"Seek knowledge, even unto China" - Prophet Muhammad
As-salamu alaykum, chapos!
After consulting with the cyber Ulama we have decided to create an open thread where curious posters can take a break from the great posting jihad and ask questions on the nature of Islam or the Muslim experience. So long as they are asked in good faith, from a position of truly wanting to learn, these questions will be answered without judgement.
As for Muslims, all of us are free to answer any of the questions, even ones that have already been answered. This is an open thread, and the input of different Islamic perspectives is valuable to getting a big picture.
To all those reading this, remember: No one person is an authority on Islam. This is why it traditionally the din never had its own clergy. Always have this in mind when researching on Islam.
Alright, now GET TO ASKING!
When Islam first emerged as a movement in the 6th century, it was in a liberatory fashion, especially for the women. Islamic values asserted new rights for them and espoused their equality with men. When comparing the condition for women after Muhammad to the Jahiliyya period before it, it seems like night and day. During the Jahiliyya, women were reduced to nothing but objects. Powerful men would collect dozens of wives and treat them like they were his property, while the society at the time would bury infant girls just because they preferred having sons.
The Prophet instituted rules at the time that were absolutely revolutionary for the era. A lot of these aspects of Islam that are used in a reactionary way were actually originally liberating for women, and so lose the spirit of it. For example - the idea that a Muslim man can have 4 wives was actually meant to limit them, and this came with the necessary assertion that they must be treated as equals. Islam asserted for women the right to inherit instead of it all going to the sons, the right to keep anything they earn from employment instead of giving it to the family, and equity in all economic transactions. The Qur'an also vehemently asserts that victims of sexual violation are completely innocent, which some modern Muslim states completely disregard for many women.
Even though today Westerners accuse Islam of being misogynistic, during the colonial era ironically they claimed the opposite - it may be bizarre to say, but Westerners used to level the accusation that Islam was misandric. That's because the traditional role of women in Islam was to be an equal partner who had an equal say in how a household is run, and the Prophet gives the ordinance that they must be treated with the utmost respect and veneration. Just look up any quote by the Prophet or the early Sahaba on women and this becomes clear:
"Only an honorable man treats women with honor and integrity, and only a vile and dishonorable man humiliates and degrades women" - Prophet Muhammad
"The whole world is a provision, and the best object of benefit of the world is the pious woman." - Prophet Muhammad
"The women are not a garment you wear and undress however you like. They are honored and have their rights" - Umar Ibn Khattab
As for the LGBTQ community, this is harder to analyze because the early Islamic sources simply never says anything about the LGBTQ community. The concept of there being distinct categories of "sexuality" is a relatively new concept in Western society, so the Qur'an never says anything about them because they weren't even aware of the existence of such a thing.
The way Islamic values are presented, it is clear that Islam is not merely a set of specific, hard-encoded rules to abide by. The Qur'an for example is definitely not structured like a rulebook, it's a series of sermons, prayers, and stories that we have to put effort and analysis in order to interpret its meaning, it's open-ended. The reason I say this is because Islamic jurisprudence is based on interpretive reasoning, and if one were to use interpretive reasoning on the spirit of Islamic justice and liberation to fill in the gaps and apply Islam to the modern context, one could easily argue that it is our duty to protect the vulnerable and to assert the rights of women and the LGBTQ. Islamic legal scholars today have attempted to interpret reactionary viewpoints on these vulnerable communities, however, the tradition of jurisprudence is fallible and Muslims are under no obligation to listen to them. It is clear from the spirit of Islam, and from the intention of the Prophet, that the Islamic doctrine is to seek liberation and protection for all peoples, especially these vulnerable groups.
At the end of the day though that's all theory and wishful thinking. As with every abrahamic faith, is it not fair to say that whilst the original teachings may have essentially been 'peace and love man', these teachings have been put under patriarchal ideals for centuries upon centuries.
Great question.
Islam has historically had political and legislative dimensions alongside the spiritual ones. In this case, the Caliph, (Khalifa in Arabic), which means "successor" or "steward"/"deputy", is a temporal leader. The reason they are a "successor" is because they inherited the temporal seat of power of the Prophet, but not their prophethood, which is an important distinction. This means the Caliph was in charge, as a political and temporal leader, of the Islamic state that the Prophet built in his struggle against the Quraishi persecution, but the Caliph had no say in the actual doctrine of Islam. They could declare something but in the theology of Islam that didn't make it doctrinally true, and traditionally the Caliphs throughout history rarely attempted to do so because it went against the entire point of the din, it would have probably evoked revolutions.
In terms of leadership, there really isn't one. Let's approach this question from the perspective of an average Muslim. Who, as a Muslim, do you learn about Islam from? What institutions do you approach to practice your faith?
Well, first, there is the mosque. The mosque is run by an Imam. What makes an Imam an Imam? Their job description is, essentially, the caretaker of the mosque, and the person who leads prayers. And what makes a mosque a mosque is if Muslims congregate there. There is no ritual where the imams are holy ordained by a higher authority, and you don't need to ask any specific group for permission to build a mosque. Theoretically, anyone could be an Imam right now, by saying their house is a mosque and saying they are its imam. Nobody can deny this claim on a spiritual basis. They can argue no one uses it but that just means you have to attract a following. In this way, the position of Imam and the legitimacy of a mosque develops organically depending on whether the community decides to use it as such.
Of course, there are other positions that people divest prestige in. Sheiks, muftis, mullahs, etc. These are essentially just learned people. Their word is not automatically correct or holy. Mullah, for example, usually implies they attained a degree in one of the Islamc studies. A Mufti is more specialized in sharia, the legal dimension of Islam. Again, it just refers to the fact that they had a degree in it. Sheik doesn't even have anything like that, you become a Sheik based on enough people calling you that as a form of respect because you seem so knowledgeable. The "Ulama" is a learned class of Islamic scholars. There are some Ulamas given State authority in their countries in the modern day, but the Islamic viewpoint traditionally has dissuaded this kind of behavior.
None of these people have authority on Islam, either. They can issue "fatwas" - that is, essentially, legal advice based on their interpretation of scripture - but once again, there is nothing that gives their word any higher authority than anyone else's other than the implication that they studied it. For every fatwa a mufti has issued, you can find a fatwa from a different mufti that has the exact opposite opinion. Usually, neither of them would consider the other heretical, nor would they consider you heretical for not listening to them. The ones who do, most Muslims consider them cranks.
The institutions of Islam, then, are not divested authoratively from one central source. Some countries such as Saudi Arabia attempt to use State power to make one opinion higher than another, but these are outliers - most Muslims, in most countries, and for most of their history, have had the view that Islamic doctrine is up to interpretation by everyone, and that any one person's interpretation could equally be the valid or the correct one. Of course, that does not mean we have to listen to your interpretation, but it does mean I have no authority spiritually over yours - as in, I am not ordained in any holy way to say that you are wrong, I cannot interpret God's will.
How was/is successorship to a Caliph determined/how is it deemed legitimate?
In terms of leadership, there really isn’t one. Let’s approach this question from the perspective of an average Muslim. Who, as a Muslim, do you learn about Islam from? What institutions do you approach to practice your faith?
Would you say it's similar to the concept in Christianity of the priesthood of all believers?
How was/is successorship to a Caliph determined/how is it deemed legitimate?
Ah, the age-old question. How caliphial authority is determined is the basis of the Shia/Sunni split. To make a long story short, Sunnis believe that the caliphate was legitimated by the shura council that occurred after the Prophet's death, essentially a vote by community consensus which elected Abu Bakr as the next leader. Shi'is believe that the Prophet determined Ali, his cousin and son-in-law, as his heir and successor, and that the line should have passed down through his family.
You would think, then, that it's a question of community election vs line of succession, but you would be wrong, because Abu Bakr's caliphate passed down to Umar because he designated him such. So then it's designation vs line of succession? No, because Umar divested a council to elect his successor before he died, who elected Uthman. So it's designated kingmaker council vs line of succession? No because after Uthman died there was a brief civil war and Uthman's family, the Ummaya, took up the Caliphate and turned it essentially into a kingship, a policy which all successive caliphates adopted and developed. So historically it's basically all been line of succession. However, since as we've established there's no single authority on Islam, theoretically one could, say, declare a democratic Islamic Caliphate, or a communist one, and you aren't really breaking any Islamic doctrine by doing so.
Edit: forgot to add, yes, the priesthood of all believers concept is very comparable in this sense. Islam is a din that heavily emphasizes the equality of all people under God, and invoking the ability to interpret scripture as belonging to everyone equally is one of the ways it's manifested
However, since as we’ve established there’s no single authority on Islam, theoretically one could, say, declare a democratic Islamic Caliphate, or a communist one, and you aren’t really breaking any Islamic doctrine by doing so.
So a Caliph/Caliphate today wouldn't really have to illustrate some kind of line or connection to the Prophet or his successor(s) to be a "legit" one? and it's more about the rulers relation to Islam and stuff and the first Caliph have that connection because Muhamad was trying to organize the new realm he had created?
Pretty much - I mean, the Ottomans had zero connection to the original lines of succession but were seen as Caliphs by many Muslims up to 1923. So yes theoretically you can create a Caliphate today, but it would be incredibly difficult to legitimize yourself in the eyes of most Muslims. You would probably need to control a lot of the land that was traditionally part of the first caliphates to even be considered one.
Though most Shi'i would deny that it's a Caliphate at all unless you can somehow prove to the Twelver Shia that you are the Hidden Imam.
So is the Sunni/Shia split entirely based on the question of successor, or is there any other differences in doctrine that influences it?
It definitely started off that way as being based on succession, but some of the Sunni and Shi'i over time have developed the opinion that there are doctrinal differences now. For example, there is a Shi'i belief that the "Imamate" that Ali passed down to his line is not just a political position, but a cosmological marker that they are without sin that was divested in them from the Prophet. The Sunni believe that this is against Islamic doctrine, while the Shi'i believe that not believing this is against the doctrine.
Is it weird for me to get mad that they replaced jihad with crusade in the Dune trailer?
Also how disrespectful is it to say jihad in a joking manner?
I read what you answered to another guy about Muftis and Mullahs so I have to ask, have prestigious Muftis been used as "advisors" in Islamic countries?
I don’t think it’s weird, personally. I am a fan of dune with a close Muslim friend who I was lucky enough to have this conversation with. The use of “Jihad” in dune was important as every aspect of the fremen was inspired by the bedouins of Northern Africa, and so much of the language is Arabic. When the book was written, the jihads of the time were like the Islamic overthrow of the shah, etc. Only recently have they adopted this new context. Personally, we think that the use of the word is important to the development of the world due to the basing of the characters of the fremen on Bedouin tribes, and their struggle is reminiscent of the original use of the word. But it is obvious why they would replace it now due to the modern connotation with radical terrorism.
I wouldn’t be able to answer your other questions, although I will say my friend has used it jokingly despite being a Muslim. But, I am not really qualified to talk about that.
1: No idea tbh
2: As long as nobody explicitly told you they don't like you using the word, I don't see why you shouldn't use it.
3: historically? Oh yea definitely, Just read about Ibn Battuta to get a famous example of this. He wandered all over the place, serving as an advisor to plenty of Sultans.
Hey thanks so much for doing this.
I've studied comparative religion and have read on Christianity, Judiasm, Daoism, Confucianism and Hinduism but not on Islam. Would love to hear from any and all what your thoughts are on the similarities and differences between other mainstream religions and Islam.
Comparative mythology and cultural memory fascinates me, especially in relation to the Qur'an. Muslims believe that the world's memory resides in it.
I am reminded by the story of the escape to Abyssinia. I think a lot of people don't truly appreciate what that story conveys. For context, during the early years of Islam, they suffered persecution from the Quraishi, and a contingent went to Abyssinia on the advice of the Prophet, who insisted that the Negus was a reasonable man and would give them safe harbor, even though he was a trading partner of the Quraishi.
But from the perspective of the Negus, this was a bizarre event. A wealthy African Christian king across the sea is minding his own business.
Here come these former polytheists straight out from the desert, dressed in dirtied browned robes, and they tell this nation of old who had worshipped Christ long before Constantine ever read the bible, the name of Jesus, Moses, and Abraham. They tell them things they should not possibly know.
They tell them of the mother of their god, an intimate meeting between an angel and a woman one fateful night which nobody in the world should know about, yet for some reason everyone does. How can it be, that these two places know of the story of a single, unimportant virgin in Judea 700 years before? And are somehow united by it, enough to know that they are the same, that they have the same story, the same god. A god whose debut was supposedly thousands of years before hundreds of miles north, the patron of a nation which no longer exists.
The answer in Islam, of course, is cultural memory. A universal story which survived, which we keep remembering. Muslims believe there is a prophet in every civilization, appearing when they should not be, telling a story they have no right to know.
Hey thanks that is a lovely parable, I have found that when you move past the surface dogma that those who are religious seek similar things. Tend to desire to enrich themselves and those around them not for some afterlife reward but because they genuinely care. In a bit of a segue cultural anthology not based in imperalism or forced conversion is as delightful as comparative Religion. I love people and getting to know them so I'm glad you shared that with me.
Are there any novel strains or schools of thought within Islam that people may not be familiar with? I'm thinking of something like Liberation Theology in Catholicism.
Yes and no. The problem with Islamic schools of thought is that attempts to develop political Islam in the modern day will automatically be demonized as terroristic, so people tend to avoid doing such. There is Qutbianism - Qutb is the father of political Islam in the modern day. Qutb believed in what one observer has called "a kind of anarcho-Islam", an Islamic polity with no hierarchy, classes, or State, under the Islamic principles of there being no legitimate human authority on earth and all people being equal. Qutb also advocated for jihad against all the current states in the middle east today as being state powers, imperialist colonies, and monarchies, as he believed monarchism was anti-Islamic. However, Qutb had a lot of reactionary opinions, and he also denounced socialism as Western despite he himself advocating a lot of socialistic policies such as public ownership of wealth. Qutb should be viewed with heavy skepticism - I mean, every modern Sunni Islamist terrorist traces their thought back to him, so he's an imperfect strain.
There are some older strains of Islam that could be good comparison. There are the Khawarij, who broke off from the party of Ali after he agreed to arbitration with Muawiyah during the civil war over the caliphate. This is because the Khawarij maintained a very interesting and radical political theory that any kind of arbitration, written succession laws, or consensus committee on choosing one's leader, was unislamic, because this was investing the power of leadership onto fallible humans, and that was against the will of God. Instead, the Khawarij believed that true leaders will arise through material conditions and through people naturally following them, as that is how God chooses destined leaders - arbitration through battle, as they saw it. They also believed that it was the absolute duty of Muslims to rise up against tyrants and corrupt leaders, and that anyone can be a Caliph.
Actually, I think the issue with trying to answer this question is that Islam is already deeply political. Unlike Christianity traditionally has been, Muslims were divested from the beginning with the duty to make the world just by any means necessary, and had concepts like Sunni consensus of the community, ijma and reasoning by analogy, qiyas, to form it. I think the honest answer to this question is that Islam already had liberation theology-like logic within it, but that the Islam we see today had much of that stripped from it during the colonial era.
Sorry, I think I may not have been clear. I was using Liberation Theology as an example of a novel strain of thought within a religion, not asking if there was an equivalent to Liberation Theology within Islam
Ah, in that case, there are a lot, we have a pretty long history. I could probably spend ages listing all the different little strains, theological schools, legal schools, Sufi orders (and Sufism as a whole!), all the different manifestations of Islamism, Quranism, Mahdi movements throughout history, the many divergent sects. Instead I will just talk about one I got into a research binge about recently, because I find them the pretty interesting and they're extremely relevant.
The Alawites/Nusayris are the current ruling class in Syria and they're not exactly Shi'i, though they developed from Shia Gnosticism. The Alawaites have a very secretive structure and belief system. Many of the secrets they hold are known only to a select few within the community, and in general Alawites tend not to share their beliefs with those outside the community.
From what we can tell, they have a very syncretic interpretation of Islam, with elements of Christianity, Gnosticism, and neo-Platonism in their din. The gnoscticism aspect, and the secretiveness, is vital - they believe that the material world is an illusion and that the Truths of the world are successively harder and harder to understand, with only a small cadre of trusted secret-keepers being the ones who can handle the truths. They hold discretion and secrecy as extremely high, core values of Islam. Some of their unique beliefs (ones that were secret but leaked to outsiders) include a belief that souls will reincarnate until judgement day, the fact that they celebrate Christmas and have mass, and they even believe in a trinity consisting of the Prophet Muhammad, Ali, and Salman the Persian (one of Muhammad's important sahaba, the companions of the Prophet), and that God reincarnated into humanity on two different occasions - through the Prophet Joshua and through Ali. To an average Muslim this seems downright un-Islamic, but the Alawites take their beliefs seriously, and their concealment protocols is part of a greater cosmological and praxial belief in keeping secrets, being hidden, and remaining insular, in order to survive and avoid genocide. Indeed, being a minority in Syria at the moment, those who identify with this unique divergent culture constitute a diehard core of the current Assad regime's forces, and it's part of the reason why they are continuing to this day - they believe that they are fighting an existential threat to their community, and to their secrets.
This time a question on the Quran:
How is it structured and what does it contain?
For example The Bible contains and builds upon alot of the old Jewish books with the life of Jesus, the apostles and the early church. but from my cursory understanding the Quran doesn't do this (although I could be wrong) what, if anything, does it take from the earlier texts etc.?
In Islam, the Bible and Tora are seen as holy books that have been corrupted by human changes to it. The Qur'an as such is seen as the perfect, unchanged word of Allah, as it was revealed to Muhammad SAW, Jesus, Moses and all the earlier prophets. There are a lot of stories it shares with the Bible, from Mary and the immaculate conception to Moses and his story and plenty more. I wouldn't call it "taking" though, as this isn't how the religion sees the texts.
Maybe taking is the wrong word. Just what stories and such does it have in common and how are they presented.
Oh wow, I wouldn't even know how to answer that question becaude there are so many stories shared. Like so many stories. But as an example and as the central thing in which Islam differs to Christianity, is the story of Jesus. In both, he was born through immaculate conception to Mary, but while he was the son of God who died for humanity in Christian belief, the Qur'an emphasizes that he was merely a prophet sent by Allah, and instead of dying, he was taken back to Allah, with the Romans crucifying someone they mistook for Jesus. Then, again, both faiths believe in the second coming of Jesus, on the day of judgement.
I guess I was aware of what you mentioned above about the Qur'an but wouldn't know what it looks like.
Like the Bible is separated obviously by the Old and New Testament, but also by The Pentateuch, the historical, prophetic and poetic books etc.
Perhaps it's too difficult to accurately explain in a short web reply, but if the Bible "starts" with Genesis how does the Qur'an start, does the Qur'an take a certain structure? idk how to better explain what I am wondering.
oh, now I get you. Yes, the Qur'an is sorted, but I dont exactly remember how: by length, I think: so it starts with the longest sura and ends with the shortest. Talking about the Sura, it is the main unit of the Qur'an: each Sura is its own story or message, in a sense, and can vary wildly in length, from being a simple three ayat (verses) to taking an hour to read. I don't know if this is generally used in every day life too, but for learning the Qur'an, it is divided into thirty-three juzu' (units). And of course, the Surat can also be divided into Meccan (revealed to prophet Muhammad in Mecca, before the Hijra) and Medinan (revealed to Muhammad after the Hijra, in Medina).
I was pretty anti-Christianity until I met some Christian anarchists / Catholic Workers.
Does Islam have anything similar?
Of course, I mean you are talking to an Islamic Marxist Leninist right now. But if you mean any organized movements, there was the MEK. They were a party in Iran during the revolution who married communism with Islam, back when the revolution was a bigger-tent alliance of anti-imperialists, but the MEK and many other groups were ousted by the Ayotollah's regime once their power was secured. The MEK was widely popular with the masses because most other communists in Iran were quite detached from the rhetoric of the average worker, and they knew how to use Islamic philosophy and rhetoric to communicate a message of communism. They constituted the largest opposition group in Iran, although over time after finding themselves in the outskirts of political power they got paranoid, basically turned into an insular cult ,and much of their original communist rhetoric was lost, and now they're essentially neocons with ties to American intelligence. It's pretty sad, but the fact that they existed and were going strong shows that there is the potential for a healthy Islamic workers movement.
Of course there was Gadaffi and the Third Internaional Theory, which married Islam, socialism, Pan-Africanism and Arab nationalism in an anti-imperialist struggle. It was the main framework that Libya was run on for four decades. Unfortunately, some parts of Gadaffi's theory is lacking in coherency, specifically because he himself ruled in a contradictory fashion throughout his regime. And he condemned communism, yet still called himself a socialist, which is bizarre to me, but whatever.
Most of the people in Rojava are Muslims, they also practice a unique form of anarchism. I don't know too much about the exact anarchist theory of Rojava, and though I doubt it has zero influence on the Islamic values of most of its population, I think they use more secular theory to engage in the struggle (especially since Rojava has a large Christian minority) - which is fine of course, but I don't know if what you're asking is for Muslim leftists or Islamic leftism, which aren't the same thing.
Thanks for all that information. I probably should have been more specific: I’m interested in whether there’s a branch of Islam specifically interpreted in a leftist manner, so an Islamic leftism.
I’ve also heard of Islamic banking as a cool concept. Is that at all socialist adjacent or something you’re able to infodump on?
Of course - in that case yeah, Gadaffi and the MEK are the two big ones that come to mind - the MEK was part of a grander movement during revolutionary Iran that had a lot of syncretism between communism and Islam present in it, Ali Shariati is a good example of a thinker during the revolution who espoused that. There are also all the black Muslim movements and many of them identified themselves as Islamic left, Malcolm X for example believing in a staunchly anti-capitalist Islam. The NoI has some beliefs I dislike but the movement as a whole that it is a part of is pretty based in general. There's the Somali Revolutionary Socialist Party, who considered themselves Islamic socialists when they ruled for a decade and a half with Soviet support. Those are some of the big ones I can think of.
Islamic banking sucks. The Qur'an condemns usury, that is, the concept of loaning with interest, and claims that the object of banking should never be for profit, but to provide a community service. "Islamic banking" today is literally just finding obscure loopholes to charge interest without calling it interest. They're basically capitalists in a shemagh, they suck lmao. The only real way to express "Islamic banking" as it was intended would be to overthrow capitalism first and establish a community vault.
Cool thread, I've learned a lot so far, especially your points about Islam having a duty to seek liberation of the lgbtq community as they sought liberation of women.
What strategies do you feel should be different for tackling the issues of radicalization (towards terroristic causes) in islamic communities vs in Christian or atheist communities?
Great question. Muslims are a large and diverse community across the world, so obviously there is no single solution and it should depend on the specific local context - however, in general, Muslims are very devout and do not think in the same terms as secular Western/liberal humanists do. They tend to view the world through an Islamic lens, and secular nationalist movements are doomed to fail in the long-term in places like the Middle East because it simply can't be reconciled with their values of a united Ummah practicing together.
Islam has within it something me and my friends like to call "endogenous radicalism." I'll let Hegel explain this, though mind some of the Western chauvinistic language (and the fact that he calls us "Mahometans"):
"Abstraction swayed the minds of the Mahometans. Their object was, to establish an abstract worship, and they struggled for its accomplishment with the greatest enthusiasm. This enthusiasm was Fanaticism, that is, an enthusiasm for something abstract – for an abstract thought which sustains a negative position towards the established order of things. It is the essence of fanaticism to bear only a desolating destructive relation to the concrete; but that of Mahometanism was, at the same time, capable of the greatest elevation – an elevation free from all petty interests, and united with all the virtues that appertain to magnanimity and valor."
Essentially, due to the structure of the Muslim world view, there is a deep-seated dissatisfaction in most Muslims in the world that manifests itself "fanatically" by reacting negatively to the current form of things, the "world of the concrete", but which also constantly pushes Muslims into political action, "capable of the greatest elevation." Muslims view an unjust world and cannot help but use Islam to change it. This is why terrorists are easily recruited, but it is also possibly the greatest weapon against them, if used correctly.
The strategy I would suggest would be that Muslims develop an Islamic revolutionary consciousness that is distinctly liberatory rather than reactionary. It can be done and has been done in the past (I've used the MEK as an example). Radicalizing young impressionable Muslims throughout the global south by showing them that communism is the only valid manifestation of Islamic values would take away from the recruiting pool of the reactionaries and Salafists. This is an important difference because most attempts to address terrorists is to meet them on secular terms, through an imperialist "justice system" or liberal ops, and this will only weaken the very valuable tool Islam provides for leftists.
I like this answer a lot, its very grounded and accessible but also shows the same forward thinking desire to make the world better.
More controversial question, not asked in bad faith: what are your opinions on Xinjiang and the Uighur population?
Full disclosure I want to believe China is trying their best to solve the radicalisation problem but I am extremely concerned that their efforts are eerily similar to the residential schools in canada that destroyed our First Nations people for generations.
Do you feel the measures in Xinjiang are having/will have any lasting success? Are those measures creating or working towards a revolutionary conciousness in your opinion? Do you feel it is a half measure that will only create more tension, do you feel it goes too far or just goes in the wrong dorection?
(Please feel free to answer according to the reports you have heard and believe, be it the reports from the West, the official line from the PRC, or somewhere in between)
I've talked about this on the site before, but the gist of my take is: it's definitely not as bad as Western media wants you to think, because in their pathology they like to project their dark underbelly onto others. However I personally get disheartened by the lack of skepticism for these camps among leftists.
My concern is that they are clearly approaching this situation in the mode of the secular nation-state, something that has never worked. You simply cannot approach Islam that way without getting something wrong at some point. Of course I don't want this to turn into a China struggle session, so I'll speak in a more general sense. What China is doing, regardless of the ideological position of the party, what they're doing in terms of their actions, is bad for the left globally and bad for the vulnerable Muslim community specifically, because their actions are consistent with cultural erasure. I would never go as far as to call it a cultural genocide, because that's absolutely not what the CPC is doing, they aren't nearly going that far. But what they are doing is not good either - they are diminishing unique cultural and spiritual practices and ways of life because they believe this will pacify the region. And it might very well do that, but that is not the same thing as saying it is the only way to make the region not a threat to you.
There are ways to positively develop Xinxiang's relationship to the State as a whole, to diminish terrorism in the region, without resorting to these kinds of policies, and as leftists we should want them to take those options because it protects a vulnerable community.
Let's say you were a smart, pragmatic Marxist and you found yourself having to navigate the Xinxiang problem, and since you are a Marxist obviously your goal here is to cultivate the necessary conditions to replace capitalism with a communist economic system. A smart thing to do, something which is rarely pursued because for some reason it's a novel idea, would be to help develop in the region a synthesis of Marxist ideals, Islam, and Uighur culture. As I've pointed out a lot, Islam and leftism are fully compatible and it's not very difficult to espouse an Islamic version of many of these ideologies. This would cultivate the idea within a population that reactionary terrorists are simply un-Islamic and provide nothing of value to you. Maybe even develop a distinctly Islamic strain of a vanguardist State in the area to serve as a perpetual check on counter-revolutionaries, and they'll do this because they are actively fueled by the belief that the revolution is willed by God. These would make for valuable allies, would they not? But for some strange reason people are barely willing to entertain the notion that you could construct a theological argument for communism when it's practically screaming at you when you open any holy book. For the Uighur people specifically, I am concerned that a similar effect will take place there, where the population loses any sense of meaning and suffers a form of political alienation, the same one many Muslims face today after having the political dimensions of the din taken away from them and having their own culture diminished. Just food for thought. Halal, of course.
What is the relationship of modern Muslims to science? During the Umayyad there was a lot of scientific progress made but now Muslim countries seem to have fallen behind quite a bit (they rank really low on nobel prize winners for example). Why do you think this is? Also is there a creationism vs evolution debate amongst Muslims like with Christianity or is it different?
Yeah its just what first came to mind, I fully agree that Nobel prizes have a huge western bias to them.
When Darwin released On the Origin of Species, most Christian theologians and scholars disavowed the findings. However, when word reached the Middle East, it was split about 50/50, and wasn't debated as impassionately. This shouldn't be a surprise, considering Muslim scholars formed the theory of natural selection centuries before the West did:
In Kitab al-Hayawan (Book of the Animals), the 9th-century scholar al-Jāḥiẓ references several facets of natural selection, such as animal embryology, adaptation, and animal psychology. One notable observation al-Jāḥiẓ makes is that stronger rats were able to compete better for resources than small birds, a reference to the modern day theory of the "struggle for existence." In the 11th century, the scholar Sami S. Hawi argues that Persian scholar Ibn Miskawayh wrote about the evolution of man in his Fawz al-aṣghar.
The 14th-century influential historiographer and historian Ibn Khaldun wrote the Muqaddimah or Prolegomena ("Introduction") on what he referred to as the "gradual process of creation." He stated that the Earth began with abiotic components such as "minerals." Slowly, primitive stages of plants such as "herbs and seedless plants" developed and eventually "palms and vines." Khaldun connects the later stages of plant development to the first stages of animal development. Finally, he claims that the greater thought capabilities of human beings was "reached from the world of the monkeys."
This is because the Islamic perspective on science is that it is a tool of the din, not in opposition to it: The Qur'an and several hadith both command us to seek knowledge as much as we can, that the duty of humanity is to learn about Creation. We are taught that absolutely nothing we can learn is incompatible with Islam - anything we discover scientifically is merely an addition to the greater understanding of the Islamic cosmology. Of course, this gets into the question you see in the West of what, then, do we make of the creation story? The typical answer you see from non-creationist theists is that the stories in the Bible are metaphorical, non-literal. This is also incompatible with Islam. But how does that figure? How can we both believe Adam and Eve were made from clay, and also that the human species evolved out of natural selection?
Ibn Taymiyyah has a great way of explaining this. He maintains that the distinction itself, between literal and non-literal, is in fact an artificial mental construct entirely divorced from the way language functions in the real world. He is fully aware that words denote a number of different meanings, admitting an equivocity; however, these are not to be classified as 'metaphoric' or 'figurative'. For instance, he accepts that the word yad, hand, can be used to mean other things than the five-digit appendage of flesh and bone; in English, say, it can be used as 'can you give me a hand?' or 'he had a hand in this!' What he is rejecting is the notion that words possess, independent of context, particular 'literal' or 'real' meanings which we are condemned to abandon in favor of secondary, 'metaphoric' meanings. Rather, for him, all meaning, every instance of language use, is determined by context and judged by the communally shared conventions of the language in question.
Essentially, it is not that the Qur'an uses metaphor exactly, just that one thing can mean something else other than the obvious, not in a representative way like a metaphor, but as it actually is. So it is not that "Adam and Eve are metaphors" of anything, the Qur'an is saying this "happened" just not in a way you immediately understand, that the words describe something equally true at the same time.
Thankyou for your answer, I found it very interesting.
Why post a picture of Malcom X dancing? Didn't they have video back then?
I don't think he's dancing, I picked it because it's a photo of him teaching and this is an educational thread :P
99% of the population of this site would be murdered for being trans and gay in literally any Muslim majority country :)
Iran has a relatively accepting approach towards trans folks. It’s kinda weird, but they fund surgery and the like.
