"Obama is acting like Bush"

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by Max2147

I think the vast majority of Muslims, and even a majority of those in Iran, would be offended by the comparison to Ahmadinejad.

Don't put your money on that. There is no evidence that Ahmadinejadh has not gotten a majority in this time's elections, and he got that in last time'S elections, and maybe you underesitmate the widespreaded conservatism of Muslims in Algeria, Turkey, Iran, Egypt - of these countries I can speak due to personal impressions from not just short stays. The Western assumption that socalled moderate Islam is the real Islam and that socalled extremist Islam is just a deformation and a distraction from the rule, is wrong, and a Western self-deception. Islam is an extreme fundamentalist, totalitarian ideology by it'S most natural essence and content. So do not be mislead. Regarding Iran, I said it from the beginning on: there probably has been some fraud, to be sure that Ahmadinejadh would win for sure, but I strongly assume he would have won anyway, even without fraud.

[Aramike]

What Obama failed to realize is that the people he thought he could "talk" to aren't interested in talking at all - they only want concessions. Concessions that the West would be unwise to give.

It's sad that we in the US elected a president who was so hopelessly naive about foreign policy and so dangerously irresponsible on domestic fiscal matters.

[nikimcbee]

Oh, I thought he was at the Ranch wearing cowboy boots and clearing brush.

Wait, now that would be a sight.

[Max2147]

Originally Posted by Skybird

Don't put your money on that. There is no evidence that Ahmadinejadh has not gotten a majority in this time's elections, and he got that in last time'S elections, and maybe you underesitmate the widespreaded conservatism of Muslims in Algeria, Turkey, Iran, Egypt - of these countries I can speak due to personal impressions from not just short stays. The Western assumption that socalled moderate Islam is the real Islam and that socalled extremist Islam is just a deformation and a distraction from the rule, is wrong, and a Western self-deception. Islam is an extreme fundamentalist, totalitarian ideology by it'S most natural essence and content. So do not be mislead. Regarding Iran, I said it from the beginning on: there probably has been some fraud, to be sure that Ahmadinejadh would win for sure, but I strongly assume he would have won anyway, even without fraud.

Just because somebody is a very conservative Muslim doesn't mean they like Ahmadinejad. He's hardly a spokesman for the religion.

Saying that conservative Muslims think like Ahmadinejad and like him would be like saying that all conservative Christians around the world liked George Bush, which simply isn't true.

[Buddahaid]

Islam, Christianity, and Judaism, all have their people who use it as an excuse to be sh*ty to others. Spin the wheel and get a prize.

Buddahaid

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by Buddahaid

Islam, Christianity, and Judaism, all have their people who use it as an excuse to be sh*ty to others. Spin the wheel and get a prize.

Buddahaid

You need to pervert the sermon on the mountain or other preachings by Jesus and must ignore him in order to behave sh*tty to others, to use your words.

You need to pervert Muhammad and be disobedient to him in order to behave tolerant and respectful to other cultures and relgions.

Either this tells oyu something, or it doesn't. The Quran is on the level of the Old Testament, and stayed there. but the Bible has a New Testament as well - and that is very different to the old one. Quran has no parrallel to that.

If christianity would have gotten stuck with the old testament only, it would be a problem for all mankind today, too. And in fundamentalist Christian communities that take the old testament serious and read the whole bible literally anyway, you see that being the case indeed. And the long since gone past of the churches saw them acting inhumane and barbaric too - in violation of Jesus
preachings, not in obedience to his teachings.

Never forget where the Quran comes from: it is the collection of speeches that Muhammad made to justify himself and to motivate and fire up his followers to follow him into the fights and battles he brought upon others (almost 70 wars and predatory raids he waged in his life as prohet) to subjugate them, and make himself unavailable to criticism of follwers who would risk death since criticism of the leader was equal to religious heresy. That the dead have to be buried the same day, also comes from this: to prevent Muhammad's followers to think about the latest bloodshed and aggression when the dead are too long on their minds. Get the bodies out of sight as soon as possible, therefore. Tell people not to mourn the dead.

Now compare that with lets say the sermon on the mountain. How many wars have Jesus authorised? How many men has he slain himself? How many predatory raids did he ordered? How many genocides (like Muhammad in Medina) has he unleashed? Was Jesus a murderer and bandit like muhammad? A conqueror and warmonger? Say, how many caravans has Jesus robbed before he started preaching, and how many of his followers had to flee him in order to save their lives from his wrath?

It is very ignorrant to compare these two books or persons with each other and indicate they are essentially the same. You could as well compare Mother Theresa with Jack the Ripper.

Originally Posted by Skybird

but the Bible has a New Testament as well - and that is very different to the old one.

So? There still is an old testament that the fundi-christians can fall back to. And for you to draw paralles between the old testament and quran, that's just like, your opinion, man.

[Max2147]

Originally Posted by Skybird

Never forget where the Quran comes from: it is the collection of speeches that Muhammad made to justify himself and to motivate and fire up his followers to follow him into the fights and battles he brought upon others (almost 70 wars and predatory raids he waged in his life as prohet) to subjugate them, and make himself unavailable to criticism of follwers who would risk death since criticism of the leader was equal to religious heresy.

You're half right. The Koran is indeed a collection of Muhammad's justifications for his own actions, but he was much more than a military leader.

He got his start as the peaceful arbiter of disputes in Medina. He unified the Arab tribes that had constantly fought among themselves before he came along. He was a brilliant political leader. And yes, he was a military leader as well - quite an effective one too.

The variety of roles he played in his life is the reason behind one of the Koran's most defining features - it's inconsistency. All religious texts contradict themselves every once in a while, but the Koran does it more than most. As Muhammad's life, his role in his society, and his needs changed, his teachings changed. Sometimes peaceful coexistence and tolerance were the order of the day, sometimes all-out war was the order of the day. As a result, the teachings in the Koran can be used to justify a wide variety of actions, many of which are contradictory.

[UnderseaLcpl]

Originally Posted by Max2147

He got his start as the peaceful arbiter of disputes in Medina. He unified the Arab tribes that had constantly fought among themselves before he came along. He was a brilliant political leader. And yes, he was a military leader as well - quite an effective one too.

That's a little different from the way I heard it. My understanding was that Muhammad was a self-styled prophet in Mecca, who was shunned by his neighbors and family. Disillusioned, he went to Medina and began leading raids against Meccan caravans. Eventually, he got enough guys together to go back and sack Mecca.
IIRC, part of the reason Islam is so radically divided between the Sunni and Shiite sects is because after the prophet's death, some chose to follow his closest friend and other followed his brother, who he disliked but who was his closest kin.

Is that all true or am I mistaken?

[Skybird]

I refer to an older piece of text of mine, to save me the time to type it again, if you do not mind.

Originally Posted by A critical history of Islam

Social revolution came in the person of Muhammad, born around 571, whose parents died when he was young. Beeing an orphan, commentators describe him to have shown several psychological anomalies (maybe coming from the early death of his parents), a general hypersensitivity of his mind and physical senses, and often it is said that he was epileptic, too. But however, his intellectual and organisational talent soon became evident when he started to help out in the business of his uncle, whose family belonged to the Hashim, a sideline of the trade-controlling Quraysh, which were the elite caste controlling the trade via caravans from and to Mekka, and the complete financial system in the Western provinces of the Arabian peninsula. During his travellings and business negotiations he trained his talents in organisation, perceiving opportunities, and his obviously outstanding intellect. When he was in his mid-20s, he married a woman that with over 40 years was far older than he was, Khadidja, she was a rich business women that already had lost two husbands. Originally it was planned as an instrumental marriage to increase his monetarian basis and her profit incomes by using Muhammads intellectual and organizational and negotiating talents. Both partners later learned that there may have been more in their relation than just material gains, and so they had six children, of which only the four daughters survived childhood.

No longer depending on his original tribe and a low income for himself, but beeing secured in wealthy living conditions, Muhammad now had the freedom and time to concentrate on questions that had found his interest since longer time now, additionally motivated by the experiences of his many travellings. Beeing of high sensual sensibility and intellectuality, he realized the growing dysbalance between the growing wealth of the Quraysh and the increasing social insecurity of the poor that formerly were embedded in their functioning tribal structures, and he became aware of the growing moral and ethical vacuum that came in the wake of the material success. These personal qualities together earned him the reputation of beeing a visionary seer (kahin). He did not stop here, his business travellings brought him into contact with the ideas of the Christians, Jews and Hanufas. Especially the Christians sects, victims of deportation or expulsion by the official Byzantinian church, were struggling hard to widen their influence in the Arabian diaspora. But all the new religions Muhammad came into contact with, described the same single, allmighty, true God that would hold court over each human beeing at the end of his days and would judge him according to his individual bilance of life. That all these religions and their regions of origin had been able to create civilizations that were far superior in practical political power to that of the Arabs of that time, may have had an additional effect on Muhammad that drove him into an intense examination of these religions and cultures. For one and a half decade he spend much time on sharpening his view for the social problems within Arab society, and educated himself in the teachings of the Christians and Jews.

The year 610 marks the time when Muhammad is said to have received teachings and educations by an idea of a higher divine entity that he named „Allah“, and that from now on should have send him regularly visual visions and verbal inspirations („Eingebungen“), that are named ayat (that means: signs of miracles, Wunderzeichen). He used these to start doing threatening, powerful preachings, in which he made it more and more clear, that this entity named Allah was speaking through him and that Muhammad himself for that simple reason rightfully claimed the status of beeing God’s prophet, a „call to duty“ that was delivered to him by the archangel Gabriel in an appearance that almost should have crushed him to the floor and pressed all breath out of his body (sign for his epilleptical disease?) so that he almost feared that he must die and lost allmost all control over his mind, body and senses.

The "divine" inspirations (probably nothing else than epilleptic attacks) did not stop, a cousin of Muhammad, who was of Christian belief, thought of them as “namus“ in the understanding of the Jewish law and Thora. With time passing by, the growing number of Muhammad’s preachings and inspirations started to circulate under the term „qur‘an“, an Arab word that means „recitation“, while there is a link to an old Arameic word as well, „quiryan“, which means „liturgy“. With growing intensity Muhammad was focussing in his preachings on the social dysbalance in society, on the need to turn and put all trust and faith in the source of his inspiration, Allah, and on the responsebility each individual has for his life when there will be his judgement day at the end of his existence. That he also targeted the criminally and/or illegimately accumulated power and wealth of the rich class both earned him the sympathy of more and more people, and reminds me of the constellation 14 centuries later:

In the beginning of his activity as a preacher and prophet, Muhammad was willing to make compromises concerning the content of his sermons, to avoid too much friction with his social and religious environment in the form of the old traditional gods of tribal structures in his place, of which there were namely three in the main (and a large number of minor ones). That gave him the peace and freedom to act that was needed as long as his position was still weak and uncertain. But beeing told by Allah, that these false gods were only creations of Satan, he gave up to display tolerance towards them, what exposed his position somewhat. In a non-Muslim understanding: he showed strong signs of weakening tolerance for ideas opposing his own’s, and acted with mounting intolerance against them to overcome their resistance. This, in combination with his critizism of established power structures of the Quraysh, finally led him to have raised the attention of the feudal elite - that became aware that he started to become a threatening problem for their privileges. His verbal attacks on their trading monopoles and privileges showed the moral and spiritual deficits of the new social order they had established. Of course they reacted. Muhammad’s few followers became subject to expulsion, torture, murder and prosecution. The unique power monopole and influence on trade the Quraysh had, allowed them to even put pressure on traditional tribal social structures that were trying to protect their members to some degree. The conflict became a serious issue. Muhammad, who had spend so much of his life in Mekka, of course knew the power constellations, and that the reserves for his followers to hold out were thin. Long before the conflict escalated, he had started to form contacts with Medina and Abbyssinia, to learn if it was possible to evade into these regions, if Mekka should happen to become too dangerous to stay. Short before the Quraysh were able to extinguish his rebellious teachings completely by killing him and all of his followers, he left Mekka with a small group and escaped to Medina. This escape in 622, named hidjra, is usually agreed on to mark the beginning of an independent Islamic identity. Usually the move to Medina is interpreted by modern Islam not as a sign of weakness, but pragmatism that is a key charcteristic in Muhammad’s life and personality. They evaded not because of fear, but to ensure they can keep trying on. Having left the reprisals of the Quraysh behind, the small community in Medina now had the freedom to bolster their status, to raise their own profile, to strengthen their community, to win new followers. Literature knows them as muhadjirun (exiles, emmigrants), where as their helping sympathizers in Medina are known as ansar. The climate in Medina was helpful for Muhammad, the local religious cults had been exhausted by decades of rivalry and fight to become the dominant dogma, and so had not only little strength left to resists the convincing power of Muhammad’s new revolutionary ideas, but even showed to be all too willing to follow him under his own rulership and give up their own cults.

The attractiveness of Muhammad’s teachings, heavily influenced by the monotheistic ideas of Christians and Jews, need to be explained, else the question remains, why he was so successful and where Islam was getting it’s convincing and high „cultural penetration power“ from. Until Muhammad, Arab society was ruled by cults based around nature phenomenons and tribal gods that acted as guardians for the tribe and thus saw themselves in conflicts with other gods as often as tribes waged wars against each other (which was no rare event at that time). People‘s mind did not realize that it was their own acting – the world of man, not the world of gods - that was leading to the twistings and conflicts they experienced in their history, and that their gods were just projections of their own states of mind and of human flaws, drives and motives. So people focussed on their gods as creators of war, suffering and conflict, which gave them the impression that life was ruled by the will of gods, whose intentions often remained a mystery and thus, life was an event ruled by random chance and man’s inability to influence it. There was the only answer to subjugate to the tribe’s god, assuming that he hopefully would be stronger than that of the others, and to trust in the belief that beeing a follower of his cult saves one from harm that was projected into man’s world from conflicts taking place on the level of the gods.

But now came Muhammad: and his idea of man beeing the deciding factor himself that creates each individual‘s fate (all life, punishment or reward) by his own responsebility - that was revolutionary. Because it freed people from the canon of many gods and their conflicts that led to human suffering, and brought order and foresight to a world that before was experienced as a „labyrinth“ of random chances, in which everything was unsecure and no anticipation of a secure future seemed to be possible. The subjugation to Allah caused law and order, structure and insight to enter man’S world: a fair bilance between one own’s good and bad acts and doings, and one’s resulting fate after death, and these deed‘s consequences (in form of Allah’s judgement) decided the design of desirable ways of behavior to avoid bad consequences and to help good consequences. If man was living a life that was pleasing to Allah, if he was obedient in other words, he now had all reason to trust in his mercy and getting his reward, giving him peace of mind and a sense of certainty and security that before was unthinkable, because what Allah expected from him was preached by Muhammad: an ever-growing set of more or less strict rules, that left little space for misinterpretation and misstepping, and a codex of behavior that assisted man in finding his way to Allah’s mercy and let him in no more existential fear and doubt. That sounds like a fail-safe method for guaranteed ticket to paradise. Man had all reason to feel arrived in life now, to be fulfilled by having a duty in life for which he will be rewarded, to be held by the hand of someone who was bigger than it all. „Success“ at the end of his life – in the understanding of avoiding an empty, dark void after death, or a hellish penalty - was now within man’s own reach and responsibility, it was no longer a lottery that was manipulated by selfish, fighting gods, or the arbitrariness of nature’s phenomenons. The forming and regulating authority of Allah, the destroyer and mercyful („Vernichter und Erbarmer“), should end the increasing disorder of mislead behavior of man, the ratio of monotheism replacing man‘s former fatalism in the face of god-made random rule in life, so that man could start to act with a sense of responsebility for himself, and awareness of Allah’s final judgement as a motivation for that. Divine arbitrariness was replaced with human ratio. And that was a revolutionary idea in the Arab world of that time indeed.

Nevertheless, although having been influenced by Jewish ideas, his knowledge of their religion was far from beeing complete, so his contacts to the Jewish tribes, that had a very strong presence in and around Medina, necessarily ended in the exposure of his theological deficits. That the Jewish theologists, aware of their superior theological agility, also met him with condescension and hurting irony, necessarily must have offended a strong and dominant personality like that of Muhammad. Realizing that the Jewish disrespect threatend his postion in Medina, he took drastical consequences. In 624 he attacked and drove away two Jewish tribes, and three years later he took on the last remaining one, the Quaryza, who were sort of allies of the Quarysh in Mekka; he ordered a two days-lasting massacre, in which up to 800 male tribe members got executed in his very own presence, while all girls and females were traded into slavery or ended in the harems of his followers, or his own.
For the population sizes of that time the size of the massacre was immense. The years 624 to 627 saw Muhammad’s radical extinction of Jewish opposition and any opposition in general. Several short wars and predatory raids against all other tribes settling in his neighbourhod, to strenghten his economical power, were accompanied by the systematical hunt on artists, writers and poets, intellectuals, who did not fully support his rulership and that were killed by a growing dedicated subgroup of murderers amongst his followers. The acting-option to use the later so-called fatwa to call for the killing of an unwanted critics has seen it’s tradition beeing founded in these years and still is a valid option until today. As a matter of historical fact, murder always has been a legitimate tool of securing Islamic power throughout all centuries of it’s existence. Murder was also acceptable in the powerpolitics of Western civilization, but here it never was raised into the official status of beeing religiously acceptable, where a fatwa not only means that it is acceptable according to religious rules, but that it even is allowed to actively order it.

This policy of displaying a tyrannic ammount of power, and using it without scruples or mercy, did it’s part to intimidate his enemies and to silence those who were in doubt. In Mekka people started to look in deep sorrow towards Medina. There were no doubts left about who was in control of rulership. The ursurping of power was complete. The political and economical success and the many raids Muhammad conducted, raised the wealth of his community and raised the convincing power of his example (that’s one reason why it is called the Medina modelm the other reason beeing that the community of Medina for later generations of Muslims served as a model that taught them how to orgnaize their communal life, identity and self-understanding). In 628 he surprised his old enemies in Mekka by using the financial prey from his raids to form and lead an impressively big army to Mekka „for pilgrimage“, by that he left the city no other choice than to accept a dictating of conditions during so-called „negotiations“, that led to a peace treaty that should last for ten years – so said the treaty. But in fact just two years later (in which he conducted a series of more raids throughout the region to fill his community’s treasure chest), in 630, he again attacked Mekka with an even bigger army and broke the peace treaty, and enforced the handover of the city. Bribery, generous gifts and distribution of his prey from former raids were used to calm the hostile sentiments in the city, which led to some anger amongst his followers from Medina. Muhammad now was in control of the Kaaba and changed the cult around it so that it was focussed on Abraham and reflected the monotheistic belief in Allah. New followers joined the community by the thousands. It just took two more years to secure Muhammads conquest of the complete Arabian pensinsula, this part of history ended with the last independent tribe surrendering to the new authority of Muhammad’s rite. Administratively Arabia now was controlled by close and trustworthy followers of Muhammad, who were responsible both for preaching and strengthening faith, and to control the regular payments of taxes: state and religion essentially were united in the same hands.

Two years later, in 632, Muhammad died in Medina.

[Max2147]

Originally Posted by UnderseaLcpl

That's a little different from the way I heard it. My understanding was that Muhammad was a self-styled prophet in Mecca, who was shunned by his neighbors and family. Disillusioned, he went to Medina and began leading raids against Meccan caravans. Eventually, he got enough guys together to go back and sack Mecca.
IIRC, part of the reason Islam is so radically divided between the Sunni and Shiite sects is because after the prophet's death, some chose to follow his closest friend and other followed his brother, who he disliked but who was his closest kin.

Is that all true or am I mistaken?

You missed some parts.

When Muhammad started receiving his "revelations" in Mecca, he started spreading them. Part of his sermons criticized the powers that be in Mecca for their corruption, arrogance, and ignorance of the poor. This did not make him very popular among the local elites, so they decided to kill him. He got wind of the plot beforehand, so he fled, along with his followers.

He had family connections in Medina, and the local leaders decided to invite him in as a neutral arbitrator to resolve a local dispute. He agreed to arbitrate, on the condition that Medina accepted his authority and brought in his followers. They agreed. He gained a reputation as a wise and just arbitrator, and others began bringing their disputes before him. Soon he was the ruler of the city.

He then took his skill in settling disputes to another level, and began to settle disputes between warring Arab tribes. A condition of his arbitration was always that the parties involved accept his authority. Through this he united the Arab tribes under his rule. Mecca was still independent, but eventually submitted without a fight after Muhammad assembled an army to attack it.

This had all been peaceful, aside from a brief unsuccessful attack on Mecca a few years before. The first large scale use of force came when some of the tribes tried to break away, and Muhammad attacked them to force them back into the fold. After that Muhammad began to expand aggressively, conquering the Arabian peninsula and later attacking the Byzantines and Persians.

There was a bit of dispute about who should succeed Muhammad, but the Shia movement didn't really get going until the next century.

[Buddahaid]

Originally Posted by Skybird

You need to pervert the sermon on the mountain or other preachings by Jesus and must ignore him in order to behave sh*tty to others, to use your words.

You need to pervert Muhammad and be disobedient to him in order to behave tolerant and respectful to other cultures and relgions.


Now compare that with lets say the sermon on the mountain. How many wars have Jesus authorised? How many men has he slain himself? How many predatory raids did he ordered? How many genocides (like Muhammad in Medina) has he unleashed? Was Jesus a murderer and bandit like muhammad? A conqueror and warmonger? Say, how many caravans has Jesus robbed before he started preaching, and how many of his followers had to flee him in order to save their lives from his wrath?

That would seem to be my point. I said people, not Messiahs.

Buddahaid

[Fish]

Originally Posted by Skybird

but the Bible has a New Testament as well - and that is very different to the old one.

Yeah, but when the OT turns out to be fraud, where does that let the NT? let

[geetrue]

I wonder who the Iranian people are going to believe after the smoke clears (no pun intended)

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad accused Barack Obama of behaving like his White House predecessor and called on him to apologize for what he called U.S. interference following Iran's elections.

Originally Posted by google

With enhanced research, VOA has been better able to track its audience. Of particular interest is ... where 40 percent of urban adults listen regularly to VOA

http://www.wtopnews.com/?nid=500&sid=1696410

Iran regulates and monitors the activities of international and independent media operating within its borders, and it closely watches and guides its own internal state media. Many reformist newspapers, magazines and Web sites have emerged in the past decade, but often come under restrictions or are shut down.

http://ibb7-2.ibb.gov/pubaff/farsi001.html

Monitoring has identified two forms of jamming. The first is “bubble jamming,” a fast oscillating tone transmitted by a jamming transmitter operating on the same frequency as the VOA transmitters. The second is “voice jamming,” broadcasts of the external service of the Voice of the Islamic Republic of Iran transmitted on the same frequency as VOA Farsi.

The Voice of America broadcasts world, regional, and U.S. news and information in 53 languages to an estimated weekly audience of 91 million listeners.

[don1reed]

A passing suggestion:

Don't know if any here have viewed the PBS series, "God on Trial." It's about Auschwich Jews putting God on trial for their predicament.

It can be viewed on Youtube.com in a 9 part series.