And another thing. Posting a picture of 9/11 to prove that Islam is violent is about as misleading as posting a picture of a Klansman hanging a black guy to prove that Christians are violent.

There are at this moment 250,000 US troops in Iraq,
more than 1 million dead Iraqies
more than 3 million ,16 % of Iraqi populatition have become refugees
Your Argument Is Invalid.

Not tongue in cheek. The great civilization that achieved great splendour over in Bagdad embellished under the figure head named Haroun al Raschid. This was a wonderful and spiritual culture of a very high order(786 to 809 A.D.). This was the time of Charlemagne who was only beginning to read and whose culture was of a more primitive order.

True, wars of the Arabic culture spread to Europe and especially into Spain. They continually knock on the doors of Europe. We can see a Europe surrounded by Arabism. Wars are fought all along the line stretching from North Africa to the Iberian peninsula and are beaten back by European Christianity, by Charles Martel and Charles the Great himself. Beaten back, it would be easy to imagine that Arabism disappeared but war is not always and most likely not about religious conquest and we have Arabic thought surreptitiously enter into European Christianity.

Now I'll bring the point of the whole matter. Any consideration of thought processes and basic approach to science in particular reveals that only individuals bring these matters to specific peoples. the reincarnation of Haroun al Rashid was none other than Lord Bacon of Verulam. there was a commander of the Arabs at about 711 A.D. named Tarik and he stormed Spain via Gibralter from North Africa. His name was Gebel al Tarik from which Gibralter ws named. Oh wow, and this very man reincarnated and was later known in the west as Charles Darwin.

Before one is accused of propagating any particular position especially in the sense of science one must see that what was consequential to this was the advent of ABSTRACTION OR ABSTRACTIVE SCIENCE, the thrust of this great Arabic culture.

To see abstraction properly one can see our Cartesian coordinate system in which the x,y,and z axes are abstracted from the consideration of left-right, up-down and front-back. Man then deals with the three dimensional space by denying that the left is different than the right, for example. Bring one's Ego to bear on your own left and it is not the same as the right. the consequences of abstraction and Arabic thought denies the difference. Man can really only truly relate to the positions in space by experiencing the so called directions within himself and they have been abrogated. Man , in truth, can only relate to the entire cosmos by considering himself as part of that cosmos. Our present thought process separate the individual man who in a sense sits outside reality not considering himself to a part of the same.

OK, I'll stop, for it can only be appreciated slowly and I've gone as far as I can. By the way, the history I've presented can be referenced in Volume 1 of Steiner's "Karmic Relationships", an 8 volume work published by the Steiner Press of the Anthroposophical Society.

rizeagainst! There are a lot of passages in the Quran that relatives your quotes from Quran for example:

Sura 22 - Al-Hajj (MADINA) : Verse 39
To those against whom war is made, permission is given (to fight) because they are wronged― and verily, Allah is Most powerful for their aid


Sura 4 - An-Nisa (MADINA) : Verse 90
Except those who seek refuge with a people between whom and you there is a covenant, or (those who) come unto you because their hearts forbid them to make war on you or make war on their own folk. Had Allah willed He could have given them power over you so that assuredly they would have fought you. So, if they hold aloof from you and wage not war against you and offer you peace, Allah alloweth you no way against them.

Al-Kafiroon (THE DISBELIEVERS, ATHEISTS)
Say: O disbelievers!
I worship not that which ye worship;
Nor worship ye that which I worship.
And I shall not worship that which ye worship.
Nor will ye worship that which I worship.
Unto you your religion, and unto me my religion.


I think these verses are enough to show you that what you have been quoting from Quran are related to the state of war.

Hmmm. OK, first, the Arab Commander's name was Tariq bin Ziyad (Jabal simply means mountain in Arabic, and the name Gibraltar is derived from Jabal al-Tariq (Tariq's mountain). Both Tariq bin Ziyad and Harun al Rashid are important political figures, no doubt. But for the flourishing of science in Islamic science, you need to look at the "Bayt al-Hikma" (The House of Wisdom), the library and research institution founded in Baghdad and reached its peak of influence during the reign of Al-Ma'mun, one of the sons of Harun al-Rashid. There was an intense translation movement around the House of Wisdom and many Greek, Indian and Persian ancient texts were translated into Arabic there in the ninth century. There was also much original research going on there, resulting in the virtual invention of Algebra (coming from the name of the famous book of Al-Khwarizmi, named Kitab al-Jabr). As a side note, the name Algorithm comes from the latinized name of Al-Khwarizmi. Anyway, Algebra and abstract mathematical thought later led to the foundation of proper experimental scientific method by Ibn al-Haytham in his famous work on Optics. These works were later translated to Latin, and together with the philosophical works of Ibn Rushd (known as Averroes in the west) greatly contributed to the early scientific revolution in Europe. In any case, you are on the right track.
Good luck and cheers

My beef is that religions for the most part, Islam especially, have fanatical books with fanatical claims. So it should be no surprise that people who think they were divinely inspired become......................fanatics.

No doubt, there are others: how does one give true credence to centuries or even years of accomplishments by individuals? I can't twit over that but I didn't write it to praise the Arabic culture but more to characterize a very small but large piece of history. To be clear, this what you may call "Abstraction" and possibly revel in, is in no small part a petit madness which mankind is working his way through.

Haha, yes, yes, indeed. The "abstraction" you mention is essentially related to the great Arabic insight that mathematics could be generalized to a level so that it may be seen as "the" language of nature. In the early modern period, of course, the general conception was that this language was the language that the author of the nature ("God") wrote the natural laws. So, it was practically a humanized way of understanding the intention of this author. This Arabic insight about the connection between mathematics and physics was completely foreign to the ancient Greeks. One needs only to carefully read the Physics of Aristotle to see that. In the later stages of modernity, the original Arabic insight about the natural laws remained in place while the emphasis on the "author" gradually faded away. The whole process, from the very start, might perhaps be characterized as madness. But, nevertheless, it is this madness that created our modern world. The modern world may be described, philosophically that is, as so deeply and ubiquitously an Islamic creation that the very moderns living in it do not even realize it: What can I say? Fish living in the ocean can not understand the ocean.
Cheers my friend and deep greetings from the bottom of my heart

You believe, perhaps correctly, that you have proven via long posts that Islam is not the cause of scientific decline in recent middle east history. I have no argument for or against that, shrug.

There was water in my pool for over 9 months, therefore this hard shiny stuff in it now can't be because of the water.

There were lions in the zoo in London for over 200 years so this animal attack on this boy couldn't be done by the lions.

Science rose in the 9th century in a muslim civilization, so the recent decline can't be influenced by islam.

When you're done worrying about what insult to try next ( you're an amateur on these forums in that department) you might want to run just the two paragraphs I quoted past your philosophy department for soundness of argument. Be prepared to be embarrassed.

You are tempting me into a prop bet.

g'luck in any case.

Yeah, yeah, whatever...I am a busy man.

A couple of questions - some more serious than others.

I've heard that some governments (in particular Saudia Arabia) edit the Quran to their liking. Could you comment on this.

How long (if ever) before women get equal rights in Islamic countries (obv your speculation)?

How do non-fundamentalist muslims react when someone draws Mohammed's picture?

What % of muslims do you estimate gets extremely angry when someone draws a funny cartoon of Mohammed?

P.S. IMO rise is wrong (not considering %'s and other factors is a mistake) and luckyme is right (technically that is - I haven't read what the actual argument is - for all I know the conclusion is correct regardless of the logical misstep).

I haven't dealt with anything he has written, just the one ludicrous two sentence argument he made. I can't get through to him that I'm not disputing he could be 100% correct on his conclusion ( reached through other methods) but the argument he put forth that I disagree with is beyond terrible.
He's so wrapped up in "hey, I'm a plumber so when I say water runs up hill on thursday it must be correct" to actually read what I write.

edit: the reason I think it's important is because he is claiming to be an expert. If his reasoning ability is such that he believes the logic in his statement is so rock solid that my objection to it is proof I'm in need of help we should not be trusting his ability to weigh and analyze evidence and draw conclusions from it.

What are the things in the Quran that are the most disagreeable to you personally? Things in Islam in general?

Do you think getting muslim countries to be less religious would be a good thing?

Nice thread, thanks

Do you think muslim empire was at some point perhaps in general the most advanced and pleasant place to live in at that time?

There is not anything in the Qur'an that is particularly disagreeable personally to me. To paraphrase what Nietzsche once said, wherever I look (Torah, New Testament, Qur'an, it does not matter), I see things human, all too human.
Cheers

Certainly. If somebody forced me to live somewhere in the world in the tenth century, I would choose to live in Baghdad. Early sixteenth century Istanbul does not sound too bad either.

How does that change wether it's disagreeable or not? War, rape and slavery are human, all too human.

Looks like you missed this question:
Do you think getting muslim countries to be less religious would be a good thing?

Editing or changing the Qur'an in any significant way at this point is impossible. No Muslim would ever accept that. Perhaps they are sponsoring some new commentaries?

Women do actually have equal rights with men in Turkey. The general direction of social change in the rest of the Middle East is pointing at the Turkish model. Some places like Lebanon and Syria (perhaps, Egypt, but it is difficult to argue one way or the other for Egypt) might be following the Turkish example earlier than other places, like Saudi Arabia. But there is no doubt about the general contours of the modernization process. It is slow and painful, but it is there. Of course, the end result of Middle Eastern modernization might not directly or completely reflect the European experience. But I do not think that this last point is terribly important.

I think I already mentioned that the classical Islam does not like the general idea of the representation of living things (including humans). But the last hullabaloo about the cartoons of Muhammad, I think, was more about the perceived "disrespect" against Muhammad (and how he was depicted) in those cartoons felt by many Muslims rather than about the fact that he was depicted at all. In any case, I have many Muslim friends, both religious and non-religious, and many of them absolutely love the comic strip named "Jesus and Mo" (you need to see it, I think it is great). I have absolutely no idea about what percentage of religious Muslims would get angry if they saw a funny cartoon of Muhammad.
Cheers

I have a pretty neutral stance on religions. I do not think that getting rid of them would necessarily be a good thing, as I do not think that they are the ultimate causes of human greed, stupidity or violence. Greed, stupidity and violence are natural qualities of a species that have only recently evolved to be differentiated in any meaningful manner from chimpanzees. Historically, religions have been utilized for incredibly good things as well as for some stupid things, but I appreciate them nevertheless. Religion is like art or love, it is part of the human experience. Although, I have seen pretty stupid and downward harmful examples of both art and love, I would not want them to disappear. Why would I?

I did not say disappear, I meant become less important than it is now.

Isn't that a terribly sugarcoated thing to say? "they have been utilized for incredibly good things as well as for incredibly bad things" would have been straightforward. Why do you feel the need to apologise like that?

Don't forget that Mo is actually Mohammed's body double and not Mohammed himself

Originally Posted by Arouet
Ok, this has been bugging me since I read it and I think I've figured out why. You've basically described these sections in a quite rational way that they were drafted by the leader in a political manner in order to help them rally the troupes. I get that.

However, this is a pretty non-theistic approach, of which I approve, however how would an adherent approach these paragraphs? Doesn't the inclusion in the Qu'ran elevate them beyond pragmatic rally cries for a particular time to more general exhortations to be applied throughout history?

Ok, these violent passages are still bugging me, and again, I think I figured out why. Let's accept that those violent passages were contextual and meant to respond to a perceived threat against the Muslim faith/community. Let's also accept that Muslims are taught that those provisions only apply in certain circumstances. Isn't it the case, then, that those who want to invoke those provisions merely need to analogize current conditions/perceived threats to those ancient threats and those previsions can be justified once again. Is that part of the the thinking that does indeed go on with current radical Muslims invoking (and acting on) those provisions?

Iirc it was a Nat Geo program and the claim was that in a lot of places they give their interpretations of words in parentheses in the Quran. Like if it says e.g. infidel, they write (Jews) next to it and stuff like that - I don't remember the actual examples. The program represented it as strict government control of how Quran should be interpreted (and of course religious texts mean little without interpretations and can mean diametrically opposite things under different interpretations) in such a fashion as to benefit the rulers. So I thought you might know more about this.

What is your actual point again? I have zero need to apologize for anything.