Gods can be funny in what they consider abominations. For instance, coloring hair has been decreed “un-Islamic”:
A supreme forum of the Sunnis here has issued a fatwa (religious decree) that colouring the hair black is un-Islamic.The Darul Ifta of Deoband issued the fatwa saying, “Applying black colour in hair is unlawful.” The fatwa was issued in response to a question posted at its official website.
The question read: “My brother is 26-year-old. His hair are turning white due to natural factors, please tell whether applying black colour in hair is permissible or not.”
Replying to the question, the Muftis said: “We have been sternly prohibited in Hadith (Prophet’s saying) from doing so (colouring hair). Therefore, it is unlawful.”
A prominent Sunni cleric, Maulana Khalid Rasheed, said: “As colouring of hair amounts to deception, the fatwa has been issued against using the colour.” Rasheed heads Lucknow’s oldest Islamic seminary.
If hair coloring is considered deception, that would mean so should makeup, clothing, hair and nail cutting, skin grafting, plastic surgery, and wig wearing.
But, of course, blowing up your enemies is just fine and gets you into heaven.
(via)
I think that the people who’ll be listening to this sort of thing probably weren’t big on makeup to begin with. I don’t think that many Sunnis would have been getting boob jobs, skin tucks or botox injections either.
I had also assumed that most suicide bombings involved some degree of deception.
That’s interesting, considering that women from that area have been using henna to color their hair, hands and feet for thousands of years. Muhammed’s wives probably used henna themselves — it was just done at the time. I’d be very surprised if they didn’t.
@Proto
But you see, that form of deception is fine, as it is only deceiving the infidels that you have been given permission by Allah to murder. You just shouldn’t deceive fellow True Muslims ™.
@Jan Andrea
Assuming that the person called Muhammed actually existed, that is. There is some debate from experts on that point, rather like the debate that exists about the existance of Jesus. Your point, however, is well-made. I lived in Saudi Arabia for 5 years back in the 80s and seem to recall a lot of henna on the women’s hands and in their hair. I also recall noting quite a few men whose jet-black hair seemed incongruous with respect to the age of their faces.
Baka:
I thought the the historical existence of Muhammed was fairly uncontroversial. The Enyclopaedia Britannica says that Muhammad is “the only founder of a major world religion who lived in the full light of history and about whom there are numerous records in historical texts, although like other pre-modern historical figures not every detail of his life is known”. If you have sources that provide an alternate view, I’d be very interested to read them.
You should’ve done your homework before posting this. Coloring one’s hair for beautification purposes is ok as long as it not pure black (with certain exceptions). Read this Fatwa, http://www.askimam.org/fatwa/fatwa.php?askid=648c82ce154610b7a00faa294ffeea05
this particular website is among the many branches of Deoband.
Also there is no evidence in the Islamic texts that supports or promotes “blowing up your enemies.” However, fighting is allowed for defensive purposes.
Ah I see. So if someone wanted to bleach their hair blond, that would be ok? Figures. I wonder if those 23 virgins they get in heaven after blowing themselves and other people to bits are all blonds? When did they all become Hugh Hefner?
@therneck
… or maybe it just goes to show what a bunch of nonsense Islam is like all religions as it tries to base the one and only “true way” on a completely ambiguous text.
As an aside do you honestly think that it makes any more sense to say you can dye your hair as long as it’s not black?
Of course, like many other religions, and more so than most, Islam is an evolving theology. Fatwahs are hotly debated, and while all Imams can claim some authority, this isn’t Dogma. Some of the faithful will follow, others will ignore.
Suicide bombing tends to have a lot more to do with politics than religion per se. And there again, some will follow, the vast majority ignore.
On the topic of shading: One of my favourite friends made the Haj to Mecca, and returned wearing the hijab, a thing she’d never done before but now felt was appropriate for her current spirituality. One day she came for dinner and confessed that she’d dyed her hair (a lovely jet-black on its own) purple.
Curious, I asked why–what was the point? She smiled and said “Oh, just for me.”
Why didnt England turned the other cheek as quoted inMat 5:39 when Hitler was about to attack english channel.
We know the answer to that. If Churchill didn’t advised for attack in self defence then there would not have been English Channel…
Funny being a Christian Nation they should have welcomed Hitler and should have followed the teachings of Jessus (PBUH).
They should not only stop on the Cheek but should have given their Cloaks i.e the throne..
But yet they followed teachings of Islam…
Corinthians 11 :
For if a woman will not veil herself, then she should cut off her hair; but if it is disgraceful for a woman to have her hair cut off or to be shaved, she should wear a veil.
Muslims are the only nation who ful fill bible’s above statement… still Christians object why Muslim Women wear veils…
Like I said Study Islam not the Muslims shown on the Govt. sponsored media news. And donot listen to the so called islamic experts brought by these Govt. sponsored media.
Why the word Islam is fixed with terrorist….Journalisim’s fundamental law is neutralism in news now biased.
The Terrorism acts commited by Hindus are shown Attack by Tamil Tigers but they dont even call that terrorism or Hindu Terrorist. Ireland terror attacks…no one brings that to the picture…
Islam has the solution for Humanity .. its the way of Life… So Study Islam .. do your research ..
Hitler was going to fill in the sea between France and Britain?
That is an ambitious plan…
@Yasser Mahmood
So that proof of god that you had – any luck with posting it yet?
Yeah, that Churchill, such a good Muslim. Except for the drinking, and the womanizing, and the sausages.
Although I understand Allah may forgive the drinking and women.
“But yet they followed teachings of Islam…”
For what it’s worth, I think it’s an obvious fact that personal morality and corporate morality are two different things. What you do that affects only yourself is one thing. What you do when you have the responsibility for the well-being of others is another.
In the Gospels, Jesus has little to say about corporate morality. Even had he preached on the topic, it’s not likely his followers would have passed it on. After all, what chance would they have for national agency in the Roman dominated world? Some of the teachings on personal morality survived.
Obviously, Judaism and Islam are different. Their creators had some national independence.
Here’s a question: Why is dying your hair black a deception, but hiding all your features, including your facial expressions, under a burqa not a deception?
@wintermute asked me,
“I thought the the historical existence of Muhammad was fairly uncontroversial.”
“If you have sources that provide an alternate view, I’d be very interested to read them.”
And right you are to request them. Thank you for keeping me honest! :)
Truth be told, I just threw that quip in there to see if I could get a rise out of anyone and because I recalled reading something about it recently. I had to go digging to find where I had read about it, though. Turns out that it was an article in the Wall Street Journal from November. I found it via Richard Dawkins’s website. Here is a link to the article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122669909279629451.html
Since you asked, I decided to do a brief spate of Googling on the subject. I’ll say here at the beginning that I have no formal training in this area, and can, at best, draw highly tentative conclusions from the subset of articles that I read. I fully admit that Googling is not in any way equivalent to real research into this question. That said, here’s what I have found of interest so far:
It certainly seems to me that it is more controversial to question the historical existence of Muhammad than it is to question the historical existence of Abraham, Moses, or Jesus. At least one Islamic scholar (the guy mentioned in the link above) appears to think the evidence doesn’t add up. There are many more who seem to think it ludicrous to question Muhammad’s existence.
This guy from the WSJ article could be a complete crank, of course. But, he was apparently cheered and hailed by both muslim community leaders and German politicians when first appointed. Then again, the relative lack of dissent about the historicity of Muhammad and other events held to be true by modern Islam may have a lot to do with the fact that dissent is often harshly punished. Take this guy who writes under a pseudonym about his research into the origins of Islam:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christoph_Luxenberg
He apparently writes pseudonymously because of the counsel of Arab friends and the story of another scholar, Suliman Bashear, who was thrown out of a window by other muslim students who disagreed with his non-doctrinal opinions:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suliman_Bashear
I will reiterate my original statement that there appears to me to be some debate by people who look like experts on the point of Muhammad’s historical existence. I have no expert knowledge in this area myself and remain open-minded about it.
Historicity is one thing, of course. However, I openly and unapologetically doubt the supernatural claims made in the Qur’an. But, I suppose he could have been a con-man; a lunatic; a sincere, but mistaken, person; or an amalgam of several historic and/or mythic figures cobbled together after the fact by clergy.
In defense of my continued skepticism about the case for Muhammad’s existance, I cite the Wikipedia article on Muhammad (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad). This page claims that:
“The most trustworthy source for the historical Muhammad is the Qur’an”
Given some of the more outlandish claims of the Qur’an, not the least of which is its support of the creation mythology of the Hebrews as set forth in the OT, you can probably guess my opinion about treating it as a historically accurate document. Wikipedia goes on to point out that the next most important documents testifying to his historicity are the biographies, the earliest surviving member of which dates from 120 to 130 years after his death. The four Christian Gospels were written sooner after the alleged death of Jesus than that, and look how inaccurate and inconsistent they are.
In closing, I really don’t care one way or another if there really was one guy named “Muhammad” that lived around that time and did the non-supernatural things he was said to do. My comment was off-the-cuff because I had recently read the Wall Street Journal article. After reflection and more (admittedly limited) research, I still stand by my statement. I’m convinced there is some question about Muhammad’s existence, even among experts on the subject.
That’s the first time I’ve had a comment held up for moderation. I wonder what triggered it? Length most likely. Or, perhaps number of URL links?
Baka: More than one URL, is what generally does it for me.
@Baka: I have it set to put a comment in moderation if there are two or more URLs. But Askimet does such a good job with spam these days, maybe I can remove that. I’ll have to take a look at how things are working in the spam department.
Baka: Very interesting. I’m also no expert on the subject, and I’ll have to spend some time digesting it. But it does sound like his existence might be more controversial than I’d thought.
Coloring hair is not forbidden, it is men using the color black on their hair that is not allowed. I know it sounds stupid, but it’s a quibble, and one that people should be straight on if they want to mock Islam (and I generally encourage the light-hearted mocking of Islam unless it crosses into something else, like Arab bashing). Men can and do use henna to color their hair. If you live in an area where there are people from the Subcontinent, you may have seen an elderly man with an orangeish tint to his hair or beard, the result of using henna. To my knowledge, a man can also use bottled hair dyes, but who among us, of any religion or non religion, does not mock men who use “Just for Men?”
[[that would mean so should makeup, clothing, hair and nail cutting, skin grafting, plastic surgery, and wig wearing.]]
The deception meant by the hadith about using black hair dye is that it makes a man appear younger and more virile than he might be, which would not allow a woman or her family to make an informed choice in marriage. Makeup is forbidden outside of the home because it is against hijab. Clothing – come on now. In Islam, we wear all the clothes we can find. Hair and nail cutting are commanded, but interestingly, in some Subcontinental Islamic traditions, the muftis have forbidden it for women. Plastic surgery is forbidden. Skin grafting, I don’t believe it is. Wig wearing is general forbidden. I believe when it comes to nitpicking, we Muslims (well, I am an ex-Muslim) excel!
[[But, of course, blowing up your enemies is just fine and gets you into heaven.]]
I hope you click on my link; it’s a guide for atheists to dealing with ex-Muslims and skeptical, questioning Muslims. Comments like this make me shake my head. Al Qaeda is out there, killing more Muslims than non Muslims, but you know… most of us aren’t like that and neither are our scholars (who are definitely $hit eaters for the most part). Sort of like saying Christianity teaches that you should kill all the babies and the women because there are stories in the OT where skyman commands it.
@jabster: The *difference* is that the freethinking / atheist community must approach Islam in a way that shows that the homework has been done, that we are challenging Islam on Islam’s own terms, that we aren’t relying on blind hatred and ranting screeds (often published by Christians who have their own special agenda for Muslims). So yes, it is important to distinguish the reasons why and to be accurate.
On that note the “did Mo-man exist” debate seems a very pointless exercise by some heterodox Muslims and others to ape what’s happened within the Christian tradition. And it is pointless, imo.
@yasser: Can it. More than half of Muslim women don’t even bother with the scarf, so spare us all the usual Muslim dawahganda on how the ummah is doing the Bible better than the Christians.
@Mathurine: I really appreciate your comment! Very informative.
One nitpick myself:
Our point is that these kinds of verses are in the OT and the Koran, and fundies can and have used it to suit their evil agenda (or to inspire an evil agenda). That’s why we think it’s dangerous to blindly follow holy books.
But seriously, Mathurine, your comment made my day!
@Mathurine:
It’s always fascinating to see the cultural underpinnings behind religious tradition.
A friend of mine who leads a Jewish temple pointed out that the prohibition on seafood in the OT makes damn good sense in a desert many miles inland from the sea, where shrimp can get good and high before they get sold to you.
So your explanation of the “deception,” connecting with decisions regarding marriages, is fascinating. Thanks for that.
@Mathurine,
I’ll echo Daniel and Metro in thanking you for a very nice comment and some real food for thought. I disagree with some of your points, which I’m sure doesn’t come as a surprise, but agree with some too.
For one, it seems that one of your goals is the defense of the great silent (from the perspective of public perception) majority of muslims who are moderates. This is a worthy point to keep in mind, just as it is with Christians. However, the same way that you can claim all extremists to not represent the real face of Islam, we can claim that our most vicious attacks are not directed at those moderates. So, keep that in mind when working up offense at what is said.
Regarding moderate religion in general, I’m not a big fan. This is, in part, obvious because I’m an atheist. But, I also happen to think that moderate religion acts as a reservoir and safe haven for many (but not all) forms of extremism, and even if the real desire of the silent majority is reason and peace, the extremists take the majority’s silence as tacit approval and a source of emboldenment. This is in no way unique to Islamic moderates, btw.
I was crafting this response when I noticed your comment in the “Befriending Ex-Muslims” thread. I’m going to take my discussion of moderate Islam over there.
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