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has added a new journalpeace
when discussing "Muslim|Islamic Feminism" - do you feel its appropriate to use the word Islamic in the title - what i am asking is should we only talk about Muslim Feminism or can we also say Islamic Feminism??
thanks for your comments
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has added a new journalpeace
any stories memories anecdotes to share about their schooling experiences in the west...
with respect to being a Muslim in a non-Muslim setting..
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has added a new journalThe printing press changed the modern world. Sparking the end of Catholic Dominance over a claim on Christianity with the widespread distribution and circulation of Luther?s thesis, but with it, first time different views and questions regarding faith became rampant and, in Europe, provoking the spread of ideas which in turn allowed intellectual though, and artistic expression to emerge in new directions. The ideas of Luther caught on, not because of their originality as many before him sought reformation of Catholicism, but because of accessibility.
What will bring such things to the Muslim world? Can the internet be Islam?s Printing press? Can increasing education and literacy throughout the Muslim world combined with the world wide access of ideas and new thought bring the dreams of reformation to the fore and allow laypersons into the religious debates before relegated only to clerics and scholars? Will it give disparate ideas a chance to coalesce into modern schools of Islamic religious thought? We should have no illusions of an all encompassing concept of Islam that all Muslims share, in any given mosque anywhere in the world you are guaranteed to find as many different conceptions of the ideals of Islam, it?s interpretations, practice and intricacies among thinking practitioners as you would in any given Church or synagogue regarding their respective religions.
While the key tenant and their understanding will remain largely uniform, peripheral concepts of religious ideas are as subject to individual understanding as any other ideology, religious or otherwise.
You would be hard pressed to find Sunni Muslims who agree with the wanton slaughter of Shia?s that seems to be a prevalent tenant of the more violent Sunni militants in Iraq. But religious debate in Islam has largely been a matter that has not permeated the Muslim street. The question is why?
How does one bring about a religious reform in a religion without a formalized church that defines its tenants? Without a head that can pass down change to the masses, without an institution that catalogues tenants, ideas and philosophies of the masses?
This is both a strength of Islam, and very likely the reason for the lack of internal revamping that was seen in the Christian world in the 15th and 16th centuries. There is no head of a worldwide Islamic Church; no Pope figure, no institution that codifies Islamic laws for its entire cadre of adherents that is able to ?change? them. No single institution that can be questioned or challenged.
For every fatwa that is proclaimed, it is nearly impossible to find group that will uniformly adopt or repel it. It becomes a matter of individuals. For every jihad that is called, it comes to each individual to accept it and practice it, or not. Islam has no figure that can excommunicate, nor one that will ever be able to state with any real accepted universal authority that a ruling is either correct and legal, or preposterous and absurd.
A fatwa against voting in western democracies or women driving in Saudi Arabia, gets a greater amount of Muslims shaking their heads in disbelief as not.
A more poignant example is that of Saudi Arabia, which is considered a Muslim state, while at the same time being a country ruled by a monarchy, a concept foreign to Islam as a religion but depressingly common in Islamic history and current nations that profess Islam as the dominant and ruling creed, as the alleged legal systems of said nations.
Within in Islam labels such progressive or conservative, fundamentalist or modern are arguably devoid of any significant defined meaning. Each believer believes what they believe, regardless of whether they pray five times daily, or not, fast during Ramadan or wear a beard or hijab, you can find progressive hijabi?s and self defined religious fundamentalists who mingle with the opposite sex drink alcohol.
Having over a billion adherents it is absurd to think of Islam as having a cult-like mentality where all share the same view on all aspects of religious theology and practice. At the same time it is imperative to bring a general understanding of the fluidity of Islamic thought to the fore. Those who capture the limelight, and the unfortunate effect this has on shaping the direction of dialogue is disastrous to the understanding of Islam to Muslims and non-Muslims alike. Valid theological questions drown under threats of violence and retribution. The dialogue is taken hostage, and each individual who is not committed to weathering the storms of debate in order to see a new understanding of ideas emerge is left to define themselves alone, without the guidance of a defined religious authority.
Personaly I revel in such freedoms, I dislike it when others tell me what my beliefs are, or when people who are not me, tell me what I must believe, but the problem becomes how would I tell others that their beliefs are absurd and their understanding of a religion we share is either 1- stupid and fallacious, or 2- completely ignorant of the actual religion and more stepped in a cultural heritage that is now functionally defunct, or 3- some scholar?s poorly thought out misunderstanding of reality.
Who can I challenge? Where is the Mosque onto which I can nail Mosque?s door can I nail my thesis of Islam and tolerance?
How can I spark and unintended revolution against a church that does not exist in the same way?
Maybe I?ll send an email to the Saudi embassy?.
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has added a new journalcome back everyone!
Ok... I'll ask random questions...
1.) What thing in your life do you most regret and why?
2.) Have you ever broken the law? how?
3.) Why did you 1st join naseeb?
PlatoShadow
boy, it sure is dusty in here.... wow....hey Mystie
1- i once lied to my parents and said my brother did something that it was actually me that did it. he got spanked (i was 4 he was 5) and the entire time he was saying it wasn't him.
he said it was me (correctly)
my parents told him i was too young to lie. clearly not true.
1a- i was once extremely offended by this other fella, and didn't beat his asz for the offence, i regreted it for while until.....
1b- this other guy similarly offended me, and i did proceed to beat him violently, and i regreted that. beacuse it felt stupid, evil and vicouse afterwards.
maybe i learned somethign from 1a- 1-b
2- yep, stolen things, once i tresspassed onto private property, i suppose the above would include assult and battery, there was once an APB out for me for double kidnapping, that was sorted out though.
3- i was bored, working late nights, i logged on for the first time and was impressed by my muslim people's vast diversity.
it was great. i kept coming back alomost everyday for over a year.
things petered down. this is my first time back in a few weeks....
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has added a new journalbased on the survey i had to do to log in today. the question was what would make me pay for membership.
maybe if some actual networking tool was added, such as a monster.com resume post/job offer/ actual interst in doing osmething was added?
unlike the villages that spring up on a whim and remain fallow, a posting that, say involves creating something, an actual community effort perhaps, a magazine, a publishing house, an effort to build homes for the homeless or adopt orphans or fund an ophanage or a school or start an actual company.
the villages clearly don't work well in this regard
but maybe a searchable listing where one can check to see what projects exist, and learn more about the ideas and how to contribute, searchable by geography?
if that was avialable and the community content was worthwhile/interesting i would pay to join.
i think many people who joined this site may have had this same idea about it when they joined. an actual place to find like minded muslims and build together.
a place that served as a community, networking spot, and hub of ideas and endeavors.
what i found was mostly gossip and childish behavior.
it's hard to find poeple who want to do something who are close enough to one another to actually work together, with over 300K members you'd think it would be easy to find people who are intersted in building a community.
much like the internet itself, high hopes of community empwerment and grassroots building of the world have fallen by the wayside of inanities and porn (no porn on this site, but you get the idea)
ConfusedFella
There are Naseeb memorial groups being formed on Facebook. People who join are asked to remind others of their screen names.Being somewhat sensible, I keep away from such groups.
mysticlvr
strange how facebook replaced naseeb! it's so dead here! :(PlatoShadow
yah this site is close to comatose...i don't know what exactly it is, but it seems to have lost a lot of it's mommentum....