"Western culture, for example, has this innate fear of death. This is not a fear that other cultures share." This seems incredibly broad and...just very off.
"These grisly words are as foreign to Western sensibilities as they are all but sacred dogma for Muslim radicals at war with the West—and with Western sensibilities.
The sentence originated with a 7th-century Muslim commander who threatened his enemies with the prospect of “an army of men that love death as you love life.” As if to prove that, at least in the Middle East, there is nothing new under the sun, Hassan Nasrallah employed the phrase in a 2004 interview to explain why Hizballah, the organization he heads, is destined to prevail over Israel"
"How to understand this macabre sentiment? Martyrdom has played an important role in Islam since its inception, and a number of chapters in the Quran mention the rewards of those who fight and die for God."
That's for armies, though. The West is the culture that produced "I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country" and "Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori," both in the context of war.
And there have been many, many religious martyrs in the history of Western civilization, and lots of veneration of those martyrs, mostly in the context of battle. Not just in Christianity - the Eddas say that all who die in battle will be guaranteed a place in Valhalla (or either Valhalla or Folkvangr, depending on the source).
I think the interesting distinction here is that my examples and yours are all related to battle, and the context here isn't about battle. Is some culture unique in its lack of fear of death outside of battle?
> That's for armies, though. ... Is some culture unique in its lack of fear of death outside of battle?
At least staying with my example, there's an explicit "duty" for the "jihad" (which can also be translated as the "battle" http://www.thesaurus.com/browse/struggle and which is exactly so understood by the majority of scholars) to be performed by every believer:
Jihad isn't obligatory, that's a perversion of the verse. The only obligations are the 5 pillars of Islam - Belief in the Oneness of God, Salah (Prayer), Hajj (Ritual Pilgrimage), Charity and Fasting during the month of Ramadan.
Also, Jihad doesn't refer to a violent battle. Jihad means struggle, struggle to follow their faith. Violence is only the last step and often only in self-preservation. Even then there are rules of engagement and not a barbaric manner as depicted.
Struggle for self-preservation to follow Islam is no longer applicable IMO. The West doesn't limit their citizens or visitors from following their faith. Freedom of religion is a fundamental right, and as such no Muslim can claim to be fighting for their religion when killing Innocents which is one of the biggest sins.
Jihad was invented by Muhammad who was political and military leader in need of big army to enable his conquest of Arabia. So when Muhammad spoke about Jihad he meant it quite literaly: kill the infidels.
That "spiritual struggle" interpretation was invented later, by some imams, who turned out to be better, more peaceful and compassionate human beings than the prophet himself.
The Christian tradition knows the concept of ecclesia militans. Whatever the battle metaphor means depends on the believer and their tradition. It's not helpful to single out Islam as particularly militant, indeed Mohammed originally considered himself a reformer instead of the founder of a new religion. Muslim concepts tend to have a Christian counterpart.
> Mohammed originally considered himself a reformer
And Jesus didn't consider himself starting a new faith ("Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.") Irrelevant.
> It's not helpful to single out Islam as particularly militant
Have you actually read the original texts, the Bible and the Quran and Hadith (as these two are the equivalent of the Bible), to compare? I think the huge difference is more than obvious to anybody who does. That is, that whoever actually reads can't deny it. E.g. ten commandments versus 75 commandments only about sharing the loot (including the female slaves):
Or simply compare: the Christian martyrs are those who were thrown to the lions. The other martyrs are those "who are killed while killing the unbelievers." The idea of heaven with 72 virgins always ready for sex with the died fighters is also quite non-comparable, but explains the motivation for wishing the death.
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Or can you quote something testosterone inducing in fighting for Christian God or being in heaven? This is from the real site ("a project of the non-profit Islamic Supreme Council of America organization devoted to providing educating the public regarding Islam, Muslims, Islamic belief and law, and Islamic spirituality (tasawwuf)"): "Arousal and verses about the houris" http://eshaykh.com/halal_haram/arousal-and-verses-about-the-...
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We are really lucky for all the people who don't take the religious texts seriously.
Can we have proper sourcing on this website please? Some decent Islamic theology if you discuss Islam, not random stuff written by people with uncertain reputation? No one would quote such stuff in their degree thesis, it would make their university look funny.
It's pretty difficult to make an intellectually honest comparison between the levels of violence in the Quran and the Bible if the Ten Commandments is the only part of the Old Testament you're willing to acknowledge exists. It's not like the Old Testament doesn't also have long lists of innocuous things for which one can be put to death, clarifications on the level of beating that one is permitted to give ones' slave, and divinely-sanctioned combat and divinely sanctioned mass killing of civilians. As with the Quran, there's a lot of scope for scholars and leaders to determine which passages they believe are most applicable to the present situation.
Can you point me to any actual Fiqh which presents the possibility of choice of "which passages to believe" in Islamic scholarship? I'm really not aware of it, only the opposite, and for that there's enough quotes in any Fiqh:
I actually said "which passages they believe are applicable to the present situation" which is quite different from "which passages to believe"[1]
Fiqh literally is the principle of interpreting how actions and statements made by Muhammad at various times during his rather turbulent life should be applied as behavioural rules and guidelines for Muslims living under different circumstances today and in the future. For example, Islamic scholars differ hugely on whether the "sword verse" abrogated all prior calls for religious tolerance found in the Quran or was better understood from the context of the surrounding passage as a conditional and quite specific directive targeted at particular pagan groups in the event of them opting to violate a ceasefire during the time of Mohammed (and of course there is plenty of scope for scholars following the latter interpretation to nevertheless claim a particular side of a particular conflict is an analogous situation...). Needless to say, the interpretations found on websites like "Answering Islam" are not necessarily the most authoritative or representative of mainstream Muslim belief.
[1]if this is because you have a more general difficulty or unwillingness to interpret even simple, uncontroversial sentences written in modern English using their most natural meaning, the study of Islamic theology probably isn't for you...
"We certify that this translation corresponds to the Arabic original and conforms to the practice and faith of the orthodox Sunni community (Ahl al-Sunnah wa al-Jama’a). — Al-Azhar, the Muslim world’s most prestigious institution of higher Islamic learning (Cairo; February, 1991)"
Some quotes from this fiqh:
"In the time of the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) jihad was a communal obligation after his emigration (hijra) to Medina. As for subsequent times, there are two possible states in respect to non-Muslims. The first is when they are in their own countries, in which case jihad (def: o9.8) is a communal obligation, and this is what our author is speaking of when he says, "Jihad is a communal obligation," meaning upon the Muslims each year."
"O9.4: Who is Obligated to Fight in Jihad
Those called upon (O: to perform jihad when it is a communal obligation are every able bodied man who has reached puberty and is sane."
"O9.6
It is offensive to conduct a military expedition against hostile non-Muslims without the caliph's permission (A: though if there is no caliph (def: o25), no permission is required)."
Etc.
Now I'm still waiting to hear from you fiqh of which school excludes jihad as a warfare and an obligation, or which of those allows anybody to chose which passages "are applicable to the present situation."
Meanwhile, a billion or so actual Muslims living in their own countries included, apparently don't think the quotes you have cherry-picked from this Fiqh amount to a communal obligation upon them to go to war each year.
But I'm sure you know their religion much better than they do.
As I've pointed out Fiqh literally is the interpretation of which passages are applicable to which situations and so your request makes about as much sense as "show me a legal ruling that Common Law is a law". (If what you actually want is an example of Islamic scholars not considering passages of the Quran relevant to contemporary life, I refer you to the Wikipedia link you just posted...). As for the different schools' perspectives on what can constitute jihad, every school of Islam acknowledges that jihad can take several non-violent forms, including jihad al-nafs ("literally jihad against oneself") and every school acknowledges that military action can be a form of jihad, though since jihad literally translates as "struggle" that's pretty much a tautology, and Islamic scholarship is rather more concerned with debating which circumstances dictate that war is just or unjust. This is Islam 101 stuff.
I suspect you're under the impression that a bit of Google-fu and a few straw man requests makes you look like you're well informed on this subject and have a point. It doesn't. It makes you look like a troll.
Even if this was the place to discuss comparative theology, I wouldn't feel inclined to do it with somebody inclined to start discussions by suggesting that violence is unique to the Quran by implying Biblical exhortations and narratives never got any bloodier than the Ten Commandments.
So you don't have any reasonable answer, just as I've thought.
That the billion of Muslims don't go around killing anybody isn't proof of Islam not being a blood-thirsty-Jews-and-Unbelivers-hating religion. It's just a proof these Muslims don't take their scripts seriously, just like a billion or so Christians also don't. But Islam is more problematic simply because the founder of it was more problematic. He killed unbelievers, ordered them decapitated, he raped the female slaves, he took 20% of all booty .... nothing of it was done by Jesus... Islam is based on considering its founder as the best example of life that exists... Specifically, I claim that Islam is based on not allowing the believers to do any critical thinking about exactly these acts of its founder. The exact example of any influential (for the believers) person who is a counterexample is more than welcome.
All the priests consider the founder as the best example of the righteous life, so if you just give me one influential that doesn't I would believe you.
Note: I don't have anything against Muslims, just like I don't anything against Christians. But I absolute don't like what the founder of Islam did and I don't like anybody who considers this a good example: specifically: killings of unbelievers, decapitations, intolerance, rape and torture. And I don't like anybody who approves these acts on because it's "a religion" or "his religion." And I'd really like to see who does approve this just because it's related to the name of the specific religion. It's absolutely no excuse.
Why is it so hard to understand? I am against religion, and that one especially deserves to be analyzed for its negative basics. I don't have problem with the people, most of who never had any choice: they were just born there and leaving that religion can still get you killed.
Free people are supposed to be able to point to the negativity of some ideology, and that religion has huge ideological component which is dangerous: the still practiced laws (in more countries officially or semi-officially) of killing anybody who disagrees shouldn't be ignored.
Because it's only thing which is clearly separated as "the actual words of god" in the Bible, compared to the Quran which is "the whole separated book of the actual words of Allah." If we'd count everything from the Bible, we'd have to count everything from the Hadiths ("The life of Muhammad," much bigger than the Quran) including all the killings ordered by Muhammad (once, 900 Jews were beheaded at once after they surrendered) which are described there but not in Quran.
Now the life of Muhammad was actually used by Muslim law makers to produce the Sharia Law, but what did Jews and Christians do with the "every Jot and Tittle," in the words of Steve Wells:
"Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law. Matthew 5:18
If Jesus really said these words, he wasn’t much of a prophet. Because nearly every jot and tittle of biblical law is ignored by his followers today, as it has been throughout the history of Christianity. Even the Jews stopped obeying most of the commandments after the temple was destroyed by the Romans in 70 CE.1 And yet despite Jesus's prophecy, the earth is still here."
> The idea of heaven with 72 virgins always ready for sex with the died fighters is also quite non-comparable, but explains the motivation for wishing the death.
It's there in christianity as well, it's just not so explicit - if you die for a christian goal, you'll get into heaven, same as their muslim counterparts, and heaven is an awesome place that you really want to be.
A lot of Christian martyrs were martyred outside of battle. Like, the entire first 300 or so years of Christianity, for starters. Also Christians living under Muslim rule.
For example, Western culture lacks ritual suicide outside of possibly the idea of a captain going down with their ship. Though this is more utilitarian as the assumption is insufficient lifeboats. Other forms of ritual suicide are fairly common across most cultures.
I agree that it is too broad. I am painting with too wide a brush with that statement, for that I apologize.
I think like anything, broad strokes overlook individual differences and Western culture (and other culture) is so diverse now that it's difficult (and sometimes controversial) to try to define it.
That being said, there is some research (although admittedly lacking strong empirical footing, although might be able to find it) to back up the assertion that Western cultures are often believed to be more driven by death anxiety than others.
"Although not many studies have empirically made comparisons between cultural groups on variables other than religion, we can extrapolate from these findings that death anxiety will be relatively lower among death affirming societies than among death-denying or death-defying cultures. The United States, and probably most of the societies in the West, is a death-denying/defying society where even the idiom of expression is that of resistance. People vow not to go gently into the good night (Blake, 1988) or conjure images of fighting illness, or fighting the enemy, death (Kalish & Reynolds, 1981). On the other hand, other societies appear to be more accepting of death."
Source: https://www.wwu.edu/culture/gire.htm
That whole site is an interesting read on this topic.
