Religious links
Test your religious knowledge.
About the Druze.
Review of a book on the lost Christianities of the Middle East.
Row between the religious and secular in Israel and whether government computers can work on the Sabbath.
Vatican condemns the work of the latest winner of the Nobel Prize for Medicine.
Being ironic about a notable anti-gay preacher who lives in a huge mansion and is being sued by young men for sexual harassment.
Useful piece by law professor on Catholic Church, priestly sex abuse and paedophila.
Pope Benedict condemns “deplorable” Belgium raids on priests and Church property.
Hitch on Mother Teresa.
Symposium on moderate Islam.
During the C20th, the Saudi kingdom enslaved black pilgrims.
Suggesting that designer heresies could be used to massively destablise Islam, or sections thereof.
“Rushdie rules” reach Florida:
Khomeini established the Rushdie Rules, which still remain in place. They hold that whoever opposes "Islam, the Prophet, and the Koran" may be put to death; that anyone connected to the blasphemer must also be executed; and that all Muslims should participate in an informal intelligence network to carry out this threat.
More. Some thoughts on Qur’an burning.
About the origins of Muslim-Nazi connections and the 1929 Arab massacres of Jews in Jerusalem and Hebron "provoked" by Jews daring to sit at the Wailing Wall.
Examining what a mosque is. About the problems of Islam:
If you put a young God-fearing Muslim in a room with an Islamic radical and an Islamic moderate, both trying to win over the young person’s soul, the radical would win again and again. It is because the canon - hadiths, sira and Koran - are massively stacked in favor of the radical position. Yes, there are violent passages in the Bible too, but it is an uphill battle to build a violent theology based on them. With the Koran, building a violent theology is like rolling balls down a hill. It is a huge uphill struggle building a “moderate” Islamic theology on the basis of the Islamic canon alone.
A Muslim commentator on Muslim attitudes to technology:
Muslim reaction to Neil Armstrong’s landing on the moon nearly 40 years ago was true to form. It passed through various stages. At first, the vast majority of Muslims refused to accept it as a fact. Mullahs vociferously argued, and the majority of people accepted, that the claim was a western hoax, for conventional Islamic wisdom emphatically rejected the possibility of man ever conquering the moon.
In a few years, most Muslims conceded that the moon landing was a fact. Some went so far as to say that it was foretold in the scriptures. The new line of reasoning was that nothing was beyond the reach of man, since he is God’s supreme creation (ashraf-ul-makhluqat).
Later, Muslims were elated with the baseless rumour that Neil Armstrong had converted to Islam as he had heard the call to prayer (azan) on the moon. Another version attributed his conversion to his having seen signs of the ‘parting of the moon’ as believed by Muslims.
But when, a year or so ago, some American conspiracy theorist(s) claimed that the moon landing was not for real, many Muslims happily reverted to their original position of denial.
About the closing of the Muslim mind:
a struggle a millennium ago between two theological schools, the Ash’arites and the Mu’tazilites, which not only had opposing views of the value and role of Hellenic thought but totally different conceptions of God, which they both believed they found present in the Qur’an (Koran): “On one side was God’s will and power, and on the other his justice and rationality. The argument … took place over the status of reason in relation to God’s revelation and omnipotence. The questions involved: What has reason to do with man’s encounter with God? Is there any relationship between reason and revelation? Does reason have any standing to address God’s revelation, or must reason remain outside of it? And perhaps most importantly, can reason know the truth?” (p.3). Initially the Mu’tazilite rationalist view prevailed, but eventually Ash’arite irrationalism was victorious, with dire consequences.
About the Druze.
Review of a book on the lost Christianities of the Middle East.
Row between the religious and secular in Israel and whether government computers can work on the Sabbath.
Vatican condemns the work of the latest winner of the Nobel Prize for Medicine.
Being ironic about a notable anti-gay preacher who lives in a huge mansion and is being sued by young men for sexual harassment.
Useful piece by law professor on Catholic Church, priestly sex abuse and paedophila.
Pope Benedict condemns “deplorable” Belgium raids on priests and Church property.
Hitch on Mother Teresa.
Symposium on moderate Islam.
During the C20th, the Saudi kingdom enslaved black pilgrims.
Suggesting that designer heresies could be used to massively destablise Islam, or sections thereof.
“Rushdie rules” reach Florida:
Khomeini established the Rushdie Rules, which still remain in place. They hold that whoever opposes "Islam, the Prophet, and the Koran" may be put to death; that anyone connected to the blasphemer must also be executed; and that all Muslims should participate in an informal intelligence network to carry out this threat.
More. Some thoughts on Qur’an burning.
About the origins of Muslim-Nazi connections and the 1929 Arab massacres of Jews in Jerusalem and Hebron "provoked" by Jews daring to sit at the Wailing Wall.
Examining what a mosque is. About the problems of Islam:
If you put a young God-fearing Muslim in a room with an Islamic radical and an Islamic moderate, both trying to win over the young person’s soul, the radical would win again and again. It is because the canon - hadiths, sira and Koran - are massively stacked in favor of the radical position. Yes, there are violent passages in the Bible too, but it is an uphill battle to build a violent theology based on them. With the Koran, building a violent theology is like rolling balls down a hill. It is a huge uphill struggle building a “moderate” Islamic theology on the basis of the Islamic canon alone.
A Muslim commentator on Muslim attitudes to technology:
Muslim reaction to Neil Armstrong’s landing on the moon nearly 40 years ago was true to form. It passed through various stages. At first, the vast majority of Muslims refused to accept it as a fact. Mullahs vociferously argued, and the majority of people accepted, that the claim was a western hoax, for conventional Islamic wisdom emphatically rejected the possibility of man ever conquering the moon.
In a few years, most Muslims conceded that the moon landing was a fact. Some went so far as to say that it was foretold in the scriptures. The new line of reasoning was that nothing was beyond the reach of man, since he is God’s supreme creation (ashraf-ul-makhluqat).
Later, Muslims were elated with the baseless rumour that Neil Armstrong had converted to Islam as he had heard the call to prayer (azan) on the moon. Another version attributed his conversion to his having seen signs of the ‘parting of the moon’ as believed by Muslims.
But when, a year or so ago, some American conspiracy theorist(s) claimed that the moon landing was not for real, many Muslims happily reverted to their original position of denial.
About the closing of the Muslim mind:
a struggle a millennium ago between two theological schools, the Ash’arites and the Mu’tazilites, which not only had opposing views of the value and role of Hellenic thought but totally different conceptions of God, which they both believed they found present in the Qur’an (Koran): “On one side was God’s will and power, and on the other his justice and rationality. The argument … took place over the status of reason in relation to God’s revelation and omnipotence. The questions involved: What has reason to do with man’s encounter with God? Is there any relationship between reason and revelation? Does reason have any standing to address God’s revelation, or must reason remain outside of it? And perhaps most importantly, can reason know the truth?” (p.3). Initially the Mu’tazilite rationalist view prevailed, but eventually Ash’arite irrationalism was victorious, with dire consequences.