From: faris@sarcasm.trl.OZ.AU (Aziz Faris)
Subject: Re: Developement of religious strata Judaism and Christianity (related to Islam)
Reply-To: a.Faris@trl.oz.au 
Organization: Telecom Research Labs, Melbourne,Australia
Date: Wed, 23 Dec 1992 01:46:12 GMT

In article <1992Dec18.041028.29184@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu>, lhermi@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (Lotfi Hermi) writes:
|> 
|> It should be known that after the removal of its
|> prophet, a religious group must have someone to take care
|> of it. (Such a person) must cause the people to act according
|> to the religious laws. In a way, he stands to them in the
|> place (khallifah, caliph) of their prophet, in as much as (he
|> urges) the obligations which ( the prophet) had imposed
|> upon them. Furthermore, in accordance with the afore-men-
|> tioned need for political leadership in social organization,
|> the human species must have a person who will cause them
|> to act in accordance with what is good for them and who will
|> prevent them by force from doing things harmful to them.
|> Such a person is the one who is called ruler.

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.

|> 
|> In the Muslim community, the holy war - Jihad - is a religious
|> duty, because of the universalism of the (Muslim) mission
|> and (the obligation to) convert everybody to Islam either by
|> persuasion or by force. Therefore, caliphate and royal au-
|> thority are united in (Islam), so that the person in charge
|> can devote the available strength to both of them at the
|> same time.

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.

|> 
|> The other religious groups did not have a universal mis-
|> sion, and the holy war was not a religious duty to them, save
|> only for purposes of defense. It has thus come about that the
|> person in charge of religious affairs in ( other religious
|> groups) is not concerned with power politics at all. (Among
|> them,) royal authority comes to those who have it, by acci-
|> dent and in some way that has nothing to do with religion.
|> It comes to them as the necessary result of group feeling,
|> which by its very nature seeks to obtain royal authority, as
|> we have mentioned before, and not because they are under
|> obligation to gain power over other nations, as is the case
|> with Islam. They are merely required to establish their re-
|> ligion among their own (people).

In terms of Christianity, its sole mission was to spread the teachings of
Jesus of Nazreth peacefuly. Christianity is by nature secular and did not
require that political figures be responsible for the religious affairs of
the masses.

Judaism on the other hand was plagued with constant struggles between the
clergymen and the tribal leaders. When the Jewish tribes all united, the
clergymen or prophets played a major role in the state affairs when it was
favourable to the ruler. Most often this role caused massive disruption and
termoil among those tribes.

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.

|> 
|> This is why the Israelites after Moses and Joshua re-
|> mained unconcerned with royal authority for about four hun-
|> dred years.  Their only concern was to establish their re-
|> ligion. The person from among them who was in charge of
|> their religion was called the Kohen. He was in a way the
|> representative (caliph) of Moses. He regulated the prayers
|> and sacrifices of the Israelites. They made it a condition for
|> (the Kohen) to be a descendant of Aaron, as it had been
|> destined for him and his children by divine revelation.
|> 
|> For (supervision of the) political matters which naturally
|> arise among human beings, the Israelites selected seventy
|> elders who were entrusted with a general legal authority.
|> The Kohen was higher in religious rank than they and more
|> remote from the turbulent legal authority. This continued to
|> be (the situation among the Israelites) until the nature of
|> group feeling made itself fully felt and all power became
|> 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-
|> ites, the Armenians [!], the Edomites, the Ammonites, and
|> the Moabites fought against them. During that (time), po-
|> litical leadership was entrusted to the elders among them.
|> The Israelites remained in that condition for about four
|> hundred years. They did not have any royal power and were
|> annoyed by attacks from foreign nations. Therefore, they
|> asked God through Samuel, one of their prophets, that He
|> permit them to make someone king over them. Thus, Saul
|> became their king. He defeated the foreign nations and
|> killed  Goliath, the ruler of the Philistines. After Saul,
|> David became king, and then Solomon. His kingdom flour-
|> ished and extended to the borders of the Hijaz and further to
|> the borders of the Yemen and to the borders of the land of
|> the Romans ( Byzantines) .

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.

Also Ibn Khaldoun is totaly wrong in his account of the Jewish kingdom. The
Jewish kingdom only exerted control over parts of present day Syria, Lebanon,
and Jordan. This was also done during the reign of David, Solomon traded with
places such as Yemen, Hijaz, and many other places that the Phoenicians
traveled to. 
 
|> 
|> 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 
|> then wrote down the Gospel that had been revealed to Jesus,
|> in four recensions according to their different traditions.
|> Matthew wrote his Gospel in Jerusalem in Hebrew. It was
|> translated into Latin by John, the son of Zebedee, one of
|> ( the Apostles) . ( The Apostle) Luke wrote his Gospel in
|> Latin for a Roman dignitary. (The Apostle) John, the son of
|> Zebedee, wrote his Gospel in Rome. Peter wrote his Gospel
|> in Latin and ascribed it to his pupil Mark. These four
|> 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?.

A.Faris