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Originally Posted by DMcCunney
There wouldn't be. There are a number of different important imams and ayatollahs whose views command respect and whose pronouncements tend to be accepted as definitive, but the position is one of popular acclaim. There isn't a priestly hierarchy like the Catholic church, or anything similar.]
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Just Sunnis and Shiites and Wahabbists (?) .... there is no monolithic entity that controls it all either. Their may not be a hierarchy, but there are no important figures who can single handedly pronounce anything for Islam either.
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Originally Posted by DMcCunney
The way you argue with a rock like that is to hit it with a bigger rock...  |
I'll try to remember that ...
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Originally Posted by DMcCunney
I suspect so. If you stand up and voice an opinion on something like that, you are letting yourself in trouble, even if the trouble doesn't take the form of physical danger, and you think hard about whether you really want to poke that hornet's nest with a stick.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by DMcCunney
Who said it makes sense? The Taliban are hard core fundamentalists, drawing their strength from poor and ignorant rural populations of the "anything that is not explicitly permitted is forbidden" mindset. I saw an article a while back talking about the challenges faced by the Afghan Folk Orchestra, a group of noted Afghan musicians playing traditional music from the area. The Taliban had forbidden music, and the members of the group had considerable rust to blow off when they could emerge and actually play again.
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Well ... yes, I guess nothing about religious fundamentalists make sense ... except to other religious fundamentalists.
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Originally Posted by DMcCunney
There was an interesting bit recently from Turkey, where a group of Islamic scholars are engaged in a project of re-examining the Hadiths. The Qu'ran is the fundamental basis of Islam, but the Hadiths are collections of sayings and practices attributed to Mohammad, and holding nearly the same authority as the Qu'ran. The scholars believe that the Hadiths need to be examined as products of a particular context, and modified to suit the present day.
For instance. orthodox Muslim practice forbids a woman traveling alone, and believes Mohammad made the original pronouncement. The scholars suggest that he probably made that pronouncement because back then, it simply wasn't safe for a woman to travel alone. They think Mohammad was attempting to protect women from very real dangers, and not simply subordinate them to men, and that the practice needs to be adjusted for modern times when it isn't physically dangerous for a woman to travel.
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Sort of a Torah/Talmud kind of thing ... except that it would be like Moses being the one who first stated the Talmudic law??
Well, that sounds reasonable. Actually, from what I've read of Mohammad, he seems like he was a pretty decent guy. The one story I remember hearing (from when I was really little) was that Mohammad loved his cat so much, that one day, while he was talking to his followers, there was a call to prayer. Well, his cat was sleeping on his robe ... so he asked one of the men to run and get a knife. He then took the knife and carefully cut the robe off around the cat ... leaving kitty comfortably sleeping, so he could go to pray.
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Originally Posted by DMcCunney
It will be very interesting to see how this progresses.
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Dennis
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Yup. It will.