Kadyrov, 33, was once a separatist but switched sides, recasting himself as an Islamic leader who is also loyal to Moscow.
At first, his injection of national pride along with lots of money from the central government in Moscow soothed war-weary Chechens.
And at first, the process of Islamization was voluntary. Any female student who wore a headscarf initially earned a prize of $1,000. Now all females, regardless of their religious convictions, must cover their heads in schools and government offices.
Kadyrov has banned the sale of European-style wedding dresses in the republic’s bridal salons. Polygamy is increasing. Members of the team around Kadyrov openly have several wives. Kadyrov has also supported honor killings.
Lipkhan Bazaeva, who runs a nongovernmental organization promoting women’s rights, says Chechnya is going back to the Middle Ages.
“Yes, we are a traditional, conservative society, with our own values, but the government has gone overboard, declaring unacceptable limits on women — that they should sit at home, they should obey their husbands,” she says. “As an individual, she has no rights even if her husband beats her, despite Russian laws to the contrary.”
Tagged: traditionalism Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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johnpi
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johnpi
Lebanon’s Shiite clans seek end to some old traditions.
It started with a small traffic incident and ended in yet another murderous showdown in the age-old vendetta wars between the powerful Shiite Muslim clans who rule Lebanon’s eastern Bekaa Valley.
But unlike past feuds, this time clan elders and the militant group Hezbollah stepped in to defuse tensions, handing over to authorities the suspect accused of murdering a rival clan member and agreeing on a pact to end the revenge killings.
The “gentleman’s agreement”, drawn up earlier this month, marked a first step in clan efforts to do away with their reputation as outlaws who have long ruled supreme in the remote arid plain of the northern Bekaa, a Hezbollah stronghold traditionally ignored by successive Lebanese governments.
“Our customs date to pre-Islamic times and dictate that each family is responsible for the security of its members,” said Moflih Allaw, a member of one of the most powerful clans in Hermel and whose relative was involved in the recent killing.
“If someone from a clan was murdered, a member of the opposing clan had to die and that was part of our tradition,” added Allaw, 67, a local councillor in Hermel who helped formulate the recent pact.
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aziz
Has anyone managed to reconstruct the grand debate on traditionalism in the Islamsphere from circa 2006? About half blogs involved have broken/inaccessible archives.I seem to recall someone here at TI mentioning it recently but couldn’t find it.
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Zack
Here’s one solution.
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thabet
That reminds me: what happened to the blogger known as Von Aurum?
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Zack
That still misses Ali Eteraz.
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aziz
you mean his wordpress blog I assume. i see that some of the old eteraz.org content is in the Wayback though.
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Aasem
Zack, you can update my links as I have shifted my blog to wordpress.
Tradition (1): Key Dualities
Tradition(2): Conversation Incarnate
Tradition(3): Converse to Create Knowledge
Tradition(4): Conclusion and more…-reagrds
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pi.info
This is why I tend to excerpt heavily. There are too many examples of blogs and bloggers disappearing into the void — taking their important contributions with them. It’s hard to have or create a common understanding if you can’t at least reference the insights and information that informs your perspective. Ali Eteraz is one example of such a loss: Salafi Burnout is another.
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aziz
actually, Wayback does a good job pf preservation. The problem with Ali’s blog on wordpress is that he explicitly set the robots.txt file for max privacy, so archive systems cant access the content. Usually the reason content is gone is because the owner wants it thus; otherwise the default is to leave stuff available forever. blogspot.com and wordpress.com arent going anywhere
If ever for some reason (god forbid) I was unable to continue actively maintaining TI I would at bare minimum fund its domain and host in perpetuity so teh archives were permanent. My estimate is that for about $1000 I could keep it online for almost 50 years. Ideally Id just handover the day-to-day ops to others, though, in the hope it would be self-sustaining. But one way or the another, TI content is here to stay. (which goes for the Journals, too).
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abunoor
People should of course write with the intention that what they are writing is there forever and should write with such taqwa.
However, if people have for whatever reason decided they do not want their own words on their own blog to be available anymore, that should obviously be their right, and I don’t think it would be correct to try to thwart their intentions.
Allaah knows best.
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pi.info
That get’s into other sets of ethical issues, as posted here.
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Abu Noor
John, I remember that post — I agree there are some different considerations if a particular post makes specific allegations against someone or if for some other reason the post itself is newsworthy.
I think one should be careful in assuming that the blogging etiquette that has developed is necessarily consistent with Islamic adab and good character.
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null
here are too many examples of blogs and bloggers disappearing into the void — taking their important contributions with them.
It’s always distressing. Sunni sister, Mere Islam, Dervish (Umm Yasmin) …
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aziz
incidentally we added a category to the Brass Crescent Awards this year for just such blogs. So nominate!
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null
I’m sorry Aziz, I must be daft – but which category would that be?
Or do you mean, just to vote for defunct – but much missed – blogs under the Best Blog/Best Writer categories? Confused…
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aziz
oh no i meant there was a categgory for BEST RETIRED – Shahed may not have added it yet to the drop down, let me bug him about it…
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Naila
Apropos somewhat: I spent the week reading through 19th-century archives of letters, personal correspondence, and other material for a project, and it occurred to me how the advent of email and ethereal cyber-communication will make this kind of research so much more difficult, if not impossible, in the future. Personal letters especially are invaluable windows into the past, and crucial especially for biographies, and I wonder what we will have a 100 years from now.
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null
I felt this way often. Thomas Carlyle, Goethe, Nietzsche all have such impressive letter correspondences.
It’s a lost art.
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Naila
Have you read Naipaul’s correspondence with his father? Absolutely gorgeous stuff.
I couldn’t open the video link you posted. It shows up and no play option works. The title of the video sounds wonderful.
Ah, technology.
Future historians will have to mine through Facebook, Myspace and Twitter accounts…
*shudder* I will take my late-in-the-night solitary intimacies with microfiche in the dank library basement any day.
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null
This is the URL for the video Naila:
http://www.ted.com/talks/lakshmi_pratury_on_letter_writing.htmlOr just search ‘Lakshmi Pratury’ on ted.com. Get your tissues out.
I haven’t gotten around to reading much of anything by Naipaul actually. Maybe the sappy family letters are just the thing to warm me up to him.
Towards the end, my nani suffered from some memory loss. The things she knew off by heart until her dying days were surahs from the Quran Sharif, and the love letters my nana sent her when they were courting. Pages and pages, word for word. Magic.
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thabet
Future historians will have to mine through Facebook, Myspace and Twitter accounts…
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aziz
(since the thread has been hijacked from my initial purpose, I am removing the post content and will try again later.)
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Shams al-Nahar
The Granada/TI debate is isomorphic with Taymiya and Ghazali, not Rushd and Ghazali.
Taymiya argued that Ghazali was intellectually promiscuous in that he used Other (christian, greek) philosophy (as opposed to purely Islamic philosophy) in argument.
Ghazali argued that truth is seperable from origin.It was not adab that failed us in the fitnutz thread (well mine did, okfine), but our shared mizan, our methods and criteria for the resolution of intellectual conflict.
Because interpretive disagreement is legitimate, and that is how knowledge expands and grows.-
Buzz
Shams – you could atleast try to hide that you have drunk the Granada koolaid. You regurgitate so verbatim it is like a purple ring around your lips.
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Shams al-Nahar
What do you expect?
Like my beloved Ghazali, I am intellectually promiscuous.
I see both value and flaw in TI and Granada.-
Buzz
ok
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Buzz
I am intellectually promiscuous.
Is that the same as polytheism?
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Shams al-Nahar
no……but it IS kinda like being bi-spectual in the World[of Warcraft].
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Buzz
That was a little rude. I apologise.
I thought toeing the party line exactly was a right-wing-thing that you abhored. Have you become that thing? The mirror image of western imperialism?-
Shams al-Nahar
whose partyline am i toeing?
yours? theirs?
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aziz
i wasnt referring to granadablog at all.
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Shams al-Nahar
I was.
lol
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Ibn Sadiq
shams
I think Granada is intellectually promiscuous without being theologically promiscuous (not saying anyone here is… I have to be so sensitive on this site).
there is no way granada is on the “ibn tayimya side” in your analogy, notwithstanding, that we ourselves are sufis; and half of our blog is an attack on salafees (well one aspect at least)…. lol the idea that granada is on the tayimya side v ghazali debate would go down with a laugh here in our home city. Since one of our members is deconstructing and questioning “the book of tawheed” on another forum.
the other half of our blog is littered with western philosophy, post colonial thought, feminism, marxist critical theories and debate over liberalism and modernity, ideas we have adapted and engaged with as well as our own traditional islamic disciplines; all governed by a maqsid grounded in our Muslim tradition…all pinned together with our belief in Allah (swt) and the Quran and sunnah as guide…
I dont know where this charge that we are resilient, unworldly and isolated (lacking intellectual adaptability) comes from. (apart from coming from buzz who hasn’t a clue what we are on about, and who joins an army of moral commentators who are anti-granada because they can’t put us in a box and thus latch themselves onto a few sentences or two… to justify their uneasiness)
I know now that many clearly have not read the granada project network page…. which speaks about the necessity of cross disciplinary and cross pollination in respect to science and ideas…
True, We adhere to principles, that we believe are unambiguous, and unquestioned, in that these have travelled through revelation through systems like the shariah … and there is an overwhelming consensus that Islam abrogated the shariah, and correct the aqidah, of religions before it…
But perhaps then we come across as “overly-Muslim” because this site is a little less so… in that everything here is a rationalist perspective, where if the blog was written by a few cosmopolitan surfers… much of the conclusions would be the same, since you derived only from observing your surroundings, while the content and key phrases might change….say from calling each other “bro” you might call each other “dudes…” there is no obvious discussion on what exactly is Muslim about your politics
Buzz might be Muslim, and may Allah guide us all, (I;m not making takfir) but there is nothing Islamic (adherence to Muslim sciences) in his conclusions, he just thinks, being “universal”, tolerant and intelligent makes you, somehow, be default an excellent Muslim who’s captures Islam’s spirit.
…anyway, I promise this is the last time I come to Granada’s defense. Too many people write about too many intelligent things for the conversation to be about Talk Islam xenophobia to anything different and anything they perpetually misunderstand…
Salam
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Buzz
Buzz might be Muslim, and may Allah guide us all, (I;m not making takfir) but there is nothing Islamic (adherence to Muslim sciences) in his conclusions, he just thinks, being “universal”, tolerant and intelligent makes you, somehow, be default an excellent Muslim who’s captures Islam’s spirit.
Haha. Let me play too, Yasir. You are not a takfiri but you do say all the things a takfiri would say. May whatever gods you worship guide you as well, both the political ones and the spiritual ones (which is NOT to say you are a polytheist who uses the Name of Islam as a label to faux legitimize your political agendas cuz I am TOTALLY NOT saying that)
Thankfully, the “Islamic” club you belong to is not something I need or want to belong to. I am glad you have come out of your phony phase and you are really letting your hair down in these last couple of posts.
So NOT polemicist.
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shams
well…I am referring to Taymiya’s rebuttal of kalam al-nafsi, the inner speech that is separate from the politics, etc you describe. Ghazali was the opposite side in that.
Taymiya maintained that knowledge was inseperable from identity, and that is why he fiercely resisted cultural borrowing from western thought.
I did not mean to offend…Taymiya has some excellent points…
He was a polymath and a great scholar.
The other way you remind me of him is the “thunderbolt” style of argument.
Please forgive me if I have offended thee….it was not deliberate.I will still come to Granada’s defense.
Shams al Nahar– Defender of Granadablog! -
Ibn Sadiq
ou are not a takfiri but you do say all the things a takfiri would say.
a takfiri is someone who says another is NOT muslim. Don’t reinvent the term … to make yourself some pathetic granada victim so you can justify your moral pontificating about how wrong we are….
believe me if I wanted to call you a kafir I would do it directly, … I call you a maftoon. If you were a kafir i would excuse you from the things you say…as a maftoon I’m obliged to argue/clarify what part of Islam you have reshaped for your secular benefits…
Thankfully, the “Islamic” club you belong to is not something I need or want to belong to. I am glad you have come out of your phony phase and you are really letting your hair down in these last couple of posts.
Bro this is not about joining a club, this is about our obligation to those less fortunate and what message we should promote on their behalf… I’m sorry you see this as a lifestyle choice.
phony phase?
subhanAllah, like the true racist, always suspicious, when i say the opposite to what you think I’m “phony” when I reaffirm your xenophobic image about being violent I’m being the “real” me.
We’ll leave it at that. Buzz your an animated corpse made active by the Other’s gaze…. Muslim shell – white politics
You offer nothing to the ummah, and want instead the Ummah to offer you peace of mind by reorganizing into good Muslims v bad Muslims … hope you find yourself in gaza one day, try telling them their enemy’s zionism is just another path to Allah (swt).
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Buzz
You have no idea what I believe you incredible fool. You are the one who comes here to make friends and engage in dialog and then rips into people when they don’t buy into your load of turds.
You must have some kind of psychological issue. The prescription is patience, being an example of your (fake) position and if all else fails, anti-psychotics.
You are a goof and not to be taken seriously as far as I am concerned. I read you and Granada blog for amusement purposes only.
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aziz
I’m closing this thread.
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buzz
Worship services at the first (and last) unsplintered monolithic religion
Every simpleton who watches Fox news knows clearly that while we ‘speak’ of moderate and extreme Muslims…in fact, they are all one fatwa away from being radicalized. Rifqa Bary has made this quite clear.
So it goes with Christianity in the dreaded “Fitnutz” debate. While abrogation has been defined and refined, one thing most of you involved in the discussion will agree on is that Christians are all idiots who believe exactly the same thing: the Divinity, the Trinity and the only begotten Son of God.
Not necessarily so fellow bloggers. Meet the non Trinitarians. Here the divinity of Jesus and the trinity are debated according to scripture. Can it be that there is variation in Christian belief? I thought that was only a “Muslim thing.”
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razib, murtad fitri
as an organized movement unitarian christianity is rather small. also, i would suggest that some non-trinitarians, like mormons, are even more objectionable from a muslim perspective….
though it would be interesting to dig up data on how many christians reject the trinity, as the number will likely be higher than explicit unitarian christians.
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razib, murtad fitri
this is gonna be hard. *i* come up 2 times on the front page of one google query i’m trying to use to dig up numbers on this….
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razib, murtad fitri
give up for now. this looks like it might be a long-term project to find such a survey. part of the problem is that most christians have very inchoate views on the trinity. they just know they believe in it….
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Buzz
They don’t know what they believe in. This non-sense was cooked up a long time ago and never completely explained or justified and Christians are called to have faith in anycase rather than apply logic.
An objective, “interfaith” view of the Prophecy and Mission of Jesus (one share with me by a Sufi master) is that Jesus’ work was cut short by the Romans and his school and his teaching to apostles was never completed. That is precisely why Christianity has a bit of (excuse me any Christians out there) a broken feel to it. It is really incomplete. A lot of blanks had to be filled in.
It is a really really sad story. It makes you want to cry for Jesus, truly. He was very human. Very pure. On the night prior to his crucifixion, all he wanted was company and his apostles could not stay awake. His best follower was a prostitute! She poured perfume on his head in preparation for his death and his great apostles criticized her for the waste of the perfume that could have been sold to feed the poor.
Poor man.
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Buzz
“This bread is my body – eat it! This wine is my blood – drink it you ungrateful useless unfaithful followers.”
Sounds different if you imagine it went down that way. -
Otto Kerner
Bob Price argued somewhere that the real meaning of the Trinity is “sit down and shut up”, i.e. “we [the church authorities] will do the thinking for you. There is no theology being discussed.”
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thabet
How much do the different major sects/groups (RC, Orthodox churches, etc) agree/disagree on the Trinity?
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Otto Kerner
They mostly agree. They all descend from a single church organisation legalised under Constantine in the 4th century, which seems to have had the trinity as an article of faith. Subsequent schisms often concerned the nature of Jesus’ divinity, not the yes/no of it: Assyrians emphasise the separateness of Jesus’ divine and human natures; Miaphysites (Copts, Ethiopians, Syriac Orthodox, and Armenians) emphasise the unity of the two natures; while Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholics, and Protestants all accept the medium Chalcedonian position.
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mirelle
If you want to make your head swim, I’d suggest a read of the Athanasian Creed. There’s a reason why this thing isn’t read in liturgical churches except on Trinity Sunday.
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aziz
it was my understanding (confirmed downthread y James) that the Trinity is now a core belief, and disbelief in it is enough to warrant the label “heretic” under any of the main Catholic or Protestant groups.
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mirelle
Aziz, it is. But there was a time when it wasn’t, prior to about 200 CE. It’s not obvious from a close study of the Christian scriptures, although apologists have been reading things back into various texts for literally centuries. (Or even doctoring the text to read it back in, cf. “Johannine Comma” for the gory details.) My own study of the subject indicates to me that the earliest followers of Jesus in Palestine were strict monotheists. They probably saw Jesus as a prophet, perhaps even something like “God’s last prophet,” but wouldn’t go any further than that. However, Paul’s evangelism of non-Jews combined with the disaster of the Jewish War in 67-70 CE unmoored early Christian belief from its foundations and set it free for all sorts of innovations. That would include not only today’s orthodoxy but also the Gnostic Jesus as depicted in the Nag Hammadi writings.
Oddly enough, it was the heretic Tertullian who came up with the Latin “trinitas” to describe the relationship he perceived between God the Father, Jesus and the Holy Spirit. Tertullian thought the church in his day was insufficiently rigorous and joined a breakaway sect called the “New Prophecy” or Montanism. Ironically, although it’s been a parlor game amongst scholars for centuries to decide which ones of Tertullian’s works were written before he joined the Montanists and which weren’t, all of the scholars are in agreement that his discussion of “trinitas” is most assuredly orthodox. Go figure.
One thing that one has to keep in mind in this discussion is that the Trinity is inseparable from the discussion about Jesus’ status. You can’t have one without the other. Had Jesus merely stayed a prophet and not become a cosmic savior figure (as in John’s Gospel wrapped up with Paul’s letters), this discussion likely would not have happened (or at least not in the form we see it now).
In the past, there were many, many, many times that I wished I’d been a fly on the wall during the first years of the Christian movement. Now, I just want to know when it became OK to worship a human being as God, and thinking that probably is not a good thing.
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razib, murtad fitri
mirelle, well isn’t it almost tautological (from a non-christian perspective) that the palestinian christians were monotheistic in a straightforward manner? they were jewish, and christianity was a sect of judaism (in fact, officially rabbinical judaism didn’t reject christians as jewish until the end later 1st century when xtianity had mostly become a gentile religion which did not adhere to jewish law).
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Otto Kerner
I think it’s obvious — although, since it flies in the face of orthodoxy, it still needs to be argued — that none of the various authors of the Gospels, and probably the New Testament in general, knew about the Trinity. The later Trinitarians even felt the need to add a passage (the Comma Johanneum) to one of the epistles mentioning it specifically. There is almost nothing in the Gospels which implies it and much that appears to contradict it. Some of the epistle authors and possibly the author of John seem to have believed that Jesus was God, but that still only indicates a two-person’d God.
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Buzz
There is almost nothing in the Gospels which implies it and much that appears to contradict it.
How do Christian decide upon “apocryphal” gospels or verses? Is there a set process?
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Otto Kerner
Do you mean, how did the decide which works would be considered apocryphal and which canonical. It appears to have been a fairly complicated process, is about the extent of my knowledge. To a certain extent, the Church fathers made an admirable effort to apply some sort of standards and rigour in deciding what made the cut, although well short of modern academic standards. I haven’t read Lost Christianities, Bart Ehrman’s book on this subject, yet, but I’ve found his work in general to excellently informative and readable.
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mirelle
razib: I agree with what you said. I think that had the Jewish War not happened, the Christianity that apparently sprang up around Jesus’ family in Palestine would have been a serious contender, particularly combined with a proselytizing Judaism. One thing people tend to forget is that first century Judaism proselytized, the Empire had a significant minority of Jews, estimated to be around 10%, Judaism as a philosophy had non-Jewish adherents who didn’t keep Jewish law but were called “God fearers” AND Judaism had a coveted exemption from worshipping the Emperor as a god. The Jewish War put an end to most of that and Paul’s version of Christianity moved into the vacuum (but it was not without its own problems). I wish we knew more about the period, but we know more now than a few decades ago.
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razib, murtad fitri
if you haven’t, recommend rome & jerusalem.
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Buzz
The Divinity and Trinity aspects of Christian theology could very likely have been inserted as a trademark stamp on God, like a patent on an invention.
I think the important question, as a 6th Century Muslim theologian and qadi, is: do non-trinitarian Christians, those that believe in the Gospels and the same standard for God that Prophet Mohammad revealed, do these Christian have the right to legal and spiritual protection or are their beliefs in God also abrogated because of the label they share with other non-conforming (bida’at) Christians.
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razib, murtad fitri
i think we’re gonna talk more theology on a blog that doesn’t talk theology….
anyway, if so, i’m out of the conversation.-
aziz
since when has that ever stopped you
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Buzz
It was totally a rhetorical question.
It was answered and accepted more or less, However begrudgingly. -
Crabby
According to some scholars specifying on the Christians saved in 2:62, it is the Christians who, during the time of the Prophet, didn’t get into Son of God/Trinity business by default that were saved while those that fell into that polytheistic doctrine were damned.
If that is true, it will be very interesting since it means there is actually historical cases of that “uncorrupted” Christianity being practiced in the Prophet’s locality.
But the idea seems to go against the general Muslim narrative that original Christianity has always been lost.
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aziz
LOL “monolithic” religion!! nice pun, Buzz
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Buzz
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Shams al-Nahar
One of my shayyks (the living one) hypothesized to me that the trinity is christian mysticism.
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midwinterspring
This is certainly true for the Orthodox tradition. There is an excellent book titled “The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church” by Vladimir Lossky in which this idea is developed. Lossky explains that, from the Orthodox perspective, there is no mysticism without the trinity and there can be no theology of the trinity divorced from mysticism.
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shams
tyvm
I shall jump on that as soon as I finish Time and Cosmology -
thabet
Talking of which whatever happened to ‘western’ mysticism?
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Otto Kerner
Shams, the bizarre thing, it seems to me, about the concept of the Trinity is where the Holy Spirit comes in. Once they deified Jesus, that necessarily makes a two-person’d God, but the third is a question mark. It always struck me as a reasonable explanation that the Holy Spirit was originally a name for something that early Christians experienced while in ecstatic trance states; i.e., basically Christian mysticism.
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shams
Otto, perhaps mysticism is an emergent property of religion…..or just an emergent property of homo sap. that gets co-opted by successive evolutionary stages of religions.
Is there a buddhist expression of mysticism?-
Otto Kerner
Well, I guess it depends on what you mean by mysticism, exactly. Isn’t Buddhism nothing but mysticism? What I mean is, Indian religions in general have trance states as their main ostensible goal (one should probably make a distinction between vipashyana and trance states, but it’s close enough for government work).
The above is true from a theological perspective. Ordinary people often have worldly magic or social ends in mind, instead.
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midwinterspring
I observed that debate from afar and don’t really care to weigh in on the issue of “abrogation.” However, I believe you are mistaken in suggesting that there is any room for legitimate disagreement on the issue of the trinity and the divinity of Jesus (alayhi salaam) within Christianity. Like any other religion, Christianity does leave room for disagreement on many theological issues. This is clear enough when looking at the differences between Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant theology. But the trinity is simply not one of those issues. It is at the heart of the most basic creeds of the faith. Those who deny it are not Christians in the meaningful sense of that term. We may regard them as followers of Christ, of course, and we can certainly see them as having played some role in the history of Christianity. Perhaps such people are even addressed by the Qur’an — Allahu alim. But to insist that they are Christians in any unqualified sense of the term is to deny the Christian tradition the right to define itself.
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Buzz
In your view, is it fair to call the Trinity belief a polytheistic dimension of Chritianity?
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midwinterspring
While it may be a grave error from the Islamic perspective, I don’t think it can be properly classified as polytheistic.
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Buzz
yeah, three in one. I get it.
These ideas are basically theological impasses between religions. Best left well enough alone.
Sad, cuz it would be nice to resolve but it probably would have been resolved by now if it was easy.-
midwinterspring
On the other hand, there is the observation of G.K. Chesterton:
“It is not merely true that a creed unites men. Nay, a difference of creed unites men – so long as it is a clear difference. A boundary unites. Many a magnanimous Moslem and chivalrous Crusader must have been nearer to each other, because they were both dogmatists, than any two homeless agnostics in a pew of Mr. Campbell’s chapel. “I say God is One,” and “I say God is One but also Three,” that is the beginning of a good quarrelsome, manly friendship.”
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Buzz
“I say God is One,” and “I say God is One but also Three,” that is the beginning of a good quarrelsome, manly friendship.”
Yes. I completely agree. I love to argue and I love good arguers.
Not everyone sees it that way. -
aziz
that is a glorious quote. Indeed, the king of Byzantium is said to have welcomed the emissaries from the Prophet SAW, in defiance of the Meccan pagans. In the movie The Message this event is dramatized with the king drawing a line in the sand and saying (of the muslims) that this is all that separates us, the implication being that the gulf between him and the pagans was far vaster.
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Buzz
Hahaha…you know….
On the other hand…Christians could say, “We’re polytheistic!?!?! You Muslims are 33 times worse!!!!”
But I am not sure Christians are willing to agree that the Trinity equates to Al ‘Asma ul Husna (99 Divine Names).-
Buzz
Makes a numerologist’s head spin.
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shams
nasrani kafir muthallith
“christian trinitarian infidel”i love arabic.
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shams
i mean, there is a word for everything and sometimes many words for delicately shaded meanings and nuance.
and if there is a word for trinitarian and a word for polytheists then then they mean different things. -
Buzz
Then we can decomission the word, synonym.
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shams
synonym means LIKE… not “exactly the same.”
arabic is an oral tradition language….meaning is dependent not just on context, but on inflection sometimes. -
Buzz
Glad you are studying Arabic. When you speak fluently, you can begin to look down on other Muslims. Meanwhile, try to keep up on the language of al Dajjal:
Synonym: 1 : one of two or more words or expressions of the same language that have the same or nearly the same meaning in some or all senses
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shams
look…im supporting your argument.
if trinitarians == polytheists why are there two different words? -
Buzz
Wait a second Shams. You made me your personal punching bag on the Sura Ikhlas issue and now you are willing to concede?
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shams
? i thought you were defending the trinity, not the godhead here.
sura ikhlas says not begetting, not begotten….nothing about splitting into 3 parts like some of triplic meiosis.
jesus is not the son of god.
sura ikhlas says nothing about trinity. -
shams
defending trinitarians against the charge that they were polytheists, i mean.
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Buzz
Yeah, yeah…sorry. I got it.
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aziz
I’ve defended the Trinity concept form the polytheism charge many times myself. Its not just “three in one” divine schizophrenia kind of thing, its actually three separate projections of the same concept onto different “axes” of human perception, like a solid mass throwing a different shadow profile onto the X-Y, Y-Z, and X-Z planes. The Three is a manifestation of our limited human perception, not an inherent property of the Divine itself.
There’s a sort of Platonic sense about it that appeals to me from an aesthetic perspective.
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Crabby
Shams comment that Trinity is Christian Mysticism is interesting. There were also other Muslims who could see in that concept aziz’s wrote. Two example is Pickthall’s (one of well known translators of the Quran) sheikh and a famous Iranian poet, Hatef Esfahani.
Pickthall was a Christian and as he grew to appreciate the Quran, he expressed his desire to his teacher, the Sheikh ul-Ulema of Damascus Great Mosque become a Muslim. The teacher reminded him he should consult with his mother first and that as Pickthall wrote:
“No, my son,” were his words, “wait until you are older, and have seen again your native land. You are alone among us as our boys are alone among the Christians. God knows how I should feel if any Christian teacher dealt with a son of mine otherwise than as I now deal with you.” Then, pointing to a candle burning near, he said: “Observe this fire. There is a shapely flame, the light that shines around us, and when I put my hand out, there is the heat as well. I blow, and all is gone. How many things? You answer three in one, I answer one. We both are right.”
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Esfahani was lured into a Church by a Christian girl whom he was enraptured with and this was their little discourse:
“Those who give counsel, alas, it is better,
To teach me about your love by word or letter.
I know the road to the place of happiness, I know!,
But, alas, I have fallen in fetters of sorrow.
In the church, to the Christian charmer, I muttered:
“O fairy to whom my poor heart is fettered,
Till when you must fail to achieve divine unity?
Till when be damned to impose on One the Trinity?
How can you call the Single One (with reason lost)
A father, a Son and the Holy Ghost?”
The Christian opened her sweet lips and thus she said,
While from her smiling mouth candy melted:
“If you know the secret to unity,
Why do you blame us with blasphemy?
In three looking glasses the everlasting maid of grace
Sends rays of radiant light from her shinning face;
Silk shall not be three things if you call (she vented)
Shot silk, pure silk or a silk painted.”
While thus we were discoursing near the door
I heard this song being chanted by the choir:
That there is God only and none but God,
God is the sole Being and none but God.”Credits to this lone facebook post. I have to add again, that the concept of Trinity very much probably unfolded very differently outside of the Prophet’s small locality.
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shams
I am unsure if it is a bug or a feature of my personal skull furniture, but I always find Ars Poetica the most persuasive, and most capable of melting socio-religious boundaries in understanding.
shukran Crabby. -
Crabby
You’re welcome! Well.. sometimes knowing I don’t have the wits to grasp religion properly, I feel like giving it up and think maybe just being kind to each other is enough. For shams and also anyone out there caught up in the middle of religious fighting:
“Heresy to the heretic, and religion to the orthodox,
But the dust of the rose-petal belongs to the heart of the perfume seller.” – Akbar’s Abu Fazl.Peace.
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shams
heh
my personal experience with al-Islam is that it grasped me.
bi la kayfah
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razib, murtad fitri
midwinter, unitarian christians (of whom there is an active church in hungary dating back to the reformation), mormons and jehovah’s witnesses (who explicitly count themselves as latter-day arians) reject the trinity. they are outside the ‘great tradition,’ but they would bristle at being called followers of christ. that being said, it’s a matter of numbers really from a non-christian perspective. if mormons become 10% of this nation’s population of self-identified christians it doesn’t matter that nicene christians think they’re not christian, for the large and growing non-christian minority in this country that’s good enough for a first approximation.
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razib, murtad fitri
to be explicit, i once lived in an area where over 50% of the self-identified christian population was mormon. the non-mormon christians would reject that christians were mormon. but for those who were not christian in any way, operationally one simply took mormons at their word that they were christian.
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mirelle
razib, where did you live? Somewhere in Idaho? Even when I lived in Salt Lake City in the 1990s, the city itself was trending towards minority Mormon status, especially if one factored in the trend of dual church membership (that is, nominally Mormon but actually a member of another Christian church). I believe the city itself is now minority Mormon, due to the move of Mormons out to suburbs like Sandy and points further south and west.
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razib, murtad fitri
yeah, it’s minority mormon. salt lake tribue has data which suggests utah is only 65% mormon as a whole now. i lived in eastern oregon.
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Otto Kerner
Most Christians might regard Unitarian Universalists, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and Mormons as “non-Christians”, but I’d be surprised if they also treat Oneness Pentecostalists as non-Christians. The Oneness Pentecostalists are modalists, insofar as they believe that God can appear as the Father, Son, or the Holy Spirit, but they don’ t believe that these are three separate persons.
I don’t know anything about how the Hungarian Universalists are viewed by their neighbors.
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midwinterspring
Certainly sociological factors can affect the way in which we refer to various religious groups. But I don’t think that really changes the basic issue here. If Mormonism were to someday entirely overwhelm traditional Christianity to the point where it was no longer questioned whether they were “really Christians,” we simply wouldn’t be referring to the same thing when we spoke about Christianity. It wouldn’t mean that the other Christians had been wrong all along. It would mean only that the Mormons had won the right to redefine Christianity to include themselves.
Of course, I don’t have a problem with the operational use of other definitions of Christianity for various purposes, as you mention in your second comment. This even seems to have been how Christianity was historically understood by Islamic ruling powers. As I understand it, heretical Christian groups fared relatively better under Islamic rule than they did under Christian rule, precisely because the Muslims weren’t particularly concerned with whether or not Christian subjects were “really really Christian.”
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razib, murtad fitri
in the short term, yeah. the persian church had a nestorianish (though not quite) theology, and could because they were outside the roman empire. obvious christological argument got chilled out once the monophysites were mostly under muslim rule too.
the same applies to muslims. the ismailis arguably faired much better in the indian subcontinent before the emergence of unified sunni muslim hegemony under the later mughals.
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razib, murtad fitri
from below abu noor says:
Obviously one needs context, but there is a notion in the American/European context that associates religious observance with conservativeness. I see no reason why that should always be the case, or even an assumption.
i think this is an important point. people create definitions which are natural in their own context, but implicitly generalize them. for example, for most of american history up until 1960 the proportion who were affiliated with a christian church was increasing. most of this was due to increased urban concentration and transportation, but some of it was due to revivals of religion such as the second great awakening or the religious revivals concomitant with the progressive movement of the early 20th century. similarly, the % who are religious and believe in god has increased in south korea, and ‘liberal’ views tend to be concentrated among christians in that nation.
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thabet
I think Daniel Larison underestimates the psychological damage ‘social pressure’ can have on people (speaking of what I have witnessed of traditional, religious, close-knit, families and communities as an ‘insider’):
abunoor, 
Dan, and 3 others are discussing. 
null, 
Naila, 
Buzz, 
Ibn Sadiq, and 1 other are discussing. 
Otto Kerner, 
Shams al-Nahar, 
Crabby, and 6 others are discussing. 
Dan 12:15 pm on November 3, 2009 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Kadyrov will ruin Sufi Islam this way.
shams 12:56 pm on November 3, 2009 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Nah.
Nothing has the power to ruin sufism.
ya-haqq FTW!
abunoor 3:27 pm on November 3, 2009 Permalink | Log in to Reply
The Kremlin regards Sufism as an ideal alternative to Salafism because Sufism agitates for non-violent methods, does not interfere with politics and helps to divide Russian Muslims, especially in the North Caucasus, according to ethnic characteristics. The North Caucasian insurgency has the opposite goal: to unite Muslims living in the Caucasus with those living in all Russia under a banner of the holy war against infidels and for establishing a pure Islamic state. The rebels in the North Caucasus recently gained an important ally—the famous Russian Muslim preacher Said Buryatsky.
abunoor 3:35 pm on November 3, 2009 Permalink | Log in to Reply
My point is not to insult Sufism as a whole, but the criminal tyrant agent of Putin Kadyrov and anyone who would support him.
Willow 4:06 pm on November 3, 2009 Permalink
Sufism is not inherently nonviolent in any case…there were armed Sufi uprisings against the French in Algeria and the British in Sudan in the 19th century. Neither are Sufis necessarily less conservative than salafis or anyone else. At their root, the differences between traditionalism and salafism are ontological and organizational (the nature of God, the role of madhahib and sheikhs, etc) rather than practical. There are plenty of ultraconservative Sufis.
I think the ‘Sufism’ advocated by RAND/the Kremlin etc is largely a product of wishful thinking and some internet research.
Dan 4:18 pm on November 3, 2009 Permalink
The difference between militant Sufism and militant Salafism is that Sufis do not engage in offensive wars, nor do they try to destroy the cultures of the people they oppose. Did Imam Shamil try to kill Russian civilians when he was opposing the Russian invasion? Obviously not. Even the most ultraconservative Sufi will not go as far to destroy shrines like Salafis have done in the past.
abunoor 4:29 pm on November 3, 2009 Permalink
Dan,
I don’t know what you mean here by offensive wars and I’m pretty sure that we would disagree on what it means to destroy ‘cultures’ of people they oppose, but I think you need to read up a little bit on your Islamic history.
Start with Usman dan Fodio, rahimuAllaah.
shams 7:45 am on November 4, 2009 Permalink
well….I think sufis can engage in offensive warfare…witness my personal meme jihad.
also, too— the sufis at Granada Blog.
Dan is quite wrong, according to the past Grand Imam of Al-Azhar…
At this blog at least, with Buzz and I as exemplars, people should abandon the stereotypes of Sufis as medlevi whirlers and pacifist aesthetes.
abunoor 4:19 pm on November 3, 2009 Permalink | Log in to Reply
You make many good points Willow but the point here is that Kremlin Sufism is plenty violent, its just that the violence is directed at Muslims who dare challenge their agent.
bingregory 8:57 pm on November 3, 2009 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Cry me a river, abunoor. Basayev and his goons undermined, disobeyed and repeatedly tried to kill the elected president of independent Chechnya, Aslan Maskhadov [as anti-Kremlin a sufi as you could ask for] during the interbellum, and when that didn’t work, provoked Russia by invading Daghestan, prompting the second war. Whatever violence wahhabis (and everyone else) have to endure now from that hideous monster is entirely the doing of the unmissed Basayev, Khattab, etc, whatever young jackal has taken their place, and their wahhabi bankrollers in the Gulf.
Dan 11:26 pm on November 3, 2009 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Exactly. The piece of shit Salafis are entirely to blame for the situation in Chechnya. I have yet to see Salafis condemn Shamil Basayev and his cronies for what they have brought to Chechnya. That scumbag who proudly took children hostage in Beslan as well as engaging in ethnic cleansing in the Georgian town of Sumo is the one responsible for the situation in Chechnya. But hey, like the Taliban, you will never see Salafis condemn one of their own. I’m glad Basayev is dead and anyone who supports or defends that piece of shit can go to Hell for all I care!
abunoor 11:50 am on November 4, 2009 Permalink | Log in to Reply
binGregory,
As salaamu ‘alaykum. I don’t really understand your comment, akhi. I was writing to criticize (very sharply indeed) Ramzan Kadyrov and the brand of “Sufi Islam” promoted as a joint project of he and the Kremlin.
I don’t think you are defending that so while I appreciate you contributing with critiques of other figures in Chechnya as well I don’t understand why you would be so hostile (cry me a river?) to my comments.
Aslan Maskahadov was killed by Russian agents who were given medals by Putin, who is the hero and close close ally of Kadyrov, so again I really don’t understand what there is in my comments that you disagree with.
Maybe you can clarify for me, I’m honestly confused.
Allaah knows best.
bingregory 7:45 pm on November 4, 2009 Permalink | Log in to Reply
The war against Russia was a national struggle for independence. Upon achieving that, the salafis showed that what they really wanted was an eternal War on Kufr which like the War on Terror will never end.
The idea of an independent Chechnya died when the Salafis invaded Daghestan. The death of Maskhadov only confirmed it. From that point forward, Chechnya was going to return to the state of a Russian client. From that point forward, the only reasonable position was to settle. After three generations of rebuilding a civil society, if living with Russians is still intolerable, they can always try again. In the meantime, a Russian puppet state that endorses Islam, recognizes Islam and builds islamic institutions – masjids, madrassahs, radio stations – is the best possible settlement.
Now the only people still fighting are those same salafis, and the way they recruit for their struggle – besides cash money, that is – is by declaring the puppet state to be *islamically* illegitimate.
At this point, with imposing hijab etc Kadyrov is merely stealing salafi talking points. As soon as the salafi rebels quit using religious differences as a means to legitimize what is now a *civil war* against their Chechen brothers, Kadyrov can ease off the repressive islamic program. And that’s why I am hostile to an armchair critique of the islamicness of what Kadyrov is doing: that critique is the grounds for a pointless ongoing civil war in Chechnya. When salafis put their guns away, I will be less hostile to criticisms of Russia-sponsored state religion.
bingregory 11:35 pm on November 4, 2009 Permalink | Log in to Reply
I can’t resist adding that Aslan Maskhadov came to the United States in 1998, between the wars, when hope still existed, as the head of state of Chechnya, as the victorious mujahid who had led his people to independence, to plead for recognition and cooperation with his country. Where were our Salafi brothers? If they had come, they might also have met and heard from a half-dozen muftis of predominantly muslim Russian states who told us that prospects were bright for the muslims of Russia who were enjoying the most religious and cultural freedom they had seen in at least a hundred years and were busy building masjids, religious schools and cultural institutions for their growing populations, while the ethnic Russians dwindle away. Take the long view! Little wonder Daghestan and other neighboring muslim regions decided they were not interested in the bloody anarchy Basayev and the boys were busy trying to unleash. It is difficult to appreciate the maxim that was old when Ibn Taymiyyah endorsed it, that tyranny is preferable to anarchy, until you see the terrible mayhem that Salafi insurgencies excel at creating in country after country after country. Islam, or sufi Islam if you must, is quietist when it needs to be and oppositional when it needs to be. After 20 years of devestating war when the only people left fighting are unhinged perma-jihadists, now is the time for quietism.
abunoor 11:59 am on November 4, 2009 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Ok, I guess I’m reading know that there is some confusion about the actual circumstances of Maskhadov’s death and that some claim Kadyrov is directly responsible.
It still doesn’t help me to understand what you have a problem with in my comments, binGregory.
Dan 12:19 pm on November 4, 2009 Permalink | Log in to Reply
I’m guessing that he thinks you are putting too much weight behind condemning Kadyrov and his cronies while staying silent on the Salafis who as bingregory said, brought the situation to what it is now.
abunoor 12:22 pm on November 4, 2009 Permalink | Log in to Reply
But that’s unfair — Kadyrov is the topic of this thread not Salafis or even the history of the Chechen wars.
abunoor 12:30 pm on November 4, 2009 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Ok, I guess Salafis are part of the topic in that this is stated explicitly as a counter to Salafi Islamism.
Are you or binGregory arguing that this is an appropriate response by Kadyrov?
Finally, if people think I’m somehow reflexively biased in favor of Salafis I can’t really blame them but I don’t think that is true. First it ignores the basic reality that intra-Salafi animosities are often more heated and emotional than Sufi/Salafi ones. I’m not sure if that is true amongst Sufis. For example my own teachers are often savagely criticized by the pro-Saudi government anti-interfaith or intrafaith Salafis as well as by the Jihadi Salafis.
But beyond those points, for me personally, I don’t deny that I’m not an equal opportunity criticizer. But I think my bias is less about Sufi/Salafi than about pro-government or anti-government. I wil admit that I am much harder and more emotional in my critiques of those who side with oppressive government power than those who fight against it, although I acknowledge that especially during wars, there is much wrong that is done on both sides.
Dan 12:32 pm on November 4, 2009 Permalink | Log in to Reply
abunoor, what about critiquestowards so-called Islamic governments that are oppressive (i.e. the Taliban)? I noticed that the same people who are quick to condemn the brutality of secular (or in this case, ‘Islamic’ leaders backed by an imperialist power) but stay silent when it comes to people who profess to spread the message of the Almighty.
abunoor 12:39 pm on November 4, 2009 Permalink | Log in to Reply
I think viewing the Taliban as an “Islamic government” is questionable Dan. They are a nationalist resistance movement at present and never really established complete control over the country even at their height.
I don’t think you’ll find many regimes of which I am more critical (maybe it doesn’t always come through in the topics discussed on TI, but I assure you it is correct for me, but I can only speak for myself I don’t know who exactly you are lumping me in with here) than ones like Saudi Arabia or Iran, which claim to be Islamic but are oppressive and tyranical.
Dan 12:53 pm on November 4, 2009 Permalink | Log in to Reply
That’s good to hear abunoor. But I want to make it clear that I was not singling you out by any chance. I was just making a general observation when it comes to criticism of this nature.
I’d like to discuss whether the Taliban is nationalist or transnational (I believe the latter because they held a desire to export their movement to neighboring countries, including Iran), but I would venture to say that we would be straying from the original topic.
At least we can both agree that Kadyrov is a ruthless tyrant. It’s a shame that Anna Politkovskaya isn’t around anymore to expose his crimes even further.
abunoor 12:59 pm on November 4, 2009 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Well, I guess it is actually more tribalist in one sense than even Nationalist, but the tribe extends at least into Pakistan so that makes it transnationalist. There are also indications that some elements have bought into a transnational Islamist type ideology but it is pretty clear that there are other elements who are more narrowly focused. And of course here we’re only talking about whatever element is explicitly ideological. The majority from the foot soldiers up to some of the chiefs are I’m sure actually driven by some perception of what is their self interest (including that of their family and those they care about of course) in what is in many ways a desperate and terrible situation.
Allaah Knows best.