(Vanity) As the World Turns, Part II, or Back to the Future

The final went well. Just three more now.

I can try to answer some of the questions in your post #20...

1. I’m pretty sure the Arabs are the descendents of Ishmael (hence the Ismaili sect, and the name Ismail is common amongst Muslims). Hebrew and Arabic are both Semitic languages and are fairly similar. Genesis says Ishmael’s descendents would have their hand against Isaac’s, and against the world. Boy is that true. The Muslims do indeed hate the Jews, and pretty much the rest of the world too.

2. Wahhabism is a relatively young sect of Islam. If I remember right it originated in the 1700s and was created by Muhammad Abd al-Wahhab. The Saud family, who had controlled the area around Riyadh since the 1400s, adopted Wahhabism in the 1700s and it’s still the majority sect in Saudi Arabia.

3. Wahhabism and Sunni Islam in general doesn’t have a heirarchy of clerics, but Shi’a Islam does. The lowest rank is the mullah, followed by the hujat al-Islam ( “proof of Islam” — al-Sadr was one of these), then the ayatollah, and then the grand ayatollah (i.e. Khamenei in Iran). The imam is the guy who leads prayer and gives sermons at the mosques—both Sunnis and Shi’ites have them.

I’ll let Cronos & Muawiyah give their input too :)

1. The Ibadis are the majority islamic sect in Oman (they are tiny minorities elsewhere). The Ibadis are separate from Sunnis and Shia: some differences are that Ibadis believe that hell is everlasting and that there is no such thing as purgatory (sunnis and shias believe that muslims enter purgatory and then are cleansed before going to heaven -- no matter how grave the sin, though how true they are to the Koran determines which level the Muslim goes to (hence the term seventh heaven as in the levels of heaven) -- but non-Muslims all go to hell

they support Ali's stand against Muawiyah, but however, say that since Ali compromised, he wasn't worthy of being the imam. Hence the Ibadis have their own imamate -- in fact they were a law unto themselves in the Imamate of Oman (distinct from the Sultanate of Muscat until the 19th century).

2. Wahabbis are among the strictest group of islam. Taliban ARE Wahabbis -- in their beliefs. Talib means student and these poor souls were trained in Saudi sponsored madrassas in the NWFP in Pakistan -- they were brainwashed and we're living with the consequences.

There always was a formal, historical and hierarchical structure within Islam -- called the Caliphate -- the first CAliph was Muhammad and then the good caliphs like Abu Bakr and al-Khattab. Husein and Ali (descendents of the prophet) tried to make the Caliphate a dynasty but were overthrown by the Umayyads and their followers became the Shias, Ismailies, Bohras etc.

3. Ok, so now you got the split between the Shias and the Sunnis. Now, a bit later, there were disagreements about the rule of one or the other Imam and the dissenters from the main group became Ismailies (or followers of Ismail), then Bohras, Dawoodi Bohras etc.

Druze are a mystery religion with bits and pieces of Islam, etc. They are also ethnic as well as religious since they only marry among themselves and do not accept outside converts (like the Parsis or Zoroastrians in India).

I do believe that the BEDOUIN Arabs are the descendents of Hagar. The ones who are descended from the Arabs in the Yemen were more cultured and not related to the northern arabs (Yemenis after all are descendents of the Shebans and have a civilisation dating back millenia). The Arabs from the Hejaz may be descendents of Keturah.

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