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Pastimes : Understanding Islam -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: IN_GOD_I_TRUST who wrote (550)	11/20/2001 10:59:00 PM
From: mr_stevenson	Respond to of 2926

IGIT: Indeed a Very Interesting article. I read the following from the text and could not help but remembering what Persians had always believed that islam was created not by Mohammad alone, but by “some other” religious figure of the time. Persians believe it was Salman Farsi who was the Zoroastrian supreme religious leader of Persia who betrayed his country in 660-670AD and who had come to know Mohammd a decade earlier, and brought Arabs to invade Persia and through force bring and impose Islam on them. It is believed Salman Farsi wanted to impose and create his own religous idelogoly that differed from that of Zoroastrianism. There is a whole series of research on this subject that claimed that Quran was in effect written by Salman Farsi and enhanced by him after Mohammad’s death. That is why in Farsi (i.e. Persian) language, a Muslim is called MoSalman (meaning we are from Salman. Although if you ask an average Iranian Muslims he/she would have no clue why he/she calls himself/herself a MoSalman!). Like I said here is a whole series of research done on this by the Westerners and others in the 50’s and 60’s, but it was suppressed during the Shah’s regime for the obvious reasons as this article is also pointing out and in order not to anger Muslims (or at least Iranian Shiet Muslims). And of course now (in khomeini’s regime) this is of course a forbidden subject to even mention and is punishable by death! If I find the time I will look and provide the resource links to those research studies (if available of course). At the time I was told of these studies I was very very young and do not really remember the exact nature of findings expcet the overall of what I recall as expressed above. Anyway, here is the segment from the article that really grabbed my attention: Crone is one of the most iconoclastic of these scholars. During the 1970s and 1980s she wrote and collaborated on several books -- most notoriously, with Michael Cook, Hagarism: The Making of the Islamic World (1977) -- that made radical arguments about the origins of Islam and the writing of Islamic history. Among Hagarism's controversial claims were suggestions that the text of the Koran came into being later than is now believed ("There is no hard evidence for the existence of the Koran in any form before the last decade of the seventh century"); that Mecca was not the initial Islamic sanctuary ("[the evidence] points unambiguously to a sanctuary in north-west Arabia ... Mecca was secondary"); that the Arab conquests preceded the institutionalization of Islam ("the Jewish messianic fantasy was enacted in the form of an Arab conquest of the Holy Land"); that the idea of the hijra, or the migration of Muhammad and his followers from Mecca to Medina in 622, may have evolved long after Muhammad died ("No seventh-century source identifies the Arab era as that of the hijra"); and that the term "Muslim" was not commonly used in early Islam ("There is no good reason to suppose that the bearers of this primitive identity called themselves 'Muslims' [but] sources do ... reveal an earlier designation of the community [which] appears in Greek as 'Magaritai' in a papyrus of 642, and in Syriac as 'Mahgre' or 'Mahgraye' from as early as the 640s"). I wonder, I really wonder, what would happen if Moslems come to know what they have been practicing and believing is nothing but the best kept secret scam of the past 1500 years or so! That really would be a day! However, since that vast majority of Moslems really have no clue what Quran says as they do not understand it, or do not care to read and study it for which it is hard to understand, I doubt it would have any impact on their beliefs. Nothing would change much. Although, if Quran ends up being more civil and humanistic in its teachings, there maybe some hope for a quick and speedy purification and sanitation of the religion. Anyway thank you so much for this very interesting article. Regards, - Addi

To: IN_GOD_I_TRUST who wrote (550)	11/21/2001 1:56:48 AM
From: uu	Respond to of 2926

I just had a rather very nice phone conversation with a Muslim friend of mine. I brought up the article you had mentioned, and interestingly he said he was aware of what the article is saying for a long time. He is not a practicing Muslim, and in fact is very much against Quran being noted as Islam's holly book. When I asked him what he thought Moslem's reaction would be if the current Quran is proven to be not the original one, he said, it did not matter. No one would believe that even if God himself spoke to them and told them this book did not belong to him! I told him about this thread, and he said he would give it a thought to become a member and speak on his religion. As a moderate open minded Moslem I think he is indeed a breadth of fresh air to most whom (at least I) have come across with. In any event....... A very thought provoking article, and once again thanks for pointing that out.

To: IN_GOD_I_TRUST who wrote (550)	11/21/2001 2:33:36 AM
From: uu	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 2926

When I read the following post, Message 16631237 And excluding the statement where it puts a positive spin on Quran characterizing it as a dynamic book, it really makes me feel a bit better knowing that there are actually some people out there who do try to put up a logical reasonable case and try to make sense with the religion Islam. Then I turn the TV channel to CNN or MSNBC, and see thousands of psychopaths in the streets of IslamAbad Pakistan, marching and insisting on going to the other world via fighting for the Taliban and Osama groupies. Then I see hundreds of hard-core religious schools brain washing hundreds of 5-7 year old boys having them move their heads forward and backward 10 hours a day while constantly memorizing Quran (without knowing what is it that they are memorizing). Then I see the guy in charge of one of these schools, and he openly says that they are training the future soldiers of Islam with one single intention in mind, to fight and to die in the name of Islam. I then recall those psychopath Muslims in Iran who beat and hit themselves during this month of Ramadan to show their sorrow and mourning for one of the Iamamss who was killed in a battle over 1000 years ago. I then see thousands of Muslim women in Iran who are being treated like a pet by their men under the umbrella of Quran. And then I feel so depressed and so sad, and ask myself, can those who write such nice articles and posts (as provided earlier) overcome the increasing number of psychopaths who feel it is their duty to be brained washed by the likes of taliban, and Osaman groupies? What does Islam have that so many are willing to do evil deeds for it, and in the name of Allah - without they realizing that what they are doing is evil? The only other ideology that I can think of that would have similar characteristics would be Nazism that literally brained washed a generation of Germans to think nothing but to destory and to kill. What is it about human spirit that so easily is drawn to being manipulated by evil?

To: IN_GOD_I_TRUST who wrote (550)	11/21/2001 3:25:19 PM
From: James Calladine	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 2926

THE CONFLICT BETWEEN EASTERN AND WESTERN NOTIONS OF GOD: Is it possible that conflict between Eastern and Western notions of God, the Infinite, etc underlie social conflicts (like the present one)? <<< THE IDEA OF INFINITY(by Adi Da) In the traditional oriental or Eastern mind, Infinity is pondered as the ultimate Zero, or "no thing" In the traditional occidental or Western mind, Infinity is pondered as the Maximum Number, the totality of possibilities, or "every thing" These two entirely different conceptions of Infinity, or the Absolute, describe or illustrate the essential cultural difference between the East and the West. The traditional East is devoted to regression from the repetitive cycles of birth and death, or the reduction of experience to Home Base, before anything exists. The traditional West is devoted to the progressive increase or the linear and even evolutionary elaboration of experience, until End Time, when everything is perfected. Each of the two great motives excludes and cancels the other. And the origin of these Two is in self-divided Man--or Man prior to whole bodily Enlightenment. When the whole body-mind of Man awakens beyond the illusions and ultimately destructive motives of self-division and recoil from the single Life-Principle, then the Paradox of Infinity is Revealed. The Infinite, Absolute, All-Pervading Reality is One. It is simultaneously (and thus paradoxically) Every Thing and No Thing. It is Love, Bliss, Radiance, Truth, Life, Fullness and Mystery beyond the force of all contradictions. I am a witness to this One. This is the Holy One, Who is not set apart from the world. >>> Namaste! Jim