Australian Politics Forum - timeless vs transient morality

freediver

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Re: timeless vs transient morality
Reply #15 - Dec 1^st, 2013 at 8:25am

polite_gandalf wrote on Dec 1^st, 2013 at 8:11am:

FD everything islamic - laws, principles and morality - have to be flexible and interpreted based on the context of time and place.

You may not be aware of this, but many Muslims, including the ones that have posted here before you, consider Shariah law to be rather inflexible. That is, it can be expanded upon to accommodate new situations, but not changed. That is why I am asking such basic questions about how you derive it. So far I cannot differentiate your 'method' from making it up as you go along. You and Karnal are the only new age Muslims we have had here, so the interest is inevitable. Your views could represent the way forward for Islamic ideology in the modern world, so don't be shy about it. It is rather fortuitous that you have dubbed yourself Gandalf.

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polite_gandalf

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Re: timeless vs transient morality
Reply #16 - Dec 1^st, 2013 at 9:33am

freediver wrote on Dec 1^st, 2013 at 8:25am:

You may not be aware of this, but many Muslims, including the ones that have posted here before you, consider Shariah law to be rather inflexible. That is, it can be expanded upon to accommodate new situations, but not changed. That is why I am asking such basic questions about how you derive it. So far I cannot differentiate your 'method' from making it up as you go along.

I believe the term is Ijtihad, which is basically deriving islamic laws based on a sound and thorough understanding of the islamic texts. As the article explains, around 900AD many scholars believed the "doors of ijtihad" could be closed - or in other words, every islamic law that was needed for all time had already been made. Which is just ridiculous in my view. The world today is slightly different to how it was in 900AD.

As I said previously, islamic sources provide general principles and rules on universal morality, however interpretation and undeniably some "independent reasoning" to make sense of these principles in specific contexts of time and place. But it is absolutely not making it up as you go along - as a clear understanding of the 'spirit' of islamic morality, and be consistent with that.

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A resident Islam critic who claims to represent western values said:
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Outlawing the enemy's uniform - hijab, islamic beard - is not depriving one's own people of their freedoms.

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freediver

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Re: timeless vs transient morality
Reply #17 - Dec 1^st, 2013 at 10:25am

Shariah law is not a "general principle" or a "universal morality". It is law, and according to the other Muslims who have posted here - an eternal, unchangeable law, including prescribed punishments. Are you pretending that you do not disagree with those Muslims?

Quote:

But it is absolutely not making it up as you go along - as a clear understanding of the 'spirit' of islamic morality, and be consistent with that.

Can you elaborate on this please? This is what I have been trying to get you to clarify.

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Yadda

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Re: timeless vs transient morality
Reply #18 - Dec 1^st, 2013 at 12:28pm

polite_gandalf wrote on Dec 1^st, 2013 at 8:11am:

FD everything islamic - laws, principles and morality -

have to be flexible

and interpreted based on the context of time and place.

Moslems are like pollies, ....'tricky'.

Or is that vise-versa, re moslems/pollies ??? Shocked

Either way, imo, you can not trust them to keep to their word/'principles'/agreements.

Dictionary;
law
1 a rule or system of rules recognized by a country or community as regulating the actions of its members and enforced by the imposition of penalties. such rules as a subject of study or as the basis of the legal profession. statute law and the common law. something regarded as having binding force or effect: his word was law. (the law) informal the police.
2 a statement of fact, deduced from observation, to the effect that a particular natural or scientific phenomenon always occurs if certain conditions are present.
3 a rule defining correct procedure or behaviour in a sport.

'Yadda's LAW';
I've said it before;
The moslem, is 'a flag in the wind'.
When the wind [of fortune] changes, so do the [deceitful] 'principles' and allegiances, of moslems.i

Gandalf's views on Islam
http://www.ozpolitic.com/forum/YaBB.pl?num=1354330218/66#66
Quote:

To moslems, in various Sharia jurisdictions,

Sharia law is a 'moving feast'

, in the same way that a moslem,

a true moslem, is 'a man for all seasons'.

In the sense of a moslem is, "A flag in the wind.", and, "Which way is the wind blowing today ?"

Blasphemy laws an impediment to Islamic reform
http://www.ozpolitic.com/forum/YaBB.pl?num=1360382901/29#29
Quote:

WHAT WE MUST UNDERSTAND, ABOUT MOSLEMS, IS THAT;

Every moslem, EVERY moslem, is 'a man for all seasons'.

Every moslem, EVERY moslem, is flag in the wind.

When, if the political winds change here in Australia [to favour moslems], gandalf will change, to follow the wind [gandalf will then 'become' more devout].

Moslems are not sincere people.

Moslems are 'flags in the wind'.

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"....And he said unto him, If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead."
Luke 16:31

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polite_gandalf

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Re: timeless vs transient morality
Reply #19 - Dec 1^st, 2013 at 10:10pm

freediver wrote on Dec 1^st, 2013 at 10:25am:

Shariah law is not a "general principle" or a "universal morality". It is law, and according to the other Muslims who have posted here - an eternal, unchangeable law, including prescribed punishments. Are you pretending that you do not disagree with those Muslims?

Why would I pretend? I've never been shy to express disagreement about what other muslims claim before.

And why are the two things you mention necessarily contradictory? Sharia is both law and a general set of principles and universal morality. You won't find any muslim who disagrees with that. You also won't get any muslim denying that a process of understanding and interpretation - called ijtihad - must be performed before islamic courts and judges can make specific earthly rulings on day to day matters. The difference between myself and people like Abu and Falah is that they believe that this process of ijtihad is already complete, and a ready set of all the earthly rulings that we will ever need has already been decided. Whereas I believe the process must be ongoing.

The point being, *BOTH* points of view agree that you don't just take the quran or the sunna directly and make rulings straight from that. There are books of fiqh, written by "faqih" - experts in islamic law - who have established every day laws for the islamic community based on the ijtihad they have done on islamic law. These basically serve as semi-official legal documents, and it is to these documents islamic jurists refer to when making rulings, not the quran itself.

freediver wrote on Dec 1^st, 2013 at 10:25am:

Can you elaborate on this please? This is what I have been trying to get you to clarify.

It is not "making it up as you go" because at every step it is based on a solid understanding of islamic texts. I'm not sure how else I can elaborate without repeating myself.

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A resident Islam critic who claims to represent western values said:
Quote:

Outlawing the enemy's uniform - hijab, islamic beard - is not depriving one's own people of their freedoms.

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polite_gandalf Gold Member Offline Australian Politics Posts: 20027 Canberra Gender:	Re: timeless vs transient morality Reply #20 - Dec 1^st, 2013 at 10:13pm freediver wrote on Dec 1^st, 2013 at 8:25am: It is rather fortuitous that you have dubbed yourself Gandalf. "Do not be too eager to deal out death and judgment. Even the very wise cannot see all ends" - could easily have come from The Prophet himself.
Back to top	A resident Islam critic who claims to represent western values said: Quote: Outlawing the enemy's uniform - hijab, islamic beard - is not depriving one's own people of their freedoms. IP Logged

Yadda

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Re: timeless vs transient morality
Reply #21 - Dec 1^st, 2013 at 11:33pm

polite_gandalf wrote on Dec 1^st, 2013 at 10:13pm:

freediver wrote on Dec 1^st, 2013 at 8:25am:

It is rather fortuitous that you have dubbed yourself Gandalf.

"Do not be too eager to deal out death and judgment. Even the very wise cannot see all ends"

- could easily have come from The Prophet himself.

Oh really ?

Do you really think it is so, gandalf ?

Which do you think fits Mohammed better ?

"...the Prophet said, "Do not be too eager to deal out death and judgment. Even the very wise cannot see all ends""

hadithsunnah/bukhari/ #XYZQWERTY

OR......

"...the Prophet said, 'If somebody (a Muslim) discards his religion, kill him."

hadithsunnah/bukhari/ #004.052.260

????

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"....And he said unto him, If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead."
Luke 16:31

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freediver

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Re: timeless vs transient morality
Reply #22 - Dec 2^nd, 2013 at 12:50pm

I think that Abu and Falah also believed it to be ongoing, in the sense that new situations may arise, but for 'old' situations the punishment has already been determined. I took a particular interest in where the death penalty applies, where people should be punished for things that are now considered human rights or personal freedoms or where things are permitted that would today be considered a violation of human rights.

If the same situation were to arise today under a Shariah state - eg fornication, adultery, blasphemy, apostasy, slavery, rape, wife beating etc - how do you justify reaching a different conclusion regarding the punishment to what the historical Islamic scholars decided?

Do you subscribe to a recognised 'school of thought' on this?

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polite_gandalf

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Re: timeless vs transient morality
Reply #23 - Dec 2^nd, 2013 at 1:15pm

freediver wrote on Dec 2^nd, 2013 at 12:50pm:

If the same situation were to arise today under a Shariah state - eg fornication, adultery, blasphemy, apostasy, slavery, rape, wife beating etc - how do you justify reaching a different conclusion regarding the punishment to what the historical Islamic scholars decided?

You suck it up, be objective, and have the courage to consider that the historical islamic scholars were above all else products of their time, and that their customs and prejudices were infused into their laws - to greater or lesser extents.

Islam can go one of two ways: we can accept that 10th century customs are appropriate for today's global, modern society, and turn back the clock, and bring back the camels and sand dunes for good measure...

OR

we can accept that 10th century laws are appropriate only for people living in the 10th century. Accept that the world now contains realities that these 10th century scholars could never have imagined, and therefore never catered for. Importantly, this involves not just merely expanding existing islamic laws to incorporate these modern realities. It must involve an entire reassessment of the appropriateness of the laws, and accept that they are not perfect translations of islamic law, but are very much laws made by fallible men who simply cannot have been free of their own prejudices and biases of a 10th century world. Just as I would hope that muslims a thousand years in the future wouldn't take the laws written today as perfect for their time and place.

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A resident Islam critic who claims to represent western values said:
Quote:

Outlawing the enemy's uniform - hijab, islamic beard - is not depriving one's own people of their freedoms.

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freediver

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Re: timeless vs transient morality
Reply #24 - Dec 2^nd, 2013 at 7:52pm

Quote:

You suck it up, be objective

Is this an Islamic principle? I have never heard a Muslim say anything like this before.

Other than saying you have to know about Islam in order to do it, you have not explained how you go about choosing your 'path'.

As far as I can tell, what you propose is a complete rejection of the legal aspects of Islamic law. You want to throw it all out and come up with new ones, keeping only some vague principles that you came up with yourself and inventing everything specific on top of that. I have no idea how you got those principles from Muhammed's example, and they do not appear to be presented as core principles of Islam in Islamic texts. If we ignored enough of what Hitler did we could probably refine a few decent principles from things he said or did, but that would not reflect Nazism in any real way. I cannot see a difference between that and your method of interpreting of Islam.

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Torpedo

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Re: timeless vs transient morality
Reply #25 - Dec 2^nd, 2013 at 11:04pm

freediver wrote on Nov 14^th, 2013 at 9:47pm:

This seems like a big improvement on what all the other Muslims here have said, but it raises a lot of questions.

I can't believe there is still questions, heads are regularly chopped, women regularly oppressed, Europe is on the brink of collapse, and yet they keep asking questions
Wake the bugger up!!!

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Torpedo Gold Member Offline Australian Politics Posts: 867 Sydney Gender:	Re: timeless vs transient morality Reply #26 - Dec 2^nd, 2013 at 11:07pm I mean, this gandalf quotes this vile horrible person TC in his signature, and they ask him questions
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Stratos Gold Member Offline Australian Politics Posts: 4725	Re: timeless vs transient morality Reply #27 - Dec 2^nd, 2013 at 11:07pm Torpedo wrote on Dec 2^nd, 2013 at 11:04pm: Europe is on the brink of collapse Geez you post some odd things
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freediver

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Re: timeless vs transient morality
Reply #28 - Dec 7^th, 2013 at 9:03pm

polite_gandalf wrote on Nov 14^th, 2013 at 2:35pm:

freediver wrote on Nov 14^th, 2013 at 2:00pm:

No Gandalf. The essence of the question was how the "context" can make it morally appropriate to have sex with children. I was after details.

Perhaps you missed it:

Quote:

I made it clear it was something only for a particular time and place - and that time was a long time ago. Since then Women receive education, better health care, they grow up in relative peace and prosperity etc. You make it sound as if it is something that is worth pursuing, I never said that. In fact I made it clear that going back to that would be massively retrograde. Girls were "conditioned", if you like, to grow up very fast because life was much shorter, far more volatile and generally sucked in just about every measure compared to today. And this was not an environment of Muhammad's or islam's making - it was the way of the world - everywhere. What Muhammad did do was try and make the best of a sh!tty situation- raising the status of women, having a *VERY* strong emphasis on education (in fact he deemed it compulsory for women to be educated), and severely curbed the ill-treatment of women. Aisha embodied that "new way" for women - becoming well educated and a strong, wise and very much reverred leader of her society.

http://www.ozpolitic.com/forum/YaBB.pl?num=1374112476/176#176

Did you mean to say a particular set of circumstances, rather than a particular time and place?

What if the conditions were to arise again? Many parts of the world are still like this. Does that make it morally appropriate to have sex with children?

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