|
"The medieval Islamic world offered vastly more
freedom than any
of its predecessors, its contemporaries and most of its
successors."
Bernard
Lewis
In the name
of the merciful and compassionate Lord.
0 thou who
art enwrapped!
Rise
by night except a little the half, or deduct there from a little, and
chant the sacred
text.
Verily, we will cast on thee a heavy speech.
Verily,
the early part of the night is stronger
in impressions and more upright in speech!
Verily, thou hast by day
a long employment; but mention the name of thy Lord,
Devote thyself
thoroughly to Him; there is no Allah but He; then take Him for a
guardian!
And endure patiently
what they say, and flee from them with a decorous flight.
And leave
those who say it is a lie, who are possessed of comfort; and let them bide for
a while.
Those who
bear the throne and those around it celebrate the praise of their Lord,
Believe in Him, and ask pardon for those who believe.
'Our Lord,
thou dost embrace all things in mercy and knowledge, then pardon those who turn
repentant and follow thy way, and guard them from the torment of
hell!'
'Our Lord make them enter into the
Garden of Paradise which
thou hast promised to them, and to
those who do well of their fathers, and their wives, and their seed; verily,
thou art the mighty, the wise.
Guard them from evil deeds, for he whom
thou shalt guard from evil deeds on that day, thou wilt have had mercy on, and
that is mighty bliss!
IN the name of the
merciful and
compassionate Allah.
By the
night when it veils!
And the day when it is displayed!
And by what
forged male and female!
Verily, your efforts are diverse!
As for him
who gives resources
and
stands in awe of Allah,
And believes in
the best,
We will send him easily to ease!
As for him who is
closefisted,
And longs for wealth,
And calls the good a lie,
We
will send him easily to difficulty!
And
his wealth shall not avail
him!
Verily, in the creation
of the heavens and the
Earth, and in the succession of
night and day, are signs to those possessed of minds;
who remember Allah standing and sitting
or lying on their sides, and reflect on the creation of the heavens and the
Earth.
'0 Lord! Thou hast not forged it all in vain.
We celebrate you Lord!
610 AD
The archangel
Jibril (Gabriel) reveals Islam to Muhammad.
The first three years of his
ministry Muhammad shared Islam privately among relatives and close
acquaintances.
Vehement opposition arises in Mecca.
615 Muhammad
sends emissaries to Aạḥama ibn Abjar in Abyssinia.
622
Muhammad makes 26 day trek to Medina - Hijrah.
The Hijrah marks the
beginning of the Islamic calendar
 
The word 'Islam' is defined as the
submission
and/or surrender
to the Will of Allah.
Those that submit to the Will of Allah
abandon the unnatural desires of
Agency.
Apostasy in Islam
In some interpretations
of an Islamic state, conversion
by Muslims to other religions is forbidden and is termed apostasy.
In Muslim theology, apostasy
resembles the crime of treason, the betrayal of one's own country.
Penalties may include ostracism or even execution if they live or have
lived in an "Islamic State" and are deemed enemies of the state.
By analogy, in the age of nation states, an individual who
commits treason (turning state's
secrets to a foreign power, or spies for a foreign power, etc) is subject to
severe penalty - historically, death.
A well
known example of a Muslim "apostate" undergoing persecution is that of Salman
Rushdie, whose novel The Satanic
Verses prompted Ayatollah
Khomeini to issue a fatwa (religious opinion) for his execution.
Even though some suspect that Khomeini issued this fatwa more
because of the lampooning of Khomeini himself it could be argued that
Khomeini's motivation for
issuing the fatwa is irrelevant as Rushdie's apostasy was the formal
ground for the imposition of the death sentence.
"Some of us are
righteous, and some are less than
righteous; we follow
various paths.
We knew full well that we can never run away from Allah
on Earth and escape.
When we heard the guidance, we believed therein.
Anyone who believes in Allah will never fear any injustice, nor any
affliction.
Among us are the submitters, and among us are
the compromisers.
As for those who submitted, they are on
the right path.
As for the
compromisers, they will be fuel for Gehenna.
If they remain on
the right path, we will bless them
with abundant water.
We will surely test them all.
As for
him who disregards the message of Allah, Allah will direct him to ever
increasing retribution. "
Qur'an Jinn 72:11-17
The language of the Qur'an has been described
as "rhymed prose" as it
partakes of both poetry and prose; however, this description runs the risk
of failing to convey the rhythmic quality of Quranic language, which is more
poetic in some parts and more prose-like in others.
Cutural excellence
revolved exclusively around eloquent speech and the
composition of beautiful and
attractive poetry and literary excellence.
Muhammad found attentive
ears among his contemporaries, who not only were articulate users of the
language but held
those skilled in the arts of linguistic composition in high
esteem.
Before the rise of Islam, Arabic was mainly a spoken
language with an oral literature of elaborate poetry and, to a lesser extent,
prose.
Writing had not yet fully
developed and memorization was the most common means of preserving the
literature.
Prophet Musa
had the power to divide the sea with his hand
and rod, and to let the rock burst forth with water in the desert, and all
his other signs in a time
of magic.
Prophet Isa had the power to
bring the dead back to life, to make birds out of clay, to cure those who had
been blind from birth and the leprous, and all his other signs
in a time of medicine.
Prophet Muhammad had the book and his other signs in
a time of
eloquence.
Sharia, Shari-'ah, Shari'a, Shariah,
Syariah,
Islamic law or the Law of Allah
Shariah controls, rules and regulates all public and private
behavior.
Shariah has regulations for personal hygiene, diet,
sexual conduct, and elements of child
rearing.
Mainstream Islam distinguishes between
fiqh, which means ' understanding of details' and refers to the
inferences drawn by scholars, and
sharia, which refers to the principles that lie behind the fiqh.
Scholars hope that fiqh and sharia are in harmony in any given case,
but they cannot be sure.
Sharia has certain laws which are regarded as
divinely ordained, concrete and timeless for all relevant situations
(for example, the ban against drinking liquor as an intoxicant).
Sharia
also has certain laws which are extracted based on principles established by
Islamic lawyers and judges (Mujtahidun).
The sharia as interpreted by
Islamic lawmakers is believed by Muslims to be merely a human approximation of
the true Sharia, which is understood as
the divine and eternal correct
path.
In deriving Sharia law, Islamic lawmakers are not, therefore,
actually creating divinely correct or incorrect actions beyond question, but
rather attempting to interpret divine principles.
Sharia in general is
considered divine, but a lawyer's or judge's extraction or opinion on a given
matter is not.
Again the process and intention of refering to the Law
of Allah is divinely sanctioned.
An Islamic lawyer or judge's attempts
to rule according to Sharia, can be described as 'ruling by Sharia', but this
ruling is not beyond question.
For
Sunni Muslims, the primary
sources of Islamic law are the Qur'an, the Hadith or directions of the Islamic
prophet Muhammad ibn
'Abdullāh, the unanimity of Muhammad's
disciples on a certain issue
(ijma), and Qiyas (drawing analogy from the essence
of divine principles).
Qiyas -
various forms of reasoning,
including by analogy - are used by the law scholars (Mujtahidun) to deal
with situations where the sources provided no concrete rules.
The
consensus of the
community, public
interest, and others were also accepted as secondary sources where the
first four primary sources allow.
In Imami-Shi'i law, the sources of
law (usul al-fiqh) are the Qur'an, anecdotes of Muhammad's practices and those
of the 12 Imams, and the
intellect (aql).
The practices called Sharia today, however, also
have roots in local customs (Al-urf).
Islamic
jurisprudence is
called fiqh and is divided into two parts: the study of the sources and
methodology (usul al-fiqh - roots of the law) and the practical rules (furu'
al-fiqh - branches of the law).
The authority of Sharia is drawn from
two primary sources, as well as two secondary sources.
The first major
source is the specific guidance in the Qur'an, and the second source is the
Sunnah, literally the 'Way', i.e.
the way that Muhammad ibn
'Abdullāh lived his life.
(The compilation of all that
Muhammad ibn
'Abdullāh said, did or approved of is called the Hadith.)
A
lesser sources of authority is Qiyas, which is
the extension by analogy of
existing Sharia law to new
situations.
Finally, Sharia law can be based on ijma, or consensus.
Justification for this
final approach is drawn from the Hadith where Muhammad states; "My nation
cannot agree on an error."
The role of ulema, i.e. scholars, is critical, since they are the ones
who study the Islamic law and therefore have authority to represent it.
Sharia has largely been codified by the schools (madhhabs) of Islamic
Jurisprudence (Fiqh).
The comprehensive nature of Sharia law is due to
the belief that the law must provide all that is necessary for
individual spiritual and physical
well-being.
All possible actions of a Muslim
are divided (in principle) into five categories: obligatory, meritorious,
permissible, reprehensible, and forbidden.
Fundamental to the
obligations of every Muslim
are the Five Pillars of Islam.
Sharia is the social equal to English common law,
Roman civil law,
Hindu law and the Law of Moses.
There
is a striking legal contractual difference between Sharia law (Islam) versus
English common law and
Roman civil law (Christian).
In both English common law and Roman civil
law lawfully executed and valid contracts can not be revised
without the consent of both parties.
At the
apex of legal protection for people of the descendent Western legal systems a
number of laws give consumers a
legal right to cancel contracts in specific transactions within a short
time after the consumer signs the contract without giving the seller or other
party a reason or having to show "legal cause."
"Buyer's Remorse"
clauses in consumer contracts are not universal.
The trend in Western corporate
culture is to eliminate consumer rights.
One method is to write contracts with
arbitration clauses.
Arbitration clauses wave
the right of redress through the legal system of the jurisdiction.
Under
Sharia law if one party to a contract feels the contract is unjust he may ask
the Sharia law authority to change the terms, modify or invalidate the contract
on the grounds that fairness and justice under Sharia law requires the equal
enrichment of both participants to the
contractual
obligation.
According to the Quran, marriage is intended to be
unbounded by time, as indicated by its characterization as a "firm bond" and by
the rules governing divorce.
The relationship between the spouses
should ideally be based on love compassion and important decisions concerning
both spouses should be made by mutual consent.
When marital harmony
cannot be attained, the Quran allows and even advises the spouses to bring the
marriage to an end, although this decision is not to be taken lightly, and the
community is called upon to intervene by appointing arbiters from the two
families to attempt a reconciliation.
In ancient Islam
all it took for either a husband or wife to divorce was to repeat the phrase
"I divorce thee" three times.
The Quran establishes two means to avoid hasty divorces.
It
prescribes two waiting periods of three months before the divorce is final in
order to give the husband time to reconsider his decision.
A man who
takes an oath not to have sexual intercourse with his wife, which would lead to
automatic divorce, is allowed a four-month period to break his
oath.
Crime and Islam Sharia requires a very high level of proof for the most serious
crimes and punishments.
If proof is not as specified then the crime
must be considered a lesser crime.
A major myth is that judges in
Islamic nations have fixed punishments for all crimes.
The judge under
Sharia is not bound by precedents, rules, or prior decisions as in English
common law.
Hadd crimes, the most serious crimes in
Sharia law, are murder,
apostasy, making war upon Allah and His
messengers, theft,
adultery,
defamation,
false accusation of adultery
or fornication, robbery and
consumption of
intoxicants.
These are considered crimes against
Allah.
Tazir crimes are acts which are
punished because the offender
disobeys the word and Law of
Allah.
Tazir crimes are
crimes against
humanity.
A Qesas crime is one of retaliation.
If you commit
a Qesas crime, the victim has a right to
seek retribution and retaliation.
The concept of retribution was
found in the first statutory "Code of Hammurabi" and in the
Law of Moses in the form of "an eye for an
eye."
Muslims add to that saying "but
it is better to forgive."
Contemporary common law is filled with
the assumptions of retribution.
The American justice system has adopted
a retribution model which sets fixed punishments for each crime.
The
American federal code contains "mandatory minimum" sentences for drug dealing.
Many states have fixed punishment for drug, violence and the use of
particular weapons.
Qesas crime is simple retribution: if one commits a
crime he knows what the punishment will be.
Diya
has its roots in Islamic law and dates to the time of the prophet Mohammad when
there were many local families, tribes and clans.
The prophet Mohammad
was able to convince several tribes to take a monetary payment in retribution
for damage to the clan or tribe.
Diya is paid by the offender to the
victim if he is alive.
If the victim is dead, the money is paid to the
victim's family or to the victim's clan or tribe.
The assumption is that
victims will be compensated for their loss.
Under English common
law, the victim or family must sue the
offender in a civil tort action for damages.
Qesas law combines the
process of criminal and civil hearings into one, just as the "civil law" is
applied in many nations on Earth.
Qesas crimes are compensated as
restitution under common law and civil law.
Qesas crimes require
compensation for each crime committed.
Math and Islam
"Mechanical methods can suggest the truth of
mathematical
propositions, which then may be rigorously proven by mathematical
methods."
Archimedes
Decimal
system is dependent upon the Arabic numerical system.
Algebra was first
fully developed by Al Khwarism, the "father of algebra".
Al-Tusi is the
"father of trigonometry".
Al-Khashi, from
Persia, invented
decimal fractions.
Sunni Islam is the world's
largest religious denomination, followed by
Catholicism.
Sunni
and Shi'a culminate
centuries of competition between ideologies.
Both sects used each other
to further cement their own identities and doctrines.
The schism
occurred in a debate over who were the true adherents to the Sunnah, the
prophet’s tradition.
A caliphate is a state under the leadership of
an Islamic steward considered to be the successor to Muhammad ibn
'Abdullah.
Sunni rulers
embarked on sweeping conquests that extended the caliphate.
The last
caliphate ended with the fall of the Ottoman Empire.
Sunni
emphasize the all encompassing power of
Allah in the material world while
Shi'a value martyrdom
and sacrifice to turn the dark into light.
2009 Sunni Muslims constitute 90% of the world's Muslim
population.
The color green has a
number of traditional associations in Islam.
Green is used in several
national flags as a symbol of Islam.
These include:
Afghanistan, Algeria,
Azerbaijan, Comoros,
Iran, Mauritania, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Sri Lanka. |
|
 |
This web site is not a commercial web site and
is presented for educational purposes only.
This website defines a new
perspective with which to engage reality to which its author adheres. The
author feels that the falsification of reality outside personal experience has
forged a populace unable to discern propaganda from reality and that this has
been done purposefully by an international corporate cartel through their
agents who wish to foist a corrupt version of reality on the human race.
Religious intolerance occurs when any group refuses to tolerate religious
practices, religious beliefs or persons due to their religious ideology. This
web site marks the founding of a system of philosophy named The Truth of the
Way of the Lumière Infinie - a rational gnostic mystery religion based
on reason which requires no leap of faith, accepts no tithes, has no supreme
leader, no church buildings and in which each and every individual is
encouraged to develop a personal relation with the Creator and Sustainer
through the pursuit of the knowledge of reality in the hope of curing the
spiritual corruption that has enveloped the human spirit. The tenets of The
Truth of the Way of the Lumière Infinie are spelled out in detail on
this web site by the author. Violent acts against individuals due to their
religious beliefs in America is considered a "hate crime."
This web site
in no way condones violence. To the contrary the intent here is to reduce the
violence that is already occurring due to the international corporate cartels
desire to control the human race. The international corporate cartel already
controls the world economic system, corporate media worldwide, the global
industrial military entertainment complex and is responsible for the collapse
of morals, the elevation of self-centered behavior and the destruction of
global ecosystems. Civilization is based on coöperation. Coöperation
does not occur at the point of a
gun.
American social mores and values have declined precipitously
over the last century as the corrupt international cartel has garnered more and
more power. This power rests in the ability to deceive the populace in general
through corporate media by pressing emotional buttons which have been
preprogrammed into the population through prior corporate media psychological
operations. The results have been the destruction of the family and the
destruction of social structures that do not adhere to the corrupt
international elites vision of a perfect world. Through distraction and
coercion the direction of thought of the bulk of the population has been
directed toward solutions proposed by the corrupt international elite that
further consolidates their power and which further their purposes.
All
views and opinions presented on this web site are the views and opinions of
individual human men and women that, through their writings, showed the
capacity for intelligent, reasonable, rational, insightful and unpopular
thought. All factual information presented on this web site is believed to be
true and accurate and is presented as originally presented in print media which
may or may not have originally presented the facts truthfully. Opinion and
thoughts have been adapted, edited, corrected, redacted, combined, added to,
re-edited and re-corrected as nearly all opinion and thought has been
throughout time but has been done so in the spirit of the original writer with
the intent of making his or her thoughts and opinions clearer and relevant to
the reader in the present time.
Fair Use Notice
This site may contain
copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically
authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our
efforts to advance understanding of criminal justice, human rights, political,
economic, democratic, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe
this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for
in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C.
Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those
who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for
research and educational purposes. For more information see:
www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted
material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you
must obtain permission from the copyright owner. |
 Copyright
© Lawrence Turner
All Rights Reserved
|