Posted on 12/16/2006 6:51:54 PM PST by Valin
By now, most people know that Sunnis and Shiites make up the two major sects in Islam, but very few are aware that Sunnis adhere to four major schools of Islamic jurisprudence: Hanbali, Hanafi, Shafii and Maliki.
These schools vary from the most conservative Hanbali to the most tolerant Hanafi. The Hanbali is the literalist school and, as such, promotes strict adherence to literal interpretation of the Koran and the Prophet's sayings. An act that does not conform to either is regarded as out of the ordinary (bidaa), and in the Hanbali view all "bidaas" are acts gone astray (thalalah), and all thalalahs are destined for hellfire.
There is no room for conscious mistakes in the Hanbali tradition and even less in the Wahhabi sect that adheres to it. This tradition is very different from the one advocated by the Maliki school, which is predicated on knowledge. Imam Malik, the founder of the tradition, was a scholar of science, mathematics, logic, philosophy and jurisprudence. All these are reflected in the school's teaching of religion and the concept of faith.
Indeed, while the Hanbali school leaves little room for initiative or novel interpretation, the Maliki leaves too much. What is clear, however, is that the Maliki school opposes religion as a burden and refuses the literalist tradition as a path. Intentions play a huge role in the acts of individuals; reason a larger role; and in some instances, attention to the general at the expense of the specific an even larger one.
Islamic jurisprudence is predicated on the following sources: the Koran, the Sunna (way of the Prophet), Kiyass (measurement to a comparable dictum in the first two sources), Ijmaa (consensus by religious scholars) and Ijtihaad (one's own initiative at doing right). To determine if one's actions are religiously correct, they need to be passed through the first four criteria, and if no answer can be found, then one is permitted to do one's best to do right. Here intentions become paramount, for in the final analysis one is responsible for his own actions.
As such, Maliki societies of North Africa tend to be far more religiously and socially tolerant and free than the Arab peninsula. In North Africa, there is no chopping of heads or hands or religious police. There are movie theaters and nightlife, libraries and bookstores with materials on everything except criticism of indigenous regimes. The interesting aspect of this school has been the absence of religious institutions, which permitted indigenous ones to emerge.
However, the most liberal and lax of all the schools of Islamic jurisprudence is the Hanafi school. It is even more liberal than the Maliki because it evolved to cater to non-Arab Muslims. Just as Catholicism had to adapt to believers in Africa by incorporating some local traditions or Latin America by developing liberation theology, the Hanafi schools accommodated the societies it came into contact with. The major adherents to the Hanafi schools can be found in non-Arab Asia.
The final school is the Shafii school. Its founder was a student of Malik but differed from Malik in that he institutionalized his teacher's teachings. His greatest success has been in Lower Egypt, China and Southeast Asia where, like the Hanafi tradition, his brand of Islam catered to non-Arab Muslims.
I don't expect many in the West to know or care about the differences between Islamic schools. But for anyone to judge the majority of Muslim believers by acts or edicts of the minority made up of conservative Wahhabis is silly. The Wahhabis are not bad; they are merely afraid of straying from what they believe to be the righteous path. I don't agree with their philosophy and firmly believe there are many paths to righteousness, but I am not their judge.
Islam has no clergy as is the case in Christianity, and hence the concept of God is not uniform. How a Muslim perceives God is highly personal. And unlike Christianity, which identifies and humanizes the father with the son, Islam doesn't make it easy to understand God. It is much harder to be a Muslim because the purpose of the faith is not to understand God but to understand oneself. Unfortunately, some Muslims have not gotten that message yet.
"Some slacked jawed mouth breathing moron who has delusions of adequacy probably has it."
Are you a muzzie?
Wahhabis are not bad??? WTF.
A prefect example of why major parts of Islam is a religion that will never be brought into the modern world.
If this author can't even judge the most brutal and regressive form of Islam and call it what it is.
There will be no reform
Here you are:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/1736879/posts#15
In other words: They make it up as they go along.
Thanks
I thought Donna Thalalah was Secretary of Education under Clinton. I'd send her to hellfire....
Thank you!
Go to consang.net and we Will all finally realize our peril
It's funny how I don't see the complexity as a concern, I'm kind of base and un-nuanced sometimes.
They have brainwashed their populations that Jews use the blood of palestinian children to make bread, their children have American and Israeli flags that they use as doormats at the entrances of their classrooms.
These people have been brainwashed into a dangerous death cult, we should have stopped it a LOT sooner, but now we face a choice. Us or Them.
It is time for the Hiroshima/Nagasaki wake up call to these populations.
America is the most powerful nation in the world and can wipe you off the face of the map in less than a week. If you don't rebel against your radical theocracies we will keep killing you until you submit. I thought this was a GLOBAL WAR ON TERROR, not a friggin' pillow fight.
The terrorists at the outset of this "Global War" predicted when American soldiers started coming home in body bags that the American public would lose their stomach for war, with willing propaganda from the AMERICAN media, their prediction has come true.
Are we willing to walk away depressed, with our tail between our legs saying there is no way we can win this war while they ululate and celebrate in the streets? Making their terrorist theocratic leaders MORE powerful?
Or are we willing to kill a few million of them in one day, let THEIR people lose THEIR stomach for war, let THEM walk away depressed and say there is no way WE can win this war against the most powerful, technologically advanced nation in the world?
Right now it seems the answer to this question is the former. Unless we choose the latter we will RUE THE DAY we did not decimate our enemy while we had weapons of mass destruction and they didn't.
Hey, I'll sign up for that.
Oh, wait. I'm not sure they mean the same thing that I do by "infidel".
If The Wahhabis are finding most Islamic education in the USA and England, does it matter what other sects say? No one doubts the malevalence of the Wahabbis sect, since it has fueled Al Kayda.
What a load of BS.I only one thing that Islam is incompatible with Western civilization and the sooner we realse that the better we will be.
"Because holy war is an obligation of the faith, it is elaborately regulated in the shari'a. Fighters in a jihad are enjoined not to kill women, children, and the aged unless they attack first, not to torture or mutilate prisoners,..."
Dr. Bernard Lewis "The Crisis of islam"
"Do not kill any old person, any child or any woman" (Abu Dawud). "Do not kill the monks in monasteries" or "Do not kill the people who are sitting in places of worship" (Musnad of Ibn Hanbal).
During a war, the Prophet saw the corpse of a woman lying on the ground and observed: "She was not fighting. How then she came to be killed?" From this statement of the Prophet the exegetists and jurists have drawn the principle that those who are non-combatants should not be killed during or after the war.
If anyone killed a person not in retaliation for murder or to spread mischief in the land, it would be as if he killed the whole of mankind. And (likewise) if anyone saved a life, it would be as if he saved the whole of mankind"
(Surah Al-Maaida 5:32)
Well when it comes to BS I have to defer to a true expert such as yourself. As you are if not full of it, you do a very good impersonation of someone who is.
No, I am a Christian. And what does that have to do with the price of tea in china?
Well when it comes to BS I have to defer to a true expert such as yourself. As you are if not full of it, you do a very good impersonation of someone who is.
_______
If you put the word Radical in front of Islam would he still be full of it?
There are whole populations who are brainwashed beyond repair. We can't hire 500 million deprogrammers to sit in a locked hotel room with all of thes people for a month.
There is a disturbing percentage of muslims who are incompatable with Western Civilization, the Nazi's never hit New York and Washington, the muslims did.
We decimated the enemies countries in World War II, why can't we decimate the enemies countries now? Especially when we have weapons of mass destruction. Would you have trusted Hitler to be judicious in his use of nuclear weapons? Are we willing to trust this new crop of Hitlers to be judicious in THEIR use of nuclear weapons once they get their hands on them?
I don't care if Islam has one or ten thousand different schools of thought. They still don't get along with anyone else. They still think it their duty to kill all others who don't believe as they do.
It is a death cult not a religion.
We decimated the enemies countries in World War II, why can't we decimate the enemies countries now? Especially when we have weapons of mass destruction.
Two points
Question: And then what?
Question which countries would that be?
See my tagline.
Sounds like the red crescent aclu.
I don't agree with their philosophy and firmly believe there are many paths to righteousness, but I am not their judge.
Nope. YHWH will judge them, I suspect harshly.
Also the weapons used in WWII were quite different as was the infiltratin of the enemy all over the globe.
If the Nazi's had smuggled several nuclear weapons into the US we might have lost. The fact that large armies had to be moved long distances to have enough force to prevail is not true today.
The spread of Muslims all over the globe means that a possible army exists everywhere if some event galvanizes the masses of followers of Islam to act.
Say for instance we do nuke several Muslim countries including Mecca. There would be tremendous outrage perhaps enough to cause worldwide battles on small and larger scales.
That was not the case during WWII.
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