From: aabiyaba@edag.ptdg.sharp.co.jp
Newsgroups: soc.culture.arabic
Subject: Re: Developement of religious strata Judaism and Christianity (related to Islam)
Date: 23 Dec 92 05:47:27 GMT
	<1992Dec23.014612.20051@trl.oz.au>
Organization: Production Technology Lab., SHARP Corp., Tenri, Nara, Japan
In-reply-to: faris@sarcasm.trl.OZ.AU's message of 23 Dec 92 01:46:12 GMT


faris@sarcasm.trl.OZ.AU (Aziz Faris) comments upon one of
lhermi@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (Lotfi Hermi)'s excerpts
from Ibn Khaldun's Muqaddimah.

To start off, I urge everyone to view the Muqaddimah in
it's proper context.  Modern historians have acknowledged that
It is perhaps the first attempt at rational analysis of history.  
It presents a theory and as such partially reflects upon the 
society at the time as well as Ibn Khaldun's own predisposition 
(or prejudices if you will).  It is not a work of any Islamic law 
and where "religion" is invoked we can only learn about the 
author's understanding of it.  It is a window into the world of 
the time - but just one data point nonetheless.  

>[excerpt deleted]
>Is force the only means that Ibn Khaldoun is aware of. I expected a scholar
>to propose education and mentoring to prevent people from harming themselves.

Apply a "smoothing function" to glean some insight;  one way 
to do so would be to learn about the terminology used in other 
works of the time.  As an added exercise compare Ibn Khaldun and 
Hobbes' later work. 

>[...]
>How many times has it been stated here on this net that Islam is against
>forced conversion. It appears that Ibn Khaldoun is either right or the people
>who claim that forced conversion is not permitted are totally wrong. However,
>history shows that Ibn Khaldoun is correct.

Another possibility is that your analysis is incorrect.
	Ibn Khaludun writes about "convert[ing] ... by force."
	The Quran says "There is no compulsion in _deen_."
Common sense shows where to look for a definition of Islam.  History shows
the discrepancy between people's actions and the Islam that they have 
sometimes used to justify themselves.

>[discussion on secular and religious authority deleted]
>In Islam these concepts were merged so that the political leader was also the
>religious leader inorder to avoid the constant struggling that was dominant
>among the Jewish tribes and at the same time have the religious mission of
>converting people to Islam as a state affair.

The religious mission is to present the message.  Whether people
accept it or not is another question altogether.

>[...]
>|> political. The Israelites dispossessed the Canaanites of the
>|> land that God had given them as their heritage in Jerusalem
>|> and the surrounding region, as it had been explained to them
>|> through Moses. The nations of the Philistines, the Canaan-
>[...]
>Does the above paragraph aknowledge that God had promised the Jews the land
>of others. Who is wrong here, I have been told by many Muslims that God
>gave them responsibility to spread the word of God not the mandate to take
>away other peoples' land and kill them.
>[...]

The story of the Bani Israel is in the Quran which is a better source of
information than hearsay.  The connection, if any, between that story and 
"the mandate" of the Muslims is another topic.

>|> The Apostles divided into different groups. Most of them
>|> went to the country of the Romans and made propaganda for
>|> the Christian religion. Peter was the greatest of them. He
>|> settled in Rome, the seat of the Roman emperors. They 
>[...]
>|> recensions of the Gospel differ from each other. Not all of
>|> it is pure revelation, but (the Gospels) have an admixture
>|> of the words of Jesus and of the Apostles. Most of (their
>|> contents) consists of sermons and stories. There are very
>|> few laws in them.
>
>Some scholar, he beleived the Qur'an saying that Jesus was a prophet then
>turns around and calls his teachings and message "Propaganda". I wonder if
>the God of Islam is the same God of the other religions?.

	"There is no god but the One God."
Picking Rosenthal's translation with a fine comb isn't going to help much.
In any case, Ibn Khaldun isn't terming Jesus' message "propaganda" 
but rather the actions of the Apostles of the Christian religion.  
Those who deify Jesus [pbuh] are Christians.  Those who worship
God Alone are Muslims in the sense of faith.  Those who further acknowledge
the Final Revelation of God and the Law of the last Prophet [pbuh] are
Muslims in the sense of ritual and are in a position to perfect their faith.
	"Has not the time come for those who believe
	 to submit their selves to Allah?" - The Quran

Read the Quran with an open mind sometime.

--Ahmed Biyabani