ah some of these young muslims today- they blow up so quickly don't they :)
Printable View
ah some of these young muslims today- they blow up so quickly don't they :)
No problem, your Tory MP will also be on the take. Hey, I said that not just without evidence, but before he was even elected.Quote:
Tories as I knew the local 'socialist' MP was on the take and so it proved to be, she's not standing next time
No doubt this will attract a swarm of insect.
I wasn't really referring to you, more some other posters on here.
Anyway. Dhimmitude is an interesting thing. Obviously it's an Anglicisation of an Arab word but the meaning people give to it in English is very different to the real meaning of Dhimmi in Arabaic.
The word is ذمي. It means a non-muslim to whom the state has an obligation of protection. That is, it extends to non-Muslims exactly the same rights as Muslims, in other words equal rights. What, exactly, is wrong with that?
I can't account for what others post, but I am trying to keep this thread on the topic of Islam, not Muslims, subject to what I posted earlier.
For example, the pic I posted with the mother preparing her child as a suicide bomber: she and the kid are Muslim, but it is extreme Islam that she is conditioning him into, just as it was bred into her. While others may point out that I'm singling out Muslims, carefully ignoring the Islamic teachings behind her action, it is because they cannot or refuse to or simply do not want to distinguish between Muslim and Islam.
To clarify, my beef is not with Muslims that get on with their genuinely peaceful life in the West without imposing or taking advantage of their faith to the detriment of their hosts.
Of course it was, to pretend otherwise is ridiculous. You were hoping for a nice little circle jerk of like minded people to reassure your prejudices and threw a hissy fit when Ant rained on your parade.Quote:
Originally Posted by keda
I'll take 'Abortion clinic bombing' for $10 Al(ex) Keda.Quote:
Originally Posted by keda
Religion is a pox on humanity. To single out one as better or worse than another is to miss the entire point.
Not really incredible, is it? Judaism started as the family cult of a Sumerian herdsman and Christianity started as a minor offshoot of an esoteric Jewish sect, its original followers being labourers, fishermen, slaves, and freedmen.
More than anything else I'd say that Islam's start was typical rather than incredible.
I'm re-quoting because I missed this bit in my previous post.
You are right, but not right to leave it at that. Two points:
If you wish to simplify, then a dhimmi is as you say a protected non-Muslim living under Islamic rule. But that protection comes at a price, and may be withdrawn at anytime. The dhimmi must accept second-class status. He must pay the jizya, which is a tax over and above regular taxes that non-Muslims under Muslim rule must pay to the Muslims, for that tenuous protection. He is also subject to severe domestic, political, legal, career and religious restrictions. His word is not acceptable against the word of a Muslim. He must accept subservience to any Muslim, and live his life in a state of 'subjection'. In other words, he must know and importantly be made to feel a dhimmi.
For want of a better word, dhimmi is also applied to a non-Muslim in a non-Muslim land, who may be a fully fledged citizen like any other, but who pays a 'symbolic' jizya by (mostly) knowingly or (possibly) unknowingly assisting or favouring or otherwise accepting the supremacy of Islam. In this way he is contributing to Islam.
Note:
dar al-Islam ( House of Peace, under Muslim rule)
dar al-harb (House of War, temporarily occupied by the infidel until Islam satisfies the command to rescue it and make it part of dar al-Islam)
Please stay with this thread, and hope to post more on the importance of dhimmitude, which is actually a brilliant concept and one of the techniques used for Islam's phenomenal early expansion.
The Jizya is, theoretically at least, the same as the Zakat. As in most societies everybody had to pay taxes, as Zakat couldn't be taken from non-muslims there was no question of Jizya being over and above it. It was complementary to it. You're right when you say that Dhimmi were not equal to Muslims, in practice the treatment of Dhimmis ranged from equitable to extremely harsh but in theory they were not to be oppressed.
One important point here, what we're talking about is Dhimmi in the historical context. That is, a Dhimmi was generally a non-muslim Jewish or Christian subject in a conquered land. The impositions on Dhimmis didn't necessarily arise from their religious status, they arose from their conquered status and their religious status gave them privileges over and above other conquered people. I see Dhimmi as far more a political status than anything else, think of it as something like the "Latin Rights" a large number of subjects under the Roman Empire enjoyed, rights which gave them a better status than the majority of imperial subjects but less than those of fully fledged Roman citizens.
Dhimmi, a farang in Thailand.
Jizya, farang price.
:smileylaughing:Quote:
Originally Posted by slackula
There have been thousands of ME desert religions, and only Judaism and Islam have survived with a significant head count. So, with Judaism as the only other measure for comparison, yes it can be said that Islam's dustbowl start is 'typical', like 2 out of 2.
Only, it was not the dustbowl start of Islam I commented on as incredible. It is the very much 'atypical' feat of its expansion from a dustbowl religion into a major following.
Consider also, Islam is 1400 years old. Judaism is between 3300 and 5000 years old depending on who/what you believe and how you define the birth of the religion. Either way, it is 2000 to 3500 years older than Islam. Yet today's Jew:Muslim ratio, is 1:100.
Many reasons of course, but however you look at it this is an incredible feat.
I don't think Christianity has a show in this, since it originated at the center of the world.
A flash from the ether, not thought through and not researched, so no big deal if it's well off target..but if turns out to be correct then in the context of the survival and growth of Islam, it becomes even more incredible: Though Christianity is 650 years older than Islam, it was born at a time and place that was more technologically, politically, and socially advanced than the Arabian Peninsula 650 years later.
Well it took you a while but at least you got it in the end I suppose.
Part of the problem of this thread, and I don't need to remind anyone, is that it is not possible to isolate any single element to focus on, in this case dhimmitude, because so many other factors overlap and are interrelated. This is why we seem to move off onto tangents before returning to the main point or thereabouts.
Now I have to thank a couple of posters for inspiring a new idea, and adding structure to the thread. Nobody is going to remember everything, and as relevant points are made to other sub-topics I will repeat these on later posts, praps to the point of tedium, hoping it is absorbed and not allowed to drift away. For example, the concept of dar al-harb and dar al-Islam.
Now, Muslim groups and supporters constantly remind us that Islam is tolerant of other faiths, and that many non-Muslims live in peace under Muslim rule. Sure they do, and it’s excellent propaganda that’s swallowed by many. But what we’re not told as an inconvenient truth by these groups and part of the mainstream media itself bordering on dhimmitude, is that those dhimmis are living in uncertainty as second-class citizens with few to zero rights equal to those of their hosts, or protectors; and let’s face it, those rights are nothing to crow about.
It may have been covered during my absence, but if not then anyone interested could make the effort to follow what’s happening in Turkey, and Egypt with the Copts, among other Muslim nations that have ‘protected’ dhimmi communities. Bets are being called off, gradually, sporadically, but progressively, and some dhimmi communities are becoming smaller or disappearing altogether, as temples aer trashed or converted into mosques, and as non-believers leave. As mentioned in an earlier post, one of the terms of dhimmitude is that the dhimmi knows it is an arbitrary arrangement that may be altered or withdrawn at any time.
So while I agree the front end is an illusion to conceal the reality of the harsh existence of a dhimmi, it becomes a travesty for the infidel, and therefore a success for Islam, that many in the West are ‘protected’ from knowing the principles and practice of dhimmitude. Sure it's available on the www, but so is everything else worth discovering.
Fisrtly there have not been thousands of Middle eastern religions, nowhere near. I'm also surprised you believe that Galilee was the center of the world, you also seem to believe that the major pilgrim center of Mecca was some isolated backwater, or that 1st century Judea was somehow more advanced (whatever that means) than Arabia. Arabia was never an isolated backwater, it was where the semitic peoples originated, home to several civilizations, and a trading partner of major civilizations dating back to the time of the Sumerians.
Christianity neither originated at the center of the world nor can Islam be understood in isolation from Christianity or Judaism. All three are aspects of the same fundamental religion, both Christianity and Islam are basically Jewish heresies or, more reasonably, an evolutionary growth of Judaism. Their history and beliefs should not be treated in Isolation.
The threat Islam poses is a gross exaggeration. There is no doubt some Islamic clerics use Islamic scripture as a reason for getting folks to blow themselves up in the name of Allah but it is a threat that has been blown out of proportion by governments and the media.
According to various intelligence agencies there have been about 200 terrorist incidents that are directly inspired by Islamic radicalism.
The premise Islam with a couple of hundred or even a couple of thousand religious nutter incidents doesn't constitute an indictment of 1.8 billion Muslims as potential terrorists and as such the elimination of the religion.
If it were so, I reckon I am the luckiest guy in the world having escaped Islamic vengeance when living in Turkey, Malaysia and Indonesia for several years.
Judaism is considered by many to be an evolution of Pharaoh Akhenaten's monotheist belief in Aten. Modern religions all have aspects of no longer practiced ancient religions embedded in their scriptures.Quote:
Originally Posted by DrB0b
I've heard this theory but I don't believe it. The timing is wrong and the only real relationship between Atenism and Judaism is monotheism and Atenist monotheism was pretty different in structure to Judaic monotheism. There are very many correlations between Judaism and other Semitic religions but only really one (possibly two if you take into account the similarity between the Hymn to the Aten and one of the psalms whose name I can't remember offhand) between Atenism and Judaism. It's quite possible that Judaism did take some things from Atenism but I very much doubt that it evolved from Atenism. There's also fairly strong evidence that Judaism only became monotheistic rather than henotheistic at a fairly late stage, some time in the 300s BC, over 1,000 years after the time of Akhenaten.
There are some people who believe that Akhenaten's Grandad was Joseph but the only basis I can find for this belief is that if you slur your words and take advantage of the lack of vowels in Egyptian writing Yuya can sound a little like Yusuf.
Who are these idiots? They must believe in time travel as well because Juadaism predates Akhenhaton by over 400 years and from memory he only ruled for about 20 years anyway. His religious reforms were all swept away as soon as he died and did not have any influence in his time on other religions. It would be more probably to claim Akhenhatons religious views about one god were influended by Judaism.
Of the entire ME, the Mecca region alone of the Arabian Peninsula, had more than 300 gods at the time of Mohamed, with hundreds more that had died off over the centuries.
Metaphorical: Jerusalem was center of the world relative to the ME dustbowls that saw the birth of both Islam and Judaism at vastly different times. This is what we were discussing and these are what we were comparing, which is why we did not included Christianity in that comparison.
Mecca was on the pilgrim route, which makes it as you say far from a backwater, but only within the Arabian Peninsula, which itself was the backwater. Close to the Holy Land yet off the main overland trade routes (once you're in, turn around because no way through), with harsh terrain and a difficult environment, this was part of the reason it was left relatively undisturbed by invaders for so long. While the ME was a strategic post between Europe and the East, the Peninsula, and the Mecca region in particular (southwest), was off the East-West trade routes.
You have switched to comparing theologies, and arguing that they are similar as though continuing a discussion. Only, theology was not what we were discussing, rather the physical locations of their birth.Quote:
Christianity neither originated at the center of the world nor can Islam be understood in isolation from Christianity or Judaism. All three are aspects of the same fundamental religion, both Christianity and Islam are basically Jewish heresies or, more reasonably, an evolutionary growth of Judaism. Their history and beliefs should not be treated in Isolation.
Perhaps you would be better off talking to yourself as that way you can maintain full control of the discussion? Perhaps you should also delete the list of topics mentioned in your OP (which I foolishly assumed were topics to be discussed in this thread) and instead post a step-by-step plan of what you want discussed, the order in which it should be discussed, and the acceptable conclusions to be reached from the discussion.