 Muslim Tribes of Bangsa Moro in the Philippines, for example. And they differ considerably in adaptation from the Codes derived from the SAME school among the Yemenis (from whom most of the influence of Islam originated) and other Arabs. The Indonesians, being a matrilineal culture (as opposed to a patrilineal one, such as the Arabs), re-adjusted the Shari'ah in light of this and during the colonization period, there were many Muslim Indonesian women who married Christian Dutch men and raised their children as Muslims. Some of these Dutch - Indos, as they came to be called, were even Hajjis and Scholars.
The Qur'an is a book that is originally written in Arabic. Anything else is but a translation and subject to faults. Additionally, you need a good understanding of the sciences of ta'weel and tafseer to properly delineate the teachings of the Qur'an alone...not to mention a whole other corpus of knowledge necessary to delineate the teachings of the Sunnah.
So...where are your licenses in the sound knowledge of tafseer and ta'weel, sir? Where are your certificates of authenticity? Are you a hafiz of the Qur'an? Can you recite it all? No, you cannot. In fact, you may not even speak Arabic. And that means that you have no clue just what you're talking about, once again.
3) I have already stated that A) Shari'ah Law is not a single code of laws as some FOOLS try to pretend and B) that Non-Muslims are held to the standards of their own laws, unless they should prefer to be ruled by the codes of the Shari'ah. If you would care to read about Islamic History, you would know that this was the case. But you just like to assume a lot of things and spout off about things of which you have no knowledge. Fools will do as fools will do.
As for the Wahhabi Fundamentalist school which has its source in "Saudi" Arabia -- it is aided and abetted in its preaching and spreading and corrupting of decent Muslims by those in power who hold close alliances via their family's oil wealth and business deals. That select group of people in power in this nation have allowed the Wahhabi "Saudis" to dictate what books go into the majority of the mosques and they have allowed the Wahhabi "Saudis" to establish their dominance in the MSA (Muslim Student Association) across the US and Canada. So if you want to complain about this, then change our government. I personally don't like this either but since people like you continue to vote in rulers that like to cause wars while allowing extremist ideology to spread...well, what can I say? And in the meantime, you spread all of these false claims? You are helping to carve all of our dooms.
4) The practice of other religions under the Classical forms of Sunni Islam was neither eliminated nor strictly suppressed. This is only the case in "Saudi" Arabia, which is aided and abetted by our present administration. If you want to complain, write to the President and tell him to stop helping out his buddies over there and to forbid them from passing their books to US mosques and start investigating who is in charge of the MSA and start helping Non-Wahhabis to run the MSA's and the mosques. Then maybe we wouldn't have so much mis-information running around and corrupting young, idealist Muslims in their late teens and early 20's.
But going back to the Classical Tradition as exhibited by the first four Caliphs -- the religions were neither eliminated nor suppressed. Only the preaching to Muslims was dissuaded. As for the killing of apostates, that is a mis-interpretation. In the early days of Islam when the apostates were actually committing treason and going to the side of the pagan Arabs of Mecca, the punishment of death was sometimes enforced, in the same way that the punishment for treason is enforced within most nations today, with death.
You should know of what you are speaking before spattering out all of these misconceptions and foolishness.
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