I'm so glad someone hadithsplained this to me.
He may be judgmental but it was probably wise of the Prophet to intervene heavily at that stage. Early Christianity also had a problem with people actively trying to get themselves martyred as well. Early church doctors railed against it. It must be a hard wired response in some kinds of religious people.
Listen to your heart before you Jihad 'til you die.
Which is why they suppressed St. Paul's Epistle to the Lions.
3 beat me to it but I was also going to say that it sounded like someone had learned a lesson from the early Christian church's martyr problem.
3, 7: Very few of those early Christian martyrs were of the murder-suicide variety. The murder period was later by centuries.
Of course, the available weaponry wouldn't have allowed much latitude for the modern, soloist, suicide-terrorism methods.
It took scientists like Napoleon before that happened.
I think the Circumcellions preceded the Prophet by something like 100 years, though, so it could work. I don't know how much of an impact they would have made in the area where that bit was written, but they were certainly a memorable bunch of loons.
I just looked them up on Wikipedia. It's a good thing they followed D&D rules for clerics, but I think maybe the early church doctors would have had many problems with the non-martyrdom part of their beliefs.
The linked thing is great, as well as being (what looks like) an excellent piece of legal argument. Is anybody here expert enough to judge it as a work of interpretation of Islamic law?
Also, it looks like there was only one Saudi signatory, which is both revealing and sad.
Ah, the one Saudi signatory is a persecuted non-Wahabbi Sufi cleric. It looks like he would be the Imam of the Grand Mosque at Mecca if the House of Saud wasn't in power. Fucking Saudis, and fucking us and our oil companies for tolerating them.
I just had a Sudden Clarity Clarence moment of realization that the international oil industry is maybe indirectly, but still principally, responsible for all of the following:
- Global waming
- Salafist Islam and related terrorism
- Texas right-wing politics, its influence on the United States, and thus, indirectly, the worldwide growth of libertarian bullshit
And that's not even mentioning direct stuff like Nigeria or air pollution or the arctic or whatever. So, basically, oil companies are the modern devil, and the (broadly speaking) richest industry in America, England, and England-Holland has blood on its hands comparable to the Nazis or Stalin or Mao.
If you're going to make that analysis, you have to go all the way. Oil is the fuel, what's the engine? Throw off your chains, brah.
Oil is the fuel, what's the engine?
Literally an engine?
Also Putin I guess. But we could still run the "V" line of Cadillac products off of nationalized Mexican Venezualan or Norwegian oil maybe, so I'm not a hypocrite, except for the money that comes directly from Exxon.
Is anybody here expert enough to judge it as a work of interpretation of Islamic law?
It's based soundly on the sources it cites but the wording strikes me as a little odd, especially in the executive summary. This translation reads more for western consumption, and I'd want to see the Arabic to really evaluate it. Many, really all, of the points it makes are sound. And some good signatories there but also a lot who are good scholars but wouldn't actually meet the first criterion on the list. I have seen it discussed on some academic Islamicist listservs I'm still subscribed to but don't recall the details of the discussions. Just my quick one-off before going to sleep.
I'd want to see the Arabic to really evaluate it.
I can't actually seem to find the link to the whole letter from that, just a single paragraph. Will try to give it a look in the morning between laundry and packing for my two week vacation to Dubai for film fest with Chani.
It might be easier to just go to lettertobaghdadi.com.
I can think of better attitudes towards martyrdom than "It is really totally OK to go to war with people to spread your religion and crush theirs, just as long as you are sincere about it".
Not at all what the concept is, at least according to the letter.
That isn't even an attitude towards martyrdom at all.
I thought it was something more like "fighting for God is a noble thing but seriously now don't pull that martyrdom shit with God he knows what you're up to there buddy."
