Warning, mega post.
Cmon, GM why cant you write normal posts like everyone else ? It would be most appreciated if instead of an array of articles to prove your point, you would put together something of your own accord. It is only because of my infinite patience that I backtrace and dig up points you want to move across, from your post-al bombardment.
Andrew, do you understand the role of naskh in islamic theology and why the "verses of the sword" override the nicer verses like what you posted above? Can you tell me where in the muslim world there is the freedom of religion?
+ BOSTOM ARTICLERampant simplifications.
Naskh, or abrogation is a term used mostly in exegesis for contradictory material between the Qur'ān and the Sunna. In its historiographical use, naskh usually incorporates the replacement of an earlier tradition with a chronologically newer one.
Last 200 years give or take there has been serious objection to the idea of naskh within Muslim interpretatons themselves whereas many modern scholars even reject it.
Weiss-Asad one of the most influential muslims of the 20. century, outright refutates the very notion of abrogation.
The harshest argument counter abrogation is the sole fact that
there are NO secondary sources within the Hadith literature on the problem of abrogation. You have a grave misunderstanding of not only how traditional religious texts are being read and interpreted on scholarly level but how history in general is being written today. I know for a fact Bostom is aware of the details because I remember reading some of hist stuff on tafsir a while ago, but obviously he has a similar urge to suddenly forget the things that may counterbalance his work.
The problem with bloggers like Bostom and amateur historians ala Menzies,Voronov, and others, while they do mostly work with generally good and credible data analysis and „facts“, they are (intentionaly or accidentally) clueless to the modern methods of historiography, theory and philosophy of history. In Bostoms case, the general tone of voice is strident and propostreously anti-Muslim. There isnt a problem with this per se, but it is coupled with selective works designed to pick out the worst examples of anti-Christian and anti Jewish behavior by Muslims, usually in time of war and threats to their own destruction, and this is what is greatly bothering me. To make things worse he demonizes the so-called Islamic threat to Western civilization all thedamn time and the final word is more times than not confusing and quite frankly, irritating.
Claiming, especially in humanistics, that ONE thing has all the answers dead stop, is silly and ignorant. Its not exact science, where gravitational pull is 9.82 no matter how many times you drop the stone. Like already said, there ARE scientific METHODS being used though, which most of the guys dont care to look at. These things are mega collages, and if you want an objective all around view, alot of the times you have to read what you think is propostreous and wrong. Then again, maybe at that point, its too late
You provide articles, I provide books. Heres one of the more important issues for the topic at hand, interpreting sources (primary, secondary, first hand, second hand...et al) in Islamic historiography :
The Sources of Islamic Law: Islamic Theories of Abrogation, John Burton
To also portray the other side of the coin, which often means diametrical opposites, read up on Montgomery Watt and Alfred Guillaume for example.
Do you understand the concept of just war, or is it bad because it has the word war in it? War is bad, mmmmkay ? This alone could be a week long debate, again, there is no one, monographic answer to what Just war is. I wrote it as an example, just as there is no one monographic answer to what Jihad is. Like Guro crafty says, theres levels and then theres levels.
You have Ciceronian Bellum iustum concept, Augustinian, Aquinian, Skabimierz...itd. Since Grotius, Just war was replaced with international law, being codified and embraced in a set of rules. Before that though it was a very neat concept for waging war upon whoever you didnt like, or wanted something from, but didnt have a formal cassus belli. Something similar to the War on Terror.
all in all, my point was that throughout history Christians in this manner werent any different to Muslims, in fact they were far worse.
And the crusades grew out of what? Let's try hundreds of years of islamic aggression, enslavement and occupation of europe before the first crusade happened. I'd think as a european historian, you'd know this. Cause and effect and linerar history, do you think the islamic brutality experienced by the europeans might have shaped how they then fought in the crusades? Simplifications, half truths.
While it is true the goals of the crusades were to take back lost lands, a great number of campaigns were waged against pagans, Balts, Slavs, Jews, Greek and Russian Orthodoxy, Mongols, Cathars, Hussites, Waldensians, Old Prussians, and political enemies of the various popes. There were also situationary allegiances between and within sides, like the Christian alliance with the Rum sultanate during the 5th crusade for example. Some of theexpeditions were diverted, which in the 4th crusade even resulted in the sack of Christian Constantinople and the partitioning of the Byzantine Empire between Crusaders. Thank god for plenary indulgence.
The hundreds of years of aggression, enslavement and ocupation of Europe rings so horridly plastic its almost ripe for Hollywood.
Most of what we know from ancient Greek thought, came through Muslim scholars and literates, reevaluation of Aristotles thought and Neoplatonism, spherical trigonometric functions got its basic modern form, great advancements in astronomy, navigation on sea was highly developed by the predecessor of the sextant, it was only through early Arabic translations that medieval Europe rediscovered Hellenic medicine, Galen and Hippocrates.
And a word about non Muslim subjects under Sharia Law....I beleive I wrote about this already, but what the hell, Im sure it cant hurt.
Dhimmi is one of those incredibly misinterpreted and misused words for the topic. Basically, dhimma were provided rights in return for taxes. Dhimmi were excused from Muslim duties but otherwise equal under the laws of property, contract and obligation.
Dhimma had more rights and freedoms than any other social and religious minority in Europe during the whole Middle Ages under any type of rule. Sometimes they even allowed cases of behavior that Muslims found repulsive. One example was the Zoroastrian practice of incestuous "self-marriage" where a man could marry anyone from his kin, even males. According to Qayyim, the famous Islam Sunni scholar, non-Muslims had the right to engage in such religious practices even if it offended Muslims, under the conditions that such cases not be presented to Islamic Sharia courts and that these religious minorities believed that the practice in question is permissible according to their religion.
Dhimmis were even allowed to operate their own courts following their own legal systems in cases that did not involve other religious groups, capital offences, or threats to public order. Not only is the enslavement comment ridiculous, its outright wrong.
Islamic law and custom prohibited the enslavement of free dhimmis within lands under Islamic rule in the time of the Caliphate. Pickup anything from Bernard Lewis, his insight on this particular topic is excellent. Then again, these things are not binary, nor simple.
So, an outline, as you can see, is far from the neatly sacked, half baked information you provided, to prove your point.
I offer you sources for the other side too, so you wont accuse me of only working from the other side of dogmatic belief, here are a couple of authors that not only refute the Islamic golden age, but write it off as a myth. Personally I hate the style with which the books are written, and the scientific apparatus is crumbling, but here you go anyway :
Srđa Trifković, Sword of the Prophet
Dr. Shoja-e-din Shafa, Rebirth
And then, heres two of the books from mandatory literature for my general medieval history exam.
Fernand Braudel, History of civilizations and Jacques le Goff, Medieval Civilization, 400-1500
Andrew, before you cite academics like Edward Said (Edward Sayid), you might want to examine their agendas and how the truth might not be one of them. Look up Ward Churchill as another academic who understood that as long as one is sufficiently post-modern and leftist, actually scholarship is not required.Oh man, I kinda hoped you will have sprung that trap. Like all stories, this one too, has more sides.
Ok, lets begin. Weiner never interviewed Edward Said. Asked about this, he said that after conducting research that lasted three years, he saw no need to talk to Said about his memories or his childhood: „There was no point in calling him up and saying, 'You're a liar, you're a fraud.'" Wow, very investigating reporting like.
The journal „Nation“ and Christopher Hitchens wrote that schoolmates and teachers confirmed Said's stay at St. George's.. Then New Republic editor Charles Lane said Weiner had offered to sell him the essay on Edward Said but that discussions over publication broke off when
Weiner refused to "look at the galley of Said's memoir and take it into account." Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair of Counterpunch interviewed
Haig Boyadjian, who reported telling Weiner that he had been Said's classmate at St. George's, a fact Weiner omitted mentioning.Amos Elon, biographer of the founders of Israel, wrote in The New York Review of Books that Weiner failed to disprove that Said and his family sought refuge from the war outside Palestine, as did hundreds of thousands of other Palestinians at the time.
The fact remains that shortly afterward the family's property in Jerusalem was confiscated. Said and his family became political refugees as the result of the Israeli government's refusal to allow them to return to the country of their birth.
Now, Its a fact, the family left Jerusalem when he was a kid, but the war and violence were so booming, that it became impossible for them to function. Like Holocaust survivor and Israeli human rights activist Israel Shahak says on Sayids refugee status : "This is like saying the Jews who escaped from Germany before the war were not kicked out. The main argument is that they were prevented from returning to their land. This is what it is about.“
In reply, Weiner accused Elon of dishonesty, and Hitchens of making himself into
„ a poster boy for Palestine." Again, brilliant counter argumenting. Go get'em tiger. Said observed that several publishers of a conservative magazine, had attacked him in three long articles and that Weiner's was the third in the series. Said commented that the article about his early life was "undercut by dozens of mistakes of fact."
Even if all that were true or at least parts of it, I couldnt care less, to be honest. I dont care. Sayid could be a transsexual gay church pastor on crack for all I know. If his work has ground and value, Ill check it out. How can you jump to conclusions that if parts of his Bio are untrue, his whole persona is a compulsive liar ? His concept of Orientalism is stil a very burning one, with alot of debatable pro and contra points. Apart from Maria Todorova, Bernard Lewis and a few others, he is for me one of the better writers concerning the whole Orient-Occident polemic.
What kind of rhetoric is this GM ? So what, lets say that because Chomsky was part of several political (and otherwise) controversies, he surely is not a man of worth and should be discouraged to read ? And somehow his intent is not Truth but something else ? But still the fact remains modern linguistics could not stand if not for him, first coherent critiques of Skinners Behaviorism that shook ground of modern psychology, far reaching implications on cognitive sciences, and one of the first noted critiques of post-modern and post-structuralist thoughts.
Man if you want to limit yourself and your horizons like this, go ahead.
Heres the sources :
Amritjit Singh, Interviews with Edward W. Said (Conversations With Public Intellectuals Series). Oxford: University Press of Mississippi, 2004: pp. 19 & 219.
Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair, Commentary: 'Scholar' Deliberately Falsified Record in Attack on Said, Counterpunch September 1, 1999, accessed February 10, 2006
Christopher Hitchens, The "Commentary" School of Falsification, The Nation, 2 September 1999. Accessed 6 February 2010.
aand for the other side, Weiners article that GM posted, with Craig Offman, Said critic blasts back at Hitchens, Salon.com, 10 September 1999. Accessed 5 February 2010.
Make your own judgement to who is the scapegoat here.
And who were the first non-africans to take part in the african slave trade? Long before the europeans ever were involved.I dont see how this partakes to the quoted number from me. Islam views on slavery are VERY concise, and alot is said on the topic. The Qur'an, Muhammad, and majority of Islamic theologians, all stated that humankind has a single origin and rejected the idea of certain ethnic groups being superior to others. The legendary, Arnold Toynbee, british historian, said it nicely : "The extinction of race consciousness as between Muslims is one of the outstanding achievements of Islam and in the contemporary world there is, as it happens, a crying need for the propagation of this Islamic virtue."
Not to go into too much detail here, fact is alot of the views got distorted ESPECIALLY after huge influence of the great Western pillar Aristotle (whom many muslim scholars such as Avicenna and Averroes are credited that we even know of his existence and works) and his view that certain ethnic groups are slaves by nature, and also the influence of the highly ethnically discoherent Jewish Geonim academies.
Know this though, that a religious imperative was never the driver of the slavery impetus. Arab slave trade even started way before Islam ever began spreading. The status of „slave“ was completely different to what we may imagine under the meaning of the word now. They had to be dealt with in accordance of the Islamic law, especially during the Umayyad and Abbasid eras, slaves were allowed to earn their living if they opted for that, otherwise it was the masters duty to provide for that. They also couldnt be forced to earn money for their masters unless with an agreement between them both. If the slave agreed and he would like the money he earned to be counted toward his emancipation then this was written in the form of a contract. This contract is know as a „mukataba“. The slaves usually bought themselves to freedom. Although the owner did not have to accept the request for freedom, it was considered praiseworthy to do so.
Now Im not saying they wore jewels or held their POW and others with silk gloves. Im just saying, these things are not black, not white, nor grey, satin or infrared. They are f***g chaotic and all over the place, without one true, unwavering answer. You need to GRAVELY widen your horizon of knowledge if you want to make deeper connections here. You can pin point circumstantial evidence everywhere you want in the historic timeline, but sadly, that doesnt count for much.
@Guro Crafty,
I find your response here quite remarkable. It is PRECISELY as simple as whether Israel has a right to exist and to defend itself or not!!! Annale slice and layer all you want to concerning the etymology of the terms Palistine/Palestinian, Iran/Aryan, Jihad/Kampf but the simple facts are :........Well to a point of course it is as simple. But then again, the answers are simplifications too.
Most of the facts are bound to the Arabian hatred towards Jews. Ok, when you are spending all this time about the resoltuion, spend at least a day thinking about the problem. The Arabian Exodus was a grave and tragic event, no doubt here, but treating the symptom will usually not get you very far. It will only sharpen the sword and deepen the hate gap.
I stand by my initial post here, the underlying problem is that of identity. Identity, whether its natural, or historical law, always searches for its roots, because of the ideological apparatus. Roots lead to ethnogenesis and ethnogenesis leads to history. Thats why they say history is an apparatus of the state, because it „formally“ places a nation and its tradition on the map. It is its door to existence. Sad thing is, like I already said, that both sides have grown so accustomed so fighting, it has become symptomatic, almost to a point, where sides have forgotten what the origin of the conflict is.
And this is where I chime my 2 personal cents. At this point, off the record, I blame the politicial noise gets intentionally very loud, because certain subjects do not want to settle the conflict, as turbulent West Bank is a very nice opportunity maker excuse. A Just War-like one. Also there is the fear of cascading, if any side gives in or settles for something, there will be swarms of similar uprisings from similar surrounding cases the next day all around the Globe.
As GM has already clarified, his comments were directed to the entirety of Marxism, the over twenty million killed by Stalin et al, the 50-70 million killed by Mao, etc. And I write again, that the „entirety of Marxism“ is a dangerous misconstruct. Contrary to what you guys may think, or have heard overseas, Marxism is not a holistic, homogenous, ideologically coherent whole, where the State takes your candy. Far from it. In approx. 100 years of its scholary existence it has grown so divergently that by now you can hardly follow it. It has branches, sub branches, connections, ifluences, contradictions, structuralist, post structuralist incursions, addendums of critical theory...you name it. To just shrug it off and throw it all away into one barrel is somehow shortsited, not to mention incredibly ignorant. You can blame Marx for all you want that has the prefix „comm-“, but in effect you simply cannot equate the horrific doings of afore mentioned men, with incredibly subtle and deep reaching marxist ontology and philosophy of history.
If this „entirety“ holds true, then may we not say that St. Augustine is guilty for all the horrors done in the name of the Christ since he is the theological father of the Christian religion, and most other theologians and paters and mystics that evolved the dogma were deriving from him anyway ? Of course we cant, even though his influence is far more direct and more straightforward than Marx' ever was to his successors.
Unless, the Christian notion of original sin is so embedded in your symbolic order. In that case I can accept this transferral of guilt to and from the „source“, but you must warn me of this earlier, because it inevitably enforces a very different kind of debate.
PS: I have looked in vain for your statement of your guiding philosophy "Annales Marxism" was it? I would like to read up on this a bit. This is what I have found so far-- is this it? I wrote Annales Marxism as a type of intern joke I like to say. Because the Annales school was the school that has generally replaced the marxist interpretation of history in most of Europe, and they consider themselves a purificated, perfected and most progressive historiographic school to date. Which arguably, they are, but I like to contradict, especially the french
If you would like to read up on some of that I strongly suggest : Fernand Braudel, A history of civilizations and Lucien Febvre, The Rhine: Problems of History and Economics. They should be rather easy to find.
Must be some of that "Islam, with its unique religious ontology" I've been told about. The way you are limiting yourself in thought, I too, could not have seen it any other way. A bit less Jihad Watch, a bit more library.
Show Posts
If only there was such fiery support of the state in the fiscal and monetary sector, teeheee 
