2 thoughts on “Defending Islam: Corpus juris must be seen as a whole; the cancer of Islamofacism” Lambda Gongyi-Lu 18 July 22016 www.19.org I would like to add an extra note. Islamophobes are obsessed with a kind of logical fallacy that goes as follows: Elephants are animals, therefore, a small elephant is a small animal. But …
Defending Islam: Corpus juris must be seen as a whole; the cancer of Islamofacism Lambda Gongyi-Lu 12 September 2015 www.19.org I’m suggesting the general formula of a new argument for defenders of Islam and religion in general. This is not only relevant to defense of Islam, but also to how we can accurately describe phenomena …
Lambda, while a high school student in China, started communicating with me in January 19, 2012. She had, somehow had obtained Quran: a Reformist Translation and had decided to convert from atheism to rational monotheism. Soon she surprised me by informing that she wanted to translate the Quran into Chinese. She was still a high school student in China and was volunteering for such a task that many professional academics in the field could not dare. I did not discourage her. She did not know Arabic, but a translation of translation that is not distorted by Sunni and Shiite hadith and jurisprudence, would still be much accurate and closer to the message of the Quran. We also could find another Chinese monotheist who knew Arabic to read and edit her translation. She surprised me again, by actually starting her translation.
Why the Sharia Law Is So Dangerous for Our World By our affiliates Abdur Rab and Hasan Mahmud Originally published at World Religion News, October 8, 2015 Human oppression is part of the human legacy. Sadly, it’s often the State that acquiesces in, or even willfully partners with, such oppression. And all too often, such oppression …
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All in all, with the help of the two before-mentioned ayahs (21:104 and 96:4) which direct us to contemplate on the issue painstakingly, we can infer that the Quran had already been written and compiled as a book in the time of the prophet. It was the book sent by God, and its receivers and believers would later be obliged to pay some big prices just because of their loyalty to the message of the God. For instance, they would later be forced to leave their lands, be threatened with their lives. So then, is it something reasonable to think that those people acted such negligently and did not compiled the message for which they ventured to be killed?
Community by definition must be tight knit, a group of strangers can only exist in a locality not in common unity. Group size varies according to what type of community is involved, for example within an allodial cooperative the group size should ideally never get above 15 members as it can generate conflicts within the group, when the group reaches or surpasses 15 it would be wise to split the group into two separate cooperatives.
In equitable society, tortious arbitration of all disputes to relief is the foundation that holds all souls free, only a slave needs a masters consent, given as rights granted; or the fictions of State, government, corporation or trust that dominate the feudal order, all designed to prevent tortious relief. The Monopoly of Violence
Stories relating the words and deeds of the Prophet Muhammad, known as Hadith in Arabic, have long been esteemed by the vast majority of Muslims as a source of law and guidance second only to the Qur’an in authority. In recent years, an increasingly vocal Muslim opposition to Hadith insists that the Qur’an alone should be the sole source of religious law and guidance in Islam. Rashad Khalifa, Kassim Ahmad, Edip Yuksel, and Ahmad Subhy Mansour are among the most important rejecters of the Hadith, whose arguments influence a wide variety of groups popularly labeled Ahl al-Qur’an, Qur’niyyun or Qur’anists.
The questions are now for us, community of submitters and followers of Quran alone:
Are we actually reflecting on our very own argument with the Sunnis?
Can we use it as a righteous scale to determine our very own deviation?
Can’t we see that sometimes we fall into the deception that we are above the rules, that we got it all and we are not candidates for that same Satanic trap?
A recent Gallup poll has indicated that most Muslim Americans do not feel they are represented by existing Muslim organizations in America. The highest approval rating any one of these organizations received was only 12%. While we must assert that all of these existing organizations do extremely valuable work, we also understand that there exists a huge gap between the sociopolitical aspirations of Muslim Americans and the previous achievements of Muslim American organizations. In order to address these issues, we must consider the following:
Muslim Enlightenment: How do we know when it happens? Fereydoun Taslimi www.19.org This paper is an expanded version of a presentation by the author at International Conference of Critical Thinkers for Islamic Reform, Oxford University June-11-13, 2010 Every once in a while a new study surfaces in the United States or some other western country, …
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Divine Will and Human Freedom Abdur Rab Shakespeare writes: “Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and others have greatness thrust upon them.” This pretty much sums up the role of the three groups of factors that shape human destiny: heredity, human effort, and environment. This also echoes what Scriptures would tell us. Influenced by …
No Matter Who Is President of Iran, They Would Stone Me to Death By Lila Ghobady Iranian Artist-in-Exile (Writer/Director/ Journalist) Why didn’t I vote in the latest elections for the president of the country of my birth,Iran? Because no matter who is the president ofIran, they would stone me! As an Iranian woman, I require …
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I believe that the spirit of ijtihad should not simply be brought back. It should be democratized and popularized beyond the academics and imams. Some scholars will object, insisting that to exercise ijtihad one must have skills developed by years of training. Otherwise, they say, we wind up with anybody quoting the Qur’an to justify radical behavior, as is already happening with the rise of the internet and the decline of traditional authority.
Spending in God’s way should be understood in a much broader sense than the generally understood zakat system. It involves considerable spending on the part of a modern state for a variety of functions financed through a well-devised taxation system, besides charitable spending at the individual level. The best kind of spending in God’s way is helping others stand on their own feet. To help another person in a way, which makes him or her look for help all the time, is inherently ill motivated, and is like that of those who like to be seen by men, and is of no intrinsic virtue to them (2:264). From this point of view, the modern state should take appropriate measures to promote investment and development to increase opportunities for gainful employment of unemployed people, along with crafting a well-devised social welfare and security system. At the individual level, such efforts should include savings, investment and work that would help build infrastructure and industries for employment-generating development, along with their humanitarian spending in deserving cases.
So, I believed, without solid evidence other than my reverence to my Prophet, that the stories of the marriage of seven-year-old Ayesha to 50-year-old Prophet are only myths. However, my long pursuit in search of the truth on this matter proved my intuition correct. My Prophet was a gentleman. And he did not marry an innocent seven or nine year old girl. The age of Ayesha has been erroneously reported in the hadith literature. Furthermore, I think that the narratives reporting this event are highly unreliable. Some of the hadith (traditions of the Prophet) regarding Ayesha’s age at the time of her wedding with prophet are problematic. I present the following evidences against the acceptance of the fictitious story by Hisham ibn ‘Urwah and to clear the name of my Prophet as an irresponsible old man preying on an innocent little girl.
Great inequality of wealth along with fraud and greed are common problems today. The modern world for all its material development has not been able to overcome the moral failures of Mecca. All over the world great wealth and hunger exist side by side. Greed, fraud, lack of charity, wealth centered life, these money related sins are as prevalent today as they were 1400 years ago in Arabia. As such, somewhat sadly the description of pagan Mecca is recognizable all over the world today.
A noted Turkish scholar Edip Yuksel who now lives in USA and Arnold Yasin Mol of Netherland and Taj Hargey of MECO were main organizers. Besides Islamic scholars there were some activists and students from Oxford who also participated. It was quite encouraging that so many Islamic scholars from various countries who want reform and change within Islamic frame-work came together to discuss various issues pertaining to Islamic societies and contemporary challenges.
By promoting “incrementalism” over speedy transformation, and by promoting negotiations with troubled and corrupt governments over rapid and positive political change, America would blunder again. And this is a bad time to blunder, as this is a historic chance for change. Demands for democratic ideals and good governance are coming from the most conservative parts of the Muslim world.
