A Muslim's Guide to Islam

[jackelgull]

There has been a resurgence of interest in Islam on this site, and a lot of silly things said on the subject, so I've decided to take it upon myself to provide an overview of the different sects of Islam. That way, anyone wants to hate Islam, they can be more specific on whether they hate Wahhabis, or Sufis,or maybe the Tablighis.

I have only only one request for people who want to post in this thread - no videos.

Addendum: Like Owen has suggested, if you're going to post a link I will implement a high school essay rule: if you direct quote something you need to include original commentary or interpretation of the quotation that is at least as long as the quotation itself.

 

[schlaufuchs]

As an addendum - because I actually hate links/article copypastas even more than youtube videos, I would love to see a thread (like this one) implement a high school essay rule: if you direct quote something you need to include original commentary or interpretation of the quotation that is at least as long as the quotation itself.

 

[Phrossack]

Thanks for making this thread! Should be useful.

As an addendum - because I actually hate links/article copypastas even more than youtube videos, I would love to see a thread (like this one) implement a high school essay rule: if you direct quote something you need to include original commentary or interpretation of the quotation that is at least as long as the quotation itself.

That would be an excellent rule. For all threads.

 

[Wolfbeckett]

I don't know about the "that is at least as long as the quotation itself" part because I don't want people muddying up their points adding a lot of unnecessary verbiage just to adhere to some arbitrary rule, but I'm in general supportive of the concept of not posting articles without having some kind of discussion or commentary about them. If the article is important enough to be relevant to the thread, it's important enough to spend 2 minutes explaining why it's relevant and what it's implications are and so forth.

 

[Aea]

I just want to see a stop to the posts where people throw up multiple links with thousands of words and claim they disprove what you're saying. And then any follow up is the same crap.

 

[Joecoolyo]

I just want to see a stop to the posts where people throw up multiple links with thousands of words and claim they disprove what you're saying. And then any follow up is the same crap.

Agreed. If it discourages mindless copy-and-pasting I'm all for it.

 

[NovaKart]

I was surprised to find out recently that dream interpretation is a thing among some Muslims at least. I told a co-worker about a reoccurring dream I have where I see enormous snakes everywhere as I walk around. Every time I have this dream it bothers me so much I have to get out of bed and turn on the lights.

He was very serious about it and looked it up on the Internet and asked me specific questions like the color of the snakes and if I had killed them in the dream. He listened to a speech by an imam and couldn't get a specific answer but he thought it meant I had bad jinn in my apartment possibly and I should recite some verses from the Quran. I'm not a Muslim but he said maybe it would work anyway.

When I was a child, this is not a joke, I had a recurring dream in which me and my sister where chased around the house by a giant hair drier. I'm not sure that would be in the list. Anyway I'm not mocking the dream interpretation thing just pointing out there are some really odd ones hard to classify.

 

[jackelgull]

Sit down folks because I'll need to lay some groundwork down here.

First of all there are two 2 main sects of Islam, Shiites and Sunnis.

The split began as a political one during Uthman's reign, but the roots for it were present before hand. Uthman's actions (promoting family members to high places, using the public treasury as his own) provoked resentment and lead to his assassination. Ali was chosen Caliph by a hastily assembled board. His legitimacy was later put into question, when one of the board members claims Ali threatened him into accepting his bid for Caliph.

This was the perfect opportunity for all groups and political actors to stake their bid for the Caliphate. What they had was a Caliph whose legitimacy was on shakier ground then all the previous Caliphs. So they spread rumours that Ali was shielding the assassins that killed Uthman from justice, and fought a free for all Civil War against Ali under the pretext of justice. I won't go into who allied with who and who betrayed who, but the last man standing was the governor of Syria, who created the Ummayad dynasty. The people who fought for Ali slinked into corners and became known as the Shiite' Ali, or the partisans of Ali.

Now here's something I'll bold because it is important - although these guys, the ones who fought for Ali, were technically the first Shiites, they aren't the Shiites of today.

For the next forty to sixty years, the Shiite Ali acted mainly as opposition to the central government under Muawiyya. The main theological opponents of Sunni Islam of the day were Kharijites. They believed that there should be no separation between the ruler and his people, that even a slave should have a chance at becoming Caliph. They also didn't venerate the first Muslims like Sunnis did, they were pretty egalitarian in that way, believing there was no difference between the first converts and the last ones. They also believed they were the only true Muslims, and that other Muslims were just Kaffir in disguise too. They were also notorious for killing women and children, and organized rebellions throughout several Caliph's reign. They later evolved into the Ibadis who still exist in Yemen. Unlike the Kharijites who believe that a Muslim who committed a grave sin is no longer a believer, the Ibadis believe a Muslim who has committed a grave sin is an ungrateful monotheist. This is a distinction that Sunni Islam doesn't make, but in Sunni Islam, such a Muslim is still a Muslim, and not in some limbo category between Muslim and unbeliever.

In 660, the split between Sunni and Shia became more pronounced, when the grandson of Ali, Hussein lead a rebellion that was crushed. He became a Shia martyr, and began their tendency to venerate Ali and his successors as the true leaders of the Muslim community and their belief in a Mahdi, a rightly guided one descended from the Prophet Muhammed from his daughter Fatima's side.

 

[jackelgull]

You still with me? Good, let's talk about fiqh (Islamic Jurisprudence)

After the Prophet died it was up to a large body of scholars and judges to interpret Islamic law, and so a variety of juridical schools emerged emerged, known as madhhabs. Many fell in and out of favor, until in the 14th century, it was agreed to recognize only four, those founded by the four famous Imams, or leaders, namely, Abu Hanifa, Ibn Malik, Ash-Shafi, and Ibn Hanbal. They are reckoned to be authorities of the highest rank on Islamic law

1. Abu Hanifa 31% of Muslims
The Hanafi school of jurisprudence uses a rationalistic method in its approach to theological questions. Abu Hanifa believed a code of laws could not be static for too long and risk not meeting the needs of the people. He advocated interpreting the sources of Islamic law in response to the needs of the people. This however, never lead to him trying to supersede the Quran or the Sunnah. Instead he promoted the use of the Quran and Sunnah to derive laws for the public good.

A major aspect of his methodology was debate to derive rulings. He would commonly pose a legal issue to a group of about 40 of his students, and challenge them to come up with a ruling based on the Quran and Sunnah. Students would at first attempt to find the solution in the Quran, if it was not clearly answered in the Quran, they would turn to the Sunnah, and if it was not there, they would use reason to find a logical solution.

To this day, the Hanifa school of thought is the most liberal - for example, under Hanafi jurisprudence, blasphemy is not punishable by the state, despite being considered a civil crime by some other schools. The Hanafi school also established the principle that the universal concurrence of the Ummah (community) of Islam on a point of law, as represented by legal and religious scholars, constituted evidence of the will of God. This process is called ijma',which means the consensus of the scholars, and it also accepted local customs as a second source of law.

2. Imam Malik bin Anas
He was very attached to Medina and was opposed to making decisions based on rationalistic methods, so he created a system founded on Medina, the abode of the customs of Muhammed. Malik made it his business to arrange and systematize such traditions as were current in the city and to form out of them a system of jurisprudence. He wrote The al-Muwatta, the very first Islamic book of law. He also used the practice of the Companions of Muhammed as law, and occaisonally used opinion and analytical reasoning.
3.Imam Ash-Shafi’i
He's widely considered the father of Islamic jurisprudence. In a nutshell he basically synthesized the Hanafi method of reasoning with the Malik method of relying on hadith and other traditions. He is largely responsible for systematizing the methods used for deriving Islamic laws.
4. Imam Ibn Hanbal
The Hannabi school of jurisprudence is probably the strictest. It adheres tightly to the Quran and the Hadith. Hanbal and his followers would rather have follow weak hadith than accept consensus. Part of this can be explained by the fact he founded his school in a time when Hanafi school of jurisprudence dominated, and he feared that legal scholars were taking the principle of analogical deduction to dangerous lengths

5. But, but you said there were 4 right?
When I said that I was referring to Sunni only.
Meet Imam Ja‘far ibn Muhammad al-Sadiq , otherwise known as the basis for the Shia school of jurisprudence. Not univeraally accepted but some Sunnis accept his ruling as equally valid to the other schools. Due to a history of persecution of Shiites, this school of jurisprudence wasn't presented to the masses the conventional way. He basically had to wait until the Ummayads became weak, then teach his classes in secret. At one point though four thousand scholars, commentators of the Qur’an, historians, and philosophers attended his classes in the holy city of Madina. Therefore, he was able to pass down the teachings of the Noble Qur’an and the Prophet Muhammad and crystallize them in what came to be known as al-Fiqh al-Ja‘fari, the Ja‘fari Jurisprudence. His teachings were collected in 400 usul (foundations) which were written by his students and encompass hadith, Islamic philosophy, theology, commentary of the Qur’an, literature, and ethics.

 

[schlaufuchs]

I don't know about the "that is at least as long as the quotation itself" part because I don't want people muddying up their points adding a lot of unnecessary verbiage just to adhere to some arbitrary rule, but I'm in general supportive of the concept of not posting articles without having some kind of discussion or commentary about them. If the article is important enough to be relevant to the thread, it's important enough to spend 2 minutes explaining why it's relevant and what it's implications are and so forth.

Better a poorly articulated point than no point at all.

The reason that the rule works in high school is because if you have so little to say about your quotation that you can't match its length in original content then it is: a) not servicing your point particularly well and you'd be better served paraphrasing it, b) there is a lot of fat in your quotation that needs to be trimmed (rather than including the whole paragraph, why not pick one sentence that gets to the heart of what you're trying to say), c) there is no point to begin with, so why are you including the quotation in the first place?

Also great jackal. I kind of wish it'd be a little meatier, but the work is still appreciated and I'm looking forward to more

 

[abradley]

I was surprised to find out recently that dream interpretation is a thing among some Muslims at least. I told a co-worker about a reoccurring dream I have where I see enormous snakes everywhere as I walk around. Every time I have this dream it bothers me so much I have to get out of bed and turn on the lights.

He was very serious about it and looked it up on the Internet and asked me specific questions like the color of the snakes and if I had killed them in the dream. He listened to a speech by an imam and couldn't get a specific answer but he thought it meant I had bad jinn in my apartment possibly and I should recite some verses from the Quran. I'm not a Muslim but he said maybe it would work anyway.

When I was a child, this is not a joke, I had a recurring dream in which me and my sister where chased around the house by a giant hair drier. I'm not sure that would be in the list. Anyway I'm not mocking the dream interpretation thing just pointing out there are some really odd ones hard to classify.

Don't think it's just a Muslim thing. My Thai wife, a Buddhist, is into it. Big in Thailand.

 

[abradley]

Better a poorly articulated point than no point at all.

The reason that the rule works in high school is because if you have so little to say about your quotation that you can't match its length in original content then it is: a) not servicing your point particularly well and you'd be better served paraphrasing it, b) there is a lot of fat in your quotation that needs to be trimmed (rather than including the whole paragraph, why not pick one sentence that gets to the heart of what you're trying to say), c) there is no point to begin with, so why are you including the quotation in the first place?

Also great jackal. I kind of wish it'd be a little meatier, but the work is still appreciated and I'm looking forward to more

Disagree, rather have a well presented point than something that's not as articulately presented.

Less chance of misunderstanding IMO.

 

[jackelgull]

If you ask a Muslim, "What is your religion?" they'll probably tell you "Islam".

However, if you ask them "what kind of Muslim are you?" you'll likely find a variety of answers.

See, many Muslims believe that you can't pick and choose which school of Islamic jurisprudence you should follow, and these schools of jurisprudence govern things like behaviour, and legal/ religious scholars divide activities into forbidden (Haram), undesirable (Maqrooh), okay (halal), encouraged, and mandatory (Firdh). So in a way they act as sects. Many Muslims will identify by which interpretation they follow. Until I was 10, I thought I was Hanafi because my mother said we were Hanafi Muslims. I then learned that we are Tablighi Muslims. Or maybe, it would be more accurate to say we are both, and that both identites are valid, except that we and a lot of other Muslims tend to identify by our school of fiqh, rather than our denomination.

Part of the reason for this stems from the fact that a lot of Muslims come from revivalist movement back grounds. These movements were begun by theologians who weren't out to create something new, they just wanted to purify Islam from centuries of corruption and bad practices. The founder of the Tablighi Jamat movement (An underserved figure imo. Most scholars on Islamic revivalist movements ignore him, even though he founded the most successful grassroots organization. Still, not relevant) was a Sufi Muslim who studied under and was probably a hanafi jurist. He did not specifically try to create a new brand of Islam. However, in doing what he did, he breathed new life into the religion, and people recognized it. A lot of the "converts" to Tablighi were already Muslims, they just wanted to practice Islam in a different better way. Over the past few decades though, there have been reasons for Tablighi being a label, and one of those is persecution from other Muslims.

 

[jackelgull]

How do my posts look so far? Are they choppy and incomplete? Is the information well presented?

 

[abradley]

How do my posts look so far? Are they choppy and incomplete? Is the information well presented?

Good, the background is needed by those not knowing it.

Like the 'figh (Islamic Jurisprudence)', it's seldom covered.

 

[Atticus]

How do my posts look so far? Are they choppy and incomplete? Is the information well presented?

I like the brevity, but all the different terms and names are hard to keep up with.

 

[Arwon]

Sit down folks because I'll need to lay some groundwork down here.

First of all there are two 2 sects of Islam, Shiites and Sunnis.

Just the two? Where do Sufis and Ibadi fit?

 

[Thorgalaeg]

I think sufis are not exactly a sect but a philosophy or something like that. You can be sunni or shii and sufi at the same time. And BTW i though there were still some karijies around at the persian gulf zone.

 

[chijohnaok]

If you ask a Muslim, "What is your religion?" they'll probably tell you "Islam".

However, if you ask them "what kind of Muslim are you?" you'll likely find a variety of answers.

See, many Muslims believe that you can't pick and choose which school of Islamic jurisprudence you should follow, and these schools of jurisprudence govern things like behaviour, and legal/ religious scholars divide activities into forbidden (Haram), undesirable (Maqrooh), okay (halal), encouraged, and mandatory (Firdh). So in a way they act as sects. Many Muslims will identify by which interpretation they follow. Until I was 10, I thought I was Hanafi because my mother said we were Hanafi Muslims. I then learned that we are Tablighi Muslims. Or maybe, it would be more accurate to say we are both, and that both identites are valid, except that we and a lot of other Muslims tend to identify by our school of fiqh, rather than our denomination.

Part of the reason for this stems from the fact that a lot of Muslims come from revivalist movement back grounds. These movements were begun by theologians who weren't out to create something new, they just wanted to purify Islam from centuries of corruption and bad practices. The founder of the Tablighi Jamat movement (An underserved figure imo. Most scholars on Islamic revivalist movements ignore him, even though he founded the most successful grassroots organization. Still, not relevant) was a Sufi Muslim who studied under and was probably a hanafi jurist. He did not specifically try to create a new brand of Islam. However, in doing what he did, he breathed new life into the religion, and people recognized it. A lot of the "converts" to Tablighi were already Muslims, they just wanted to practice Islam in a different better way. Over the past few decades though, there have been reasons for Tablighi being a label, and one of those is persecution from other Muslims.

[My bold emphasis above]

Would Wahhabism be included as one of these "revivalist" sects?

I have heard/read that Wahhabism is an effort to reform (not sure "reform" is the correct term here) the religion into a more conservative form. Would that be correct?

It's my understanding that the Saudi government promotes Wahhabism across many countries of the world by financing the building of mosques and paying for the salaries of Imams that preach in them. Is this also correct?

 

[jackelgull]

Just the two? Where do Sufis and Ibadi fit?

Sufis aren't a sect perse, they're more of a philosophical system that adds a psycho spiritual dimension to Islam. The Ibadis, oh yeah, those guys, I will edit my first post to include them.

[My bold emphasis above]

Would Wahhabism be included as one of these "revivalist" sects?

I have heard/read that Wahhabism is an effort to reform (not sure "reform" is the correct term here) the religion into a more conservative form. Would that be correct?

It's my understanding that the Saudi government promotes Wahhabism across many countries of the world by financing the building of mosques and paying for the salaries of Imams that preach in them. Is this also correct?

Wahhabism is a revivalist movement, but lumping it in with the other revivalist movements is kind of tricky, since it is so different from the movements of the 19th and 20th centuries, in alot of ways. The founder of Wahabism (Muhammad ibn Abd al Wahhab) felt that the people of Najd (the area of Saudi Arabia he was preaching) had strayed too far from the teachings of Islam. They venerated trees and prayed to saints etc. However, it is important to note that in its day, Wahhabism was a reformative movement of sorts. Muhammed ib Abd al Wahhab was also concerned with the indifference shown to widows and orphans, as well as the fact that women were not given their fair share of inheritance under Islamic guidelines.

This is part of the symbiotic relationship the House of Saud established with Wahhabism. When Wahhabism was in its infancy, its founder and a local powerful leader named Muhammad ibn Saud came to an agreement, the House of Saud would back Wahhabism, and Wahhabism would help the House of Saud. They essentially did this by converting political loyalty into a religious obligation. According to Muhammad ibn Abd al Wahhab's teachings, a Muslim must present a bayah, or oath of allegiance, to a Muslim ruler during his lifetime to ensure his redemption after death. The ruler, conversely, is owed unquestioned allegiance from his people so long as he leads the community according to the laws of God. I could go into the various ways that Wahhabism was beneficial to the Saud family, but this s not the place to get into that.

So yes, the House of Saud spends money to promote Wahhabism, its beneficial for them too.