Muhammad (PBUH) is dead

Ron Webb wrote: AhmadJoyia wrote: While with pagan tribal communities there were no ethical or moral grounds to respect for �human rights�, other than the fear of revenge from the individual�s tribe, but with the advent of Islam, these were clearly defined, irrespective of their faith or tribe, as shown in the Quran. Kindly refer verses 9:4 and 9:6, in this connection. What makes you think the pagans had no morals of respect for human rights? Granted their understanding of morals may be different from yours (as mine are too) but i don't think there has ever been, or could ever be, a society without some sense of morality.

As I said, �only the fear of revenge dictated their sense of Morality� whatever it was. Thus tribal protection was essential for the survival of an individual in that society.

Ron Webb wrote: AhmadJoyia wrote: IMHO, those who left Muslims (after taking shahada) were Meccans and went back to Mecca. Those of Medinans, mostly got willing conversion to Islam, but there were few who apparently did take Shahada, but remained unconvinced. They were called the �Hyopcrites�. In your opinion? Where are you getting your information from?

Please provide alternate to my opinion, if you have.

Ron Webb wrote: AhmadJoyia wrote: Which �civilized society� are you referring to? All of them. I can't imagine any civilized society that condones highway robbery.

In the state of war, such measures were only used as �Economic embargo� against only the specific enemy, whereas the �highway robbery� implies earning living through these means. I hope you know the difference.

Ron Webb wrote: AhmadJoyia wrote: Justice is one principle that no civilized society would forget, how humane it might appear otherwise. I think what you call justice is more like what I would call revenge, or the law of the jungle. IMHO when people seek justice they do so by appealing to the state or to some other impartial authority. When the aggrieved party is also the judge, jury and executioner, if the result is justice it is only by sheer coincidence.

I guess one need to put his feet in their shoe to understand the situation of those times. What �State� or �Impartial� system do you think prevailed among them?

Ron Webb wrote: AhmadJoyia wrote: My brother who stops you from specifics? Aren�t we doing exactly the same, one by one, God�s Willing. I assumed you would know the specifics. There are probably hundreds of examples in the Quran. Here are just a few: - "...when there came to them that which they recognized, they disbelieved in it; so the curse of Allah will be upon the disbelievers" (2:89) - "those who transgressed among you concerning the sabbath, and We said to them, 'Be apes, despised'" (2:65) - "O you who have believed, indeed the polytheists are unclean, so let them not approach al-Masjid al-haram" (9:28) - "We will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieve for what they have associated with Allah of which He had not sent down [any] authority. And their refuge will be the Fire, and wretched is the residence of the wrongdoers." (3:151) - "Indeed, they who disbelieved among the People of the Scripture and the polytheists will be in the fire of Hell, abiding eternally therein. Those are the worst of creatures." (98:6)

Well, thanks for sharing your apprehensions. But from Muslims� perspective, these are all admonitions by the Creator to His disobedient creatures against Allah�s rights and none of them is asking Muslims to do anything against them. But of course Muslims were ordered to take action against those evildoers who did violate the human rights.

Ron Webb wrote: AhmadJoyia wrote: Despite my sound arguments with appropriate references, the basis of your sarcasm is beyond comprehension. No compulsion in faith dictates no compelling what to talk of killing. Your arguments are against a straw man of "compulsion in religion", which has nothing to do with what I am saying. Apostates are killed for the same reason adulterers are killed: as a penalty for a sin already freely committed, not in an attempt at compulsion or to force them to repent or turn away from sin.

Sin is a violation of a God�s right and not human right. Thus Muslims are not to take action against the sins but only God; that too, after an appointed time is over for them.

Ron Webb wrote: AhmadJoyia wrote: As I said, �only the fear of revenge dictated their sense of Morality� whatever it was. Thus tribal protection was essential for the survival of an individual in that society. Yes, you said that. What I asked was, what makes you think that?

Knowledge about tribal life style is very basic especially once you have an interest about early Muslim history. You wouldn�t miss it, if you happened to read it.

Ron Webb wrote: AhmadJoyia wrote: Please provide alternate to my opinion, if you have. [IMG]smileys/smiley36.gif" align="middle" /> You have a very strange way of seeking the truth. You seem to form opinions simply based on what you would like to be true, and then demand that others refute your opinion. If they can't or won't, you think you have the truth.

Ok, I must admit my fault that I do assume some basic knowledge of Islam from my brothers on this forum which ensures that I may not have to teach 101 of Muslim history on this forum. If you want to know the name of books, please note that there are many, and to satisfy the need of bro Airmano, I did give him non-Muslim sources (eg Karen Armstrong etc) to verify my statements. However, I do see you in a strange habit of putting �how�, �when�, and �what� to all the logical arguments presented to you without any counter argument to refute. Although, you might hide behind being skeptic, but this does show how much more you might need to learn about the basics of Islam. So, yes, I am not surprised from my atheist brothers when they have nothing to refute, their pet sequence of question is always there to hide behind. Nevertheless, I must surely present my source of statements, whenever asked for. But expecting basic knowledge is also not very far-fetched. Is it?

Ron Webb wrote: As I said before, it doesn't work that way. For an opinion to have any merit at all, it must be based on evidence of some sort. Not necessarily irrefutable evidence -- that would make it more like a fact, not an opinion -- but at least on something more than just hot air.

How the evidence from history be presented other than refereeing through books that too of non-Muslim authors?

Ron Webb wrote: You want an alternate opinion? Sure, that's easy. I think that when Muhammad and his little band of credulous admirers first arrived in Medina, the peaceful citizens of that city saw no reason not to tolerate them. After all, it was unlike in Mecca, where they were being disruptive and trying to force other worshippers out of the Kaaba. By the time the more moderate Medinans realized the potentially coercive and violent nature of this new religion, it had grown too large to be controlled. Those who couldn't stomach the incessant public calls to prayer, the misogynistic treatment of women, and the general "holier-than-thou" attitude, found it easier to move to Mecca than to confront the growing Islamic community. Do I have any evidence for this? None that I'd care to share; but please go and verify my statements. Or present your proof to support your disagreement. [IMG]smileys/smiley2.gif" align="middle" />

Well, flaw in your argument if so conspicuous especially once you bring �treatment of women� that I have to forcefully control over my laugh over your knowledge so as not to discourage you asking questions. But I can only suggest all brothers like Airmano, Caringheart and may be you as well, to stop taking info from unreliable sources like Wikipedia on the internet. Such sources may be used as a short cut to give a quick info, but it is often inaccurate without any credentials of its authors.

Ron Webb wrote: AhmadJoyia wrote: In the state of war, such measures were only used as �Economic embargo� against only the specific enemy, whereas the �highway robbery� implies earning living through these means. I hope you know the difference. An economic embargo is when you block the movement of goods and services, and thus prevent trade from happening.

What do you do with the violators? Especially, if the violators have guns also, which they never hesitate to shoot at first sight?

Ron Webb wrote: Highway robbery is when you attack innocent travellers on the road and steal their money or property. It's kind of the opposite of an embargo: if an embargo is in effect, there would be few travellers, no trade goods to steal and few opportunities for highway robbery.

Armed embargo was necessary just to ensure the implementation against the violators and these were not innocents. Clearly, no attacks were launched against the non-Meccan +allied (innocent) tribes. Isn�t it legitimate to ask you the name of one such incident in which �innocents� were attacked? Mind it, I have yet not asked you your source of info, but simply questioning your knowledge.

Ron Webb wrote: AhmadJoyia wrote: I guess one need to put his feet in their shoe to understand the situation of those times. What �State� or �Impartial� system do you think prevailed among them? I'm sure there were various secular and religious authorities, but in any case I was speaking hypothetically.

and I am also sure that your �surety� is only speculative than factual. Isn�t it?

Ron Webb wrote: Questions of justice can only be resolved by a neutral third party. Otherwise, it is meaningless to speak of "justice". No doubt each side in a dispute thinks that justice is on their side.

Your argument of �third party� is the classical example that I just talked about reflecting your depth of knowledge in the subject that we are discussing here. Please, no harm intended, at all, but my only request is to gain knowledge from some authentic sources.

Ron Webb wrote: In this particular case, it's not at all surprising that neutral tribes would regard Muhammad's attacks on commercial caravans as unjust. The only ones who would condone such behaviour would be tribes that were inclined to engage in such attacks themselves, but I wouldn't define those tribes as "civilized".

O my dear brother, do you think with your mere conjecture based hypothetical arguments would take this discussion to any meaningful conclusion? Kindly name any single tribe of such characteristic to support your hypothesis.

Ron Webb wrote: AhmadJoyia wrote: Well, thanks for sharing your apprehensions. But from Muslims� perspective, these are all admonitions by the Creator to His disobedient creatures against Allah�s rights and none of them is asking Muslims to do anything against them. But of course Muslims were ordered to take action against those evildoers who did violate the human rights. Maybe there is a misunderstanding here about the word "hostile". I assumed when you said that most of the other tribes in the region became "hostile" to the Muslims, I assumed you meant merely unfriendly, not that they were physically aggressive. Unfriendly I can understand, for the reasons I have offered; but do you mean that the other tribes were actually attacking the Muslims? Seems kinda hard to believe.

Don�t believe, but just read about the composition of attacking tribes in the three battles against Muslims especially the �Battle of Ditch� and you would know it.

Ron Webb wrote: AhmadJoyia wrote: Sin is a violation of a God�s right and not human right. Thus Muslims are not to take action against the sins but only God; that too, after an appointed time is over for them. And yet adulterers are to be put to death. If Muslims are commanded to kill adulterers, then why not apostates?

Notwithstanding the fact that adultery is a human crime (how to quantify the hurt one feels if his/her spouse cheats) against not only an individual but also collective against the community, but IMHO, the fact remains Quran doesn�t prescribe killing the adulterers. Please share your source of info or reference from Quran, if you are truthful and not hypthetical.


Edited by AhmadJoyia - 09 January 2016 at 4:38am

Ron Webb wrote: AhmadJoyia wrote: How the evidence from history be presented other than refereeing through books that too of non-Muslim authors? If you had any non-Muslim sources for your claims, it would be interesting to see them.

1). Book by Karen Armstrong. 'Muhammad Prophet For Our Time'; Harper press; ISBN-13: 978-0-00-723245-1. 2). Book by A. Guillaume. 'The life of Muhammad -- A translation of Ibn Ishaq's Sirat Rasul Allah'; Oxford University Press; ISBN: 978-0-19-636033-1.

Ron Webb wrote: AhmadJoyia wrote: What do you do with the violators? Especially, if the violators have guns also, which they never hesitate to shoot at first sight? You enforce an embargo by preventing caravans from entering or leaving Mecca. You don't rob them.

Penalty of violation is not to rob them. If robbing was the only purpose, why other tribes were not attacked?

Ron Webb wrote: AhmadJoyia wrote: and I am also sure that your �surety� is only speculative than factual. Isn�t it? There were tribes, and tribes generally have leaders. There were religions, and religions generally have religious authorities. You're right that I'm only speculating (and I probably should have used the word "confident" rather than "sure"); but really, are you claiming that there were no tribal leaders and no religious authorities prior to Muhammad?

Bro do excuse me for either you didn�t understand my reply or am I missing something from your reply because I can�t connect your questions from our previous discussion on this point. Here I bring back our discussion for review of your reply

Ron Webb wrote: AhmadJoyia wrote: I guess one need to put his feet in their shoe to understand the situation of those times. What �State� or �Impartial� system do you think prevailed among them? I'm sure there were various secular and religious authorities, but in any case I was speaking hypothetically.

and I am also sure that your �surety� is only speculative than factual. Isn�t it? [/quote]

Ron Webb wrote: AhmadJoyia wrote: Your argument of �third party� is the classical example that I just talked about reflecting your depth of knowledge in the subject that we are discussing here. Please, no harm intended, at all, but my only request is to gain knowledge from some authentic sources. Again, I was speaking hypothetically. For justice to be done, the judge must be a neutral third party. What kind of justice would it be if the judge is one of the parties involved in the matter being judged?

This could be the problem of the times prior to when UN was formed.

Ron Webb wrote: AhmadJoyia wrote: O my dear brother, do you think with your mere conjecture based hypothetical arguments would take this discussion to any meaningful conclusion? Kindly name any single tribe of such characteristic to support your hypothesis. The principles of natural justice are innate in all humanity. That is a bit of humanist "dogma", I'll admit, but there is plenty of psychological research and anthropological evidence to back it up. The Code of Hammurabi, for instance, existed more than two thousand years before Muhammad. There is no merit to the claim that religion, let alone any specific religion, invented ethics. I don't know the specifics of the tribes in seventh century Arabia, but I see no reason to suppose they would be any different. A society that condoned theft would be inherently unstable and would not survive long.

Ok, with this kind of argument, it could also be logical to assume that since none of the neighboring tribes objected the actions of Muhammad, thus it could prove that his actions were seen as just and norm of the community taken against the tumult of Meccans.

Ron Webb wrote: AhmadJoyia wrote: Don�t believe, but just read about the composition of attacking tribes in the three battles against Muslims especially the �Battle of Ditch� and you would know it. Have you ever heard the expression (attributed to various sources) that "History is written by the victors"? It is commonplace for the losers of any conflict to be described (by the winners) as the most depraved and evil of creatures. .

This is again a speculation based on general observation to which, yes, I may agree with you, but can you suggest any solution to this problem? How can we bring the so called �neutral� history? On the contrary, we do see that the traditional Muslim Scholars did their best to at least authenticate this history by classifying the chain of narrators to sift fabrication from some degree of reliable accounts, though not perfect �word to word� account. Don�t you want to give some credit to this honest and unique effort, not found anywhere else among human history.

Ron Webb wrote: If you have a non-Muslim source for your information about the other tribes, I would be pleased to read it, but I'm afraid that anything based on traditional Muslim accounts is not trustworthy.

I don�t think there is any reliable and independent �non-Muslim� sources about Muslim History. All non-Muslims, eg those that I have quoted above or many others that I came across, do use only the �Muslim� historians to build up their own opinions with their own biased intellect. However, one thing is very conspicuous that while Muslim Jurists only rely on the �Sahih� traditions, many non-Muslim historian tend to use all kind of stuff, reliable or fabricated, it didn�t matter to them, but only to malign Islam what come may. It is this approach of theirs which has caused so much euphoria against Islam among the otherwise peaceful population of the west. For example, it has come to my knowledge that one such pseudo scholar has chronologically compiled Quran from unreliable and fabricated sources (of course Muslim sources but not Sahih), which shows only its compiler�s sinister motive to divert my non-Muslim brothers from the truth of its believers.

Ron Webb wrote: AhmadJoyia wrote: Notwithstanding the fact that adultery is a human crime (how to quantify the hurt one feels if his/her spouse cheats) against not only an individual but also collective against the community, but IMHO, the fact remains Quran doesn�t prescribe killing the adulterers. Please share your source of info or reference from Quran, if you are truthful and not hypthetical. As you are no doubt aware, the Quran verse that prescribed the stoning of adulterers was allegedly eaten by a goat. [IMG]smileys/smiley2.gif" align="middle" /> There are, however, plenty of hadiths that confirm the penalty. I can give you examples if you wish, but I'm sure you have read them yourself.

I am also amused with your jokes simply because I guess you know the truth as well.

Ron Webb wrote: I am glad that you so easily dismiss these awkward hadiths, and the purpose of this discussion is to convince other Muslims to take the same approach. The question remains, however: what do you make of the hadiths in which Muhammad commanded these things? Can you just disregard the ones you don't like? And given that there are so many of them to be disregarded, how can you have confidence in any of them? How many others are equally spurious, but don't happen to conflict with anything in the Quran?

My brother, the punishment of Adultery is clearly prescribed in Surah Noor for the Muslims. However, some of the Ahadith do narrate the punishment of stoning to them, but it must be realized that initially, in the absence of revelation of verses in Quran, this punishment was adopted from the OT. If I am not forgetting, even one of the narration of hadith is about prescribing this punishment to the Jews by consulting it from their own book, Torah. Without realizing this historical fact, however, I do know some of the traditional Muslims have invented different theories to match up an apparent dichotomy between the two i.e. the Quran and the Ahadith. Regarding the use of Ahadith in generality discussed elsewhere, I hope, I didn�t leave you waiting for my reply.

Edited by AhmadJoyia - 11 January 2016 at 11:17am

airmano wrote: Ahmad: If robbing was the only purpose, why other tribes were not attacked? Indeed robbing was not the only purpose as this Wiki article clarifies. Please note that the entries are referenced with sources for you to check. Airmano

Thanks bro Airmano for your favourite Wiki to show as how you understand Islam. Anyhow, even this source clearly states its limitation as follows

This article has multiple issues. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page. This article relies too much on references to primary sources. (April 2015) This article needs additional citations for verification. (April 2015) Some or all of this article's listed sources may not be reliable. (April 2015)

On the more, you would see that this compilation mostly rely on Ibn Ishaq or Ibn Hashim as their primary sources who have been already categorized as the unreliable sources simply because of their weak methodology of collecting their accounts of the history.
Best regards