I don't really understand this paragraph, but I'll make a guess. I think your actual field, which is classical Islamic history, is showing through your viewpoint. In reality, you can't compartmentalise the practice of religion like that. It seems as if you are taking some things that are said about Islam too literally, in fact making your views, if you were Muslim, seem pretty darn puritan.
Now I think you refer to my "for shari'a, it doesn't matter if a law opinion was issued yesterday or in XIV century" claim. It is a fact. Moreover, it's old law opinions that are valued more. Muslim scholars usually use taqlid when they can: if earlier scholars expressed an opinion on something, no new should be given, just the old one reiterated. If there's a completely new question, it's different. It's all completely logical: there's no concept of being out-of-date in a clearly religious point of view. One would have to believe in progress to think that what was in past is obsolete. But why should islamic jurists believe in an european concept of progress? It's past when islam was at its height. Of course, there are jurists who give new answers to old problems. And it may solve a couple of problems, if this approach was to win. But it doesn't solve all the problems.
And that brings us to the point of this paragraph, which you (allegedly) didn't understand. It is that You suggested that muslim law can neutralise the meaning of the violent verses of islam, but did not give evidence for it. So I ask you to do so.
If it is literally true that the gates of ijtihad are closed, does that make any Muslim who do not conform to tradition heretics or, at best, hypocrites?
Not quite. I don't think that thinking that the gates of igtihad should be opened makes somebody a heretic or whatever. I doubt even muslim scholars think so. But I guess that if there's an opposition against it, it is because conservative jurists are - rightly - afraid that once the gates are opened, modernists will try to change the shari'a to fit "modern values" better, using far-fetched interpretations and such. From their point of view, that would be a heresy, hypocrisy or whatever. I'm saying, however, that if someone finds that Al-Qur'an is outdated etc, that means he's probably straying away from islam.
As such, your insistence that Islam by definition has a problem with the treatment of non-believers makes no sense to me. It seems to be a question that is decided by the Muslim community concerned, not by the commandments of the Quran.
Uh, so islam is what (self-claimed) muslims claim or do? Didn't you argue against it a while ago? How do we know what "muslim community" decides? And indeed, that claim of yours seem to indicate that you DO believe Al-Qur'an's commandments are irrelevant, and you ignore the fact that the decisions of muslim community is directly or indirectly, to a bigger or lesser extent, inspired by Al-Qur'an.
Even if people have similar understanding of the relevant texts, it does not mean they will see them in a similar light and come up with the same applications. Indeed, Muslims don't seem to, and your allegation that the moderates might simply not have thought it through strikes me as presumptuous and ridiculous.
That is not what I'm claiming. I claim that muslims are conscious conservatives, conscious liberals and the mass that doesn't have opinion or doesn't care.
I still urge you to find a peaceful interpretation of the violent verses in Al-Qur'an, or at least tell me, what it may be. I see a possibility: to accept the concept of progress, to decide that there's a distinction between the essential part of islamic teachings (5 pillars etc), which are eternal, and the rest, which was the historical context of spreading this essential concept. But that would be an interpretation that'd shake the fundaments, or even render obsolete, the shari'a and go against the old established and commonly accepted concept of Al-Qur'an being eternal, of it being perfect etc, as well as against specific coranic verses that say Muhammad was of exalted characted and he is a great example to follow for everyone. Such an approach exists, but in a complete minority.
I still think you are missing something, but it's probably because you want to put Islam in a straitjacket and see it through the lens of whatever you've learned.
You believe so? huh
I believe you are one of the post-hippie crowd for whom words that "every culture is good and equal, every religion preaches peace" or whatever is an axiom.
This makes no sense whatsoever. First of all, I accept no notion that bad practices can be traced to the essence of Islam.
Perhaps you don't, but you've written:
"saying there is
also evidence to the opposite"
which clearly states there IS evidence for the (alleged) initial claim that "the essence of Islam is bad because you can trace the practice of reprehensible things by its believers to its essence"
Secondly, I never said that the Quran is irrelevant. Your insertion of that in quotation marks, as if quoting me directly, is a slam dunk case of putting words in my mouth, which does not speak well for yourself at all.
Don't be silly. The "irrelevant" bit was in ()s, excluding them from the direct quote of your post. Calling Al-Qur'an "old passages" implied it being irrelevant anyway, you also stated that quoting a holy book has "very little relevance" for religions. Moreover, your earlier claim in the same post, "It seems to be a question that is decided by the Muslim community concerned, not by the commandments of the Quran" plainly shows you find Al-Qur'an irrelevant to the question we are talking about, despite the fact that it gives clear orders in this subject.
That is not an assumption. It's a conclusion.
It's an assumption you take to claim that the argument is nonsensical.
Anyway, whatever.
I can't really make head or tail of this. Is this an argument or what?
You claim that since some muslims do something wrong and some don't do this wrong thing, one may not claim that islam is bad, because if one can trace the bad action to the essence of islam, one can also do it with the lack of this action, therefore, islam doesn't order it, otherwise all muslims would be doing it. That is wrong on many levels, and I've pointed a few.
First of all, an action is based on a belief that this action is good, justified, or whatever. The contrary of this belief is a belief that this action is wrong, or unjustified. Lack of this action is not a proof of holding a belief that this action is bad. So lack of extremist actions is not contrary to the extremist actions, it is neutral. A protest, condemnation of these actions would be contrary to them. And indeed, many islamic scholars condemn terrorist attacks etc. But I've never heard an islamic scholar condemning limiting religious freedom in a muslim country in favour of islam.
Secondly, you claim that it is impossible to draw contrary opinions from the essence of a religion. I believe it is, because:
1) even if the essence was 1 unity, many interpretations would be possible
2) the essence doesn't have to be 1 unity, it may consist of various elements.
3) various people may have various opinions on what the essence actually is.
Therefore, I believe your "logical proof" is not sufficient at all
There is one interesting point, though. If you do think that different people can have different interpretations, then I don't know why you seem to be trying to pin any blame on Islam at all.
Because I hold Islam responsible for its holy book. I do believe there can be various interpretations, but a book is responsible for any logical interpretations of its text, and anyway, "an apple doesn't fall far away from an apple tree", as they say. There is a direct link between the interpretation and the text it is interpreting, and I can not think of any completely peaceful interpretation of the said verses. They have very simple meaning. At best one can limit their modern influence by arguing they only refer to the specific circumstances Muhammad lived in. But that doesn't get rid of the other possible interpretations - sunni islam has no central doctrinal authority anymore, and even in caliphs' times, it was not working - and it goes against many powerful muslim traditions, as it'd show that Muhammad is not a perfect example to follow anymore, and that's what shari'a was built upon for ages.
The essence (let's call it the Idea of Islam, because that's what it really amounts to)
I think there's a difference between "essence" and "idea" of something.
is not something that exists independently of people's minds. It's not an entity or an object, so I don't think it can truthfully be said to exert some sort of causal force. And because it is not an object that has a relation to how many human brains interact with it, the action of some people cannot make the idea more or less moral. There is no such thing as an Islam goodness counter that goes up or down depending on what believers do. Besides, there is every practical reason not to think this way - it's only one step removed from thinking in terms of guilt-by-association.
A concept can well have influence on the material world, it only needs a human mind as an intermediatory.
Do you really think that no concept can be immoral? Isn't a concept of brutally killing someone without a reason immoral, for example? Isn't there a link between an action and a concept of it? Isn't morality a concept, anyway?
Islam is, among others, a concept that Al-Qur'an is the word of God, whom we should obey. God orders people to do various stuff in Al-Qur'an, and these things are moral or not.
You've omitted these bits:
{quote]
(we need to define the essence of islam)
otherwise, how do you want to test it if it's "bad in any way"?
You've just agreed that you can't prove either way judging on actions of islam's followers.
[/quote]
(in responce to your claim that we may only judge religion by its essence)
It depends, also on how do you define essence.
Is essence ALL we can say about a religion, or rather the most important bits of it? If it's the first thing, why is it called essence. And if it's the second thing, there can be said something about islam that isn't part of essence of islam.
(btw, it's only now I realised that indeed my definition of essence of islam is bad if one would have to make it encompass all muslim groups, but I'm not sure of it)
Also, as I've mentioned, the essence doesn't have to be a perfect unity, nor does it have to have one interpretation. And surely muslims have different ideas what the essence of islam is.
And if you mean by essence "what every muslim agrees on", what rests is that the essence of islam is "submitting to God", which doesn't really mean anything without stating what's the God's will. One may - although only after ignoring some of most heterodoxical, extinct muslim groups - claim that "and Muhammad is God's prophet"
is also part of the essence. But that also doesn't really mean anything unless we know what's the word of God transmitted by Muhammad. And you'd agree that the words are nothing without interpretation... and the interpretations are in ash-shari'a (although they're often mixed with interpretations of hadiths)
How can we "take its essence into consideration" when we don't know what is it?
To sum up: if you say that there's nothing wrong in the essence of islam, and if you claim that one may judge religion only by its essence, and you claim that we should take the essence into consideration, you should tell us what =, in your opinion, this essence is. Isn't that obvious?
Don't understand this. It certainly doesn't look like anything I was saying except for the quoted bit.
You claim that "Cultural influences such as religion only define the context of individual actors as the manifestation of the will of the group." suggests that you don't believe in a possible personal approach towards religion, that a person may actually believe in this religion and makes his own opinions based on the sacred texts and its earlier interpretations. Nor that there's a process called internalisation, in which the cultural norms become parts of one's mind, what some call super-ego.
Also, it suggests that a group has one will (religion), that the religion does not have influence on its own,
What did I mean by "that the adherents of an religion (unless you mean actual, full followers) always agree with it, it denies any importance to the holy scriptures of a book etc"?
If you claim that religion is the will of the group, you make it one unity, and something external from a human, it makes a revolt against part of this religion a revolt against its whole. Indeed you yourself treat religion "as an idea compels people to act in a certain way as if it has a life on its own".
You've - again - ignored a bit, about that " A similar claim about holy books would be even sillier, taken into account that they could, at best, manifest the will of the group that existed when they were created."
So how do you explain the influence of the Holy Book? At best you can say that it's manifestation of the will of the author of the holy book, that is Muhammad (or God, if someone beliefs he was indeed a prophet). What's the correlation between the will of the author of the holy book and the will of the "group of people"?
I shouldn't have said antropomorphisation. I should have said objectification. And I just can't imagine how you can fault something that doesn't actually exist (i.e. that is not an object). Is, say, darkness at fault for your inability to see? How does it cause you to be unable to see?
Darkness is lack of light, and light is what I need to see. Therefore, if I don't see when there's no light, I blame it on lack of it, that is on darkness.
A religion is, among others, a concept of how people should behave. If it tells people to do something wrong, I can blame it on it.
Anyway, I think I've said what I can say and nothing bears repeating again. Knowing facts about Islam isn't as important here as being able to reason about what is to blame for the problems that exist in the Islamic world.
Yes, surely, knowing facts about islam isn't very important when dealing with Islamic World.
Anyway, what is to blame for the problems that exist in the Islamic World, according to you?
Also, why do you blame Europe for problems with coexistence?
I refuse to accept your thoughts about islam because they rest on overgeneralised, unproved premises, accompanied by feeble thinking and lack of knowledge.
I agree that arguing that the Fatimid chroniclers certainly thought it was a possibility for the Byzantines to be pissed off about the destruction of the Holy Sepulchre is a fair point, but wouldn't that also have a lot to do with the events of the preceding five decades, with Nikephoros Phokas, Ioannes Tzimiskes, and Bardas Skleros launching military expeditions offensively in every direction on the slightest provocation? I'm not sure how much that can tell us about Basileios in particular and his response to the church's destruction.
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