No Reason To Worry About Islam

N

newatit2010

Well-Known Member
Iran can't do a damn thing, it has 1.5 million people that want freedom. AJ is hoping other countries will help do his dirty work.
 
Ernst

Ernst

Well-Known Member
Interesting post! Thanks!

There is a bit going on. Saudi Arabia is in Bahrain it is called a Proxy War And Bahrain shuns Kuwait's mediation offer‎

Here is a quote
New evidence has emerged that the Iranian government sees the current unrest in the Middle East as a signal that the Mahdi--or Islamic messiah--is about to appear.
CBN News has obtained a never-before-seen video produced by the Iranian regime that says all the signs are moving into place -- and that Iran will soon help usher in the end times.
While the revolutionary movements gripping the Middle East have created uncertainty throughout the region, the video shows that the Iranian regime believes the chaos is divine proof that their ultimate victory is at hand.
'The Coming is Near'
The propaganda footage has reportedly been approved at the highest levels of the Iranian government.
It's called The Coming is Near and it describes current events in the Middle East as a prelude to the arrival of the mythical tweflth Imam or Mahdi -- the messiah figure who Islamic scriptures say will lead the armies of Islam to victory over all non-Muslims in the last days.

"This video has been produced by a group called the Conductors of the Coming, in connection with the Basiji -- the Iranian paramilitary force, and in collaboration with the Iranian president's office," said Reza Kahlil, a former member of Iran's Revolutionary Guards who shared the video with CBN News.
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This rolling revolution is the most dynamic political event I can remember.

The base of it all Is Sunni and Shea Muslims.

Isn't Shea and Sunni the sects of the two Grandsons of Mohamed?

There is a story behind that Political feud I understand.. One Brother kills the other?
 
Ernst

Ernst

Well-Known Member
If the reader would like some background on the rift between Shea and Sunni Muslims I offer some Nation Public Radio links.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=7332087

There is a complete series on it not just this one. Download the entire MP3 series.

It's not known precisely how many of the world's 1.3 billion Muslims are Shia. The Shia are a minority, comprising between 10 percent and 15 percent of the Muslim population — certainly fewer than 200 million, all told.
The Shia are concentrated in Iran, southern Iraq and southern Lebanon. But there are significant Shiite communities in Saudi Arabia and Syria, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India as well.
Although the origins of the Sunni-Shia split were violent, over the centuries Shia and Sunnis lived peacefully together for long periods of time.
But that appears to be giving way to a new period of spreading conflict in the Middle East between Shia and Sunni.
"There is definitely an emerging struggle between Sunni and Shia to define not only the pattern of local politics, but also the relationship between the Islamic world and the West," says Daniel Brumberg of Georgetown University, author of Reinventing Khomeini: The Struggle for Reform in Iran.
That struggle is most violent and dangerous now in Iraq, but it is a struggle that could spread to many Arab nations in the Middle East and to Iran, which is Persian.
One other factor about the Shia bears mentioning. "Shiites constitute 80 percent of the native population of the oil-rich Persian Gulf region," notes Yitzhak Nakash, author of The Shi'is of Iraq.
Shia predominate where there is oil in Iran, in Iraq and in the oil-rich areas of eastern Saudi Arabia as well.
The Partisans of Ali
The original split between Sunnis and Shia occurred soon after the death of the Prophet Muhammad, in the year 632.
"There was a dispute in the community of Muslims in present-day Saudi Arabia over the question of succession," says Augustus Norton, author of Hezbollah: A Short History. "That is to say, who is the rightful successor to the Prophet?"
Most of the Prophet Muhammad's followers wanted the community of Muslims to determine who would succeed him. A smaller group thought that someone from his family should take up his mantle. They favored Ali, who was married to Muhammad's daughter, Fatimah.
"Shia believed that leadership should stay within the family of the Prophet," notes Gregory Gause, professor of Middle East politics at the University of Vermont. "And thus they were the partisans of Ali, his cousin and son-in-law. Sunnis believed that leadership should fall to the person who was deemed by the elite of the community to be best able to lead the community. And it was fundamentally that political division that began the Sunni-Shia split."
The Sunnis prevailed and chose a successor to be the first caliph.
Eventually, Ali was chosen as the fourth caliph, but not before violent conflict broke out. Two of the earliest caliphs were murdered. War erupted when Ali became caliph, and he too was killed in fighting in the year 661 near the town of Kufa, now in present-day Iraq.
The violence and war split the small community of Muslims into two branches that would never reunite.
The war continued with Ali's son, Hussein, leading the Shia. "Hussein rejected the rule of the caliph at the time," says Vali Nasr, author of The Shia Revival. "He stood up to the caliph's very large army on the battlefield. He and 72 members of his family and companions fought against a very large Arab army of the caliph. They were all massacred."
Hussein was decapitated and his head was carried in tribute to the Sunni caliph in Damascus. His body was left on the battlefield at Karbala. Later it was buried there.
It is the symbolism of Hussein's death that holds so much spiritual power for Shia.
"An innocent spiritual figure is in many ways martyred by a far more powerful, unjust force," Nasr says. "He becomes the crystallizing force around which a faith takes form and takes inspiration."
The Twelfth Imam
The Shia called their leaders imam, Ali being the first, Hussein the third. They commemorate Hussein's death every year in a public ritual of self-flagellation and mourning known as Ashura.
The significance of the imams is one of the fundamental differences that separate the two branches of Islam. The imams have taken on a spiritual significance that no clerics in Sunni Islam enjoy.
"Some of the Sunnis believe that some of the Shia are actually attributing almost divine qualities to the imams, and this is a great sin," Gause says, "because it is associating human beings with the divinity. And if there is one thing that's central to Islamic teaching, it is the oneness of God."
This difference is especially powerful when it comes to the story of the Twelfth Imam, known as the Hidden Imam.
"In the 10th century," says Vali Nasr, "the 12th Shiite Imam went into occultation. Shiites believe God took him into hiding, and he will come back at the end of time. He is known as the Mahdi or the messiah. So in many ways the Shiites, much like Jews or Christians, are looking for the coming of the Messiah."
Those who believe in the Hidden Imam are known as Twelver Shia. They comprise the majority of Shia in the world today.
"Twelver Shiism is itself a kind of messianic faith," Brumberg says. It is based "on a creed that the full word and meaning of the Koran and the Prophet Muhammad's message will only be made manifest, or real and just, upon the return of the Twelfth Imam, this messianic figure."
Political Power Fuels Religious Split
Over the next centuries, Islam clashed with the European Crusaders, with the Mongol conquerors from Central Asia, and was spread further by the Ottoman Turks.
By the year 1500, Persia was a seat of Sunni Islamic learning, but all that was about to change with the arrival of Azeri conquerors. They established the Safavid dynasty in Persia — modern-day Iran — and made it Shiite.
"That dynasty actually came out of what's now eastern Turkey," says Gregory Gause. "They were a Turkic dynasty, one of the leftovers of the Mongol invasions that had disrupted the Middle East for a couple of centuries. The Safavid dynasty made it its political project to convert Iran into a Shia country."
Shiism gradually became the glue that held Persia together and distinguished it from the Ottoman Empire to its west, which was Sunni, and the Mughal Muslims to the east in India, also Sunni.
This was the geography of Shiite Islam, and it would prevail into the 20th century.
There were periods of conflict and periods of peace. But the split remained and would, in the second half of the 20th century, turn out to be one of the most important factors in the upheavals that have ravaged the Middle East.
"Why has there been such a long and protracted disagreement and tension between these two sects?" asks Ray Takeyh, author of Hidden Iran: Paradox and Power in the Islamic Republic. "It has to do with political power."
In the 20th century, that meant a complex political dynamic involving Sunni and Shia, Arabs and Persians, colonizers and colonized, oil, and the involvement of the superpowers.
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Ernst

Ernst

Well-Known Member
Good catch.. I had forgotten until you reminded us. Also that NPR audio covers the Messiah people.

Have a listen friends.

Carne Seca said:
Don't forget about the Sufis.. poor things. They always get left out.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sufism
Sufism or taṣawwuf (Arabic: تصوّف‎) is defined by its adherents as the inner, mystical dimension of Islam.[1][2][3] A practitioner of this tradition is generally known as a ṣūfī (صُوفِيّ). Another name for a Sufi is Dervish.
Classical Sufi scholars have defined Sufism as "a science whose objective is the reparation of the heart and turning it away from all else but God."[4] Alternatively, in the words of the Darqawi Sufi teacher Ahmad ibn Ajiba, "a science through which one can know how to travel into the presence of the Divine, purify one's inner self from filth, and beautify it with a variety of praiseworthy traits."[5]
Classical Sufis were characterised by their attachment to dhikr (a practice of repeating the names of God) and asceticism. Sufism gained adherents among a number of Muslims as a reaction against the worldliness of the early Umayyad Caliphate (661-750 CE[6]). Sufis have spanned several continents and cultures over a millennium, at first expressed through Arabic, then through Persian, Turkish and a dozen other languages.[7] "Orders" (ṭuruq), which are either Sunnī or Shī'ī or mixed[8] in doctrine, trace many of their original precepts from the Islamic Prophet Muhammad through his cousin 'Alī, with the notable exception of the Naqshbandi who trace their origins through the first Caliph, Abu Bakr.[9] Other exclusive schools of Sufism describe themselves as distinctly Sufi.[10]
Some mainstream scholars of Islam define sufism as simply the name for the inner or esoteric dimension of Islam.[1] René Guénon in 'Insights into Islamic Esoterism and Taoism ' (Sophia Perennis 2003) contended that Sufism was the esoteric aspect of Islam supported and complemented by exoteric practices and Islamic law. However, according to Idries Shah, the Sufi philosophy is universal in nature, its roots predating the rise of Islam and the other modern-day religions, save for perhaps Buddhism and Jainism; likewise, some Muslims consider Sufism outside the sphere of Islam.[1][11]
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Ernst

Ernst

Well-Known Member
I thought maybe they were the eccentrics of the Muslim world and I liked that.

The Links to Taoism and Buddhism caught my eye..
 
Carne Seca

Carne Seca

Well-Known Member
Ernst said:
I thought maybe they were the eccentrics of the Muslim world and I liked that.

The Links to Taoism and Buddhism caught my eye..
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Sufi philosophy is elegant and ancient. Even the dance (whirling dervish) is a means to tap into the infinite. It's a very beautiful sect among the different Muslim teachings. :)

[video=youtube;yEdCXRGJuM8]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yEdCXRGJuM8[/video]

[video=youtube;UjSig4DxU_M]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjSig4DxU_M[/video]
 
Ernst

Ernst

Well-Known Member
Well, I see amazing things in the nature of information. I think we are all exploring the same thing; The Nature of Existence.
 
Ernst

Ernst

Well-Known Member
Carne Seca said:
Sufi philosophy is elegant and ancient. Even the dance (whirling dervish) is a means to tap into the infinite. It's a very beautiful sect among the different Muslim teachings. :)


I understand. Nice videos I watched them.

I'm all for Islam that doesn't kill me.. Religion is just another way we deal with the fear of impermanence.
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