Postby Kamal35 » Tue Sep 20, 2005 7:22 pm
Completly disagree here, Achilles, mate. There was a time in which muslims were the most modern people all around the world. Not only this. The most advanced culture. Take a look to Qurtuba or Gharnata in Al Andalus. There was a time in which, if you wanted to read the Classics, from Greece to Rome, you had to study Arabic. If you wanted to learn the best philosophy, you had to study the muslim philosophers. Islam was leading the way, no doubt about it. And if you doubt it: go to The Alhambra and see it with your own eyes.
Unfortunately for those times, Christians, who were by that times more barbaric, but also leading a barbarian invassion, as it happened with the Germans against Rome, developed a brutal attitude and also new weapons. In Spain, Fernando and Isabella were using The Inquisition (a barbaric organization) at the same time they were learning for Italian Reinassance. They were really lucky because Christopher Columbus discovered America and, from that on, they had a lot of big big money to maintain the Christian armies in Spain to suffocate any muslim rebelion.
When an empire collapses, everything that empire allowed, collapses too. Personal freedoms, laws, way of living, etc. All that disappear under a kind of new order.
That's the reason I see some parallel lines between the fall of Islam in Europe (Al Andalus) and the decadence of the Western World today: personal freedom is gonna be lower and lower from now on... It's gonna be a world in which barbarians (because they don't have sense of laws, style, attitude, arts) will try to impose their barbarian style (i.e. Talibans, Western Neo-Nazis, Neo-Cons, Al Qaeda, fanatic muslims, fanatic westerns). When a culture reaches a great point of modernity, it also reaches a great point of fragility. Because you want to protect the right of someone to walk in the street, you can't foresee that this someone walking in the street is a guy with his waist full of bombs ready to kill a lot of people in a bus. The most modern you are, more and more doors are opened to barbarians.
And barbarians are all over the world. Sick people. Sick people for any reason.
Someone asked me to describe a "modern muslim" as a "nice person" because I said that a modern muslim is a nice person. Someone asked the definition of "nice".
"Nice" is someone who's living according to present times, not the times other people lived. I mean Muhammad, Jesuchrist or Napoleon. You can't live with old times. You can't pretend to live like Napoleon, even if you admire him so much, because the times of Napoleon were completly different to these times. You can learn from Napoleon, you can memorice his life. But you can't repeat the times of Napoleon, nor his circumstances. Napoleon was Napoleon and his time. Muhammad was Muhammad and a man talking for the people of his time. In the language of his time. In the mentality of his time. In the costumes of his time.
A modern muslim is someone who understand this. Someone who, instead sticking to the literal hadiths of Muhammad, tries to understand the circumstances, elaborate what was the real meaning of the hadiths, and apply this to his own -nowadays- circumstances.
I don't exactly remind, but there's an Aya in Al Quran which reads: "There are univocal Ayas and there are equivocal Ayas", meaning: "There are some Ayas that you have to admit literally and there are Ayas which you have to interpret and apply to your life in your own way".
So, as I said before, a modern muslim is a muslim living in modern times. Someone talking about the lenght your beard must be or the dress code you must have, is not a modern muslim. I don't think Muhammad wanted an Army of uniformed people with beards, hijabs, etc. I think he dreamed in a world in which everyone could be happy and feel free and talk freely.
Probably the fanatics wants here a 4th Reich of Islam: well uniformed people, saying "Allahu Akbar" instead "Heil Hitler". But well uniformed people, both in clothes and mind. Nazis reminding each others how to behave, how to get dressed, etc.
Spirituality, or Religion, has nothing to do with the way you dress up or how many hadiths you memorize.
More about how many hadiths you understand.
There is no such thing as a modern muslim, You are either a muslim or a disbelieve.