Ibn al-Hussain

So you are fine with the killing of current Islamophobes such as Tommy Robinson, Ayaan Hirsi, various Hindu Nationalists and others who have made it their career as being open enemies of Islam? Wasalam

For Ayatullah Sistani, yes - since he says Khums has to be paid on wealth that is acquired even without having worked for it. Wasalam

This is because people have an absurd understanding of what divine individuals were about - this is primarily an issue for Shi'as who are brought up with a very delusional and imbalanced image of the Prophets and the Imams. If they were actually familiar and well-read with the primary texts of the hadith literature, they would not have such an absurd understanding and would realize that the Prophets and Imams also engaged in very human and relatable activities on a daily basis. This included participating in most social norms and customs of the time, be it in physical behaviour or in speech. Not every activity of theirs is to become the measure of all things for eternity - there are technical sciences that deal with the various criteria in being able to differentiate these matters. The problem is that the average Shi'a is getting their theology from the pulpits, not from the actual sources. The material on the pulpits is already very skewed to fit certain contemporary popular narratives. The balance between their human and divine position is often hard to strike, we see Sunnis attaching and exaggerating in their human dimension, and the Shi'as exaggerating in their divine aspect. What criterion are you using to determine the progression or regression of human thought to then make the claim that human thought in the past was slow in determining the immorality of such behaviour? Can you identify this criterion without begging-the-question? As a matter of fact, many philosophers (Muslims and otherwise) will argue to death that modernity and post-modernity has brought on the demise of the human intellect - so quite the opposite of what you are claiming. Secondly, Stockholm syndrome is itself a rare syndrome - most captives do not develop it - so for you to presume that the "majority" of slaves through out human history were simply affected by it, and hence were fine with it, is a far-stretch even based on current studies. Thirdly, even if we say humans have progressed to such an extent and it is only due to this progression that they have decided to abandon slavery and discovered its inherent evil, this would mean previous generations were not at this level. This means we ought to judge them as per their own level of maturity and understanding, similar to how you would not label a child or insane person as immoral if they were to engage in something due to their lack of maturity and sanity. Fourthly, while it is true that the validity of something cannot be inherently judged by how many people agree to it, this principle is true for matters that have external ontological realities (for example if the majority or all scientists believed the sun revolved around the Earth in the past). This is not always the case in the realm of social-conventions and contracts which translate into behavioral social norms, since most of these are mere mental existents which we have created for the purpose of organizing our lives and majority (or all) agree to be bound by it. In fact, human behaviour is deemed correct when one behaves in line with such conventions and going against them is deemed "incorrect", even immoral at times. Religion has interfered in some of these social conventions, has temporarily or absolutely abrogated and prohibited some of them (for example certain types of divorces), made positive alterations to some and offered some absolute red lines for us to avoid. Even in the specific case of slavery there were changes made to the conventions people upheld at the time, for example enslavement could only occur through very specific means (predominantly as a result of war) rather than certain other means that were prevalent in other societies (like the failure to pay a debt or just selling yourself into slavery). These type of critiques may be valid against those who believe in the comprehensiveness of religious law and are forced to explain away the rulings and verses on slavery since they believe Allah (سُبْحَانَهُ وَ تَعَالَى) has legislated laws for all aspects of life and that these laws are absolutely eternal. In other words, someone who does not believe religion revolves around the presence or absence of slavery as an institution, they do not believe slavery actually has anything to do with religion, it is not a sacred and divine institution. It was something institutionalized by people, it was not an absolute evil, it was always better to free them, and neither did people perceive it as a great evil (as opposed to murder for example). Religions came and offered some laws and regulations for it, it did not offer any commands saying it must remain eternally or that an alternative to it is problematic (which it has done for certain other social conventions like homosexual marriage which it explicitly does not recognize), while on the contrary there are many injunctions related to freeing them. If today humans have collectively decided to get rid of it then that is the end of it. It does not bother me if verses pertaining slavery still exist in the Qur'an or Hadith, this does not harm the divine status of the books nor the messengers. The religion continues to remain very relevant today because matters like slavery were hardly ever the essence of religion, you don't become a disbeliever by abolishing the institution, and if someone is bogged down by its historical presence and extensive legal system then as per my opinion they completely missed the point. I do not know what your definition of divinity is - you have used this term multiple times and it seems to be the basis of your concern; that to argue against slavery jeopardizes their "divinity". My understanding of their divinity is restricted to very specific matters which I do not need to expand on here as that is a theological matter and requires a separate discussion on its own. Divinity for me does not equal absolute eternal application of all laws that simply appear in the Qur'an or Hadith. If you read up the academic scholarship on this subject you will see that this norm is historically very difficult to prove - the source material on this is very scarce so we cannot really say with full confidence that female infanticide was actually normal. Perhaps it was restricted to specific situations like in the case of severe poverty, but not that it was a cultural norm amongst all tribes and that such a thing was celebrated. That being the case, there is no way to demonstrate that even those who committed infanticide - at least in Arabia - were doing so thinking it is moral and that they are not guilty of anything wrong. On a side note, you should know that now that the Western ethical framework has aggressively moved towards accepting abortion as a moral right (because of giving over-exaggerated relevance to similar criteria many are buying into on this thread as well - I.e. choice, unrestricted autonomy), the next step seems to be to slowly push discussions justifying the morality of infanticide as well. Not to mention the verses telling you to kill off disbelievers where ever you find them (2:191) and (9:1-18).

Unfortunately, these type of questions cannot really be addressed on a forum in detail for a number of reasons: 1) they require a lot of expounding of the issue to get to the crux of the matter and as well as an investigation of individual's presumptions and their validity (universality of their particular moral perceptions across time and space); 2) addressing actual misunderstandings of what the laws were (or are) and putting them in their appropriate historical contexts to better understand their moral positions; 3) addressing the flaws of the alternative being offered, such as the plethora of issues with secularism, secular states, existence of very similar laws such as blasphemy, treason, apostasy etc. sometimes under different terminologies. No society can completely do away with criminalizing these notions since every society holds certain ideologies and conventions sacred, even if they differ in how they decide to punish people for these crimes and what the instances of these notions are. All of the above reasons require much extensive writing and such extensive and elaborate writing requires a lot of time which unfortunately I do not have. Such conversations are better held face-to-face or via verbal communication. Perhaps try looking at https://yaqeeninstitute.org/ - even though some aspects of the discussions are specific to a Sunni understanding of Islam, generally speaking they do try to address some of the concerns you have brought up. Wasalam

I was only speaking about 2 minutes of the video (between 1:05 to 1:07), not anything else.

I found 1 hour 5 minutes to 1 hour 7 relevant:

You are talking about instances where the woman is not aroused and so on, have you seen absolutely any religious source legitimizing this or even bringing such a scenario up? I have yet to see anything encouraging or permitting this - on the contrary there are traditions saying make sure the woman is aroused and so on. You seem to be conflating your understanding of war-rape with what these narrations are talking about. You cannot harm a slave, or even your wife, but what does that have to do with consent? You are tying consent with harm because this is what has been understood to be the case in the last century (in fact marital rape only became a thing very recently even in the West - because marriage itself is a contract of "implied consent", hence marital "rape" had no meaning). The two things (consent and harm) are not mutually inclusive. As for psychological harms, to say that these harms were universal in all contexts, times and places is not proven - yes today due to one's upbringing and how the world functions and what is expected from humans, such a phenomenon may cause psychological harm, but in a world where this is a norm and expected, one has to prove these individuals were suffering from psychological harm. A good example is child-marriage. There is no doubt that child-marriage (in our definition today) was a thing in the past (even though what we call child today were not considered children then) - yet to claim these "children" (in the past) were suffering psychological damages is laughable. I am sure we have members on this forum whose grandmothers were married off by the age of 13-16, ask them if they are willing to say their grandmothers were psychologically damaged and harmed. Without exhaustive contextualizing you can make anything sound evil or good in the past. Each of those variables you added have connotations today that may not have existed in the past as a part and parcel of life - once again you mentioned consent, when consent actually had no perceivable meaning in this social phenomenon. Someone can come 200 years from now where the world, education system, and work force are so different that they could possibly say, "Kids would be forced by the state to go to schools till the age of 18, being indoctrinated by state course material, with their only goal being to prepare them for the work force in order to serve the wealthy establishments. They would make them so dependent upon these individuals and establishments - without their consent - that individuals had no choice but to spend lots of money out of their pockets and go into debt just to pursue even further studies to get a piece of paper so they could get a job and to live pay cheque to pay cheque which would put food on their tables, only then to be at the mercy of their boss who could fire them over the most trivial mistake. Such a thing causes psychological harm and serious stress and is against the will and autonomous nature of man and against basic human rights." Can you nullify the possibility of the above moral judgement in the near future? We cannot nullify it. If such a moral judgement about our norms today is possible in the near future due to significant changes in the world, we say it makes no sense for those in the future to judge us as unethical and immoral humans for what we are doing today and is considered acceptable. We do not find such a life immoral currently (in fact, on the contrary some are claiming this is the most ethical we have ever been in human history). I was only asking those questions for purpose of thinking and contemplation - otherwise the scholarly discussions on it are far too complicated and technical to discuss on this forum. Wasalam

There is enough documentation to show Muslims were also being taken as slaves, especially by Europeans, and that it isn't just that Muslims were the ones capturing slaves. In fact during the Safavid period there were even Shi'as being taken as slaves in the Bukhara regions by the Sunnis. So it's not about agreeing with it since one hopes the results will be in their favour, rather the whole point is that if you can acknowledge that it is a phenomenon that simply exists in all societies and the functionality of society is heavily dependent on it, you will not argue "against" slavery even if you are unhappy that some of your own people have been taken into slavery. As I even earlier mentioned, if you look at the slave rebellions in the Muslim world, even they were not fighting for abolishment of slavery, something like abolishment was not perceivable in those times. No I do not care about Aristotle's division of hierarchy here, my whole point is that the ethical perceptions you are feeling today about slavery have nothing to do with some pure or higher human intellect - rather they are totally subjective and a result of the world you grew up in. How can you honestly say that if you were living 500 years ago in Turkey or Iran or even Europe, you would have had these same problems with slavery? Though I do not believe this claim through the Fitrah has any real defense, but for argument's sake, I would rather say that a millennia of humans engaging in this activity is more evidence of it being in line with the Fitrah than to look at the actions of a society in an era where one could argue the Fitrah hasn't been seen as more corrupt than it in human history before. By me admitting that the scripture is divine, it does not mean some parts of it can't become practically irrelevant in certain times and places. See below: Muslims (and humans in general) are often brought up with these universal ideas, such as "compulsion is unacceptable", "Prophet is a role model", "Qur'an is for eternity", "Religion has an answer for everything" etc. which are generally true ideas, but without a scholarly treatment of these principles one does not know their limits. For example, we say Prophet is a role model, but a role model in what? If he decorates his house a certain way or lives in a mud-house, does that really mean it is ideal for us today to live in mud-houses and decorate our house the same way he did? Or if Fatima (s) is a role model for us, then does it really mean we should also get our daughters married at 10? Or when we say Qur'an is for eternity - what about the Qur'an is for eternity? Does that really mean every single verse of it has to be practically applicable in all times and ages (even if there is no context left for them) or that the general theological and ethical precepts in it are meant to be for eternity? These ideas need to be expounded on and conveyed to the general Muslim population because too often they have some ideas in their mind which are absolute and they expect it to be applicable in every instance, yet when they see its not, they begin questioning the integrity of things - whereas the problem is often that the principle itself was not as absolute as they had thought. Actually many of them have been posted and there is more than enough discussion on those traditions on this website and elsewhere in the Shi'a world. You are making it sound like people are pushing for slavery today or something - this is a historical discussion. We are talking about something that exists in scripture and was a valid and legitimate system that existed in the world. Slavery and Islam is a very well known phenomenon and is a matter that many have already attacked Islam for, since many decades and if the only cop-out an average Shi'a growing in the West is going to have is to describe it as a "Sunni phenomenon" then that is highly problematic. Firstly because this has created nothing but a whole generation of ignorant Shi'as of their own history, law, heritage; and secondly which is more disturbing is that they are willing to judge all of human history and paint them as immoral and unethical based purely on the acceptance of modern ethics - not realizing the subjectivity of their own ethics today. This second is highly problematic since it does not just begin and end at slavery, rather it leads to the questioning of many other things that exist in religious scripture such as apostasy laws, blasphemy laws, temporary marriages (I.e. compared to prostitution), the hijab, "child" marriages, Prophet being a "pedophile", the "patriarchal structures" of law and so on. They were banned for a short period of time when there were some unity efforts being made during the time of Ayatullah Borujerdi, but have long been in print since even before the Islamic revolution. These volumes are very easily accessible so I don't know what you are talking about. There is no precedent in the practice of the Imams with regards to the open cursing of their enemies, so there is enough grounds to argue against it being ideal - not just because of some "time and place" matter today.

There is no necessary relationship between these two sentences, since something simply being in religious literature and being justified in the past does not always mean it has to be justified today. The laws are always revolving around specific subject-matters and if those subject matters do not exist then the law is not applicable. Slavery laws are a good example of that since their subject-matter (I.e. slaves in the legal sense) do not exist anymore. This also does not necessarily mean there is no possibility of the world returning back to an era in the near future where slaves could again become a necessary part of society - who in their right mind could rationally nullify such a possibility? What will you do then? The abolishment of slavery is not ancient history, it is only very recently that it was abolished (there are many economic and technological reasons for that as well). Otherwise its the existence of slavery that has long been an integral part of human history (across different ethnicities, religions, geographical locations etc.). Most people have an issue with slavery altogether, not just non-consenual sex which for them is simply making things worse than they already are. Slavery and some of its related laws are very clearly mentioned in the Qur'an - the Qur'an recognized it as an existing phenomenon.

Around 4-6 months - I was in Iran and hence why I picked it up really quick.

Yes I am fluent and I speak mostly informal Farsi now, even though I began with learning formal.

Fair enough, I am not going to defend the actual ruling since there are many theological presumptions being made to arrive at these rulings, but my point is that so far the responses on against the traditionalist position are weak and based on a very subjective moral compass - there is no reason to take Western normative definitions as the criteria especially when the premises of these norms are very problematic.

Rape is prohibited in Islam and is punishable by death, but why should I care about your definition of rape and about your judgement of the traditional framework and definition of things?Even in the West the definition of rape has changed multiple times over the last century, let alone since the time of the Greeks where it had no sexual connotation, and will probably continue to change. To answer your question: yes, in a scenario where consent has no meaning such an act is justified and it is not defined as rape. Rape only has meaning in a place where consent has relevance. You are presuming relevance of consent in a slave-master relationship, so you have to prove why this needs to be the case for a world where slavery exists. This is also besides the point that today rape is often associated with physical harm and injury, or even death (even though the definition of rape do not include this). If adultery isn't a good example, since it "harms another party" (even though there are large segments in the West who do not see it as justified and neither is it illegal in many Western countries), then how about fornication and premarital consensual sex?

http://www.easypersian.com/ Wasalam