Posts Tagged ‘Caliphate’
And why France, one of the staunchest supporter of ISIS, is ditching the ‘Islamic State’ name? And replacing it by the original Daesh? A label this group currently hates?
Posted by: adonis49 on: April 22, 2021
ISIS hates the original label of Daesh: Islamic State in Iraq and Syria
Posted on September 21, 2014
- In: cities/geography | Essays | Events/Cultural/Educational/Arts | Islam/Moslem/Islamic world | political Artical
From the start, what exactly was the problematic of the colonial powers in calling the extremist Islamist group? An occupation that has taken over much of Syria and Iraq.
At first, many called it the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) or (the acronym Daesh in Arabic).
However, due to differences over how the name should be translated from the Arabic, some (including the U.S. government) referred to them as ISIL (the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, meaning Syria, Jordan Lebanon and Palestine).
(The US preference for ISIL iwas n order to satisfy the wishes of their obscurantist Wahhabi Saudi monarchy that is scared to giving the ISIS any further expansion schemes into Arabian Peninsula, the hotbed of Wahhabism and their homeland. Wahhabism is the extreme Protestant counterpart in Islamic sects)
To make matters more complicated, the group later announced that it should simply be called the “Islamic State” – a reference to the idea that the group was breaking down state borders to form a new caliphate.
(Or the caliphate title is thought after by the Saudi monarchy and Turkey)
A number of media groups, including The Post, the Associated Press and, eventually, the New York Times, adopted the Islamic State, while others stuck with ISIS and ISIL.
Now the French have added another complication.
On Monday, the French government released a statement that included a reference to the group under a different name: “Daesh.”Adam Taylor September 17 , 2014
An image made available on the jihadist Web site Welayat Salahuddin on June 11.
The picture shows militants of the Islamic State posing with their trademark jihadist flag after they seized an Iraqi army checkpoint in the northern Iraqi province of Salahuddin. (Welayat Salahuddin/HO via AFP)
France had hinted that it would begin using this term – how the group is referred to in much of the Arab world – before, but this week appears to be the first time that the country has used it in official communications.
“This is a terrorist group and not a state,” Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius told reporters last week, according to France 24.
“I do not recommend using the term Islamic State because it blurs the lines between Islam, Muslims and Islamists. The Arabs call it ‘Daesh’ and I will be calling them the ‘Daesh cutthroats.’ ”
That logic is certainly understandable, and the French aren’t alone in bristling at the idea that an extremist group gets to take the moniker “Islamic State.”
Last month, Egypt’s leading Islamic authority, Dar al-Ifta, called on the world’s media to stop using the term, instead suggesting a new term: “al-Qaeda Separatists in Iraq and Syria” or QSIS.
“The initiative by Dar al-Ifta came to express the institution’s rejection of many stereotypes that attach the name of Islam to bloody and violent acts committed by such groups,” Ibrahim Negm, an adviser to Egyptian grand mufti Shawqi Allam, told al-Arabiya News.
And a group of British imams recently called on British Prime Minister David Cameron to stop calling the group “Islamic State,” making a request for a new moniker, “Un-Islamic State,” instead.
“We do not believe the terror group responsible should be given the credence and standing they seek by styling themselves Islamic State,” a letter sent from the imams to Cameron read, according to the Guardian.
“It is neither Islamic, nor is it a state. Despite the admirable French logic, Daesh comes with its own complications.
As historian and blogger Pieter van Ostaeyen noted back in February, that word is a transliteration of an Arabic word (داعش), an acronym for al-Dawla al-Islamiya fi al-Iraq wa al-Sham (which is itself a transliteration of the group’s Arabic name: الدولة الإسلامية في العراق والشام).
There are a variety of different schools of transliteration, and there are a number of different styles for writing the Arabic acronym in Latin characters: The Washington Post uses DAIISH, but DAASH, DAIISH and DAISH are also used.
However it’s spelled, there’s another big factor: The group is reported to hate the moniker.
The Associated Press recently reported that the group were threatening to cut out the tongues of anyone who used the phrase publicly, and AFP have noted that the term “Daeshi” has been used a derogatory term in some parts of the Middle East.
Some analysts have suggested that the dislike of the term comes from its similarity to another Arabic word, دعس, or Da3ess.
That word means to trample down or crush.
Adam Taylor writes about foreign affairs for The Washington Post. Originally from London, he studied at the University of Manchester and Columbia University.
No, Hezbollah didn’t fight Angels in Syria: Western Colonial powers, Erdogan, “Arab” Monarchies knew what the 300,000 riff raff were meant to accomplish in Syria
Posted by: adonis49 on: March 11, 2021
This nightly Mass Graves in Nineveh
Nabih Al-Burji. March 9, 2021
The charge of the western colonial powers: Hezbollah has gone to Syria to fight against Angels!
Yes, no less, fighting against angels, otherwise we would have seen how the land that produced 7 Roman emperors, gave birth to the bishop of Rome (Pope Gregory III), has been transformed, by Abi Bakr Al-Baghdadi, Abi Muhammad Al-Gulani, and Abi Omar Al-Chechani, to a paradise for democracy.
Hillary Clinton, Obama, the western colonial powers, Erdogan, the “Arab” monarchies and Emirs knew how to devastate Syria and massacre its people. Weapons from the colonial powers and cash from the petro-dollar monarchies.
Instead of the Republic of Plato, the Republic of Abi Dhar Al-Ghafari…
Were Hezbollah fighters supposed to welcome the terrorists with open arms in the campaigns of Lebanon eastern mountain chains, those Islamic extremists who massacred our Lebanese officers and soldiers who were made prisoners?
Was Hezbollah supposed to believe that these terrorists, if they had access to the statue of the Lady of Bechwat in the Bekaa Valley, they would have knelt before it, and shed tears on the feet of the Virgin Lady, just as it was in Maaloula, in Raqa, in Qoroush and in Mosul.
We have all followed the Islamic State Organization (ISIS) in Iraq.
Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi had to declare the Caliphate from the place of Hussein in Karbala, or from the Monastery of Mar Uraha in Nineveh, or from the Church of Mar Corgis in Erbil, not to mention the Yazidi ′′ Lalish ′′ temple near Sinjar.
Who prevented him from reaching Baghdad, Erbil, and Karbala? Ask the White House. (It was the Iranian fighting volunteers, commanded by Qassem Suleimani, who quickly filled the void in the Iraqi Kurdish districts and stopped the advances of Abu Baker riff-raff))
The American army has been in Iraq since 2003, under the pretext of fighting terrorism. Where were the Apache planes when the terrorists were swooping on the city of Qoroush (Qaraqosh) the historic presence of Christianity in between the two rivers, and when Christians were chopped off with machete and swords, and when they were spending nights out in the open for shelter from the ′′ graves night in′′ Nineveh?
Was ′′ Hezbollah ′′ in Iraq when Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi appeared, with his double character, and where Freudian simulation between Hulaku and Shahriar, and when the new Mongols, on the horse s’ rift, Mosul city, which once hosted, the goddess Ishtar?
We didn’t imagine that the Iraqi tragedy was so horrific (but it’s Iraq, guys).
Pope Francis’s visit made this tragedy a panoramic trip.
Especially the horrors Christians have faced. We ask the Pentagon about that Iraqi army that he built over a decade, generals flying in women’s clothes, and in women’s shoes…
The tribes of Yagog and Magog (Yajooj Majooj) were supposed to enter Damascus to be within steps from Beirut, and they attracted Abu Suleiman Uzbek who promised, promised, and promised, to set up a ′′ camp for women ′′ in Downtown Beirut.
How could′′ Hezbollah ′′ implicate the pseudo Lebanese “state” in the collapse of relations with others when he went to Syria (to fight against angels).?
Maulana Al-Khalifa was supposed to receive drum rolls, following the footsteps of some of the political system stars when they visited, with their precious gifts, and with their honorable attitudes, military killers in Arsal Valley.
Saad Hariri PM, whom Hezbollah raised him on their shoulders (and we always wished the resistance would stay out of the jungle), is advising one of his mediators to carry Hezbollah party as a visa to enter Riyadh.
Thus, after more than four months of spinning inside the vicious circle, the state owner’s media office discovered that the party is adopting the manoeuvring a way awaiting Iranian password that allows it to start seriously in forming the government.
Self-exoneration as a philosophical rule. Your cup, homeland… (Kasak ya watan)
We don’t know whether the leader in charge knows what the moral meaning of words, who accuses Hezbollah of evasive maneuvers, duplicit,…
May the advice not be spent to close the south road, and the Bekaa road, to besiege ′′ Hezbollah ′′ and to catch Saddam, do not thank his punishment.
Thus above the rubble (like a red carpet) enters the palace of the dove.
Despite all that, the doors of the government have not been locked in front of him. He is the one who locks it down…again and again.
Hezbollah to desist spreading myths: Encore
Posted by: adonis49 on: October 18, 2009
Hezbollah to desist spreading myths: Encore; (October 16, 2009)
In a previous post I discussed the two myths: dress codes, and the mixing of State and religious responsibilities. I also stated the reasons for selected Hezbollah for my topic. There are three reasons: first, I need to have a specific target in order to minimize tendencies for generalization; second, Hezbollah is the most powerful movement in Lebanon in number, organization, military training, and in readiness and thus, this important social and political force can either spread havoc or strengthen the independence of Lebanon depending on close dialogue and communication among the Lebanese political parties; and third, because I have a high respect for this organization that saved Lebanon twice from becoming a total non-entity within the last decade. Yes, with Hezbollah I feel that Lebanon is no longer just a State recognized by the UN but has acquired the status of a Nation; a tiny Nation but with the potential of agreeing that we are one people under the law and against all contingencies.
There is this boring and unsettling tendency at Hezbollah’s leadership to start their speeches with a long litany of the “honored” descendents of the Prophet Muhammad. I understand that most diseases are inherited but I have not stumbled on studies characterizing intelligence, learning, and wisdom attributed to inherited genes. Actually, research have demonstrated that offspring of highly intelligent men to be born mostly idiots.
The Prophet Muhammad did not die suddenly; he felt terribly sick for eight days and realized that he is to die soon. The Prophet was fully conscious many times and he said the Morning Prayer before he died in the arms for his beloved and young wife Aicha. If the prophet wanted a close relative to inherit the title of Imam he would have done so; he still had two daughters and two son-in-laws and many close relatives who were Moslems. (Muhammad had four daughters, all married, and two sons; two of the married daughters died before him and his two sons died in infancy before reaching the age of 4).
Maybe it is time for Hezbollah to desist forcing on people untruths of super great offspring generated by the Prophet. Yes, we must be inclined to pray even more forcefully for them because the odds are that they suffered immensely by the high expectations impelled upon them by ignorant and lazy-minded followers. Maybe it is time to expect the next Mahdi to be born from the common people instead of some “noble” creed.
My fourth worry is this trend of re-writing history to please cultural propaganda of a nascent Islamic regional power such as Iran. Chiaa have lived in northern Palestine, Lebanon, and northern Syria many centuries before the Turkish Safafid Empire ruled Iran in the 17th century and decided to adopt the Chiaa sect as the Kingdom religion. The Chiaa had to flee the Arabic Sunni Caliphate Empire for two centuries and suffered frequent persecutions during the Ottoman Empire.
The Chiaa took roots in India and in the Maghreb in North Africa. From the Maghreb they converged to Egypt and ruled during the Fatimid Dynasty for over a century and enjoyed many converts in Palestine, Lebanon, and Syria when Baghdad’s central power was very weak; the city of Aleppo and its district was a major focal point for the Ismaellia Chiaa. The Chiaa also converged from India to Herrat (west Afghanistan) and to Uzbekistan and Tajikistan before spreading to East Iran and the eastern shores of the Arabic Peninsula. Consequently, the Chiaa in the Near East are its inhabitants and form an intrinsic part of the fabric of this region: they adopted the same customs and tradition.
If for political exigencies Hezbollah needs to select leaders who attended religious schools in Qom of Iran, then it does not follow that this short–term need should be the trend. Hezbollah has no advantage to alienate the main religious center in Al Najaf and then Koufa simply because its members are Near Eastern and not Persians. It will pay in the medium-term for Hezbollah to re-write the history of the Chiaa in Lebanon and changing their tradition for a far away civilization and taking official sides for this Iranian Ayatollah or that, or this Iraqi Ayatollah or that. Hezbollah is a resistance movement against any invader to Lebanon because it is Lebanese people and not a branch or an extension or a mercenary force to any regional power. Changing culture and history of the Chiaa in Lebanon can be as dangerous a trend as fomenting civil war.
Misleading Legitimacy: Is your Government Legitimate? (part one)
Posted by: adonis49 on: May 28, 2009
Misleading Legitimacy: Is your Government Legitimate? (May 4, 2009)
Note: This essay on misleading legitimacy is a worldwide problem that is spreading chaos and instability. Thus, this essay can sustain more than one chapter. The first part will focus on the Arab and Islamic legitimacy in the Arab World.
Absence of legitimacy in any society creates a sense of weightlessness in the emotions and orientations of citizens that may spread havoc. The lack of credibility in authority, institutions, and even an eminent personality in matter of moral standing can subject society to be doomed to the rule of the jungle: those perceived to be the strongest in military forces or in organizational stability feel legitimate as tyrants to exercise their violent tendencies and commit massacres and drive society into chaos.
I like to start with two examples, not directly related to the Arab World. We have the case of Indonesia in the 1960’s. As Sukarno secured the Independence of Indonesia, the most populous of the Moslem world, Islam was oriented toward a secular State and was the most tolerant. The colonial mines of raw materials were nationalized and Sukarno was a pillar of the non-aliened States. Normal relations with the Soviet Union and China were progressing without any serious popular opposition.
Sukarno was endowed with popular legitimacy because he satisfied the sense of dignity to his people. In fact, Sukarno had the foresight to combine the doctrines of nationalism, Islam, and communism under the acronym NASACOM but it did not gel well in the short time of his legitimate authority.
As the USA was bracing for a long protracted war in Vietnam, the US Administration decided to secure the total adhesion of the neighboring States with Vietnam to its ideology; the same bipolar pronouncement “You are either with us or against us”. Thus, Suharto, a general, was propelled by a military coup to power. From October 1965 to the summer of 1966, over 600,000 of the Indonesian intelligentsia were executed in universities, the administrations, in the Capital Jakarta, and even in remote villages. By the end of this dictatorship that lasted over 20 years, Islam re-emerged with a different sense of urgencies, more radical, and more zealot.
Let us consider the case of legitimacy in Iran. Mossadegh PM tried in 1951 to have a deal with British Petroleum (BP) for half its profit on its exploitation of Iran’s oil. BP refused and Mossadegh nationalized this oil company by a vote in the parliament. Britain encouraged the US Administration to lead a military coup that brought back the young Shah to power in 1953 for 25 years of tyranny. The Shah perpetrated security harassment, lavish expenditures on personal aggrandizement, purchasing the largest military hardware in the region, and fighting off the powerful Mullahs. The Shah succumbed to Khomeini as President Carter refused to support the Shah’s “precarious” legitimacy. Iran reverted to an extremist conservative Shiaa Islam.
The concept of Arab nationalism is at least two century old and its resurgence was based on two critical factors. First, as the Ottoman Empire waned in culture and civilization by the 18th century, the cultured intelligentsia in Syria and Lebanon immigrated to Egypt for an environment more suited to their literary creativity and publishing.
The climate of openness to various civilizations in Egypt sent a choc wave to the Ottoman Empire that was reverting to Turk nationalism. The successive political turbulence in Turkey considered the nations outside the boundaries of Turkey as nominal dominions that were not worth the investment in time or money. The parties and free minded people who proclaimed the need to revert to Arab culture and Arab language were persecuted and hanged.
Second, Iran of the 18th century has consolidated the power base of its Empire on the Shiaa sect that attacked the Caliphate legitimacy of the Ottoman Sultan. Many non-Sunni sects proselytized a return to conservative fundamentals of Islam (for example, the Wahhabit of Najd in the Arab Peninsula and the Yazd in Yemen) were censuring the dominant concept of Caliphate.
This second chock wave in religious fundamentals of governing focused the attention of the Sunni Moslem toward Mecca and the Hashemi dynasty, supposedly descendent of the Prophet Muhammad. During the First World War, the British colonial power exploited this spiritual revolt into convincing the Arab Moslems into revolting and fighting the Ottoman Empire with lavish promises that it had no intention of keeping.
Consequently, the spirit of Arab nationalism started in earnest during the First World War when the colonial powers tried to ally the “Arab” Moslems against their coreligionist Moslems in Turkey. The colonial powers had no intentions of permitting the “Arabs” to instituting any sustainable State economically, politically, or strategically.
King Faissal of Mecca was promised Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, and Jordan but the French mandate chased him out. The British mandate allocated Faissal the “throne” of Iraq, but Faissal was overturned and died at the age of 50.
The Syrian Nation spirit spread in Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine. First, the Syrian could not conceive why the urban societies in Syria should succumb to nomadic sovereigns selected in Mecca; second, as the Arabic civilization has died 5 centuries ago, even before the advent of the Ottoman Empire, it was necessary to dust off the previous civilizations to Islam and re-invent a national culture and civilization that reflected the urban spirit of fertile Syria. The Arabic formal language was fundamental to maintain, encourage, and solidify as the motherland language while maintaining the ethnic languages.
In 1936, the Syria National Social Party was founded by a Christian Orthodox Antoun Saadeh from Mount Lebanon. This political and ideological party focused on regional unities by adding Iraq to the Syrian Nation and uniting Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Palestine. The other nations would include the Arab Peninsula, the Nile nations, and then the northern Arab nations in Africa such as Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco.
Antoun Saadeh recognized that this region is Moslem by a large margin and wrote a well researched book “Islam (submission to One God): One message Christ and Muhammad” The mandated powers of France and Britain were highly worried of this wild fire being disseminated in the Middle East. Thus, the mandated powers did the utmost to discredit this new ideology by rekindling confessional emotions and sectarian communities and spreading false information on the affiliations of its founders. The founding leader Antoun Saadeh was to be executed without trial by a military court in 1949.
In 1945, the Baath political party was founded by Michel Aflak, another Christian Orthodox from Syria. This new party excited the Arabic nomadic romantic spirit. By 1946, half a dozen States in the Arab World were recognized by the UN such as Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia of the Saud dynasty. The Baath party took roots in Syria and Iraq and was ruled by Sunnis; this party was swept away as Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt came to power and galvanized the Arab populations into the feeling of a new identity and recapturing its dignity.
The Baath Party was ready to include any new State recognizing Arabic as the State language into the Arab Nation. As one Arab State after another were recognized independent by the UN then, Sunnis tried to galvanize the populations into uniting under a vast nation, from Morocco to Sudan to Yemen to Iraq, all in all 21 States reunited under the Arab League.
The Sunnis were enthusiastic for any Arab unity since they form the vast majority in this region; they ultimately contemplated to re-institute the Caliphate.
When the military coup of Gamal Abdel Nasser recaptured power in Egypt it dethroned King Farouk. Many Egyptians believed that “The Moslem Brotherhood” was behind this coup: the “Moslem Brotherhood” had legitimacy among the Egyptian population and had infiltrated the army. Gamal Abdel Nasser declared the nationalization of the Suez Canal in 1955, which was run by Britain and France.
It happened that in the same period, the Soviet Union invaded Hungary to crush a revolt again communism. The US Administration was in a serious predicament; if it allowed France and Britain to capture Egypt by a military alternative then what message it would be sending to the under developed States? That the ideologies of capitalism and communism are the same enemies to the new recognized States? President Eisenhower pressured France and Britain to withdraw and Gamal Abdel Nasser emerged politically the victor and the symbol of Arab regained pride and dignity.
The first move of the newly established “legitimate leader” was to crush his serious challenger to legitimacy, mainly the “Moslem Brotherhood” party.
Many political parties in the Arab World sensed the pulse of the emotional feeling of the masses; a few fought back this unpractical nation with the lame tool of rationality and others countered with the logic that nationality and religion were outmoded by the advent of communism. In fact, every military coup that was supported by communists turned against the communists in no time.
Gamal Abdel Nasser set the tune and the tone; the Arab masses listened to their legitimate leader regardless of his setbacks, pitfalls, critical errors, and his one party dictatorship ruling. The legitimate leader could be forgiven for crushing liberties, freedom of opinions, and sending thousands in prison and hundreds dieing under torture.
In 1965, the Palestinian Resistance under the leadership of Fateh’s Yasser Arafat (Abu Ammar) started re-taking its destiny and responsibility for the forgotten Palestinian aspiration to a motherland. Gamal Abdel Nasser understood that his legitimacy is being challenged for failing to deal with the Palestinians rights of return to their lands. This feeling of challenge to legitimacy was one of the main implicit factors that pressured Gamal Abdel Nasser to ask the UN peacekeeping forces to vacate Sinai in 1967 and the follow up crushing military defeat by the tiny Zionist State of Israel. (To be continued in Part 2).
Note: The theme was extracted from Amine Maalouf’s book “Le Dereglement du Monde”
What do you mean by Secular States? Are western States that secular?
Posted by: adonis49 on: April 6, 2009
How do you understand “Secular States” to mean? (April 6, 2009)
Note: This essay applies to all States, western, orient, animists, pagans, monotheists, secular, semi-secular, democratic, theocratic and other political systems…
Charles Malek, a philosopher and Lebanon’s representative to the United Nations in its earliest 1946 sessions in San Francisco, proclaimed in the 60’s that Lebanon cannot survive as a State, unless all Lebanese convert to Christianity!
Lately, the Moslem Sunni fundamentalists proclaimed in 2006 that the State of Lebanon should be governed Caliphate-style. The Moslem Shiaas of Hezbollah want to establish the rule of the “Wilayat al Fakeeh“, an Ayatollah who would lead by holding both the spiritual and political powers.
For example, the Christians during the civil war wanted to establish Christian cantons, exclusively for the right-wing Christian Lebanese, since they had overrun the Palestinian Christian camps in their “enclaves” and evacuated the lucky surviving Palestinians from the massacres outside the Christian cantons.
Do Christians in the Levant (Near East States) have ground to be worried?
Islam means by “Jihad” the right to proselytize Islam everywhere and all the time. As if the western nations have not been carrying their own brand of “Jihad” since Medieval Age to any place they wanted to colonize.
The Christians in the Levant have grounds to be apprehensive: the Christian sects have refrained from converting Moslems because conservative Islam sects command as “halal” the shedding blood of the “blasphemous” re-converted Moslems.
The Moslem Sunni salafists in north Lebanon, twice fought the Lebanese army within two years: hundreds of soldiers died and were handicapped for life.
The Qaeda of Osama Bin Laden has the same political objective with a twist; the Qaeda wants to establish the restrictive and ultra conservative Wahhabi sect as the essence of selecting Caliphates. The Wahhabi sect is the one adopted by the obscurantist Saudi Arabia theocratic absolute monarchy.
In 1925, the Sunni Ali Abel Razzak wrote in his book “Islam and origin of governance” that
“Islam is innocent of what the conservative Islam understands of the Caliphate. The Caliphate was never in the religious planning, and neither were the religious judges nor any of the civil administrations in the government. The Prophet Muhammad didn’t recognize them or order them or denied them. The political and civil administrative issues were left to the Moslems to decide upon them. Thus, it is proper that we engage our mind and consider the experience of nations, and the rules of politics that are the best around for our Nation.”
In Iran, Ayatollah Borojardy was detained because he wanted to separate States civil politics from religion, thus, resisting the “Fakeeh” concept of government. In Lebanon, the Secretary General of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasr Allah, publicly harangued the Shiaa to considering “Wilayat al Fakeeh” as the official political system of his party.
Knowing that Nasr Allah speaks as a clergy in every religious ceremony, blending religion with politics with resistance to the Zionist Apartheid State, could we ever hope that the politics of Hezbollah are just short-term tactics to uniting the Shiaa against Israel?
The State of Israel would like you to believe that a mythical leader they named Moses had a revelation by a superior being named Yahweh to conquer land by the sword and genocides: Land that was “promised” to the horde of tribes following him. Thus, Israel would like to establish a Jewish theocratic State in Palestine.
It has been categorically proven that the Old Bible was initiated in the second century before Christ in Alexandria, and chapters were added many centuries later, and it was re-edited several times.
Hebrew, as most Arabic verbal languages bordering Syria, was a verbal slang of the Aramaic written language: A written version was created in Alexandria as Jews flocked to Egypt around 300 BC.
If you are nowadays following Lebanon’s politics and the preparations for the election in June 7, you might have the impression that it is the political leaders of the religious sects who are manipulating the sacerdotal castes of our 18 officially recognized religious sects.
Don’t be fooled; ask any Lebanese and he will tell you that he is forced constitutionally to pay his first allegiance to his sect. In fact, the sects were given the legal and official right to administer the civil status of its coreligionists from birth to death and the central government is totally helpless in interfering; even if any serious government wishes to change the political system, it would never want problems to blow in its face…
My question to the western States’ citizens is: Do you believe that the separation of State and religion is implicitly a de facto reality? Do you believe that religious clerics and institutions have desisted from meddling in State affairs? That during voting periods, the religious sacerdotal castes do not impress on the political climate?
Do you believe that there is no religious backlash on religious minorities in democratic States?
Isn’t religion recognized in your constitutions and in the prayers of your national ceremonies? Are not the civil administrative posts implicitly submitted to a quota system?
I am sincerely worried about the practices of those hypocritical Secular States who force its minorities to submit to the various litmus tests, on the ground of applying civil laws and regulations.
Personally, my position is that religious doctrines and stories are a bunch of hog wash nonsense of myths and abstract concepts that even “zero IQ quotient ” individuals refuse the premises.
The religious sacerdotal castes would like you to substitute “your belief in a Creator” from watching the cosmos and the mysteries of life, into total faith in their particular ideological constructs and set of values.
I feel limited in finding a resolution where check and balance can be erected to cope with the all permeating power of the sacerdotal castes in every States around the world.
Constitutional laws need to be thought out to restrict the implicit power of the thousand tentacles that religions have instituted to infuse their ideologies in schools and civil administration of people’s daily life.
One of the best and most efficient methods is to encourage the establishment of opportunities to exercising choices in every aspect in our lives from birth, decentralized schooling systems, marriages, legal divorce alternatives, and burial at each of the legislative, legal, and executive branches.
Only available opportunities for choices, backed by political determination to honor those choices in the workforce, in the daily living, and in society structure, can permit a fighting chance for all those free minded and reflective citizens and families who respect their potential power for deciding what is best for their spiritual development.
Persia during the Arab Caliphate Empire (651 to 1500 AC), Part 5
Posted by: adonis49 on: March 1, 2009
Part 5. Persia during the Arab Caliphate Empire (651 to 1500 AC)
The Moslem Arabs, bolstered by a new religious belief, defeated the Byzantium Emperor Heracles in Yarmouk (Syria) and they extended their land to Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, and Egypt. Five years later, they defeated the Sassanid army in Qadisya in 636 and totally captured the Persia Empire in 651.
The vast majority of the Persian elites adopted Islam to safeguard their social positions.
In the first century of the Omayyad Dynasty, with the Capital based in Damascus, the elites, learned people, and intellectuals of the administration were hired from the Near Eastern population (Syria, Lebanon, Palestine). The Abbasid Dynasty settled in Kufa as capital and then built Baghdad in 762. Slowly but surely, the Persians elites dominated when the Caliphate turned over to the Abbasid Dynasty in 750. Iraq was dominated by the Persians in population and in skills. The viziers were Persians such as the Baramikas tribe, originating from Khorassan, as well as the key posts in the administration because the Persians were famous for their political acumen.
The manuscripts and scientific books were written by Persians in the Arabic language, simply because of the richness of scientific vocabulary that the Arabs accumulated by translating Greek manuscripts. For example, we know of Ibn Mukafaa, Ibn Khurdadbeh, Ibn Rusteh, Istakhri, Khawarazmi, Farghani, and Sibawe (the famous grammarian of the Arab language). Obviously, it was the Persians who needed to learn the Arab grammar and not the bedwins (nomads).
Even though the Persians spoke and wrote in Arabic and were Moslems, they were lumped as Shuubiya or “gentiles”. As the Caliphate authority in Baghdad lost hold on the administration of his Empire then the Arab Empire was divided into fiefdoms of princes under the nominal umbrella of the Caliphate.
In Aleppo (Syria) the Hamadan Dynasty was having skirmishes with Byzantium. In the east, the Samanid dynasty (820 to 1000) reigns in actual Uzbekistan in Central Asia to be replaced by the Ghaznevide Dynasty (998-1186) that occupied most of eastern Iran, Afghanistan and the Punjab in India.
In Egypt,the Fatimid dynasty, with origin in Tunisia, established the first Shiia Moslem sect Empire. In the Caspian region the Bouyide dynasty or Seljuk occupies the plateau of Turkey and then Baghdad in 945. This new powerful dynasty the Seljuk expanded eastward toward Persia and Central Asia. The Seljuk dynasty fought the Crusaders for two centuries and they started defeating the Crusaders by 1150. As the multiple Crusaders’ waves to occupy Egypt, which was the main objective to secure commercial routes, failed then there was no purpose left for the European barons to invest more money in further campaigns.
Although most of the dynasties that reigned in Persia were Turks by origins they adopted the Persian language as the official language for the administration and culture. Persian intellectuals started writing in Farisi that adopted the Arabic alphabet. For example, Ferdowsi, Al Biruni, Ibn Sina (Avicenna), Nasr al Din Tusi, and later Al Kayyam, Atar, Rumi, Saadi, and Hafez have written in Farisi. The main worry of the previous dynasties was to contain the successive waves of invaders coming from the Mongolia and Central Asia steppes. Finally, Genghis Khan’s hordes swept over the entire Middle East region, destroyed Baghdad in 1258, and brought in the plague cholera.
A century and a half later, Tamerlane (Timor-i-lenk or Timor the lame,1330-1405), the “devout” Moslem from current Turkmenistan repeated the same genocides of Genghis Khan and built hundreds of minarets out of heads of decapitated citizens and transferred the artisans and skilled workers from Damascus and the important cities in Persia to his Capital Samarqand.
The prosperous city of Isfahan, of over 400,000 inhabitants, suffered 70,000 decapitated civilians; the city of Delhi in India suffered the same kinds of massacre Tamerlane would not even sleep within the city limit of Samarqand but in tents outside the city. Tamerlane devastated Moscow and the major cities on the Volga River in his pursuit of the leader of the Golden Horde Toqtamish (a descendant of Genghis Khan).
This long and devastating incursion against the Tatars facilitated the victory of Ivan the Terrible half a century later and the establishment of a Russian kingdom. Tamerlane died while on his way to invade China.(To be continued)
Adonis Diaries 