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In the Name of God بسم الله


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Everything posted by Shamati

  1. In Pakistan & India Sunnis join the shi'ites in mourning his martyrdom. There they look up to Sufi saints as those who brought Islam & converted the population - not the ummayad caliphate. Those Sufi saints in turn mourned the martyrdom of Hussain (as) & followed Ali (as) as the Gate to the City of Prophetic Knowledge. The great sunni scholar Abu Hamid Al Fhazali said this about the rights of the Ahlul Bayt:
  2. Among the general population of the EU disdain towards Muslims in general grows as a result of every terror attack perpetrated by Salafi Jihadis. The average Joe doesn't know anything about Islam except the '5 pillars' & that the Quran is their scriptures which is taught about in religious studies in school. The only other time they hear about Islam is in the context of millions of refugees fleeing the wars between Islamic sects in the Mideast (that's how the media portrays it) & the threat of terror attacks. People should educated about the fact that all Islamic terror groups (except for Hezbollah which is labeled as a terror group by the EU & US) share the same denomination of Islam. It isn't good enough to say they have nothing to do with Islam because they cite Quranic verses & Hadiths to support their acts so the one who says that appears as a liar trying to deceive the public. Instead, say they're Sunni Salafis, that Salafism was a considered a heresy by the majority of Sunni scholars during the times of Ibn Taymiyya & the Muhammad Ibn Abdul Wahhab. That al-Saud teamed up with the most radical salafi of the day, Wahhab, who was condemned as a heretic by Sunni authorities of the day, & conquered Arabia while slaughtering everyone who disagrees with their radical salafi ideology. & that this radical salafi ideology called Wahhabism after that man has been spread worldwide by Saudi Arabias immense oil wealth. That the amount of money they spend on spreading this ideology far outnumbers the amount the USSR used to spend on communist propaganda. Not all Wahhabis & salafis are terrorists but they are in the conveyor belt of radicalization & susceptible to doing violence upon the general public because the rationalization for this is present within the ideology itself. It's just that not all act on it. This radical ideology is allowed to become the new Sunni orthodoxy because of the oil money & God knows the consequences of this for the coming generations. Couls any sane individual imagine the allied powers being allied to Germany while fighting a World War against Nazism during WW2? If not, how can the west be allied to the gulf Arab monarchies while fighting a war of salafi jihadi terrorism? Overall Muslims aren't subject to any more racism than are other immigrants. But it's beginning to change as a consequence of the general public fearing muslims more & more.
  3. Sometimes shi'ites must lie about their beliefs to avoid being slaughtered by sunnis. The scholars have allowed for this. I know many sunnis feel this is bad because it makes the selection of victims a bit harder but try to imagine yourself in their position: as the last remnant of Islam, being persecuted constantly by a deluded, violent majority who don't want to debate issues unless they can define the straw men beforehand.
  4. They're Muslims but not momins because they believe it was right to disobey God & 'elect' a leader who 'appointed' a successor etc.
  5. Most Sunni empires throughout history mourned his death. Only recently with the emergence of Wahhabism/salafism as the new orthodoxy of sunnism has he become controversial. Before that it was generally a point of agreement between the Shia & the Sunni's that Imam Hussein (as) was wrongfully killed by a tyrant.
  6. A Shi'i-Sunni dialogue (The Right Path) - A series of letters debating Shi'i and Sunni beliefs between the late Shi'i scholar Sharaf al-Din, and the late Sunni scholar and head of Al-Azhar university.
  7. I get the impression that those Sunni scholars who actually believe in the coexistence with the Shia of Iraq & the validity of representative democracy in a Shi'ite majority nation don't represent the sentiment of the majority of Sunni Arabs. How can it be that they have a live & let live attitude while the Sunni provinces bursts out into spontaneous warfare against shi'ites time & time again? Because the Sunni Aqidah is now defined in Saudi Arabia & even before that they believe they have a Divine Right to Rule. Why can't the Mideast be like Europe? Look at Germany which is ruled by a specifically Christian-Democratic Party: it's current leader is a Lutheran Protestant (Merkel) who believe individuals can interpret the Bible but her closest partner is a Catholic who believe only the Pope as successor to St. Peter can legitimately interpret the bible. Yet for the sake of expediency, they lay their differences aside & unite in a part to affect change in line with basic christian teaching. Politics isn't about whether the Imam's (as) or the consensus of scholars are Infalliable interpreters of the Quran & Hadith but about practical matters such as how to gain funds, what to do with these funds, building bridges, schools, hospitals & roads, determining how much there should be in welfare benefits etc. The only time Shia or Sunni becomes a matter is with regards to the armed forces. Isn't it the case that the top echelons of the army stationed in Mosul (& other Sunni majority areas of Iraq) were Sunnis & they conspired with ISIS to hand over the recruits for execution because they believed in the Wilayat of Ahlul Bayt (as)? I've heard that Sunni Arabs are actually overrepresented in government compared to their numbers which is only ~15% The supposed occasional atrocities of the militias should be take with a truckload of salt as they're reported by Salafi Mouthpieces like Al Jazeera & Al Arabiya & even if they happened, which is unacceptable, it's nowhere near the genocidal intentions & actions of the Sunni Iraqis who joined or sympathize with ISIS. It could be that these 'atrocities' were surprise attacks on ISIS targets as ISIS is supported by average Sunnis
  8. They should not give up an inch of their homeland even if 99% of the local populace of the contested are support ISIS & want to cede from Iraq. They should also not just defeat ISIS & then withdraw to the south because in a few years there'll just be a new Wahhabis death squad with another name & the same aims. What is needed is a comprehensive plan of resettling Shi'ite Iraqis in the north & Sunni Iraqis in the south: mixing up the country more while the scholars of religion should spare no 'sacred cow' & preach the Shia positions openly & try to gain converts from sunnism. if I had faith that sunnism would return to its traditional state as it was practiced during the Ottoman & Mughal Empires I would have hope that Iraq could return to peaceful coexistence with a 20% Sunni Arab minority. But I believe that Saudi Arabia will remain the most religiously influential Sunni country of the world for the foreseeable future & salafism/Wahhabism will only grow & it will eventually fully supplant traditional Sufi sunnism as Sunni orthodoxy. You can see the process in that even Sunnis who are of the traditional strain in Aqidah believe shi'ites are polytheists that must be killed & this position comes from salafism/Wahhabism.
  9. Yes I do. Even computer oriented jobs are now becoming automated by more efficient programming. In the beginning leaders said this process would give us more spare time & the benefits would be redistributed but we all know that isn't the case. The future is very bleak for the traditional working & middle class occupations - not everyone can be a stock market trader (something needs to be traded by the companies for it to work) or a lawyer or a Doctor.
  10. Non US citizens have no rights under the US constitution. That's why Obama has the right to murder anyone in the world at any time with drones if he deems their existence a potential threat to the US. This is not legal against US citizens, which is why there was an outcry when he droned al Qaeda preacher Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen, who was an American citizen But technically, non Americans DONT have constitutional rights. It is just the 'Highest Law' of a specific territory subject to it & doesn't include people outside the US territory who don't have US citizenship. Many people wished it did, but it doesn't & it can be considered rude to include all mankind in ones own people's constitution (based on European enlightenment & based on Christianity) just as you wouldn't like to be subject to Saudi Arabia's constitution by them extending it to include all mankind. People who live in nations who didn't ratify the UN charter for human rights don't have any 'human rights'. What is Human Rights? It's a charter of rights that have been debated & outlined & voted for by they are a human invention in that they may change & are even now expanding to include many other things. Human rights can be considered an ideology, or a secularized form of Christianity even. Maybe other cultures have other definitions of rights & don't want to have specific ideas developed by people's on the other side of the planet forced upon them? The US has the right to ban any Muslim from entering the US just as it had the right to ban any Japanese from entering the US & placing Japanese Americans in concentration camps for the duration of the 2nd World War. These things happened & they can happen again if the threat is deemed serious enough by the majority.
  11. You can relax as Trump clarified saying the ban would only be enforced on people who aren't citizens of the US as citizenship guarantees religious freedom. Im sure Hillary will win though. It's been planned for years that she should take over & I think she would be the most war hungry candidate
  12. The Jannissaries were the elite forces of the Ottomans & they were Bektashi Shi'ites. It's true though that the ottomans became more & more Sunni fundamentalists after the conflict with Safavid Iran until the point where it ultimately disbanded the Jannissaries & persecuted alevis, shi'ites & bektashis. i thought that in those days shi'ites were mostly prosecuted for having cursed the Sunni Sahaba, who after all are their most revered saints. But regardless of the Ottoman Empire, the millet system was great & it's still the way Israel for example & many mideastern states, approaches their minorities: each sect governs itself; the main point being that no individual should be forced to perform a religious obligation against his/her will.
  13. The best solution is for a nation to have something akin to the "millet system" of the Ottoman Empire; each religious community is governed by its own laws & judged by their own courts. The state & court above the particular courts deal with intracommunal issues etc. In this way there can be seculars, shi'ites, sunnis, zoroastrians, christians & jews all following their particular laws & customs being governed by particular communal governments under a civil state that adheres to the minimal islamic obligations by virtue of Iran being a muslim majority country. I believe it's counterproductive to force women to wear the veil by law. In Egypt for example, most women were unveiled half a century ago but today most are veiled even though it isn't illegal to not wear a veil. Banning women from being unveiled is like forbidding a child from eating candy while placing a bowl of candy in front of them. It might actually increases the urge to sin & the fact that you don't have the freedom to choose by your free will to veil yourself for the sake of God they might be drawn to not wear the veil more because it's an issue of personal liberty that they don't have & even though they might not want to, they want the freedom to choose..
  14. Salam! What's the best site for learning Quranic Arabic online? Also, which arabic script is most simple to read & easiest to comprehend for a beginner?
  15. I think the post by Qa'im is the most concise answer for the OP. Regardless of the crucifixion / resurrection narrative being true or false, the christian teaching on salvation is completely different from the islamic & jewish equivalent. Convincing yourself that a particular teaching or doctrine is true doesn't ensure salvation or the forgiveness of past, present & future sins (protestantism). At most it orients the soul towards doing certain acts & abstaining from others - but in the end all will be judged based on their deeds. Nasir al-Din al-Tusi says (Quote cited from "Al-Haqa'iq fi Mahasin al-Ahklaq/Spiritual Mysteries & Ethical Secrets" by Fayd Kashani) concerning your predicament & the causes of it;
  16. The talk about the 'Holy Spirit testifying to its validity' is not based in reality. This theory, that the Holy Spirit would come upon a believer when reading the scriptures & 'lead' him/her to the truth was taught by Martin Luther first & it nullifies the need for Prophecy, Divine Revelation & the establishment of the Church or Imamate. There are over 20 000 Protestant sects in the US alone, which means that it wasn't the Holy Spirit leading believers, but more likely themselves. Therefore it isn't a trustworthy doctrine. instead, any spiritual experience should be validated by Revelation. Something to think about perhaps
  17. Salam, Jesus (pbuh) is the messiah, but the word messiah is used many times in the Hebrew Bible. It's used for the prophet King David aswell. King David (pbuh) & his Kingdom are believed to be foreshadowings of the coming Messiah & His Kingdom because every single prophecy of the Bible continues indefinitely to describe events in the future. This is called Typology is a fundamental teaching of exegesis in christianity as christianity was taught by the disciples of the Apostles of Jesus up until protestants split off from the Catholic Church & denied joining with the Orthodox Church (Catholicism that disputes the Divine Right to Rule of the papacy). The jews rejected the messiahship of Jesus because in the jewish tradition that they had built up since that time had defined as a central dogma the "messiahship" that the Messiah would be a King, just as David (pbuh), & would subdue the whole world under Israel & make the Jews the rulers of the world, making all gentiles worship the One God as inferiors & not as equal brethren in the faith. Jesus built a different Kingdom; his Church, which existed in Heaven & on Earth, but he didn't physically subdue the romans, only spiritually. We believe God can't be confined or contained in human form. Neither can god be divided into 1, 2 or 3 persons & remain One. To get around this trinitarian contradiction the Orthodox stress the importance that all supposed "persons" of the Godhead "proceeds" from the Father, who alone is unbegotten & unproceeding. But they also stress that the other 2 persons are part of the Godhead & not "lesser" than the Father other than as a matter of speech to describe the eternal "causation" within the Godhead. But if this is so, why not just accept that there's One God & that God can provide anything he wants with His Spirit & Speak anything into being without having to divide the One God & separate his Speech & his Spirit from God himself? See the problems that christian theology has gotten itself into? & the problem is it can't just backtrack & say "those doctrines were not thought through but defined when greek philosophy was dominating the culture" as they have been defined as Dogma in the Nicene & Apostle's Creed that are held as sure norms for what is contained in Divine Revelation by ALL christian denominations. Why do you think, that soon after the Doctrine of the Trinity had been defined as "Divine Revelation" (& affirmed over & over again in councils which called ALL christian bishops of the world back then) there arose a Prophet (pbuh) in Arabia who affirmed the self-evident, ancient truth that there is only One God - that no other spiritual being is to be termed "God" (There is no god but God).
  18. Etnicity is a fact of life. It has always been an issue for humanity & it always will. The existence of nations depend on exclusion: sometimes based on ethnicity, other times based on language, religion or customs. But for most of history all said factors have been involved in the formation of tribes & nations. We shouldn't assume that most slaves throughout history have been of sub-saharan ethnicity because that's what we automatically associate with historical slaves because of the influence of American culture. The Muslim states of North Africa dealt with slaves that came mostly from Southern Europe & the Ottomans recruited slaves to their army from the Christian areas of the Balkans. Being from Egypt, Algeria, Tunisia or Morocco, which are all African countries - someone would still resemble the peoples living in that area today. All of us have sub-Saharan blood in our veins from somewhere back in our lineages but even after mass migrations, peoples generally assimilate with the general features of people of that area within a few generations. On saudi's & Yemenis one can see they have African & arab features. Intermarriage between the Arabian peninsula & the near east coast of Africa has been going on for millennia. Maybe His (afts) will disappoint both sides & have the appearance of a Quraishi Arab with eastern African features? The Noor can be a subtle radiance a person gives off that has more to do with morals, conduct & comfortable to be around rather than the paleness or darkness of the skin. Otherwise, the most pale skinned persons would automatically be the most blessed & it just isn't true. Our skin color varies depending on where on our planet our lineage originates in relation to the Sun, equator etc.
  19. I've tried it & it's not magic. It's a meditation/mindfulness technique. Magic is something completely different & has many definitions: from the religious rituals of "other" religions to when someone invokes a spirit at certain auspicious/inauspicious astrolonomical times to achieve a personal goal. This technique involves meditation & pressure points on your own body, which has been created by God. - It doesn't invoke spirits.
  20. What if you tell her you must leave her & that your marriage is void according to the shariah? If she truly loves you & cares for her children, she will accept islam, if not for the sake of God, for the sake of family
  21. well, if there are so many bombings, why don't we ever hear about them? Don't those bombs kill people? I'm very skeptical to these statistics proving that there are acts of terrorism comparable to salafi terrorism cuz it's unprecedented in many western countries. Another factor people overlook is that Islam & Christendom has been at war since day 1. These wars have seeped into & permeated our cultures & histories. Great heroes have been made in wars against Islam & the European crusaders. Asking people to overlook these is like abrogating much of the heritage. When a radical communist guerrilla force takes people as hostages & start demanding things, people can handle it better cuz they can comprehend their goals. But the goals of the salafists are so "other" that it's literally seen as a war against the demons of hell.
  22. Salam, Condolences. I believe you should wait until some time after birth because pregnancy & childbirth is known to increase emotional & mental instability. So it might be that after things have settled down biologically, she'll change her ways.
  23. They're still Allah (SWT)'s attributes. The Imams (as) just reflect His attributes thru' their purity. We, because of our sins, can't reflect Allah(SWT)'s attributes. But when you purify the heart, it acts as a mirror reflecting the constantly emanating attributes of God. They were always there, it's just that ordinary folks is on another frequency. Because the Imam's (as) were inerrant, they could always reflect the, but they are still wholly God's.
  24. Obviously, professing Sunnism should be severely restricted in a shi'i state due to the heightened risk of terrorism & radical militia attacks & advances. If it's not to be banned outright, at least salafism ought to be. It's kind of strange that Iran hasn't managed to convert the Kurds yet considering the close relationship historically & the Safavid sheikhs were Kurdish. They should try to convert them so that all Muslims follow the correct path
  25. David: Muslims don't believe in freedom of the press or freedom of speech because they believe Allah (SWT) has provided laws & they prohibit certain things which would come under freedom of the press or freedom of speech in the west. Those Muslim states that are more liberal & secular to the extent of freedom of speech & press implement these ideals instead of Islamic ones.. Freedom of speech & press I define as the freedom to say anything at all & print anything at all, save that which incites violence It's been the same in Christian states for ages, but nations are liberal democratic in the same way nations used to be officially Christian. It's a whole new state ideology that is not neutral but a replacement of spheres previously governed by state religion. The press these days ain't what it used to be anyway. It once emerged looking more like today's conspiracy theorists instead of spouting the talking points of governments press offices.
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