Discussions on Islam and religion in general

[xmad]

Originally Posted by PowerPuff Grrl

Why can't the Qur'an be translated in other languages without having its meaning watered down?

No,it can be translated.I saw it in persian.The original one and its translation both of them were together.I read afew pages of that and it was nice.

Originally Posted by PowerPuff Grrl

Why do devout Muslims call themselves Arabs when they aren't?

No,they dont.I've seen afew of them in Iran and they never said we are Arabs.

[PowerPuff Grrl]

Originally Posted by nath

PowerPuff Grrl, Just some little words to tell you that I have no negative view about the Coran, about this Religion "at the origine" (even if the religion doesn't evolve with the society..but it's the case and the limitation of all the religions).
I just have a problem with those who disturn the Coran for personnal, political and powerful reasons.

I know. I'm just stating my inquiries about Islam, of course, not the rilgion itself but how it is being followed today.

Originally Posted by xmad

No,it can be translated.I saw it in persian.The original one and its translation both of them were together.I read afew pages of that and it was nice.

Yeah, there are translations of it, I've seen a couple of English ones in my library. However, those don't have the religious approval of most Imams and those are meant mainly for non-Muslims with a keen interest in Islam. People who are sent off to learn Islam in medrassas (sp?) learn it in the "original" Arab text and they recite it, as rosh stated, without knowing what they are reading/saying.

Originally Posted by rosh

just as an aside, people who memorise the quran are termed haafiz [hufaaz is the plural] and it literally means "protector", since someone who memorises all of the quran is thought to be protecting it in this way as well.

Protecting from what though? Other cultures?
I know that the intention is to prevent the loss of meaning when it comes down to translation but we're talking about the word of God here. God is universal, or at least that is what I was taught. So it doesn't make sense that God's words are limited of the confines of the Arabic language. This only leads to Islamic scholars refusing to properly translate the texts for all to see. Which means that people have to conform to the Arabic language/culture in order to be fully Muslim.

Originally Posted by xmad

No,they dont.I've seen afew of them in Iran and they never said we are Arabs.

And although Persians are the exception to the rule of claiming Arab heritage (your country's nationalism is far too strong, some would even slit your throat if you mistaken them for Arabs) a lot of Muslims claim to being Arab. Case in point; the genocide in Sudan is often reported as being between the North Eastern "Arabs" and Western Sudanese. The North Easterners aren't Arab. They are black people who very much resemble Ethiopians/Eritreans/Djiboutians/Somalians. Somalians often tell me that East Africans (where a lot of Muslims are) are descendants of Arabs. Pakistanis also often say they are Arab, though admittedly there are quite a few with some sense to say otherwise. The Nation of Islam (that is, Black American Muslims) say that their true religion before slavery was Islam and that Arabic is the "Latin" of Africa.

And so on and so forth...

[rosh]

Originally Posted by PowerPuff Grrl

Protecting from what though? Other cultures?
I know that the intention is to prevent the loss of meaning when it comes down to translation but we're talking about the word of God here. God is universal, or at least that is what I was taught. So it doesn't make sense that God's words are limited of the confines of the Arabic language. This only leads to Islamic scholars refusing to properly translate the texts for all to see. Which means that people have to conform to the Arabic language/culture in order to be fully Muslim.

to answer more fully, protecting it from being changed. through the ages, muslims believe that the word of god has been distorted and changed by people to suit their own ends. im not saying people dont do that with the translations of the quran or when they extract a sentence from a paragraph and twist it to mean what they want it to mean though because ive seen this before and debated it with other people before as well. however the point here is that the quran is still in its original arabic form, with nothing changed. the implied meaning and translations and commentaries will vary from scholar to scholar, but the actual arabic sentences and paragraphs and chapters are as they have always been for the past +1400 odd years.

there is no block on translating the arabic text to any other language though. im not sure where this misconception has crept in. in fact muslims are encouraged to pray in whatever language they are most comfortable with since to pray in a language you do not understand is quite meaningless. and the five daily prayers consist in part of reciting parts of the quran. whether you recite these in arabic, urdu, faarsi, english, afrikaans, swahili etc etc it doesnt matter, as long as you understand what youre saying.

[PowerPuff Grrl]

Thank you for answering my questions, I genuinely appreciate it.
You're right, there may not be a official ban on translating the Quran or anything, however my impression is that the translations of the Quran do not fare as well as a Quran written in Arabic because something may have been lost in translation or changed or whatever. So like the Arab version of the Quran will always be superior to all else.

It isn't that I think that Islam is all about Arabic and Arab culture, it is just that Muslims I have encountered have always reinforced this notion. I have never heard the Somali version of "Salam Aleikim" (sp?), or the Udru, the Malaysian, the Persian, Tigrinia versian, etc... It is always said it Arabic, same with "Allah wu Akbar" (I really suck with spelling). As well as this yearning to learn Arabic, like it is a necessity.

Actual Arab Muslims I have met frequently say that Arabs are the true Muslims and everybody else are just derivatives, especially true when considering how non-Arab Mulsims are treated like shit in the Middle East. Of course, not all think this way but they were too many incidents like this that it is really hard to dismiss it.

[xmad]

Originally Posted by PowerPuff Grrl

It isn't that I think that Islam is all about Arabic and Arab culture, it is just that Muslims I have encountered have always reinforced this notion. I have never heard the Somali version of "Salam Aleikim" (sp?), or the Udru, the Malaysian, the Persian, Tigrinia versian, etc... It is always said it Arabic, same with "Allah wu Akbar" (I really suck with spelling). As well as this yearning to learn Arabic, like it is a necessity.

Sorry but I cannot understand your point.
Those 2 words that you mentioned are 2 Arabic words."Salam Aleikim" means Hello
"Allah u Akbar" "Allah=God" and Akbar=Big/huge

[PowerPuff Grrl]

I know those are Arabic. The fact that these words aren't said in Ebo, Somali or Urdu, etc. is what gets me. I have never heard a non-Arab devout Muslim greet another person of the same nationality in their own language.

This in itself is pretty harmless, but I think it is an example of how Arabic is becoming synonymous with Islam.

In other news, $25,000 bounty put on head of Danish cartoonist:

The reward "will encourage people to kill the blasphemer," Qureshi said, adding that he hoped that many other people would come up with more such announcements.

"If they can put a bounty on Muslims, why not we. He (the cartoonist) is a terrorist for us," the cleric said.

President of Goldsmiths' association, Israr Ahmed Khan, said his organization would fix the amount on Saturday. "We will definitely announce (the reward money) and it will be in dollars," Khan said.

"It will be in dollars," I like that. Damn the West all you can but in the end its their shit that you need.

[haku]

Originally Posted by PowerPuff Grrl

So shouldn't it be this fanatical Islam that you should be frustrated at and not just Muslim immigrants. Of course, I don't want to tell you what you should be angry at but it seems that you feelings kind of displaced. Like, because of these people you feel that integration of anyone anywhere can never work.

You have to put that in a more general opinion that i have on the subject anyway, basically i want external EU borders to be closed to immigration for the time being.
For the first time in their history, European nations are working on continental unification *peacefully*, several attempts to unify the continent were made in the past, but each time it was through war, this time it's through peaceful negotiations.
However, the construction of the EU is a difficult and slow process, the abolition of EU internal borders and the creation of an EU citizenship has caused tremendous changes in member states, people from any member state can work and live freely in any other member state, companies from any member state can offer their products and services in any other member state and compete with each other.
Those changes have put a lot of stress on European populations, they have to get used to seeing people and companies move freely within the EU as if it was one big country instead of having closed national borders like 50 years ago, it's a big change.
And adding external immigration and unregulated globalization to an already stressful process of continental unification (which is a situation unique to Europe) is simply too much, many people are getting anxious, scared, and that kind of feelings never lead to anything good, signs of resurgence of nationalism are clearly visible.
For me the construction of the EU must be the priority for the decades to come, which is why i am in favor of closing external EU borders until the populations of member states get used to the new landscape they live in. There is a limit to the amount of changes people can take at a time.

And i am not at all convinced that multicultural societies can work anyway, i think it's possible when those multiple cultures are relatively close, like various European cultures, or various Chinese cultures, but mixing cultures from totally different civilizations does not really work in my opinion, the gap between 2 civilizations is just too big. And i'm not even sure that multicultural societies are something to aim for, i see nothing wrong with China keeping its Chinese cultures or Europe keeping its European cultures.

Originally Posted by PowerPuff Grrl

The entire Western hemisphere chickened out. Fucking cowards. Since when do we listen, let down bend over for a bunch of maniacs burning down embassies. We sent a bad message to those fanatics; "burn down an embassy and we'll do whatever you tell us to do."

The situation is similar to the 1930s in Europe, leaders of democratic nations can feel the wind of war, they can feel it coming, they are doing what they can to delay the inevitable as long as possible but they know that they are only buying time because whatever you do, you can't achieve peace with people who want war… It's just as useless to talk peace with Muslim leaders now as it was with leaders of the Axis in the 1930s, because they actually want war and will seize any excuse to cause it.

Originally Posted by PowerPuff Grrl

In other news, $25,000 bounty put on head of Danish cartoonist:

That was to be expected, Muslims won't be satisfied until they see some more Europeans decapitated, a lot more… crazy barbarians.

[rosh]

Originally Posted by Amber

That was to be expected, Muslims won't be satisfied until they see some more Europeans decapitated, a lot more… crazy barbarians.

thanks

we're not all barbarians you know

[freddie]

Originally Posted by powerpuffgrrl

It isn't so much that I don't even trust the moderates or the truly faithful. But the religion itself, the way it is being followed has me thinking. There's this undercurrent of Arab imperialism at work, I find.
They say that Allah is all encompassing and infinite, mighty and powerful; Allah is everywhere. So why pray specifically towards Mecca? Why can't the Qur'an be translated in other languages without having its meaning watered down? If Allah's words are universal then surely it can stand translation. Why do Muslim's have to dress like an Arab in order to devout Muslims? Why are mosques design after Arab architecture? Why do devout Muslims call themselves Arabs when they aren't? Why do Arab Muslims often look down on non-Arab Muslims? Why is pre-Islamic history in Muslim countries not discussed among the people of that country? Just because Arabs don't consider anything worth mentioning in their pre-Islamic history doesn't mean they have to enforce it to other nationalities. Why is Arab affairs always the primary concern of all Muslims but non-Arab Muslim affairs get no attention among Muslims?

That's a good point. If christianity was at that stage right now, a mass would still be conducted in latin or better yet - hebrew. One of the bases for success of christianity was the bible being translated into vulgaric latin dialects and later in other indo-european langauges. Christianity should also be wrapped around that basic idea of "the chosen people" getting their holy land - after all that's exactly what Jesus was fighting for as a jewish rabi - his words were aimed at the suffering of ancient jewish people, rather than people in general. Islam really does have it's roots in Arabic cultures and for now it still seems to (mostly) be an all-arab-affair... I have no idea how Persians in Iran or Indonesian mulsims to name a few can take that so lightly. It's almost like another culture being impossed on them and they take it with open arms.

Originally Posted by Amber

And i am not at all convinced that multicultural societies can work anyway, i think it's possible when those multiple cultures are relatively close, like various European cultures, or various Chinese cultures, but mixing cultures from totally different civilizations does not really work in my opinion, the gap between 2 civilizations is just too big. And i'm not even sure that multicultural societies are something to aim for, i see nothing wrong with China keeping its Chinese cultures or Europe keeping its European cultures.

I think places like Canada are a proof enough how different cultures can blend together well and coexist peacefully given the right conditions.

Originally Posted by Amber

That was to be expected, Muslims won't be satisfied until they see some more Europeans decapitated, a lot more… crazy barbarians.

Trust me... every culture has the potential to be like that given the right conditions. Look at Scandianvians. We all see them as these bland, peaceful, yet somehwhat cold and boring people these daysy eventhough they were fearless Wikings centuries back. Wikings started out as Pirates and they were just as vicious as their Mediteranean pirate peers. And lets not forget what happened to the good people of Germany in WW2.

[haku]

Originally Posted by freddie

I think places like Canada are a proof enough how different cultures can blend together well and coexist peacefully given the right conditions.

Possibly, but Canada is 10 million km2 with only 30 million people and an history that doesn't go very far back, the EU is 4 million km2 with 460 million people and 3000 years of history behind them, we'll see how Canada is doing when it has 1 billion inhabitants.
And coexistence has not been perfect in Canada either anyway, French Canadians have always been oppressed, thousands of French Canadian families were even deported at some point (see Acadian history), families were separated by force, their children taken away from their parents and placed in English-speaking families to be submitted to forced assimilation. Not that peaceful.

[freddie]

From what I know french canadian families have it pretty well in Canada now - figuring from the fact french is considered as a 2nd langauge eventhough the majority population aren't of french descendancy.

And regarding the other point... most of Canada's population is bunched up in major cities though - those 10 million km2 can be wastly empty except for major urban centers which are just as populated as any region in Europe is. And the fact they don't have any history and we do should work to OUR advantage rather then theirs - there were seeds & ideas of democracy on our continent when Canada or the USA didn't even exist yet. We should be masters at tolerance and coexistance by now.

[PowerPuff Grrl]

I think freddie was referring to the--so far--very smooth integration of peoples from Eastern and Western cultures. To point to the English/French divide would only refer to a last remnant of European rivalry which has nothing to do with the supposed East/West divide.

Considering that 50% of the pop. in Toronto are first generation immigrants born outside of the N. America and Europe its pretty impressive that so far, in the twenty years that they ahve been here nothing has happened and it doesn't seem like anything will happen anytime soon. It is honestly hard to find a racially homogeneous couple in places like Toronto, Montreal (even moreso, imho), and Vancouver. So I think we are doing ok, but you're right. Canada in itself is pretty young and we'll never find 1 billion people willing to live in these insane weather conditions, however I don't think its fair to dismiss Canada's example by pointing these things out.

ETA: Woops, at bit too late there, sorry.

[freddie]

Originally Posted by PowerPuff Grrl

I think freddie was referring to the--so far--very smooth integration of peoples from Eastern and Western cultures. To point to the English/French divide would only refer to a last remnant of European rivalry which has nothing to do with the supposed East/West divide.

Yarr. This is true. The East/West divide is important here since we're talking about the so called clash of the civilizations. French and british cultures are relatively similar compared to semitic or oriental ones. The divide between the french and british however was caused by exactly the same style of thinking that Amber has, but pointed towards british (or french in the case of the british), rather than some even more distant culture.

[haku]

The headscarf battle continues, Tunisia is launching a campaign against the Islamic veil. Headscarfs have already been prohibited in Tunisia (in schools and public places) for many years, but religious extremists are pushing more and more women to disobey the law so the Tunisian government has decided to enforce the ban more actively.

The move is welcomed by France where religious signs are also prohibited in schools and public places, and since there are many French people of Tunisian origin, it's helpful to have the same ban enforced on both sides of the Mediterranean.

[QueenBee]

The move is welcomed by France where religious signs are also prohibited in schools and public places

Do you mean that people aren't allowed to wear headscarves in schools? (Just checking, because here in Sweden such a ban would be completely unacceptable)

[haku]

Originally Posted by QueenBee

Do you mean that people aren't allowed to wear headscarves in schools?

Absolutely, that's totally prohibited, and it's not just headscarves, all religious signs (Muslim veil, Christian crosses, stars of David, etc) are strictly prohibited in schools and public buildings.

It's not new, it's been like that since the French revolution of 1789, the French republic is strictly secular, religion is considered a private matter and is not allowed in the public sphere.
This short article explains the French secular principles pretty well.

[QueenBee]

haku, thank you for the article, I had no idea... Shows you how much I know about the world.

[haku]

Australia's top Muslim cleric is causing some outrage after saying that women are to be blamed for rape. His take on women and rape:

If you take out uncovered meat and place it outside... and the cats come and eat it... whose fault is it, the cats' or the uncovered meat?

The uncovered meat is the problem.

If she was in her room, in her home, in her hijab, no problem would have occurred.

BBC

[haku]

Elton John calls for a ban of organized religions. Now that's a good idea, go Elton!

[Rachel]

Originally Posted by haku

Elton John calls for a ban of organized religions. Now that's a good idea, go Elton!

I saw a link for that earlier on the BBC news website when I was at Hayley's. Best thing I've read in weeks