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.
The Hanbali school believes in killing infidels without raising taxes.
Definitely! We do not need science, mathematics, logic or philosophy. Sharia jurisprudence is sufficient.
Actually, it sounds like they have gotten the message. They understand that they are flawed, and that they are sinners, and behave appropriately.
Now which school condones the cowardly killing of innocents?? Oh, all of them thats right..?!
btt
Oh, all of them thats right..?!
I know you trying to be witty and sarcastic but actually they do.
Actually, this info is good to know.
"Complexity" -- hmmm, I see. Is that like "nuanced?"
"...How a Muslim perceives God is highly personal..."
No it's not! All of them perceive allah exactly as it suited mohammad to perceive allah.
To perceive allah otherwise would be to deny mohammad and for a mohammadan, that's impossible.
Well put.
It's long past time for westerners to try and understand these blodd thirsty aborigines and commence w/ defanging them.
The only complex questions are about tactics and timing.
The goal of Islam is to conquer the world for "allah". Everyone who does not believe in "allah" or mohammed his so-called "prophet" is an infidel.
Infidels get only one of three choices:
1) Believe in allah and mohammed by choice or by force.
2) Become a slave, subject to Islamic masters, under shariah law.
If you refuse the first two "choices":
3) Die for your "faith" or lack there of.
Those are the ONLY choices Islam offers everyone who does not "believe". And if you do "believe by choice or by force and you recant... you die.
Not complicated, just plain EVIL.
Oh yes, a few other items:
1) The only way you are guaranteed to go to heaven: kill infidels and die doing so, the more you kill the better.
2) Heaven is nothing more than a continual sexual orgy. Those "good Muslims" who get there by killing nasty infidel Jews and gentiles and who die in the process get 72 perpetual virgins whose sole purpose is to pleasure them for all eternity. They also have access to boys an young men who they can sexually abuse to their hearts content. AND they get a perpetual hard on that lasts for eternity. This is every adolescent males biggest wet dream.
3) Women are nothing more than property and chattel, who should not be educated, should not drive and who are fit for nothing more than breeding purposes; pushing out baby Muslim men... all the better to take over the world my dear. If these Muslim women get out of line, their Muslim men have the power to beat them, punish them as they see fit and divorce them any old time they feel like it by repeating three times the magic words: "I divorce you, I divorce you, I divorce you." Women also have no right to sexual pleasure because it poses a temptation for them. Therefore, they should have the clitorises God so foolishly gave them violently torn from their bodies ASAP.
Anyone in their right mind reading the above dictates of this perverse so-called "religion" would say that those who believe or follow this stuff belong in an institution, but rather than call it what it is; the religion of Satan, our PC politicians and the MSM perversely call Islam: "The (so-called)Religion of Peace"! Peace my necktie; Islam and it's followers are responsible for the overwhelming majority of terror, violence, war and death in the world today.
There is nothing complex about Islam... people just do not want to face reality regarding how evil it really is and those who follow it, don't want you or the "infidels" of this world to know what they REALLY believe, follow, practice and teach because if you did, you, along with the world would fight them to the death, which is exactly what it is going to come to in the very near future.
"I know you trying to be witty and sarcastic but actually they do."
They do not.
Who has that graphic "All I need to know about Islam, I learned on 911?
Now, which branch acknowledges original sin, and repentance through personal relationship with the holy spirit, and receiving forgiveness, without having to earn it, but given freely by the grace of God?
Just how complex does it have to be?
Who has that graphic "All I need to know about Islam, I learned on 911?
Some slacked jawed mouth breathing moron who has delusions of adequacy probably has it.
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