The Islam Thread...

[Evil_Maniac From Mars]

"A wedding has been canceled cause the wife wasn't actually a virgin".

However unreasonable, this is one of the few cases where I'll side with the Islamists. In this case she lied to her husband about it, he found out, and got the marriage annulled. He thought it was important enough to do that. If my wife-to-be lied to me about something extremely important to me before the wedding, I would probably call it off as well - trust is fundamental in a relationship.

[HoreTore]

However unreasonable, this is one of the few cases where I'll side with the Islamists. In this case she lied to her husband about it, he found out, and got the marriage annulled. He thought it was important enough to do that. If my wife-to-be lied to me about something extremely important to me before the wedding, I would probably call it off as well - trust is fundamental in a relationship.

Indeedy-doodely. What's the other alternative? Forcing someone who doesn't want to get married to get married anyway?

As much as I think sexual abstinence is ridiculous, and me being a huge fan of hippie free sex, I'm also a big fan of letting people sort out their private life for themselves... What I think of what other people are doing is completely irrelevant and should never affect them in any way whatsoever.

[Evil_Maniac From Mars]

Indeedy-doodely. What's the other alternative? Forcing someone who doesn't want to get married to get married anyway?

Not getting married in the first place and skipping the whole debacle comes immediately to mind.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

Yuh go away for a few days and so much happens.

Hmmm, what to say? Not much really, I'm heavily biased towards Christianity but I am a bit dissapointed that no one picked up on my point about the formation of the Bible and the Koran. One being explicitely an anthology collected by a bunch of beardy bishops 300 odd years after the fact and the other claimed as a contempory account written or dictated by the Prophet.

Just to answer Fahed's point about whether Jesus could raise an army to the answer within the text is emphatically "yes, but he chose not to" this is one of the central axels around which Chrisrian philosophy turns and is usually expressed as "God chose to deliberately sacrifice his only Son for the Sins of his creation." Among world religions it's an unusual message because of its passive nature.

As regards interpretation of the Koran, if a Muslim believes that the Koran is the Word of God, is infallible, and that he has the right interpretation of that Word, which is to slaughter unbelievers, then he is being entirely reasonable. The problem comes because that's three too many ifs for an atheistic humanist, two too many for a Christian and I suspect one too many for a Muslim.

This is what worries me, the belief some Muslims have that they have a perfect understanding of the Word of God. Islam certainly has elements of conquest within it in a way that they are not presented in, for example, Christianity because they come from a current Muslim covenant while the comparative passages in the Bible come from a covenant not held by Christians. This is something that Sigurd pointed out a few weeks ago to me, in Acts God sends Peter a vision where he commands him to break the Jewish laws regarding clean and unclean food. So, as far as I understand it Muslims are bound by the Koran because it's the manual for abiding by their covenant with God. Interpreting that covenant is one thig but it would seem to me that they are bound by the whole of it without any real grey areas.

This is a major difference with Christianity and the point which I made earlier and Tribesman dissmissed. You can point to the passage in the bible about pigs and say to me "you can't eat pork" but I can then quote Acts to demonstrate that the Law is not valid for me as a Christian. As far as I can see there is no comparable leeway in the Koran, if you can pin down the meaning of a passage a Muslim is bound by that passage and the only debate is about the meaning therin, not the validity of that meaning.

In so far as I am a scholar at all I am a Christian one, not a Muslim, so I may well be off base but that is the impression I have consistantly recieved regarding Islamic scripture.

[HoreTore]

There are certainly more than enough christians who believe that the bible is written solely by the Holy Spirit and as such is the direct word of god, Philipvs...

[AlexanderSextus]

There are certainly more than enough christians who believe that the bible is written solely by the Holy Spirit and as such is the direct word of god, Philipvs...

There are also christians that realize that it is NOT the direct word of god. Indirect word of god , Direct word of god .

Its weird. i remember reading a part of the bible where one of the apostles, (i think it was peter) said "what i am about to say is not from god" and some christians say that the passage after that quote comes directly from god.

BTW...I have read the whole bible before... just not in a while so i'm a little rusty. But i do remember that part.




Oh, and also, a lot of the time muslims say that "God cannot reproduce and have a son, so Jesus is not the 'son of god'."

The fact is, the idea that Jesus is the BIOLOGICAL "Son of God" does not sit well with most christians either. Son of God means that Jesus was the first thing that God created,(as the Archangel Michael) before the universe, before the earth, so therefore that makes him His "Son" in a figurative sense. (or at least that was what i was told by my uncle, who's a devout christian and really knows his stuff.)
Again, "Only Begotten Son" was a mistranslation. "only CREATED son" would have been much better. Would that make the idea of Jesus being the "son of god" more acceptable to muslims??? God creating jesus as his first angel would be well within the scope of Allah's power, no? (

[Paradox]

Allah has no son, and we believe the first man he created is Adam.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

There are certainly more than enough christians who believe that the bible is written solely by the Holy Spirit and as such is the direct word of god, Philipvs...

It's an interpretive doctrine that came out of the reformation (Sola Scriptura "Through Scripture Alone" which was one five "Solas" and essentially a propaganda campaign against the Catholic church) it's not itself scripture. There are passages which refer to the direct word of God but they are reported in the Histories of the Old Testemant. As I said, the formation of the Bible is a matter of historical record at the

There are also christians that realize that it is NOT the direct word of god. Indirect word of god , Direct word of god .

Its weird. i remember reading a part of the bible where one of the apostles, (i think it was peter) said "what i am about to say is not from god" and some christians say that the passage after that quote comes directly from god.

BTW...I have read the whole bible before... just not in a while so i'm a little rusty. But i do remember that part.




Oh, and also, a lot of the time muslims say that "God cannot reproduce and have a son, so Jesus is not the 'son of god'."

The fact is, the idea that Jesus is the BIOLOGICAL "Son of God" does not sit well with most christians either. Son of God means that Jesus was the first thing that God created,(as the Archangel Michael) before the universe, before the earth, so therefore that makes him His "Son" in a figurative sense. (or at least that was what i was told by my uncle, who's a devout christian and really knows his stuff.)
Again, "Only Begotten Son" was a mistranslation. "only CREATED son" would have been much better. Would that make the idea of Jesus being the "son of god" more acceptable to muslims??? God creating jesus as his first angel would be well within the scope of Allah's power, no? (

No offense to your Uncle but I've come accross a fair few flavours of Christianity and that one's new to me. Certainly in traditional doctrine Michael is not Jesus and in any case Jesus was not created by God he IS God. Or rather, the Son of God is a part of the Triune Godhead which was manifest on Earth as the man Jesus. Jesus was both fully man and fully God. This was one of the issues which Constantine had the Bishops hammer out and so the story goes it took three whole days of theological arguement. In any case the first Angel was Lucifer, the Light Bringer.

We're getting derailed into Christian mysticism.

Fahed, question: Why can't Allah have a son?

[Tribesman]

Fahed, question: Why can't Allah have a son?

Because allah is wise , he believes in safe sex so you don't get the complications of children .

[Hax]

The fact is, the idea that Jesus is the BIOLOGICAL "Son of God" does not sit well with most christians either.

Yeah, but when did we ever find biology in religion? Science of any kind is not found in any of the Holy Books.

[Paradox]

Science of any kind is not found in any of the Holy Books.

Err, you sure about that, Hax?

[Paradox]

Fahed, question: Why can't Allah have a son?

There are verses in the Qur'an that explain this, it's the shortest Surah so it isn't difficult to find.