Hello Catalyst,
Originally posted by Catalyst
As soon as Mohammed died they started killing each other, starting with Mohammeds family...and still are today.
your wishing is useless, all this is about POWER, not religion or faith or whatever you folks believe in...
what I find funny is Mohammed brought a message of peace and TOLERANCE for others, but it seems to me 1 billion muslims forgot all about it...yet it is written somewhere.
The last thing I really wanted to do was to turn this into a debate thread, especially because there will be plenty of other opportunities to do that, but I do want to answer this simply because it betrays a common but fundamental misunderstanding amongst Westerners of Islam and Muslims.
When we here in the modern West think of religion, we tend to conceive of it as fundamentally private and personal, and concerned with almost purely ethical and spiritual matters. Even in the nations of Europe that still have state supported churches, we generally think of religion and government as separate spheres, we are appalled by the idea that anyone would be
compelled by violence, intimidation, or economic pressure to convert to one religion or continue to profess a faith they do not actually believe. When we think of the foundational tenets of religion, we tend to think exclusively in terms of what we might call
the noble and hopeful virtues. Love, peace, compassion, mercy, truth, happiness, self-control, self-sacrifice, self-denial, wisdom, etc. To a great extent, this religious grid we use has been shaped by Western history, by ecumenism, by the ever changing theology of liberal Christianity, by science and philosophy, discourse in the media and the academy and so on. We make a critical mistake, however, when we simply assume that all of our categories apply equally to all religions and in particular, Islam.
Islam was founded by an Arabian tribesman named Muhammad in the early 7th century. He claimed to have received secret revelation from the Angel Gabriel in a cave outside Mecca. In this revelation he was told he was the final prophet sent by Allah to establish his religion throughout the earth. All other religions were to be swept away - the “religions of the book” Christianity and Judaism had supposedly been corrupted by their followers, and the tribal polytheistic religions were simply an abomination. All men must abandon them and surrender their obedience to the one god Allah and to his prophet, Muhammad. It is from this act of surrendering to god’s will that we get the Arabic word “Islam.” All other things were subordinate to this end, and all means might be used to accomplish it. Allah’s instructions to Muhammad were not merely to set up a private spiritual religion, but to put into place a comprehensive system that dealt with all the different elements of life including government, laws, economics, social order and so on. For instance, the only legitimate government under Islam is the Caliphate (Allah’s messenger on earth enforcing his divine laws) and the only legitimate law is Sharia.
At first, Muhammad tried to get his fellow Meccans to become Muslims by preaching and encouragement, this was the origin of the “Meccan” early sections of the Quran that are usually trotted out for Westerners because they aren’t violent and are filled with encouraging praise for those they wish to convert. During this period Muhammad’s followers were few. Eventually resistance to Muhammad stiffened, and he was eventually forced to flee from Mecca to Medina. There he consolidated his power and had a number of his critics, including the poetess Asama bint Marwan assassinated. At this point in history, the Quran changes its tone. Now those failing to convert are not encouraged, but threatened and the earlier encouraging verses are abrogated. Moreover the verses encouraging followers to fight in order to establish Islam begin to pile up: "fight and slay the idolaters wherever you find them" (9:5), "smite at their necks" (47:4), "make war on the unbeliever in Allah, until they pay tribute" (9:29), "Fight until the religion be all of it Allah's" (8:39) or "announce painful punishment to those who disbelieve" (9:3) In Medina, the Muslims began attacking and pillaging the caravans of the Meccans, raids that Muhammad himself took part in. Also, after an early defeat the Jewish tribe of Banu Qurayza which had refused to convert was accused of conspiracy and the 600-900 males beheaded and the females made wives and slaves. Muhammad himself taking a 5th part of the booty and the wife of one of the slain.
Eventually the Muslims became strong enough to overcome the Meccans by force. From that point on, under Muhammad’s leadership, the surrounding tribes and peoples were offered Islam, and if they refused, were fought against and subdued and forced to convert. This Jihad continued throughout the lifetime of the prophet and technically must continue on till the nations of the Dar-El-Harb are subdued and the rule of Islam is complete. War is the natural state of resistance to Islam, peace the result of surrender and obedience to it. Jihad is simply this process of expansion and is not always achieved by violence as European Author Wolfgang Bruno explains:
Jihad as Holy War is the geographical expansion of Islamic rule by force of arms. It does not always mean killing those who are conquered, but it does mean the acknowledgment of Islam's supremacy. However, if that is not yet possible, then jihad should be with one's tongue, by speaking out. Simply put, jihad is anything undertaken to advance the spread of Islam, peaceful or not. Which means that jihad is always present, even if there should be an absence of violence. Da’wah, missionary work and calling to Islam, is also part of jihad, and is utilized until such a time that physical jihad is made possible through greater numbers. Until then, it is important to make sure that non-Muslims are not fully aware of the real Islamic agenda. This is where deception comes in.
So the ideas of peace and tolerance as we conceive of them are not what Muhammad taught or practiced. Neither are they considered virtues. To promote them as anything other than
taqiya would be to betray the cause of Islam. And yes, it is about power, but it always has been.
My “wishing” as you put it might indeed be useless if I accepted that Islam will simply continue on and eventually achieve its aims, but actually what I’m doing is praying in faith that God’s will would be done on earth as it is in heaven and trusting His promises that Muhammad’s ideology will not ultimately prevail. I accept that neither politics, nor all the guns and bombs in the world will change the Middle East, which is why I’m also doing all I can to support people like those at Zirve who are working to peacefully end the hegemony of Islam and bring the good news of real peace with God and man to that section of the world.
