From: cl056@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Hamaza H. Salah)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.arabic
Subject: Re: What is  H a m a s  ??
Date: 6 Jan 1993 19:34:53 GMT
Organization: Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH (USA)
Reply-To: cl056@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Hamaza H. Salah)
NNTP-Posting-Host: hela.ins.cwru.edu


oueichek@gram3 (Ibaa Oueichek) writes:

>Hamaza H. Salah (cl056@cleveland.Freenet.Edu) wrote:
>: 
>: Tamer AbdelJawad writes:
>: 
>: 
>: Here is my proof:
>: If you got enough of the ones in AlBaqarah, here is a new one:
>: 
>: Altawbah
>: {
>: 5. So when the sacred months have passed away, then slay the
>: unbeleivers wherever you find them, and take them captives and
>: besiege them and lie in wait for them in every ambush, then if
>: they repent and keep up prayer and pay the poor-rate, leave their
>: way free to them; surely Allah is Forgiving, Merciful.
>: }
>: If these are instructions were given to muslims at the time of
>: the prophet, can't we see if they were not islamic, quran would
>: have not said them?

>  Hamza, i feel really frightened by what you are writing here. However,
>i'll try to follow you in your logic till the end.

 I really like your tone of writing this time.  I like the friendly mood.

>  Would you please tell me (in modern terminology) WHO are those unbelievers ?.
>I don't have my copy of the Koran handy, but i remember the word is 
>"mushrikeen".

I believe you should have a copy of the koran handy, so we all have the facts.
you can ftp it from snake.mcs.kent.edu, however the arabic version is the
preferd one.  Mushrikeen to my understanding include all those people who
associate any doing with God.  We really have to understand the arabic language 
in order to understand what mushrikeen means.  mushrikeen are the people who 
make shirk.  shirk which is the noun is drived from the verb ashrak.  ashrak 
means has an association with.  For example, ibaa ashrak hamza in buying a car.
This means both ibaa and hamza bought the car, or "took part" in buying the
car or were partners in buying the car.  Knowing that and applying the meaning
of it to God existence.  As muslims, we beleive that there is one and only good
who is the creator, the giving, the almighty, etc..  Anyone who belives that 
God is not the only creator and there other Gods who assist Him in any doing,
then this means he is making ishraak, therefore he is called mushrik.  Jews and
christians are called mushrikeen because the make ishrak, Jews beleive that 
Ozir was the son of God, and christians beleive in the trinity and some others
beleive in God to be the jesus, which all considered by quran in so many verses
as mushrikeen.  Some Jews consider there is only one God, but they don't follow
his rules, that are in Torah.  For example, torah says one thing but they do 
the other.  This means they don't listen to what God judgement is, rather they
follow someone's else.  This is not applicable to jews only, but to all people
who do such a thing.

You may find this very offending but bear with me.

>  However, whatever the interpretation of the "unbelievers" is, i think this
>verse means (to you )that there are people who'll be slaughtered because of 
>their religious belief, which is something definitly unacceptable in our time
>(And it's not because there has been an inquisition in Spain that there should
>be one in the Arabic world).

No no, islam doesn't instruct us to slaughter people because of their religious
belief.  The verse I quoted above came to muslims to fight mushrikeen that way
not because they are merely mushrikeen, but because they were mushrikeen who
had done injustice to muslims.  They tortured them, they kicked them out of
where they lived, they used to capture and kill muslims wherever they found
them, they were the ones who started fighting them initially, they had 
confiscated all their belongings, etc.  So, if such circumstances exist,
there is islamically nothing wrong in doing what the quote says.  That is
basically what islam is teaching muslims, "fight people the same way they
fight you and don't be injust to others."  As Malcom X put it "nobody resents
that kind of religion taught but a wolf, who intends to make you his meal."

>  I remember that once i flammed one of our dearest Israel supporters at tpm 
>specifically because he insisted that Islam encouraged slaughter of non Muslims.
>Now you are giving such people an argument to bash your religion and your 
>belief. I'll stress that your ideas are really new to me, and that my impression
>about Muslims is that they were much more tolerant than that you are trying to
>say they should be. And while life for nonMuslims wasn't really great under 
>Muslims role (and sometimes it was definitly bad), there has been very few cases
>where Muslims killed people because of their belief, and i'll not account Islam
>as responsable for these events, it was rather political ambitions.

I agree with what you understand about islam.  islam never punished people
for their beleifs.  i hope you understand what islam is all about and don't
jump to conclusions right away.  Please try to for the good of your being.
-- 
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