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my apologies to everyone for my verbose response... it's marked as OT...
Dear Addi
if I make an assumption, I don't deny doing so...
it was someone on SI, either on this thread or on SUNW's thread who made that comment. but that is beside the point anyway.
in your second paragraph, you refer to, and I quote, "evil doers doing their deeds under what is referred to as Islam". And I can not agree with you more... it's evil doers under the guise of Islam
I don't know what you are trying to say in your third paragraph. Are you saying you know more than I do ? which no one really knows. However, instead of asking me to translate the Holy Quran for you, why don't you read it for yourself ? if you call the Information office of the Saudi Embassy, they will send you a free copy... and will not even charge you for postage... they are located in Washington DC where the area code is 202... you have to do something my friend...
your fourth paragraph is interesting... Muslims have always had treaties with non-Muslims... non-Muslims were even excused from fighting in the Islamic army in return for paying a fixed fee while Muslims had to go fight and risk their lives...
and by the way, there is a saying attributed to the Prophet (pbuh) that the one who cheats, is not from us (meaning not a Muslim)... and "cheats" was not qualified as cheating a Muslim, a Christian, a Jew or anybody... it is categorical... just because somebody does it, and convinces himself / herself that it's ok, does not mean that Islam condones it... and NO, Islam does not validate violence against ANYONE... and here, one has to discern that violence is so if it is targeted against innocent civilians and not armed forces... there is a huge difference which I am sure everyone realizes...
now as far as the Holy Quran being written for men only, that is a big misunderstanding... Quran addresses man as the head of the household, any country has only one president, king or Queen, any ship has only one captain, any kitchen has only one chef...and the head of the household is the final decision maker... however, this does not mean that the head of the household becomes a dictator making decisions independently... the Prophet (pbuh) consulted his wife... did you know that ? of course now you will say, well, he had more than one wife... that is true, but if you go over the Islamic history, you will see that he listened to his wives opinions...
now to your fifth paragraph... first, let's understand what is referred to beating as punishment in Islam... let's take the most severe form of beating which is flogging... in flogging as a punishment, according to Islam, the elbow is not to leave the side of the body and the wrist is not to bend... meaning, to flog someone according to Islam, you put your hand to your side, fix your elbow to your side, raise only your forearm to your shoulder and bring it down to your side without bending your wrist... so you see, there is not much force in that... it's not the same as the flogging as seen in movies where one uses all the force in his shoulder / arm to flog the other person... now, let's talk about beating one's wife... what is meant here is not the beating you see on TV of abused wives... far from it... it's more like a slap on the hand... and not to "punish her in any way you want" ... that must be someone's bad translation... and by the way, when can a man punish his wife like that ? I will leave that for you to research...
now to your last two paragraphs Addi, if someone misinterprets any document to his / her liking... does that invalidate the document or one has to question the person ? do you know why Quran is in Arabic ? because it came to the Arabian Peninsula... to the masters of the time of the Arabic language... in their own language... and it states that had it been in another language, the Arabs would have argued on it's interpretations...
finally Addi, if you want to understand Islam, you are going to have to do more research on your own and not allow yourself to be manipulated by what you see as bad behavior from ill informed people, or by what you read...
regards
amein alsuezi |
