John99 said:
Sam, are you starting your own branch of Islam?
No I'm removing popular misconceptions about Islam.
People tend to think that Islam and Christianity are identical in their structure; they are not.
http://www.islamia.com/what_is_islam.htm
No 'Religious' Hierarchy
In Islam, there is no hierarchy of religious leadership such as the people of some other religions may have come to expect. There are no priests, bishops, monks, Popes, ...etc. Muslims define a scholar of Islam as an 'Imam' (not to be confused with the "Imams" of Iran who claim to have boundless supernatural powers and divine attributes). In any given neighborhood, the Imam is the person that a Muslim seeks for religious rulings.
For example, if a Muslim dies and his sons want to distribute his inheritance, they go to the Imam and he presents them with the verses of the Qur'an and the Sunnah which describe the required procedure. This man will also usually give religious lectures to teach the Qur'an and the Sunnah.
The Muslim Imams and scholars have no special divine powers. They cannot forgive sins. They do not receive divine "inspirations." They cannot issue passes to heaven. They do not have knowledge of the unseen. The can not change the law. They are just regular Muslims who have distinguished themselves with their study and their knowledge.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_and_anarchism
Islamic anarchism is based on an interpretation of Islam as "submission to God" which either prohibits or decisively limits the role of human authority. Muslim anarchists believe that only Allah has authority over humanity and reject a submissive compliance to the fatwas of Imams, relying instead on the concept of Ijtihad for a non-authoritarian interpretation of Islam. This is further elaborated by the Islamic concept of "no compulsion in religion".
Traditions within Islam also encourage the formation of communities where people know each other and practise mutual help. This is reminiscent of anarchist collectives and different from the capitalist labour markets where work is bought and sold as a commodity.
Another anarchistic feature of Islam is the lack of religious hierarchy. Imams in Islam are people who have studied Islam and amassed knowledge, but their role is that of advisors, not authority, and each Muslim should have a personal relationship with God, without middlemen. Islam teaches of the brotherhood (and sisterhood) of all people.Some see these teachings as commensurable with anarchism, as Islam only implies submission to God, and never submission to priesthood.
Another source:
If you want the Catholic position on terrorism, ask the Vatican. If you want the Southern Baptist position, refer to the Executive Committee and the resolutions of the annual convention. There may be dissent, as in all faiths. But these offices have the authority to speak on behalf of their religion.
Islam has no organized church to speak with such authority. As the world confronts terrorism, no single Muslim or Islamic organization can tell us definitively what Islam says on the subject.
There is a time-honored precedent for this diversity of religious authorities in Islam. Soon after Muhammad's death, faced with the fallibility of human efforts to interpret revelation, leading Muslim scholars agreed to disagree. Not all approaches were tolerated, but a form of pluralism became institutionalized in the 9th century through the four schools of Islamic law, which most seminaries in the Islamic world have recognized and taught alongside one another for centuries. In the 1950s, the rector of al-Azhar even agreed to recognize and teach Shi'ism -- the sect of Islam that predominates in Iran -- as a fifth legal school.
Disagreement and debate among Muslim scholars is thus expected and accepted, even as the boundaries of toleration have on occasion been enforced with expulsion or death.
The profusion of religious authorities outside of the seminaries has generated a large body of liberal Islamic thought, as well as radicalism, including Islamic arguments for democracy, human rights, gender equality and the like. As a result, the diversity of Muslim opinion has widened considerably over the past century, making it even harder to identify a single authoritative position as representing "the" Islamic take on virtually any contemporary issue.
Who speaks for Islam? More and more Muslims do. As they compete with one another for the support of their fellow believers, there is debate even over the criteria by which they ought to be measured: scholarly insight, personal piety, political efficacy or other grounds.
http://www.unc.edu/~kurzman/whospeaks.htm
John99 said:
Seem's to me they are interpretations rather than misconceptions, and rememner the Imam vehemently disagreed with you on many point's.
So "misconceptions" can be understood, when you are presenting your opinion, which seem's to differ in so many way's, as fact or absolute. You see i have no interest in proving you ri9ght or wrong, how can i? can anyone?
I am not going to find that post i referanced to point this out to you.
Any Muslim is free to disagree with me on any point of religion as long as he can find scholarly documents to back up his claim (or quote a verse of the Quran). Just like in science (for example) we can argue over the "evidence" and either we come to a consensus or agree to disagree. That is the beauty of it.
That is what ultimately happened between the Imam and I.The problem today is with poor education in Islamic theology and a lack of distinguished scholars to take on the chore of examining the Quran and Sharia in the context of contemporary society.
Did you miss this?
There is a time-honored precedent for this diversity of religious authorities in Islam. Soon after Muhammad's death, faced with the fallibility of human efforts to interpret revelation, leading Muslim scholars agreed to disagree. Not all approaches were tolerated, but a form of pluralism became institutionalized in the 9th century through the four schools of Islamic law, which most seminaries in the Islamic world have recognized and taught alongside one another for centuries. In the 1950s, the rector of al-Azhar even agreed to recognize and teach Shi'ism -- the sect of Islam that predominates in Iran -- as a fifth legal school.
Disagreement and debate among Muslim scholars is thus expected and accepted, even as the boundaries of toleration have on occasion been enforced with expulsion or death.
Wahabism is not one of these schools of thought (aka Madhab) and did not gain acceptability in the Muslim world until the Sauds came into oil money and began propagating their ideology through madrassas. It is still not considered acceptable by mainstream Muslims.
