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[Jakeh111]

What's your basis for this thought?

I just see that they use religion as a tool and really want power more than anything. My view is skewed being an atheist I just dont get religion when its used to that extreme.

 

[Amir0x]

I just see that they use religion as a tool and really want power more than anything. My view is skewed being an atheist I just dont get religion when its used to that extreme.

I just mean, you can use religion as a tool for power and still legitimately believe it is true. I was looking for some hard evidence that many of these individuals in power don't actually hold the faiths they claim they do.

 

[Jakeh111]

I just mean, you can use religion as a tool for power and still legitimately believe it is true. I was looking for some hard evidence that many of these individuals in power don't actually hold the faiths they claim they do.

Ah, yeah its just my opinion really.

 

[Messofanego]

The Wahabi's in Saudi Arabia have wreaked havoc on Islamic history in Mecca and Medina. They demolished the house of the Prophet along with most other buildings dating from that era and later. They are even in talks to demolish the cave in which the first revelations were supposed to have come down. These were sites that were honored and respected all through out Muslim history through all the different powers who have had control over that region. Wahhabism truly is a curse on Islam.

I visited the Cave of Hira when I was living there, it was awesome.

Ugh, this is just so sad to hear.

 

[Antiochus]

The prolific human population genetics/social sciences blogger Razib Khan had a fairly good disambiguation two years ago of what ISIS' and their ilks ideology really stands for when the news was about Ansar Dine (the Islamist fanatics back in Mali who attempted to destroy Timbuktu):

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/g...rstanding-the-nature-of-affairs/#.U9Sf7fldVDQ

There are many points to dispute in this editorial, but I want to put the focus on the idea of “radical conservatism.” Though one can strictly be radically conservative, one has to be careful when someone uses such a term. After all, conservatism in a deep sense is at cross-purposes with radicalism. In the 1990s many American conservatives were angered that the media kept referring to unreconstructed Communists in the former Eastern Bloc as “conservatives,” but in a strict sense that was defensible (though I do think that the terminology ultimately reflected media bias in part).

Not so in this case. Groups like Ansar Dine, inspired by the infantile iconoclasm which seems to crop up in Islam, makes it part of its program to destroy very ancient monuments. In other words, Ansar Dine is attacking the organically developed traditional customs and folkways of Islam in the region, going first at the material manifestations of the local culture. This is fundamentally anti-conservative. Rather than conserving, these radicals resemble the Khmer Rouge or the Red Guards, who wished to create a cultural blank slate and start over. This is the delusion of strain of the Islam which we term Salafi (and its related siblings, such as the more radical Deobandis).

Salfism is predicated on a radical delusion, that modern Muslims have access to the arrangement of life of the first generations of Muslims, and can recreate that way of life. The analogy here to radical Protestant sects which attempted to emulate “primitive Christianity” is strong. To recreate the Islam of the first decades of the religion the Salafists and their fellow travelers construct a society to their own tastes. It is fundamentally a utopian project. Because of their reliance on their own rational faculties of analysis and reconstruction the Salafists feel no need to give due deference to the organically evolved history of Sunni Islam from 8th century down to the present (or, what was to become Sunni Islam). This is why they are engaging in acts of egregious iconoclasm against the past: they believe that the past is untrustworthy a idolatrous, as opposed to their own idealized blueprint. To get a better sense, here is a Wikipedia entry, Destruction of early Islamic heritage sites:

For example, “The House of Khadijah bint Khuwaylid in Makkah was demolished and paved over and several public protests were heard at the building of a public toilet on the same site. The house where Muhammad was born was converted into a library and was slated for demolition as part of an expansion project.” Khadijah is Muhammad’s first wife.

Why does any of this matter? Because of the media characterization of radical Islamists as neo-feudalist reactionaries misleads the public as to the basic nature of the danger the world faces. Radical Islamism is not the resurrection of an old world, it is the accelerated destruction of elements of the old world, an almost nihilistic response to modernity. The project of development and modernization may inevitably lead to a minority of Muslims in any nation to embrace a position analogous to that of the Salafis. All the education and economic development won’t change that. Instead of expressing shock and horror we need to figure out mitigating strategies. These sorts of infantile pseudo-traditionalist radical may be like a fever which will eventually pass as cultures stumble to modernity.

 

[Messofanego]

The prolific human population genetics/social sciences blogger Razib Khan had a fairly good disambiguation a year ago of what ISIS' and their ilks ideology really stands for:

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/g...rstanding-the-nature-of-affairs/#.U9Sf7fldVDQ

Hmm interesting.

 

[Terra Firma]

The prolific human population genetics/social sciences blogger Razib Khan had a fairly good disambiguation a year ago of what ISIS' and their ilks ideology really stands for:

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/g...rstanding-the-nature-of-affairs/#.U9Sf7fldVDQ

I would say that this guy has little idea about Islamic scholarship if he sees conservative movements in Islam as little more than emulations of Christian movements. The fact that he lumps all Salafis together and even a traditional, non-Salafi movement called the Deobandis with them exposes his bias.

Salafis are varied in not just belief, but even their expression of this belief. There's a reason that Salafis are one of the most divided groups in Islam. It is highly likely that one Salafi probably thinks of another as a disbeliever or deviant for this or that reason. That is why that despite the fact that there are a lot of Salafis in the Middle East, there are way too many divisions and way too many different groups that call themselves Salafi or would fall under the Salafi banner.

He also conflates what the majority of Muslims, Salafi or not, yearn for (i.e. returning to the practices and beliefs of the Golden Age of Islam) with "a cultural blank slate and start over". Most Muslims do believe that the Golden Age of Islam, which was the time of the Prophet PBUH and the rule of the four rightly guided caliphs, to be the best time for Islam and want to bring the ideals of that time into their lives as much as possible. That is what the term "Sunni" is derived from in "Sunni Islam" - those that follow the Sunnah (the path) of the Prophet PBUH, which includes the way it was exemplified in the life of the Prophet PBUH and the lives of his companions.

He says: "Salfism is predicated on a radical delusion, that modern Muslims have access to the arrangement of life of the first generations of Muslims, and can recreate that way of life." Does he not realize that the foundation of Sunni Islam is the Qur'an and the Sunnah, which in conjunction, do provide traditional Muslims (let alone Salafis) access "to the arrangement of life of the first generations of Muslims"?

It would probably surprise this guy to know that many Salafis (and Deobandis) were against the destruction of the house of the Prophet PBUH. They were against the destruction of the house of his closest companion and the first caliph Abu Bakr as well. A simple cursory look on Islamic forums that are run by Salafis will also show that.

There are Salafis that want the Green Dome over the grave of the Prophet PBUH to be destroyed as well. And then there are Salafis (and Deobandis) that are against this. There are Salafis who were proponents of turning Makkah into a Las Vegas knockoff. There are Salafis who are against it.

It is not a simple, black and white issue. He says that what Salafis are practicing is "infantile iconoclasm" yet he is sweeping centuries of scholarly differences within Islamic tradition under the label of Salafism. Iconoclasm is not the same as Salafism. Iconoclasm existed during the Golden Age of Islam. There are even Sufi groups that are iconoclasts. It might surprise the author to know that the Taliban are not Salafi (for the most part), but Hanafi Sufis! Even the Barelvi group (Hanafi Sufi as well) in the Indian subcontinent, although declaring ALL Salafis to be outside of Islam, is iconoclast if there is any inkling of saint worship/grave worship (the exact same position as the Deobandis, except most Deobandis see Salafis as deviants from Islam, not outright heretics). It should be noted that Barelvis also deem Deobandis to be heretics (but not because of any differences in iconoclasm; the issue is a lot more nuanced here and has to do with the nature of the Prophet PBUH but that is a completely different topic).

The core of Salafism is not adhering to the four established schools of thought (Hanafi/Hanbali/Maliki/Shafi'i) and/or rejection of the two schools of Islamic philosophy (Ash'ari/Maaturidi). That is the definition of a Salafi, according to Islamic scholars. If someone follows one of the four schools of thought and one of the two schools of philosophy, that person is not Salafi, but a traditional Sunni.

 

[Amensalism]

edit: false alarm

 

[efyu_lemonardo]

US needs to take out the fake caliph and end this shit once and for all.

Yes, that's exactly what the US should do. What could possibly go wrong this time?

 

[PJV3]

I just think of this as being similar to the reformation or puritan periods in England. Give it 500 years and there will be gay mullahs, tea and Victoria sponge.