Individualism and Judachrislam

[innonimatu]

Innonimatu, you make some good points, but I have to agree with Winner overall here.

It's just a matter that christianity has changed a lot since it originated - first with the emergence of an organized church (without the roman empire it might have gone a different way) that managed to inherit the prestige and part of the power of a falling empire, then with the reformation.
Islamism has not changed. Not because it couldn't change, but probably because the caliphate, which oversaw its spread, was not collapsing at the time. That (and this is my guess, and probably would be heretical if I was a muslim ) lead to its holy book being set down in more rigid terms, and created a tradition of interpreting it literally. But I don't know enough about the power relations during the original caliphate (political/religious power) to venture more that a guess here.
Still, at its origin, they shared the same concepts - which is no wonder, they all shamelessly ripped off from the more ancient religions.

 

[QuoVadisNation]

I can't believe we're bringing in positive freedom and negative freedom into this. Whatever the case, it's important to remember that Christianity (and Judaism) has morphed to incorporate ideals of positive individual freedom in some cases, but only very recently in the past 200 years. Other (most) forms of Christianity are undoubtedly in the negative category where personal individualism isn't very emphasized.

 

[innonimatu]

I can't believe we're bringing in positive freedom and negative freedom into this. Whatever the case, it's important to remember that Christianity (and Judaism) has morphed to incorporate ideals of positive individual freedom, but only very recently in the past 200 years.

Just a comparison with the two concepts of individualism presented by aneeshm, can you see no similarities?

Ideas get independently (re)invented many times.

 

[MayNilad Man]

I think that Chrisitanity incorporated positive indiviudalism ever since its inception.

During the times of the Apostles, when the Mass was more of an informal meeting amongst friends, there is a trend towards spiritual perfection through the support of a community. That tradition, I think, continues to this day, in a more insitutionalized form.

Whether that insitutionalization is a good thing or a bad things, is up for discussion.


Some examples of positive individualism in Catholicism:
Confessional- the idea being that everyone has a personal spiritual guide to help him realise the moral code supposedly written in his heart.
Mass- the idea being that celebration with community reinforces positive attributes (depending on point of view) better than individual celebration. Really playing on the power of peer pressure.