Not true or True Catholicism and True Islam

The Inquisition was not Catholic

Pope Innocentius III excommunicating the Albigensians (left), Massacre against the Albigensians by the crusaders (right) (British Library, Royal 16 G VI f. 374v) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The Inquisition with its censorship was in itself not Catholic, like ISIS is not in fact “true Islam.” When Pope Innocent III (1160 or 1161–1216) considered  the dualistic religious movement of the Cathars, descended from Gnosticism and Manichaeism and echoing many of the ideas of Marcion a greater menace to Christianity, a greater menace to Christianity than the Islamic warriors who pummeled the crusaders and who threatened all of Europe he took up the weapons against believers of the same God and followers of the same teacher Jeshua (Jesus). To satisfy his outrage, he ordered the only Crusade ever launched by Christians against fellow Christians, declaring as heretics the Albigensians, as the Cathars of southern France were known. It would be totally wrong to say that the Catholics all were in favour of the killing and murdering which took place at the catholic wars like the Inquisition and the military campaigns sanctioned by the Latin Roman Catholic Church during the High Middle Ages and Late Middle Ages, such as the Albigensian Crusade, the Aragonese Crusade, the Reconquista, and the Northern Crusades. They all were papal-led expansion attempts by Western Christendom but that does not make it that Christendom nor Christianity were in favour of those so called defensive wars against Islamic conquest.

Burning_of_the_Waldensians (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Also when Protestantism got more followers throughout Europe and Pope Paul III (1468–1549) established the Congregation of the Inquisition (also known as the Roman Inquisition and the Holy Office) in 1542, it where not all Catholics who hated those different thinking Christians. It also where not all Catholics who wanted to kill those other Christians. The Holy Office was less concerned about heresies and false beliefs of church members than they were with misstatements of orthodoxy in the academic writings of its theologians. When Carafa became Pope Paul IV in 1555, he approved the first Index of Forbidden Books (1559) and vigorously sought out any academics who were prompted any thought that offended church doctrine or favoured Protestantism.

True or not true Islam

Jerry A. Coyne is annoyed that there are apologists who claim that ISIS is not in fact “true Islam.” In his article: “If ISIS Is Not Islamic, then the Inquisition Was Not Catholic There is no such thing as ‘true’ religion” he argues:

if ISIS is not Islamic, then the Inquisition was not Catholic. The fact is that there are no defensible criteria for whether a faith is “true,” since all faiths are man-made and accrete doctrine—said to come from God, but itself man-made—that becomes integral to those faiths. Whatever “true faith” means, it doesn’t mean “the right religion: the one whose God exists and whose doctrines are correct.” If that were so, we wouldn’t see Westerners trying to tell us what “true Islam” is.

As far as he can see, there are only two such principles:

true to scripture or true to some code of conduct that the writer approves. But these definitions often contradict each other, so no “true” religion can be specified.

You also can question what is a true religion and what is the right religion, if they ever exist. But when we have certain faith groups we can compare the findings in those groups or see how they keep to their own religious way of thinking and their rules of faith.

According to the author of the article truest religion could be that which sticks the closest to scripture, which I would consider as the main element for a ‘true faith of God”. For Jerry A. Coyne in that case the “truest” Christianity and Judaism would be “literalist and fundamentalist”. But to stay true to the Holy Scriptures does not have to mean we have to be taking every word literally for what people do understand for that word today. In the Old Times people did have an other way of speaking and used much more ‘a way of speaking.’ The I & II world war and boom generations are also brought up with a lot of ideomatics whilst the children of today do not know many ideomatics any more. So if they literally would believe we take old cows out of the river when we argue with somebody, they are totally mislead. And if they would go really scratching my back in the expectation I would literally scratch theirs as well, they like me are not getting to get what we both would like to receive, and I would clear out bag and baggage.

Religions of all sorts of kinds and menace to the world

To have a true religion is also not the same as keeping to their true religion. Some heathen or pagan believer will normally consider himself worshipping his ‘true’ gods, whilst for me he will be a pagan worshipping false gods. There are many gods in this world and many different faith groups which consider certain followers in that faith group good or right followers whilst others false teachers and schisms or even sects.

Sam Harris, the author of the bestselling books, The End of Faith, Letter to a Christian Nation, The Moral Landscape, Free Will, Lying, and Waking Up and cofounder and the CEO of Project Reason, as an atheist cannot help it wondering when what he calls the scrim of pretense and delusion will be finally burned away.

He writes:

It may be true that no faith teaches people to massacre innocents exactly — but innocence, as the President surely knows, is in the eye of the beholder. Are apostates “innocent”? Blasphemers? Polytheists? Islam has the answer, and the answer is “no.”

Harris over exaggerates by writing:

More British Muslims have joined the ranks of ISIS than have volunteered to serve in the British armed forces.

this is totally absurd. Then ISIS would have a huge army by now. True it might be to say that this group has managed to attract thousands of recruits from free societies throughout the world. Belgium may have even presented the highest percentage pro mile citizens of the country.  We shall not deny that this group calling for an Islamic State tries to convince the others that they alone are the way to the paradise, but are doing this with repression and sectarian slaughter in Syria and Iraq and even try to bring havoc in Western countries which they threaten with terrorism. And the menace we should not take light.

This is an astonishing phenomenon, and it reveals some very uncomfortable truths about the failures of multiculturalism, the inherent vulnerability of open societies, and the terrifying power of bad ideas. Many people consider it to be religions being the cause of civilian and holy wars, but even when people would not have had their own ideas about gods and worshipping they would have looked for making and enlarging borders and found causes to threaten others, willing to bring them under their power.

Having regard for a culture or faith

When people choose to belong to a group of people or to a faith group, it are normally several things which attracts them and enough matters that pleases them to join. when feeling part of a culture or religion one expects that those persons do have respect for that culture and for the signs of that religion.

With ISIS we do see that those Jihad fighters do not at all have any respect for their previous Muslim constructions.  Igor Volsky and Jack Jenkins of ThinkProgress are right in claiming ISIS is not, in fact, Islamic because

ISIS clearly has little regard for this or other fundamental tenets of Islam. They have sparked the rage of Iraqi Muslims by carelessly blowing up copies of the Qur’an, and they have killed their fellow Muslims, be they Sunni or Shia. Even extremist Muslims who engage in warfare have strict rules of engagement and prohibitions against harming women and children, but ISIS has opted to ignore even this by slaughtering innocent youth and using rape and sexual slavery as a weapon.

No matter which Quran, belonging to a Sunni, Shiite, Christian or Jew, that book always be a Quran and by Muslims to be considered holy and not allowed to be damaged or to be disacrated or dishonoured. Burning, bombing or tearing up a Quran is blasphemy because the Holy Quran belongs to the sacrilege writings.

“No matter how many people they kill to gain power, how many fellow Muslims they terrorize into submission, or how loudly they scream their self-righteous blasphemy to the heavens, ISIS is not—nor will ever be—Islamic.”

Volsky and Jenkins write.

Original Holy Scripture and additional human writings

Jerry A. Coyne pleas:

there is a case to be made that a fundamentalist Southern Baptist is a “truer Christian” than a liberal Unitarian, and a misogynist Orthodox Jew a truer believer than a modern reform Jew.

And questions why shouldn’t adherents to a far greater number of verses than in the Bible, calling for violence, characterizing Jews as “apes and swine,” dictating the killing of infidels and apostates, and dooming nonbelievers to hell, be considered “true” Muslims?

He continues:

Many beliefs of some Muslim sects—like female genital mutilation and devaluating a woman’s testimony in court (according to sharia law, it’s worth only half of a man’s) —are not explicitly given in the Qur’an, the word of Allah supposedly dictated to Muhammad. Rather, they have become associated with Islam through the hadith and the sunnah (reported sayings, practices, and beliefs of Muhammad), or through simple tradition. ISIS has an extreme and fundamentalist interpretation of Muslim doctrine. But in exactly the same way, dogma about the immorality of abortion, homosexuality, premarital sex, and divorce have become part of Catholicism. They are theological interpretations of scripture that appeal to some people’s sense of morality. Others disagree. Whose faith is “truer”?

Front cover of Musnad Imam Ahmed Ibn Hanbal Urdu translation, published by Maktabae Rehmania, Lahore, Pakistan.

With this saying he himself points to the danger of all religions, where human traditions are preferred to the words written in the original or main book of faith. The hadith or hadis which is a report of the sayings or actions of Muhammad (qawli) or his companions (qudsi), together with the tradition of its chain of transmission. As in Christianity it is a human writing which became in Islamic law (shariʿa) a source of legislation second only to its basic Holy Writing, the Qurʾan. We should take the Ḥadīth (Arab., ‘narrative’) for what it really is: a Muslim tradition — accounts of the ‘words, deeds or silent approval’ of Muḥammad, from whose proclamation of Qurʾān Islam derives, during the period of his preaching, but especially after the beginning of the Qurʾān revelations. [Although the plural is ahādith, Hadith is used in English as a collective for ‘traditions’, as well as the word for a single tradition. {Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions}]
As in Christendom we may find several different traditions by the many faith-groups of that religion, it is no different by the Muhammadans. Like in Christendom those human writings creating division, they also created schisms in the Islam world. As such the  Sunnis are accused by the Shīʿa have their own collections of ḥadīth, and have many sects, of which the following are or have been important: Ithnā-ʿAsharīya (Twelvers), Zaydis (Seveners, see ISMA-ʿĪLĪS), Bātinites, Nizāris (now called Aga Khanids), and the Druzes. Shīʿa communities are found as majorities in Iran and parts of Iraq, and as sizeable minorities in India, Pakistan, Lebanon, SW Syria, and Hawran district of Israel/N. Palestine.

As in the Bible the Quran refers to certain elements, like prayer, in general terms only. According Muslims it is the Sunna/Sunnah* which supplies the detailed explanation.’ (“L’tibar” by al Hamdani).  Sunnah (or Sunnat) and Hadis are technically synonymous terms, but sunnah

“implies the doings and practices of Muhammad.” (Sahih Muslim Introduction, page IX of Volume I). ‘It is thus a concrete implementation, a tangible form and the actual embodiment of the Will of Allah….”(ibid.). Literally it means a “path”, “way”, “a manner of life”.

Ahlus Sunnah Website Preview

If Mohammed is reputed to have done something it is “sunnah” to his followers. This obviously applies also in the negative sense: if Mohammed rejected or condemned something, it is forbidden to all Muslims.

In the Islam one expects the Muslim to seek guidance for his actions in every aspect of daily life in the Hadith. To copy the sayings and doings of Mohammed, is (to the Muslim) the safest way to live a life pleasing to Allah. Therefore salvation is sought by copying as closely as possible the life of the Prophet, who is considered to be the greatest of all human beings for a Muslim. Most Muslims believe that Mohammed’s life and everyday talk were as inspired as the Quran itself. Sober scrutiny will cast doubt on the reliability of the Hadith, however. To give an example: Abu Da’ud, one of the collectors of Hadith, accepted only 4 800 traditions out of 500 000 and even in his careful selection, he states that he had written down only “those which seem to be authentic and those which are nearly so.” {Ibn-Khallikan Volume I, page 590}.

The Sunnah is thought off to regulate all aspects of the life of Muslims but some Muslims deny that the Sunna may abrogate the Quran and there is disagreement concerning this point.

In fact, it cannot be imagined that one reject the entire probativeness of the Sunna and remain a Muslim. For the foundation of Islam is the Qur’an, which cannot be described as Allah’s word when one unconditionally rejects the probativeness of the Sunna since the fact that the Qur’an is Allah’s word was not established by other than the Prophet’s — Allah bless and greet him — explicit statement that this was Allah’s Word and His Book. That statement is obviously part of the Sunna. Therefore, to say that the Sunna is no proof is no different than a denial of an integral part of the Religion and an attempt to undermine the basis of the Religion. {The Probativeness of the Sunna, part 1 Introduction}

To be a true Muslim demands than at least to hold onto some Sunnah rules or writings. But it would also mean somebody going totally against those writings would not really to be considered a Muslim and as such we do find those ISIS fighters going against to many traditional Islam writings and therefore I would not consider them true Islamists or not real Muhammadans.

No “true” religion in the factual sense

Jerry A. Coyne agrees that in the end, there is no “true” religion in the factual sense. He probably knows very well that any religion is made up by human beings and has its human imperfections and shortcomings. Several religious organisations want to define marks and grow in power. It is that urge to growth and power that often kills the purity of the religious group, church or denomination. For the many denominations or churches or mosques or masjids or Madrasas, the Islamic schools, for children, and for adult studies there is in a certain way no good evidence supporting their claims to truth.

Every faith justifies itself and its practices by appeal to authority, revelation, and dogma. There are just some religions we like better than others because of their practical consequences. If that’s what we mean by “true,” we should just admit it. There’s no shame in that, for it’s certainly the case that societies based on some religions are more dysfunctional than others. Morality itself is neither objectively true nor false, but at bottom rests on subjective preferences: the “oughts” that come from what we see as the consequences of behaving one way versus another.

No concern with traditional law rules

Throughout history the way of thinking how to behave changed and continuously new rules about morality became considered the right way to behave in the future and often became part of a new law. Also by the followers of Muhammad there were “regulations of God‘s law” or Shariʿa as transmitted through their prophet. Also by them, like in many Christian societies their ‘Law’ also depends on theology brought forward by the human beings who considered themselves as allowed to discuss and to present (new) laws.

When we look at IS we do not seem to see that they do give validation of law by resting on textual sources, “whose divine origins and truth are known”.

Furthermore, all sciences that are used to attain a knowledge of law and theology are considered Shariʿa sciences, even if their subject matter is not legal or theological. Therefore, the Arabic language, hadith (verbal statements of Prophetic traditions), exegesis (interpretations), and even logic are deemed Shariʿa —even if designating logic this way has always been controversial. {Encyclopedia of the Modern Middle East and North Africa}

Sunni Islam mosque

For ISIS none of the numerous schools of jurisprudence which emerged in the course of Islamic history seem to belong to the ‘true Islam’. though four coexist today within Sunni Islam, with one or more dominant in particular areas — Maliki or madhhab (N and W Africa), Hanafi (Turkic Asia), Shafii (Egypt, E Africa, SE Asia), and Hanbali (Saudi Arabia; see Ibn Hanbal, Ahmad). While these schools of jurisprudence vary on certain rituals and practices, they are often perceived as complementary rather than mutually exclusive. Twelve-Imam Shiite jurisprudence is often referred to as Jafari.

We do know that the Muhammadans give great importance to Islamic law. In nearly all nations with a Muslim majority population we see that the extension of sharīʿa is made particularly by ijmaʿ, qiyās and ijtihād, and in practice through fatwā made by a.o. a  muftī according to a particular madhhab (‘school of law’) and often being modified by local custom (adat). But here by this group of Jihad fighters we do see that they follow mainly one leader, Mohammad Al-Areefi, who has made up his own rules and has no concern with traditional law rules. sam Harris writes:

The man has 9.5 million followers on Twitter (twice as many as Pope Francis has). If you can find an important distinction between the faith he preaches and that which motivates the savagery of ISIS, you should probably consult a neurologist.

In his speech responding to the horrific murder of journalist James Foley by a British jihadist, President Obama said:

ISIL speaks for no religion… and no faith teaches people to massacre innocents. No just God would stand for what they did yesterday and what they do every single day. ISIL has no ideology of any value to human beings. Their ideology is bankrupt…. we will do everything that we can to protect our people and the timeless values that we stand for.

I could agree with the saying that ISIS is “a strain of Islam that is barbaric and dysfunctional”, but can not agree by calling it “a nonsense that it’s a “false religion.”” I do not think we might say ISIS is really a religious movement based on the faith in Allah. They use the title of the Most High Allah, but only to cover up their aim to create an own rich empire. Their supposed faith, “which is belief in the absence of convincing evidence” (according Jerry A. Coyne, professor of Ecology and Evolution at The University of Chicago and author of Why Evolution is True), “isn’t true or false, but simply irrational”.

Devout Muslims merely want what everyone wants—political and economic security, a piece of land to call home, good schools for their children, a little leisure to enjoy the company of friends. Unfortunately, most of my fellow liberals appear to believe this. In fact, to not accept this obscurantism as a deep insight into human nature and immediately avert one’s eyes from the teachings of Islam is considered a form of bigotry.

writes Harris. While he also reminds his readers that many Muslims happily ignore the apostasy and blasphemy of their neighbours, view women as the moral equals of men, and consider anti-Semitism contemptible.

But there are also Muslims who drink alcohol and eat bacon. All of these persuasions run counter to the explicit teachings of Islam to one or another degree. And just like moderates in every other religion, most moderate Muslims become obscurantists when defending their faith from criticism. They rely on modern, secular values — for instance, tolerance of diversity and respect for human rights — as a basis for reinterpreting and ignoring the most despicable parts of their holy books. But they nevertheless demand that we respect the idea of revelation, and this leaves us perpetually vulnerable to more literal readings of scripture.***

Religion shall always have impact on one’s behaviour

When people come to a certain faith, this will influence them. We can not deny that religion has an impact on one’s behaviour. As in Christianity we would say Faith without works is death. Without any difference between a person of a faith and another person who does not keep to that faith, that religion would not contribute much to that person nor the society.

Kansas City Chiefs Husain Abdullah after he kneeled for a post-touchdown prayer was penalized 15-yards and may be fined by the NFL for doing what many NFL

Today we can see many cases of genuine Islamophobia, like penalizing someone who shows their Islamic belief in public while letting off others who do the same thing in the name of the Christian God, which the main-group in the U.S.A. considers the right God. ** First of all it is totally wrong to claim god for one self or for only one faith group. The Divine Creator who created all human beings in His image belongs to everybody and wants people to live peacefully together, not hating one each-other, believer or non-believer.

The ones who really seriously live by faith should not be afraid to show it and should live according to that faith, being a good example for that faith. This can not be said of the people behind the “war for an Islamic State” (IS).

The way people behave should others give the right impression or make them to believe those people live according to their ideas of faith, regulations, laws and their faith- or holy books. Too many expressions, too many actions ISIS undertook were contrary to basic Quran teaching. Therefore we can not take them to be people of the ‘True Islam”.

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Notes:

° This is a reaction on: If ISIS Is Not Islamic, then the Inquisition Was Not Catholic There is no such thing as ‘true’ religion & WhyEvolutionIsTrue.

* According to some scholars, Sunnah predates both the Quran as well as Muhammad, and is actually the tradition of the Prophets of God, specifically the tradition of Abraham. A broad form of Sunnah was already being practised by the Christians, Jews and the Arab descendants of Ismail, when Muhammad reinstituted this practice as an integral part of Islam. Both Sunnah and Quran are equally authentic and the former includes worship rituals like salat, Zakah, Hajj, fasting in Ramadan as well as customs like circumcision. {Ghamidi, Javed Ahmad (1990 (tr:2009)). Mizan (translated as: Islam – A Comprehensive Introduction) (in Urdu). Lahore: Al-Mawrid. Retrieved 1 June 2011.}

** Addictinng Info reports that a Muslim football player, Husain Abdullah, the safety for the Kansas City Chiefs, prostrated himself before Allah after scoring a touchdown in a 31-14 win over the New England Patriots. For his religious display he was penalized, his team losing 15 yards.

*** One of the reasons, you could say, not bad to have a look at the Quran and compare it to the Bible: Quran versus older Holy Writings of Divine Creator

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Please do find as well:

1. How do you define religion?
2. Does He exists?
3. People Seeking for God 2 Human interpretations
4. People Seeking for God 3 Laws and directions
5. True faith
6. The Immeasurable Grace bestowed on humanity
7. Being Religious and Spiritual 1 Immateriality and Spiritual experience
8. Being Religious and Spiritual 2 Religiosity and spiritual life
9. Being Religious and Spiritual 3 Philosophers, Avicennism and the spiritual
10. Being Religious and Spiritual 4 Philosophical, religious and spiritual people
11. Being Religious and Spiritual 5 Gnostic influences
12. Being Religious and Spiritual 6 Romantici, utopists and transcendentalists
13. Being Religious and Spiritual 7 Transcendence to become one
14. Being Religious and Spiritual 8 Spiritual, Mystic and not or well religious
15. Trusting, Faith, Calling and Ascribing to Jehovah #11 Prayer #9 Making the Name Holy
16. Trusting, Faith, Calling and Ascribing to Jehovah #18 Fulfilment
17. Creator and Blogger God 4 Expounding voice
18. Creator and Blogger God 6 For His people
19. Words in the world
20. Digging in words, theories and artefacts
21. Scripture alone Sola Scriptora
22. All things written aforetime for our instruction
23. Nazarene Commentary Luke 2:1-7 – A Firstborn’s Birth In Bethlehem
24. Christianity to be enshrined
25. Religious Practices around the world
26. Kill the messenger
27. Religion, fundamentalism and murder
28. Christian fundamentalism as dangerous as Muslim fundamentalism
29. Public not informed enough about Jihad terrorism in Belgium
30. Something Most False Christians Have In Common
31. Are you religious, spiritual, or do you belong to a religion, having a faith or interfaith
32. Looking to the East and the West for Truth
33. Looking for True Spirituality 1 Intro
34. Looking for True Spirituality 2 Not restricted to an elite
35. Science and the Bible—Do They Really Contradict Each Other?
36. Science, belief, denial and visibility 1
37. The mythical conflict of science and Scripture (2)
38. Reconciling Science and Religion
39. A dialogue about the earth moving and spinning around the sun
40. Anti-church movements and Humanism
41. A disciple of Christ “hating” the world
42. Faith because of the questions
43. Migrants to the West #1
44. Migrants to the West #2
45. Migrants to the West #3
46. Migrants to the West #4
47. Migrants to the West #6
48. Migrants to the West #8 Welbeing
49. Migrants to the West #10 Religious freedom
50. 19° century Londoners, religion and heretical opinions
51. Jew refering to be religious or to be a people
52. Built on or Belonging to Jewish tradition #4 Mozaic and Noachide laws
53. Representatives of the “Slave Class” or the Real “faithful and discreet slave”
54. Belonging to or being judged by
55. Mormons, just an other faith
56. Hello America and atheists
57. American atheists most religiously literate Americans
58. Religious Beliefs Founding Fathers U.SA.
59. Not many coming out with their community name
60. Capitalism and economic policy and Christian survey
61. Being religious has benefits even in this life
62. Depression, Anxiety, Pressure and megachurches
63. Quit griping about your church
64. Manifests for believers #5 Christian Union
65. Misleading world, stress, technique, superficiality, past, future and positivism
66. Good or bad preacher
67. Tongues a sign of authenticity or divine backing
68. Hamas the modern Philistines
69. ISIS, Mosul Dam and threatening lives of those who want to live in freedom
70. The world Having to face a collective failure
71. Iraqi Underclass and animosities
72. Islamic State forcing the West to provide means for Kurdistan
73. The Way To Life
74. Some one or something to fear #2 Attitude and Reactions
75. Victims and Seekers of Peace
76. A risk taking society
77. Juncker warns for possible new war
78. All the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting… George Orwell
79. Subcutaneous power for humanity 1 1940-1960 Influenced by horrors of the century
80. Resting and depending for its continuance on the free consent and will of the sovereign people of each region
81. If You want to start winning the war
82. If Peace Should Be Peaceful
83. Running the battle
84. Subcutaneous power for humanity 3 Facing changing attitudes
85. Do we have to be an anarchist to react
86. Spring in sight
87. Moving forward
88. If we, in our prosperity, neglect religious instruction and authority
89. Living in faith
90. Count your blessings
91. Quran versus older Holy Writings of Divine Creator

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Additional reading:

1. Rabbinic, Heterodoxy, sectarianism and Modern Judaism
2. Judaism and Jewish tradition
3. Jewish conceptions of childhood
4. The Canon Episcopi and Inquisition
5. Albigenses. A branch of the Cathars of S. France
6. Reminders of Extinct Sect Live on in ‘Cathar Land’
7. The Cathars: Dualist Heretics in Laguedoc in the High Middle Ages
8. The Song of the Cathar Wars: A History of the Albigensian Crusade
9. Power & Purity: Cathar Heresy in Medieval Italy
10. Catholic Identity: The Heart of Catholic Education
11. Protestantism -Ologies and -Isms
12. Essay on War
13. How does one define a war?
14. Culture, War, and the Military
15. Border a boundary/especially the Border, the boundary and adjoining districts between Scotland and England
16. Sunnis
17. The Hadis and Sunnah
18. Mosque: anglicized French cognate for the Arabic word masjid, which literally means “place of prostration.”
19. Mosque or Masjid (Arab., masjid, from sajada, ‘he bowed down’, Egypt. dial., masgid > Fr., mosquée). The Muslim place of assembly (jumʿa) for ṣalāt.
20. Madrasa, Islamic college and, more specifically, a center for religious and legal studies
21. Sharia, the religious law of Islam
22. Fatwa, an opinion made by a judicial/religious scholar (a mufti) on a legal, civil, or religious matter, often issued to raise awareness and provide clarification regarding a specific issue for Muslims, who then may or may not follow them
23. Adat, Land, and Popular Democracy: Dayak Politics in East Kalimantan
24. The Roots of Law in Malay Muslim Society
25. Reform of Sharīʿah law
26. Ḥanafīyah (Islamic law)
27. Ikhtilāf (Islamic concept)

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  The “Cathar heresy” that struck Southern France in the 13^th century, and was viciously persecuted by the Roman Catholic Church, remains a pool of interest and intrigue. What really happened, and what did the Cathars actually believe?
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  an estimated 200,000 to one million people died during the twenty year campaign, which began in earnest in Béziers in July 1209. Papal troops marched to Béziers where they ordered that 222 people, suspected of being Cathars, be handed over to them by the town’s citizens. When this was refused, the papal troops decided to attack. One of the crusaders asked their leader, the Papal Legate Arnaud-Amaury, how to distinguish between the 222 heretics and the thousands of faithful Catholics that lived in the city. “Kill them all,” was the abbot’s alleged reply. “God will recognise his own!” The number of dead that day was between 7,000 and 20,000, the latter figure being the one quoted when Arnaud-Amaury reported back to the Pope.
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  We must first realize that there were two inquisitions or, to put it better, two currents of inquisition, quite dissimilar in their origins and functions. The first, in the thirteenth century, was the result of a long process set in motion by the popes; it is often called “the pontifical inquisition”. The second answered to an initiative of the Catholic kings of Spain who, in 1478, asked the pope to reorganize the former institution. This tool of royal absolutism – aimed at the religious minorities of Jews and Moslems, who were being assimilated with difficulty into the national life, and at the current trends of thought which seemed to be threatening the social order – would not be suppressed until the nineteenth century. This was the object of “the black legend”, so tenacious that even today the term “inquisition” immediately arouses emotional reactions and evokes concepts of fanaticism and intolerance among the people. The kings of Spain often appealed to Dominicans like Thomas of Torquemada, but more often, from the end of the sixteenth century on, to Jesuits.
• The Cathars (thepressnet.com)
  The end of Catharism began with the Albigensian Crusade ), which was initiated in 1209-1229 by Pope Innocent III to annihilate the “heresy” in the South of France and maintain the power of the Roman Church. Many of the handed texts show the distorted image of the Cathars which was drawn in order to discredit them and to banish them from society like the pestilence.
• Osama bin Laden Death – Vengence (stevenddeacon.wordpress.com)
  Most Muslims share our condemnation of these Islāmic Extremists and worship according to Islāmic traditions of love and faith.
  As we are vigilant we must also be mindful of the fact that there is blood on Christian hands as well.

• Muslim Coalition Denounces ISIS for Steven Sotloff’s Murder (pr.com)
  The murder of innocent civilians is immoral, illegal, barbaric, and in direct contravention of the major tenets of Islam and Islamic law. No cause or purpose is served by this heinous act other than a clear manifestation of this group’s cruel and un-Islamic nature.
  “We are outraged that we once again find ourselves in the position to condemn this organization that calls itself the ‘Islamic State’, also known by the acronym ISIS, for killing Mr. Sotloff, especially so soon after its members murdered journalist James Foley,” said Oussama Jammal, USCMO secretary general.

• Stumbling Into an Insight: (brothersjuddblog.com)
  

  Well, if ISIS is not Islamic, then the Inquisition was not Catholic.

  Which is precisely what B. Netanyau demonstrates in his magisterial, The Origins of the Inquisition in Fifteenth Century Spain

   

• Netanyahu Defends The Islamic Religion, And Says This About The Jihadist Terrorism Problem: “It’s not Islam.” (shoebat.com)
  Typically, its first victims are other Muslims, but it spares no one. Christians, Jews, Yazidis, Kurds — no creed, no faith, no ethnic group is beyond its sights. And it’s rapidly spreading in every part of the world.