Paris: Charlie Hebdo shooting

sportsczy wrote:WILL “moderate Muslims” finally “speak up” against their militant coreligionists? People around the world have asked (but, as in the past, have not all seriously examined) this question since last week’s horrific attacks on the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and on a kosher supermarket in Paris.

In fact, Muslim statesmen, clerics and intellectuals have added their voices to condemnations of terror by leaders around the world. But they must undertake another essential task: Address and reinterpret Islam’s traditional take on “blasphemy,” or insult to the sacred.

The Paris terrorists were apparently fueled by the zeal to punish blasphemy, and fervor for the same cause has bred militancy in the name of Islam in various other incidents, ranging from Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s fatwa against the writer Salman Rushdie in 1989 to the threats and protests against the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten for publishing cartoons lampooning the Prophet Muhammad in 2005.

Mockery of Muhammad, actual or perceived, has been at the heart of nearly all of these controversies over blasphemy.

This might seem unremarkable at first, but there is something curious about it, for the Prophet Muhammad is not the only sacred figure in Islam. The Quran praises other prophets — such as Abraham, Moses and Jesus — and even tells Muslims to “make no distinction” between these messengers of God. Yet for some reason, Islamist extremists seem to obsess only about the Prophet Muhammad.

Even more curiously, mockery of God — what one would expect to see as the most outrageous blasphemy — seems to have escaped their attention as well. Satirical magazines such as Charlie Hebdo have run cartoons ridiculing God (in the Jewish, Christian and Muslim contexts), but they were targeted with violence only when they ridiculed the Prophet Muhammad.

Of course, this is not to say extremists should threaten and harm cartoonists for more diverse theological reasons; obviously, they should not target them at all. But the exclusive focus on the Prophet Muhammad is worth pondering. One obvious explanation is that while God and the other prophets are also sacred for Judaism and Christianity, the Prophet Muhammad is sacred only for Muslims. In other words, the zeal comes not from merely respect for the sacred, but from militancy for what’s sacred to us — us being the community of Muslims. So the unique sensitivity around Muhammad seems to be a case of religious nationalism, with its focus on the earthly community — rather than of true faith, whose main focus should be the divine.

Still, this religious nationalism is guided by religious law — Shariah — that includes clauses about punishing blasphemy as a deadly sin. It is thus of vital importance that Muslim scholars courageously, even audaciously, address this issue today. They can begin by acknowledging that, while Shariah is rooted in the divine, the overwhelming majority of its injunctions are man-made, partly reflecting the values and needs of the seventh to 12th centuries — when no part of the world was liberal, and other religions, such as Christianity, also considered blasphemy a capital crime.

The only source in Islamic law that all Muslims accept indisputably is the Quran. And, conspicuously, the Quran decrees no earthly punishment for blasphemy — or for apostasy (abandonment or renunciation of the faith), a related concept. Nor, for that matter, does the Quran command stoning, female circumcision or a ban on fine arts. All these doctrinal innovations, as it were, were brought into the literature of Islam as medieval scholars interpreted it, according to the norms of their time and milieu.

Tellingly, severe punishments for blasphemy and apostasy appeared when increasingly despotic Muslim empires needed to find a religious justification to eliminate political opponents.

One of the earliest “blasphemers” in Islam was the pious scholar Ghaylan al-Dimashqi, who was executed in the 8th century by the Umayyad Empire. His main “heresy” was to insist that rulers did not have the right to regard their power as “a gift of God,” and that they had to be aware of their responsibility to the people.

Before all that politically motivated expansion and toughening of Shariah, though, the Quran told early Muslims, who routinely faced the mockery of their faith by pagans: “God has told you in the Book that when you hear God’s revelations disbelieved in and mocked at, do not sit with them until they enter into some other discourse; surely then you would be like them.”

Just “do not sit with them” — that is the response the Quran suggests for mockery. Not violence. Not even censorship.

Wise Muslim religious leaders from the entire world would do Islam a great favor if they preached and reiterated such a nonviolent and nonoppressive stance in the face of insults against Islam. That sort of instruction could also help their more intolerant coreligionists understand that rage is a sign of nothing but immaturity. The power of any faith comes not from its coercion of critics and dissenters. It comes from the moral integrity and the intellectual strength of its believers.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/14/opinion/islams-problem-with-blasphemy.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=c-column-top-span-region®ion=c-column-top-span-region&WT.nav=c-column-top-span-region

Peccadillo wrote:I re-iterate that the biggest internal debate that needs to occur in Islam is to re-evaluate the Hadith. It is man-written, is entirely relative and therefore should be subject to scrutiny.

Peccadillo wrote:but there are a number of examples from "authentic" hadith that already do conflict with the Qur'an.. as I thought I established in my earlier post that you responded to.

This is my point.. I'll give you another example..

Qur'an states: Make ye no excuses: ye have rejected Faith after ye had accepted it. If We pardon some of you, We will punish others amongst you, for that they are in sin.

Again, punishment for some in afterlife, not in this life.

However, Authentic Hadith states: Ali burnt some people and this news reached Ibn 'Abbas, who said, "Had I been in his place I would not have burnt them, as the Prophet said, 'Don't punish (anybody) with Allah's Punishment.' No doubt, I would have killed them, for the Prophet said, 'If somebody (a Muslim) discards his religion, kill him.'

This is from al-Bukhari, sahih (authentic hadith).. so clearly these "authentic hadith" that have apparently been studied by scholars and the distinctions between fact and fiction drawn has failed miserably.

I have a million of these examples, where the Qur'an either does not say anything at all that supports what the hadith states OR is actually contradictory to it. Again, I am only talking about authentic hadith here.

If you yourself do discard certain hadith because you believe they conflict with the Qur'an, that's good for you and well done for doing so. But the fact remains that mainstream sunnis place far too much emphasis on Hadith and fail to have an internal debate.

Anyway I don't really want to turn this into a massive theological discussion, but in my opinion if we talk about the need for Islam to have internal discourse about how to tackle religious extremism. This is where it needs to start, in my opinion.

Winter is Coming wrote:
I think its a bit unclear and brings a lot of confusion, because it seems someone else is narrating Ibn 'Abbas' reference to something the Prophet said in the past tense in a rather unclear situation.

I also spoke to many scholars about this and I recall my friend also bought it up a few days ago when we were speaking about hadiths that at times you have to remember what circumstance that event in the hadith was written in, for example it could be during the time of war, when someone deserts the religion and joined the enemy what did he take with him? Intel, most importantly forgot about leaving the religion, what was he going to commit? Treason.

This is how the prophet death with apostasy,

A bedouin gave the Pledge of allegiance to Allah's Apostle for Islam. Then the bedouin got fever at Medina, came to Allah's Apostle and said, "O Allah's Apostle! Cancel my Pledge," But Allah's Apostle refused. Then he came to him (again) and said, "O Allah's Apostle! Cancel my Pledge." But the Prophet refused Then he came to him (again) and said, "O Allah's Apostle! Cancel my Pledge." But the Prophet refused. The bedouin finally went out (of Medina) whereupon Allah's Apostle said, "Medina is like a pair of bellows (furnace): It expels its impurities and brightens and clears its good. [Sahih al-Bukhari, Vol. 9, #318]
Notably, as Dr. M. E. Subhani explained in his book:

This is a scholar take on the above,

This was an open case of apostasy. But the Prophet neither punished the Bedouin nor asked anyone to do it. He allowed him to leave Madina (of his own will). Nobody harmed him.” [Apostasy in Islam (New Delhi, India: Global Media Publications, 2005), pp. 23-24.]

As you can see I've never heard about the prophet ever committing such an act (killing those who left the religion), that hadith is referencing something supposedly the prophet said, but it didn't exactly come out of his mouth, especially when you look at how the prophet allowed that one guy to leave without any harm.

I agree with you on your points don't get me wrong, but i believe its more us muslims who are at fault rather then hadith, we are always told to approach those knowledgable about this and not to act on things we are unsure of, but unfortunately a low of people don't they read something and they automatically assume its true or this si what it wants us to do, sort like the media, or those hidden sublime messages.

rwo power wrote:Sounds like Islam needs their own Martin Luther - a scholar to thoroughly reform the religion and even risk a schism for the greater good.

rwo power wrote:That sounds highly intriguing and actually pretty fitting for the  current time even.

Dunno how much you know about the Reformation, but it appears to me that something similar might not be the worst idea to tidy up Islam from the extreme flavours - even when it at first lead to major unrest, too: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protestant_Reformation

Winter is Coming wrote:

Peccadillo wrote:I re-iterate that the biggest internal debate that needs to occur in Islam is to re-evaluate the Hadith. It is man-written, is entirely relative and therefore should be subject to scrutiny.

I have responded to your post regrading this not sure if you read it, but I'll post it again

Prophet Muhammad himself warned,

"Whenever a Hadith is presented to you in my name, verify it with the Qur'an. If it agrees with the Qur'an, accept it, and if it is in conflict, discard it." [1]

"There is no doubt that, there will be Hadith coming after me, claiming that I have said things. So you must test those Hadith from the Qur'an. If it is really according to the Qur'an only then accept it, otherwise reject it." [2]

Likewise, Salama relates,

""I heard the Prophet saying, "Whoever (intentionally) ascribes to me what I have not said then (surely) let him occupy his seat in Hell-fire."" [3]

So any hadith that goes against the Qu'ran should be discarded.

rwo power wrote:Sounds like Islam needs their own Martin Luther - a scholar to thoroughly reform the religion and even risk a schism for the greater good.

RealGunner wrote:Think you posted it and the linked the article. It has quotes in it lol, ofcourse you wouldn't write that.

RealGunner wrote:Do you really trust hear-say?

If you really compare Hadiths with Quran, 80% of them will be fallacious. They are recorded by people who either have no records of ever existing or collected by people born 100+ years after Prophet Muhammad died(Muhammad al-Bukhari, the pioneer of Sahih Bukhari).

McLewis wrote:This doesn't seem to happen anywhere else other than France and there are a lot of other countries with very large Muslim populations.

Why does this continue to happen in France specifically? I'm not particularly well educated on this yet.