Northwest

@Abu Nur She is mostly concerned about the flow of illegal migrants and terrorists such as Wahhabi–Salafi forces. You yourself are familiar with the activities of migrants in Finland, based on your posts. She mainly opposes the globalists’ open-borders policies and wants stricter policing as well as efforts to preserve native society. What is inherently wrong with that? Muslim countries such as Iran do the same for their own societies. Unrestricted immigration is never good for a society. Do you want drug dealers, human traffickers, and violent terrorists in your society? Look at how migrants have ruined many Finnish cities. Many immigrants contribute to society, but a very sizeable minority do not, and that minority needs to be filtered out.

@Abu Nur Giorgia Meloni talks about the importance of traditionalist values such as religion and the preservation of the family. How is that “fascist”?

@SoRoUsH As @HzAbbas indicated, only a handful of the few hundred bishops present rejected the Trinity, so Constantine was not its primary definer or architect. He simply ratified the view of the majority of bishops then present. Of course, this does not mean that the Trinity is valid as a concept, but it does indicate that the Trinity was not simply created out of thin air, so to speak. It was derived from somewhere. My question is, Why did the majority of bishops adopt a concept that is nowhere attested in the very sources (Old + New Testaments) that they relied upon? Nowhere did I imply that the Trinity should be endorsed. I am merely asking why the Christian leadership has maintained an otherwise unsubstantiated dogma.

@Ashvazdanghe The only thing that I hold against this article is its anachronistic liberal bias. For example, it criticises Trump and his supporters for opposing open borders, yet the same article notes that Elizabeth I did not like Muslims, but only allied with the Ottomans and Safavids for strategic, pragmatic reasons. Also, notwithstanding trade, neither side wanted a mass transfer of populations between them, so most Englishmen stayed in England, Persians in Persia, etc. Otherwise, the article is good.

@kadhim According to the Qur’ān, though, Christians are described as being comparatively humble and self-effacing, so why would their top scholars, who are otherwise quite humble and logical, stubbornly cling to the Trinity for millennia? Thinkers such as St. Augustine of Hippo, St. Thomas Aquinas, et al. were, on balance, very cerebral and logical, so why would they selectively refuse to apply their logic to and reject the Trinity, especially in light of the fact that they even admitted the “mysterious” (i.e., irrational) nature of the Trinity? If they could apply logic and reason to so many other spheres of knowledge, why not here? The major problem with this is that the Christians have consistently presented the Trinity as ontological reality, in effect “deifying” and personifying the Divine attributes that you mentioned, e.g., merging the eternal Logos with a created man and claiming that both share the same essence. They make the Divine attributes and a created being equal to the Absolute Himself. It’s as though they feel uncomfortable with the Judaeo-Islamic notion that the Creator transcends His attributes, in the sense that He is “greater” than created beings can conceive (i.e., “greater than/beyond a mortal’s measure of greatness”).

@Kenneth Lau Then why are Salafi so involved in the killings of Christians in Egypt, Syria, and so on? Then why are Salafi so involved in anti-Hindu activities in Kashmir and elsewhere? I don’t deny that Salafi detest Shias, but I wouldn’t call them pro-Christian/-Hindu at all.

It is often asserted that Christian Trinitarianism was enforced by the political power of the emperor, e.g., Constantine the Great. However, Christianity largely succeeded in dominating Europe after the dissolution of the Western Roman Empire, so the successive reigns of individual emperors do not explain why the Church has upheld Trinitarianism. For nearly a millennium medieval Christendom and its Trinitarian ideology were rooted in feudalism. Under feudalism secular or temporal power was largely decentralised, so centrifugal rather than centripetal forces tended to dominate. There was no centralised state or bureaucracy to enforce doctrine, and in fact the Church, not the state or monarch, was the largest and wealthiest landowner. Furthermore, under these conditions doctrine would have been exposed to other influences, e.g., Judaeo-Islamic, monotheistic hermeneutical (“legalistic”) interpretation, via trade and war, given the absence of a unified, centralised secular authority over most of Europe. Even following the consolidation of the secular state during the Renaissance/Reformation, “reformed” modern Christendom upheld the Trinitarianism of its medieval Catholic forebear(s). Also, the Church Fathers/Doctors and early Protestant Reformers featured plenty of logical, intellectual giants, so why would they continue to uphold a transparently “illogical” doctrine such as that of the Trinity, given their otherwise logical approach to practical life, scholarship, and theology? For most of early Christian history political ambition cannot really explain why the Church as a whole adopted and did not abandon Trinitarianism, even in the absence of a single, centralised secular authority that could enforce such an “irrational” theological concept on its subjects. Medieval Europe was very decentralised, and the Church was more powerful than the emperor/monarch, so why would Trinitarianism be so uniform and persist, despite opposition by and exposure to Judaeo-Islamic monotheism via the Crusades etc.? One cannot blame the “secular” power for this.

Are there any good scientific rebuttals of these FE videos and claims? The first video asserts that a certain property causes distant objects and layers to reflect one another, thereby causing distortion, so that the Sun may not actually “set” below the horizon but appear to do so, owing to “mirroring” and the creation of a false horizon. The second video seems to show at least one instance in which the Sun does not fully go below the horizon prior to “fading,” unlike in this video. See the following comparison for illustration:

A lot of Muslims seem to fixate on the supposed “racism” and “discrimination” that occurs under Christianity. Now they are complaining about “woke” liberal degeneracy, but look at their reactions to Trump and his ilk, including his religious base. The same people who are complaining about “woke” liberal degeneracy would oppose Christian theocracy even more. As soon as traditionalist Christians begin to gain influence, many Muslims begin complaining about the “far right” and “white supremacy.” So it is hard to feel sympathy for people whose positions are woefully inconsistent. I say this as someone who by no means approves of “woke” liberal degeneracy. @Eddie Mecca How much of your viewpoint on this matter has been influenced by liberal educational material at university?

@Mahdavist I respectfully disagree. To excuse the public is to deny individual and collective responsibility for one’s actions, which contribute to the state of society and the quality of its leadership. Also, it is clear that a religious Sunni government is much worse for Shias and other minorities than a secular yet pluralistic government. For example, while the Sunni Muslim Brotherhood under Egypt’s Morsi was aggressively sectarian, persecuting lay Shias and scholars alike as well as Christians, the current Egyptian regime under the secularist Sisi has consistently treated Shias and other minorities better than Morsi’s did. Assad’s Syria, despite being secularist, treats religious minorities far better than a religious Sunni regime would. The West wants sectarian, extremist rather than secular, pluralistic regimes in place across the MENA, so it consistently supports extremist, Takfiri Sunnis such as the majority faction within the Muslim Brotherhood, ISIS, al-Qaida, etc. The problem is that Iran, unlike Syria’s Assad, has refused to sever ties with treacherous groups such as Hamas and its parent, the Muslim Brotherhood, even though those groups have consistently acted against Shia and other minority interests, as in Syria. Secular leaders such as Assad and Sisi seem to be much more clear-eyed about the dangers of religious sectarianism than the Iranian leadership. After all, unlike Iran’s leaders, Syria’s Assad, like Egypt’s Sisi, considers the Muslim Brotherhood to be a terrorist organisation.

@iCenozoic You are normally very critical of religious literalism in general, yet here you seem to be subtly endorsing flat-Earth cosmology. Is it because you truly believe in or otherwise endorse the flat-Earth worldview, or do you wish to condemn all religious traditions as “unscientific”? I am genuinely curious. @Eddie Mecca @notme I do have one question: does the word daḥāhā (دَحَاهَا) refer to the spreading of a flat surface or to the laying of an egg? After all, an ostrich’s nest is flattened prior to the laying of the egg. So should the translation of daḥāhā be rendered as “He made it [the Earth–ed.] egg-shaped” or “He spread it out”? Does the egg refer to the Earth or to something else? As mentioned, the ostrich first spreads out a flat expanse before laying the egg. Yet the flat expanse is part of the Earth, so “spreading out the Earth in order to lay it” does not make sense. Also, the very source that claims Sūrah 79, ’āyah 30 refers to a spherical Earth being “laid” also takes Sūrah 27, ’āyah 88 out of context, claiming that it refers to the mountains’ drifting upon the Earth‘s mantle, when in fact the reference is to the dissolution of mountains on the Day of Judgment.

I’m going to bring this from @-Rejector- here: To add to this: Sunni NGOs and outlets like al-Jazeera, financed by the West/Israel and Wahhabi–Salafi petrodollars, are relying on simplistic sectarian propaganda and religiously driven bigotry to advance certain false claims about China’s alleged oppression of Sunni Uighur. Their basic, underlying premise in regard to China is as follows: China is run by the Communist Party, the Communists are atheist infidels, therefore every Western claim about their evils is true and every means may be used to overthrow the evil Communist Party! They use the same logic against Iran and Shias: Iran is run by Shia rafida, rafida are bad, therefore every negative claim about them is true and every method may be used to combat them! These Sunnis would rather ally with the West/Israel on the basis of religious bigotry and nothing more. Religious bigotry is their sole calculus.

At the end of the day most (not all) Sunnis’ calculus rests on whether a particular action directly or indirectly benefits Shias. It is a zero-sum calculation. Sunnis will often feign hostility to the West/Israel but in the end solidly prefer Zionist imperialism to a tactical partnership with Shias. That is why Sunni groups such as Hamas may accept Iranian assistance but at the same time treat individual Shias with hostility and side with Shias’ enemies, as has been the case in Syria. And the Sunnis’ actions make sense. After all, anything that casts doubt on Sunni behaviour or belief, or lends credence to forces that do, is seen as anti-Sunni. So most Sunnis at best will “accept” Shias‘ assistance in order to use it against Shias later on, as in the case of Syria. Now if most Sunnis were not under the influence of Wahhabi–Salafi hegemony the case might well be different, as in Syria, where most native Syrian Sunnis sided with Assad vs. the foreign-backed Takfiri militants, preferring a pluralistic society to a Wahhabi–Salafi “caliphate.” But Syrian Sunnis’ reactions were a major outlier in the Sunni ummah, as most non-Syrian Sunnis, especially in the GCC, were at best indifferent, equivocal, and/or lukewarm, or, as was more often the case, overtly hostile at worst. Many more foreign Sunnis entered to Syria to fight Assad rather than to support him. And in the vast majority of cases these Sunnis fought Assad because he was seen as a “Shia” or crypto-“Shia” who was aiding Shiite Iran and/or Hezbollah. These Sunnis were practically always a) hardcore Wahhabi–Salafi or b) under the sway of Wahhabi–Salafi ideology and its propaganda. The point is that in most (not all) cases forging political “unity” with Sunnis means giving aid and comfort to Wahhabi–Salafi forces and their sympathisers. Even plenty of “moderate” and secular Sunnis have sided with the Sunni Islamists against Shias. For example, many Iraqi Baathists served high-level positions in ISIS during the insurgency of 2014–15, on the shared basis of anti-Shia and anti-Iranian policy. The uncomfortable truth for Iran and its supporters is that true cases of Sunni–Shia unity vs. Western/Zionist imperialism and Takfiri ideology are few and far between. Syria was the exception rather than the norm. Of course, we see plenty of Sunnis (and even non-Sunnis) worldwide echoing Western/Zionist MSM about alleged oppression of Sunni Muslims in Xinjiang, Myanmar, Kashmir, Chechnya, etc. But these same Sunnis never mention the much greater oppression of Shias and other non-Sunni religious minorities in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Yemen, and so on. Where are the Sunni complaints about the decades-long Shia genocide in Afghanistan and Pakistan, for instance? Isn’t that a case of Muslims being oppressed? Clearly, for many Sunnis, some Muslims “are more equal than others,” to paraphrase George Orwell’s Animal Farm. And the blunt truth is that this collective Sunni blindness cannot be pinned on Wahhabi–Salafi propaganda or the Sunni elite alone. The worst thing about all this is that the Sunnis are often among the loudest in their denunciations of Western/Zionist imperialism. One cannot count the number of occasions on which Sunni and Wahhabi–Salafi Islamists have denounced the evil West/Israel for their crimes. But on almost every available occasion these “Muslims” are equally willing to echo Western/Israeli narratives about alleged oppression of Sunnis in Russia, China, India, Syria, Iran, etc., while saying nothing about the ongoing genocide of Shias, Sufis, non-Muslim religious minorities, and even traditionalist/orthodox Sunnis in much of the world. How very much like Osama bin Laden and his ilk, who pretended to oppose Western/Zionist interests while actually working for them in so many ways. All this brings me to another point, which may unsettle some here, but holds some validity: there is an obsession, certainly not without merit, with the corrosive effects of secularism on Islamic virtue. I do not doubt that there is much truth in this. There is also a tendency among some here to attribute political or personal motives to all who commit crimes in the name of religion. There is certainly some truth to this as well. But neither of these twin truths reflects some cold realities: that some of the greatest carnage being perpetrated in the world is being committed by Sunni “Muslims” whose motives cannot simply be reduced to mere political vendetta or personal aggrandisement, but to deep-seated religious bigotry. Misguided, but religious nonetheless. And the hard truth is that in many cases a “Sunni” state ruled by Sunni sharia, under today’s circumstances, would be far worse for Shias and other religious groups than, say, a pluralistic state that accepts and guarantees the rights of these minorities. I say “in many cases” because Iran is an admirable exception to the norm. But unless your Islamic theocracy is modelled on Iran’s, it simply isn’t going to work, much less withstand the pressure of foreign-funded Wahhabi–Salafi activism, which is given unlimited resources by the West/Israel via the GCC and Turkey. So in most cases the least bad option would be a situation like Syria’s, in which the secular state does not favour one religion over another or discriminate against public displays of religious practice.

@AbdusSibtayn I don’t believe that these people should be considered “far-right,” “conservative,” or “Christian.” They are largely products of secularisation. For example, traditional Christianity held that wives should attend to their domestic duties, wear headscarves, and not get involved their husbands’ prerogatives, e.g., politics. Yet we have seen plenty of “conservative” female activists go about uncovered while actively, publicly promoting their husbands’ political careers, or even assuming positions of political authority themselves, e.g., Sarah Palin, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and so on. Strangely, not one “conservative Christian” has called out these women for engaging in un-Christian activities such as seeking political power and going about immodestly uncovered in public. A few hundred years ago this would have been unthinkable, even in the West. Source As far as the “far right” is concerned, I think that Muslims should stop relying on tropes to criticise traditionalist white Christians while siding with liberal-globalist “Jewish” NGOs on matters such as immigration (open borders), multiculturalism, etc. Muslims end up twisting themselves into pretzels by, on the one hand, supporting Holocaust revisionism and denouncing Zionism yet, on the other hand, siding with the liberal wing of Zionism against the “racist far right/white supremacy.” After all, left-wing, “Islam-friendly/multicultural” Zionism is seemingly just as bad, from an Islamic perspective, as right-wing, “anti-Islamic/nationalist” Zionism, if not more so in some respects. After all, liberal Zionism is more dominant than conservative Zionism in elite MSM, academia, entertainment, finance, etc. Liberal Zionists support social liberalism along with mass immigration and “diversity.”

The thing is, a lot of ordinary Sunnis don’t seem to want political unity with Shias. When the Sunni Muslim Brotherhood promoted Morsi to power in Egypt, the first thing its candidate did was call for anti-Shia “jihad” at home and abroad, e.g., in Syria. In the GCC there wasn’t a lot of grassroots Sunni resistance to the anti-Syrian, anti-Iranian proxy war. Quite a few Iraqi Sunnis sided with ISIS during 2014–15. Look at how many foreign Sunnis willingly volunteered to fight in Syria, Libya, Afghanistan, and so on. And they still continue to do so. Iran has conditionally supported Turkey as a lesser evil compared to the House of Saud, but Turkey’s Muslim Brotherhood-linked government has been Syria’s primary enemy. Also, while Iran and Hezbollah maintain ties with Hamas, Iran’s partner in Syria, Bashar al-Assad, refuses to deal with Hamas, because Hamas is part of the Muslim Brotherhood and the Muslim Brotherhood is anti-Syria (which among Sunnis tend to translates into “anti-Shia”). The real question is, Have the returns for Sunni–Shia political unity exceeded the losses?