We do not have much of a disagreement then.
Cheers

If He was sent to be the savior, why would one need to do anything else than follow the savior to be saved?

Because, from a Muslim perspective, the original message of the savior was later corrupted by humans. That is why.

Here's an even more ignorant question for you. This question is basically "hey I saw something do you know what it is and now explain it to me".

I live near Philadelphia. In the city, I have often noticed African-American women wearing full-body burqas. The burqas are all black, and the only visible skin of the women's bodies are their hands and the areas around their eyes. My assumption is that they are Muslim, but this is based upon the glib assessments of friends and co-workers, who speak without any real knowledge of their culture.

You had previously expressed that burqas are largely throwbacks to older Middle Eastern cultures, rather than dictated by the Quran. Yet, these women are presumably not of a Middle Eastern culture (since they are African-American, and this is my only reason for mentioning their race). Are they representative of a particular sect of Islam? How prevalent is this sect in the U.S.? Throughout the world? Is this culture explainable by any reference to the Qur'an, or do you believe it to be based on a misunderstanding of doctrine?

Ordinarily, it'd be none of my business. But I see these women out and about, working jobs, speaking to men, etc. I'm trying to get a handle on why one would so shield her physical appearance from the world, but otherwise seem to live fully in it (i.e. I would think that if one is prohibited from showing one's face, one would also be prohibited from going out in public without being escorted by one's husband/father/brother/etc.).

Recognizing that this is a hugely loaded question, would you please do your best to describe what Muslims believe to be the "original message" of the Savior?

There are some admittedly vague verses in the Qur'an about veiling. However, you need to realize that veiling was common practice for women (especially higher class, aristocratic women) in the Middle East as well as in Eastern Roman and Sassanid Empires before Islam. So, Muslims just continued the common practice. However, there are no verses in the Qur'an explaining how exactly should the covering of the body be. That is why you would see widely different versions of the covering of the hair and body in Islamic countries (from very light covering in places like Turkey or Malaysia to burqas in Afghanistan and chadors in Iran or abayas in Saudi Arabia). I am assuming that the women you saw either learned their Islam from more strict Muslims of the Saudi Arabian or Afghan variety, or they are recent converts who do not want to err and be "theologically" safe by trying to be more Muslims than the Muslims

The original message of the savior is the eternal truth of "Islam": That is being humble, kind and loving; and submitting your will and ego to the will of one God. The eternal and all-loving God who created the heavens, earth and humans out of his unbounded compassion, mercy and wisdom.

OK, enough for today. Post your questions and I will try to answer them tomorrow.
Cheers everyone

So in other words you can't back up what you originally said in the quran, and instead must refer me to commentaries.

you originally claimed that the Quran does not mean for these passages to be universal commandments. So I'll ask again, Where is the passage in the Quran that confirms this claim? Hint: referring me to commentaries doesn't count.

What killed islamic science?

Regular science

rize, come on; this is a good thread. The question clearly refers to the relatively advanced scientific knowledge of Islamic culture during the European 'Dark Ages', and its replacement with hyper-religious stuff. He's basically asking why Islamic culture didn't produce the Spinning Jenny in 1400 and special relativity in 1600. Damn good question IMO.

You sound awfully like the Islamic fundamentalists by repeatedly asking me to find answers from the Qur'an. Do you realize that? It is kind of funny. On a more serious note, only a marginal minority of Muslims throughout history has had the attitude towards the Qur'an that the fundamental Christians have toward the Bible. Mainstream Muslims believe that although the Qur'an is word of God, it has a historical as well as a theological context. This context is provided by Muhammad's words, deeds and traditions (Hadith) as well as the order and causes of the revealed verses ("Why does this verse call for a fighting?" "What is the intended meaning in the context?" etc.). These questions are not trivial questions and cannot be answered by reading the Qur'an over and over again. That is why the secondary literature on "Hadith" (Prophetic Traditions) as well as "Tafsir" (Qur'anic exegesis) are not trivial exercises, but absolutely essential ingredients of an Islamic worldview.
By insisting on looking at the Qur'an from a perspective which is more favored by Christian (mostly Protestant) fundamentalists, you will only confuse yourself and not understand much about what is really going on in Qur'an.
Cheers
I hope

In 1258, the Mongol Hordes coming from Central Asia sacked the capital city of Baghdad of the Abbasid Dynasty. At that time Baghdad was the cultural and scientific capital of the world. The entire city as well as its multiple libraries and research institutions were burned down. Many scientists and researchers were outright killed if they did not want to work for the Mongols. This was a major blow to science in the Islamic world. Islamic world recovered from this major blow, and it was still possible for people like Ulug Bey (in Samarkand, Uzbekistan) and Ali Kushci (in Istanbul, Ottoman Empire) to make significant contributions to mathematics and astronomy in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries.
Ultimately, the scientific and cultural enterprise in the Muslim world depended on financial stability and economic prosperity which were provided by the Muslims' control of the major trade routes of the world (Indian Ocean Trade System, Silk Route etc.). As the Portuguese and the Spanish found new maritime routes to India and discover the Americas, the Global Economic System experienced a major shift from a Mediterranean and Indian Ocean based system to an Atlantic centered system. So, beginning in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, not only the Muslim states, but also the Italian city states (which benefited from the Mediterranean trade with the Muslims) began to relatively decline in economic terms. New powers such as Spain, the Dutch and the British rose. Since science follows money and you cannot create real science without a secure economic and financial system, the Muslim lands entered into a long and gradual decline in scientific studies. The new science would of course be done in the rising powers of the European continent.
Cheers

PS: The idea that the decline of scientific enterprise was due to "Islam" goes back to nineteenth century orientalist Ignaz Goldziher and is completely discredited now. After all, if science declined in the Middle East because of Islam, how did it rose there between the eight and tenth centuries in the first place? You know, they were Muslims back then too.

I wished I had a book about Islam written by damaci. It has been years since I did read any kind of book, but this one would be worthwhile reading it. And I wouldn't read it in first place because how acknowliged and informative damaci is, but because his nice and clear explanations awake the hope in me that peace in this world might not be an illusion after all.
Thank you damaci and cheers

Very kind words. Thank you.

Wow. that is terrible logic, whatever the truth of rise,fall,or decline of science in the muslim world.

I think it`s a logically fallacy called Post hoc ergo propter hoc ("after this, therefore because (on account) of this").

The point is that the rise or fall of science in a civilization has very little to do with religion, and is essentially related to broader social and economic factors. I hope you did not misunderstand it.
Cheers

Whether the above is correct or not, the argument you made was that it can't be islam now because it wasn't islam in the past. THAT is a ridiculous argument... for your students sake I hope I misunderstood it.
hope that's clearer. thanks.

Yes, you misunderstood. Now follow me step by step.
The dependent variable that we try to explain is the rise and fall of scientific studies in the Islamic world. We know the following facts: Islam was introduced in early seventh century to the Middle East. Then we have an incredible level of scientific flourishing from the eighth century to around the thirteenth century in the Middle East. Then, from the mid-thirteenth century onwards, we see a gradual decline. If you use the independent variable of "religion" in order to explain the dependent variable of "level of science", then you would have a problem, because although the dependent variable changes significantly, your independent variable remains, for all practical purposes, the same. You cannot explain the change in a dependent variable by referring to an independent variable that does not change. Do you understand that?
Now, what I am saying is that the real independent variables that you should use to explain the change in the dependent variable (level of science) are economic and social factors that are related to changes in the World Economy which I explained earlier.
Now, first, get a good book on logic and study it. Secondly, if you are a university student, or a graduate of a university, go to the administrative center of the university and demand your money back.

Let's replay what's happened here.

You said it was not true that the Quran commands Muslims to kill non-believers.

I showed you over 100 passages in the Quran that command Muslims to kill non-believers.

You then qualify your statement by saying, well, these weren't universal commandments.

I then ask you to show me where the Quran (not you, and not someone else that's willing to grab for any straws whatsoever on youtube in an attempt to show Islam to be more peaceful than it is in reality) says that these commandments aren't to be taken universally, you don't, and then randomly call me a fundamentalist.

Is that a good summary of what has gone on here?

I don't see how my status affects the quality of your argument, but if you think it does.. shrug.
Religions morph, sect arise, they flow in and out of influence in a society. The American science and technology would look different if the amish had more influence and our museums and cosmology would (will ) be different if the fundamentalist christians gain more power.
The flaw in your argument is that there hasn't been, isn't and won't be a unitary "islamic" viewpoint anymore than there has been, is or will be a christian one. That is assisted by the fact that it also depends on the influence a religion or a sect of it is having on a society at any point in time.
It may help you if you didn't think of the variables as constant in influence over time, whatever the variable is.

Along those lines, until science pushes on the right religious buttons it can progress even if the main religion of a culture is rather anti-science or science neutral up to a point. Anti-science and anti-intellectual aspects of religion only kick-in when science butts against some basic beliefs, easy to see that aspect of the problem in modern america. Just what triggers it varies from religion and sect both in christian and islamic strains.
Certain religions may be science compatible and stop bleeding people and take the odd shot of penicillin and then go nutso with creationist museums, cosmology and stem-cells. Does the fact they were ok with science is 1821 mean they must be ok with it today?
Equivocation error likely, confusing the term "islam" with the various concepts it has, does and will represent in any given society at any given time.

What is your argument again? I am a historian and a social scientist, and I cannot give any single social factor (including religion) more importance as an explanatory variable than it is historically justifiable to do so. Now, I am telling you once again that religion in general is a weak predictor to explain what historically happened to the scientific enterprise in the Middle East from the introduction of Islam in the seventh century to the thirteenth century and beyond.

I am not saying that religions do not ever change, but that the actual change one may observe in the interpretation of Islam from the seventh century to the sixteenth century in the Middle East is not enough to explain why there was intense scientific activity in the Middle East from the eighth to thirteenth centuries, and why this intense scientific activity gradually lost its force beginning with the Mongol Invasion of 1258, and almost disappeared from the scene by the seventeenth century as the Muslims lost their global position as the masters of trade and industry to the Europeans.

Now, normally I am a soft-spoken man, and I am willing to hear your historical arguments about why you think that the rise or the fall of science in the Middle East was due to Islam rather than other social and economic factors that I already mentioned. Then we may talk more productively, I think.

Ultimately, my point is that Islam was responsible for "neither" the rise nor the fall of scientific activity in the Middle East. For some strange reason, I feel that you give religion much more importance as a social explanatory variable than it deserves.

I am sorry that Muslims' actual standards of how to interpret the verses of the Qur'an and how to live by them do not conform to your childish, naive and fundamentalist reading of these verses. But I think that this is the fault of neither the Qur'an nor the Muslims.