Cdn Blackshirt said:
Question for Abdullah,
It seems that there is a strong schism between those muslims who wish to be more inclusive such as those who invited Loachmen to dinner and those who would punish those muslims for acting in such a fashion (or those that killed that shopkeeper in the UK).
Can you elaborate on where that divide comes from? As in where does it start? I assume as with all philosophies it starts with the teachers. If that is true is there a practical way to promote the teachings of inclusiveness and eliminate the spread of ISIS-like prejudices?
Many thanks, Matthew.
Good question Matthew, I will answer to the best of my ability. But please keep a few things in mind.
1; I am not an Islamic scholar
2; I have not studied social sciences
3; I have only traveled north America and only experienced the start of extremist tendencies in people but have not dealt with any full blown extremists or any extremists from the mid east or Africa.
4; I can seem to '0' my hunting rifle with this new scope and I'm preoccupied with why that is. Aka I'm wondering if I need a new scope.
The start came 7-800 years ago and has been brewing and evolving ever since. One of the very first salafi's if not the first was ibn taymiyyah. His works is instrumental to the contemporary salafi movements, albeit many scholars are very critical of him and his ideology (I also follow the opinion that he had quite a few... wrong ideas. That were baseless.)
A quick bio about him;
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibn_Taymiyyah
Now ibn taymiyyah amongst others who follow his ideology take hadith's from "ikrimah the liar" who is.. extreme in his narrations and thoroughly debunked by classical hadith narrators and classic scholar. But some contemporary scholars have designated him as a sound narrator which goes against a thousand or more years of scholars saying he was a weak, unreliable, liar. Which creates issues when religious rulings are involved.. in the last few hundred years (more so lately) you find more calls for death for crossing different religious boundaries that none of the accepted classical scholars called for capital punishment on.
Now this is only one facet of the ideological battle that is going on. There are more religious issues that exist between the classical and contemporary scholars such as niqab/burka vs hijab or what food is halal etc but for simplicity sake I will stick with ikrimah the liar.
Now over the last few hundred years, the salafi movements have been gaining traction in the Islamic community, yes there are different kinds of salafis, if you didn't know which make it even harder to combat where needed.. because not all salafis need to be neutralized err eliminated... um corrected? Some of them are quite good to be honest... but I'm dealing in generalities and the small groups of salafis who don't have these flaws.. I won't bring up because it will take to long.
But here is a quick link if interested;
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salafi_movement
Now add to that the decentralization of the Muslim empire in the last 100 years, with the fall of the Ottoman Empire which left a power vacuum needing to be filled and the Sykes picot deal that had redrawn the borders in a most unfortunate way in my opinion.
The fall of the Ottoman empire;
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historiography_of_the_fall_of_the_Ottoman_Empire
Quick read on the Sykes picot deal, but basically the divided ethnic, religious and linguistic groups and didn't care;
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sykes–Picot_Agreement
Now onto why groups like Daesh have.. been born. they are simply a salafi movement and the salafi ideology has been receiving huge funding for the last 80 years or so.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wahhabism
With the Saudi Arabian petro dollars funding thousands upon thousands of Islamic schools world wide this ideology has began seeping into the original four madhabs.
http://www.themodernreligion.com/basic/madhab/bio.html
Some scholars from the four madhabs have become... confused on figh issues because of this worldwide funding and propagation of salafism. So we now have some hanafi scholars saying that killing apostates is obligatory, when abu Hanifa gave Lee way it in almost all cases by his actions and lack of criticism when leaders did not execute apostates.. because they have put so much money into funding their version of Islam.. which coincidentally is conveniently easier to radicalize people with, by power hungry dogs (not meaning to insult noble dogs at all).
So when you have contemporary Hanifa scholars going against classical hanafi scholars (which in Islam is a big no no) the people get confused and choose the third route. So even a lot of guys on the good team are unintentionally helping the bad team, by propagating these fatawas that call for death over stupid crap (even though they usually preface the stupid fatawas saying it only applies in Islamic countries).
Now how to combat this and spread the true message of Islam, that calls for all people to feel safe and to have peace in their lives wether they are Muslim or not...
We can go back to the basics and follow what our prophet taught and what the pious predecessors propagated. There is A LOT more I can supply then these two links (which I barely checked lol) but I'm starting to wane.
http://seekershub.org/blog/2011/03/forty-hadiths-of-the-prophet-muhammad-lastprophetinfo/
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reforms_of_Umar%27s_era
Now how to promote this... Christ if this post hasn't put me on hit list yet... this will lol. We have to stop Saudi dollars from propagating this crap. We have to seek out solid scholars who are following what the classical scholars taught and help them get their message out there however we can and in some cases protect them and keep them alive. Daesh violently and brutally murdered many Syrian scholars who taught true Islam by calling them kafrs. Just because the Islam they were teaching was gentle and loving (sorry this one hurts, they were great people). Every one scholar daesh murders hurts Islam more then one can imagine, because that particular knowledge dies. The war murdered one of the world greatest hadith scholars... just because he wouldn't propagate or accept their bs. He died rather then ruining Islam, people like him need to be protected. (I believe it was daesh but some critics say otherwise so I'll be neutral. None the less if their wasn't this war he wouldn't have died.)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohamed_Said_Ramadan_Al-Bouti
We need to find muslims who care about Islam to study under these scholars or their kids to study under these scholars to save this knowledge before the extremist elements in the salafi movement eliminate them all. We (Muslims) need to pay for these scholars to have platforms to speak from and teach from. We have to ask the hard questions and get true answers from them to keep the fight going and show the kids an alternative Islam that teaches love not hate.
Basically, we need to fight for our religion in our homes, our mosques and our streets. But sadly to many people do not care and thus their kids take knowledge from any youtube shayk or Google mufti they find and then these problems persist. He'll maybe even our government should censor and blacklist all extremist speakers, to help the good guys... but freedom of speech and all won't allow it and to many Muslims have spent the last 50+ years thinking these lies are true so they will riot if you blacklist the fool who says to kill people who insult the prophet or what have you.
Dang it all I'm rambling. We are already doing a lot of these things outlined here, but we are out gunned and out manned right now and it kills me inside. I know for every dollar the good guys spend correcting this issue, those on the other side spend a thousand and these days money buys the minds and hearts of the young.
So how to practically, quickly and effectively eliminate these perverse ideologies I have nothing and may God forgive me for not doing more.
I hope I made a little sense... I spent roughly 2 hours writing this lol
Abdullah
PS my salafi brothers I know not all of you guys are bad wallahi I know
Pss the scholar in Syria I was thinking of I only knew as the "Shayk ul hadith of syria" but the chap I linked to looks like and sounds like him that I'm 99.99% sure it is the right guy.
And I also stress this is just my opinion, nothing more or less.
I think this should be my last clarification, some religious rulings that I have brought up need to be taken with the context of the actions of people of those times. Not just the fatawas of that time. This is another long discussion, but basically if no one was punished for doing xyz during those times by the order of the righteous Islamic leadership then we can rule it out as people 'needing' to be punished for doing xyz.
*posted for a reason to continue to show the sharia isn't a brick wall lol*
