From a hardcore Muslim Instagrammer:
Shaykh Ibn Al Qayyim said “Congratulating the non-muslims on the rituals that belong only to them is haraam by ijmâ (consensus), as is congratulating them on their festivals and feasts by saying: ‘a happy festival to you’ or ‘may you enjoy your festival,’ and so on. If the one who says this has been saved from disbelief, it is still forbidden. It is like congratulating someone for prostrating to the cross, or even worse than that. It is as great a sin as congratulating someone for drinking wine, or murdering someone, or having illicit sexual relations, and so on. Many of those who have no respect for their religion fall into this error; they do not realize the offensiveness of their actions. Whoever congratulates a person for his disobedience or bid’ah (innovation) or disbelief exposes himself to the wrath and anger of All?h.” [Ahkaam Ahl Al-Thimmah]
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See, Ibn Al Qayyim was a renowned Shaykh of Ahlul Sunnah from over 600 years ago. On top of that, he mentioned this statement with reference to the Ijmâ (consensus) of that time! An ijmâ (consensus) is when every single scholar agree on a certain matter and none of them disagree over it, so this is something we haven’t even had for hundreds of years. So if you want to say, “Nah maybe he’s wrong”, surely the other hundreds and thousands were not all wrong!
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Tell your friend/family, or Abu Fulan who talks a lot, or your misguided Shaykh who gives you a fatwa for celebrating Christmas; tell them they have no authority to overwrite an ijmâ.#tawheedvision #shirkmas #shirk #tawheed #christianity #christmas #carol #jesus #allah #makkah #madinah #polytheism #monotheism Reposted from @tawheedvision
And then you have the monotheists who say, “We all worship the same god.” Somehow, I don’t think that phrase means what you think it means. At least polytheists can say, “Well, maybe Yahweh and Allah are not the same god, and we can make room for that, at long as you are not trying to kill us according to the instructions in your holy book.”
Have a wonderful Yuletide, y’all.
I started reporting these as abusive because they keep showing up in my polytheism hashtag follow. It does cross a bit of a line.
Kaye, if you are referring to Instagram, then I found it the same way, obviously. But I don’t think it was abusive that it was in my feed: the Muslim poster used the hashtag #polytheism in the standard way — he just happens to hate it!
It crossed the line for me because the blood was too graphic, and I think it should have been caught by content moderators. If it had been text with some kind of stock image of a sun or something, I would have just blocked them.
With further thought, I have come to agree with you.
I don’t see the point of this posting. It just seems like stereotypical right-wing Islam bashing, the kind of stuff dished out in the past by professional anti-Muslim bigots like Frank Gaffney and Pamela Geller. Easy to do: you pick out the most extreme and inflammatory examples of Islam and then suggest that this is all there is to the religion and its followers. The same could be done with any religion if you have the motivation. It’s like saying all Catholics are pedophiles. I am very sad to see this here. I would expect that someone involved with Paganism, an often despised and mischaracterized minority religion, would be in favor of religious tolerance and diversity and would oppose such thinking, not promote it. What’s next? Three cheers for Trump’s Muslim ban, Prime Minister Modi’s anti-Muslim polices in India, and the mass slaughter of Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar?
Thanks for dropping by, Michael.
You function in academia, and I am sure that the Muslim scholars whom you encounter are mostly nice people. But their community also includes people like this, and his viewpoint has deep historical antecedents, going back to the Medina period, when Muhammed and his followers made their living pillaging the property of non-Muslims. Is that “extreme and inflammatory,” or just historical fact?
(Imagine Jesus and the Twelve pulling bank jobs. When he drove the money changers from the Temple, did his gang scoop up all the cash and divide it later in an quiet olive grove? That is not in the record.)
“Religious tolerance and diversity” are fine words, but they need to be a two-way street. You are not obligated to tolerate the person whose stated objective is to erase your culture — and to erase you too, if you don’t run fast enough. Ask the Yezidi people of Syria about “tolerance and diversity,” to give just one contemporary example.
If some drunk driver is going east in the westbound lane of the interstate highway, are we supposed to tolerate his diversity? Or do we save ourselves through defensive maneuver and hope he gets what he deserves? Most drivers are following the rules (more or less), but there are some who don’t. That is a fact, and we deal with it on the road. So there is the “point of this posting”: drive defensively.
See Kaye’s comment above. Honestly, this dude used the hashtag #polyethism correctly in a dictionary sense. He just thinks that polytheism is shirk and that polytheists should be terminated with extreme prejudice.
It hadn’t occurred to me that a “consensus of scholars” could agree on something so horribly wrong.
My experiences of the madness of academia inclines toward hypocritical and perhaps greedy cover ups within bureaucracies. Not finding homicide in civil discourse.
Then there is this, from 2015:
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/brunei-cancels-christmas-sultan-warns-those-celebrating-could-face-up-to-five-years-in-jail-a6782561.html
Not only that but the Quran apparently encourages the murder of any Muslim who decides to leave the faith.
What’s the old joke? The difference between a cult and a religion is the number of followers.
I stand my ground that a lot of the discourse here is garden variety Islamophobic cherry-picking, exclusively showcasing the WORST elements in Islamic theology and the most fanatical and offensive Muslims to paint a picture of Islam as nothing but a religion of oppression and death. I find it very sad that some here seem to suggest that academics like me who devote many years to studying religious traditions and world history are fools or worse. I will quote the bumper sticker, “If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.”
Concerning the discussion about Islam, I agree that we should criticize harmful elements and denounce malicious persons in Islam, but I believe that the same should apply to other religions and religious believers. The discussion here leaves the very untrue impression that ONLY Islam and Muslims engage in such things. It is mentioned above that the idea of religious tolerance and diversity has to be a two-way street. That is why I mentioned the anti-Muslim actions in India, Myanmar and the USA, to which we could add the forced “reeducation” of Uighur Muslims in China, who are being put in what some have called concentration camps.
If we look to the Bible, we find King Saul punished by God for not totally massacring the Amalekites and even killing all their cattle. This in the Old Testament Book of 1 Samuel:15. If we go into the New Testament, we find the wild prophecies of the Book of Revelations suggesting that only a small remnant of humanity will survive the final days to be granted a place in heaven. The Christian slaughter of Jews during the Crusades is well-known, and the Crusades were launched by an evil Muslim cleric known as the Pope. These examples are given not to compile some kind of grim portfolio of “worst religious actions and ideas” among the world’s religions, but just to point out that there are offensive elements in most, if not all religious traditions and texts.
I notice that those who responded to what I posted did not bother to address what I mentioned about the abusive treatment of Muslims in a number of places in the world today, including the USA, where mosques have been bombed and many Muslims who are peaceful citizens are being subjected to scorn and abuse simply because they are Muslims. The net effect of only criticizing the offensive ideas and actions of Muslims and not mentioning this larger context of religions and religious communities of all stripes having their own shortcomings, offenses and hypocrisies to answer for is to support the bigoted view that Islam is a uniquely evil religion and to empower Islamophobes and anti-Muslim politicians and political parties. I am sad to see this blog going down this road.
I am puzzled by the statement, “You are not obligated to tolerate the person whose stated objective is to erase your culture — and to erase you too, if you don’t run fast enough.” As this is “a Pagan writer’s blog,” with concern for issues affecting modern Pagans and Paganism, what about the intolerance that Christians in the USA and elsewhere exhibit toward Pagans and Paganism? What about the long history of Christian suppression of Paganism going back to the Roman Empire? What about the burning of witches by Christians? I am sorry, but the more I contemplate this posting the more it seems to me nothing more than a hatchet job against Islam and Muslims.
What about ? What about? What about? As a rhetorical tactic, “whataboutism” loses energy pretty fast.
Yes, I ran into some anti-Pagan feeling just last week in connection with some of my academic editorial work (not Pomegranate). But no bloody-knife imagery was involved.
I am focusing on today’s more potent threats, not those of the sixteenth century or whatever. Instagram Muslim Dude is only a very short step from those jihadis driving heavy trucks into German Christmas markets and so on.Pagans should be more concerned about that guy than about the Holy Inquisition.
And yes, Christmas — including Santa, candy canes, and fruitcake — is part of my culture, and I enjoy all that. I don’t demand that my holidays all be authentically pre-Christian.
By the way, if you want the latest on bulldozed and blown-up mosques, not to mention Christian churches, Taoist temples, meditation centers, etc., I recommend that you share with your students the online journal Bitter Winter: A Magazine on Religious Liberty and Human Rights in China.. I have placed a link to it in the sidebar under the “Religion and Journalism” heading, at the bottom. Massimo Introvigne recommended it to me — you know Massimo, right?